Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Mitchell! Noced! Renault! Schmid! James!

Daniel Noced/Guy Renault vs Petit Prince/Alan Mitchell 10/12/74

MD: Really, really good stuff here. Look, Petit Prince is having a moment this last week due to a big viral tweet. I do hope that when that happens people find their way to the blog and the master list so that they can watch this footage for themselves. There's so much more than just gifs of highspots to these matches. Everyone that's been following along knows that. Spread the word! (And because I haven't linked to it for a while, here's the Master List, updated as of a month or two ago: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2021/05/french-catch-tuesday-master-list.html)

Ok, so this was excellent. Two things became very clear to me from watching it. Most importantly, Noced is the Psicosis to Prince's Rey Mysterio, Jr. He's the perfect base for him, able to take all of his stuff, able to beat him down when it's time, over the top with a red mane of curly hair and beard that the black and white doesn't do justice. He knows all of Prince's stuff and can play into it perfectly. The second is that Mitchell is really Prince's perfect partner. He's a technical brit who knows all the tricks and is all about the close-up magic of tiny bits of limb and joint manipulation. It's perfect contrast for Prince's sweeping acrobatics. This is the only match we have with them as a conventional team and they're just so perfect together.

Mitchell is very close to the top of the list of someone that I wish was in another ten matches. He has ways of clowning his opponent that no one else in France was doing. Bits where he bodyscissors them so they have to walk around the ring with him attached or traps their arms or legs with his arms. There was an exchange where Renault was trapped and it was all he could do not to fall over and Renault kept coming in to pick him up and Prince would come in to knock him back down. The fans loved it. Renault was totally game but Noced was the star in how mean he'd hit and how smug he was after escaping one thing or another (including the ref pulling his ears) only to slip on a banana peel or get his comeuppance from a stylist a moment later.

This had about fifteen minutes of the stylists mostly outwrestling the bad guys, including a great long short arm scissors by Prince on Noced where he was going back and forth with it like a rowboat as the fans chanted, and all of the lift ups/rolls that you'd expect. That led to a brief but awesome bit of heat once Noced was finally able to place him on the top rope. Because of his diminutive size, Prince could really get sympathy bumping into the crowd and getting knocked off the apron. This led to a great earned comeback by Prince and one of the best hot tags I think I've seen in French catch to end the first fall. The second fall was mainly fun and celebratory but led to a ref bump and guest Ring Announcer Jean Robic (a former Tour de France winner) coming in to count the fall to a big ovation. Just great stuff all around. Mitchell/Prince is one of the greatest one-match teams we have on tape.

PAS: Tremendous stuff, Prince is so great in every match he is in, it is hard to rank them. This feels like a high end Prince match, as we have a great pair of rudos, and Mitchell adding his own spice to the mix. Loved all of the stuff with Mitchell's drop toe hold and his weird body scissors. I am a short arm scissors mark, and this was a very cool variation of that spot. The Tour de France guy coming in to make the pin was a fun bit of old school pro-wrestling business, I love a good celebrity appearance, and it is fun to see  a guy who was a big deal fifty years ago but is lost to history now. 

Al-Casi vs Christian Preno 4/13/75

MD: Hey, we're in color now. Stylist vs stylist match that goes a little over ten minutes. Al Casi was 26, Preno was 23. This feels like the French version of a young lions match and it's probably extremely interesting to compare/contrast vs that or a first match on a mid-south card in 83, that sort of thing. Casi was obviously more experienced but Preno was very willing and there was never a moment where they weren't scrapping and trying for holds or escapes or mares or throws and occasionally even shots as it came close to boiling over in the middle before it calmed back down. I wouldn't want to watch these sorts of matches week in and week out at the expense of everything else, but you can't fault their effort here.

Daniel Schmid vs Rocky James 4/13/75

MD: This is just a bizarre scene. We didn't have anything from the end of 74 or the first few months of 75 and thus we're in April here, in color, and I'm not really sure what to make of this. James came out with bagpipers and an accordion player. Schmid had definitely been a heel before. Neither of them played nice. Both were bigger guys with big shots and a lot of aggression. James felt like a de facto face who did heelish things (snuck in a single leg from the ground, played king of the mountain in an unsportsmanlike way, wouldn't break clean, kept getting admonished by the ref) but expected to be cheered for them and sort of did. He reminded me a bit of Otto Wanz actually. Schmid, as always, reminds one of Buddy Rose with his pudgy speed and literal baby face reactions. This never really came together but that just gave everything a more competitive feel. Past a fairly long armbar early where James kept control through a lot of escape attempts, you never quite felt comfortable as a viewer with this one. It was good action with bigger guys but not wildly coherent, even as the band kept playing in the background and the crowd just seemed happy that they were hitting each other.

SR: 1 Fall match going a bit under 25 minutes. This was a match between two guys with fantastic physique. I love that Schmid was like a mini Greg Valentine while Rocky James looked like a more stocky Jerry Lawler. The first 10 minutes of this were pretty much a study of upper body holds and throws which these guys executed at blinding speed. After that Schmid tags James with a punch to the jaw and the match turns into a potatoefest. Schmid looked grizzly here, bowling James out of the ring when he tried a leg stretch and then putting on a nasty Fuchi stretch of his own while stepping on James face. The crowd seemed confused about who the face was, so James made sure to be a bastard and clubbed Schmid hard with nasty forearms and punt kicks. I loved all the body shots that were thrown and the back and forth european uppercuts were some of the funniest we‘ve seen with both guys aiming at the jaw. Basically a mix of really fun wrestling and hard hitting by two barrel chested dudes who look like truck drivers.

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Noced! Batman! Klondyke! Montreal! Le Comte! Calcard! Magnier!

Petit Prince vs Daniel Noced 6/6/74

MD: This is the cliff notes version of the touring 74 Petit Prince match, so it's not unlike things we've seen befoe, but it's such a great show. I love the contrast with Noced, who's just a mean jerk. He can feed into and base for all of Prince's stuff, but his own offense is just slamming his head into the mat in a hammerlock or lifting him to the top rope and hammering him. He's a mean bullying bastard and that makes it all the better when Prince runs circles around him. You get all of the big marks: the headlock go behind takedowns, the cartwheels, the back flip off the top, the amazing entry into the short arm scissors, but also just enough selling on the outside during a king of the mountain and a big spirited comeback and a clever stunning move to win. This was less than 8 minutes from bell to bell and it feels like something that can stand up with the best Rey Jr. TV matches along those lines. French Catch is so much more than just the quick exchanges, but this feels like the perfect tiny dose of Petit Prince to show someone reluctant to dig in just how special he personally was.

Klondyke Bill vs Batman 6/6/74

MD: This was a great piece of business. This is the UK Klondyke Bill, though he was billed from Canada. The rep he had was that he was a more athletic (though still massive) predecessor to the giants that would come a few years later in the UK, a guy who could go 30 (or 6 rounds) even if he never made it to the biggest stage at home. You get a real look at that here. Great use of the girth in general, with Batman just bouncing off of him, and earning every shot he got. He'd pry fingers away only to get pressed into the ropes and tossed. Bill would toss these belly bumps at Batman and he'd just bump halfway across the ring for them as the fans went nuts. He'd certainly antagonize the ref, shooting him across the ring as well. He had some gnarly holds too including a sort of a stump puller where he put all of his weight on Batman or just a toehold that looked nasty due to his size. He wasn't afraid to bump big off things you wouldn't expect either though, but he did it on the back half of the match after the tide had turned. Likewise, he'd go to cheating when he lost an advantage. Ultimately he'd get DQed for abusing the ref but the fact this went a smooth twenty with a number of different beats and holds and sections was a testament to how he was a step above his super heavyweight peers.

Jean Pierre Le Comte & Mr. Montreal vs Bernard Caclard & Fred Magnier (JIP) 7/11/74

MD: Nice to see some different guys in this one. We get the last two falls, as the stylists had taken the first one. It felt like one of those AJPW tags where you have one wrestler like Hansen or Spivey who can really assert themselves and know how to handle things and then another foreigner who doesn't quite get it and gets eaten up, so it becomes a tale of two matches. Or Harley Race. Have you guys ever seen Harley Race in an AJPW tag? He manages to be in the ring for about twenty seconds before losing the offense to literally anyone he's wrestling. Anyway, that was Le Compte here. He had the look of a poor man's Van Buyten and had some pretty good stuff when he got to show it: a nice cartwheel, a flurry of dropkicks, some hard shots, but he spent most of the match, when he was in getting destroyed.

And when Montreal was in, he was completely unbeatable. He looked more like Lou Ferrigno than ever here. Early on he did the strength spots, just overpowering every top wristlock and front facelock attempt. When he came in later it was about slamming and bearhugging and bodyscissoring his frustrated opponents. Le Compte took his beating well and sympathetically at least, and Magnier and Caclard were game. Magnier (the Mercenary of the Ring) has that sort of doughy bruiser bodytype that reminds you of Dick Murdoch (or Robert Gastel) and he can really lay it in with high/low shots, knees and stomps. Caclard was slimier and haughtier and more the little dog to Magnier's big dog. When Le Compte was in they controlled the ring and kept him in the corner and on the rocks. So there was some drama on whether or not Montreal could get back in and what sort of revenge he'd get when he did, but I still wouldn't call this a balanced match, even if the crowd did enjoy it.

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Corne! Mitchell! Noced! Richard! Renault! Mercier! Menard! Fake Mongolians?

Guy Mercier/Jean Menard vs. Abdul Khan/Chang Li 1/5/74

MD: French heroes vs probably fake Mongolians here. Chang Li was taller and thinner and could have passed for a fake Russian a few years later. Mercier is very good at what he does and had been for decades at this point. Menard we've seen once and we'll see again (but as a heel, I think) and he had the crowd behind him, especially the young ladies. They had a bit of Ben Chemoul/Bordes vibe as one was sort of a younger version of the other. Mercier used all the old tricks, the cross-footed Mascaras twist, the bearhug into a backbreaker, the repeated bodyscissors butt crash followed by atomic drops and Menard was game. He especially did well as face in peril building to an actual hot tag, as the ref had missed a tag and Chang Li and Abdul Khan did well cutting off the ring. They were mostly chop and nerve hold based with a decent amount of chinlocks and cheating. Abdul Khan brought the over the top character flourishes, looking like he was all but electrocuted as he reacated at times and Chang Li's strikes looked pretty good for what they were as he went high low high or low high low. After the big comeback in the second fall, it never quite felt like the Mercier and Menard were in much danger but by that point the crowd wanted to see the Mongolians get what was coming to them anyway. Fun stuff if you're in the mood for fake Mongolians, certainly.

Petit Prince/Jean Corne/Alain Mitchell vs. Daniel Noced/Jacky Richard/Guy Renault 2/9/74

MD: Due to a preliminary match (where the heels cheated) Alan Mitchell can't participate in this match for the first fifteen minutes, so it's three on two. For the first ten minutes, that doesn't really come into play as Petit Prince (and to a lesser but still meaningful extent) Jean Corne run circles around the heels and clown them repeatedly, because they're just that good. The heels base well and take everything, with Noced's reactions especially good. Eventually though, Noced has a very mean control on Prince (drawing a public warning and making it worth it) and he knocks Corne off the apron. That means when Prince makes it to the corner, there's no one to tag. By the time he's back the heels distract enough so that the ref misses a hot tag. They really cracked the code on how to get heat, southern tag style, somewhere in the early 70s and here we really see it bear fruit. That means a huge press slam into a gutbuster by Noced gets them the first fall.

Perfectly timed for the end of Mitchell's penalty period is Prince's comeback however, and the fans go nuts for the tag. The rest of the second fall was full of Mitchell showing off some nice matwork tricks, a bit of heat where the heels try to keep things in the corner, but ultimately a lot of big clowning spots, including all of the heels trapped in the face corner with Prince standing on them, and miscommunication spots, before Mitchell lands a pretty unique sunset flip variation. The third fall was more of the same, with plenty of elaborate spots, lightning quick one after the next like an old lucha match's tercera where much of the drama had passed and now it was time for the crowd to celebrate the prowess of their heroes. All in all, this was a great showcase, maybe one of the best, especially given that they were able to successfully milk the drama of the penalty period.

PAS: This was really great stuff. I agree with Matt about how this is one of the first tags we have seen with the more traditional cutting off the ring stuff which is what we expect from tag wrestling. Prince is a perfect babyface for that role, and a perfect babyface for the later section where he just dazzles around turning the heels into stooges and goofs. All the heels were really cool as foils and I liked the idea of a penalty box in a six man tag. So crazy that Le Petit Prince was basically unknown five years ago, and now we have so many chances to see him dazzle us.

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Sanniez! Hassoni! Bernaert! Calcard! Prince! Noced!

Albert Sanniez/Kader Hassouni vs Bernard Caclard/Pierre Bernaert 2/15/73

MD: Another swimming pool match. We've seen some of these that were fairly weak but the last one we saw was pretty funny (though Catanzaro being in it stacked the deck) and this one had some great action, but then again, it had Sanniez who is one of the best juniors we've seen out of France. Bernaert, by this point, was an incredibly experienced tag team worker, a great stooge, and here, actually wrestled a bit more than we'd seen him in a while since much of the action was kept to the center of the ring given the water surrounding them. That said, and while Bernaert took most of the bumps into the pool throughout the match (Calcard's saved for the post match own goal), I'd say it was Caclard who created much of the motion on the heel side, as he was able to base and keep up for Hassouni and Sanniez's quickness. Calcard had a great front chancery suplex throw too. Sanniez' reverse bridging headscissors escape remains amazing to watch and he did it twice here. When it came time for the heels to take over (after Sanniez went flying through the ropes on a tope to nowhere due to a missed move), they were sufficiently vicious as you'd expect. Honestly, the pool didn't limit the action much at all, even when the ring was bobbing violently towards the end given how fast and hard they were going. Maybe this would have been slightly better as a conventional match but it was still very good overall.

Petit Prince vs Daniel Noced 3/16/73

MD: Every Petit Prince match we haven't covered is a treasure and this is no difference. I wouldn't call it the most impressive or spectacular match we've seen, but it's one of my favorite performances of his. He seemed more mature as a wrestler when it came to selling a limb, to squaring up to build anticipation for a move, in knowing when to go all out with speed and when to milk something for the crowd. Noced was exceptional too, both as a base, and as a stooging, bullying jerk, a real contrast to the Prince. There was just a little more stalling out of him than we've seen lately, a little more of that focus on his nose towards the end of the match when you'd expect things to be picking up, but it worked because the fans were emotionally invested and because the Prince played a long, one way to take them down one last time before the finish.

After some quick chain wrestling to start, they settled into around fifteen minutes of holds here, Noced controlling to start, first with a wristlock and then a hammerlock before the Prince took over with a short arm scissors. All of it was brilliant. What people will ultimately know about this match will probably come from the gifs of the escapes and escape attempts, and there'll be yuking it up about how wrestlers are spot monkeys or whatever else, but it's the set ups that make all of this really resonate. It's like chess, with each attempt at an escape built up with three bits of motion to even create that opening, and then multiple escape attempts being necessary before slipping out can occur, and then it's usually right back in so that they can take it back down and build it back up again. Without having two or three minutes to work the hold and slowly escalate upwards, the ultimate bursts of motion and acrobatics wouldn't mean nearly as much. Taken as a total whole, it creates the illusion of believable counters on top of counters, with Noced often not sure which way the Prince will go next and trying to adapt during and after the fact. Looked at as just a gif in isolation, it's going to be an amazing spot, but taken as a whole, there's an underlying struggle that creates the environment for which it can exist. But please, gif this stuff anyway; people should see it. And if it takes them back to the source, all the better.  But without the long dedication to a hold, the ultimate flash would feel far, far more empty.

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Robin! Royal! Hessle! Liehn! Petit Prince! Louis! Noced! Richard!

Vic Hessle/Bert Royal vs. Edmund Liehn/Guy Robin 9/11/58

SR: JIP 2/3 falls match of which we get about 23 minutes. We join about just as the first fall is decided with a spinning toe hold of all things. After that, this is pretty much an all out brawl. Liehn & Robin are all over this, buckling the Brits to the corner and taking them apart like a leaner Anderson brothers. This is the only time we see Liehn, and I really liked him here, a car salesman looking stocky guy who looked like he was trying to pull peoples head off and not holding back with punches and forearms. Robin always looks great in these matches drawing heat and being a pesky shit, and he was great here once again diving off the top rope to knee people in the back. The brief bit where he just decided to slap the shit out of Royal with Royal taking him down and looking like he was gonna kill him had to be one of the best moments in this whole project so far. The job of Hessle & Royal was mostly to just hand out great looking forearms and uppercuts, and that they did. Hessle is the father of Bert & Vic Faulkner, so it‘s cool to have him on tape. He didn‘t do much extraordinary but he looked like a surly barrel chested dude from the local pub. He gave one of the heels a pretty painful looking face massage during a pin attempt and that is what you want from an elderly veteran type face in a tough brawl. Bert Royal is once again dynamite in this. He is so energetic when it‘s time forearm the shit out of someone, and his fast, super-vicious arm assault that left the other guy broken on the mat was awesome.

PAS: I loved every second of this, you had three barrel chested brawlers and Royal who was awesome at using his athleticism to hurt people.  Royal has this cool spot where he climbs up his opponent and knees him right in the face and was willing to throw just as hard as his opponents. Hessle had some of the most violent monkey flips I have seen he uses his stubby legs to just fling his opponent on his head. There is a point at the beginning of the third fall where it seems like everyone stepped out of the script. Robin starts slapping Royal, Royal takes him down (after Robin stonewalls a couple of attempts) and grinds his forearm into his face, which brings in Liehn who starts hammerfisting Royal, which brings in Hessle to throw a slap to the ear. It felt like something you might see in a Japanese interpromotional match. Finish was incredible with Royal just ripping and tearing at Liehn's arm with a spinning arm hold and knees.

MD: Very interesting match. It's our first look at Liehn. Robin is one of my favorites. Royal had the amazing match against Oliver and Vic Hessle is actually his dad. This is 2/3 falls and we come in around 15 mins in at the end of the first fall though we have another 20 plus of action. I liked Liehn right out of the gate. He comes off as big stooging blowhard which works well with Robin's manic alacrity. The difference between this and some of the Delaporte tags is more subtle than striking. The general idea is the same: cheating and swarming with big moments of babyface comeback and dominance. Here though, the comeback setpieces were fewer and shorter and the swarming was both more chaotic and somehow less cooperative. Instead of the elaborate counters and escapes of French Catch, the heels had one goal and only one goal, to get their opponents back to their corner. The ref was all but useless even as there was goozling and choking with the tag rope and Robin coming in again and again with knees off the top. In this regard it almost felt like a lucha trios where the tecnicos were just unable to stop the rudos momentum for almost mystical reasons. The heels were akin to rabid animals just tearing away and doing anything they could to keep the advantage. It made sense, for whenever they lost it, they were punished. There just seemed to be less orchestration behind it without someone like Delaporte directing traffic. Hessle was big and rugged, with meaty, satisfying punches. Royal was spirited, showing a lot of the righteous fire we've seen out of visiting Brits in this footage. Ultimately, this had less big moments (though it had a few like a big battering ram in the corner and the miscommunication between father and son that let the heels take the second fall) but created a very vivid feeling of dirty warfare. That'll stick with you, as will Royal's absolute destruction of Liehn's arm at the end, one of the best maulings to end a match and force a submission you'll ever see.

ER: This was nonstop French action that we've come to expect, a breathless pace a year before Breathless. All of this era Catch that we've seen has been great, but every few weeks we pull something out that is a cut above its peers. This was a perfect use of all four men, with Royal/Robin being the real marquee pairing while Hessle and Liehn brought a ton of personality to go with big clubbing arms. This whole thing was a real fight, the kind of match I can watch a few times and notice new things each time. Royal is such a scrapper, undersized compared with the other men but he sure doesn't act like he's undersized. He hits as hard as anyone here and had inventive ways of overcoming any size differences. I loved how he climbed up Liehn, almost like he was going to do a monkey flip and then thought "why stop there?" He climbs up bit by bit, clenching his neck with both hands, one leg at a time, before boosting off a thigh with a great knee. It was nice payback for Liehn practically cranking Royal's head off with a cravat earlier. Hessle brings a cool dad charisma to this, like a Catch Pat Patterson, and his scraps with Robin may have been my favorite parts of the match. Robin took out his hairline on the immaculately coiffed Hessle, locking in one of the sickest chokes I've seen. He hooked his arm around Hessle's neck like he was going for a judo throw but just leaned into the choke, throwing a punch to the kidneys when Hessle almost broke it. I loved Hessle coming in throughout the match to break up the heels, and how Liehn would subtly stooge for him, the best being one punch that knocked him back on his heels and onto his butt, holding his face and head like he wasn't expecting it. The finish was joy filled savagery, Royal twisting and kneeing and leaping on Liehn's arm with glee and a glazed over rage. It almost looked like Robin didn't want to step in and stop it because he didn't want any part of that Andy Capp dust cloud.


Le Petit Prince/Francis Louis vs. Daniel Noced/Jacky Richard 2/22/71

SR:2/3 Falls match going about 30 minutes. The evolution of the lightweight style in France is interesting to watch. Basically, they still did the same moves as 15 years earlier, but everything smoother, and with a formula in place, making these matches approach the same rhythm, similiar to a Lucha trios. You had the Prince and his partner Louis looking fantastic as you‘d expect, with lots of stupidly fast armdrags and everything being executed with a sense of struggle, and also a real standout performance from Daniel Noced. Not only was Noced a great base and dance partner for all the flashy shit in the match, when the time was right he just kicked the shit out of the Prince and even chucked Francis Louis over the top rope. The heel beatdown on the Prince was pretty intense with him eating a ton of kicks to the ribs and body shots as well as getting hammered into the mat over and over. It‘s also the kind of things that people who aren‘t used to European wrestling can watch and easily get into, as there were multiple cut offs building to the Prince finally getting the hot tag and Louis rolling in to give the heels what they had coming to them. The ring being pelted with garbage is an iconic sight too. The Prince remains the focus of the match though, as he soon eats a nasty posting. Noced takes a spill to the outside and a near riot breaks out, with folks surrounding him and the police having to break the scenery up. The ending with the Prince covered in blood looking to get a piece of Noced and towel being thrown in was something else too.

MD: What made this work as well as almost anything we've seen in the collection so far was the marrying of the slickness of Petit Prince matches with the patience and discipline of a narrative-heavy Southern Tag. It's equal parts spectacular and accessible; plenty of style, plenty of substance. We're talking shine-heat-comeback (and a breathtaking shine at that), with the added story element of Prince demanding to get back in, again and again, when he wasn't ready to fight in order to get revenge. When I say discipline, I mean that while there were a lot of illegal double-teams behind the ref's back to build up heat, the ref missing the hot tag didn't happen until right before the end of the first fall. They held it off until it'd mean the most and then almost immediately went to the finish of the fall afterwards. When you have a two-out-of-three-falls structure, you can do that. That's what built the fans up to a fever pitch and that allowed things to boil over as they went into the second fall. By that point the crowd was already throwing things into the ring. Obviously, we've seen that sort of thing before elsewhere. What really made this stand out here, though, was that this was awash in the 70s French juniors style. The hope spots here were Prince utilizing more and more elaborate escape attempts only for his opponent to either hang on to the hold or immediately thereafter cut him off and put him right back in. Basically, it leveraged what we've been seeing all throughout 57 and 58, the way they strung together matches with long, dogged holds and frequent escape attempts, and overlaid that onto the southern tag format. When your face in peril is one of the most athletic and agile wrestlers ever, a smaller underdog, someone who can portray a singular fire and passion, and your heels are a bunch of real goons: Noced who was an uppity bully and Richard who just had this meanstreak intensity to him, well, you're going to get results. Add in some color and that's a riot. The finish was equal parts triumphant and satisfying and heartbreaking and leaving you wanting so much more. Exceptional stuff.

PAS: This was awesome stuff, a true discovery. Much of the Prince we have seen before was like an early Rey Jr. exhibition match, like Rey vs. Psicosis in WAR. This was more like Rey vs. Eddie on Smackdown, a complete violent match with a dramatic arc and huge payoff. We still get some of the crazy takedowns and evasions from the Prince and he also gets the shit kicked out him, including Noced grabbing him by the side of the head and driving him into the mat temple first. We get a real hyped up hot tag with Louis throwing big uppercuts. Prince gets lawn darted head first into the ringpost and comes up bloody, and we get an awesome fired up bloody babyface standing tall moment, with the crowd trying to murder Noced. This is in the highest level of matches we have seen in this project, really an all timer.

ER: This was spectacular, like seeing a Michinoku Pro trios for the first time, except I'm not sure any of them were as good as Le Petit Prince (and those guys were GOOD). His sequences are so tight, so believable in their physics, this small man knowing exactly which way to swing the pendulum to make the most of his momentum. There are plenty of small wrestlers now who just expect larger wrestlers to bump for everything they do, and that's what happens. Most of the time, it looks absurd. Prince connects all those dots and makes it look crazy if one of his big armdrags didn't take someone down. He moves so fast that he makes typical time stand still moments look incredible, like when he crawls through his opponents legs to get the drop on them. He actually scrambles through opponents' legs fast enough that he is back on the attack before they turn around in real time! Noced and Richard are great heels for him to work his magic against, as Noced especially is a great base for his flying, and then cruel as can be when the tables turn. Louis is a wonderful babyface partner, taking a couple big bumps to the floor, always ready to fight for Prince. This whole thing really jumps up another level once the heel team starts cutting Prince off, with Noced and Richard putting the boots to them, like two Sonnys giving Carlo twice the beating he deserved. Noced had this running kick that was greater than any punt I've seen in wrestling the past several years. These two were just burying kicks in Prince's ribs and off the side of his head, to the point where a riot felt like a reasonable reaction. Fans immediately swarm Noced the second he hits the floor, with one tall Daniel Stern motherfucker leaping hard into the fray with a cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth. That was an organic reaction inspired by tremendous ring work, the kind of match where you know you're watching something special the whole way through.


PAS: Hell of a week, which places two matches on our All Time MOTY list, with Le Petit Prince tag beating out  Tony & Roy St. Clair v. Vic Faulkner & Bert Royal for 1971. Bert Royal got bumped out of the 70s, but he stays on our All Time MOTY list with 1958.


ALL TIME MOTY LIST

Read more!