Tuesday is French Catch Day: Leduc! Mychel! Dumez! Cohen! Montoro! Tejero!

Gilbert Leduc vs. Bert Mychel 4/16/73

MD: This is a rematch to a very good match from a couple of years earlier. Mychel was a two time Olympian in Greco-Roman wrestling. We come in late, maybe ten minutes in, but by this point, everything is gritty as hell and it never, ever lets up, not even once, over the next twenty-five plus minutes. One of the first things we see is Leduc powering Mychel over with the tightest cravat you'll ever see, just torquing his head around. As the match escalates, they'd escalate to throwing forearms, just pounding each other, both in holds and on their feet, but it never felt unsportsmanlike. It never felt craven or underhanded. It felt like exactly what they needed to do to contest each other. That was the level of skill and grit and determination and power and precision. They rolled around the ring, and it was everything Leduc could do to keep Mychel in a hold. Even with the slightly deteriorated film stock, you'd see it in his face, the exhaustion and frustration. He would catch him with a fake out, would take a leg, would snatch an arm, would get him down but there was no rest, no respite, no real control. Mychel was always grabbing for a limb, locking arms around a waist, and as the match went on, kicking or smacking, doing anything he could to escape.

Meanwhile, Leduc, even deep into his 40s, was an absolute warrior, always back up on his feet to fight, always pushing forward, giving his all to escape each hold, but sometimes not how he'd prefer. He was able to get his trademark headstand spin out of an arm puller, but for the headscissors, he couldn't manage it; they were just too tight. He had to squirm his way out through splitting the legs, through doing anything else he could. Maybe that's why he did strike first once or twice, but you never held it against him. It was what he had to do; the stakes were that high, his opponent that deadly. It was just business. Towards the end, he was the first to pick up speed, to escalate things further, but a high cross body went awry and he tumbled over the top rope. He climbed back in but was felled by three consequtive fall away slams by Mychel, able to pull himself up after the first two, but not the third. You can jump into any moment of this match and watch the two of them push each other up against the limit. Even when they were striking one another back and forth, they seemed to cut the gap so that they were almost face to face. There wasn't an inch of give there and there wasn't an inch of give anywhere else in this one. An amazing thing, maybe more so considering we've been watching Leduc go at it for almost two decades now and that he was able to create an equally exceptional but very different, gaga filled match when he teamed with Corn against Henker. What a struggle.

ER: We've seen a lot of stiff, well-executed matches in the 20 years of Catch, but this might be the match with the best fight feel we've seen. I don't think we've covered a French match like this. This felt like bad blood, but bad blood between two real entertainers. It all ended in Leduc being helped to his feet, but the 25 minutes before that sportsmanship was filled with potential hamstring injuries or broken jaws. This was Gilbert Leduc working as smooth as Santo but more violent than Finlay. Leduc's headspin escape should at minimum put him some sort of respected-in-the-right-circles Breakdancing Progenitor role. There was a real missed opportunity to have a Street Stylin Jacques Tati short feature with a Frenchman in a well tailored suit breakdancing on the L Train. Leduc could have started in a Spike Jonze video in a slightly different life. 

But in this life, he's trying to break Bert Mychel's hands by snapping at them with his strong grip (see how vice grip Leduc applies a cravat and picture that grip pinching into your hamate bone. Leduc pounds Mychel's hand into the mat, knuckles going into the soft spot of the palm. Michael takes the hand breaking in stride and sees where Leduc wants to take this, and starts colliding with him on every strike. Once we built to strikes, I'm not sure there were any strikes that only made contact in one spot. They start throwing their whole body into uppercuts, throwing a shoulder into the clavicle while throwing a forearm across a length of jaw. As the striking got more intense, the matwork got more intense. Leduc had an escape where he grapevined Mychel's leg out of a hold and rolled through so hard that it made my hamstrings sore. And the more intense the matwork gets the harder the strikes keep landing. Mychel rings Leduc's bell with one of the loudest open hand slaps, and the crowd reacts in more of a DAMN! way than with pro wrestling heat. It all builds to Mychel fallaway slamming Leduc to death repeatedly, throwing him over the top rope to the apron, then throwing him more onto the ring until the ref stops the damn match. It's pretty incredible the different ways that French Catch has continued to outdo itself, and I don't think there's another Catch match like this one. 

PAS: This was great stuff, it felt like a Billy Robinson or Terry Rudge match more than any other Catch match we have seen. We have seen other matches with great mat wrestling, and other matches with big striking, but this kind of hard gritty mat wrestling was a new thing. Every bit of grappling felt incredibly painful, and the spots with Leduc pounding Mychel's hand was iconically sick shit, it looked like he was torturing an enemy agent. Loved the finish too, with the multiple big fallaway slams. This footage just keeps delivering. 

Maurice Dumez/Georges Cohen vs. Antonio Montoro/Anton Tejero 4/30/73

MD: I think we have four matches with Montoro in the collection. This is the last. He has a rep of being one of the best Spanish workers, up there with Aledo, and he's so good and so versatile in what we have of him, especially his 70s work, that you can really see it. If someone who had lived through this period and watched these matches told me that he was the best they'd seen, I'd believe it. We just don't have enough footage to make that claim ourselves. He's taller, lankier, but can keep up with everyone in rope running and quick exchanges. He's hugely imaginative, using the conjuro backbreaker, a ripcord into a spinning tombstone, complex and intricate rope-running spots. He works those spots into callbacks, winning the first fall with a leap back body press off the top and losing the second by having Cohen catch him while attempting the same move. He has just enough personality throughout it all, raising his hands to deny cheating, sneaking in shots, having his arms flail about as he's getting punched. He bases for all sorts of offense, including a really tricked out headlock takeover exchange by Dumez, and bumps all over the ring, including a mad leap backwards on a miscommunication spot where Tejero crashed into his gut to set up the finish.

Tejero, of course, given his girth, bumps like mad as well. Dumez and Cohen were more than up to the task to face them here. I wish some of the comebacks had a little more dramatic oomph to them, as the beatings were solid and the heat was good, but when they came, they came a little too easy and didn't have that perfect flash of lightning to make them possible. Still, you watch this and marvel that Dumez and Cohen could take and hit all of Tejero and Montoro's stuff and equally that Montoro and Tejero could take and feed for all of Cohen and Dumez' stuff. You can't fault a second of the action in this one.

ER: We did not have a 1973 match on our All Time MOTY List, and none of us have seen a better contender from 1973 than Leduc/Mychel, so that match is now our 1973 champion! Peep the rest of our All Time MOTY List at the link below: 

ONGOING ALL TIME MOTY LIST

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corne! Falempin! Gilmour! Kaye! Der Henker! Corn! Leduc! Mychel

Jean Corne/Michel Falempin vs. Ian Gilmour/Jeff Kaye 11/14/70

SR: 1 fall match going 30 minutes. I was expecting the Brits to bring some heat, but this was a pure technico vs. technico contest. Pretty much just one exchange after another, and while it wasn't high speed athletic stuff there were some smoth cartwheels and pin exchanges. To be honest I could not tell who was who, but everyone was about on the same level. Dug all the technical trickery such as the various turn-yourself-into-a-ball-moves, there was a nifty wrist legsscissor and a cool sequence from a stepping inside pin that turned into both wrestlers turning into an amateur scramble. Things got a bit fired up here and there but the match stayed clean and never really seemed to indicate that you were about to see a finish. Great to watch if you just want to see some good wrestling though.

MD: Another week, another excellent tag. This was face vs face with the premise being that the Bretons were up against the Scots, with bagpipes and flags for everyone on the entrance. Lots of fast, tricky exchanges back and forth. They were working towards a draw but I didn't figure it out until the last third. I think this is our earliest look at Gilmour and he brought a lot of flash with his cartwheel escapes. Kaye had some stilting escapes of his own where he just snuck out of headlocks or headscissors. I wouldn't say it necessarily boiled over towards the end, but it did get more chippy, first with headbutts to the gut off the ropes and then with the forearms and uppercuts. Before that, even when they might focus hard on an arm with lifts or hammerlocked throws, they were also very quick to help when someone's throat got stuck in the ropes, very sportsmanlike. A big chunk of this was taken up by the commentator hobnobbing with people in the front row which hurt the mood a little but, but the holds, escapes, counters, rope running, and finally escalating shots as they ran out of time were all excellent.

Der Henker vs. Jacky Corn 12/12/70

MD: Hell of a debut for Henker, who was billed as a German sort of headsman (as opposed to the French one we've gotten before). He came off as something of a total package, able to lock in holds, escape from them, having superior power, able to knock Corn down with one shot and absorb multiple ones from him, able to pick up the pace a little with pin exchanges, and with a real vicious streak that came through at the end. Corn was his usual self, able to slug it out with anyone and with a fiery streak in his comebacks and when they got going in the stretch this really did become a slugfest. Henker had a way of meeting him head on right until he didn't, and the key moment towards the finish was when he went low in a strike exchange. That let him toss Corn out and then post his head on the way back in. Corn bled, which has been pretty rare in this footage overall, and Henker focused in on it, though it's worth nothing that Corn was still trying to fire back right until the end, which was a resounding tombstone and a stoppage as everyone was more than a little concerned for their longtime hero (including Mr. Lageat, Corn's father and the promoter). Good debut that put over Henker as a dangerous force but not an unstoppable one.

Gilbert Leduc vs. Bert Mychel 12/12/70

MD: In the last third of this match, the commentator sums it up better than I can (or at least the youtube translation I use did): "No Unnecessary malice but holds well worked." Mychel was a former two time Olympian in Greco-Roman wrestling and he had an amazing fall away slam, a real ability to dominate while in a hold and to turn escape attempts into slams, and even went for a really interesting gutwrench once. Leduc was 38 at this point, remained a real master at the headspin escape, could outstrike Mychel, and could hold his own in the wrestling (that gutwrench? Leduc picked a leg out and got a hold out of it). This was wrestled clean though it threatened to boil over once or twice and other than those fall away slams and some Leduc crab attempts towards the end, would have fit right in ten+ years earlier. But the struggle in holds, especially as Mychel didn't want to just go along with Leduc's headspin, was excellent throughout. Late in the match, Leduc would return the favor, eating one too many fall away slams before finding a way to jam Mychel on them. Two experts wrestling expertly for a title belt and celebrating each other's skills after the match.

SR: 1 fall match going about 25 minutes. Seems we JIP'd a couple minutes into it. This was a slow match where guys fight in and out of holds. It was enjoyable but pretty much for the purists only. If you can get into that, it was quite good. Mychels suplexes were great and there was a really cool moment from a gutwrench suplex that turned into a scramble. A bitchslap happens at one point but they kept working a technical match, though the crowd seemed willing to go unruly at Mychel. The only shade I can throw at this match is that it wasn't as good as Leducs 50s work (50s Leduc would've bitten Mychels ear off) but few things are.

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