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delete please


Legace

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Shit, I really wish I could. The closest I can get is Titanes en el Ring from Argentina, or Eurocatch (EWF [Flesh Gorden's French promotion]) on Eurosport in the early 90s.

 

This is probably the best On Topic thread in years though. Going to throw up the @JNLister sign here.

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The Observer had this obituary of a Telecatch wrestler in 2012:

 

Mario Marino, one of Brazil’s top pro wrestlers of the 60s and a major national celebrity under the name Ted Boy Marino, passed away on 9/27 at the age of 72.

He was light skinned and had bleached blond hair, which was a contrast to most Brazilians, who have dark skin. He had long hair and a muscular athletic physique from weightlifting.

Ted Boy Marino played the role of the ultimate white meat babyface during the era of “Telecatch,” the pro wrestling show on national television in that era. He had a great resemblance to a young Jerry Jarrett, with the blond hair and sheepish looks. Like Jarrett before his days as a promoter, Marino played the boy-next-door babyface who could get the sympathy from women as he sold. For people who are in their 50s in Brazil, Ted Boy Marino would be remembered as a legitimate childhood hero to many.

Telecatch was a primitive form of modern Lucha Libre with the same type of cadence and comebacks. Marino would take a beating from ugly heels with names like Aquiles, Verdugo (not the Mexican version but possibly the Peru version), Rasputin and La Momia (again not sure if it’s the same La Momia who was a superstar in Argentina at the same time).

He was the master of the flying head scissors in particular, and in doing comebacks, could hit six or more in a row and follow it up with dropkicks. He was also the subject of campy babyface videos, years before Memphis introduced them to the U.S. pro wrestling scene, showing him training and having picnics with young girls in the park and playing the role of the nice looking boy next door.

Marino was living in Rio de Janeiro and was diagnosed with acute vascular insufficiency, which required emergency surgery, and had complications, including suffering a stroke. Doctors were working on him for nine hours until he went into cardiac arrest after surgery.

While he was most famous in Brazil, he was actually born in Italy, but at the age of 13, his family moved to Buenos Aries, Argentina. He worked as a shoemaker, but after work, trained in both wrestling and weightlifting. He started wrestling in Argentina in 1962 on their version of “Telecatch.” Catch was a term used in Europe and South America in those days for pro wrestling, with the wrestlers called catchers, stemming from the old term catch-as-catch-can for pro wrestling.

His success in Argentina led to Brazilian promoters importing him in 1965, where he was made into a star on national television. “Telecatch” aired on Saturday nights from 9-10 p.m. on TV Excelsior, at the time the leading national network, airing live from Sao Paulo. Already one of the most popular stars in wrestling, he became a more well known national figure as a star on the television show “The Lovely Trapalhoes,” which was one of the highest rated programs in Brazil of the era. Executives at TV Excelsior were looking for a vehicle to attract women for a variety show, with Ted Boy Marino and Wanderlei Cardoso (a teen idol at that time) as the stars. They later added singer Ivon Cury and actor Renato Aragao for comic relief and at the peak of the show in 1967 and 1968, it was doing between a 50 and 60 rating, so he was legitimately a household name. He also starred in a movie in 1968 called “Sois na Lona,” playing a fighter. He was a big enough star that at one point he was on the cover of Brazil’s version of TV Guide.

During the 70s, he was signed by TV Globo, which became the dominant network, and was a regular on four different weekly shows at the same time, meaning he was on prime time television almost nightly. He was the star in a Monday night soap opera fighting various villains. He was in a variety show on Tuesdays where he co-hosted entertainment acts like singers and circus performers, stemming from his success years earlier on “The Lovely Trapalhoes.” He also appeared weekly as one of the big stars on wrestling, which in that era aired on prime time on both Saturday and Sunday nights.

Later, as wrestling’s popularity on television faded in the early 80s, he became a full-time actor.

He was co-star of the TV show “Os Trapalhoes,” and did guest appearances on a number of television shows, and as he got older played occasional villain roles on television, but remained a star to children on a Saturday morning show. He also performed in theaters.

He retired from the entertainment world in 2000, and largely faded from public view at the time. He lived near the beach in Rio de Janeiro and was often spotted hanging out with friends and playing beach volleyball.

He was healthy and in good shape until the past few months. One year ago, he went to Guadalajara to cheer on the Brazilian athletes in the 2011 Pan American games. He was interviewed while at the games last October, saying he loved seeing Mexican Lucha Libre, but that he hated the violence of mixed martial arts. That wouldn’t be surprising, given that during his heyday, the Brazilian style was similar to Lucha Libre, and there was a feud at times between the Vale Tudo business, and some of its stars and the pro wrestling business. The feud between Vale Tudo vs. pro wrestling was the backdrop of Helio Gracie’s famous matches with Masahiko Kimura, who was a pro wrestling superstar in Brazil at the time, and Waldemar Santana, Gracie’s top protege who quit being the shooter at his gym to become a pro wrestler.

 

 

Can't help thinking Ted Boy Marino looks like Pat Patterson and that the whole deal about him winning the IC title in Rio was mistaken identity.

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I was wracking my brains to remember where I knew the name Ted Boy Marino from. Bloody Os Trapalhões, incredibly dopey Brazilian film and TV comedies. Didn’t expect that and Wanderley Cardoso to pop up on here. Had a bit of a look into Brazilian wrestling recently, but apart from Ted Boy and his headscissors, and the replacement of Vale Tudo because of the violence level, didn’t seem to be a mountain of stuff out there. 

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Something interesting I found out in the MMA forum very recently thanks to @wandshogun09 was that Vale Tudo was a sub-discipline of a Brazilian martial art called "Luta Livre", which, obviously, is the Portuguese linguistic equivalent of "lucha libre" - "free fight".

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I assume Tele Globo own the rights and are either blocking footage on copyright grounds and/or not much footage still exists. I found this footage on YouTube though, the bottom one is from a playlist of other luta livre

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x1p1GD2SaEg

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wYkWIto4sgU

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f2uuG4U5alU

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sKGoDtC4XDg&list=PLDxiq_Q6vVjl1L6tWisqYzOj4kmcZE_O-&t=0s&index=4

Edited by Really Big Shoe
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