Tuesday is French Catch Day: Boucard! Demon! James Brown! Apollon! deLasrtesse! Hess!

Daniel Boucard vs Red Demon 2/6/66

MD: This was something. I'm just not sure what. Red Demon, in his ill fitting costume, definitely got an A for effort. He reminded me of a Chris Champion or Brady Boone, one of those guys who had bigger ideas than they had athleticism. He'd land on his feet off of mares and monkey flips, but just barely and never gracefully. He'd bound up to the top rope and somersault off onto Boucard but it looked neither smooth nor entirely painful. I liked his attitude. He kept returning to this attentive position, presumably to throw off and taunt his opponent and the crowd. Every time he landed on his feet early on, he'd charge right back in with a flying headbutt to the gut. When Boucard started to get some offense, he tried to keep him outside the ring. At one point he took a powder when things got too hot. And he had interesting stuff, an armhook takeover or a cavernaria and those flips off the top. He just couldn't really execute any of them well. I liked the layout too with Boucard really struggling until he either wore Demon down or figured out how to solve the puzzle. When he started to hit a few revenge charging headbutts of his own, it was a nice moment, and then a nice callback at the end as he got too overzealous on it and took a nasty bump to the floor (not his first in the match) and couldn't answer the count. Most of all, this made me look forward to was 1968 and the arrival of Kamikaze into our footage.

James Brown/Ray Apollon vs Jack de Lasartesse/Hans Hess 2/11/66

MD: I'd say that this had some of the better hope spots and fighting from underneath we've seen. Really, I thought Brown was excellent here. His shine stuff, the dropkicks and 'ranas and strikes were very good. Watching him land on his feet out of a cravat into a mare perfectly was a breath of fresh air after our masked friend from the last match could barely manage it. He had good fire and the crowd was behind him. Lasartesse and Hess were a very good team, with Lasartesse's reach just a brilliant tool for tag wrestling. When he had Brown in a chinlock and he started to get out, he could reach over to Hess from almost anywhere in the ring, it seemed, and get pulled back to their corner. Long tags too, of course. The heel side were great at cutting off the ring too. Plus, of course, you would have Lasartesse doing an arm trap suplex or swinging bearhug backbreakers (Brown had a great pendulum backbreaker too). 

Apollon was a crowd pleaser but a little of him went too long if you ask me. His primary mode of attack would be to bully his opponent in the corner and hit these swinging hammers to the gut as the fans counted along. In and of itself, it wasn't a bad act but that was the entire act. He'd thereafter seem lost and almost immediately tag out. That meant that Brown would get some revenge shots in, but he was almost always put in a tough situation, even after he'd make a big, valiant tag. It was the right call for the match since the quality was loads higher when Brown was battling against Hess and Lasartesse and I could see Apollon working well as an attraction that fans only saw occasionally, but that's not exactly how this footage works. This was the best we've seen Brown look and next time we see him, against Bibi and Husberg later in the year, he'll even have a proper partner in Jean Corne. Oh, in case anyone was wondering, here it is too, before the match, our first look at the giant Jean Ferre, who got to shake hands with the aforementioned Cheri Bibi. He looked almost unrecognizably young at 19.