Segunda Caida: La Petit Prince is Having the Prime Time of His Life

La Petit Prince vs. Michel Saulnier 9/30/67 - EPIC

PAS: This was worked like is Godard directed Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Dean Malenko. Saulneir had these nasty cauliflower ears and would try to ground the Prince with tight headlocks and hammerlocks , and be countered by the Prince who was flying all over the ring with absolutely crazy backflips, headscissors and reversals. When Saulneir got on his feet he would move really quickly too, but the Prince was really next level with his speed and acrobatics. There were a couple of very cool unique spots, including a great sequence of reversals and counter attempts built around a short arm scissors, and a fun spot where Saulnier tries a bodypress and gets caught by the ref. Only minor flaw was kind of a flat draw ending, where the ref just kind of stops them mid lock up, no real drama or build to the draw, they just do stuff until it ends. It was super cool stuff though.

ER: And here I just copy and paste from every other French catch match and talk about how it's some of the most mind bending athleticism I've ever seen in a wrestling ring. These guys are like Cirque du Soleil (I'm casually proud of myself for not needing spell check on that one) performers with their balance and movement and spacial awareness, always coming up with new tricks and always taking exchanges a different direction that I expect. Petit Prince is adorable, in the ring with his little cape and his eye glasses, and Saulnier is a bit more of a brute, and I loved the longer the match went on the more brutish Prince worked. Prince had this amazing ability to grab a headscissors out of nearly any position, and there were no cheapies where Saulnier had to go over for a headscissor that wasn't quite locked in. Prince would catch Saulnier in one so snug that he wouldn't have any choice but go over, and that's kind of the greatest thing about this stuff: We get tons of hyperspeed hold exchanges (seriously, some exchanges look like the frame rate is sped up, but then you see the brie-baked ref slowly walking by in the background and you are reminded that these men are just super freaks), but they all look strong, never look like one of the workers is bumping something too early or going through a rehearsed sequence, which seems flat out impossible. There are no shortcuts taken with these moves; snapmares look like they're going to pop a guy's head off, same with the headscissors, backdrops look natural and headlock takeovers look violent.

Fans get really excited when Prince makes his comeback, puts niceties aside and starts taking it to Saulnier. Prince suddenly starts throwing in these dickish gestures, scraping his heel across Saulnier's chin, throwing in an absolutely brilliant spin kick right into Saulnier's chin, a spin kick that came so fast and landed so precise that I don't know if I've seen one better. What's amazing is these guys don't often strike, so you wouldn't expect them to just have this rarely used amazing strike hidden in their cape. We get a couple fantastic, unique moments, down the stretch: The two men start choking each other and wind up in the ropes, the ref attempts to get in between the choking and the two just continue choking each other around the ref. We get a fun missed crossbody where Saulnier flies into the ref after Prince ducks, with the large ref catching him and setting him down, like the most natural occurrence of a silly midget match spot. The draw finish was disappointing, but it didn't make me think the 20 minutes of wrestling was any less spectacular. And I disagree that there was no build, as the moves clearly ramped up down the stretch, with Prince especially working more big shots. It came out of nowhere to us, as there were no traditional announcements of a time limit, and these matches aren't built around going for a lot of nearfalls, so we don't get a ton of "cues" that a time limit is imminent. But I think the work definitely built, and really could have kept on going.