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Post by Deleted on Jan 30, 2018 17:37:35 GMT -5
Your were right codystarbuck it was in the fall of 1984 when I saw the Steiners battling the Road Warriors and according to my friend ... the Road Warriors defeated the Steiners in that match. |
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Post by berkley on Jan 30, 2018 21:31:50 GMT -5
I remember watching a show called Grand Prix Wrestling in the early 70s. I think it might have come from Montreal because there were several Quebec wrestlers - Mad Dog Vachon and his brother whose name I forget, Gilles "the Fish" Poisson, an acrobatic guy named something Kelly whose trademark was to jump up and do the splits touching his fingers to his toes, ... but the biggest stars were two famous French wrestlers, Edouard Carpentier and Andre the Giant. Another big name was Killer Kowalski.
Then I think there wasn't anything on tv for a few years until the 80s boom which I always link to Hulk Hogan's appearance in Rocky III. I watched sporadically through the 80s and 90s well into the "Rock" era, whose antics I always enjoyed - you could always see he was a born performer who loved being on camera, though I had no idea he'd be able to transfer that showmanship to the big screen so successfully.
There's definitely a connection or parallel with superhero comics: the colourful costumes, acrobatic and entertainingly unrealistic fights, impressively muscular larger than life characters, black and white good guy vs bad guy set-up, etc. But I think it's more a matter of both forms of entertainment pushing some of the same buttons rather than one of them taking its audiences to the other.
I'm not sure why I lost interest in it. Maybe I just lost the habit of checking it out now and then as I used to do for years - and now I don't have cable so I'd have to make an effort to look for some way to see it.
I think it might be something like watching one of those soap operas that goes on and on for years without anything really happening: you can stay hooked as long as you're a regular or even semi-regular viewer, but once you're away from it for awhile the spell is broken.
The rise of MMA might be a factor too, though I don't think Pro Wrestling really pretends to compete with real combat sports any more, so it can't be the whole story. I have been fascinated with MMA since the earliest UFC tournaments, though, and still watch it pretty often.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 31, 2018 0:29:11 GMT -5
The Vachon's ran a promotion, called Grand Prix, in Montreal, in opposition to the Rougeau family promotion, before going under. I've seen a little Carpentier from old tapes. The big Canadian promotions were in montreal, Toronto (Frank Tunney and several partners), the Maritimes (Emil Dupree), Calgary (the Hart's Stampede promotion) and Vancouver (Gene Kiniski, in conjunction with Portland promoter Don owens; and under Al Tomko), with some other smaller ones, here and there over the years. There is a vibrant indy scene in Canada now.
France used to have a pretty big pro wrestling scene in the 60s, which continued for years, before petering out. Germany had several, including Otto Wanz's Catch Wresyling Association, which used wrestlers from germany, the UK, US and Canada.
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Post by berkley on Jan 31, 2018 23:27:23 GMT -5
The Vachon's ran a promotion, called Grand Prix, in Montreal, in opposition to the Rougeau family promotion, before going under. I've seen a little Carpentier from old tapes. The big Canadian promotions were in montreal, Toronto (Frank Tunney and several partners), the Maritimes (Emil Dupree), Calgary (the Hart's Stampede promotion) and Vancouver (Gene Kiniski, in conjunction with Portland promoter Don owens; and under Al Tomko), with some other smaller ones, here and there over the years. There is a vibrant indy scene in Canada now. France used to have a pretty big pro wrestling scene in the 60s, which continued for years, before petering out. Germany had several, including Otto Wanz's Catch Wresyling Association, which used wrestlers from germany, the UK, US and Canada. I see posters up all the time here for wrestling shows and a couple of my drinking buddies have suggested checking one of them out sometime. If we ever get around to it I'll be sure to report back here. French pro wrestling shows have been famously written about by Roland Barthes in his book Mythologies; you can probably find a translation online - IIRC, it's a pretty short essay. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 1, 2018 0:40:17 GMT -5
There are some clips on Youtube and it is probably more comparable to earlier lucha libre (in the era of El Santo and Gory Guerrero) , with the acrobatics, but still with mat wrestling.
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