Tuesday is French Catch Day: Genele! Cabrera! Mercier! Taysse! Gonzalez! Renault!

Bob Genele vs. Pedro Cabrera 3/21/74

MD: Interesting setting on this. Apparently they're somewhere on the Riviera, in a shopping center, with the ring up on stilts in a fountain in a plaza. There are palms about and occasionally we get an interesting camera angle from above. Usually, you'd see these guys in tags, but this was a singles lightweight match that went about twenty with clear face/heel leanings. The first few minutes were generally about Cabrera having advantage despite Genele's best efforts, so you knew he was going to turn things and start heeling and cheating soon enough. Genele was a Teddy Boy and had a real mean streak that got a lot of heat. As the match went on, he'd get some shots in but Cabrera would control with a headlock or short arm scissors or armbar, which they'd work in and out until Genele would have to pull the hair or get in a forearm to escape. He'd get some shots in and they'd repeat. Straightforward stuff but well worked with some quick flourishes and rope running bits and a nice repetition reversal finish. A match like this going twenty instead of thirty isn't a bad thing by any means. Cabrera was slick and this felt like a pretty good example of what a standard lightweight match of the time might be.

Guy Mercier/Gerard Taysse vs. Jo Gonzalez/Guy Renault 3/21/74

MD: Another match from the same show in the fountain. At the very end of this they teased a couple of spots where Renault almost went out, but he didn't quite. As it went on, I really thought the ref (our old friend Michel Saulnier) was going to go but nope. He did eat a lot of offense considering and he deserved it too. The first minutes of feeling out was solid wrestling, with Gonzalez working tight cravats and Mercier with headstands and even a short leg scissors at one point, but obviously the heels were going to start to play dirty. When they did, it was deep southern tag, with Mercier hot on the outside and Saulnier distracted and stopping the babyfaces to the point of putting too much heat on himself. Still, there was heat and Gonzalez and Renault were excellent at grinding down even through a couple of tags where they kept control with the numbers advantage and by distracting the ref. Occasionally here Saulnier would eat a dropkick or a punch from the babyfaces but the heels kept control through the end of the first fall. 

When it was time for Mercier to come in hot, he blew the roof off the place (if it even had one), with big shot after big shot and huge whips all around (including to Saulnier). One of the best hot tags we've seen in this, though they never go to a finish right after. Still, from that point on the stylists were definitely in it and they were able to clown the heels more and more as time went on. Mercier was one of the great French stylists, no question there, another one of those guys who knew all the tricks, hit hard, really wore his heart on his sleeve in the ring. Gonzales was one of the great stooges and villains; that's become apparently as we've gotten into the 70s. Taysse played face-in-peril well and got a few good shots in on comebacks but he and Renault were both capable but not nearly as memorable second bananas for their partners. They also had to fix the ring between the second and third falls due to its odd set up in the water. That hurt momentum a bit. If that didn't happen and if a bit more of the heat ended up on the heels and not the ref, this would have been over the top great. As it was, it was still very good.

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Saulnier! Cabrera! Renaud! Genele! Falempin! Ramirez! Batman! Gonzalez!

Michel Saulnier/Pedro Cabrera vs. Teddy Boys (Guy Renaud/Bobby Genele) 6/7/73

MD: This is a runback of a match we saw and loved in 71, and it was still certainly top notch juniors tag action. This time it was in more of a studio style setting and just one fall. Genele was an all time jerk and Renault could work super smooth, very fast, very complex exchanges with Cabrera and Saulnier, the sort of stuff that makes you look at Malenko and Guerrero and realize that things weren't all that novel, just forgotten. They wrestle pretty clean for the first ten minutes and then less than clean but with the stylists coming out on top again and again for the next ten. Every time it starts to really pick up on a heat level, they come back. The last ten has more considerable periods of control by Renault and Genele, including some great tombstones by Renault and just as good, if not entirely different, cheapshots by Genele. The hot tag, therefore, does feel rather hot and the comeback fiery. It's all good stuff, but it's stuff we've seen a chunk of. This is one of those matches where if you'd never seen any French footage, you'd be absolutely blown away but it serves here more now as just more evidence of what we already know: the standard quality of the work in French juniors tags was absolutely exceptional.

Michel Falempin vs. Paco Ramirez 7/19/73

MD: We get the last four and a half minutes out of an almost 25 minutes match. Good action with plenty of heat. Ramirez was billed as Andalusian, unless I'm mistaken, and had a gimmick where he wanted to be a matador but ended up wrestling instead. We'd seen him team with Batman before but he was working rougher here. He hit hard with some big corner whips, using his size. Falempin, of course, was one of the Celts with Jean Corne, and the crowd was behind him and his comebacks. There were a couple of near-falls I bought but they were primarily to make sure someone landed on the ref in the kickout before a quick rope running sequence led to the actual finish. We haven't seen a ton of high cross body blocks in the footage and Falempin put a bit of extra oomph into his here. Shame we didn't get this whole one.

La Batman vs. Jose Gonzalez 7/19/73

MD: We've seen Gonzalez a few times now, but it's been hard to place him alongside guys like Peruano/Montoro/Tejero/Viracocha. I'm not saying they're all interchangeable, but we usually see them in tags so it takes a few matches for a guy to stand out. Gonzalez, however, does stand out. He's one of the best stooges we've seen in the footage, up there with Delaporte and Bollet, with Bollet's energy when it counts. Early on, when Batman was winning holds, he'd whine and wheedle and retreat to sell. He's the sort of guy who'd ask for a handshake and then kick you in the face twenty seconds later and then go to show off a bicep to the crowd like he had performed a feat of strength. He also had a high dropkick and some good rope running and, in the last big comeback spot missed a charge towards the ropes and ended up choking himself in them. Batman looked a bit smoother than last time I saw him, hitting cartwheels and dropkicks clean. He had a great sense of timing, of playing to the crowd, of knowing when to make a big comeback shot matter, of getting tit-for-tat revenge spots that would lead to a big pop. He was technically sound but a big showman as well, probably up there with Wiecz/Carpentier and Ben Chemoul towards the top of the stylists we've seen along those lines. This match was good on its own but important personally in solidifying Gonzalez' strengths to me. We'll see him a few more times before the end. 

ER: Gonzalez is great. He has the straight posture of Richard Harris with the face and hairline and mustache of John Astin going on 70s game shows without his piece. We've gone through a lot of hairstyle phases in the last 50 years, but the one that doesn't appear to be coming back is for balding dudes to just grow their remaining hair long. Watch any cop drama from the 70s and you'll find a dozen different example of male pattern baldness with every one of them coping with it in different, increasingly wild, ways. Combover ridicule no doubt lead to bald men mostly accepting their fate, but few bald men are brave enough to let their remaining strands grow and fall where they may. Maybe the acceptance is more of a French thing, as the Rick Rubins of the world are hard to find, and Jose Gonzalez understands that. He has a kind of combover but his attempts are not serious. He is not Charles Nelson Reilly or George Kennedy, starting his part just above his ear. No, Gonzalez just kind of sweeps his remaining top strands to the side and lets the rest of it hang long to his shirt collar. I think his hair really adds to the smug buffoonish way that he takes bumps, and he bumps great for Batman. Gonzalez took a big bump over the top after getting dropkicked in the back, and took a phenomenal bump when he missed a torpedo charge and wound up trapping his own neck in the ropes. Batman had one of the coolest cartwheels I've seen, done with Gonzalez at point blank range. Alex Wright used to kick guys in the head all the time when he did a short arm cartwheel, and Batman just defies physics as he avoids Gonzalez. I enjoyed watching this in the bathroom at work. 

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corn! Doukhan! Les Blousons Noirs! Petit Prince! Saulnier! Genele! Renault!

Jacky Corn/Gass Doukhan vs. Blousons Noirs 10/18/71

MD: Really good match that oscillated between heat and comebacks. I think at one point the Blousons got too deep down the rabbit hole after an extended period of cutting off the ring and sneaking in cheapshots because a fan started to go after the ref. They let the stylists have some more control after that, including some feel good stooging from the heels. Gessat might have looked a bit older and couldn't quite rock the black jacket the same way he did a decade before, but they were picture perfect in the ring. Manneveau had this great belly to belly toss over the top and wasn't afraid to bump into the second row either. I loved this bit they did where Manneveau had Doukhan in a grounded armbar in the corner and Gessat kept stepping on his other hand from the outside. The finish involved the Noirs begging off from some celebrity to the delight of the crowd but by that point Corn had already beaten everyone around the ring in his final comeback so it was fine.

Petit Prince/Michel Saulnier vs. Bobby Genele/Guy Renault 12/14/71

MD: The usual good stuff from d'Éricourt and Saulnier with Renault and Genele serving as bases and bruisers depending on what the moment called for. The VQ here was a bit rougher than usual but with a bit of work you can tell the difference between everyone. The first ten minutes, before the heels started to cheat, was as good as you'd expect but maybe not novel in any particular way. The most interesting holds actually came in the back third, with a long short arm scissors bit by Prince and subsequently a hammerlock he had to work out of. His act where he gets knocked out of the ring repeatedly and has to fight his way back was compelling and over. Saulnier was very effective as a hot that that would rush in and hammer everyone, despite his relatively diminutive size. There was always a sense of struggle here despite the complexity and sharpness of spots. There was a moment where d'Éricourt came in low on Genele and he just jammed him and power bombed him and it came off as incredibly uncooperative. In general, we're quite used to matches like this, but it's like watching a magician manage to repeat a difficult trick: it reaffirms what we know about the greatness of these juniors.

PAS: Prince is really a special talent, really all of these guys are, but he is so unique and incredible to watch. It is crazy that we discovered this guy, and get to watch him perform his magic in so many different ways. I am a huge short arm scissors fan, and this had one of the cooler short arm scissors spots ever. Saulnier is great too, and is a bit shortchanged by tagging with the Prince, it is like that WCW Nitro dark match where Blitzkrieg did all of the same spots as Super Dragon, just higher and faster, if Blitzkrieg wasn't their Super Dragon would have gotten his spot, Saulneir is also a transcendently talented athletic technico, it's just that he isn't the Prince

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Drapp! Dula! Genele! Renault! Saulnier! Cabera!

Andre Drapp vs. Jimmy Dula 4/26/71

MD: Mean, chippy fight where both sides used up their public warnings. It feels like the first 30 minute draw we've seen in a while. We also haven't seen much of either Drapp or Dula lately. Dula, especially, seems to have come a long way in ten years. He was a unique bruiser before who would appeal to the crowd after every move. Here, there was very little of that and more aggression as he was always moving to the next attack. They were really going from the get go, just great lock ups and jockeying for position with very little given, all the way throughout. As the match went on, Dula would cheat more and more but Drapp would then get admonished as well as he'd bend the rules while getting his revenge. It was definitely impressive that they kept it at the level that they did for so long.

Bobby Genele/Guy Renault vs. Michel Saulnier/Pedro Cabrera 5/7/71

MD: Exceptional juniors tag. I'd say the 20 minutes of the first fall was one of the best single falls we've seen in the entirety of the footage. They started by wrestling clean and fast, with Saulnier's low center of gravity giving him an extra bit of torque on every mare, Cabera showing off with the cartwheels, Renault basing like a champ, and Genele adding a bit of spice with his reactions. There was a buzz every time he came into the ring, and it wouldn't become apparent until later on just why. From there, they settled down into well worked holds and counter attempts for a bit until Genele started with the inside shots. It'd still be another round of holds before Renault really joined him. At that point, Genele shone with that sort of chip on his shoulder attitude and mean forearms and stomps that justified the reaction he had been getting. They took over on Cabrera's arm, creating an actual, genuine tag heat segment where they cut the ring in half, had hope spots and cut offs, and built to a big hot tag and Saulnier clearing house with faster and faster exchanges as they escalated to a finish. The rest of the match was still good, as Genele and Renault worked in another heat segment using holds, where the individual escape attempts felt more like hope spots than in almost any match we've seen. It's French tag wrestling so the second and third falls were far shorter and to the point, but the last one was celebratory and the fans got sent home happy like usual. I focused so much on the narrative that I was underselling how good any single individual exchange was. This was the high end junior style of the time. People will be able to make gifs of Cabrera going up and over and around to lock in a short arm scissors or some of the super fast rope running exchanges. It was just grounded in a structure that let the crowd really care about what was happening and that made the big moments resonate more than usual.

PAS: This was great stuff. Both tecnicos really threw some fun stuff, Cabrera especially was just flying around the ring. GIF makers can definitely get some shit to tweet at Jim Cornette. Genele is a real shithead and while I think the focus will be on all of the fast cool shit the babyfaces did, lots of credit to heels for making it look good and adding some real nastiness to the process. 

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Cohen! Guisto! Genele! PETIT PRINCE~!

Georges Cohen vs. Pasquale Guisto 5/8/66

SR: 1 fall match going about 20 minutes. It’s the only appearance of Italian worker Guisto, but Cohen will show up many more times. This started with some fantastic technical exchanges. These guys had some serious body control and certainly made all their armthrows and headscissors look effortless. Guisto had some neat counters and unique things, like countering a headscissor attempt into an indian deathlock. Then, Guisto took offense to Cohen slamming him into the mat during a hold and they got really heated slapping the shit out of each other. Both men shook hands and apologized for the occurrence, except Guisto couldn’t seem to quite get over at as he proceeded to act like a jerk, letting Cohen know he considered himself to be above his opponent. Guisto started throwing European uppercuts and soon Cohen started firing back with uppercuts and nasty short kicks of his own. It’s a broken record, but the stiffness was just on another level and there were a few great exchanges were both guys were on their knees raining hell on each other. I don’t know what the deal with Guisto here was, as he suddenly started selling like he was a punch drunk Terry Funk. It gave me the feeling he was supposed to be a skilled, but coked up jerk and was trying to cue Cohen into turning up the heat more, although Cohen remained stoic. They even seemed to ring the bell early, or maybe I’m seeing things. Either ways, aside from the not quite-delivered upon promise there was some damn great wrestling and both guys raining hell on each other was awesome. Good shit.

MD: The first two thirds of this were very good, but maybe a little more cooperative than what we're used to. Some of that you could attribute to sportsmanship. There were lots of clean breaks and handshakes, even if Couistot was a little showy about it at times. Lots of holds that were hung on to and tricked out escapes and blocked escapes, and both guys going for the same thing at the same time. There was a lot of using one hold (like a full nelson) to set up another (like a mare); that sort of thing. Cohen was maybe a bit quicker and slightly more agile, Couistot had a reach advantage and maybe was just a little more skilled in his technique (from a kayfabe perspective). Despite the slight differences, they were very evenly matched. Couistot could go through the legs and Cohen could power him over. Then, after one of the many clean breaks, Couistot started the European Uppercuts and they were nasty and resoundent. Cohen fired back with a quick flurry. And they really didn't look back. There were moments where they went back to holds or spots and moments of deescalation and handshakes, but eventually it all broke down to a thousand nasty shots and the increasing exhaustion that went along with it. It reminded me a lot of the stylist vs stylist matches of the 50s, but maybe just a little more stylized. I'm not sure if it holds up to them on overall quality and competitive technique but it certainly did when it came to sheer enjoyment.

PAS: Very entertaining match, I mean this show had three guys we had never seen before and all three looked like superstar workers (and this was your first Prince match chronologically and he is an all timer). All of the exchanges here were slick and well contested and I loved the French Catch formula of technical wizardry breaking down into stiff violence. By the end of this match guys had abandoned any ideas of sportsmanship and were just unloading with hard shots. You have to love it when violence amps up like this and this match ended on a real note. 

 Le Petit Prince vs. Bobby Genele 5/22/66

SR: 1-Fall match going about 25 minutes. This is probably the earliest full match of Le Petit Prince we have, maybe even his debut since his first TV appearance was this year. It had the feel of rookie action. A few athletic moves of the Prince were there, but not everything landed clean and the match had a rugged feel to it. Of course, that may have been due to Bobby Genele, who was roughing up the Prince like nobodies business. The rugged execution of some sequences didn‘t hurt the match, and Genele, who had the look of an arrogant upper class twit compared to the fairytale like boyishness of the Prince was really vicious when it was time to deliver a beating. His head stomps looked especially brutal. He also did this neat thing where he blocked the Princes floating snapmare by holding onto the rope, which is such a simple cutoff spot that needs be stolen by every rudo worker on the planet. Genele ate the receipt savate kicks and weird electric chair spots from the Prince like a champ too so I think we can certify him as a very good rudo base. They nailed the end sequence too.

MD: It's our first look chronologically at Petit Prince and straight from the start, it doesn't disappoint. This was brilliant stuff, even if it was a little rough around the edges. Genele let himself get outwrestled maybe once before starting the bullying and inside moves and he never looked back from there. You get the sense in this early stuff that the cameramen barely know how to film Prince. Before long, Genele takes over by really going at Prince's arm and that carries a lot of the first half of the match, with Prince selling, including to the point of being too hurt to hang on to holds, which is something you rarely see in 60s France. Whenever he comes back, though, it's absolutely worth the wait. At one point he does a leap over the arm out of a wristlock and ducks a clothesline turning it into a near standing Spanish Fly. There's a real sense of anticipation in the back half, once Genele's beating becomes broader and less arm-focused; Genele's great at keeping the violence and punishment going, but everyone's learning quickly, if they didn't already know, that it's well worth your effort to see the Prince get his comeback. Each one feels a little more spectacular than the last, whether he's backflipping out of a victory roll position to lock in a takedown and a flip into a toehold, or backflipping off the top to hit a shot to the gut. The finish was as dynamic as any rope-running we've seen with Prince backflipping through the momentum of a kick up by Genele and going over and under him at high speed before hitting a sunset flip.

PAS: Goddamn is Petit Prince a revelation, every time I see him I can't believe I am watching him. Genele was a nifty base for all of Prince's insanity, and responded to getting spun on by unloading some violence, which is what you want. I loved him holding on the the hammerlock and not letting Prince flip out of it. Now, so much of wrestling is just counter, counter, counter, I liked that Genele actually made him earn it. We also had a cool short arm scissors spot and a headscissors section. However, you are waiting for Prince to flash on him, and man does he ever. His backflip out of the mule kick, right into the rope running roll up has to be one of the cooler finishing flashes I have seen. 

Read more!