Tuesday is French Catch Day: Magnier! Plantin! Bordeaux! Pereira! Di Santo! Chaisne!

8/7/76

Bob Plantin vs. Fred Magnier

MD: Three matches on this show, with the second one being brand new and the first and third being new to us. They were on, coincidentally, Bob Plantin's YouTube channel. We get about 8 minutes JIP here. Plantin is quite young. Magnier is rather pigfaced in a good way for a heel. He's a former firefighter and called the legionnaire since he was apparently in the Legion for five years. Delaporte is the ref looking casual. They say he's 47 but he looks like he's 47 going on 67 with all the grey. 

Plantin was full of energy. While he sold with his whole body and flopped about sympathetically and then came back with fiery (even if he didn't hit nearly as hard as Magnier), I do think maybe he did too much too often, zooming out of the ring, doing a taupie escape without the build, going through Magnier's legs, etc. There was one great bit I don't remember ever seeing before where he went for a cross headscissors but sort of rode through with it into a roll up exchange. Eventually Magnier leaned on him too much and ignored Delaporte too much and they started scrapping but by then Plantin had an injured ear and Delaporte called the match. This would have been better if he called the match first and then when Magnier didn't let up, they THEN scrapped. Here the drama was backwards.

Antonio Pereira vs. Jean-Claude Bordeaux

MD: This went about ten minutes but it was an incredibly skillful ten minutes. Pereira is billed as Portuguese and Bordeaux we've seen in tags with Francis Louis. Both of them were lighter and they could absolutely go. They kept it mostly gentlemanly though Pereira was the aggressor. Bordeaux had a counter for everything though. Lots of sharp hanging on to holds and through throws, though nothing was worked for long as they kept things moving. Sharp headscissors and a 'rana and some very slick ways to land on one's feet. I'm not sure how much of it was Pereira's basing but Bordeaux looked extremely sharp. About two thirds through, Pereira started to lean down upon him a bit more, maybe apologetically, but definitively nonetheless. Despite that, Bordeaux was able to leap up to the top rope and then come flying back with a body press for the win. Definitely a good one to check out if you just have ten minutes to see just how good these guys were at what they did.

Michel Chaisne vs. Michel Di Santo

MD: This is a very late look at Chaisne who we haven't seen since the early 60s if I'm not mistaken. He's got grey hair and seems to be in charge of sports for some town or another as his day job. This is our earliest look at Lino's son Michel. It's twenty minutes or so (a little less) and it's very good. Chaisne had grey hair but he could still go, still knew all the tricks, still had all the technique. The start of the match had Di Santo whipping him around with his arm or his neck on these tight takeovers and they all looked brutal. Lots of hard hitting shots as well, with Di Santo bumping into the top rope throat first after one and Chiasne crashing into Delaporte (the ref here) and even over the top at one point. That gave us more extracurriculars as Magnier, in the crowd after the first match got into it with Chaisne and got routed out the other side of the ring for his trouble.

They didn't overtly play up the young vs old as much as you think, leaning instead into technique and hard shots. It did seem like Chaisne controlled the holds a bit more and had more answers, even if Di Santo was happy to move with energy and give him problems. Finish had both of them sailing over the top and the crowd helping Chaisne back into the ring first for the countout. This made me wish we had another fifteen years of Chaisne matches basically.