Tuesday is French Catch Day: Leduc! Henker! Siki! Masque

Gilbrt Leduc vs. Der Henker 7/31/71

As best as I can tell, this was for Leduc's Light Heavyweight Title, though I don't think Henker was at all a Light anything. I'd call it a very good title match and go further to that to say that Henker might have been the best pure wrestler of the monsters we've seen, in as he made the gimmick work while still wrestling the sort of title match you'd expect out of the footage. That meant early on Leduc couldn't get an edge on him due to Henker's superior strength but that Henker couldn't keep Leduc down in holds for long given Leduc's prowess and his amazing headstand escapes. As the match went on, there was a sense of both wrestlers wearing down. Leduc, especially, was able to pry off a hand and hammer it repeatedly, though he lost focus occasionally between feuding with the ref and trying to get Henker's mask off. At around the twenty-five minute mark, Henker really opened the match up for the first time with a huge fireman's carry gutbuster and a tombstone, but Leduc mounted a bit comeback by reversing a second tombstone and scored a pretty triumphant win. We haven't seen too many matches outright billed as title matches in the footage and while this isn't going to hold up against a Tony Oliver vs Bert Royal sort of match, it was very good for what it was.


Mammoth Siki vs. L'Homme Masque 8/21/71

MD: Often they'll present other wrestlers before the match and they'll shake hands and wave to the crowd. The most interesting of these was when we first saw Andre and Petit Prince. Here we get the Hippy and some others but actor Michel le Royer as well, who will guest commentate. I mainly mention because unless I'm mistaken, he died just a week or two ago. I've gotten the sense over the last few months that they've made a real effort to mention celebrities or athletes in the crowd. It's probably an attempt to stay relevant but I'll be honest, from a totally textual examination, things don't seem less hot in 71 than they did in 61.

I'm not sure how much we know about Siki. His name sounds more familiar than the internet record would leave you to believe. He worked in Germany and Japan in the 70s and does, in fact, feel like a pretty great Inoki opponent (they wrestled in 74). Save for his dropkicks, nothing he did was particularly spectacular, but everything was backstopped by his size, presence, and charisma. He came off as someone who was a wonderful attraction but that you wouldn't want to see every week. The first third of the match was L'Homme Masque, who was of course massive, trying various holds and Siki reversing them, driving L'Homme into the ropes. He finally found an achilles heal with a grinding leglock in the second third but Siki continued to escape and press his own advantage with a headbutt or dropkick or an arm driver. Basically, Siki had an answer to everything L'Homme could do. The last third was crowd pleasing as Siki went for the mask again and again until eventually getting it, leading to the ref being used as a ranged weapon and Siki scoring the win. The novelty here was the size and by doing simple things but making it seem like a lot of effort was going into them, the match more or less worked. I'm just not sure I needed twenty five minutes of it.