Tuesday is French Catch Day: Rene Ben! Jarret! Bibi! Bernaert! Cowboy Jack! Guettier!

Rene Ben Chemoul/Michel Jarret vs. Cheri Bibi/Pierre Bernaert 7/22/60

MD:I am floored by how good the Bibi/Bernaert team have gotten by this point. They're just a mauling, stooging, cheating, heat-seeking unit, totally on the same page, garnering reactions, well-balanced as they each bring different things to the table but wholly focused in that both of them can do a ton of damage. Ben Chemoul remains very impressive. Some of his big spots are becoming a little more familiar now but most of them hit with a lot of flash and plenty of substance. This is our first look at Charret (I think we get one more) and he was okay, standing out the most for punch flurries in the corner and the way he twisted his body back and forth to escape from holds. He did do a triple up and over on a top wristlock which was more elaborate than I've usually seen that spot.

Bibi and Bernaert's heel antics were great. They had a long stretch of controlling Ben Chemoul and Charret with hammerlocks, either grabbing onto the rope or each other in order to stop the flying mare counter attempts. All of their stuff looked brutal. Bibi has gone from being an immobile clod in the middle of a style he couldn't keep up with to a center of gravity that lines guys up and knocks them down, with Bernaert there to creation more motion when need be. Bibi doesn't sell much, but when he does, towards the end of the match, it means all the more. Just knocking him down and getting the best of him means something because he's presented as so strong. And all the while, the crowd is jeering him and, at times, swiping at him and trying to trip him. The momentum shifts here were pretty good, with the faces getting solid revenge at times only for the heels to cheat and scheme and take back over. The finishing stretch felt more like an old lucha trios where everything reset and the tecnicos got to clown the rudos. Here, the fans loved it and everything ended on a high energy note. Just another super entertaining 40 minute tag match from 60s France that looked absolutely effortless.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. This was, naturally, extremely similar to Chemoul/Cesca vs. Bibi/Bernaert we reviewed a couple weeks ago. It followed the same structure as usual, faces shine, heels start cheating, rinse and repeat till all hell breaks loose. I was theorizing that I was getting bored of these guys because I didn’t find the first 20 minutes or so not terribly engaging, but then Bibi and Bernaert started salvaging the match by dishing out some big damn beatings. The faces retaliated in kind and suddenly you had Chemoul trying to break peoples arms and Michel Jarret throwing headbutts and punch combos. The intensity turned up to as the falls kept dropping and it felt like the ending really delivered. I shouldn’t doubt this crew.

PAS: I thought this was dope, Chemoul is such a fun tag worker. Great at using his athleticism to wrong foot the heels, takes a monster beating, and has big exciting comebacks. His leap frog mule kick owned, popped Bernaert in the jaw. Bernaert was a monster in this, totally vicious and frantic. At one point he stops Jarret from countering a hammerlock and just starts smashing the side of his head on the mat, what a mean fucker. We get a big build towards the end with the babyfaces matching the violence of the heels. Chemoul and partner versus Bibi and Bernaert seem like a total guarantee.

Roger Guettier vs. Cowboy Jack Bence 9/15/60

PAS: Really not sure what the hell was going on here. The ring is covered in trash as we join the footage before the entrances even happen, and throughout the match every time Guettier does even a basic bit of heeling he is pelted by garbage. Weird atmosphere which kind of fucks up the match. Bence has some fun escapes, including a backflip, which was less Ricochet and more Jimmy Valient. They do some cool stuff working out of a leg lock, take some big spills to the floor and tee off on each other. Still it has to be weird to try to wrestle like that, and it was more like watching a skilled standup deal with a blackout drunk bachelorette party, then an all time memorable match. 

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 25 minutes. This was good solid pro wrestling, and I continue to be impressed by Bences ability to match the French athleticism, but there was something rather disturbing going as there was a group of snotnosed kids ringside that kept throwing trash into the ring. Normally that’s an excellent sign of someone getting great heat, but in this case the stuff just came flying with no relation to what was going on in the ring. Not that Guettier is not a good heel. It approached some kind of surrealist theater as referee and wrestlers were trying hard to ignore the fact that the ring was starting to look like a trash bin and newspapers kept flying at their heads. If you can get over that, there were some pretty sweet European uppercuts vs. punches exchanges in this match.

MD: So far, between 57-60, we've seen very little sign of kids in the audience. Here, there's nothing but kids, a legion of rowdy newspaper boys who make their presence felt like you'd not believe. They spend the entirety of the match, the entirety, tossing paper into the ring. That's not to say they're not reacting or, if Guettier does something whiny and scummy in his babyfaced heel (as in a heel who has a pudgy, baby faced look) manner, the intensity of the paper doesn't increase, but it's a constant. Mid-way through the match, they're really tying each other up in tricked out holds and wrenching and it's just in a sea of paper as they roll around. Bence is even more a showman here than the last time we saw him, coming off like the old rodeo star traveling through Europe with trick lasso moves that he might have been able to pull off twenty years before but full of so much gumption that you wouldn't dare tell him to stop now. I'm not sure they entirely adapt the match enough to the crowd they're in front of, though the end of the first fall was absolutely perfect. See, Guettier ends up on the floor. That's not where you want to be on this day as dozens of kids rush up to pelt him over and over and he doesn't make it back into the ring before the count. The wrestling is good, with Guettier mean and sneaky and Bence getting plenty of revenge, but it's the paper flying into the ring and the kids revolting against societal norms that are the real stars (maybe the real heels?) here.