Tuesday is French Catch Day: Manneveau! Le Samurai! More Luna Catch 2000! Cavilliers! Fontaine!

Guy Cavilliers vs. Alain Fontaine 1/3/72

MD: This is a rare episode that seems to be joined well in progress. We only have about ten minutes of this, with no entrances and some talk with Fontaine's family at the end. I do think we've only come in a few minutes late though. The first few minutes of this are the two of them tossing each other out, with  Fontaine getting the better of it and his younger opponent coming back. Once they get going there are a lot of headscissors takeovers and dropkicks though it's a little disjointed relative to what we're used to maybe. The finish has both of them missing dropkicks and then kipping up to crash into one another, a way for the younger wrestler to earn a draw and a novel finish even if one that you don't want to repeat too much. 

Marcel Manneveau vs. Le Samurai 1/31/72

MD: Interesting match. I have no idea who Le Samurai was. Apparently he had red gear with a red and yellow mask. Some of the things he did, like the bowing and chops, and most notably the hangman's neckbreaker where he carries his opponent to the ropes and presses up into them from underneath neck-first were parts of the Kamikazes' game, but other things weren't, and the general style of wrestling seemed different. The first ten minutes, before he devolved into the chops and nerve-holds, had some really good mat wrestling, a lot of wrist control and counters to counters. Occasionally they got overambitious and lost something. Samurai had one absolutely brilliant escape from a headscissors where he brought up his own legs to hold one of Manneveau's. As such, this was a great showcase for just how good Manneveau was on the mat, which we often don't get to see in dirty Blousons matches. Once the match opened up, both guys played the heel, though the fans were more against Samurai than they were for Manneveau. My favorite bits here were Samurai's killer double leg stump pullers, but also some of the abrupt grabbing of limbs that almost made it seem like a 1970s proto-shoot style. The finish was kind of gnarly as Samurai had Manneveau trapped in a sunset flip pin and scored the three despite Manneveau repeatedly slamming his heel against Samurai's head to try to escape. Good match even with the affectations.  

Antonio Pereira/Mota Dos Santos vs. Francis Louis/Jean Claude Bordeaux 1/31/72

MD: Yes, this is more Luna Catch 2000, where wrestler are shot into the ring off platforms with compressed air. I'm fairly certain that this 6 minutes or so that we get (more like 10 with the pomp and circumstance to begin) is actually the debut as the full match that has gotten more attention than maybe anything else we've posted is from April and we're at the end of January here. They started this with the klaxon and the cosmic bowling lights, with wrestlers dressed in silver jumpsuits but no helmets this time and with a countdown to launch them into the ring which was different. The commentator likened it to a scene from a Kubrick movie. We've got the same wrestlers as before, but I think they had the act down just a bit more in April as they were better at both not bumping on their own backs on the way in and also catching themselves then. I don't know what else to tell you. Having seen the week after week quality of the footage, this stuff is a fun novelty but if I had to choose, I'm glad we got the full Manneveau vs Samurai match and just a few minutes of watching these guys soar into the ring, land, pause and then armdrag or slam each other. Basically, while it's cool Bryan Danielson is talking about this sort of thing on a podcast, I'd rather see (and would rather he see!) another Louis/Bordeaux vs Dos Santos/Pereira match without the compressed air and ten foot high bumps than this, as they are pretty spectacular when they get to put together an actual match.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mantopolous! Delaporte! Plantin! Louis!

Eddy Williams vs Robert Duranton 3/23/68 

MD: We miss the first 18 or so but get the last four of this and Duranton has definitely further honed his act. He was way over the top with his mannerisms, little pats and waves to the crowd, taking a shot at Williams' nose, and some fun interactions with the ref, including positioning him around the ring and hiding behind him. He was nasty and hard hitting despite that. Williams looked as good as usual here, including a cool inner nelson chicken wing hold and some great dropkicks in the post match (one crushing the valet and the crowd hates no one more than the valet). This took a turn when the valet got in a bunch of kidney shots as Duranton was distracting the ref and Duranton was able to hone in from there only to lose his cool when Williams wouldn't stay down and get dqed on his third public warning. The post match had Williams fire back only to eat some nasty cheapshots and a huge slam.


Vasilios Mantopolous vs Roger Delaporte 3/23/68

MD: I was looking forward to this one. You get the sense that Delaporte, who was a promoter after all, relished getting to have this match against a smaller but unique and very over and skilled opponent. He only took about half of it, despite the size advantage, got to do all of his huge facial muggings as Mantopolous was taking him over and twisting him up, and got to play into all of his fun trick bait spots. Meanwhile, he still got to beat him around the ring and keep control of such a skilled wrestler with his underhanded tactics and size advantage. He got to play off the ref and even trick Mantopolous into getting a public warning by keeping the ref in the corner and moving at the last second so Mantopolous dropkicked him (and he was elated by that result). He got tied up in the ropes a couple of times and did a really great job of eating a bunch of rapid fire dropkicks as he was getting up. As the match went on and the public warnings accumulated for both wrestlers, they were more than happy to keep abusing the ref. The chaos kept building until they ended up slugging it out on the floor and the ref just had enough. Pretty satisfying meeting of sizes and styles and personalities.

SR: 1 fall match going about 25 minutes. It feels like a while since we've seen Delaporte. He's greyed out now, but other than that pretty much the same old Roger. This was a basic face/heel match between two guys who just have amazing looking everything. Mantopolous just makes all his tricks look awesome and Delaporte has really good mannerisms falling for said tricks as well as some nasty kicks and punches. Just the way Delaporte flails about hen Mantopolous puts pressure on his wrist is an artform. Like with previous Mantopoulus matches we've seen he dominated most of the match although Delaporte did get to beat the shit out of him here and there. It feels a bit like there was some clipping here or they were really bold announcing a 30 minute time when about 25 minutes in the video had passed. Regardless it was another stupidly entertaining Delaporte singles against a very game opponent.

Bob Plantin vs Francis Louis 4/6/68

MD: At some point it becomes a little hard to talk about these stylist vs stylist matches, even one like this between two smaller guys. This was the usual excellent stuff. There were moments where they messed up a hold early but they were quick to recover naturally. There was a little bit of weird ref attitude towards Plantin which may pay off later down the road but it wasn't a huge part of the match. When they turned up the juice, they could really go with quick near-falls and headscissors takeovers all over the place. There was a nice extended short arm scissors, but also leg nelsons and full nelsons and plenty of other holds. Plantin had a nice neckbreaker. The last few minutes had them really getting chippy with some nasty shots as they worked towards the draw. We've seen tons of matches like this now but I'm always happy to see another.

SR:1 fall match going 30 minutes. This was largely a clean match. They wrestle it out for 20 straight minutes without throwing a forearm. The wrestling was as silky smooth and athletic as you've come to expect from two French technicians. It might as well function as a sample for the style. Plantin drew some ire from the crowd after he cranked up the viciousness when Louis dropped him with some nasty neckbreakers. Other than that the match stayed fair. Pretty beautiful stuff really.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: BILLY CATANZARO! Duranton! Chaisne! Le Magorou! Mantopoulos! Louis!

 Michel Saulnier vs. Jetty Coster 06/03/60

SR: JIP match where get the last 8 minutes of a time limit draw. Jetty Coster, what a name. Saulnier was young and lean at 24 years old. Coster was bigger, but Saulnier was relentless and seemed to be tiring him out. Some quite amazing fast moving sequences here, including Saulnier backflipping and then popping up with a headbutt, and some neat pin attempts. This about served the point of being a fun scientific wrestling exhibition while folks sat there waiting to throw cigarettes at Robert Duranton.

MD: We get around 8 minutes of this. They'd already gone 22 or so. It's good action with a clever callback or two even in what we have. There's were a couple of great bursts of speed and complex spots, including Saulnier hitting a leap up to a victor roll though he had to grab the rope to do so. My favorite bit was a little later when Coster dodged another Victory roll but sort of shifting himself between the raindrops so Saulnier had nothing to hang on to. I've never quite seen that before. Otherwise, this could have used a little bit more focus. As it went towards the time-limit draw, there was a little bit of escalation with forearms but it was mostly Saulnier containing Coster by hanging onto an arm. This was our first look at Coster and he definitely hung with and based for Saulnier. We won't see him again so that's going to be my only impression of him.

Robert Duranton vs. Michel Chaisne 06/03/60

SR: 1 fall match going about 25 minutes. Last time we saw Duranton he was flamboyant. Now, he has returned with a bleach blonde head, a robe and an equally arrogant male valent. I would say it feels novel compared to his earlier appearance if we hadn‘t seen a murderers row of whacky characters ranging from masked hangmen to literal Quasimodo and motherfucking Spartacus on TV in the last few months. This was another heated match with Chaisne bringing the wrestling and Duranton bringing the cheapshots and swaggering. There were some interesting moments around his valet who had a few audience members going at him and even got into the ring to get thrown around by Chaisne one time. There was also one well executed ref spots that stood out because I am used to ref spots coming across as really fakey. Really liked the backbreakers Duranton would hit followed by those nasty short kicks. Chaisne doesn‘t sell on the level to make this an epic match but we get Duranton finishing him off in a quite brutal way. France sure wasn‘t afraid of having nasty bomb throwing for a finish.

MD: We've seen this exact match up back in 58 and at that point, it was entertaining but Duranton hadn't quite worked it all out. Here, his act was complete. He now had a valet in a tuxedo that he worked into his match as a prop. He was haughty before, but it was turned up a notch or two. And maybe most important of all, the wrestling was smoother and he didn't do anything outside of his physical limits. Chaisne is just an excellent stylist: right place, right time, right moves. He also had a familiarity with Duranton and played into his opponents gimmick: escaping holds by mussing his hair, going tit for tat with revenge spots mimicking Duranton's cheapshots or backbreakers, coming back from Duranton's peppering kicks with a big face twister. This was over 25 minutes over the two falls and through a mix of familiar spots and new ones, through working in the valet and the ref, through Duranton's reactions and general meanness and Chaisne's superior prowess and perseverance, it's entertaining the whole way through. You almost can't imagine it not being so. When the valet is finally most fully involved, as Chaisne whips him into a tied-in-the-ropes Duranton, you can see the delight on the faces of the fans. Duranton gets a lucky reversal towards the end of the first fall, dumping Chaisne over the top on a third monkey flip attempt, and that's basically the match, but it was fun while it lasted.

PAS: Chaisne is a bit Vanilla but a really skilled wrestler who can deliver some pop, which really makes him the perfect opponent for over the top characters like Kaiser or Duranton. Duranton was so great in this match, he was like Adrian Street's daddy, a flamboyant prancer who could turn into a vicious killer at the drop of a bow. There was some great stooge spots, Duranton walking away from a dropkick attempt to pose, only to get dropkicked in the mush, and some really nasty stuff like Duranton sitting on Chaisne's face and smashing him with body shots. I thought the finish felt a bit flat, we have seen some vicious beatdown finishes, and while the exchanges were great the actually moves which put Chaisne down weren't at the level I expect for French Catch KO blows. Still this had a ton to love, and I am all in on Duranton. 

Billy Catanzaro/Gilbert Le Magorou vs. Vasilios Mantopoulos/Francis Louis 8/19/66

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. Billy Catanzaro, baby. Regrettably we only got about 4 more matches of the man who started the craze in the French archive, but Billy Catanzaro is really making every single one count so far. This was right on the awesome match train. It was basically the worlds greatest IWE juniors tag with a bunch of elegant arm lock throws and takeovers interspersed with guys kicking the shit out of each other. Catanzaro was already a grimacing veteran heel here and while you’d love to see him work more straight matches like the Cesca bout, he is fantastic in the Finlay role. He does about a 100 awesome things in this match. The nasty face stomps, the stiff short kicks, the unexpected bitchslaps, a super fast spinning armlock that looked like it would pop your shoulder, some nasty face grinding, the way he got his foot stuck in the ropes when he tried breaking up a pinfall... at one point he just went and punched Louis in the face to break up a pinfall, which is a sure mark of an all time great. I also loved his missed european uppercuts. Gilbert Le Magorou felt a bit like he was Catanzaros trainee, as he looked a bit younger and did similar things to Catanzaro but a bit less extravagant. That said he was extremely solid and never a let up, but this was the Catanzarro show through and through. He looked just great at both the actual wrestling as well as the stooging and bumping for his opponents. 

Mantopoulos and Louis on the other were a great pair of tecnicos. Mantopoulos is of course someone with a million tricks, but I also really liked his elegant wristlock reversals early on. That kind of opening wristlock work is is hard to make compelling when you’ve seen geeks like Zack Sabre Jr. doing it to death but it looked classy here. Mantopoulos also has some of the more esoteric moves you’ll see in this project including that awesome swinging backbreaker that Julien Morice did in a World of Sport match once and  the GIF of it became semi-famous on certain image boards. Francis Louis was the more straight forward side of the technico team and while not as flashy as his partner I really appreciated his dedication to just wrestle and throw brutal European uppercuts when it was needed. The match had a few heat sections that were extremely well done, particularly all the interference spots from Catanzaro/Le Magouru, and a great moment where Catanzaro took a fall with a tombstone piledriver, immediately going for the same move in the next fall with his opponent barely escaping. The match built to some brilliant quick rope running exchanges, and most importantly there was a ton of asskicking going on. I have no idea how these guys just clubbed each other with thudding European uppercuts straight to the jaw and nasty short kicks for +30 minutes and never slowed down but I loved every second. For a fast workrate-like match it got pretty nasty towards the end with Gilbert looking like he was about to get KO’d by Louis. I would’ve liked Louis to finish the match as he was looking like the toughest skinny lightweight on earth as he kept smashing dudes with those uppercuts. But instead he tagged in Mantopoulos and the match ended in a pretty esoteric way. That said the journey is the destination when it comes to European wrestling and this match was a 35 minute monolith of brilliant wrestling. Which begs the question, excluding BattlArts and Futen is France the greatest place for junior tag wrestling of all?

PAS: Damn did this rule. It is such a bummer we have so little of Catanzaro, with almost a decade in between appearances. He is a very different wrestler here, much more of a trick veteran than an athletic marvel, but he is tremendous in every variation we have seen him. Mantopoulos is a fancy dude, his spinning wrist lock reversals, actually looked fast and violent, and that back breaker variation Sebastian mentioned was totally dope looking. Both rudo were great at feeding for the fancy tecnico offense, and would unload when they got a chance.  I loved the different ways the heels would get tied up in the ropes,  great bit of stooging stuff and a great way to for the faces to get their revenge. We get our traditional violent uppercut exchanges, with Le Magouru especially really getting great torque with his hips before throwing them, it was like a Joe Frazier left hook. Finish was a bit silly for a match with such violence with both heels getting tied up in balls and counted out, but this was still an all timer. 

MD: Thirty-five minutes of brilliant pro wrestling. At times, this had some of the fastest, most consistent, most elaborate chained spots we've seen as the heels keep feeding for Mantopoulos and Louis' takedowns and holds. It was often so quick and creative that the camera didn't know what to follow. That sums up the match as well as anything else. The heels weren't in charge much but they made the most of it when they were. Catanzaro was such an amazing jerk, one of the greatest characters in wrestling history, dancing and prancing around with excitement, making elated faces, as he laid in forearms, kicks, and stomps (immediately to beg off if he lost the advantage). He could go from sheer brutality to getting his foot caught in the rope on a dime. Le Magorou had a slightly out of shape junior goon look to him and he made for a great whipping boy for Catanzaro whenever they get foiled or clowned. They hit enough of their cheating and double-teaming to make it all credible and to make it matter all the more when it didn't work out for them. Louis always looks good, but Mantopoulos just goes above and beyond. He possessed great physical awareness in how he ducked a forearm or spun out before a takedown. It's as if the world moved half a step slower than him, which worked not just for wild spots but for seizing a normal advantage. Honestly though, they all went so fast when it was warranted that most exchanges started with a believable little fake out attempt. They went little with the fake-outs or Catanzaro's mean mugging, but they went big too, whether it was Catanzaro hitting two full nelson spins into backbreakers only for Mantopoulos to tag in and reverse the third with a Robinson backbreaker and then hit conjuro style spinning trapping backbreakers on both guys or when they trap both heels in the ropes and hit multiple alley oop body splashes on them. The back half of the match contained more of those elaborate set pieces and the crowd loved all of it, building finally to one of the more unique finishes you'll ever see.

ER: I loved this, and how could you not!? This is just the pinnacle of athleticism and personality through pro wrestling. I genuinely don't think there is any acrobatic wrestling better than this, nothing today compares to this. There are great athletes today, but none of them can work with the unpredictability and creativity of the men here. The unpredictability is the key, as you just never have any real idea of where some of these guys are going with their material, and yet nobody ever seems lost, nobody ever seems to be waiting too long in position, nobody does anything with their face or body to indicate they know what is happening next. Their misdirection skills are incredible, nothing in sight is telegraphed. It's incredible. 

This was such a thrill, with an excellent rudo team and two incredibly fun and capable tecnicos. Catanzaro is a legend of ours at this point, and it's great we now have two matches of his, a decade apart, with such different aspects of his abilities on display. This was like a hyperdrive William Regal house show performance from him, stooging around while throwing uppercuts so hard they looked like Louis and Mantopoulos weren't leaping to sell them, instead being lifted by force. He and Gilbert Le Magorou are such an excellent team of single strap stooges, and it feels like Catanzaro is so magnetic that he kept outshining the also excellent Magorou. Magorou looked and wrestled like the best possible Oliver Platt in Ready to Rumble. He had a belly and great floppy hair and Catanzaro knew a ton of different ways to fall into the ropes. Each seemed like they had cool ways to fall on the bottom, middle, and top rope, and knew a few ways to get tangled in the ropes (two heels both tangled by their ankles in the ropes is the kind of thing I picture a John Tatum/Buddy Rose team doing). Mantopoulos is a tecnico who is impossible to take your eyes off of, with some of the most beautiful step up headscissors, hardest dropkicks, has a few of these incredible pendulum backbreakers (like Norman Smiley's pendulum bodyslam, but ending on a backbreaker), and a killer spot where he vaults off Mantopoulos's knee, kicks over his head, and lands in front of him on his back just to hit a wicked upkick. We haven't really had a disappointing batch of French Catch yet, but getting brilliance like this match is rare. 

Unsurprisingly, we are adding this tag match as the 1966 representative on our All Time MOTY List. 

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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

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Arroyo! Husberg! Dos Santos! Louis! Bordeuax! Payen!

Jose Arroyo vs. Eric Husberg 12/27/57

SR: 1 Fall match going about 35 minutes. This was a bit „hot and cold“, but when it got hot, it got hot. Arroyo is a bald headed Spaniard who gets to be the face in this, while Husberg is your typical heel of the era who will wrestle a bit only to forearm you in the back of the head unexpectedly. The wrestling was basic but servicable, of course the juicy parts are when they start trading blows. Arroyo has really great looking european uppercuts and I liked how Husberg looked just disgusted with Arroyos retaliations. Heels thinking faces should be above their tactics is great. This also had a ref stop finish, which I believe is a first in this footage.

MD: This was a good match and had a invested crowd that seemed much more into cheering for Arroyo (who was presented as a handsome Yul Brenner sort here) than booing Husberg. In some ways, it's not bad that this match finishes 1957 for us because it was very typical for the brunt of face vs heel matches we saw during the year. They had a couple minutes of clean wrestling before Husberg got frustrated and laid in the blows. He controlled with holds and cheapshots behind the ref's back and Arroyo came back with technical reversals and punishing blows. If we had watched this four or five months ago, it'd have stood out. Really, though, it was a lesser version of a lot of what we've seen. I wouldn't call it lifeless: Arroyo was fiery when he ought to have been, almost always going farther and more violent than other faces we've seen and Husberg had this passive aggressive attitude where he seemed put upon and almost annoyed to be in this situation and he certainly was invested in the cheating. Arroyo's offense just wasn't as crisp or interesting even if the crowd was going wild for the sheer depth of violence in his comebacks or the finish and Husberg just didn't have the verve as a Tony Oliver or Pellacani; he came off as subdued, pissy or stoic. He did the right things, but they weren't nearly as enjoyable to watch as usual. Which again, might have been ok for a shorter JIP affair, but we had 38 minutes, straight with no fall breaks, of this one.

PAS: I agree with Matt that this would have stood out a lot more earlier in this project, we have seen too much elite stuff for very good to register. It is also a lot to ask to invest nearly 40 minutes in two guys with out a ton of real flash. I thought there were a couple of standout mat spots, including Arroyo rolling a leg lock into a bridge pin, and Arroyo was laying in the shots, including a finish where the ref had to stop the match (although it also looked like Husberg may have legit messed up his shoulder.) Still this need more to justify the time invested in watching it.


Mota Dos Santos/Pierre Payen vs. Francis Louis/Jean Claude Bordeuax 6/19/71

SR: JIP 2/3 Falls match going about 25 minutes. 3/4 of these guys did the insane moon wrestling match a year later. I wanted to see what they could do in a regular match. The answer was a pretty standard match that ended up being pretty fun. Dos Santos & Payen act as heels, stooging and cutting off the ring.. While they don't do anything super evil besides kicking a few people when they're down they gathered tremendous heat. The wrestling won't blow you away if you've been watching the French stuff, but it was the kind of fun solid light weight action nearly everyone can enjoy. The standout was easily Mota Dos Santos. He was really fun even just threatening to swing punches. He also had a great mlitary press and a a nice German Suplex (probably the first time we've seen one in this footage). I also noticed how insanely stocky is for the first time here which makes his fast movements look even more awesome. True to form, this is the only regular match this mysterious supposedly Portuguese wrestler ends up showing up in.

MD: We only have two dos Santos matches. One is the space catch with the trampolines. Here's the other. It was much more grounded and much better for it. They still moved quickly. They still did fantastic stuff. There were a ton of bumps to the floor off of dropkicks, lots of slugfests, tons of headscissors takedowns and clever rope running. Dos Santos bounded into the ring every time he was tagged and had a cool little rolling dodge at times (including to get heat after a fall so he didn't have to start the next one). But it was a much cleaner and clearer heel vs face narrative with cutting off the ring and build to some real payoff for the faces getting revenge. Dos Santos' normal partner was out with a knee injury; I get the sense Payen was normally a face but he comported himself excellently as a heel here, with lots of mean blows, cheating the first moment we see him with a hairpull to the outside. Robert Charron, who had been a boxing champion in the 60s was the ref but he wasn't a huge factor, only getting involved once or twice. Bordeaux played face in peril for a lot of this with Louis really dynamic on his comebacks with just huge uppercuts. There were some spectacular individual moves, like dos Santo's crazy dangling German Suplex and the press-slam gut punch combo that finished the first fall, and quite a bit of heat, much, much more than we had for the trampoline match. The biggest highlight was probably the wild brawl on the floor. I thought the finish was just a little flat because it was too similar to how the faces won the second fall, but in the end, this was a great combination of flash and substance.

PAS: I thought this was a blast, did a great job of melding the super athletic style of French wrestling with the more smash mouth stuff. Dos Santos was the stand out, a pint sized power guy throwing awesome looking press slams and german suplexes, and still whipping out super fast headscissors. Louis was a great hot tag, really coming in and steamrolling people. The brawl on the outside was super heated, they were wildly tossing hands and even shoving fans in the crowd. I would have also liked to see a more dynamic finish, but that was really a quibble, overall I thought this was just excellent.

ER: Loved this, total superstar performance from Dos Santos, but everyone had their moments. Either Dos Santos just had this real improbable strength, or Bordeaux is a master of body manipulation and making himself fly. Now, both of these things could be true. We've seen the acrobatics these guys can pull off and it's some real Cirque du Soleil kinda jazz, crazy body manipulation leading to unnatural feats of strength. And here's Dos Santos doing one of the most impressive and unexpected press slams I can ever remember seeing. He was running around the ring with Bordeaux like he was Bigelow deciding which part of the crowd to throw Spike into, except he's barely bigger than Spike. Bordeaux has a real beautiful headscissors and I'm glad he got to show it off a few times here. It's one of those optical illusion headscissors where he leaps up high enough to grab guys in a huracanrana but falls back to earth and snares them at the last minute with his ankles. It always looks like he's going to whiff or he just missed a dropkick, and then at the very last moment he hooks those ankles. It's so good. Bordeaux clearly has next level body control and it's one of the things that makes me want to see Dos Santos pull off a similarly impressive press slam with someone the same size as Bordeaux, but not Bordeaux's weigh distribution talent. The crowd brawl really stood out as it's not something we've seen a ton of here. We've had guys take wild bumps over the top and into the close seated fans, but this was a cool spirited brawl with guys throwing in a tight space. It's more jarring to see that in what is a much more professional setting, the same way you don't see World of Sport crowd brawls in front of mums in their house coats. Great stuff.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Louis! Bordeaux! Perero! Dos Santos! Oliver! Iska Khan!

Iska Khan vs. Jim Oliver 2/1/57

SR: JIP 1 fall match with about 20 minutes shown. Iska Khan was the child of Mongolian parents and born in former Yugoslavia in 1924. He was also an actor and even has a French Wikipedia page. He is introduced as the Tibetan champion here, while Jimmy Oliver is introduced as the champion of Spain. French wrestling was quite diverse. This was in the same style as the previous match between Inca Peruano and Joachim La Barba, a mix of wrestling and two guys beating the shit out of each other. There is an art to beating on each other for 20 minutes and making it good, and they had it down. Jimmy Oliver, a former boxer, had the vibe of a hard as nails guy who will really hurt you, and he had some big bumping and awesome selling. Considering that is something you can say about most of these 1950s heels working France, it really says something about how amazing the talent at the time was. Khan was working barefoot and hitting chops and nerve holds, which was a fun breath of fresh air, and he was really chopping the shit out of Oliver's neck here, he also had some amusing ways to torture his opponent. Iska works this match as the babyface and the crowd is really into him. There was some fun wrestling, although nothing super athletic or graceful. Oliver was pretty awesome to watch, he makes basic holds look really violent, and he had some really nasty knees, at one point he throws a punch combo to the body that had the referee jumping on him. The strike exchanges here were really awesome and stand out to someone watching this in 2020. These days it seems most wrestlers idea of strike exchanges seems to take turns hitting each other and making angry faces, these guys tearing into each other is on a completely different level. Khan was just chopping his opponent silly which lead to some awesome wobbly selling from Oliver, and Oliver come across as a total prick. The finish is a big move that you would expect a 1980s powerhouse to do, it comes a bit out of nowhere and I would‘ve liked to see these two guys kill each other for a little longer because it was awesome to watch. This is probably the most "standard“ of all the French matches we‘ve seen so far, it was simple but they totally nailed it.

MD: One of my favorite matches we've watched so far. Some of that is due to a sort of familiarity/standardness, sure, but I think a lot of it was the contrast. Khan was full of affectation, the honorable easterner character, down to the robe and the bowing shtick with Oliver and everyone else at the end. That said, he was still that character plucked and placed into 50s France, where everything was technically sound and they had a penchant of beating the everloving crap out of each other. He went back to the nerve hold but he did so in a looming, competent manner that the fans kept popping for (he literally went "over the top" with it, coming in over Oliver's guard). Some of that is that we never see it as a babyface hold that heels have to work in and out of. I sort of love how we're seeing example after example of mean, surly "heels," most of which I'm sympathetic to because we share hairlines. Oliver was no exception. He would occasionally get clowned or outgunned (chopped in this case) by Khan and would sell it with the height of sharp indignity, but when he came back it was brutal, stretching him, hitting a killer backbreaker/knee drop combo onto the back, and the explosive finishing stampede that maybe could have used just a bit more set up. We've got Khan vs. Bollet from a year or two later down the road and I'm really looking forward to that.

PAS: This was my favorite match we have gotten from this new batch. This is basically a WAR heavyweight match, the 1950s French version of Takashi Ishikawa vs. a more agile Ashura Hara. Khan has the best and nastiest judo chop's I have ever seen and I love judo chops. It is really fun to see a nerve hold as a babyface spot, and he really digs into the traps. Oliver takes a couple of great looking bumps into the crowd and has some really nasty looking knees to the head and body, and great punches, there are a couple of punch/chop exchanges which felt like Johnny Valentine stuff. We get a little more Khan in this stuff, but no more Oliver, one of the coolest things about this stuff is seeing guys show up you have never seen or heard of before, and instantly have new favorites.

ER: Who among us could have predicted French wrestling from 60+ years ago would look like this? I watched The Red Balloon in school, that was from the exact same period, and this surely felt like a France not seen. This really did feel like a WAR singles match, with a smaller babyface Killer Khan vs. one of Tenryu's stable of killers. The stiffness kept ramping up as the match went on, with Oliver's shots to Khan's jaw so mean that I kept expecting Khan to wilt, and instead he would fire back with full open handed chops to Oliver's head, face, and neck. These were Baba chops that would have put Baba (clearly a teen in attendance) in the hospital. Oliver is really fantastic at taking big reckless bumps into the ropes, really placing all trust in them not breaking as he plunges into and through them into the crowd. He went into the crowd twice and that's always such a strong visual for me, and here the crowds are so close to the ring that he is essentially crowd surfing on men in suits. It's perfect. There's a fantastic spot that I have never seen before, that somebody really needs to steal: on a sunset flip, Oliver traps Khan's legs, holding Khan's legs so that Khan's calves are touching the back of his own thighs, and it looked absolutely impossible to get out of. So far I am undefeated in finding something in these French matches that I have never seen anywhere else.


Francis Louis/Jean Claude Bordeaux vs. Antonio Perero/Mota Dos Santos 4/24/72

SR: Weirdest damn thing I‘ve ever seen. They‘ve got springs at ringside and using them to catapult the wrestlers into the ring at incredible heights. I can‘t find words to do it quite justice. Before the match, both teams come out dressed as corny sci fi movie astronauts while early electronic music blares. Amazing. Tags are signaled by raising a fist and the tag in, the other wrestler catapults into the ring. To make things even weirder, the match has rounds, which I‘ve never seen in a tag match. Perero & Dos Santos were announced as „Portuguese“ but that may not be true at all. Aside from the insane gimmick, the wrestling wasn‘t blow away, although there were a few beautiful armdrags and headscissors. All these guys moved slick as cats. Seems they couldn‘t focus much due to having to do all these jumps while trying not to blow their knees out. They actually didn‘t use the catapults for many moves, though there is the crazy spot where one guy catches the other flying and hits a body slam, not something I would‘ve believed possible before seeing this. Also, guys kept bumping on their back while flying into the ring and they just got up and kept moving. How am I supposed to buy a body slam as a finisher after seeing that? Anyways, this felt like a true crossover of wrestling and acrobatics. I‘m sure a couple AAA guys could do way more with the insane gimmick, but that would be riddled with thigh slapping moves, Canadian Destroyers and backcrackers. What we got here was classier, basically Catch in Space, and it was fairly nice.

PAS: I remember seeing clips of either this match, or another match like it before, but it is nutso that we actually got to see it in full. The Portuguese team doesn't seem to show up again, and I am now wondering if every match in Portugal is a springs match, and this was the 70s French equivalent of one of those ROH Dragon Gate six man tags. All the actual in ring wrestling was pretty cool, working that fast headscissors and armdrags style, including a great short arm scissors exchange, although it was hard for the match to have any structure with guys being flung into the ring. The catapult was really high, they just flew 20 feet into the air before landing in the ring, several times guys would take flat back bumps off of the catapult and jump up, and it hurt the wrestling physics in my brain, it was basically a superplex off a cage with the guy bounding up.  This isn't going to be the best thing we find in this footage, but it is the damndest thing for sure.

MD: Your poor disbelief watching this and all of the back bumps (and their poor backs!). In some ways, I'm glad this wasn't the first bit of footage that was uncovered. If we had gotten this before Cesca or Catanzaro popped up, I think we'd be blind to the failings. Instead, even with the novelty, we can see the cracks. I've been thinking what might have been changed to make this work and here's what I came up with: flip it. They started out with a feeling out process, moved on to a bit more control and build to place the middle falls, and then finished with a fireworks grand finale of guys flying in one after the other towards the draw. It's not that there wasn't some sense of escalation or struggle. For instance, the second round told a story of French control which ended with the round break and was followed by the quick Portuguese pin off of the impressive flying catch, so it was possible. So flip it. If they had started hot and then slowly showed the cost of it all with increasingly less frequent tags and the act of getting into the ring shown as making one vulnerable (which they do sort of play to at the end here), they could have made this resonate much more. Ah well. As for individual performances, it was hard at times to keep track. Dos Santos was impressively agile and seemed to do the best flips into the ring, if that is a new metric for us now; and the stuff at 18:40 might be the single most beautiful exchange we've seen since starting this project. Everyone should go out and gif it and promulgate it on the internet now. Past that, watch a few minutes of the last round and then go and watch the Khan match instead.

ER: I thought this was brilliant. Imagine if you saw this live when you were a kid. How magical must this have seemed? I was taken to events when I was a kid. I went to baseball games, and Sesame Street Live, and the Harlem Clowns (I think a feeder system for the Globetrotters) play local cops and firefighters, and the circus, and the Beach Boys playing Reno with John Stamos actually sitting in on drums. So I saw some shit, pal. Brother I've stood right next to one of those big metal globes that have two guys daredevil riding their motorcycles around really fast just inches from each other. But imagine seeing this? Your whole world would have changed. What else have you, presumably an adult, ever seen like this? But imagine watching this with a child's eyes. Look at how high up in the air these men are crashing from, over and over with no break. Phil said it looked like 20 feet! Imagine what Phil's 20 feet looked like to an 8 year old! This feels more like a 30 minute feature you would find on a new Criterion Collection blu ray, an unearthed documentary of the acrobat wrestlers of Portugal. Where are these men? What happened to their bodies? How long did they have to practice to get the confidence to repeatedly dive into an empty pool for half and hour? I have so many questions and none of us are ever going to have answers to any single one of them. We may be able to piece together loose trends or guesses, but we won't ever really know any of the hows or whats of this. And how beautiful is that? This is a treasure that we have unearthed from a forgotten time capsule, no way of contacting any human being who would have witnessed this spectacle live. This felt beamed from another galaxy. Incomparable.

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