That same year, a French troupe of wrestlers performed in Madrid, Spain, and introduced modern American-style professional wrestling to Spanish audiences for the first time.
Five months later, the FFCP held the earliest-known catch-as-catch-can professional wrestling show in Barcelona on October 25, 1933, headlined by Henri Deglane and Sailor Arnold.
[9] From the 1950s until the 1970s, live wrestling shows were commonplace in France, notably at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris, at fairs or on the occasion of special galas such as on Bastille Day.
Roger Couderc, Georges de Caunes, Claude Darget (who was briefly sacked for flouting kayfabe on air in 1959, resulting in industrial action by colleagues)[10] and Thierry Roland generally provided commentary for televised matches.
[3] Although popular television, the sport's worked nature and working class appeal attracted hostility from such luminaries as sports minister Maurice Herzog who lobbied for cancellation of "vulgar" wrestling and RTF assistant director general Raymond Janot who attempted to pull wrestling from the schedules in April 1961[11] only for a public backlash to force him to relent.
[13][14] Top stars of French wrestling at the time included l'Ange Blanc, Jean Ferre (the future André the Giant), "Le Tigre de la Lutte", Le Bourreau de Béthune (Jacques Ducrez), Le Petit Prince (Daniel Dubail), Jean Corne, the masked Zarak (British wrestler Dave Larsen), Claude Roca, André Drapp known as "the Lion of Lorraine", Abdesslam El Alami, Robert Duranton, Chéri Bibi and Delaporte, who also bought out the FFCP from Paoli in 1960, becoming the dominant promoter in France.
In the 1980s, wrestling in France moved to a more acrobatic style of action and colourful gimmick-led presentation, as exemplified by lead babyface Flesh Gordon (Gerard Hervé) who had learned his craft in 1970s Mexico.
[7][3] In 1984 the FR3 network of regional stations broadcast the series La Dernière Manchette ("The Last Forearn Smash") featuring vintage footage, new bouts and mock crowd scene sketches.
In 1988, a run of early episodes of the New Catch wrestling programme, filmed mostly in France and heavily using local stars already long established on previous television such as Gordon/Hervé, Jacky Richard (as "Travesti Man"), Prince Zéfy and Angelito were screened on TF1 the former Channel 1, in preparation for the show's full launch on Eurosport in 1989.
[21][1] The first live WWF show in France, indeed in all Europe, took place October 23, 1987 at Bercy Stadium headlined by a match with Andre as special referee between Junkyard Dog and Harley Race.
[21] The WWF continued to visit France sporadically through the early 1990s -an October 9, 1991 show at Palais Omnisports was headlined by a battle royal won by Davey Boy Smith[24] a return to the Bercy Stadium on April 8, 1993, saw Yokozuna, between World title reigns, defeat Hacksaw Duggan while on August 5 that year in Toulon, he kept his by-then regained World title by losing by disqualification to Hulk Hogan, in the penultimate appearance of Hogan's 1983–1993 WWF run.
Relations between the big two traditional promotions are exceptionally poor – even by standards of inter-promotional rivalries in the wrestling business globally – with each accusing the other of being fraudulent and refusing to speak to journalists who interview the other side.