Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mercier! Brown! Les Gorilles Marsallon!

Guy Mercier/James Brown vs Les Gorilles (Lou/Geo Marsallon) 7/1/65

MD: And we are back for a limited ten week engagement thanks to the efforts of Phil Lions to scrub through the archive one more time. A varied run of matches full of a lot of familiar names and a few new ones. I'm excited for it. Even just hearing Roger Couderc commentate again felt like visiting an old friend.

And this one started off with another old friend, or friends as it was, as seconding the Gorilles here to start were no one other than Robert Duranton and his valet Firmin. Duranton complained about not getting enough TV time, took of his shirt, threatened to go down to his underwear and left. Pretty funny stuff.

The match itself was one of those feel good babyface-heavy French Catch tags full of so many entertaining bits but that suffered to modern eyes because it was so astoundingly lopsided. The clip is 36 minutes. The match is, let's say 33 of that given the Duranton antics to start (not counting introductions and the bits in between falls) and i wouldn't say the heels really took over until the 30 minute mark.

And that's not to say they weren't formidable. They had big clobbering shots. They double teamed well. They had size and presence. There's just not much anyone could do against James Brown and his headbutt. Multiple entertaining comedy bits of them timbering to headbutts or trying to slam his head into each other's foot or trying headbutts of their own. Whenever they did take over due to a double team the stylist partner was quick to come in (usually with dropkicks, with Brown having a sort of shotgun front dropkick with big impact). Lots of dropkicks in this one.

Still, there were a lot of individual bits that I enjoyed, whether it be Mercier doing his thing spinning before a takedown (or going through the legs) or Brown himself going through the legs on a leg splitter. Brown had a victory roll bit where one Marsallon walked him over to the corner for a punch from the other only for that punch to get blocked to set up the victory roll. Lots of miscommunication bits where they ran into each other on full nelson charges too, that sort of thing. At one point one of them went flying through the roles on a missed charge, a tope to nowhere.

I will say that they got a lot of mileage out of these hefting lawn dart hotshots onto the top rope right at the end, but not so much to counterbalance 30 minutes of stylist control. Overall fun candy that kept the crowd delighted and a nice visit back to France for me but a little Brown goes a long way considering how much air he takes up. 

SR: The first new French match in a while, and man it is jarring to get back into that world. Flawless, tight execution on everything, everyone a 100% game, constantly engaging the face/heel dynamic, never missing a beat. It's safe to say when it comes to the fundamentals all these guys were on a completely different level compared to todays workers, and the athleticism, fast pace and big bumping still holds up insanely well today. Lou and Geo Marsallon could be Les Marsallons, but they are Les Gorilles, and boy do they look the part. Square, bulky, heads as bald as their chests are hairy, ugly and mean like only the best heels can be. They were dedicated stooges really taking pinball bumping to the next level, flying in and out of the ring for a dozen babyface dropkicks in ways you don't really expect two men so bulky and square looking men to fly around. They were pretty vicious too, occasionally putting back alley beatings on the faces, another thing that is really jarring, in this world something as simple as a stomp or an elbow upside the head was executed like it was intended to maul, and they wouldn't let up, crawling all over their opponents punching, strangling and doing god knows what. It was a quite vicious edge for a match that was largely a dose of fun for the crowd to watch the faces one up the heels over and over and occasionally get heated and kick the shit out of them. Brown and Mercier are a bunch of fun here too. Brown works a bit different from your typical cookie cutter French babyface, perhaps owing to him breaking into the business in Germany if I am informed correctly. He'll get up to a lot of cool things, hitting those nasty Giant Baba style falling armbreakers, a bulldog where he keeps holding on to the head, cool out of nowhere headbutts, perfect european uppercuts, backbreakers from odd angles. At one point he flipped out of a hold and lost his footing, only to immediately dive for the legs with an ankle pick like a seasoned amateur wrestler. Mercier isn't in the match as much but he is reliable as always, beautiful throws, picking guys up with freakish ease and dropping them across his knees in nasty ways. This was mostly a romp and executed extremely well with hardly any letdown. Feels crazy we've seen like a hundred tags like this, even if you are well familiar with the French footage this is a blast to check out.

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DEAN~!!! 2 Day 7: Mad Dog Connelly vs Adam Priest

DEAN~!!! 2 5/24/25

Mad Dog Connelly vs Adam Priest (Dog Collar Match)

MD: Work with me for a minute here. If you ever got a tape from Dean over the years, there was a real good chance that it'd just be something he had watched recently and enjoyed. You never knew what you were going to get. That was, in many ways, the spirit of the Death Valley Driver Video Reviews. The wrestling came to them. Maybe they had a good idea of what to seek after repeat viewings, but it was the footage that ended up in their hands. It was very much the opposite of the Observer. That was at the center, the keeper of the canon. These ruled the periphery, full of strange energy where anything counted and everything was a possibility. 

Now remember, this show was put together in part by Phil Schneider and to get a Schneider Comp was a very different experience. You were already in through the door. You knew the password. You were choosing from a numbered list. If the DVDVRs took the footage as it came, Phil took the best of that footage: the weirdest, the wildest, the bloodiest, the hardest hitting, the absolute must-see distilled from every corner of the world and put it all in one place. 

For those of us who watched the show at 7 PM last Tuesday having looked forward to it for a month+, it was a Schneider Comp. But I imagine for those who walked up not quite sure what they were getting into, that took their kids, that saw the social media posts and clicked, thousands and thousands of people, it was instead the cool tape that you got from Dean which might have anything in the world on it. 

The DVDVRs helped to expose people to the possibilities of pro wrestling, to push people out of either one box or another, the culture or the counter-culture, and realize there was so much more under the sun. And that's what this match was meant to do as well. It wasn't Connelly vs Demus II, and that's okay. It was a bit more of the touring version of a Connelly dog collar match. You could see them run this around the horn in 1985 in Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, and Jackson. It was a gateway drug for a Connelly dog collar match. Here's a taste. Intense? Sure. Not what you're used to? Not at all. Unsanitized? No Dunn Cuts and corporate speak here. Want more? You absolutely do. 

But it was one that leaned into contrast. Adam Priest can, of course, wrestle any style, and this is a style he can wrestle, but the strength here was in the differences. He was canny, savvy, underhanded, and backed into a corner and fighting for his life. That meant getting some cheapshots in early. It meant having the corrective collar in his back pocket, a real equalizer that might, might have put Connelly down if he could get it on him through hook or crook. 

The problem was, connected by the chain as they were, every bit of violence Priest could bring to the table, Connelly could return threefold. He could whip Connelly into the guardrail, bruise and batter up his side, but Connelly would burst forth and drive his own head into Priest without abandon, a living breathing guardrail coming straight at you at high, reckless speed. You aren't going to outchoke Connelly. You aren't going to outmangle Connelly. You might outsmart him, but if that buys you one opportunity, you better damn well put him down with it, because otherwise, he will get up and you will have hell to pay. In this case, hell came in the form of Priest's own corrective collar clamped around his neck as Connelly pulled and pulled until it seemed Priest's eyes might bug out. 

This was a free show. It was on YouTube. For those of us who knew what we were getting into, it scratched the itch but left us wanting more. Of course it did. There was always another issue, always another post, always another road report, always another match to be found in the crates or the distant corners. For those new to this world, however? Well, the first one's always free, isn't it? There's so much truth still left to be lived.

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