Tuesday is French Catch Day: James Brown?!? Kovacs! Quasimodo! Rabut! Costella! Allary! Lasartesse!

James Brown vs. Robert Gastel  1/14/60

SR: JIP match, but we get about 20 minutes. I think James Brown was a US guy stationed in Germany and became a wrestler there. If his performance here is any indications of the standards of German wrestling, then it wasn‘t much worse than French wrestling at the time. Brown was super athletic, both in terms of agility and strength. At one point he did this straight lift from a headlock into a torture rack which was inspiring. He seemed a little green here and there, but overall he looked a good babyface. And Gastel is really good opponent for that kind of worker. Gastel really is the Dick Murdoch of Catch, working opponents over with a variety of punches while demonstrating impeccable timing and crowd control. It‘s European wrestling so the punches are to the body but the point stands. His sell of a simple headbutt to the mid section was a thing of beauty. I also loved how he pushed the referee. Really fun match.

MD: I didn't love this. I thought Brown was super athletic and had a lot of skills and tools, but he just needed to let Gastel lean on him more. He'd let Gastel get an advantage through chicanery but it'd be gone a moment later. Because of that, there was never really any drama to this except for whether or not Gastel might get some sort of banana peel win after giving up most of the match. Gastel's a great stooge and a great heel and to see him get knocked around and stymied by Brown was entertaining at times but even with some good spots it was just too much of the same.

PAS: I agree with Matt that Brown took a ton of this match, but I was really enjoying the hardest working man in French Catch doing his thing. Countering a headlock with a deadlift into a torture rack is one of the coolest spots I have seen in all of the French Catch and there have been some amazing spots. I also really liked how he landed on his feet on every throw. I expected James Brown to have more splits based offense, but what he did was very cool. 

Josef Kovacs vs. Quasimodo 1/14/60

SR: 1 Fall match going a bit over 20 minutes. Two guys whom we saw on different matches on TV before face off. I guess it was a bit of booking that just made sense. Kovacs is big and towering and he reminded me a bit of Pat Roach here, which is a very good thing. From British wrestling I am used to Hungarians being brilliant technicians, but Kovacs was a bit more blunt force in his style. He did some cool wrestling around blocking Quasimodos throws, and when the little freak got too uppity with his dirty tactics he was made with some big European uppercuts. He wasn‘t kidding around with his bodyslams, too. Kovacs is not as charismatic and fiery as Gilbert Leduc so the match wasn‘t as exciting, but it was a good match, and that spinning torture rack drop sure is one hell of a finish.

MD: This was a war of two very different monsters, an unrelenting and bitter winter rainstorm and the hulking, groaning inevitability of a slowly rolling boulder. Kovacs is announced as the Eagle of Budapest here instead of the Butcher, but he's still a big nasty behemoth. We'd seen previously how Gary Calderon's judo skills couldn't chip away at Kovacs' strength. Quasimodo, however, is a dogged wrestling machine, rusty, jagged, oddly shaped and creaking, but a wrestling machine nonetheless. He's like a festering ooze that creeps around Kovacs, looking for an eye, a throat, a leg, hair, anything that would give him an advantage. He adds to this a low center of gravity and surprising wiry strength, able to sneak in these nasty gutbusters and an electric chair drop onto the ropes. What I like the most about him is how he's able to create advantageous situations, turning a top wristlock into a backbreaker, things like that. The problem is that it's impossible to press an advantage against someone as strong and impenetrable as Kovacs for long. All he has to is get his hands on him and Quasimodo goes flying across the ring. Quasimodo does chip away at him as the match goes on, grounding him with a nervehold, flipping him over the ropes to stomp on his head, but all Kovacs has to do is catch him, which he ultimately does with his torture rack whirlybird. I thought the mismatch and the heel vs heel nature of this was going to make for a poor match but I ended up liking this a lot.

PAS: This was cool stuff kind of like when Yokozuna would beat King Kong Bundy or Nash would beat Wrath. Establish a monster by having him take down another monster. I am an unabashed Quasimodo mark, so I wish my dude would have gotten some more shine, but he did deliver some really creeper offense. I like his backbreakers and clawing, grasping offense, but eventually the beast was going to catch him.  I agree that finishing move was a finishing move, big time impact for sure. 

ER: I love Quasimodo, truly the role this man was born to play. He wrestles with a hunch (which is really no different than the freestyle wrestler's hunch that someone like Mark Schultz had), he's ripped like gassed old man Kurt Angle, but he has the face of Rondo Hatton. I thought he looked super impressive here, especially with the size of Kovacs. He used that low hunch to muscle him into corners, and was always pawing and clawing around his face and shoulders. He takes big bumps when Kovacs does get ahold of him, getting tossed especially far on a Biel throw, but he was plenty punishing to the bigger guy in the killer one strap singlet. He had cool gutbusters and backbreakers and a single leg crab that really looked like it was cranking Kovacs knee. Towards the end of the match Quasi powered Kovacs over the top rope, flipping him over and catching his neck over the bottom rope, then started standing and jumping on Kovacs' neck as it was over the rope. It looked like some sadistic Greg Valentine tough guy offense. 

Jean Rabut vs. Ventos Costella 1/22/60

SR: JIP match with about 10 minutes shown. This was in that fast paced French lightweight style. Not everything was tightly executed and I thought nothing they did topped the initial sequence built around a kip up headbutt (probably my favourite uniquely French spot), but they knew they had to have matches like this to contrast with all the heel spectacle main events.

MD: Even in the context of what we've been watching, this felt a little like seeing Blitzkrieg for the first time on Nitro, or watching that Brian XL/Divine Storm vs SAT/Red match using Real Player. In both cases we could sort of see where things were trending, but this felt like fireworks flying over the heads of it. The sheer speed that they were working, how quickly they got back to their feet, how quickly the momentum shifted, the rapid fire pin attempts and reversals, and just the constant motion. Everything wasn't always smooth but there was always a sense of competition and struggle. There was never any winking. Sometimes after a reversal or a recovery, they'd take a second to catch their breath, but then they'd be slamming their bodies into each other once again. All of the sunset flips were the leg-hooked sort which feel so much more impressive than the standard model. It wasn't all rope running and up and overs and sunset flips. Costella had a great forearm and Rabut did this amazing torpedo headbutt to the gut in the ropes, but what you're going to remember about this is the sheer movement about it. I wouldn't want every match to be like this, but by this point, the richness of the French footage is the overlap between constant variety and constant quality.

PAS: This was more of an exhibition of speed and execution then a structured match, but man were they moving fast. A ton of really cool sunset flip roll ups and ranas, and that kip up headbutt is an absolute killer spot.

Jack de Lasartesse vs. Michel Allary  1/22/60

SR: 1 fall match going about 25 minutes. It‘s the debut of Jack de Lasartesse, who went on to be kind of a phenom. And he may very well have been in his prime here. He was a bodybuilder before turning Catcheur, so he didn‘t have the kind of skill other wrestlers we‘ve seen have, but he had no problem going in a long heated slugfest. His swaggering, self assured mannerisms here were certainly a sight to behold. It sure got the crowd riled up good as people were looking to storm the ring 5 minutes into the match. There seemed to be 300 people in that building but they sure wanted to see Michel Allary beat the shit out of this arrogant bleach blonde aristocrat. And that he did. Tons of nasty uppercuts and forearms in this match. It didn‘t develop any kind of story but they sure knew how to keep the heat coming which is what counted at this point. Lasartesse had fantastic body language and excellent sense of timing which can totally carry a match like this. It was funny to watch him do a few things he would still do as a crusty old corpse 25 years later in Hamburg. Anytime he was eating shots from Allary he would throw a punch or just jab him in the throat. All the throat work felt super violent and the throat knee drops were just insane. Brutal fucking finish too.

MD: And here we have Lasartesse, finally. The announcer says he's been in the States buying cowboy outfits and cadillacs, but he comes out in his cape with its royal seal on it, the very picture of a guy who'd lose his head in the Terror. What a perfect heel for 1960 France. We've seen him off and on through the years, of course, but here he's everything you'd want him to be. Lanky, using his size to the utmost advantage, both on offense and as a tool for drama and emotion. Deliberate, filling negative space as well as almost anyone in the history of wrestling, chewing gum, strutting around the ring as he has to wait for Allary to get up, it almost becoming a dance as the crowd chants at him. This has some elements we've been slowly starting to see creep into the footage, both focused segments on a limb with a lot of various offense targeting it and a couple of top rope moves, Lasartesse first missing and then later, to end the match, hitting the bombs away kneedrop. Allary is yet another fiery babyface with great strikes but I do wish he sold the bodypart work a bit more. Instead, he opts for more revenge. Lasartesse attacks the back; Allary does the same in revenge when it's his turn. Anyway, as I said, Lasartesse was everything you'd want him to be: menacing, stooging, infuriating, imaginative, petulant, smarmy, vicious, and craven. We're endlessly lucky to get to see him in his prime.