Tuesday is French Catch Day: Delaporte! Bollet! LeDuc! Gastel! Montreal! Sola! Bernaert! Rouxel!

Roger Delaporte/Andre Bollet vs Gilbert Leduc/Robert Gastel 12/14/61

MD: Great tag with four great guys. I have no idea why Gastel was on the side of the angels here but he came off as a folk hero and the fans loved to cheer for him. He would just mow everyone down with forearms and headbutts and the crowd ate it up. Leduc took a nasty bump on a fireman's carry into the heel turnbuckle early on and they just unleashed the most brutal, long beating on him with quick tags, slams and backbreakers, stomps, and even a somersault senton by Bollet that spelled his doom in the first fall. Eventually, in the second, Gastel had enough (they had done a good job goading him while in control) and rushed in to a big pop. From there it was fairly back and forth. Leduc sold his back for the rest of the match but had moments of fire. They built to a few big comeuppance spots like usual. Gastel had a way of taking the crowd back down after comebacks to set up the heels taking back over which were well and fine but he held one armbar for over four minutes without them working in and out of it and that was a bit much. Still, past that, these guys were masters and the match was masterful.

SR: 2/3 falls match. We JIP about 20 minutes into a 60 match. This is one of those matches which is heated as we join, and it stays heated for almost a full 40 minutes from that point forward. This was all about Delaporte and Bollet throwing hard punches and stomps, and our man Gastel being a real one and helping poor gentleman Leduc through the match by fighting fire with fire. Gastel being excepted wholly as a babyface by the audience is heartwarming. Bollet was doing those flip sentons to peoples backs like Tenryu being in a funny mood. This had quite a bit of back work, which didn‘t pay off in a major way. In fact the match had some unusual restholds and may have suffered a bit from being nothing but all these guys beating the hell out of eachother for 40 minutes, but these guys are great at beating the hell out of each other. The last 10 minutes or so are great though with Gastel throwing some awesome looking headbutts. I would‘ve liked to see the full thing, as these kinda heatfests suffer a bit when you don‘t get the early build. But knowing these guys, they may have gone for full on heat from the get go.

PAS: This was great stuff, it is really impressive the pace these guys can set in a 60 minute draw, we tend to mentally think of 20th century 60 minutes draws having long rest hold sections, but this was a go go pace. All of what we got were hard exchanges. Liked the contrast on the face team, with Gastel working like a third heel, and LeDuc being more of a technician (although in French catch even the technicians throw heat). We got two classic LeDuc headspins,  one the Santo style headscissors, one a spin out of a arm stretch, which was especially awesome. I loved Gastel's final heat segment, tying both heels up in the ropes and wailing on them with forearms. No real finish, and long matches suffer if they don't build to anything, although the work her was super strong. 

Monsieur Montreal/Ami Sola vs Pierre Bernaert/Jack Rouxel 1/12/62

MD: Another week, another show, another great tag. This is our second or third match with Rouxel and I really like him so far. He had this upstart attitude in how he'd disengage or lay shots in or interact with the ref or the crowd. Montreal leaned hard into the strongman gimmick (using the bear hug and a lot of his opponents making him look good by flying around the ring on normal exchanges) and at one point, he picked up Rouxel out of a headlock, deposited him on the apron, and knocked him off. Rouxel made sure to land in a woman's lap which popped her and the crowd. I like the guy. Bernaert (who wasn't teaming with Bibi here since Cheri was in training for another match apparently) was a perfect partner, a smarmy mentor in cheating and underhandedness. Yes, he managed a fake handshake into a forearm once here. Sola was as savvy as we've ever seen him, delighting in Montreal's strength spots, working the apron well, orchestrating a lot of the revenge spots; the best of those was probably a series of arm stretchers in the heel corner where they kept kicking Sola down when he tried to work to his feet. When he got an arm of his own, he yanked it back to the face corner and they repeated the spot on the heels in an over the top manner. It's interesting to watch things develop over the years. By this stage, limbwork/bodypart work is 100% a thing. It really wasn't a couple of years earlier. The first fall ended with the heels really targeting Sola's back. That led to a fun little moment (again showing Sola's presence and experience) when he rushed in to touch his opponent so that he could immediately tag back out to start the second fall, as you can't tag until you touched at least once. Good moment in a match full of good moments. Everything really came together here to make for yet another good tag. Others might disagree with me but I think the overall quality of the tag scene is better than a few years earlier, where there would be heat and intensity and big moments, but less tricks and narrative shortcuts, like the heels cutting off the ring or stopping babyface reversals from the apron or using the ref being distracted. In 61-62, there was just a great balance of the two elements.

SR: 2/3 Falls match going about 35 minutes. The Montreal/Sola team is pretty fun. Sola is pure technique, and Montreal is all about strength. Rouxel on the other hand looked like a slightly less blonde version of Bernaert. A classy guy who could wrestle but was simply more interested in cheapshotting guys. This built for quite a bit and there was some nice skill on display from Rouxel and Bernaert. Of course, their bread and butter is cheapshotting guys hard, and when it got to that they looked great. Especially liked Beraneaert loosening Solas jaw with a knee only to get giant swung seconds later. And well, Mr. Montreal and Ami Sola are great pair of faces to play off those vicious tactics. This wasn‘t as heated as the other tag but it felt more complete (not just in terms of how much we got to see) and well rounded.