Tuesday is French Catch Day: Tony Oliver! Bert Royal! Michael Chaisne! DR. ADOLF KAISER!

SR: We get about 5 minutes of Claude Dreyfus vs. Daniel (or Marcel) Parmentier.  Even in those 5 minutes you got a lot of character work. Parmentier was a grimacing old veteran heel and an absolute fox handing out cheapshots and faking injuries. I especially liked when he crawled underneath the referee so he could hit his opponent. Dreyfus was a younger wrestler and had some typically nifty athletic moves. Nasty finish with Dreyfus going for a rana only to get planted by a powerbomb.

MD: They packed a lot into these five minutes. The initial exchange in the footage had Dreyfus going up and over into a trip out of a lock up, Parmentier refusing to break clean after they end up in the ropes, and then Dreyfus getting revenge with three huge chops, and an insult to injury jackknife roll up in the corner with his feet perfectly dangling in the ropes. I've never seen its like. That finish was about thirty-five years before its time. Dreyfus was a little all over the place but definitely imaginative and Parmentier was a mean mug. I'd be happy to see these guys again.

Tony Oliver vs. Bert Royal 2/22/57

SR: Awesome, awesome fight. I was excited to see Bert Royal, a really neat WoS guy with all too little footage, showing up as a young lad in France 13 years before his WoS material. Tony Oliver is, I assume, another Spanish worker, and like all Spanish workers we‘ve seen so far he is really awesome. This was nasty, grinding title fight, 1 fall over 35 minutes. The wrestling equivalent to seeing Ali slugging it out with someone over 12 rounds. Great mix of wrestling and beating the shit out of each other. Oliver was the kind of worker who was all about inside shots and grinding his knuckles really hard into his opponent. Anytime he got an advantage he would dig his fist into Berts face, elbow to the stomach , bite, or hammer him in the ribs. There was a lengthy section where he was just trying to pull Royals knee apart. He also has really awesome mannerisms, like he gets so upset at the audience booing his tactics in hilarious ways, he is totally the hero of his own story. Later he takes the chance to stomp the referee, which was such an amusing psycho move. When Royal gets fed up and starts firing away with those forearms, Oliver is really awesome flopping around wobbly headed, it was amazing to watch. Royal is mostly on the receiving end of Olivers cheapshots, but he busts out some really cool fast movements here and there, he also has his awesome signature backslide submission hold and a really cool Tiger Mask spin into a victory roll. I loved how intense they worked the pin attempts, I am so mad workers nowadays have no sense for that kind of thing. Oliver also really knows how to escalate things, he is basically throwing shots the whole match, but when he drops his knee on Royals throat or stomps him in the back of the head it really feels like he crossed the line. It builds to this really intense frenzy, Royal taking bumps to the outside, Oliver getting pasted with a big palm strike (!!), both guys trading forearms on the floor, nasty use of the ring ropes, awesome finish. Post match Oliver shows some class, which I guess is a nice conclusion to his story, since we seemingly won‘t see him again. It‘s really amazing that we all got interested in French wrestling by guys doing improbable athletic shit in black and white matches, and then France keeps throwing completely different things at you that end up being really awesome.

MD: Just a lot to parse through here. It was a title match and it felt like one, with a lot of the trappings you'd expect from a long Race defense years later. Oliver was fascinating to watch. He was absolutely hyperactive, to the point where I wonder if he shouldn't have been medicated. He couldn't stand still, which played out in his work in any number of ways but the most interesting might have been his need to constantly pepper cheapshots in. It worked against him for most of the match. He couldn't just pin his opponent; he had to try to sneak three shots into the ribs or pull too much on the tights. He couldn't hang on to a submission; he had to keep trying to get some sort of extra advantage even at the cost of losing the hold. He did damage, but it was all probably counterproductive as the ref was firmly against him (and for good reason).

That middle section with the legwork, including frequent punches and grinding his knuckle into the knee, really worked for me, not the least of which because Royal sold a limb as much as anyone we've seen in this footage so far. Like a long title match, however, they transitioned out of it and into other things, but believably enough. It's almost impossible to write these up because there's just so much. For instance, Sebastian mentioned the cool backslide backbreaker submission, but it was set up by a few great dropkicks and Oliver bumping into the corner like a champ (and this was in response to Oliver utilizing some hand manipulation out of an armbar that he gave up to throw a nasty hammer, and after Oliver got out of the backbreaker by pulling the hair, Royal was right after him with rabbit punches and a shot with the ropes, and, and, and). The finish was perfect for the match, smooth as anything out of rope-running that they spent much of the match escalating towards. Forget modernity: this is the best way you'll spend thirty-five minutes watching wrestling this month.

PAS: This was a stone cold classic match. It is up there with Cesca vs. Cantanzarro and I could honestly see putting it above it on a list of all time French Catch matches. Bert Royal is in our 1971 MOTY, but this is a very different Bert Royal. We saw Tony's brother Jim earlier in the footage, and from the only two matches we get it looks like the Oliver brothers are up there with the best pair of brothers in wrestling history. I cannot overstate how much I loved Tony Oliver in this match. He was Masa Fuchi on speed, constantly driving his knuckles into parts of Royal's body in this torturous way, and then flying into big bumps and exchanges. It was so much fun to watch him lay in his cheap shots, including finding ways to plausibly stomp the referee without getting DQed. Royal was super cool too, I loved his early almost maestroish mat work, and later he lost his cool and matched Oliver blow for blow including a stomp to the back of the head which looked legitimately concussive. The final stanza was pretty wild with both guys spilling to the floor, some kinetic rope running and a deep backslide finish which was about as good of a flash pin as I can remember seeing.


Dr. Adolf Kaiser vs. Michel Chaisne  2/28/57

ON DR. ADOLF KAISER:

(from our correspondent in Paris, Alfred Lang, 1957)

„(…) French television has about half a million subscribed viewers. From experience, there are roughly 4 people watching every TV set at a time. A forum of an estimated 2 million watches both the speeches of head of government Mollet aswell as the appearances of Dr. phil Adolf Kaiser. (…) He is introduced to the French people as a German champion of Catch, and a Doctor of Philosophy. This man likely does not a speak a lick of German, he is slightly more repulsive than the musclemen who normally practise the noble sport of Catch, his face is more animal-like, and he looks like a lusty murderer in a fifth category American movie, who is brought down in the last scene by magnanimous G-man with a colt. The partner of this splendid German is usually chosen to be a good looking, sporty young man, whose pleasant task it is to get demolished by this supposed Adolf Kaiser over several rounds and finally be caught in this Germanic catcheurs gruesome stranglehold and sink to the ground, not completely soulless but unconscious, and be carried to the back in a solemn procession. The crowd completely loses it during these battles which are likely carefully choreographed beforehand. „Sale boche“ - „Beat the nazi to death“ is one of the more moderate chants. (…) Once the „Actual Report“ is over and the charming face of the host appears on the screen, 2 million people, surely a third of them children breathe a sign of relief, telling each other what a nameless swine this boche Adolf Kaiser is. The adults will listen to Monsieur Mollet excitedly talking about the French-German friendship the next day. People will be educated on the new epoch of French history in schools by well meaning teachers, but this Adolf Kaiser, German doctor of philosophy, will continue to haunt their minds until the next Friday, when 500 000 TV sets will be turned on once more to educate 2 million people on the German horror...“

SR: I have read about Dr. Adolf Kaiser, aka Hans Waldherr before. A german reporter, I think from Der Spiegel or Stern, saw him on TV in France and then wrote a rage filled article (see above) about Dr. Kaiser, who was portraying an evil German on French television, which supposedly had a toxic effect on the relations between France and Germany. I assume this was maybe the earliest appearance of Dr. Kaiser, since he gets a respectful reaction from the crowd at his introduction. I was expecting Adolf Kaiser, Doctor of Philosophy to be this outrageously evil and brutal character, but he was a fairly classy worker and he wore leopard trunks of all things. He surprised Chaisne with a nice leg trip and wrist attack, later he locks in a cool double armlock that a luchador could steal. It made me wonder how technical German and Austrian workers could get, I guess simply everyone in Europe then was some awesome wrestling genius. However, it soon became apparent where the bout was gonna go, since Kaiser was eager to show ass, bump big and throw inside shots. His animalistic body language and antics also had „evil“ written all over them. Chaisne soon started to give Kaiser the business with some nasty nasty knee scrapes and laying in the uppercuts. I almost thought it was too much too early, since Kaiser hadn‘t done anything that nasty compared to the heels we saw on French TV before, but I guess when you‘re a German named Adolf Kaiser working in France you gotta be prepared to eat some uppercuts. Wrestling wise there was some cool body scissors work and the Dr. showing he could wrestle even when he would gladly take shortcuts. Chaisne is another worker we‘ll see many times until the very 80s and he looked veritable here. He seemed to have the match in the bag until Kaiser launched him outside and rammed his head into the ringpost. Chaisne came up bloody and fell to an Indian Deathlock coupled with the dreaded nerve hold from the Dr. Afterwards Chaisne has to be carried to the back with everyone acting all concerned. Really nifty TV bout which was oozing with character all the way through.

MD: I'm glad to have the backstory on Kaiser, even though I lament the philosophy degree being worked. The crowd seemed fairly frustrated with both of these guys. We see nominal babyfaces really brutalize the heels at times in this French footage, but here it made this come off as more heel vs heel with the crowd booing both wrestlers accordingly. Kaiser leapt into his character and the match figuratively and literally, missing four or five dives. My favorite exchange in here (which sums the first two thirds up well) was Kaiser taking both of Chaisne's arms and dropping them hard onto the mat, only to scurry away hilariously on his back from the revenge armbar. It was a weird mix of comedy (with funny fingers-in-ear spots for instance), legitimately great wrestling (at one point, Kaiser did this amazing escape out of a headscissors by pressing his own feet into the ropes for a quick burst of leverage), and the two guys just being absolutely mean and uncooperative with one another (that headscissors escape was followed up by Kaiser tossing the ref into Chaisne, missing a dive, and getting kicked square in the skull for his trouble). Ultimately, that last bit won out and Kaiser's brutal posting out of nowhere gave him the match. It's good we will get to see these two again because I think I'd get a better sense of both of them against different opponents.

PAS: I thought this was really cool, we have seen better matches in this project, but something about Kaiser really connected with me. He was such a twitchy creep, like if Dennis Hopper was playing a Nazi wrestler. I loved how he would dive suddenly at the feet of his opponent, or dig his fingers into muscles. Really liked Chaisne too, he was really brutal, those knee scrapes to the face were over the top in a great way. Both guys were clearly super technically sound in addition to being violent fucks. Finish was awesome as you could tell they rarely did things like ringpost shots, and I could totally see that violent finish setting up Kaiser as a some sort of wrestling icon. The wrestlers carrying a bloody KO'ed Chaisne to the back was a pretty iconic image.