Catch up

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Television broadcast
Original title Catch up
Country of production Germany
Year (s) 1989-1991
length 40 minutes
Broadcasting
cycle		 weekly
Moderation
First broadcast April 2, 1989 on RTL

Catch Up was a wrestling show (at that time still known as Catchen or Catch As Catch Can ) on the private broadcaster RTL . It ran from April 2, 1989 to September 2, 1991 in a 40-minute edition. The total of 98 programs were broadcast weekly.

The programs were moderated by Horst Brack “Der Bestrafer” (citizen Rochus Hahn ) and Joe Williams (citizen Ben Brumfield , later online editor at CNN ). While Joe Williams mimed the serious presenter ( "Face" ), Horst Brack took on the role of the villain (also called "Heel" in wrestling ). Williams' job was to highlight the good, while Brack defended and praised all bad actions. Williams as a native American was encouraged to use his accent in order to appear as a US expert. Rochus Hahn's role model for the character of Horst Brack was the US wrestler and commentator Jesse "the Body" Ventura .

The first nine programs were moderated by Joe Williams alone. Horst Brack only joined the tenth edition. In the meantime, Peter William was also a guest, who worked as a referee and later also as a commentator in the pure WCW broadcasts.

Brumfield and Hahn were also responsible for the production of the show behind the scenes and, according to their own statements, enjoyed the freedom of fools. The moderations and other sections, which were becoming more and more present, were significantly expanded to include the two moderators and gave the show a great entertainment value even for people who were not familiar with wrestling itself.

In addition to talks by the moderators, there were insights into the fights of the major US wrestling leagues National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) , World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and the German Catch Wrestling Association (CWA) . The fans got fights from the catch greats Vader , Ric Flair , Sting , Brian Pillman and others. v. a. to see. On one occasion the moderators traveled to the USA to record interviews with wrestlers like Sid Vicious . This was done on the initiative of Brumfield, who had to save budget elsewhere.

Due to the mostly uninteresting matches that were made available to the broadcaster by the NWA (there were mostly only arguments between a star and a "jobber", an unknown opponent who was used to make stars look good), the moderators were of great importance and put their stories. Guests like the "King of Catchers" René Lassartesse or Klaus Kauroff were featured prominently in the program and the moderators were involved in feuds with the German catchers. Both moderators were allowed to appear as referees in the CWA, and Horst Brack even had a few matches as a catcher.

This paid off because Catch Up was very successful on the young private broadcaster. According to Brumfield and Hahn, over time, due to changes in leadership at the station, the show was seen as an unloved child and was often postponed and put on unattractive slots like midnight. Nevertheless, market shares of over 20% were achieved in some cases. The last 19 episodes were fully produced in 1991 and their broadcasting was postponed several times without formal cancellation, so that they never go on air. A later broadcast on the sister station RTL 2 failed due to legal hurdles. A later DVD release of the program was also canceled when it became apparent that RTL had not kept the program in the archive and the consequences were therefore irretrievably lost.

There was no insight into the fights of the world's largest wrestling league at the time, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) (now WWE ). This was in direct competition with the other leagues and had its own program called Ring Free , which ran on the private broadcaster Tele 5 . If the organizations and stars of other organizations were not mentioned in the WWF broadcasts, the WWF and its stars were occasionally mentioned in passing on Catch Up.

In 1990 Catch Up Bracks Pillory was launched. Prominent guests were targeted by Horst Brack, who tried to put his guests down in any form. I.a. were Ottfried Fischer , Ingolf Lück , Diether Krebs , Ingo Schmoll and Martin Semmelrogge guest. This popular interview series was based on Roddy Piper's Piper's Pit segments at the World Wrestling Federation.

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