Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corn! Bibi! Aledo! Dula! Monsieur Montreal!

Jimmy Dula/Jean Martin vs. Monsieur Montreal/Leon Minisini 11/16/62

MD: Long tag that we miss the start of, and it's good. The last time I saw Dula, I wasn't 100% sure what to make of him. He hit hard but seemed to appeal, ironically, to the crowd after each shot. Here, he held that to between falls and it was pretty funny when he did it and made poor Martin do it with him, plus some fanning antics with the two of them as well, but otherwise, he remained fairly focused and helped to make a 40+ minute tag almost constantly entertaining. He just had this odd way of coming at you, weird angles, a lot of charisma, but hit super hard with his clubbering and headbutts and whatever else, while still being able to work holds. I think he'd improved since last time we saw him. Martin was a persnickety bully, no question, feeling like a guy trapped in a world he didn't make, just being swept along for the ride with Dula and taking it out on his opponents. Big stooging power when he was taking offense too. We won't see more of him, which is a shame. Montreal continues to show me a bit more than I was expecting out of a muscle guy. He works well in this environment, is more than willing to take his opponents' offense, but has some big set pieces to come back with, whether it's a belly to belly toss over the top or big catapults out of the ring. This is it for Minisini too and he was fine and fiery, with big shots when warranted, but a little bit interchangeable with all the others we've seen. Anyway, they kept this moving, kept it entertaining, with Dula almost constantly finding ways to keep himself involved and active. It felt unique in a sea of great, long, hard-hitting tags.

PAS: I thought this was totally excellent. Martin and Dula are cool looking guys, they look like a pair of Sam Cooke bodyguards, and made a really fun team. With Dula as the big bruiser and Martin as more of a frenetic ass kicker. I loved Martin's low angle in ring topes, and he took some fun bumps where he missed them and flew into the crowd. These long tags are very long, but the Martin and Dula team had a bunch of different ways to work exchanges so the time flew by. The finish got super exciting, including an all time great slugfest exchange between Martin and Montreal, it was Lawler vs. Dundee level stuff, with the combos and feints and variety of shots, blew me away. 

Jean Rabut vs. Modesto Aledo 12/14/62

MD: You look back at this footage and it's Modesto Aledo and Tony Charles we really, really wish we had more of. This is it for Aledo though. 3 glorious minutes of he and Rabut really going at it, with clever call back spots (turning the second knee crusher into a shin breaker, turning the second headbutt to the gut off the ropes into a knee lift) and something we've definitely never seen before as he jammed a 'rana, turned it into a power bomb, jammed the press up 'rana attempt, and turned it into a powerbombing backbreaker. This ended with one of the best sunset flips I've ever seen. And that's it for Aledo. Ah well. At least we got a glimpse.

Jacky Corn vs. Cheri Bibi 12/14/62

MD: Totally iconic match that tells you everything you need to know about two of the greatest characters in French Catch. Corn might be the best, most sympathetic seller we've seen, though what holds it all together is how he can turn it on when it's time to fire back. He's excellent technically, though maybe not in the top, top class, but as a total picture wrestler, he's as good as anyone in the footage. He's in those stylist vs stylist matches less because he'd almost be wasted there. You want to see him dominate on the mat early, take a beating in the middle, and them come back with thunderous, battling shots in the stretch. Bibi's come a long way as a tag worker over the years we have footage of and I think that held true in this singles match as well. He's still got that monstrous, almost ever-present look of enjoyment, a bulky way of constantly cheating and leaning on his opponent, but the timing and the purpose of what he does seems tighter and better than what we saw out o f 57 or 58 Bibi. It gave Corn one of the best possible foils to battle against here and they gave us a twenty minute or so match that was focused and pointed, that took the crowd up and brought them down again, and ended clear and clean and definitively in the center of the ring.

SR: 1 Fall match going about 24 minutes. The way I saw this described, I thought this would be like a miracle performance from Bibi in a technical clinic. It wasn‘t that, but it was still pretty great. It was pretty much a mix of tight, simple wrestling and some of the sickest slugging it out in this whole project. Jacky Corn reminds me a bit of a Shinichi Nakano type guy, not the most charismatic and doesn‘t do much fancy, but he will execute his technical moves a little tighter, crank his holds a little harder than everyone else, and engage in some disgustingly violent back and forth strike exchanges. And Cheri Bibi was just a tank here. He didn‘t do anything that made me think he was a genius worker, but he was quite impeccable here as a massive, barrel chested evil dude. The 2nd half of the match is mostly them slugging it out and it was spectacular, with some shots being thrown that would look crazy in a FUTEN match, and both guys lacing each other up with those nasty short kicks. Corn has a lot of things to dish out, at one point he was kicking the shit out of Bibi's shoulder, later he chops him in the throat. And Bibi took and gave as good as he got.

PAS: Pitched fist fight which started at 10 and kept cranking it higher and higher. Bibi looks like Bob Hoskins and has shocking Hoskins in Roger Rabbit level agility when he is taking moves. He is mostly a banger though, hard forearms to the throat, jaw and kidneys, powerful ring shaking slams, he feels like a guy it would absolutely suck to have to wrestle, you are just coming out of it bruised and sore. Corn matches him shot for shot, and even starts exceeding him in violence including some razor chops right to the throat, before finally dumping him with a fast violent tombstone for the duke. This actually felt like a Johnny Valentine match to me, which is about as big a compliment as I can give. This snatches that 1962 slot from Aubriot vs. Bernaert.

ER: You know a match is stiff when the referee works as stiff as the participants. My favorite part of the match - and the most exquisitely filmed shot of the entire match - was the referee throwing some disgusting stomps at Cheri Bibi's wrist and fingers as Bibi's hand gripped the bottom rope. It really made me notice how fearless the ref was the rest of the match, whenever he had to step in between these two to break up a skirmish in the ropes. This guy had uppercuts being thrown inches from his face and he had no problems getting his body in there. Now obviously the referee wasn't the star here, but it certainly added to the presentation for me. Bibi is our favorite Buzz Sawyer/Bob Hoskins hybrid (Buzz Hoskins?) who throws punishing uppercuts, hard combos (love his right punch to the body/left clubbing shot to the back, great rhythm), and full arm shots to the body. His body shots are basically standing clotheslines, a straight arm thrown from different angles about a broad section of Corn's body, and I suspect we'd see some mighty bruising if we had color footage available. 

French Catch tecnicos are always impress me with the amount of punishment they can take, always building to a big comeback, but Corn's selling really put over Bibi's beating. I love how both men sell in the ropes, and how they sell each strike appropriately. The bumping is never over the top, and they don't overuse the bigger bumps to put over bigger strikes. I love the butt drop sell after a particularly nasty uppercut, and each man used it once, really a great way to separate and get across the severity of a particular strike, which wouldn't be as special if they had done it throughout. The tombstone piledriver that Corn finishes Bibi with was on the shortlist of most violent things we've seen in this entire series. The drop happened below the camera line, but you can see where Bibi's head was in relation to Corn's knees, and the way he dropped down fast you can tell Bibi really got crunched. Somebody might have beaten Corn to the drop though, as Bibi's big round head is already square on top of his big round shoulders. This match takes over the crown as our 1962 All Time MOTY, in our list linked below. New champs are always a cause for celebration, and these two earned it. 

ALL TIME MOTY MASTER LIST