Tuesday is French Catch Day: Delaporte! Villars! Nelson! Cody! Mercier! Le Foudre!

Al Araujo vs. Marcel Parmentier 7/25/58

SR: Only about 1 minute of this, but any Parmentier is must watch he clobbers Araujo while exuding his trademark miserable charisma and the crowd seemed excited for this.

MD: Shame we only get a minute of this. Honestly, I knew we didn't have much more Parmentier but when I saw the video was 48 minutes long, well...


Roger Delaporte/Paul Villars vs. Gordon Nelson/Bud Cody 7/25/58

MD: We've seen a few Delaporte tags now and we have a number left and they definitely fell into a simple formula. He, as much as any wrestler I've ever seen, had quite the sense of ring positioning. The game, the entire game, is keeping the opponent in his corner, cheating as much as possible, and then showing ass for multiple comebacks. He (and his partner, generally), is a constant looming presence on the outside, always ready to grab from the apron or leap in. There are times here, where he forces the breaking of a hold on Villars just by stepping in, preempting the interference, because the babyface knows what's coming. When he's on top, he's inscrutable and cruel, kicking, hammering, launching great strikes. When he's underneath, he's cowering, hiding, refusing to get in. He takes a great deal. He gives a great deal, always just a little more which is easy to do when you win so much, and the crowd absolutely loves to hate him. We had some of the hits we've seen before, like the leglock assisted by bouncing off the ropes and some new ones like a tandem Fujiwara armbar.

Here, Villars was a lot of the same, not quite the contrast of someone like Guy Robin, but doubling down on the Delaporte formula isn't a bad thing. Nelson was more of a stiff upper lip babyface, occasionally getting furious and taking out both wrestlers, but usually just a constant presence. Cody, who was billed as a distant relative of Buffalo Bill as these were fake Americans, on the other hand, was a powder-keg, a fireplug, throwing fists with abandon. Whenever the faces really fight back, it's an air of chaos, and so much of that is on Delaporte's reactions. Great finishes to the falls here, too, the first being a novel rope gut clotheslining off a whip due to Villars pulling the rope, the second being this crazy up and over press into a pin by Nelson, and the third being full on chaos with a ref bump, everyone being tossed, and the third being a Delaporte cheapshot on a slam to let Villars fall on top for the win. Forty entertaining minutes that felt like twenty, that's the Delaporte formula so far.

SR: 2/3 Falls match going close to 40 minutes. It‘s legendary tough guy Gordon Nelson in a complete match, so that‘s exciting. He was only in his 2nd year as a pro wrestler, but had the look of a grizzled balding veteran, and the commentator kept joking about nelson holds and calling him Admiral. This follows as the same basic formula as most of these matches, it starts out with some basic holds and then they slowly start cranking out nastier and nastier beatings on each other. The heel team of Delaporte & Villar was spectacular here essentially holding the match together. Villars is quite the fucker here kneeing people in the spine and uncorking these nasty punt kicks that I used to think only WAR and BattlARTS guys did. Delaporte has quite an outstanding sense of what to do when in these overly long matches, such as rolling up Nelson while he was busy with Villars only for Nelson to pop up and smash Villars in the mouth anyways, or jawing with the crowd. I have no idea how these 40 minute matches were laid out in the back but I imagine they were built around these types of cues and the faces took them well. Cody held up his end throwing fists and just beating the shit out of the French guys to the crowds delight. Ending was really good with the crowd getting rowdy as hell.

PAS: I really dug this as well. Delaporte clearly has a great formula in tags and it is as great a formula as anything the Andersons or the Midnight Express had. Villars was a great running buddy, really vicious and cheap shotty. I want to double down on the greatness of the Nelson body press which won the second fall. It didn't have any refinement to it, but it was wildly athletic and really spectacular to watch.

Guy Mercier vs Allen Le Foudre 1/24/70

MD: It's funny to watch European wrestling of any sort and see anything experimental in the idea of rounds, but that's what this was. Five rounds of dubious length with short breaks (40 seconds?) in between and a judging at the end. At one point, the commentator asks Mercier about how it's going in between rounds and he indicates it's harder than a normal match. Anyway, this was really, really good. We've seen Mericer once before, in the Finlay tag ten years later, and he maintained that sort of greco-roman vibe with his approaches and some of his throws here. Verhulst was Johnny Londos on the NJPW set; to brush up I watched him vs Fujinami and Mile Zrno this weekend. The Zrno match is great and the Fujinami one very interesting since it's almost like Fujinami facing off against the spirit of French Catch: a lot of things we're quite familiar with. I suggest people track them down. Here he brought a lot of that same energy with really deep throws (over the shoulder and using the leg across the hip and lots of quick twists from both guys). They worked some extended holds, with the Verhulst headscissors (with long headstands by Mercier) and some of the cravates with lots of hanging on as highlights. Some of the throws (Verhulst deadlift front facelock suplex, a belly to belly by Mercier that dropped Verhulst on his head, a really deep bridging on towards the end) were just great. They picked up the pace believably in the last round, really jockeying for position and building things towards the bell. I wish we had another twenty Verhulst matches, but we don't. We do have more Mercier to come though.

SR: 1 Fall match that goes about 25 minutes. For some reason, this had rounds, maybe due to this being for Guy Mercier's European title, or maybe because this was somewhere in the countryside where things were done in a different way. Anyways, Allen Le Foudre is Charles Verhulst (which the announcer also points out), who some people may remember as Johnny Londos from the NJPW set. He also had a handful of appearances in IWE and a nice handheld match against Mile Zrno. Verhulst was a former freestyle wrestler on the Belgian national team and had a reputation for being a top notch technician who couldn‘t quite put his character together. Once again, it is immense to get more footage of a guy like Verhulst from all this footage, in addition to footage of guys no one has heard of or thought about in decades. This match was strictly for the purists, but I enjoyed it a lot. No flashy spots or escapes, no story besides two guys wrestling the fuck out of each other, but I thought it was tremendous. These guys have really beautiful array of armdrags and hip throws which they execute with serious force, all to set up elbow joint popping top wristlocks and chanceries. The camera is really good because the close up really enhances all the little things these guys will do in order to try and escape a hold. All of which makes the eventual escapes more rewarding. I think there wasn‘t a single rope running spot or dropkick in the match. Guy Mercier had some cool greco roman suplexes – not something you see a lot in euro matches. This followed the typical pattern of two technicians working to a draw – mostly technical work and escapes before things flare up a bit in the last round and European uppercuts are thrown and the time runs out. Nothing surprising, emotional or mindblowing here at all, but I thought it was a great little hard fought contest.

PAS: I thought the rounds kind of screwed up the pacing here, but the actual work was really great. I adored the throws here, these deep armdrags and powerful throws from both guys that reminded me of Victor Zangiev in New Japan. There were some cool escapes from the mat and the forearm exchanges were very Catch, but a lot of this match felt different in style then what we have seen before. It didn't really go anywhere as a match, the rounds killed the momentum and we didn't get a finish, but man there was some stellar individual stuff which is as memorable as anything we have seen so far.