Tuesday is French Catch Day: Rene Ben! Peruvians! Bordes! Petit Prince! Von Chenok! Mercier
Teddy Boy vs Gerard Bouvet 12/16/67
MD: We get the last six minutes of this after they'd been going for a while and going hard. Teddy Boy is such a glorious jerk and he hits as hard as anyone we've seen. Bouvet might have been a half step slow compared to some of the smaller wrestlers we've been watching lately but he had some slick stuff, including a dive over a shoulder throw right into a cartwheel followed by a dropkick and the usual sort of stylist revenge spots like stomping on the hands and tying Teddy Boy up in the ropes for the rushing headbutt. This was building some momentum as a slugfest when Bouvet tossed Teddy Boy way over the top to end it.
Guy Mercier vs Karl Von Chenok 12/16/67
MD: The thing you need to know about Karl von Chenok is that he's not Karl von Kramer. You'd rather have Karl von Kramer. I'm also not sure I've ever seen a Karl von Chenok match that wouldn't benefit from being ten minutes shorter. There was nothing bad about this and a lot that was pretty good. Mercier, by this point, had developed an awesome array of back crushing offense, most specifically his bearhug swing into a backbreaker. He had a way of holding someone in a leglock and just beating the tar out of them with chops. He worked hard to get the headstand headscissors (Mascaras) spin going and made it seem like real effort. Chenok did one thing, his knuckles-in nervehold, but he did it exceptionally well. He had a way of sidestepping a punch and slipping it on that was as smooth as you could imagine. The match was full of struggle and at some points they were going from shot to nervehold back and forth again and again as Chenok remained dogged and Mercier unyielding. That was pretty novel actually. There was just too much of it. They never lost the crowd. It always felt competitive, even if Chenok was more of an oozing persistent presence than an electric, charismatic one. There was just too much of it.
Petit Prince vs Bobby Genele 1/22/68
MD: We get the last six minutes of this as well and it's easy for people to miss as it was on the same video as Andre vs Van Buyten which we had covered independently. By this point, the Prince had really developed into a more complete package. His selling here is exceptional. There's a King of the Mountain in the middle where Genele keeps smashing or kicking him off the apron and the way he flies into the crowd and just milks it is Ricky Morton level. It's the same with his comebacks. He's more apt to have a real hope spot and then have it cut off than most people in the footage and because he's so small and so spectacular on offense, the crowd eats it up. That said, sometimes he'll do a backflip off of someone's shoulder to go through his legs and get a mare. There's a lot of wasted motion and the first time he does it, you're blown away but by the fourth or fifth time you see it, you wonder if maybe he couldn't create some more powerful effect at the end, like he does with the backflip off the top after hammering on his opponent in the corner to charge in hard with a headbutt to the gut. I think that's a criticism we'd have of him if he was a modern wrestlers. You can do six spectacular things to set up a move, things spectacular enough to overshadow the move, if you can rationalize it being about positioning, but maybe that move shouldn't be a mare? But in the end, we're just glad to have more footage of it. It's a shame we don't have the start of this as Genele was a great, chip on his shoulder rival for the Prince and what we got here was, on whole, very good.
Rene Ben Chemoul/Walter Bordes vs Inca Peruano/Anton Tejero 3/9/68
MD: Tremendous tag. You could have probably peeled a couple of minutes off the first fall and a couple off the third, and me sitting here in 2021 would have been okay with that, but I'm sure the 1968 fans would have felt robbed. Those two falls were what they were there to see, Bordes and Ben Chemoul triumphant again and again while Peruano and Tejero tried every move and trick in their arsenal to contain the stylists. I thought that maybe, just maybe Ben Chemoul was starting to slow a bit as he was aging, but then he'd fly so high on a top wristlock up and over escape that I felt almost embarrassed for doubting him. Bordes was right there with him with complex chain wrestling escapes that stood up to almost any we've seen so far. Tejero is as good as any heel we've seen in basing and stooging and getting mean shots in, but Peruano is a wonder, one of the most creative and interesting wrestling minds we've ever seen. Here he introduced some awesome headbutts to the back of the head (one into the corner) and an amazing sequence where he turned a full nelson into a whip around and a go under to drive Ben Chemoul's head into the corner. The second fall gave weight to the proceedings as Tejero and Peruano tossed Bordes out over the top again and again. The fans tried to help him, and later Ben Chemoul as he was getting tossed through the ropes, back in but the heels were unrelenting and Tejero ended it with a huge tombstone. The stylists were able to come back in the last fall and not just come back but hit a series of satisfying revenge spots. Peruano had gotten Bordes up in a fireman's carry and chucked him across the ring into a gutbuster onto Tejero's knee, so Bordes did a one man version of the move. They made sure to toss the heels out plenty as well and the fans were not at all quick to help. Ben Chemoul set up up a few celebratory set pieces with the heels tied up in the ropes and the fans loved it, though when the ref dared to give him a public warning for one in the first fall, his overdramatic misery for the injustice of it all brought forth the loudest sympathetic crowd chant we've heard in the footage maybe. Brilliant wrestlers doing brilliant things, with skill and struggle and intensity. Just about everything you want from late 60s French Catch.
Labels: Anton Tejero, French Catch, Guy Mercier, Inca Peruano, Karl von Chenok, Le Petit Prince, Rene Ben Chemoul, Walter Bordes
1 Comments:
Guy Mercier is a fucking credit to Professional Wrestling
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