Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mantopolous! Delaporte! Plantin! Louis!

Eddy Williams vs Robert Duranton 3/23/68 

MD: We miss the first 18 or so but get the last four of this and Duranton has definitely further honed his act. He was way over the top with his mannerisms, little pats and waves to the crowd, taking a shot at Williams' nose, and some fun interactions with the ref, including positioning him around the ring and hiding behind him. He was nasty and hard hitting despite that. Williams looked as good as usual here, including a cool inner nelson chicken wing hold and some great dropkicks in the post match (one crushing the valet and the crowd hates no one more than the valet). This took a turn when the valet got in a bunch of kidney shots as Duranton was distracting the ref and Duranton was able to hone in from there only to lose his cool when Williams wouldn't stay down and get dqed on his third public warning. The post match had Williams fire back only to eat some nasty cheapshots and a huge slam.


Vasilios Mantopolous vs Roger Delaporte 3/23/68

MD: I was looking forward to this one. You get the sense that Delaporte, who was a promoter after all, relished getting to have this match against a smaller but unique and very over and skilled opponent. He only took about half of it, despite the size advantage, got to do all of his huge facial muggings as Mantopolous was taking him over and twisting him up, and got to play into all of his fun trick bait spots. Meanwhile, he still got to beat him around the ring and keep control of such a skilled wrestler with his underhanded tactics and size advantage. He got to play off the ref and even trick Mantopolous into getting a public warning by keeping the ref in the corner and moving at the last second so Mantopolous dropkicked him (and he was elated by that result). He got tied up in the ropes a couple of times and did a really great job of eating a bunch of rapid fire dropkicks as he was getting up. As the match went on and the public warnings accumulated for both wrestlers, they were more than happy to keep abusing the ref. The chaos kept building until they ended up slugging it out on the floor and the ref just had enough. Pretty satisfying meeting of sizes and styles and personalities.

SR: 1 fall match going about 25 minutes. It feels like a while since we've seen Delaporte. He's greyed out now, but other than that pretty much the same old Roger. This was a basic face/heel match between two guys who just have amazing looking everything. Mantopolous just makes all his tricks look awesome and Delaporte has really good mannerisms falling for said tricks as well as some nasty kicks and punches. Just the way Delaporte flails about hen Mantopolous puts pressure on his wrist is an artform. Like with previous Mantopoulus matches we've seen he dominated most of the match although Delaporte did get to beat the shit out of him here and there. It feels a bit like there was some clipping here or they were really bold announcing a 30 minute time when about 25 minutes in the video had passed. Regardless it was another stupidly entertaining Delaporte singles against a very game opponent.

Bob Plantin vs Francis Louis 4/6/68

MD: At some point it becomes a little hard to talk about these stylist vs stylist matches, even one like this between two smaller guys. This was the usual excellent stuff. There were moments where they messed up a hold early but they were quick to recover naturally. There was a little bit of weird ref attitude towards Plantin which may pay off later down the road but it wasn't a huge part of the match. When they turned up the juice, they could really go with quick near-falls and headscissors takeovers all over the place. There was a nice extended short arm scissors, but also leg nelsons and full nelsons and plenty of other holds. Plantin had a nice neckbreaker. The last few minutes had them really getting chippy with some nasty shots as they worked towards the draw. We've seen tons of matches like this now but I'm always happy to see another.

SR:1 fall match going 30 minutes. This was largely a clean match. They wrestle it out for 20 straight minutes without throwing a forearm. The wrestling was as silky smooth and athletic as you've come to expect from two French technicians. It might as well function as a sample for the style. Plantin drew some ire from the crowd after he cranked up the viciousness when Louis dropped him with some nasty neckbreakers. Other than that the match stayed fair. Pretty beautiful stuff really.