Tuesday is French Catch Day:Les Copains! Blousons Noir! Said! Kader! Bernaert! Double Dip of Manneveau!

MD: As promised, let's talk quickly about 1963 and 1964, and really, why we have so little from 61 on. Over at PWO, Phil Lions stopped by and told us the following:

"How come there were so few shows in 1961, you may ask? Well, in April of 1961 Maurice Herzog (the French Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports at the time) put pressure on the network not to air catch anymore, because he considered it a "degrading spectacle" and wanted them to focus on other "more noble" sports such as athletics, boxing, skiing, volleyball, and basketball. Despite catch being one of its most viewed sports broadcasts, the network could no longer air it regularly so they'd only do a handful of broadcasts per year. So that explains why there's so little footage from 1961 and onward."

So we're suffering here, 60 years later, from a cultural backlash. Phil also looked through French newspapers in 1964 and found about ten TV listings for Catch, including a couple of Rikki Starr matches (including one vs Gastel), but we don't seem to have those from the archives. Hope springs eternal that they might one day show up.

If you haven't already seen Phil's article on L'Ange Blanc, go check it out. It's phenomenal: http://wrestlingclassics.com/cgi-bin/.ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=10&t=005393

Le Grand Vladimir vs. Bernard Vignal 5/16/64

MD: We'll take whatever we can get in 64, obviously, but this might not have been my first choice. It's 9 minutes JIP and fine. Vladimir is a guy who we have British footage of decades later but seeing him young is new. He hits hard (including slaps/chops at the neck), had the sort of chokes and nerve holds you'd expect, some nice throat-based offense using the ropes, and an interesting entry into a cobra clutch off the ropes I haven't seen before. Vignal is someone we've seen before, an older scrapper with the fans behind him, but this never really escalates into the slugfest you'd want it to, and it ends on a pretty lame low kick DQ. Certainly ok stuff, and we're beggers and not choosers for this year but nothing high end.

Les Copains (Dan Aubriot/Bob Plantin) vs. Blousons Noirs (Manuel Manneveau/Claude Gessat) 5/16/64

MD: If we're only going to have one full match from 64, this isn't a bad one to have. Manneveau and Gessat are such a great unit and I'm glad we get at least a few more matches with them upcoming. They are such a well-oiled machine, constantly drawing heat, constantly cheating, constantly looking for an advantage or a double team, and when it's time, feeding and stooging. We know how good Aubriot was and he lived up to that here, with flashy offense, sympathetic selling during the long FIP stretches, and fiery comebacks when he had the chance (though always cut off in the back half due to the backwork; even after he snuck the fall on a bridge, he couldn't get out of the bridge without Plantin's help). Plantin showed a lot of fire here, especially being great on the apron. After the super fast, tricked out opening exchanges and some great hold exchanges, the rest of the match was heat and more heat, with some southern tag tricks, that heavy back focus on Aubriot, and some hot tags. Finish could use just a little more weight to it, but at that point, you got the sense that the Copains were just worn down from the constant assault.

SR:2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. The French love their tag matches. This started out as a fantastically athletic match, with guys busting out sick looking kip ups and working holds with fantastic resistance. Then it turned into a total asskicking. That was due to Manneveau and Gessat, who cut off the ring and beat their opponents like they owed them money. Aubriot and Plantin fired back like any French babyface would, with massive european uppercuts and throwing their opponents around the ring with blindingly fast headscissors. The Blousons ruled the show though, with those nasty short kicks, stomps, kneedrops to the face, and throwing hands. While Aubriot and Plantin were supposed to bring the spectacular, the Blousons had some big moves of their own, including probably the highlight of the match, a crazy headscissor counter into a huge backbreaker. The 3rd fall was just a house of fire with Aubriot and Plantin having enough and just stomping their opponents on their face. It‘s not hard to see from performances like this that the Blousons Noirs act is up there with the Anderson Bros, Misioneros de la Muerte, Ikeda and Ono etc. as an incredible heel unit.

PAS: This was killer stuff, a fine 1964 MOTY representative, even if we only have one match. Noirs have shown signs of it in the other stuff we have, but man was this a master class of showing out for the babyfaces and when given a turn just unleashing a bruising. The opening section was really fast and elaborate, reminding me of a great opening Caida in a lucha match. When it got down and dirty in got down and dirty with the babyface landing big shots and being matched with even bigger stuff Manneveau almost leaps into his uppercuts spinning the babyfaces around with them when they land. He also hit almost a springboard jumping roll up for the for the second fall. The third fall was furious stuff ending with an assault with Manneveau stomping and punching Plantin right on the throat,  he landed a disgusting knee which looked like it crushed his windpipe. The final big bodyslam almost felt like a respite. 

Arabet Said/Abdel Kader vs. Pierre Bernaert/Marcel Manneveau 1/10/65

MD: This was extremely heel-in-peril, with very few periods of extended heat, despite Bernaert and Manneveau sure trying their best and taking every opportunity. In some ways, that's a shame, because you could tell from the get go, this was a really game crowd and they would have near-rioted if there was any actual heat. At one point, some lady swipes Manneveau's leg from the outside and he barely even deserved it at that point. That's a lie. He always deserves it. What a pest. He's almost like a combination of Delaporte's mustache and smugness and willingness to show ass with Bollet's manic energy. He threw himself into everything, including bumping out of the ring repeatedly and hitting a crazy fast spinning and twisting sunset flip to win the first fall. Bernaert was more than happy to play along. He's always a great slugger and so good at being smarmy with the ref and his opponent. Said looked great here, with one extended short arm scissors bit where he kept getting each guy into it and a lot of legitimately funny stuff worked around his hard head. Kader could garner sympathy and had solid striking but he was in there to lose the advantage so Said could get it back. They built to some fun and elaborate heel miscommunication spots late. Bernaert's come a long way and Manneveau is just one of the most entertaining guys in all of the footage.

SR:2/3 falls match going about 38 minutes. This was another good match although slightly overshadowed by the above tag. Bernaert and Manneveau, the heel team, didn‘t fully let loose like the Blousons did above. There was still plenty of asskicking going on, with Arabet Said doing some fun hard head work, and we got treated to some quality wrestling from the faces including some great short arm scissors work. There was a genius moment where Mannevau from the apron tripped somebody up, who fell perfectly into a Bernaert front headlock and set him up for Manneveau to come in with several flying stomps. That is high end heel work just thrown out casually in a match that is basically a fun house show main event by the standards of this stuff.

PAS: Fun match and a look at a slightly different shade of Mannevau. He was much more of a goof here, getting caught in the ropes, spun around by armdrags, stooging for Said hard head. We never got to see him unleash the brutality he showed in the previous match, but he was great in a more overtly comedic role, as was Bernaert who just got angrier and angrier the more he got flummoxed. Love a hard skull gimmick and Said did it well, including Baernert basically breaking his arm trying to forearm him. Great week with two different but hyper enjoyable tag matches. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Al Hayes! Hunter! Delaporte! Bollet! Montoro! Bernaert!

Al Hayes/Ray Hunter vs. Roger Delaporte/Andre Bollet 12/1/60

MD: This is the back thirty of what's billed as a 60 minute draw. We get what I imagine to be most of the second fall and all of the third. It's a shame we don't have the whole thing because it means we miss the early Hayes wrestling and enough control for the heels to win at least one fall but what we get is, of course, absolutely iconic. This is going to be our last look at Hayes and Hunter and they feel like the best team in the world, with Delaporte and Bollet maybe a close and very different second. We still get a brilliant stretch of Delaporte and Bollet controlling their half of the ring to contain and punish Hayes. We get lots of heel comeuppance and stooging, just endless amounts of it, each bit hugely entertaining. I'm not sure there's a better stooge heel pairing in the history of wrestling than these two and Hunter and Hayes were the perfect straight man babyfaces, between Hunter's size and Hayes' sheer skill and presence. I could have done without the ref letting Hunter score the win in the second fall when he clearly wasn't the legal man (though I had no real problem with him coming in after all of the heel cheating, though, of course, there was a better way to do it), but other than that, my only complaint here was that we didn't have more of it. You knew exactly what you were going to get coming in and it was everything you could possibly want from a 1960 French tag match.


SR: JIP into the 2nd fall, but we get 30 minutes of this match, which is 30 minutes more good wrestling than you are likely to see in any given week in 2020. This was another bullshit tour de force from the superduo of Bollet and Delaporte. They will bump like mad, they will get bitchslapped, they will commit every single buffoonish mishap in the book, they will miscommunicate, they will grimace their way through the match in a way that makes mid 90s Shinjiro Otani look stoic, and then they will stomp the crap out of you. There was a nasty beatdown section involving Hayes taking lots of nasty flying stomps and knees to the gut while in a surfboard, which is a spot that modern indy guys could steal but they would inevitably make it look too much like a choreographed spot compared to the raw asskicking that we got here. This is the last appearance of Hayes & Hunter, and they had another good night doing almost nothing but uppercutting the shit out of their opponents. Hayes also looked good selling an asskicking, there was a moment where he ate an uppercut and whipped his head back into the ringpost, eyes rolling into his skull, it was like something out of a FUTEN match. Hunter also got to have a good night hitting a really fast airplane spin. Wild ending that saw Delaporte doing his usually great "Where the fuck am I" selling.


Arabet Said/Serge Gentilly vs. Yves Amor/Georges Gueret 2/12/60


SR: JIP match. We get about 10 minutes of what could have been a great TV main event. Yves Amor & Georges Gueret are a welcome change of pace compared to the crazy antics of Delaporte and Bollet. These guy will focus on just straight up ass kicking. It rules that about every other heel team we see in catch is another awesome version of the Anderson Bros. This didn‘t reinvent the wheel, but I could watch these guys waste each other with forearms and stiff body shots all day. Gentilly threw some crazy elbows for a skinny guy. There was a chaotic ending with Amor waltzing in to blast guys like a bearded Taue. It ended in some controversy and I could see these guys having an epic feud, but this was the only time either of these men was seen on French TV that year.

MD: We only get part of the third fall here but it's basically nine minutes of guys hitting each other as hard as possible in meaningful ways and we're always going to be for that. Past a bit of darting around and one funny spot where Gentilly waves his hands all around to try to fake out Guerret who complains loudly, we didn't see a lot of the babyfaces' speed or skill, just tenacity. Amor really used his size in interesting ways, able to get to the ropes easily or having the reach to get out of holds but also a giant canvas when he was getting whacked. Just tangible noise for forearms and uppercuts. He ate some atomic drops too, which looked sort of small but he sold huge. The finishing stretch was chaotic as Amor, as the illegal man, kept charging across the ring like a giant bullet to attack Said on the apron while Gueret beat on Gentilly, but the babyfaces came back big and it all devolved into violence and got thrown out. I thought, at times, Amor and Gueret worked a little too even with Said and Gentilly but when the end result was guys beating the crap out of each other, you don't complain too much.



Antonio Montoro vs. Pierre Bernaert 2/12/60

PAS: This is our first glance and Montoro who is a Spanish wrestler who had a mid to late 60s run in EMLL working all of the top stars (Karloff Lagarde, Humberto Garza, Blue Demon, Cavernario Galindo etc.). Man I hope there is a Spanish motherlode out there somewhere, because every time we get a Spanish wrestler in France they absolutely rule. Bernaert keeps it pretty scientific for most of this match, as Montoro does a lot of athletic takedowns and bumps big for all of Bernaert's offense. I especially liked the section where they exchange funky looking monkey flip which both guys took big bumps off of. Montoro also has a spot later in the match where he dives on Bernaert and eats a boot to the face. Finish came on a really graceful victory roll. Not at the level of the absolute best stuff in the footage, but a cool look at a guy we hadn't seen before

MD: Whew, so this was hit or miss at best. Montoro is one of the best regarded Spanish wrestlers of this period and this is our first look at him. Bernaert is a cheapshot artist who looks like Kirk Douglas and we've seen him plenty. While there were a number of innovative spots and plenty of athleticism, this worked better as selected gifs than a match. There were more moments of miscommunication or flubbed attempts at things than in any other match in the footage so far. Some of that was because Montoro was going for so many tricky things, but sometimes they just crashed into each other and sort of went over oddly. It wasn't just one time either. That can create a feeling of competitiveness but here it made things seem somehow more cooperative and you could tell by the hush and occasional groan from the crowd that they were used to something more visceral. Montoro is the first guy in this footage that would do an extra flip or flourish when he probably didn't need to and it was often simply not additive. Bernaert started playing to his strengths two-thirds through, going dirty, but he probably should have led with it instead. The novel stuff that hit was legitimately cool but the match wasn't.

SR: 1 fall match going about 20 minutes. Montoro was another Spanish wrestler. I‘ve branded Bernaert as a bit of a one trick pony before, but I thought he redeemed himself a bit here, opening the match with a good 15 minutes of straight wrestling which I always appreciate. That alone made this bout worth watching. Montoro was a lightweight and significantly smaller than Bernaert. He looked pretty slick at times, but there were a few moments where they blew their spots. Montoro also landed awkwardly a few times when he was seemingly controlling himself at times, so I‘ll blame him. On the other hand, Montoro probably had a touring match with a more familiar rudo where he looked like dynamite. Montoro also did some of those Johnny Saint style escapes that looked like dance moves so I guess it was interesting to see someone do that kind of stuff as earl as 1960. Bernaert eventually went to his cheap shot routine (as he should) and there were some nasty bumps including Montoro flying face first into an upkick which looked nastier than it was probably intended to be.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Bollet! Khan! Lecoq! Said!

James McTiffin vs. Johnny Stein 10/2/59

SR: JIP. We get the last 7 minutes of this. Looked like a typical slow paced heatmongering Stein bout, although I liked McTiffin a lot here. He looked good working an indian deathlock and he had this really cool double lifting armlock. He also had a guy at ringside playing the bagpipes whenever he got in trouble, so that is stylish. Another thing that stood out is how he threw Stein with a bearhug for the KO. 

MD: We get a little over 8 minutes of this, JIP. Stein's the best guy in this footage that I'm really not interested in watching. He does everything right and isn't even that dry in his stalking, put off manner, but the matches tend to be very long and a little of him goes a long way. This had contrast at least and I bet all of the early comedy spots we didn't get were enjoyable. What we had here was a series of holds with the bagpipes rousing McTiffin to fight back. Both guys showed fire, McTiffin with revenge punishing and Stein hitting back to regain the advantage, and there was a clear sense that things were likely over when McTiffin rolled back with the flying inverted knucklelock but this was one I was glad we only had the tail end of.

Andre Bollet vs. Iska Khan 10/2/59

SR: 2/3 Falls match going about 35 minutes. This was all about the singular charisma of Andre Bollet. Both guys come in looking like megastars, Khan in his dress, Bollet in a robe that looks like a sports jacket. Bollet is every raunchy heel character you‘ve ever seen turned up to 11 here. He threatens to punch audience members, he slips when he attempts to make his grandiose entrance into the ring, people blow smoke at him through the ropes. When the match begins he is your drunk uncle causing a mess at your sisters marriage as everyone nervously waits for a fight to break out. He slips some more, he flips the announce table for no reason. It‘s an amazing show and the match may have peaked early there. Khan is quite great as a contained gentleman taking on this walking menace. It rules that they let a short asian guy with a Hitler stache be a superstar. The match was a bullshit tour de force, although there was some really fun wrestling, and plenty of Khan going to town on Bollet with those chops. There were a few great bumps, including Bollet getting launched into the audience, and taking a headfirst dive into the turnbuckle. There were also some nutshots which end up weirdly no-sold. For this kind of match it didn‘t build to the kind of epic crescendo it needed but it was certainly a masterclass in showmanship. 

MD: Bollet was a star. There's no other way to put it. We haven't seen him for two years (nor Khan) but he jaunts out to the ring, which had a large open area at ringside for some reason, and just does multiple laps around the ring, basking in it and getting heat. That's basically the whole match, from the moment he arrives to the moment he steals the flowers meant for Khan at the end (only to have Khan smash him with him as the footage cuts off). Between the second and third fall, he threatens Khan with the spit cup he'd been using, causing Khan to brandish a stool at him. Leading up to the end of the second fall, he had taken so much punishment that he just sat in the corner as the fans counted along with the ref, again and again and again until he suckered Khan in finally. It wasn't some grand plan, just sheer persistence. That was Bollet. He stuck to the bit past any reasonable point and the fans loved every second of it. Khan, here, was constantly on too. He was an amiable gent, but every time Bollet tried a tactic, he'd get almost immediate revenge. If Bollet snuck in a low blow knee in the corner (and it's worth noting that this isn't Puerto Rico; we haven't seen many fouls at all so far), he'd return the favor. If Bollet bit his hand, Khan would bite his ear, and so on. It made for a less than even match but certainly for an entertaining one. We have so much Bollet ahead of us, against Hayes and Hunter, against Drapp, against L'Ange Blanc, against Leduc and Gastel (and how does that team work?), against Carpentier so many times. He was a star and now we're stuck with him.

PAS: I could write an entire review about what Bollet does before the bell. He struts around the ring with his hands in the air, climbs over one fan to take a swing a a fan in the bleachers, does a pratfall into the ring, covers his ears with his hands,  leaves the ring because the fans keep booing him, wipes his sweaty head on the ref's shit and dickishly shadowboxes in the corner. He is on a thousand and keeps it rolling, he throws a big overhead belly to belly but flips his way to the ropes catches his foot and gets hit with a clothesline. There is another great spot where Bollet topes Khan in the corner, and goes for it again and takes a crazy bump through the corner. Khan was great in this too, he is all Mongolian chops and cool faces and is a pretty perfect foil for all of Bollet's stuff. The match ends with an orgy of cheating, nut shots from both, biting, and Bollet putting on a front facelock/fishook combo which was just an awesome bit of assholishness. What a blast this was, one of the most purely enjoyable matches in the entire project. 

Pierre Lecoq vs. Arabet Said 10/10/59

PAS: I thought this was tremendous. Lecoq is a new name and he is a tenacious technical heel. He spends most of the match gripping on to a hammer lock like a drowning man with a life preserver. Constantly going back to it, grinding it in, twisting the wrist and fingers. Said finds a lot of different ways to squirm out of it, and eventually it comes down to a great slugfest as these matches always do. Said really lays into Lecoq who seemed out of his depth standing and trading , and Said eventually lays him out with a series of nasty bodyslams into the ropes. Lecoq was landing weird every time, and it really looked like something that could rip ligaments. 

SR: 1 Fall match going a bit over 20 minutes. Another two names you‘ve never heard of deliver an awesome match of the day. Lecoq was balding in the corners and wearing a singlet, and had the look of a real tough as nails dude. He had a real singular focus on grounding his opponent and then either bending the fuck out of his fingers or delivering a straight up beating. Said was this wiery guy who had some fast wrestling movements that he pulled off in a very uncooperative way. You can find 2 guys like these in any amateur wrestling team in the country, back then they had the choice of either living a normal life after their amateur career or going pro and becoming awesome wrestlers working these spectacles, today there‘s no money to be made in local circuit wrestling so these guys all live normal lives now and we don‘t get scrappy violent fights like this anymore. I think Lecoq didn‘t even do a single move in this match besides the hammerlock but I loved him. He was also pretty great at stiffening up and flopping around when Said unleashed his violent retaliations. There‘s another fun crowd brawling segment where audience members were looking to have a go at Lecoq, and the finish was really fun as Lecoq takes a series of brutal slams. He is able to get out of the pin but has to quit the match as it seems his ribs got crushed, something I‘ve also seen in amateur wrestling matches.

MD: I've been waiting for a match like this for a while. We've seen little glimpses or moments of it before, but here it was, a match that was almost entirely built upon body part targeting. Look, it's reductive to point at body part targeting/selling as a true sign of psychology/storytelling as we define it in wrestling but it's an easy trope and something that can be used to great effect and we just haven't seen it almost at all in the footage. If we did see it, like in the Bollet vs Khan match after Bollet tossed Khan and hurt his arm, it was usually just for a minute or two and then they'd move on to some other focus. This entire match was built upon Lecoq grounding Said by working on his arm and Said breaking free, getting distance, and firing back. At times, especially early, he had to wrestle defensively, avoiding Lecoq's grasps with one arm behind his back and darting through his legs or dancing around away from him and ending with a drop toehold onto the ropes as if he was going to hit a 619. Most of his hold attempts were headscissors, out of necessity, and when he lost it, he'd dash right up to Lecoq to try to get him back in. All of this made sense, especially given the speed and intensity of the opening exchanges. Said was dangerous. Unfortunately for Lecoq, his uppercuts and jabs and headbutts still made him dangerous even with a hurt arm. Lecoq did his own fair share of selling, spinning out after getting hit and staggering around the ring, until he was able to land a blow onto Said's arm again or ground him with a hammerlock and toss kicks and knees in there. So this was a novel format relative to what we've seen so far, and guess what? It worked. The crowd was super into Said's comebacks, his striking and his head-twisters. They wanted blood whenever Lecoq went to the floor. That played into the finish actually. Lecoq went to argue with the fans and Said was able to hit a big running powerslam and then a couple of slams in the ropes, with Lecoq unable to meet the count (which makes that the second time we've seen a 10 count finish in a couple of weeks after not seeing it much at all so far). As for the limb focus, once you see something once in this footage, it's fair game to show up again, and with this match, it's almost like a missing puzzle piece snapped in.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corn! Gueret! Delaporte! Villars! Said! Minisini!

Jacky Corne vs. Georges Gueret 7/9/59

MD: One thing I love about this footage in general is that it's almost never predictable. We get new wrestlers every few weeks or wrestlers that we've seen before in different settings. We only get a few looks at a lot of them so surprises come up all the time. That said, we pretty much know what we're getting with a Jacky Corn match by now. Crisp holds, throws, and escapes. Long sequences with hang-ons and attempts. The heel getting mean/frustrated first. Corn selling excellently in that sort of "full body" exhausted sort of way I always give Bockwinkel credit for. And then finally, as the match goes on, Corn coming back with righteous indignation and fury and it becoming an absolutely brutal slugfest. Corn wrestles beautifully and he fights valiantly and it's never unwelcome even if we've seen it before. Here, Gueret was sort of a bruising Larry Hennig sort (though in better shape), swarthy and expressive, especially when he was in a hold or begging off. He gets frustrated at the end of the first fall (including inadvertently hitting the ref) but Corn is able to capitalize with a sunset flip. Even though he beats on him a lot in the second fall, it's not until the start of the final fall that Corn really starts firing back. Just great striking here, including one exchange on their knees. Corn ultimately takes it with a very slip through the legs takedown and bridging pin. Of note here, from a format perspective, they had Roger Lageat, promoter and Corn's father, providing insights before the match and between falls.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 30 minutes. It‘s George Gueret, baby. He had grown a beard here, which adds a bit of personality, I guess, and he was quite hated. This match had a surprising amount of wrestling that built really well to the 3rd fall where they just explode and beat the shit out of each other. The wrestling was really fun as you‘d expect, but you want these guys to throw down and uncork their forearms and uppercuts, and they knew exactly that this is what their audience wanted from them really. Really good slow build to the eventual explosion. Gueret only had to throw a few cheapshots before audience members threatened to jump into the ring. Corn is pretty bland but he can wrestle and throw down, and he earned his paycheck here. And Gueret just has about the greatest forearm smashes you‘ve ever seen.

PAS: Corn is a technically sound babyface and Gueret is a heat seeking bruiser, and that is classic professional wrestling contest. What makes so much of the Catch standout is how good the bruisers are at technical wrestling, and how nasty the technicians are at bruising. The early wrestling sections are solid stuff, I love a good headscissors, and they had a great headsicssors section, and then of course it breaks down with fans jumping on to the apron and big shots being exchanges. We say it over and over again, but the baseline of this stuff is so high.


Serge Francille vs Pierre Bernaert 7/16/59

MD: We get this JIP, but you definitely get the gist of it in the fifteen minutes we have. I don't remember Bernaert leaning as much into the Kirk Douglas look but he was still the same cheapshot artist as before, always reaching for a leg when he's on the ground and sneaking a punch or hairpull in. His punches, forearms, and knees were particularly mean. Francille was yet another judoka guy. I think that's the third we've seen in 59 so it was obviously some sort of zeitgeist. While barefoot, he had less goofy foot escapes and more throws and interesting trips. He was fiery in answering Bernaert's cheapshots at least. The match absolutely knew what it was and never deviated, down to the finish where Bernaert got a little lax in his beating, tried the same thing twice and got outslicked for his trouble.

SR: JIP, but we get about 13 minutes. Francille seems to be doing a martial artist gimmick and I think the announcer calls him a judoka. He is barefoot and wears those ankle-length pants, which weirdly seems to be the go-to look for wrestlers with a judo gimmick at this point. Did judokas wear those kind of pants in the 1950s? Francille has a mustache and slender physique and looks very old time. And he has those funny open hand chops. This was just going along, Bernaert cheats some and Francille retaliates. Then suddenly Bernaert starts unleashing a really violent beating only to be cut short and pinned seconds later.


Roger Delaporte/Paul Villars vs Arabet Said/Leon Minisini 7/16/59

MD: Another long Delaporte/Villars tag, though this one went closer to 30 than an hour. Delaporte remains one of the greatest stooges. Villars, on the other hand, is absolutely brutal, and when the heels were in control, this was excellent. They cut off the ring and kept most of the action right in their corner, even as the ref tried to stop them. When they won the second fall, it was really because of that sort of attrition over time, just hacking away at Minisini until he couldn't fight back. The first fall, by the way, was lightning quick with a flash pin out of a full nelson reversal and that happened in just the first couple of miniutes. What I liked about it is that it was against formula. I don't think we've seen first falls go like that much in the footage. There was also an early moment where Delaporte refused to throw a cheapshot on a Villars full nelson in the corner but the faces did instead and had some miscommunication because of it. That felt very lucha-esque where the tecnicos (stylists in this case) cheated when it was unwarranted and feaced cosmic justice because of it. It was our first look at Said and Minisini. Said had solid fire when it was called for but when in charge, he mainly did a lot of inner armdrags and crosslegged headscissor spots, the latter of which I've had my fill of recently. Minisini played a valiant face in peril, including fighting out of the corner early only to get overwhelmed later and had an interesting bridging escape or two. The crowd was up for this, like always for a Delaporte tag, though they were more into the comeback than the heat, I'd say, and so much of that was on Delaporte's stooging and Villars bumps to the floor. Another banana peel finish utilizing Delaporte's one smooth offensive maneuver and that made the crowd hate him all the more.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 30 minutes. With names like Arabet Said and Leon Minissini, you get giddy just wondering what these mysterious dudes will bring. The answer was that they were both pretty wirey dudes who could both wrestle and put serious punishment on their opponents, so they match up very well against the mustached super heel duo of Delaporte and Villar. The interesting thing about this was the early finish to the 1st fall, which set up a kind of heel in peril section as Said & Minisini kept showing them up and the heels had to try and get a handle. Kind of a weird way to structure a match, and I kind of had the feeling it was since Delaporte & Villar were technically the stars, as the focus was on them. The 3rd fall cements this as Delaporte and Villar, after playing some of their shenanigans got banged up badly by pissed off Said and Minisini before a punch-drunk Delaporte got the pin with a pretty perfectly timed rollup. It was almost like a reverse Rock n‘Roll express finish. That being said, this isn‘t better or worse than any other Villars/Delaporte tag we‘ve seen, as they all kind of all blend together, but you always end up getting some fun wrestling and lots of guys putting big damn beatings on each other, so it‘s all good entertainment, anyways.

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