Tuesday is French Catch Day: L'Homme Masque! Delaporte! Al Hayes! DR. ADOLF KAISER! Lambert! Laroche!

L'Homme Masque vs. Roger Delaporte 3/6/59

MD: So far, 1959 has been the year of the masked wrestler. This is the third we've seen and not L'Homme Masque's debut, but he'd only been around for a bit, apparently, even if he was the first. They bill him from Texas, with 3 wives who had all ran away. If he ever loses, he would unmask. He was presented in the announcing, more so than than Le Bourreau (who worked for another promoter) as the opposite of L'Ange Blanc and we do have a match with them but not for another ten years! This was a match in three parts, with some amazing comedic performing from Delaporte to start. The first five or six minutes were all him ducking away from L'Homme and trying one thing after another: top wristlocks, headlocks, a bearhug. Each time he was shrugged off, or with the bearhug, put into a giant headlock causing his arms to crumble. Each time his reactions were hilarious. L'Homme didn't do much here, but he didn't have to. He, given his massive size, was a perfect prop for a stooge like Delaporte. If Delaporte even got touched, he'd sell it huge. Eventually he got caught and things were a little disappointing for this middle section. You'd hope he'd get tossed around and really it was fairly disappointing, just a grounded wristlock with Delaporte flailing about a bit. I did like the knees to the kidneys L'Homme utilized in taking him down though. The last third was far better though. L'Homme kept going to the ropes, wrenching Delaporte's arm around it, and there was nothing he or the ref could do. It was a great visual and, expanded to include a few arm-trapped beales, played up as brutal. Delaporte would get a comeback or two (and did drop the arm selling but that's 50s French wrestling for you; selling tended to be immediate), really slamming L'Homme's head into the turnbuckle. That just made him angrier though and L'Homme jammed him with the most amazing monster spot, the thing we'd been waiting for the entire match: he picked him up over his shoulder with a gutwrench and just slammed the back of his head over and over into the turnbuckle, before dropping him and locking in a sleeper (which he wouldn't break) for the win. Ultimately, he had presence, but this was Delaporte directing traffic. It's a testament to the talent in the 50s that they were able to put these masked attractions against guys like Villars, LeDuc, and Delaporte to give them real credibility and entertaining matches. I think this would have been better if L'Homme had tossed him about or clubbered him the first time he really caught him instead of just sitting in a hold, but otherwise, it definitely did the job.

SR: It's... the masked man. This was a complete squash at 18 minutes length. Poor Delaporte, although the crowd took quite the delight in his demise. He really is the Louis De Funes of wrestling. What a weird character to be Frances major heel star, although I guess it speaks to their culture. It's so strange to see him going from being a vicious bastard brutalizing faces to stooging around as he is himself brutalized by this comical giant. Did Louis De Funes ever do serious movies where he is a corrupt cop breaking fingers? This was a good 7 minutes of Delaporte bouncing off of L'Homme Masque in such a comical fashion that John Tatum looks like Lance Storm in comparison. Followed by 7 minutes of the masked man hanging on to an arm lock with the referee getting increasingly involved. And then, a 2 minute section where the masked man uncorks the repeated turnbuckle powerbombs before wringing Delaporte to sleep. The masked man certainly had a menacing physique, looking like something out of a comic book, but his control section aside from the insane repeated drops to the turnbuckle wasn't super hot. Will be interesting to see him going against the likes of L'Ange Blanc, though.

PAS: Delaporte certainly met his match here. I agree with Matt and Jetlag about how Masque's armbar was a bit dull, although I did appreciate the dominance. I think this would have been better served just cutting the middle part entirely, and just had the match be Delaporte's stooging and that crazy turnbuckle powerbomb combo. I am mixed about the masked invasion, I appreciate the changes in style they bring, but I just wish they were all more compelling workers.  It is a bummer we don't have any footage of Tony Oliver or Karl Gotch's masked characters, I imagine they would be more compelling

Al Hayes/Ray Hunter vs. Karl von Kramer/Dr. Adolf Kaiser 3/6/59

MD: We have about 17 minutes of this before they run out of time and I lament the loss of the other 20+ that the match would have probably contained. We have one lone Hayes/Hunter match left, but it's against the Delaporte/Bollet combo, which should be quite the show. We have one more look at Kaiser (tagging with El Strangulador Lamban) and two or three more Von Kramer matches. So no need to say goodbye to anyone now. I do, however, lament that we don't get to see more of Von Kramer and especially Kaiser against Hayes. The last times we saw Judo Al, he really ate up his opponents and the first few minutes are Kaiser and Von Kramer putting their foot down to the best of their ability to prevent that. It doesn't meant they can stop Hayes but it does make for some great, extremely high end struggle. Hayes is very interesting as he will sell, unquestionably, and he will give, but you have to cheat to get up on him. He'll drop for a cheapshot or sell an extended cheating sequence (as he does here where he limps around the ring after they work his leg over using the rope and ref distractions), but if you wrestle him straight up, he's going to not give an inch. In some ways, it's a little unfortunate he's paired with Hunter, who has such a size and reach advantage against almost everyone he wrestles that he's nigh impossible to move. You try for a hold and he'll just bonk you on the head and there's very little you can do about it. That means that Kaiser and Von Kramer are stooging and bounding across the ring and trying and failing to cheat for a lot of this. Hayes and Hunter are also a little more apt to cheat here themselves than we've seen before, which I attest to the fact they're wrestling Germans. All good but not enough; never enough.

SR: We get about 20 minutes of this. No finish, and it appears that was only the 1st fall. That is pretty bitter, as the von Kramer/Dr. Kaiser duo is about the most high end when it comes to monocle wearing fake Germans in wrestling. Here they had matching outfits, they were bumping, stooging, cheating, miscommunicating, doing some pretty fun wrestling, along with their eccentric demeanour, they had everything you want from an entertaining heel team. There was an especially funny bit where the Dr. did his spider walk only to accidentally end up running into von Kramers boot. You get the sense either of them (but especially von Kramer, god what a freaky wrestler that guy was) against Hayes in a singles would've been dynamite. "Rebel" Ray Hunter is probably the least of the faces we have seen, when everyone else is uppercutting the shit out of the bad guys, a tall guy lightly tapping people in the head with chops isn't quite doing it. Still, maybe the full thing is laying around somewhere.

PAS: Yeah this is a real tease of a match, on paper this is a total gem, but we get to see the foreplay with none of the climax. Hayes is always worth watching, he is so skilled and I loved the whole section of him trying to bridge out of a face lock while von Kramer kept punching him in the kidneys. Dr. Kaiser was a little subdued here, we got all of the stooging with none of the maniacal evil. When we are all done with what got, I think we are planning on checking back with the archive, maybe the full version of this is still in the vault.


Henri Lambert vs. Roger Laroche 4/30/59

MD: This one took me by surprise. We had seen Laroche in one of our very first matches in this project and that was primarily to get beat upon by La Barba. I think a commenter previously said that Lambert was the ref in the Mann vs Montourcy so I wasn't sure what to expect here. However, this was, yet again, one of those matches, that if we had nothing else from 50s France, would have blown our collective minds. I wouldn't say that either of these two were dynamic and memorable characters, but there was a real contrast, both in their physical attributes and how they wrestled. Lambert seemed younger, was incredibly athletic, very spirited, quite dynamic. Laroche was (as i said last time we saw him) off that unassuming French maestro assembly line. He seemed older, more reserved. At many points in the match, he stayed low and took the count in order to slow Lambert down and recover, which is not a tactic we've seen much in the footage so far. There was a real but subtle sense of him trying to absorb punishment at times to blow Lambert up so he could take over with a hold, or to draw Lambert out so that he'd get impassioned and make a mistake.

The first few minutes of this had Lambert eating Laroche up with holds, and Laroche's response was to step on the foot. The first time he did it, Lambert brushed it off. The second time, he returned the favor and followed up with a clubbering blow. Taking Lambert off his game allowed for Laroche to get an arm, headbutt the wrist, and use the knee to drive him down, leading into almost SEVEN (7) minutes of Lambert dynamically trying to escape an armbar. We've seen this, of course, with the person in control holding on through armdrags and bodyslams and hip tosses, and blocking headscissors, but this was remarkable both for the length of it and for the fluctuating desperation from Lambert. He'd sell the hand within the hold more and more, trying to keep feeling in it, but he'd also launch lightning quick combinations of hip tosses, only for Laroche to hang on and Lambert to wear himself out. It was seven minutes and it was never boring, in part due to the energy of Lambert and in part due to the sheer audacity of length.

Much of the rest of the match pitted Lambert's athleticism against Laroche's skill, with a lot of great bridges and quick bits of punishment from Lambert and reversals upon reversals. Increasingly, Lambert, in frustration, would go into blows, more emotional than underhand. Laroche on the other hand, would be the sneakier of the two, dropping down and cutting off with a grab of the leg. Lambert, an actor on the side, had a lot of stuff but could also sell very well, and as the match went on both wrestlers really portrayed the weight of what they'd been through and the sheer exhaustion they were facing. There's a long strike exchange towards the end where they're barely standing by the end of it. They were ultimately working to a draw here, though given the tenor of French matches, you can't always tell. This could have had a finish just as easily. It didn't really need one though as the draw was both escalated to and completely earned.

SR: 1 Fall match going 30 minutes. This was a stiff technical match built around armlocks and european uppercuts peppered with some athleticism. It's kind of the French house style, but after weeks of seeing masked dudes running wild on French TV, it felt like a breath of fresh air. Laroche is balding and stocky, while Lambert has a mustache and looks like someone out of a squashbuckling movie. Sometimes, you just want to watch two gentlemen forearm the shit out of each other for 30 minutes, and this delivered in spades. Laroche was a real punisher here, not an outright villain, but taking his shortcuts when they appeared and thus heating up the match. I can't emphasize enough how hard these guys were peppering each other, big kneedrops, kicking their way out of holds, hard shots to the ribs, at one point Laroche blocks an escape attempt so he eats a knee to the head for his troubles. There was a lengthy section built around Laroche keeping an armlock, twisting and throwing Lambert to the mat over and over, often making him land awkwardly on his shoulder. When Lambert gets out, he is slow to get up, clearly favouring that arm, then, when Laroche tried to go back to that same arm hold, he kneed him right in the face. The match was full of "fuck you, you are not doing that spot" which always helps keeping these matches fresh, and enough cool athleticism thrown in at the right moments to keep this from being a sheer slugfest. Still, it's all about them rolling out those forearms and uppercuts. Last couple of strikes exchanges were downright crazy.