Tuesday is French Catch Day:Khan! Gentilly! Amor! Rouanet! Horst! DiSanto!

Monsieur Montreal vs. Jack Rouxel 9/15/61

MD: We get the last 5 minutes of 20 here. It's our first look at Mr. (Marcel) Montreal. Pretty straightforward. The crowd was against Rouxel and he, after quickly escaping the full nelson we start with, just mauled Montreal. Forearms and simple throws and a few kicks for good measure. I half through the ref should call it at one point (he gave Rouxel a warning instead) but then Montreal ducked a running forearm and Rouxel went sailing over the top and the entire match turned. Montreal got plenty of revenge, to the point where both guys seemed fairly blown up from all the slams, before locking in a bearhug for the win. We have a Rouxel/Bernaert vs Sola/Montreal tag in a few weeks that sounds like a lot of fun.

Iska Khan/Serge Gentilly vs .Yves Amor/Pierre Rouanet 9/15/61

MD: Not a lot of brand new fooage this week. Just the JIPs, I think. But we're going through this stuff as we encounter it for the most part. This was a very fun tag with a lot of fun pairings. Amor and Khan are both such interesting wrestlers to watch, very talented, multifaceted despite their sort of singular gimmicks, both able to lay it in and go at it when they're not doing the highly affectated stuff. Both men were consumate performers with great connections with the crowd. Gentilly and Rouanet worked extremely well together, lots of quick exchanges and holds that were either repeatedly hung onto or escaped from, including an excellent hammerlock/flying mare exchange. Likewise, Amor vs Gentilly was a lot of fun with Amor's size and reach advantage up against Gentilly's slickness. What we saw of Khan vs Rouanet was a slugfest as much as not. When the heels decided to finally act like heels, they controlled the ring well and demolished Khan's back. As the guy who ate the fall has to start in the ring to begin the next one, it let Khan work from underneath a bit to get a quasi-hot tag and the comeback was fun. The last fall was back and forth, with a couple of flashy things like a cool triple strike combo by Gentilly and Khan's stepover spin kicks, including the one that knocked Amor out of the ring to end the match, and great straightforward ones like Amor's kneeshots in the ropes. Good mix of straight up work and fun character stuff here.

Remy Bayle vs. Al Gamain 10/5/61

SR: We get about 1 minute of this featuring lots of heated slugging and a cool spinning canadian backbreaker finish. Wouldn‘t have minded to see 2 or 3 minutes more.

MD: Just a minute of this, but they went hard for the finish. Good striking. Gamain had a great, abrupt headbutt to the gut, and won it with an over the shoulder backbreaker whirlybird which was nice to see.

Kuti Nador vs. Michel Allary 10/5/61

SR: 13 minute match going one fall. I am pretty sure Kuti Nador is Hungarian wrestler Micha Nador, since that guys real name is actually Kuti. Nador I think was mostly active in Germany and Austria. It‘s nice to have a full match if him in his prime. He also showed up in NJPW in the early 80s, somehow. He seemed like a cool worker and I would‘ve liked to see him in a 30 minute match like they gave every other worker. This was face vs. Face, with them going through the usual solid wrestling with Nador having some unique twists on the established holds and counters. Then, Nador decided to work over Allarys face with thai clinch knees and lock in a nasty sleeper. The he just dropped him with a gnarly piledriver. That was unexpected for sure. They get heated for a minute before a nasty bump occurs and the match is thrown out.

MD: We're in tournament mode here, I guess, as this only goes 10 minutes. It's a good ten minutes though. Nador is bigger and relies upon his strength. He's a little awkward but has just enough technique to be extra dangerous. Allary is super technical and generally the aggressor here which serves him well right to the end when he KOs himself through the ropes in a charge. Good stuff up til there, however, with them trading hammerlocks, a Nador full nelson, and some nice leg holds by Allary. He had one great rolling takedown into a short leg scissors of sorts (including using his knuckle to grind the knee). Nador was generally able to power out though. They escalated to bombs (a Nador bodyslam tombstone followed by an Allary neckbreaker and heated strikes), before Allary went sailing out. Good, quick sampler if you wanted to show someone a bit of the style.

Lino Di Santo vs. Horst Hoffmann 10/5/61

SR: 1 fall match going 20 minutes. It‘s Horst Hoffmann, baby. Hoffmann may be familiar to people from his work in AJPW in the 70s. He was a young Mitsuharu Misawas favourite and inspired him to wear the emerald green tights. This Hoffmann was in his 4th year as a pro wrestler, but he was quite the specimen. In Germany, Hoffmann was promoter Gustl Kaisers boy and basically The Man. Needless to say having this match alone is a blessing. And it‘s a very good bout. Hoffmann really wrestles like a bear. He would wrench the shit out of Di Santo and just throw him around. After so many cartoonishly evil fake Germans, it was nice to see a real stoic German being a straight up bulldozer. Hoffmann didn‘t do anything evil but you get the sense he was demolishing the Italian. At one point, Di Santo denied a wristlock escape and Horst just kneed him in the gut. Hoffmann also had this amazing overhead suplex that looks far beyond the scope of normal humans. I thought Di Santo wrestled a great match, too. He really put over the overwhelming force of his opponent and fired back with big impact moves of his own, including that sick looking neckbreaker of this. There was some cool grappling, too. By the end Hoffmann was just dropping the Italian hard over and over. When the time runs out, it feels like Di Santo survived a storm.

MD: I don't think we have much more, if any, of young Hoffman in the footage and it's a little strange as Di Santo was going way out of his way to showcase him here. There was a lot to showcase too. He was a beast that brought a lot to the table. Di Santo would keep holds on (like a hammerlock) to show how many ways Hoffman knew to try to escape it and he kept things equally interesting by going for frustrated shots first and having a bunch of stuff, a good backbreaker, a neckbreaker, etc. Hoffman had it all though. Size and power. Pretty solid strikes. Some interesting holds like a bow and arrow. And big, big throws including one of the first gutwrenches we've seen and his fall away slam. This stayed more even than you'd think, even though Hoffman had a clear advantage on points by the end. Just a good showcase with a solid journeyman highlighting a younger guy with huge talent.