Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corn! Gueret! Delaporte! Villars! Said! Minisini!

Jacky Corne vs. Georges Gueret 7/9/59

MD: One thing I love about this footage in general is that it's almost never predictable. We get new wrestlers every few weeks or wrestlers that we've seen before in different settings. We only get a few looks at a lot of them so surprises come up all the time. That said, we pretty much know what we're getting with a Jacky Corn match by now. Crisp holds, throws, and escapes. Long sequences with hang-ons and attempts. The heel getting mean/frustrated first. Corn selling excellently in that sort of "full body" exhausted sort of way I always give Bockwinkel credit for. And then finally, as the match goes on, Corn coming back with righteous indignation and fury and it becoming an absolutely brutal slugfest. Corn wrestles beautifully and he fights valiantly and it's never unwelcome even if we've seen it before. Here, Gueret was sort of a bruising Larry Hennig sort (though in better shape), swarthy and expressive, especially when he was in a hold or begging off. He gets frustrated at the end of the first fall (including inadvertently hitting the ref) but Corn is able to capitalize with a sunset flip. Even though he beats on him a lot in the second fall, it's not until the start of the final fall that Corn really starts firing back. Just great striking here, including one exchange on their knees. Corn ultimately takes it with a very slip through the legs takedown and bridging pin. Of note here, from a format perspective, they had Roger Lageat, promoter and Corn's father, providing insights before the match and between falls.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 30 minutes. It‘s George Gueret, baby. He had grown a beard here, which adds a bit of personality, I guess, and he was quite hated. This match had a surprising amount of wrestling that built really well to the 3rd fall where they just explode and beat the shit out of each other. The wrestling was really fun as you‘d expect, but you want these guys to throw down and uncork their forearms and uppercuts, and they knew exactly that this is what their audience wanted from them really. Really good slow build to the eventual explosion. Gueret only had to throw a few cheapshots before audience members threatened to jump into the ring. Corn is pretty bland but he can wrestle and throw down, and he earned his paycheck here. And Gueret just has about the greatest forearm smashes you‘ve ever seen.

PAS: Corn is a technically sound babyface and Gueret is a heat seeking bruiser, and that is classic professional wrestling contest. What makes so much of the Catch standout is how good the bruisers are at technical wrestling, and how nasty the technicians are at bruising. The early wrestling sections are solid stuff, I love a good headscissors, and they had a great headsicssors section, and then of course it breaks down with fans jumping on to the apron and big shots being exchanges. We say it over and over again, but the baseline of this stuff is so high.


Serge Francille vs Pierre Bernaert 7/16/59

MD: We get this JIP, but you definitely get the gist of it in the fifteen minutes we have. I don't remember Bernaert leaning as much into the Kirk Douglas look but he was still the same cheapshot artist as before, always reaching for a leg when he's on the ground and sneaking a punch or hairpull in. His punches, forearms, and knees were particularly mean. Francille was yet another judoka guy. I think that's the third we've seen in 59 so it was obviously some sort of zeitgeist. While barefoot, he had less goofy foot escapes and more throws and interesting trips. He was fiery in answering Bernaert's cheapshots at least. The match absolutely knew what it was and never deviated, down to the finish where Bernaert got a little lax in his beating, tried the same thing twice and got outslicked for his trouble.

SR: JIP, but we get about 13 minutes. Francille seems to be doing a martial artist gimmick and I think the announcer calls him a judoka. He is barefoot and wears those ankle-length pants, which weirdly seems to be the go-to look for wrestlers with a judo gimmick at this point. Did judokas wear those kind of pants in the 1950s? Francille has a mustache and slender physique and looks very old time. And he has those funny open hand chops. This was just going along, Bernaert cheats some and Francille retaliates. Then suddenly Bernaert starts unleashing a really violent beating only to be cut short and pinned seconds later.


Roger Delaporte/Paul Villars vs Arabet Said/Leon Minisini 7/16/59

MD: Another long Delaporte/Villars tag, though this one went closer to 30 than an hour. Delaporte remains one of the greatest stooges. Villars, on the other hand, is absolutely brutal, and when the heels were in control, this was excellent. They cut off the ring and kept most of the action right in their corner, even as the ref tried to stop them. When they won the second fall, it was really because of that sort of attrition over time, just hacking away at Minisini until he couldn't fight back. The first fall, by the way, was lightning quick with a flash pin out of a full nelson reversal and that happened in just the first couple of miniutes. What I liked about it is that it was against formula. I don't think we've seen first falls go like that much in the footage. There was also an early moment where Delaporte refused to throw a cheapshot on a Villars full nelson in the corner but the faces did instead and had some miscommunication because of it. That felt very lucha-esque where the tecnicos (stylists in this case) cheated when it was unwarranted and feaced cosmic justice because of it. It was our first look at Said and Minisini. Said had solid fire when it was called for but when in charge, he mainly did a lot of inner armdrags and crosslegged headscissor spots, the latter of which I've had my fill of recently. Minisini played a valiant face in peril, including fighting out of the corner early only to get overwhelmed later and had an interesting bridging escape or two. The crowd was up for this, like always for a Delaporte tag, though they were more into the comeback than the heat, I'd say, and so much of that was on Delaporte's stooging and Villars bumps to the floor. Another banana peel finish utilizing Delaporte's one smooth offensive maneuver and that made the crowd hate him all the more.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 30 minutes. With names like Arabet Said and Leon Minissini, you get giddy just wondering what these mysterious dudes will bring. The answer was that they were both pretty wirey dudes who could both wrestle and put serious punishment on their opponents, so they match up very well against the mustached super heel duo of Delaporte and Villar. The interesting thing about this was the early finish to the 1st fall, which set up a kind of heel in peril section as Said & Minisini kept showing them up and the heels had to try and get a handle. Kind of a weird way to structure a match, and I kind of had the feeling it was since Delaporte & Villar were technically the stars, as the focus was on them. The 3rd fall cements this as Delaporte and Villar, after playing some of their shenanigans got banged up badly by pissed off Said and Minisini before a punch-drunk Delaporte got the pin with a pretty perfectly timed rollup. It was almost like a reverse Rock n‘Roll express finish. That being said, this isn‘t better or worse than any other Villars/Delaporte tag we‘ve seen, as they all kind of all blend together, but you always end up getting some fun wrestling and lots of guys putting big damn beatings on each other, so it‘s all good entertainment, anyways.