Tuesday is French Catch Day: Manneveau! Le Samurai! More Luna Catch 2000! Cavilliers! Fontaine!

Guy Cavilliers vs. Alain Fontaine 1/3/72

MD: This is a rare episode that seems to be joined well in progress. We only have about ten minutes of this, with no entrances and some talk with Fontaine's family at the end. I do think we've only come in a few minutes late though. The first few minutes of this are the two of them tossing each other out, with  Fontaine getting the better of it and his younger opponent coming back. Once they get going there are a lot of headscissors takeovers and dropkicks though it's a little disjointed relative to what we're used to maybe. The finish has both of them missing dropkicks and then kipping up to crash into one another, a way for the younger wrestler to earn a draw and a novel finish even if one that you don't want to repeat too much. 

Marcel Manneveau vs. Le Samurai 1/31/72

MD: Interesting match. I have no idea who Le Samurai was. Apparently he had red gear with a red and yellow mask. Some of the things he did, like the bowing and chops, and most notably the hangman's neckbreaker where he carries his opponent to the ropes and presses up into them from underneath neck-first were parts of the Kamikazes' game, but other things weren't, and the general style of wrestling seemed different. The first ten minutes, before he devolved into the chops and nerve-holds, had some really good mat wrestling, a lot of wrist control and counters to counters. Occasionally they got overambitious and lost something. Samurai had one absolutely brilliant escape from a headscissors where he brought up his own legs to hold one of Manneveau's. As such, this was a great showcase for just how good Manneveau was on the mat, which we often don't get to see in dirty Blousons matches. Once the match opened up, both guys played the heel, though the fans were more against Samurai than they were for Manneveau. My favorite bits here were Samurai's killer double leg stump pullers, but also some of the abrupt grabbing of limbs that almost made it seem like a 1970s proto-shoot style. The finish was kind of gnarly as Samurai had Manneveau trapped in a sunset flip pin and scored the three despite Manneveau repeatedly slamming his heel against Samurai's head to try to escape. Good match even with the affectations.  

Antonio Pereira/Mota Dos Santos vs. Francis Louis/Jean Claude Bordeaux 1/31/72

MD: Yes, this is more Luna Catch 2000, where wrestler are shot into the ring off platforms with compressed air. I'm fairly certain that this 6 minutes or so that we get (more like 10 with the pomp and circumstance to begin) is actually the debut as the full match that has gotten more attention than maybe anything else we've posted is from April and we're at the end of January here. They started this with the klaxon and the cosmic bowling lights, with wrestlers dressed in silver jumpsuits but no helmets this time and with a countdown to launch them into the ring which was different. The commentator likened it to a scene from a Kubrick movie. We've got the same wrestlers as before, but I think they had the act down just a bit more in April as they were better at both not bumping on their own backs on the way in and also catching themselves then. I don't know what else to tell you. Having seen the week after week quality of the footage, this stuff is a fun novelty but if I had to choose, I'm glad we got the full Manneveau vs Samurai match and just a few minutes of watching these guys soar into the ring, land, pause and then armdrag or slam each other. Basically, while it's cool Bryan Danielson is talking about this sort of thing on a podcast, I'd rather see (and would rather he see!) another Louis/Bordeaux vs Dos Santos/Pereira match without the compressed air and ten foot high bumps than this, as they are pretty spectacular when they get to put together an actual match.