Tuesday is French Catch Day: Fryziuk! Batistou!

Yanneck Fryziuk vs Batistou 10/12/75

MD: We encounter once again Jean Frisuk (who we now think the best spelling of is as seen above), a Franco-Polish heavyweight who we have spattered about in the footage. This is our first look at Batistou, though he may be out there in one other match not in the collection. He is also a heavyweight, apparently a former rugby player, here noted as the son of a blacksmith and an ironworker artisan himself. He has a small band, including an accordion player out there supporting him and does come off as a sort of folk hero type. 

He's also a heavyweight and this is a pretty measured one. The advantage of a heavyweight contest is that all the shots hit harder and have more heft behind them, that all of the technique has a bit more weight to it. And you do get some of the latter as Fryziuk uses a series of clever go behinds on Batistou. Batistou counters more with raw power and headlock takeovers and the like. Fryziuk had the skill and could out wrestle Batistou but Batistou had the heart and almost childlike temper. They tease animosity as it goes, a shove out of the corner, pushing the ref away at a key moment, that sort of thing, but everyone in that crowd is waiting for things to boil over and it takes its good time to get there. When it does, it's pretty good though, especially once the band starts playing which they note is like "spinach" for him. He has one flurry towards the end that is almost worth twenty minutes of very deliberate pro wrestling to get to. Almost. 

I think, in the end, if I was in that crowd, I would have rather seen a hard hitting middleweight contest, however. The big guys are good novelty but by 75, these two at least, couldn't quite keep up. 

SR: They had a band for this that kept playing this jolly music, making it easily the most whimsical match we've seen so far. The music was fun a bit unfittin at times like when they tried to tease an intense moment and then this jolly music starts blaring. This was mostly clean wrestling throughout. They tease tempers flaring a few times but mostly calmed it back down. Only at the end did they flare tempers. These are two chunky gentleman, and it's fun to watch them do some slick and fast movements. Nothing mindblowing in terms of technique but it was all well worked and kept a good pace. Fryziuk had this leg stretch that turned Batistou upside down that was pretty great. Fun match though it felt a bit like a preliminary contest.