Tuesday is French Catch Day: Inca Peruano! Jacky Corne! Jo Labat! Ami Sola!

Jose Arroyo vs. Pierre Bernaert  2/11/58

SR: JIP with about 5 minutes shown. It seems like Arroyo is getting a push, as he makes short work of Bernaert. Bernaert did his usual spiel throwing underhand punches but gets what‘s coming to him as Arroyo rains punches from mount and uncorks some jaw loosening uppercuts. Exactly what you‘d expect.

MD: We have about five minutes out of over thirty of this and what it really has me looking forward to is the Arroyo vs Peruano match from 1960 that's still a ways ahead of us. Arroyo is definitely the same guy we saw last week, in with the crowd and prone to fits of violence. The clearest moment of that here was when he took a bit of abuse from Bernaert who was trying to prevent him from exiting a hold (including a grab to his ears), finally turned him over, and just paintbrushed him brutally. There was a fun revenge spot where both guys used a full nelson to slam the other's head repeatedly into the top turnbuckle and a neat little moment of Bernaert unlacing Arroyo's boot to exit a headscissors and get an advantage afterwards. Just a taste but a good one.

Jo Labat vs. Ami Sola 2/11/58

SR: 1 Fall match going a bit under 25 minutes. This was what the announcer called a „combat de gentlemen“. Ami Sola is building a really solid rep in this style of wrestling, and what a style it is. Some ultra tight armlocks and headscissors in this, the kind of zit-popping, grinding stuff that you watch old wrestling for. I love the throws these guys do, they look just legit enough for me to appreciate their beauty, and I‘m a sucker for guys getting chucked to the mat hard for a wristlock. Labat has a cool charisma, a really rugged looking technician. The match heated up when Labat knee dropped Solas shoulder at an awkward angle and really grinded his shoulder and wrist. After that it was nasty upkicks and both guys clubbing each other with uppercuts that sounded like hammers coming down. They never got downright evil, but there was the vibe that these gentlement were damn well gonna club the snot out of each other in the name of civilized combat. Downright ridiculous finish.

MD: Very good stylist (which is even what the announcer calls them) match. Sola is spry, able to use his reach advantage, quick to kip up or occasionally dodge out of the way to get ahead. Labat is stockier, but able to dart through the legs or even occasionally overpower Sola on a top wristlock battle. It's hold and escape, with some building into spots or shots. Sola has an amazingly broad European uppercut. Labat's are shorter and closer but he also has that unique short shoulder whack too. It's a lot of hanging on to holds through counters and escapes but there's certainly a visceral sense of reaction here. The escalation comes from somewhere. It has meaning and weight. For instance, there's a great extended section which began with Labat driving a knee down onto Sola's arm to get an armbar, which became finger manipulation. Sola scored a headscissors out of it and continuously jammed Labat's head onto the mat as he tried to headstand out or otherwise escape. Therefore, when he got out, it was with uppercuts flying, until things settled back to holds once again. Just excellent wrestling.

PAS: This was tremendous, excellent hard hitting mat wrestling which even got a little nasty at the end. Really impressed with how nasty both guys made the grappling. Sola's headscissors was incredible looking. If this footage was in color I imagine we would see Labat's face turning Brock Lesnar purple. Similarly Labat twisted and torqued Sola's wrist and arm in really violent and painful looking ways. There was also a lot of flipping out of holds and spinning into things, which looked even better when the holds they were flipping out of looked so forceful. Loved when it picked up too, every French wrestler in the 1950s throws better forearms then any wrestler in the 2020s, and the finish with Sola turning a Labat rana attempt into a folding pin was a total time machine move.

ER: I don't have much to add, and my opinions don't differ from the guys. These kind of French grappling matches are so cool, a masterclass in snug holds and not letting your opponent have any openings. You won't see any daylight on anything here, and the headscissors are among the greatest I've seen. I loved all of the work around full nelsons, both men keeping each other so tight they could have had these standing exchanges inside a phone booth. The way they'd whip through full nelsons, swing into a wheelbarrow but get dragged back to their feet, spin around and wind up back in the same full nelson was spectacular. This had a lot of flipping and twisting to gain leverage, but it never felt flowery, always felt necessary to advance position. It's no shock that several things felt decades ahead of their time, as "Ahead of Its Time" is on the French Catch masthead at this point, but the finish and a couple of the pins felt like a couple more examples of execution ripe for the stealing.

Jacky Corne vs. Inca Peruano 2/21/58

SR: 2/3 Falls going about 20 minutes. This was JIP to right after the first fall, which I‘m a bit salty about as I‘m sure the opening matwork between these two was great. This was another nifty match which was largely a mix of two guys doing some nifty wrestling and also cracking each other really hard. I thought Inca Peruano stood out head and shoulders above Corne here. Not that Corne is bad as he has no problem trading holds and handing out jaw cracking uppercuts, but Peruano was doing one cool thing after another. There was some great indian deathlock work including a Negro Navarroesque submission, and when it was time do play rough he had some great uses of a hammerlock too. I also really enjoyed his headscissors which Corne initially blocked but then he did a fast crawl and threw Corne anyways. Really fun inventive work. The finish could‘ve been bigger but it worked.

MD: Of all the matches for us to only get two out of the three falls of, why this one? What we got was a total war, seeping with animosity. There was about two minutes of the match where Corn had a leglock cinched in and Peruano was kicking him in the face (and doing that clap to the knee to drive a foot into the face) every chance he had to try to get out, with Corne peppering in punches to the knee. That was what this match was all about. After every major advantage, the other wrestler made it up to uppercut the hell out of his opponent. There were big moves (our first real atomic drop, a gutbuster, a Robinson backbreaker, a rope assist headscissors takedown, knee crushers), tricked out holds (Corne with some nasty arbars, Peruano with a standing Navarro style scorpion deathlock and a great bridging leglock that he was using as a pin), but what the crowd the most into was a simple exchange where Peruano kept trying to pin Corne and Corne kept bridging up. There was even familiarity as Peruano was able to jam Corne's attempt at a catapult back onto the knees, which we've seen him use before, and Corne was able to stop Peruano's second go-behind hammerlock with the aforementioned Robinson backbreaker. Finish was great, full of build and payoff as they basically did the Bret/Piper WM8/Bret/Austin SS finish, which felt novel in 1992 let alone 1958. These two were made for each other.

PAS: This really felt like a war, even the opening shot of both guys sitting on the stools exhausted looked like something out of a 80s middleweight boxing match. Peruano is one of the most unique Catch wrestlers, and this is a cool chance to see him add those unique touches to a big time fight.  There was some really cool work around a knucklelock and bridges which still felt gritty. It is hard to do a bridge out of a knucklelock and have it look like a fight, but they did it. I also loved Peruano slipping into a full nelson and driving Corne's head into the turnbuckle before punching him in the back of the neck, only to have him try it again and get rolled up for the pin. Really looking forward to what 1958 brings, as these were a pair of classics.

ER: What a fight, a match that forced me to let out nearly a dozen guttural grunts just because of all of the brutal strikes. Corne was so punishing, coming off like Drew Gulak's bad tempered grandfather. Peruano was crafty, and Corne would put a quick stop to that craftiness by making him see stars. I loved the whole sequence around Peruano trying to slyly headscissor Corne over the top to the floor. Peruano got backed into the ropes and had his feet crossed around Corne's neck in an instant, but Corne blocks it and Peruano has to grip the ropes and accept his fate. Peruano manages to run on his hands and get an in ring headscissors, but it is a small victory as Corne bends Peruano's legs into a damn tight Indian deathlock, and fires a concussive blast down on the back of his neck. The uppercuts here are as stiff as any pro wrestling strikes you've seen, and a lot of their work would stand out as notably violent in Futen. Corne drops Peruano with an awesome short atomic drop, and Peruano's selling of it looks like a guy surprised at how badly his tailbone suddenly hurts. Everything here landed as if there was no such concept of pro wrestling, and these guys were just doing all of these moves as legitimately as possible. That legitimacy elevated this to great, memorable heights.