Festelle

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Festelle

Title from Festelle VHS tape
Location London, England
Years active 1983 to present
Website http://www.festelle.eu/en/

Festelle is a long-standing female and mixed wrestling company that was started by Phil Ryder in 1983 in London, England and is still active. The first two videos tapes (FV1 and FV2) were recorded at private indoor events, but following the success of these videos they organised a live event at a pubic house in south London, England in November 1983. The video recording of fights from this event (FV3) are still available on the Festelle website e.g. Lorna vs. Sherry. All the matches were topless, which broke new ground in England at this time and led to the event being a success.

For the next 12 years live events continued to be a regular happenings for Festelle with over 150 fighters appearing in some 300 matches at 15 different venues in south and north-west London. The audience was usually around 30 to 40 depending on the size of the venue and the nature of the fights. Some indoor semi-private events, often featuring nude or erotic wrestling, were also held with smaller audiences. By 1995 the growth of the video market meant that Festelle was able to offer more videos of different styles to customers without the effort of staging live shows, so Phil Ryder decided to stop the public live events. The last public show was held in the summer of 1995 at a public house in Putney, London. With the ending of the larger public shows Festelle concentrated on private or semi-private events many of which featured nude matches held indoors or in the gardens of private houses. It seems likely that Festelle is continuing with such events to this day.