Tuesday is French Catch Day: Finale 2! Parmentiers! Rockies!

Michel Parmentier/Daniel Parmentier (Tony Lamotta) vs. Les Rockies du Ring (Eric LaCroix/Domingo Valdez) 2/17/91

MD: This last gasp of French Catch is from a show called the "3rd Half" or something along those lines, just a sports variety show. This one covered a Karate competition and then this fairly long (30+ mins) match. Michel is Marcel Parmentier's son. Daniel is Tony Lamotta, who we saw in a match from 1980. The Rockies were "Spaniards," but I'm not convinced in LaCroix' case. But despite it being 1991, the stylist side absolutely knew what they were doing and for the most part, this felt like it could have happened in 1976.

Just if it did, the commentary would be sharper, the camera wouldn't miss so many of the bits, and the heels would have been able to base just a bit better for some things. There were a few definite moments where they lost the plot, not going down for a leapfrog or up for a 'rana (I couldn't tell which), Lamotta doing the climb up takedown out of top wristlock only to sort of stumble over (it still worked). And maybe most jarring at all was the Rockies using both a clothesline and a front vertical suplex, neither of which ever showed up in the old footage, not even once until now. 

But the things that shocked being poor probably weren't as shocking to me than the things that went well, which was most of everything, even over 30 minutes. Lots of fast exchanges, lots of mares and takeovers and all the stuff you'd expect out of the back half of the footage (70s and on). They had holds to start, then rope running, then some hard shots and comeuppance. The Rockies controlled by cheating whenever they got close enough in the corner. I think at one point, the crowd gave a bonus, and they interviewed Daniel on the apron mid match. If this is the last match we have from the footage (and it is), it was nice to double back to a lot of those elements and the sheer technique that at least the Parmentier "brothers" brought into play. The commentary talked about the heyday of the 60s and 70s with the names you'd expect (Duranton, Delaporte, L'Ange Blanc, etc) but I'm more open to the idea that these guys were running small scale opposition to a small scale Flesh Gordon operation in a way that gave fans a more genuine traditional experience. The fans for this match seemed to be enjoying themselves at least. This was not without some missteps but in general, it's a nice way end our French Catch journey for now, on the notion that somewhere, even as late as 1991 at least some wrestlers were keeping at least some of the old magic alive.

SR: This was pretty fine. With it being 1991 you kind of fear French Catch might have turned into some kind of travesty (it was certainly going there with Flesh Gordon committing his horrors on New Catch) but wherever this was held they were still holding it high. The technicos looked old as heck but were still pretty spry and it was a long 2/3 falls tag with a quick pace just like in the glory days. The wrestling wasn't quite as mindblowingly fast and inventive but you still got your share of smooth ranas and guys getting bowled around. The rudos - Los Rockies - were a bit generic but solid hands. There was even some cool armworks which lead to some decent reversals. Tony Lamotta looked old as hell here with his balding head but could still deliver, and he looked fired up when he started handing out the manchettes. It does go a bit long but that's kind of the tradition with these.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Lilliputians!

Hassan Bambini vs. El Puma Negro 5/17/86

MD: This one ALMOST slipped through the cracks and that would have been a shame as it was great fun. Bambini at least seems more of a native than Tiny Tom or Cowboy Lang (they were noted as part of Flesh Gordon's stable of wrestlers) and that gave all of this a very different feel while hitting some of the same familiar marks (albeit, sometimes in different ways). Puma Negro was entirely the straight man, basing and occasionally becoming an obstactle for the Hassan Bambini act.

And what an act it was. He was an over the top creature of chaos, more Puck than Lord Littlebrook. He spent the entire match completely and utterly "on", just one entertaining bit after the next while being as over the top as possible, menacing his opponent and the ref to the crowd's delight. There was a combination of spots you'd expect, things I've never seen before, and bits of acrobatics like huge press up monkey flips or catapults where Puma ended up contorted in between the top and middle turnbuckles. 

All of it had the sort of 80s French whimsy you'd expect. My favorite bit might have been Bambini getting frustrated at the ref not counting how he wanted, so he kept going down on his knees and counting in French. When the ref finally got down to show his count pacing, of course Bambini stomped on the ref's fingers. On paper, not much, but the vocal "un doux trois" went a long way. The ref was a good sport overall and took maybe the best comedic bump of the match, kicked off on a hold escape to be lodged into the ropes. And of course, once there, Bambini slammed Puma's head into his gut a few times then tried to blame it all on Puma. Eventually, he dramatically DQed Bambini and gave the match to Puma, doing it as theatrically as possible. Somehow after that he ended up covered in silly string, which is exactly how this thing should have ended. Look, I wouldn't want to spend all my time in this part of French Catch but as a one time visit, it really was a lot of fun.  

ER: I don't know that I've watched much European mighty midgets wrestling and certainly not any from the 80s. Matt mentioned Cowboy Lang, and Lang was living in the Bay Area in the late 90s so I learned American Midget style watching a 50 year old Lang wrestle at fairs and other area Indies, going through the same beats of the same match. I thought it was funny and surprising that these 80s French minis have more in common with American Mighty Midgets style as I just kind of assumed it would have been more like French Catch But Done By Midgets. Instead of seeing smaller wrestlers with exaggerated athleticism like in lucha minis style, it's them doing slightly different Euro Disney variations on classic American midget wrestling. Lucha minis hinge on the basing of the rudos, classic American minis was more about prankster babyface making things difficult for the poor referee tasked with maintaining decorum. That's what we got here. 

Instead of elaborate armdrags it was "will he bite the referee's butt like in American midget wrestling style? Oh, in France they kick the ref in the butt instead, I see." There's more humor placed on the referee humorously covering his crotch with his hands, on how well he utilizes comedic hand cupping. He wasn't the hop around yelping kind of ref. Older. How would he handle the Tossing spots? Once I saw they were a brother of American style, I expected more tossing. I didn't think the kickout into the ref's arms would be done identically. I expected a different punchline. Good to know that's a universal language of the style, but I was holding out for that different punchline delivery. However, I really enjoyed the tease into thinking we were getting a tossing spot, the ref picking up a crying, picked on Bambini in his arms, and instead cradling and rocking him, comforting him. Feeling pity for his playfully menacing antagonist. The ref got caught in the ropes and stuck in a convincing way that worked best at his age/size. He was a ref in his 50s who looked like a less late night TV handsome Tom Snyder and fell back into and hung up in the ropes, great at selling being stuck in the ropes while also trying to hold onto that position for fear of taking a worse bump. The counting pace routine was really great, the referee standing up for his slower measured count and keeping his cool during Bambini's "un doux trois" bullying. Stomping fingers is a spot only used by heels in American wrestling and it takes French comedy style for crowds to laugh at stomped fingers. The acrobatics were saved for the late match run, drawing out the physical routines for a long time before getting to actually replicating combat. By the time Bambini was pulling out his armdrag variations and monkey flip it had been long enough that they could have segued out of a wrestling match entirely and into some other kind of physical performance beyond. 

And it perhaps it did become that, because even being placed in the middle of 1986, nobody would have expected the silly string. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Borne! Dewerdt!

Brigitte Borne vs Leo Dewerdt 8/11/84

MD: A swimming pool match where no one actually ends up in the water. This was actually more of a river match or a lake match. It's probably identifiable but there was a train going by at times which added to the ambiance. I got so many annoying comments begging for more such matches the last time I put a Borne match as public that I don't think I'll do that here. You guys can see it because you check the blog. This was clipped. They call a twenty minute mark at the 10:43 point, give or take, but you do get enough of this to make sense of it. They cut in to the studio and Delaporte commenting to cover the breaks. 

And hey, it's pretty good for what we get. They wrestle for the first ten minutes or so, do one spot where they tease the ref going over (a pretty smooth one actually where Borne navigates Dewerdt to be tied up in the ropes quite well), and then move in to more wrestling, a short beatdown, and the finish. De Werdt was Belgian apparently, mother of three, and a bit of a bruiser. Borne did quite a bit well, including how she engaged the crowd. She was excellent at that. There was a nice rolling armscissors in here.

There was also a spot I'm not going to clip where Dewerdt had her legs split, did a headbutt to her butt, and then tried it again and got caught in headscissors. Some things can stay in 1984 maybe? They cut to Delaporte to talk about it because of course they did. I imagine this was part of a broader card where people did end up in the drink, but this was a little anticlimactic without that I suppose?  

SR: The prayers have been answered - it's another Brigitte Borne match. Oh, and it's a swimming pool match, of course. And it seems to be part of Le Dernier Manchette, so they are interviewing Roger Delaporte, pretending to watch the match at a studio even though this was clearly filmed outdoors. As far as the match goes, it was good. Definitely proved their salt once again. They mostly worked holds. Tight simple stuff, with a few cool escapes and moments. I thought the match would end early when Borne already went for the body checks in the ropes at the 9 minute mark, but they went back and wrestled a bit more. A very young Didier Gapp was the referee here (later the referee at EWP in Hannover) and he was great at teasing himself being thrown over the ropes and landing in the water. Leo Dewerdt was billed as the champion of Belgium. She did some heel stuff like going for the eyes and not too much. Nothing outstanding from her but solid wrestling skill was displayed here. It's not a revelation like the other Brigitte Borne match we saw but it's a fun time and I'm glad I watched it. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Cohen! Shadow!

Georges Cohen vs Black Shadow 7/16/83

MD: This is part of a show with a Flesh Gordon/Walter Bordes vs Eliot Fredrico/Kato Bruce Lee match from the previous week too and I kept that because the version we had before and covered here. This doesn't have the audio timecode issue though so it's an improvement. The Cohen vs Shadow match is new to us.

SR: Cohen has had one of the best singles matches of all the French matches that we've seen in 1968. 15 years later, he sure is aged, but still quite on top of the game. By 1983 these matches had approximated the rhythm closer to a lucha match. Less extensive working of holds, more complicated rope running and snappy armdrags with a rudo bumping a lot. It's a fascinating evolution. Cohen showed he was definitely not coasting by his old skillset. He could do all that. And Black Shadow was an excellent bumper. There may be an argument that the guys working France may have been better rudos than the Mexicans. I mean, Black Shadow had no problem bumping around for Cohen for like 10 minutes straight here, flinging himself into armdrags and outside of the ring. They would work some holds for a bit, and then go back the bumping and stooging. It's really fun to watch. Shadow actually ends up taking up the match working over Cohen with some mean stomps and punches. Nothing mindblowing, it does the job. Shadow actually put up a bit of a fight here but ended up falling to Cohens skill anyways. Perhaps they were a bit long in the tooth here going 20 minutes with the rudo beatdown being a bit much but it was a good match.

MD: Cohen sure was good. The first ten minute had him totally in control and some of his stuff was so slick. He'd torque the arm and then vault over for the headscissors takeover or bump himself with a front flip to set up the bridging headcissors roll over. The rope running was very good. The fans were into it. Shadow did a great job of feeding and running into it all, really bumping all over the place for Cohen. Very entertaining stuff and like I said, slick, just slick. There were two bits of heel control here. Both were quite similar, with a lot of stomps and punches, slamming the head into the turnbuckle, and tossing Cohen out. In the first, Cohen was able to mount a comeback because the ref was getting in the way of Shadow. Cohen went too big on his comeback an the ref got in his way though, letting Shadow take back over. The second, which got over big, had Shadow toss him out one too many times and Cohen yank him out from the floor. Cohen was able to catapult him into the ref too, satisfying everyone. You had the sense (and the footage might justify having this sense) that these two had worked together for years. It showed here. It's late in the game for the French Catch footage, but from a skill standpoint alone, this really does stand up to almost anything in the world in 1983.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corne! Mercier! Samurai!

Jean Corne/Marc Mercier vs Les Samurai 8/21/82

MD: On this last pass with new footage I am a little wistful. Maybe we find some more later but it's just nice to see Jean Corne one last time, even if it was a bit later in his career. This is obviously early in Marc's career. He's only twenty here, I think, and this was a bit of a showcase for his dropkicks, or it was supposed to be. Some hit better than others, though overall he had a number of spots down and felt like he belonged in there more or less, even if he wasn't near the level of Corne or the Yellow Samurai. 

Really loved seeing Corne do his thing here. At the start, he rolled through a mare, and then another, and then just kept rolling and rolling around the ring. The Yellow Samurai then got rolled right out of the ring on a mare. He could still rope run with the best of them and he had some great step over armdrags and what not. The first fall was a short sprint with the stylists having an advantage until the Samurai went dirty first. That led to an abrupt pin off a slam on Corne. He came back fairly quickly in the second fall, which Mercier took eventually with a missile dropkick and body press. It was pretty back and forth overall and they tried to give Mercier a decent amount of shine. There was some ref chicanery towards the end but not enough to really shift the match too much. I'm not sure this would entirely be a memorable one in the grand scheme of the footage, but it was a nice tag that could have been in 72 as well as 82 (a compliment) and a nice final look at Corne. 

SR: Another one of those early 80s tags. Points of curiosity here: they had young fresh upstart Mercier teamed with old guard Jean Corne. Corne could still go a little, although he was more limited. He got a lot of mileage out of his slick foreward rolls. Talk about working smart. Mercier is talented and athletic enough and there were some good exchanges to start. Next point of curiosity: the heels actually did some damage to Corne early. Maybe they were working an injury angle or something since it seemed Cornes back was messed up from a basic body slam and he struggled to keep going. The Samurai did right thing and immediately began targetting his back, with one of them hitting a cool flip senton. It wasn't super expanded upon as Corne ends up making a fairly simple tag and it's not really brought up again safe for another minor injury scare later, but it's a bit of flavor that crept into the old formula of these tags. Other than that the Samurai didn't do a ton here besides bumping a lot and working some choke holds. It was a bit repetitive here and there but overall a solid effort. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Van Buyten! Verhaugue! Firmin! Raspoutine! Peducci! Goude!

Franz Van Buyten vs Luc Verhaugue 10/2/82

MD: Van Buyten is just amazing. This was a joy to watch. He's one of the greatest babyfaces of all time. I watched this and I was more sure of it than ever. Certainly one of the best sellers. This went around twenty and was for a European title. They mentioned how Van Buyten was a former world champion. Verhaugue was French but I don't know a ton else about him. Part of the crowd was for him just because he was France but his actions turned most of the rest (along with Van Buyten's selling and the early exchanges).

Verhaugue was the aggressor from the get go with the initial holds, but Van Buyten, after working his way through them, had technical reversals and answers, be it a monkey flip or an up and over headscissors. That frustrated Verhaugue and he went dirty, never really looking back. Van Buyten sold and sold and sold until he finally tried to get up on the ropes to escape. The ref (apparently a work football ref who was going to become more and more of a mess as the night went on) had admonished Verhaugue up to this point with warnings but he hadn't done quite enough and here he tried to get Van Buyten off the ropes. That infuriated the crowd and some of them started to yell at the ref at ringside. That actually distracted the ref allowing for more cheating by Verhaugue which is something I've never seen before.

Van Buyten was finally able to use one of his trademark transitions, pulling Verhaugue over the top while he had him in a hold and started firing back. When the ref got in his way, he made him join in on it, getting both in the corner and doing his running charge to set up a ten punch. The ref stayed on him and he pulled the ref's shirt off and got DQed. But overall it was a great babyface performance by Van Buyten with Verhaugue doing his part as the aggravated aggressor.  

SR: I'm used to seeing Van Buyten wrestling against monsters, so it's almost odd to see him wrestling someone who looks like a regular person. Verhague was tall, but other than that looked like a regular guy. This was bread and butter Van Buyten stuff - some simple, tight wrestling, before Verhague quickly starts working him over. If you've seen your share of van Buyten matches you can probably guess exactly what happens along the way. Verhague looked good clubbering someone with basic blows but didn't have a very deep skillset. When you are fighting who sells as good as van Buyten you don't really need much more. It worked on the crowd, as once again a big woman got mad at the heel ref and wanted to have a go at him, with only a much skinnier side referee there to hold her back. Van Buyten ends up making his signature comeback and then beats up the ref for the DQ. We get an angry Van Buyten yelling into a mic after the match. Feels odd regular of an occurance this was for Van Buyten. You really get the sense he probably had this exact match with 500 different local bad guys, and everytime it ended with a big woman getting out of her chair and a referee having his shirt torn. 

Raspoutine/Firmin vs Johnny Goude/Rino Peducci 10/2/82

MD: Second match on the show. It was a lot. Exhausting in the amount of stuff here. Very fun to see Firmin (the butler) in this role. He was acknowledged for who he was and he did ok really. Obviously we knew he could bump but he was a good underhanded heel. This version of a Rasputin was a light heavyweight and could move and bump as well. Lots of cheating in the corner with the tag rope too. That sort of thing. and lots and lots of help from the ref who now was totally out to get the crowd and the stylists. 

It was a bit much because Goude (a Belgian) and Peducci (Italian) seemed quite skilled and part of me did, in fact, want to see them in a more conventional match. But it was hard to fault just how entertaining this was for almost every second, even if so much of the heat was on the ref. They'd do bits where they tied up the heels and charged at them in the ropes and he'd get in the way on the third attempt and do a little strut in his purple jacket (for his shirt had been destroyed). Some other really fun comedy bits like grabbing both Firmin's mustache and Raspoutine's beard and then having the partner come off the top with a double stomp on them. Goude even did some dives. It got pretty wild overall with the fans furious at the ref and them doing spot after spot after spot. At one point Raspoutine took ten headscissor takeovers in a minute span and then sold like he was dead and the ref had to bring him back to life. It's the most "spot monkeys" clip outside of luna catch and I don't think I can ever let anyone see it. This ended more or less like you'd expect with all the heels and the ref piled up on each other as the stylists counted and then with them getting the actual win but the ref throwing it out only to end up as a battering ram to be used on the heels. The last image is the stylists whacking everyone with the victory flowers. Madcap and worth watching once but I'm glad not every match in the footage was like this. 

SR: Firmin, is it the same guy who was with Robert Duranton like 20 years earlier? How odd to see a noble valet tagging with the rugged Rasputin. Looking at the guys in this, you'd think it might turn out to be some local shitshow because who on earth has ever heard of the likes of Johnny Goude, Rino Peducci and the French version of Rasputin? But somehow French TV never disappoints and this is another really good match. Someone must've done a remarkable job to keep enforcing the quality even way into the 80s, because these guys did complicated, athletic, fast paced exchanges as well as pretty much anyone else we have seen so far. In, fact things veered outside of the standard stuff and into interesting territory here and there. Such as the way Goude would use the leapfrog to set up a dropkick over the ropes, or Firmins slick body scissor counter to a slingshot splash of all things. Goude even ended up hitting a plancha to the outside. And Peducci, for his pasty look, had a no-hands kip up that was as good as anyones. So they start with a bunch of fun wrestling, and then things veered into the usual heatseeking to pad the time to 30 minutes. Heels weren't mindblowing but good enough. Once again the ref is evil, and he has this goofy disco shirt and would do a Fargo strut everytime he foiled something the babyfaces tried. It was just goofy enough to be entertaining as usual. At one point Goude hit like 10 huracanranas to Raspoutine, who sold this as a KO. It seems Raspoutine is counted out but they revive him and the match continues for more simple crowd pleasing stuff. Johnny Goude, whereever you are, you convinced me with your one TV appearance that you were a fine fine wrestler. This was a lot of fun, although it played out in the usual. You notice that these euro guys always did the same crowd pleasing spots and rarely ventured into new territory. Maybe it's because this show was a touring act, maybe they just didn't think to try new things, but it is noticable that they would do some of the same spots that you'd see 10 years earlier. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Tom! Lang! Mercier! Sanniez!

Tiny Tom vs Cowboy Lang 7/3/82

MD: This is one we thought we had at some point and that might be out there but we never did find it until now. We come in 10 minutes JIP and go another 10 and it was quite good actually. Delaporte is the ref and of course he was perfect for this scenario. What i liked about it though is that there was a decent amount of wrestling between the comedy spots. They went hand to hand repeatedly and Lang especially had some nice stuff including a roll back wristlock takedown and a roll through double arm where he tied Tom up. Tom was more apt to use roughneck tactics, step on the toes or toss Lang out. I bet if we had the first ten there'd be even more wrestling and this would be even better.

The comedy absolutely hit. A lot of it are spots you've seen before like Delaporte catching Tom out of a pin attempt kick out or Tom being pushed off on a figure four and crotching Delaporte. High class stuff but Delaporte's reactions pushed it all over the top. Right at the twenty minute announcement they went home with it with Lang winning on an airplane spin (though making sure to dizzily wave to Delaporte before falling on Tom). And everyone was happy with what they got.

Marc Mercier vs Albert Sanniez 7/3/82

MD: How good is even old Sanniez? Let me put it this way. If this had been the first Catch match we came across, instead of Cesca vs Catanzaro, we would have thought that young Marc Mercier was one of the best wrestlers in the world. Sanniez is just that good. We had a few matches of his throughout the footage but not nearly as many as we would have liked so it's great to see him here, even if a lot of the goal was to put a spotlight on Guy's 20-21 year old kid. 

The first ten minutes of this was Sanniez really putting him through his paces with a lot of great wrestling, hold after hold, with Mercier having all the counters you'd want, including up and overs and everything else. At the ten minute mark, Mercier did a cartwheel out of a throw and Sanniez got annoyed and clocked him and the match opened up. Lots of little moments of personality here where he'd feign that he didn't use a closed fist. Mercier was rough around the edges but he had a wild sort of abandon which made some things look better and some worse. Sanniez went for a flip bomb at one point and Mercier didn't make it over and landed in a nasty way. 

They'd ground things back down with quick pin exchanges or other bits of wrestling before going back to the moves and it was all quite good. Mercier took a nasty bump over the top and sold it big until his comeback, which didn't quite connect for me. Just lack of experience and an unwillingness to look vulnerable. If he had gotten leaned on just a bit longer it would have meant all the more. But in general, this was good and I'm putting most of that on Sanniez.

SR: It's a look at late career Albert Sanniez and young Marc Mercier. God what a size mismatch this was. Mercier towered over the old veteran. But all that be damned, they did some really good wrestling here. Mercier is a perfectly competent young athletic guy and Sanniez is too much of a master to not go hard into some slick exchanges. Some really good stuff early on. For some reason we haven't seen many highly technical matches in the colour footage, maybe they didn't make TV, maybe they weren't archived, maybe no one could do them anymore, so this was a bit of a flashback to the glory days of lightweight catch. Sanniez ended up dropping Mercier on his head with an ill fated attempt at a powerbomb and it seemed they lost their way a bit at that time. The bout fizzled along with Sanniez being seemingly too proud to let Mercier outwrestle him and the bout failed to build steam. There were some sick manchettes and both guys threw punches, so it's not like it was a bad bout or anything, but it made me want to go back and check out the matches from the glory days. This had a good ending though with Mercier hitting a missile dropkick of all things and then at least getting a good win over the old coot.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Zarak! Bete Humaine! Di Santo! Mores!

Zarak/La Bete Humaine vs Michel Di Santo/Eddy Mores 9/30/81

MD: Let's just say that this is a rare, rare match that took place on what is undoubtedly one of the most important days of my life. I guess I'm glad Zarak and La Bete were doing their thing on that date somewhere in the world. Couple of real characters here. Zarak was, of course, Dave Larsen, aka Batman, who passed away October of 2024. You have to love just watching him move as he puts theatricality in every step. I have no idea if this is the same La Bete that we saw in 71 and I'm not going to go back to compare/contrast but he's a guy in basically a cowskin costume and mask but one that can, when he is called upon to do so, work the style very naturally. Di Santo is a few years older than we last saw him and I'm not too sure about Eddy Mores except for he's older and dubbed the Captain.

Start and end of this were quite good but I thought it had some issues in the middle. We'll get to those. The best stuff in here was when La Bete was really wrestling. Some very slick exchanges around wristlocks and what not, especially with Mores. He'd generally then fly across the ring with an axe handle or put on a choke before they'd go back to the wrestling. So long as the balance was there, it generally worked and was probably additive overall. Zarak was more prone to picking his spots, laying in a kick or a knee and prancing around in a subdued but affected way. He had some nice, caring interactions with La Bete which again were additive overall. 

When they were in control, it was a bit too choke and grind heavy without enough variety or actual heat. Part of the problem there was the referee who would get in the way and allow for tags when they should have been building heat again or to cut off a comeback without any real narrative gain to it. Just too overbearing overall. Both fall finishes were good though with Zarak and La Bete taking two in a row. Solid ceiling on this one but the floor was just a bit too low maybe. 

SR: I missed La Bete Humaine during the last French mega-watch, so this is actually my first time seeing him. This is in colour so we see that La Bete Humaine has white-brown fur, and kind of looks like a cow, but his head is dark and furry and kind of reminds me of the wolfman. Is he a cow? Does he dress himself in cow fur? That doesn't seem very beastlike. Regardless this is a pretty fun match. La Bete Humaine definitely has the vibe of something that Survival Tobita or Goro Tsurumi would face. But this is a very mannered French match. The two masked monsters bump around for a lot of snappy armdrags, and the two technicos are a lot of fun.  Eddy Mores has a cool vibe with his greying look and being really athletic, Michel de Santo is a bit non-descript but he is as solid as any French technico. They both were fast, technically skilled, and a had a lot of fun comebacks against the monstrous onslaught of La Bete Humaine and Zarak. The two masked men were good as you expect from French heels. La Bete doesn't bring quite as much flavor as you expect, he does like the claw hold a lot which is unique for Catch and he would do these graceful technical arm takedowns into claw holds because it's France, daddy. He even looked quite bumbling like when he throw one of the faces to his own corner accidentally and then was stuck adjusting his mask. Not everyone can be the Anderson brothers. In the end it was a fun match with a lot of cool wrestling and the funny sight of La Bete Humaine will Zarak did his best to maintain his classy swaggering. Technicos looked very good. I wouldn't mind seeing more of either of them here, and I imagine La Bete Humaine might be pretty fun in a singles match so I'll probably have to go back and watch that at some point. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Manneveau! Gessat! Aubriot! Bayle!

Les Blousons Noirs (Marcel Manneveau/Claude Gessat) vs Remy Bayle/Dan Aubriot 1/2/66

MD: More studio catch. We have this match in a different setting but I don't remember it well. I think, at the time, I didn't realize Bayle became Der Henker either and I imagine this is shorter which probably is a positive overall. As a slice of life thing, they have Couderc's grown up (or close to it) son introduce him, which I thought was a nice touch.

Match itself was a very good tag of its kind. Bayle had strength and technique. Aubriot had speed and technique. The Blousons pulled hair, came in illegally, controlled the ring, double teamed when they could. Thus there was a balance. Everyone worked into everyone else's spots well. It's a testament to Bayle that he could do both this and the Henker act. 

The stooging spots were all entertaining. The dogged offense by the Blousons was properly nasty and hit just the right note of enhanced reality (one pulling the rope up while the other draped the neck of his opponent over it). Gessat would miss a punch and bump on it but Manneveau was the one who would go way over the top with his reactions. Everything went wild midway through as a Blouson took a bump over the top from the ref (after tossing his opponent out) and they went towards the stands putting the cameras in danger. Just nice use of the studio. 

Great finishing stretch too as Aubriot really flexed his speed with rope running and ranas and what not. They did a double ko where they crashed into each other but Aubriot just beat the ten count (a finish I've rarely seen in any French Catch, let alone a tag) and there was much celebrating. Very fun stuff. 

SR: This was another match in that studio setting. A lot of quietness early on with no fans in sight, and they kind of wrestled in a suitable manner. A bit subdued but with plenty of neat wrestling going on. It never ceases to amaze me how many cool touches these guys would seamlessly work into an exchange, such as the blocked hammerlock that lead into a slick backslide. Even modern worker rarely think of things like that. They moved more towards the stooging, bumping and heel shenanigans that we associate with French tags and at that point the crowd came alive. Ridiculously well executed, down to even minute details such as Mannevau's headlock aiming the face perfectly at the camera. Things got more unruly with one of the babyfaces using the referee to flip out the ring and then the fight spilling into the audience ranks, which is not something we had quite seen like that before I think. They wrapped it up with some slick exchanges for a somewhat (18 minutes) match. A good match, not mega outstanding but definitely worth watching just for the clear look at the wrestling alone.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Magnier! Plantin! Bordeaux! Pereira! Di Santo! Chaisne!

8/7/76

Bob Plantin vs. Fred Magnier

MD: Three matches on this show, with the second one being brand new and the first and third being new to us. They were on, coincidentally, Bob Plantin's YouTube channel. We get about 8 minutes JIP here. Plantin is quite young. Magnier is rather pigfaced in a good way for a heel. He's a former firefighter and called the legionnaire since he was apparently in the Legion for five years. Delaporte is the ref looking casual. They say he's 47 but he looks like he's 47 going on 67 with all the grey. 

Plantin was full of energy. While he sold with his whole body and flopped about sympathetically and then came back with fiery (even if he didn't hit nearly as hard as Magnier), I do think maybe he did too much too often, zooming out of the ring, doing a taupie escape without the build, going through Magnier's legs, etc. There was one great bit I don't remember ever seeing before where he went for a cross headscissors but sort of rode through with it into a roll up exchange. Eventually Magnier leaned on him too much and ignored Delaporte too much and they started scrapping but by then Plantin had an injured ear and Delaporte called the match. This would have been better if he called the match first and then when Magnier didn't let up, they THEN scrapped. Here the drama was backwards.

Antonio Pereira vs. Jean-Claude Bordeaux

MD: This went about ten minutes but it was an incredibly skillful ten minutes. Pereira is billed as Portuguese and Bordeaux we've seen in tags with Francis Louis. Both of them were lighter and they could absolutely go. They kept it mostly gentlemanly though Pereira was the aggressor. Bordeaux had a counter for everything though. Lots of sharp hanging on to holds and through throws, though nothing was worked for long as they kept things moving. Sharp headscissors and a 'rana and some very slick ways to land on one's feet. I'm not sure how much of it was Pereira's basing but Bordeaux looked extremely sharp. About two thirds through, Pereira started to lean down upon him a bit more, maybe apologetically, but definitively nonetheless. Despite that, Bordeaux was able to leap up to the top rope and then come flying back with a body press for the win. Definitely a good one to check out if you just have ten minutes to see just how good these guys were at what they did.

Michel Chaisne vs. Michel Di Santo

MD: This is a very late look at Chaisne who we haven't seen since the early 60s if I'm not mistaken. He's got grey hair and seems to be in charge of sports for some town or another as his day job. This is our earliest look at Lino's son Michel. It's twenty minutes or so (a little less) and it's very good. Chaisne had grey hair but he could still go, still knew all the tricks, still had all the technique. The start of the match had Di Santo whipping him around with his arm or his neck on these tight takeovers and they all looked brutal. Lots of hard hitting shots as well, with Di Santo bumping into the top rope throat first after one and Chiasne crashing into Delaporte (the ref here) and even over the top at one point. That gave us more extracurriculars as Magnier, in the crowd after the first match got into it with Chaisne and got routed out the other side of the ring for his trouble.

They didn't overtly play up the young vs old as much as you think, leaning instead into technique and hard shots. It did seem like Chaisne controlled the holds a bit more and had more answers, even if Di Santo was happy to move with energy and give him problems. Finish had both of them sailing over the top and the crowd helping Chaisne back into the ring first for the countout. This made me wish we had another fifteen years of Chaisne matches basically.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Fryziuk! Batistou!

Yanneck Fryziuk vs Batistou 10/12/75

MD: We encounter once again Jean Frisuk (who we now think the best spelling of is as seen above), a Franco-Polish heavyweight who we have spattered about in the footage. This is our first look at Batistou, though he may be out there in one other match not in the collection. He is also a heavyweight, apparently a former rugby player, here noted as the son of a blacksmith and an ironworker artisan himself. He has a small band, including an accordion player out there supporting him and does come off as a sort of folk hero type. 

He's also a heavyweight and this is a pretty measured one. The advantage of a heavyweight contest is that all the shots hit harder and have more heft behind them, that all of the technique has a bit more weight to it. And you do get some of the latter as Fryziuk uses a series of clever go behinds on Batistou. Batistou counters more with raw power and headlock takeovers and the like. Fryziuk had the skill and could out wrestle Batistou but Batistou had the heart and almost childlike temper. They tease animosity as it goes, a shove out of the corner, pushing the ref away at a key moment, that sort of thing, but everyone in that crowd is waiting for things to boil over and it takes its good time to get there. When it does, it's pretty good though, especially once the band starts playing which they note is like "spinach" for him. He has one flurry towards the end that is almost worth twenty minutes of very deliberate pro wrestling to get to. Almost. 

I think, in the end, if I was in that crowd, I would have rather seen a hard hitting middleweight contest, however. The big guys are good novelty but by 75, these two at least, couldn't quite keep up. 

SR: They had a band for this that kept playing this jolly music, making it easily the most whimsical match we've seen so far. The music was fun a bit unfittin at times like when they tried to tease an intense moment and then this jolly music starts blaring. This was mostly clean wrestling throughout. They tease tempers flaring a few times but mostly calmed it back down. Only at the end did they flare tempers. These are two chunky gentleman, and it's fun to watch them do some slick and fast movements. Nothing mindblowing in terms of technique but it was all well worked and kept a good pace. Fryziuk had this leg stretch that turned Batistou upside down that was pretty great. Fun match though it felt a bit like a preliminary contest.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mantopolous! Lemagouroux! Weicz! Delaporte!

Vassilios Mantopolous vs Gilbert Lemagouroux 1/24/65

MD: As we're just on our last run (that we know of at least) of matches here, I love to look at the presentation and some of the cultural bits, even if they are still alien to me. This was another studio show. Here we have an announcement up from that conditionally, as it had not been confirmed, François Bonlieu, French alpine skier and gold medalist in the 1964 Winter Games, was going professional and would compete at the Professional Championships in the US. 

Bollet (introduced as a grand poet) was there and just nodded a long as they discussed the matches for the night. Starting with the lightweights (which were heavier than in boxing since the heavyweights were heavier). Lemagouroux was the champion of Brittany and Mantopolous the champion of Greece. When the fans got up for Mantopolous mid-match the commentary noted that this was France appreciating its Greek roots and applauding the legacy that Homer bestowed upon them. Funny stuff.

SR: Really good match. Part of me is just happy to see some wrestling after that travesty with the bull, but this was genuinely very good. I expected poor Gilbert, who didn't stand out in a big way in the tags we've seen him in, to be completely run over by Mantopolous, but he stood his ground and actually dominated quite a bit. Gilbert is really solid, goes along really well with Mantopolous stuff, really liked the ways in which he'd just yank Mantopolous down by a wrist or armlock. This was in front of a big curtain, like a theater, and it made me wonder if it was another studio match kinda deal. We don't see the audience, but we hear lots of applause, and the match was worked so simple that anyone can understand it. Textbook stuff kinda. There was a segment where Gilbert kept his opponent in a headlock, always resorting to hair pulls to maintain control, not something we've seen a ton of but it was really well done. And Mantopolous is always impeccable, really explosive and spectacular when it's time to make an escape. His flying headiscissors were just weep-inducingly beautiful. In the end Gilbert didn't stand a big chance but they topped it of with a perfect sequence. It's weird this kinda stuff doesn't stand out in a huge way in the grand scheme of French Catch but in another universe it's  like the best studio TV match ever. I'd part hard pressed to think of anything better to teach a new audience about the magic of Catch.

MD: I agree with Sebastian here. This is just perfect Intro-to-Catch, at least the lightweight style. As accessible as some of those shorter Prince vs Noced/Richard touring type matches. Like those, you could pull out any number of gifs such a Mantopolous getting out of a hamerlock by going not just up and over but through the legs to turn it into a roll up, or even the way he'd go up for a dropkick but do a headscissors takeover instead, or the multiple kip ups when he was armbarred before he escaped out of it, or the way he'd step up on Gilbert's leg to vault up and over him, and I can go on and on. But what made it all work was that he had to struggle for each of those escapes, that Gilbert sold them with frustration and meanness, coming back with enraged kicks and stomps, and that each and every one was built to in its own way. That's part of why this is perfect to show, because you see all the exclamation points, but also the meaningful, direct sentences that led to them. Just beautiful, beautiful wrestling all around.

Eddy Weicz vs Roger Delaporte

MD: Pre-show they had talked up Weicz as world champion and acknowledged as such by both Americans and Europeans. Carpentier is amazing. My appreciation has only grown and grown. He is a star. He always presented himself on TV better than his peers and this show gave him even more opportunity to do so. Maybe it doesn't always make for the best matches, but I always come out impressed by his savvy. He's always punctuating things, always getting an extra shot in, always standing up to the ref and his opponents. he has that underlying element of being a bully that fans love. Post match, when Bollet is checking on Delaporte, he dropkicks him for no reason and then hits a spin kick on the ref and the fans love it because of course they do. He's always reaching, always engaged, always putting an extra flourish on things. 

And maybe there's even an extra level of construction to the spots. If this was Delaporte vs Leduc they'd build to the toupie headscissors takeover by making Leduc really work for it. Here they do that (to a lesser degree) but then do a spot where Carpentier pumps it repeatedly and then one where Delaporte holds on to the ropes so he doesn't go over until he finally gets his comeuppance. I really do get the sense he was decades ahead of his peers in some ways and that's why his act transferred so well.

And of course, Delaporte is one of the great villains of the 20th century because he sells everything. He sells the indignity of life at every point. There's a moment towards the end where he tries for (another) cheapshot, Carpentier moves due to the crowd warning him, and then, just because he couldn't get his cheapshot, Delaporte has a fit. And it's awesome. It's selling the emotional blow of it all. That obviously resonated with both me and Sebastian as you'll read below. They'd do these bits where Carpentier would get the better of him repeatedly and he'd just lose his cool and start choking him. It was a moral victory for Carpentier even if it was Delaporte leaning down on him. And then when they got slugging, he was just so good at it. He's sort of unassuming at first and doesn't do the flashy things (even though he can) but what he does do he was as good at anyone doing, and as I said, this was just a perfect setting for these two.

SR: Well, maybe this is the perfect studio wrestling. Great mix of wrestling and bullshit. Wiecz is in a ridiculous striped shirt. Delaporte goes after him at the bell, and now the crowd seems indeed to know what's going on so maybe they aren't that unfamiliar with wrestling. Wiecz literally flips off Delaporte, cartwheels around him a bunch, does a weird hip shake, and Delaporte scurries for the hills, only to immediately try a dirty takedown through the ropes. Awesome stuff. They just keep going like this, always doing a little something to keep things engaging along with the wrestling, which is mostly Delaportes basic holds vs Wiecz more athletic stuff. A bitch slap here, a little kick in the taint there, some pretty hard looking knuckle punches etc. I love the crowd engagement. When Delaporte even tries to grab the ropes for the slightest advantage, they are immediately in on his case, alerting the referee. Later, Delaporte tries to sneak up on Carpentier from behind, but the crowd alerts him in time, allowing Carpentier to evade the assault. Of course, Delaporte cusses them out for that. Is it really such a surprise the fans were super engaged, when they could so vividly observe their engagement have an immediate effect on what happens in a match? That's what sets wrestling apart from movies and theater. You can shout at the movie all you want, the murder is still gonna happen. Not in wrestling though, you can participate. That kinda stuff is pretty much absent from modern TV matches where every move is carefully choreographed and there's little room for interactions like that. Maybe having every match go 20 minutes to allow for stuff like this really is the way to go. The finish here is cartoonishly violent as Wiecz puts the Inoki-style falling indian deathlock on Delaporte but instead of falling next to him he drops his bodyweight onto him, squashing poor Delaporte to a smear as is his rightfully comeuppance. After the match Bollet also comes in in a suit and gets a savate kick too for his troubles. Way too fun.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Bollet! Bernaert! Di Santo! Zarpa!

Andre Bollet/Pierre Bernaert vs Lino Di Santo/Armand Zarpa Intervilles 8/27/64

MD: Disclaimer up front. This isn't exactly a match per se, but it does involve some of the names we've seen the most and it gives us a different cultural look at things and maybe a bit more about how Catch fit into the national consciousness by the mid 60s. If you didn't see the clips on Twitter that Phil Lions posted a couple of weeks back, go watch the video first and then come back and read this. This is sixty years old and a historical relic and like everything else, we will treat it as such.

Intervilles was a competition show where they pitted two different towns against each other. It had a cow/bull theme. They had four of the best wrestling on a mat in a field of sorts against each other in a tag with each representing one of the two towns. I always get the impression Bollet was a bit of a break out star but his movie appearances don't really kick off until 65. The Bollet/Delaporte album was 63 though. Regardless, he's not treated as more of a star here than the other three. In the early introductions, Di Santo has a very deep voice. Good to know.

We just get a few minutes of action before everything breaks down but it is interesting. They didn't have a lot of room to work with and whenever Zarpa and Di Santo got too close to the heels, they'd liberally throw shots without tagging and get yelled at by the ref. Even just a few minutes of this is worth watching to see what they do without ropes, when they just have a few feet this way or that to move in, what holds and throws they choose to do. I wouldn't want it to be someone's introduction to French Catch but it makes you wonder if they trained or practiced with a mat like this, etc. 

And of course, a few minutes in, it all comes to naught as they release the bull. The wrestlers retreat to the walls. The bull gets distracted by the rodeo clown (or what not). The wrestlers go back and wrestle a bit more. The bull comes back. The wrestlers retreat. It's treated as great comedy by the production even as the host basically calls the whole thing off.

Then he asks the wrestlers to help wrangle the bull and if you know anything about these four, you know that Andre Bollet is going to bump at least once for the bull, and after playing matador with some cloth or another, he does just that. Meanwhile, Bernaert (who had a close call himself) pulls the bull's tail. Anyway, they can't get the bull down despite their best effort and everything just disintegrates from there. So not a lot of actual wrestling to talk about but as we have more matches to come, it was worth sharing and spending a few minutes on. We do have another episode of Intervilles later (a swimming pool match), but YouTube isn't letting me share that so I did clip some of it on Twitter. 

SR: Well, they decide to put a mat in bullfighting arena and hold a wrestling match there. I didn't know France had bullfighting. They actually wrestle normally for about 2 minutes with things looking good as usual and then they let an actual bull in the arena and it all goes haywire because everyone's running for safety. They keep trying to restart the match and the bull keeps interrupting. At one point Bernaert gets tackled by the bull and the referee also narrowly dodges a charging bull while they wrestlers have to abandon the hold they were working. Eventually the seconds (people more experienced with bullfighting I assume) get into wrestling the bull with a few guys getting run over. Eventually they all try teaming up on the bull, with Bernaert pulling his tail and kicking, probably trying to pin him to the mat but they don't succeed. Well this was certainly the most animal cruelty I've probably seen in a wrestling match outside of Japan.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Leduc! Corn! Henker! Samourai!

Gilbert Leduc/Jacky Corn vs Der Henker/Le Samourai 6/13/75

MD: Some old friends here in Corn and Henker (Remy Bayle). We're not entirely sure who Samourai was  but he was pretty good at what he did and we do have various Samourais in other 70s footage. They made sure to note that we had an Axis team on the heel side. I will say this though: the Henker gimmick was a few years in now. He's a monster, a brick wall, someone you're not going to stagger back with even a strong shot, but he's not the monster he was a few years before. Remember, he once took on both Corn and Leduc by himself. Here they needed to take out a leg or use finesse to take him down for the most part (though Leduc could manage it, eventually, with even a headlock takeover worked hard enough). And he ultimately ate a very clean pin off of a very clean slam to end the second fall in the match. Still, most of the time, they had to double team or outsmart a double team attempt to really get him down and they recovered more often than not against Samourai. 

This was probably a little long going ~40 with the introductions but every exchange was good. It just means you ended up seeing Leduc's toupie headspin 3-4 times when 1-2 would have done the trick instead. Samourai was slick, able to do the karate shtick but also keep up with all of the wrestling and feed when he had to. When he was in there against Corn they were able to turn up the speed a little bit. He also had a lot of very fun comedy bits where he slid around the ring and sometimes all the way out to the first row. The first fall was long and didn't have too much peril for the stylists. The second fall was shorter but had them working from underneath (Corn especially) a little more. I'm not saying the stakes weren't there because Henker always was a threat but again, this wasn't the Henker of a few years earlier. Lots of good individual moments and spots because Corn catching Samourai in an unlikely body scissors or Leduc torquing Henker's arm one way and then the other to get him down will always delight, but there was a moment thirty minutes in where it did feel a little much having not watched one of these long tags in a while. Still another enjoyable entry into the Henker vs Leduc/Corn feud (one of the better feuds of the 70s that we have considerable footage of) overall.

SR: I think this is the latest apearance we have of Gilbert Leduc. Cagematch says he indeed retired in 1975, so this might be a last hurray of sorts. He still does the beautiful head spinning escape. Other than that this was notably slowed down. There's some somewhat compelling work but also a lot of holds and the whole thing feels way too long. Give some credit to Le Samurai, its hard to read 'Le Samurai' and not think of Alan Deloin, but this masked guy did a few nifty things. One thing I noticed that masked heels seem less incompetent and outmatched than your typical French heels. Samurai is able to do a bit of neat wrestling, including a rope hanging choke move that was really neat and also those nifty rolling bumps and odd mannerisms, and the Henker is at least hard to get off his feet. There is some of the fun bumping and stooging that we know from the French tags and a few good moments such as a crossbody being caught into a gutwrench suplex. But yeah this was too long and slow paced overall. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mercier! Kamikaze!

Guy Mercier vs. Kamikaze (Mitsui Dozan - Modesto Aledo) 10/4/71

MD: This is a historical match but ultimately a disappointment. At the start of the match Kamikaze unmasks. They claim this is because there are as many as 11 fake Kamikazes running around France wrestling and I believe it from some of the other things we've heard. We had seen Aledo in this get up one later time and it's striking. He was shaved bald and either had parts of his face taped back or makeup on to look unique to say the least. Mercier is a higher weight class and they note that both at the start and after the match when Mercier is interviewed and notes that this must be the real Kamikaze after all and he'd know after wrestling him. 

Either because of the weight difference or just to get over the gimmick (I think the latter), Aledo completely loses himself in the character. For such an agile, technically sound wrestler to do so is a skill of itself and worth noting and respecting but were we to get one more Aledo match, I would not want it to have been this one, historical or no. There really are no long holds, though there are a few clever takeovers. There are a lot of karate chops, a lot of cheap shots, some hair pulling, a lot of mugging. There is a taupie (I always miss the "i" I've been informed) escape by Mercier and even a very short giant swing. Mercier even does this really great press slam gutbuster, and at one point he does fire back with some big shots. Most of this, however is Kamikaze skulking around and chewing the scenery. Eventually, he hits too many throat shots and tosses the ref away and that's the match. A couple of good individual exchanges and you have to respect how intensely they wanted to establish the bankable character and push back against the fakes, but knowing what Aledo is capable of, ultimately disappointing.  

SR: There's a bit of irony in how Modesto Aledo is this legendary grappler, but most of what we have of him is him doing the Kamikaze act. It's grade A pro wrestling bullshit, but I can enjoy some bullshit pro wrestling. There's a lot of cool things about Kamikaze. The way he moves, the creepy demeanour and appearance, the throat chops and nasty chokes. That thing he does where he gets flung over the top rope and somehow holds on and slides back in through the middle rope is amazing. And Guy Mercier is a real wrestlers wrestler type who I think probably can't have a bad match. It makes for some fun unique wrestling to watch, although you do end up wishing they had archived Guy Mercier vs Modesto Aledo proper at some point. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Richard!

Petit Prince vs Jacky Richard 11/6/66

MD: Both wrestlers were young here, Prince at 23 and Richard at 22. As much as I like the really slick Saulnier matches, my favorite Prince stuff is always him matched up against a bully and Richard is quite the bully here. There's just much more of a sense of build and payoff in those matches and contrast really does make the world go round. 

Here this meant that Richard really ground down Prince. He had five minutes early on where he just tore apart the leg. Prince would try to reverse it, and sometimes would even come up with a reversal attempt (the most memorable had each going for a crab at the same time) but Richard's superior side would combine with the damage already done to keep him down. The crowd was increasingly incensed as Richard used the ropes and really just because Prince was being contained. And the legwork was mostly to punish and contain because when he did come back, he hit one of his amazing flurries of move after move, incredibly dynamic stuff. 

Richard stayed on him however. and really started beating him with stomps and kicks. He'd toss Prince out and when Prince tried to get back in, would knock him not just off the apron but into the third row (where he was caught by a woman who gave Richard the what for). When he tried to get back up again he ended up in the third row again. They moved into another comeback shortly thereafter and you half got the sense it was to avoid a riot. Richard ended up tied up tight in the ropes as Prince hit him with shot after shot after shot. The finish played into all those extracurriculars on the floor as Richard went to knock him off again only for Prince to catch him. The act was still developing but this was still primal, spectacular stuff.

SR:  I think this is the youngest we have seen Jacky Richard, which is kind of nice. Now we know he wasn't always crusty and old. This felt almost like a very mat-based match for the Prince. I mean, the first 5 minutes only had a cool backflip from him, otherwise they were working a modified headlock and step over toe hold. The Prince did get on a few tears with his beautiful athletic offense, but it wasn't all out like we had seen in other matches. The match was more about Richard garnering heat by being a bastard. He really tore up the Prince's leg. It didn't stop the Prince from hitting his stuff but it looked nasty. At one point he kept throwing the Prince into the crowd over and over with folks looking really upset and throwing trash in the ring, so it was a good night of work for Jacky Richard. He also had a great looking lift into a gutbuster. The Prince's comeback was more about beating the shit out of Richard and less about hitting his spots, which was pretty cool to see. A fairly typical French TV match for the time, upgraded with the Prince's cool agility, and Jacky Richard looking like a particularily nasty bastard. Would've blown a few minds if it were the first French match we had seen, still a pretty decent addition to the collection.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mantopolous! Israel! Catanzaro! Lemagourou!

Vassilios Mantopolous/Ischa Israel vs Billy Catanzaro/Gilbert Lemagourou 6/19/66

MD:  This was part of "Télé Dimanche", which was a popular variety show, and it took place in the show's studio. There's a white backdrop behind them and the crowd is all facing them from one side. There's a musical artist (Johnny Hallyday) sitting in on commentary at times and, interestingly enough, Catanzaro's wife and two kids were there as well. They ask her questions now and again but she doesn't seem particularly bothered or interested in any of this, even when he's getting routed. She's used to it. She does note he's also a delivery driver and does weight training every Thursday. His kids don't seem to think he'll win. Considering how often we've seen the stylist win these matches (most of the time really) that doesn't surprise me.

It's a fun setting and there's maybe a slight but only slight exhibition-y feel to it. In general you get the real deal and in 1966 I'm not sure if there were two wrestlers as good in the world as Mantopolous and Catanzaro. It's a welcome blast just seeing Mantopolous scrunch down as he entered the ring before pouncing forth and Catanzaro met him in kind. They did so many acts, so many bits, all sorts of little moments of trickery where Mantopolous would draw him in. It's not just that some of the bits are things I'd never seen before, but it's that they perform it so well. Mantopolous ties up Lemagourou towards the end and while Catanzaro breaks it up, it was the most believable I've ever seen the spot done. Likewise some of the Lady in the Lake bits. 

Lemagourou played his part well, a bit more of an oaf or a stooge. The straight man to Catanzaro's inflamed and put upon character actor. He'll walk right into Mantopololus' traps (or Israel's European Uppercuts) while Catanzaro charges into them, though he was also more apt to take big bumps over the top (including right into the judges which everyone loved). And Israel did well too, hitting hard when it was his turn and getting swept under by illegal doubleteams by the heels, though he was overshadowed by Mantopolous, but then most people would be.

There was real familiarity between Mantopolous and Catanzaro which let them do the bit at the end of the first fall where Catanzaro hit a tombstone position press-up facebuster only for Mantanpolous to reverse the second attempt for a tombstone or when Catanzaro hit his spinout backbreakers twice on Israel only for Israel to tag out and Mantopolous to hit Robinson and Conjuro backbreakers. There was once or twice where things seemed to get off the rails just a bit, but in general, this was meant to entertain and it absolutely did.

SR: Well, it's another 25 minutes of pretty amazing popcorn wrestling from maybe the most reliable crew in all of wrestling when it comes to this stuff. Seeing all these guys again so suddenly after we only got a few glimpses at them a few years ago is kind of a crazy occurrance. But here they are, doing their thing. They probably had this match like 500 times, that's how seamless and never lost they go about their wrestling. This had a cool setup being in a TV studio with a white background, tall referee in a smoking, you just can't have this stuff anymore. This had the typical formula, lots shine from your technicos, some rough moves from the heels, an absolute crap ton of sometimes comedic stooging and bumping to entertain the audience. You get the sense that this was probably a deliberate kind of TV psychology, give the audience something joyful to have a romp with. 

And these guys have endless shit they can do to fill the 25 minutes time. Mantopoulos with his endless bag of George Kidd style tricks, and Catanzaro and Lemagourou with their stooging, bumping and muggig. Catanzaro actually did some brief work reminiscent of his classic with Gilbert Cesca and it was cool to see that he could still do the crazy bridging. You can tell he lived this shit, both the classy gymnastic wrestling and the part when it was time to grab someone by the hair and stomp on their face. Mantopoulos is always made to look nigh invulnerable in these matches and its doesn't annoy me because he is so convincing, amazing how he still appears to treat the match a 100% serious with his body language, he never turns into a grinning clown like some of the british technicians will. I dug Israel as the more straight forward counterpart of Vasilios, he had this really great wrist takedown at one point and threw a sneaky punch that looked great. As far as the wrestling goes there wasn't a ton that we haven't seen in other French tags, but there was one piledriver sequence that was really crazy, and the stuff that lead into the finish was downright insane. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mercier! Brown! Les Gorilles Marsallon!

Guy Mercier/James Brown vs Les Gorilles (Lou/Geo Marsallon) 7/1/65

MD: And we are back for a limited ten week engagement thanks to the efforts of Phil Lions to scrub through the archive one more time. A varied run of matches full of a lot of familiar names and a few new ones. I'm excited for it. Even just hearing Roger Couderc commentate again felt like visiting an old friend.

And this one started off with another old friend, or friends as it was, as seconding the Gorilles here to start were no one other than Robert Duranton and his valet Firmin. Duranton complained about not getting enough TV time, took of his shirt, threatened to go down to his underwear and left. Pretty funny stuff.

The match itself was one of those feel good babyface-heavy French Catch tags full of so many entertaining bits but that suffered to modern eyes because it was so astoundingly lopsided. The clip is 36 minutes. The match is, let's say 33 of that given the Duranton antics to start (not counting introductions and the bits in between falls) and i wouldn't say the heels really took over until the 30 minute mark.

And that's not to say they weren't formidable. They had big clobbering shots. They double teamed well. They had size and presence. There's just not much anyone could do against James Brown and his headbutt. Multiple entertaining comedy bits of them timbering to headbutts or trying to slam his head into each other's foot or trying headbutts of their own. Whenever they did take over due to a double team the stylist partner was quick to come in (usually with dropkicks, with Brown having a sort of shotgun front dropkick with big impact). Lots of dropkicks in this one.

Still, there were a lot of individual bits that I enjoyed, whether it be Mercier doing his thing spinning before a takedown (or going through the legs) or Brown himself going through the legs on a leg splitter. Brown had a victory roll bit where one Marsallon walked him over to the corner for a punch from the other only for that punch to get blocked to set up the victory roll. Lots of miscommunication bits where they ran into each other on full nelson charges too, that sort of thing. At one point one of them went flying through the roles on a missed charge, a tope to nowhere.

I will say that they got a lot of mileage out of these hefting lawn dart hotshots onto the top rope right at the end, but not so much to counterbalance 30 minutes of stylist control. Overall fun candy that kept the crowd delighted and a nice visit back to France for me but a little Brown goes a long way considering how much air he takes up. 

SR: The first new French match in a while, and man it is jarring to get back into that world. Flawless, tight execution on everything, everyone a 100% game, constantly engaging the face/heel dynamic, never missing a beat. It's safe to say when it comes to the fundamentals all these guys were on a completely different level compared to todays workers, and the athleticism, fast pace and big bumping still holds up insanely well today. Lou and Geo Marsallon could be Les Marsallons, but they are Les Gorilles, and boy do they look the part. Square, bulky, heads as bald as their chests are hairy, ugly and mean like only the best heels can be. They were dedicated stooges really taking pinball bumping to the next level, flying in and out of the ring for a dozen babyface dropkicks in ways you don't really expect two men so bulky and square looking men to fly around. They were pretty vicious too, occasionally putting back alley beatings on the faces, another thing that is really jarring, in this world something as simple as a stomp or an elbow upside the head was executed like it was intended to maul, and they wouldn't let up, crawling all over their opponents punching, strangling and doing god knows what. It was a quite vicious edge for a match that was largely a dose of fun for the crowd to watch the faces one up the heels over and over and occasionally get heated and kick the shit out of them. Brown and Mercier are a bunch of fun here too. Brown works a bit different from your typical cookie cutter French babyface, perhaps owing to him breaking into the business in Germany if I am informed correctly. He'll get up to a lot of cool things, hitting those nasty Giant Baba style falling armbreakers, a bulldog where he keeps holding on to the head, cool out of nowhere headbutts, perfect european uppercuts, backbreakers from odd angles. At one point he flipped out of a hold and lost his footing, only to immediately dive for the legs with an ankle pick like a seasoned amateur wrestler. Mercier isn't in the match as much but he is reliable as always, beautiful throws, picking guys up with freakish ease and dropping them across his knees in nasty ways. This was mostly a romp and executed extremely well with hardly any letdown. Feels crazy we've seen like a hundred tags like this, even if you are well familiar with the French footage this is a blast to check out.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Finale

MD: It's a little more than three years since we started this particular project. I'm writing this close to three years from when the shutdowns began actually. It's hard to disentangle the two in my mind. Phil, of course, wrote a book. Eric is writing one. At times, I thought (and still think) that there might be a book about this trip through French Catch and how it provided me a weekly focus and an outlet and structure during the pandemic. It connected me to something bigger and older and stranger than myself, something that had been lost, something that consistently surprised and amazed while also being a thoroughly consistent comfort. My day job is too much of a day job, however, and most of the rest of my life is taken up by parenting. By the time I'll have time to actually write a book, it'll all be too distant from me to resonate in the same way. Let's close things out here instead.

Phil calls Cesca vs Catanzaro one of his greatest finds, he being someone who made his name from finding and curating and disseminating such things. I'm sure even then, he never imagined that some day we'd get hundreds of matches, most of which not seen for decades, surrounding and following that match. There have been great troves that have emerged this century. There was the NWA On Demand Houston footage which gave us top level arena matches for years where we barely had any. There was Buddy Rose's Portland collection, his own vanity spotlighting to us years later how a master (or at least a savant) could anchor a territory week after week. Roy's given us (second-hand) so much 90s lucha that we didn't have before. Armstrong Alley is the home to dusted off territorial oddities. New TV and Handhelds have come out of Japan and we're still going through those. And there's even what we'll be working on next (more on that later). We're coming up on five years straight, three matches a week, never missing a week, of New/Found Footage Friday.

This was something else entirely. It was an entire tradition of wrestling, an entire culture of it. It was a whole history of it, a lost city of gold. In one swoop we greatly expanded the amount of 50s wrestling we had on tape and absolutely eclipsed the 60s footage that was out there in the wild, and that's on a global level. That, in itself, would be impressive, but the actual content of what we received, the skill and intensity and humor and flair, the lost moves and moves that we had no idea existed decades before they were in vogue, the heroism and villainy and hard hitting sportsmanship, was nothing we could have expected. Certainly Catanzaro vs Cesca had an outlier in all of wrestling history, let alone in the wrestling of one single country? But what we found early on, especially after switched from cherry picking to following a more chronological approach, was the exact opposite. This was the entire history of wrestling of a single country, yes, but the sheer week to week quality, and, surprisingly, the week to week variety, was simply remarkable.

There was so much to every match; these were the long matches that European denizens like Regal would speak of. They were structurally alien, with wrestlers working holds for three or four or five minutes at a time, building and building to an escape only to have it cut off, with it taking a number of these false escapes before freedom was obtained; and after freedom, it'd be almost right into the next hold. While things might be elaborate, nothing felt collaborative. Even in stylist vs stylist matches, ones wrestled with every bit of honor and regard, things would boil over into brutal forearms, only to sink back down into the next set of holds. In tags, very often the holds were the point, the heat incidental, the comebacks frequent and rousing. The point was generally to entertain and captivate, not to draw future houses or pay off old grievances. Things settled down a bit more as the decades went on, and you'd get more of a coherent (or at least recognizable and familiar) story within a match, but it never fully escaped its roots. Languages were always my academic weak point; you can't bullshit language like you can an essay or an argument or pro wrestling analysis. I survived as well as I did with YouTube's subtitle functions and automatic translation. But to watch these matches, I had to learn an entirely different pro wrestling language, not unlike when I was first trying to make sense of lucha. Once you become fluent, however, you can swim through any match from the collection.

I thought about writing a paragraph listing specific wrestlers, but there are just too many. I could write three paragraphs on Jean Corne or Jacky Corn, on Gilbert LeDuc or Guy Mercier. I could write an essay on Bollet and Delaporte, on Bernaert or Duranton, on Petit Prince and Vasilious Mantopolous and Michel Saulnier. We have three matches with Liano Pellacani and two with Tony Oliver and a handful of Modesto Aledo (sans gimmick). We have matches with wrestlers like Al Hayes or Eric Taylor or Klondike Bill that UK fans couldn't have possibly hoped for. We have a glimpse of Kiyomigawa and Juil Gon Don. We received new matches from wrestlers we knew were great like Lasartesse and Van Buyten. And the characters! There were characters like Quasimodo and Batman and yes, Mombo Le Primitif. There are wrestlers that I watched a lot of in 2020 like Ami Sola and Jo Labat that feel almost like distant memories to me because of all of the sheer hours that I watched since. But everyone, from the Teddy Boys to Les Blousons Noirs to Isha Israel to Isha Khan to Dr. Adolf Kaiser and Cheri Bibi all brought something worthwhile to the table. Even the most out there gimmicks like King Kong Taverne still had to know how to do the up and over escape out of a top wristlock which was the cornerstone of opening French Catch chain wrestling (and how can you watch a mundane top wristlock escape in 2023 after seeing that in almost every match for decades!)

So as there'll be no book, and as there are more wrestlers then we could ever realistically cover one by one, the work we've laid down will have to stand on its own. I hope it lasts as a resource for people as they try to tackle the matches on their own. I tried to be more informative and useful than sharply critical, tried to point out what was novel or interesting about the matches, what was new and innovative from week to week and month to month and year to year, tried to point out patterns and trends, tried to craft an overall narrative as best I could. A new bit of video production was as interesting to me as the first time I saw a gutwrench suplex. I'll update the master list and in the weeks and months to come, I'll make a third list for everyone, one that is purely chronological, which will link to the reviews (and so long as the channel doesn't get nuked, the matches). From there, over time, we may fill in some gaps of matches that were online but not in the collection. In the meantime, keep going back through. Keep making gifs. Keep spreading the word. Whenever people post Luna Catch 2000 as if it's the be all and end all of French Catch, remind them that it was an exhibition and an outlier! (You don't have to but, come on, internet....)

I know from the views here and on YouTube that there are people who have come along on this journey with us from the very beginning. There have been a few of you who have commented over time, and that's meant a lot. Like I said, much of this was during the height of the pandemic and I always appreciated every bit of interaction that we had through this project. Thanks to those who helped with a few names and translation and for those, like Phil Lions, who have done amazing research. Thanks to those who made sure that the footage got back to some of the wrestlers and their families. I heard from at least a dozen families throughout this project, people who could see their grandfathers wrestle for the first time ever, or see their fathers or uncles wrestle for the first time in decades. Every message like that was incredibly rewarding. It's great to see current wrestlers liking or retweeting spots that people post on Twitter. There's so much to delve into here, so much lost lore and technique, that I hope some of it comes back to life in the years to come. Thank you to everyone that's even just checked in and read the reviews and of course for Phil, Eric, and Sebastian for joining in when they could. It's been a lot of work but I've never felt alone in it, even covering those years where, due to the constraints of life and new projects, I had to tackle the reviews on my own.

Which leads us to what's next. While we've been covering (and posting) this footage, there's another weekly footage drop on YouTube that's been happening in the last few months. It's not France. It's not from the 50s and 60s. It's an entirely different style and feel, but it's a territory all its own, with some familiar faces and some faces to learn about. You can probably guess if you've been paying attention to the Found Footage Friday posts from the last year or two, but I'll be back next week with a new partner and a new mission and hopefully everyone finds that fun as well.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Von Kramer! Jones! The Alpha and Omega of Cesca vs Catanzaro!

Karl Von Kramer vs Ted Jones 8/1/87 

MD: As there's no sign of a suspected Prince Zevy/Flesh Gordon tag, this is our last match. It's a bit of an odd one, presented in the middle of what seems to be a Wide World of Sports type show called Sports Loisors. I have no context. Jones is billed as a Belgian champion, Von Kramer the German one. Both come out with young women presumably from their nationality. Von Kramer has an old manager dressed in a suit too and at one point the Belgian women assault him. Jones gets him once too. I have more reason to believe this is the Von Kramer from 25 years prior than I have reason not to believe it. You can extrapolate the age onto the wrestler we saw in black and white and he has the same sort of robe and overall look. I can't say for certain though. He's definitely not the Karl Kramer working in the UK at the time, that's for sure.

And you know what? It's a nice little throwback to end things on. They do work the holds. They try. Von Kramer goes over quite a few times on labored bumps. Jones works from underneath. They have a couple of holds where they hang on through the armdrags and what not. There are bursts of rope running. It's certainly senior tour stuff and we're not talking Mercier vs Montreal here or anything, but the good stuff is good and the bad stuff is forgivable here at the very end of our journey. Von Kramer might have been able to manage something in a tag with Richard and up against Hassouni and Bordes a few years earlier. The finish has Jones getting some revenge on Von Kramer in the corner and the ref pulling him back, which lets Von Kramer sneak in a low blow and score the win. Comeuppance comes while the credits are rolling. Not a terrible way to spend twenty minutes between watching cycling and equestrian on a weekend afternoon. A pleasant and forgettable farewell from France.

Gilbert Cesca vs Billy Catanzaro 5/1/57

MD: Which brings us back to the very beginning, the match that opened our eyes and our first and now last gift to you. We had bypassed it when we were going through 1957 as we knew it well, but now, here at the very end, I thought to take another look. It's good that I did too, because this is an upgrade on video quality to the version that's been out there. In the story of the footage, Catanzaro, spectacular as he was, only appeared a handful of times. In the later appearances, he represented the stooging heel that we saw so much of. Here, you just get glimpses of it, when, unable to escape a hold, he resorts to desperate shots; a seed of irritability that would grow in the years to come. He calms soon after and the process repeats, all the way to the handshake post-match. Cesca, on the other hand, feels like a stylist's stylist, part of that direct line from 1957 to 1987, through the team with Ben Chemoul, which gave way to Ben Chemoul and Bordes, which led to Bordes and Gordon. It's striking how much this represents some of the best stylist vs stylist work, the incessant holds and counter holds and forward pressing and struggle. It's also striking how much it leaves out, as it was just one aspect of one aspect of French Catch, even if it contained many overlapping specifics. Having watched this years ago, we couldn't have any sense of the breadth and depth and variety of it all. It's still an amazing spectacle though and so much more of their personalities and idiosyncrasies bleeds through with the higher video quality.

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