Tuesday is French Catch Day: Wasberg! Reggiori! van Dooren! Spartacus! Drapp! Bollet!

Eric Wasberg vs. Serge Reggiori 7/1/60

MD: This was 12 minutes JIP and we get the last ten minutes of it, and all I can say is that it was awesome. The VQ isn't quite as good as it could be. Both guys have very similar body types, similar enough haircuts. There were times that I could figure out which was which and times I couldn't, so I can't really do this thing justice. Maybe Sebastian can give you some better analysis here. Here's what you have to know from my perspective though. This was a middlweight match. The fans were very into it. While there wasn't a lot you'd call outright heeling or a severe lack of sportsmanship, it was incredibly aggressive. Everything felt turned up a notch. Explosive tight quarters dropkicks. Completely dislocating arm drivers. Every throw and every hold. And that's before they start the uppercuts halfway through. That begins with maybe the loudest single shot we've seen in this footage and it doesn't let up from there, all the way to the completely uncooperative looking press slam into a gutbuster that ends this. We've only gotten these guys in JIP matches and we won't see them again, so even though this was honestly exceptional, it's probably best to chalk this up as yet another sign of what every day French Catch could be like in this period

SR: JIP. We get about 10 minutes. Looked like a really good match mostly because these guys were doing some tight wrestling and also they really beat the shit out of eachother. Some of the stiffest uppercuts in this whole project, golly gee. Some amazing looking dropkicks too. Match was pretty heated and Reggiori drew a share of boos even though he was gentlemanly enough to help up Wasberg after finishing him off with a nasty military press into gutbuster.

PAS: This was some nice small space fist fight stuff. Both guys were just trying to decapitate each other with uppercuts, and the shots were so hard they actually sounded sweetened. The press slam gutbuster by Reggiori was a hell of a finisher.

ER: I wish we had the first half of this to see how their matwork advanced, but I love the slugfest we did get. Who knows, maybe they were kicking each other's ass like that from the bell? I have so very little interest for modern Japan forearm porn, but the passion in this and the variation in degree of contact and escalating bumps show how to do a great stand and trade. This is mostly Reggiori destroying Wasberg with heavier and heavier uppercuts. It felt like one of those great battles where one guy was refusing to die, making things worse for himself. I love how he kept ramping up his bumps, rocking back into the ropes, using them to stay on his feet, and how Reggiori kept after him. Wasberg shows he has life a couple times by rushing in with these cool shoulderblocks live I've not really seen. They were kind of like shoulder shrugs a boxer might use to create some space, only these shrugs packed legitimate power, knocking Reggiori back on his heels. The match ending KO gutbuster was wild, like the most violent version of Nikolai Volkoff's trunks yanking overhead backbreaker, like something the villain does to lose a point but cripple the hero in a fighting tournament movie. 

Spartacus vs. Jack van Dooren 7/1/60

SR: 1 fall contest over about 20 minutes. After the heated brawl in the previous match, we now watch Spartacus engage in some serious scientific wrestling. You’d think a gladiator would be more prone to having gruesome bloodbaths in the ring, but maybe those just didn’t make TV. Anyways Spartacus is a pretty elegant technician and there were lots of fun wrestling exchanges throughout. I especially liked a luchariffic crucifix pin attempt from van Dooren which Spartacus turned into a freaky deadlift and arm throw. Van Dooren eventually started working Spartacus over with nasty headbutts and kicks. The whole match kept building to the escalation for when Spartacus would return fire and when he did he just straight knocked van Dooren out with a massive elbow to the jaw. We’ve seen faces putting on extended revenge beatdowns on heels before that it almost felt like an abrupt finish but the build to it was so good that it paid off for me.

MD: Not quite as exciting as the last Spartacus match, but maybe harder hitting. Van Doreen was bigger, bigger than Spartacus actually. This was primarily set up to showcase Spartacus' many tools. Lots of escapes using bridges, cartwheels, and pure strength, all made the more compelling because he was visibly shorter. Van Doreen heeled it up more and more as the match went on, with the highlights being taking advantage during a handshake after a short arm scissors that Sparactus powered up and over the top rope. It was a hot crowd and they probably should have leaned into it more to get some more heat. There were moments in the last third which were a little flat. Van Dooren's headbutts always stand out when we see them. He can use them to punish a guy but also as a quick flash at the start of an exchange to give him an advantage. Spartacus had a good act, marrying the strength and athleticism with solid selling and a match-finishing fury.

PAS: I thought this was badass. Spartacus is such an odd quirky wrestler. He is this stocky escape artist with a wild counter for ever move put on him, crazy bridges, cartwheels, flips, he cannot be held down. van Dooren eventually stops trying to trap him and starts trying to stomp and headbutt him into oblivion. Spartacus then shows why he survived all of those lion fights in the Coliseum, by absolutely beating van Dooren down with elbows to the ribs, and a knock out elbow to the side of van Dooren's jaw which drops him face first to the mat. So many cool spots in this match, with Spartacus being one of the most fun guys in history to watch and van Dooren being a fine dance partner. 

ER: This was so good, and I actually thought it would fit in well with the very best French Catch we've watched. Spartacus has so many great escape tricks, a guy you really have to fight to take off his feet, and luckily for us van Dooren is a fighter. The Spartacus escapes are really fantastic, and I love how stubborn he comes off. It never looks like he's sandbagging spots, just that his opponent is working extra hard to make any headway. That struggle really peaked for me when van Dooren went for a big headscissors takedown, and by the time he leg strangled Spartacus to the mat it felt like a giant had been felled. Watching Spartacus not panic, shift his heels closer to the butt on his bridge, work his head out of the headscissors and get to his feet in one motion was super impressive. Plus, it never made van Dooren look weak, as the headscissors looked great and it came off like only a man with freakish body control could have escaped it. van Dooren moves the fight to throwing a ton of headbutts at Spartacus, crowd hissing and jeering, and the frustration the headbutts came from really landed. van Dooren tried to play Spartacus's game, but it's pretty understandable once he moves into landing headbutts and kicking Spartacus between the shoulder blades. I liked how those shots exposed some holes in the Spartacus armor, and his big elbow strikes during his comeback felt earned and victorious. 

Andre Drapp vs. Andre Bollet 7/15/60

MD: Classic match up here between an expert stylist and the worst rogue in Paris. The first fall was a showcase of Bollet's facial expressions as Drapp twisted him from one position to another impressively. There was more shifting from one hold to the next than we've seen much in the footage. Bollet would come back with inside moves: hair-pulling, leg grabbing off a rope break, shots to the throat, which he doubled down on when briefly on top. The second fall showed something we really haven't seen much of, delayed gratification for the fans. Bollet really worked to avoid Drapp getting his hands on him, using rope breaks and tossing his body at Drapp (both to set up headlocks and beales and also a battering ram) to avoid it at all costs. It was masterful stuff, balancing desperation and underhandedness and it paid off with the end of the fall. In the third fall they reset back to some stooging and comedy before building to a revenge-driven finish that still more or less protected Bollet. We have Drapp vs Delaporte from later in the year as well, and I'm curious how that is in comparison.

SR: 2/3 falls contest going about 35 minutes. We seem to be JIP’d slightly, which means we unfortunately don’t any Bollet pre match antics. This was very predictable but extremely high end executed predictable. Andre Drapp does some amazing wrestling and Bollet beats on him with nasty punches and stomps. I am totally fascinated with how this bodybuilder guy Drapp just wrestles like he’s El Solar. And I think Bollet threw more punches here than anyone else we’ve seen so far, it was like he just came back from a tour in Memphis. At one point he was giving Drapp the business in the rope and a lady got up and tried to pull Drapp out of harms way. I guess she just wanted to grab ahold of his leg one time. This was a bit long and had a kind of underwhelming banana peel ending but I still thought it was a strong showing for both these men.

ER: Matt's description of Bollet as the worst rogue in Paris made me laugh, and it's a great description of him. He kept the fans riled by sneaking in several cheapshots, which also made his genuinely great selling come off as crybaby-ish without actually being crybaby selling. Drapp would counter much of Bollet's cheapshots with punches right to the mouth, which Bollet would understandably sell as a man who got punched in the mouth. But the crowd would respond as if he was "drawing a foul" or overreacting! Bollet had some cool tricks, my favorite possibly being when he stood up while in a snug bodyscissors, and punched Drapp into releasing the hold. Drapp had really strong punches, and I loved how he sold Bollet's (first fall finishing) atomic drops, taking a back bump when the knee made contact with the spine. A lot of people sell it as a recoil, but Drapp's selling made it look like his legs had gone numb from the impact to the coccyx. The crowd was already treating Bollet like a coward, but his true cowardice came out in the second fall: clutching the ropes to avoid confrontation, turtling up to avoid strikes, clearly avoiding Drapp now that he was up a fall. Both Bollet and Drapp take big cartwheeling bumps to the floor here, and I dug how Bollet came out in the third throwing big closed fists, knowing the time for games was over, leading to a big moment where Drapp dropkicked him from behind to send Bollet flying super fast over the top to the floor.