Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corne! Caballec! Richard! Renault! Prince! Bouvet! Sanniez! Tejero!

Jean Corne & Rene Caballec vs Jacky Richard & Guy Renault 10/12/81

MD: This was just go go and more go but everything was mean and nasty at the same time. We've been watching Corne and Richard for years and years now with Renault and Caballec coming in and out of the footage but could they ever still go. You'd get Richard or Renault just feeding and feeding and feeding, bounding off the ropes, bumping around the ring while in holds, in and out and in again. Even when they slowed down, they didn't let up. It'd be Richard grinding on a chinlock and just punching someone right in the cheek and putting it back on or Caballec snatching a bridging headscissors to a standing Renault and the working of it just constant motion and struggle. And they'd move right into an armbar with Renault scooting around the ring and Richard bumping in trying to get a tag. Or Richard would have an arm puller on Corne with Renault continuously whacking him from the outside, eventually Corne would manage to knock him off the apron but they'd work right back into the hold until Corne could roll around into a headlock and kick Richard in the face. They just kept going and going, constant motion. Just one sequence after the next, constantly interesting and engaging and violent.

There were differences. Richard and Renault were the next version of the Blousons Noirs, I guess, now fitting for the early 80s, by way of Adrian Adonis and studded leather everything. I mean, it was still Jacky Richard. He had to be an old friend to most of these fans. There was a quick and out of nowhere first fall where Corne got clocked by him off the ropes, though. Even Delaporte seemed confused by it, but it did add a bit more drama, yes. The only time the match settled down were the real periods of heat where the heels were controlling the pace and beating down the stylists, and there Delaporte helped to bring the motion as ref as he bristled about. That didn't give the crowd any rest. It just ramped up the pressure for the comeback more and more. And that paid off with some big house cleaning moments from Caballec and clowning revenge by Corne. All of the turmoil boiled over into a short third fall as they worked towards the time limit with pin attempt after pin attempt before Delaporte got to partake in his favorite indulgence and declare the stylists the winners. Just a wonderful middle ground between working hard and working harsh.

SR: 2/3 Falls match going 30 minutes. Richard & Renault were donning the leatherman gear here. There were some structural choices here that may confuse people, but the work was undeniable. This kind of insane cardio show from a bunch of crusty old men is just befuddling. I liked the early pinfall to increase tension throughout most of the match, and there was just one entertaining exchange after another. Richard & Renault weren‘t bumping as big as other rudos we‘ve seen, but had no problem going along and looked considerably scummy. The crowd absolutely loved this and folks were jumping up and down anytime Les Celts got the upper hand.

Petit Prince & Gerard Bouvet vs Anton Tejero & Albert Sanniez 7/24/82 

MD: There's some question on whether this is 79 or 82, but given the technological advances (the names on the screen for instance), I'm thinking the 82 date is right. It's strange being in 82 as opposed to, let's say, the mid 60s where we actually have so little footage from the rest of the world. We have a great idea what wrestling looks like all over in 82 and it doesn't look much of anything like this. This was all the hits, once again, but it's amazing that Prince (and his bases, and Bouvet in his own way) were still able to do them 16 years after we first saw him. You can't help but wonder what it'd look like if Sanniez got to team with 82 Dynamite or Tejero with 82 Buddy Rose or with the potential 1980 Prince vs Fujinami match would have looked like.

It's the hits but the hits are so good, crazy wristlock exchanges early where a wrestler will hang on through everything, all of Prince's headlock sequences where you, and his opponent have no idea which direction he'll dart next as he twists around and through and over, so many cartwheels, Tejero bumping out the ring again and again, Sanniez with a chip on his shoulder, Bouvet being slick as can be. There's even the short arm scissors sequences with the Gotch lift and stumble over the top and right back in, with the actual heat in the match starting with Tejero cutting Prince off when he tries to go up and over the second time. That's the big difference between 66 and 82, that they're able to work the heat to a comeback better, with missed tags and distracted refs and everything else. That bit was probably just a bit too short to really inspire hearts and souls to rage though. It all still ends in a celebratory third fall with a lot of stooging, but even in 82 the action here more than holds up against anything in the world at the time.

SR: 2/3 Falls match going a bit under 30 minutes. This exact same match is also uploaded as being aired on 1/1/1979, so it‘s another mysterious case. This was a "more of the same" match with some sequences being replicated exactly as in the previous Prince/Rocca match. That is to be expected, I guess, and there were still like 10 sequences that would have most luchadors drop their jaws with envy. The man bringing something fresh to the table was Bouvet, doing some more technical stuff and even a skin the cat spot. Tejero was a bit more subdued here, so Sanniez stepped up being the
master of the hair pull. There was no intense heat segment like in other French tags and the faces handily bagged this one 2:0, so I guess that disqualifies it from a Best Of list anyways.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Al-Casi vs Christian Preno 4/13/75

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

Daniel Schmid vs Rocky James 4/13/75

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

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

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

Bob Genele vs. Pedro Cabrera 3/21/74

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michel Falempin vs. Paco Ramirez 7/19/73

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

La Batman vs. Jose Gonzalez 7/19/73

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

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

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Ben Chemoul! Bordes! Lagache! Grelha! Saulnier! Renault!

Brief programming note: I've updated the Master List. It should be easier to search for a wrestler, or, once we get past the first year or so, to see things mostly chronologically. Feel free to share it widely and reply if you think we have any name or date or anything else wildly wrong.

Rene Ben Chemoul/Walter Bordes vs Pierre Lagache/Grelha Le Portugais 7/17/72 

MD: This isn't my favorite Ben Chemoul/Bordes match. It was one fall, which is often a plus but this was a long fall without a lot of drama and having the heels take a fall might have actually helped here. You can't judge these French matches against southern tags. It's a different thing in a different place from a different time in front of a different crowd with a different style. It becomes less about transitions and the tension between hope spots and cutoffs and the build to comeback then and more about ebbs and flows and how compelling the action is. It's about the engagement of the wrestlers with one another, the engagement of the crowd, the struggle of the holds, the cleverness of the spots, the personalities and skill and snugness.

Some of that worked out here, but some of it didn't. Lagache comes off as a smaller Bernaert to me, capable, able to base during fast action and for acrobatic escapes to holds, with the right put upon and sour attitude, especially in how he interacts with his partner and the crowd. He was fine. I wasn't overly impressed with Grelha (Maybe Grella?) though. He had the look right, a sort of caveman Mocho Cota (not quite Barbaro Cavernario unless he was the drunken mall Santa version of him). He'd bump over the top eagerly, would stooge well, occasionally had some good clubbering or stomping, but it just wasn't enough. The commitment wasn't fully there, the offense wasn't interesting enough, and he was too low on the overall weirdness scale. I've seen Lagache team with N'Boa against Ben Chemoul and Cesca and Grelha here was no N'Boa, at least not on this night. He paired better with Ben Chemoul who had a bit more theatricality in what he did and there were a couple of fun and unique spots like a catapult into the ref or Ben Chemoul and Bordes tying his hair into the ropes to trap him. In the end though, the stylists probably took too much of this and were never quite in enough danger. The one time the bad guys took over was due to drawing a public warning with blatant cheating and I liked that, and in some ways, it did set up them getting DQed at the end for running out of chances, but this either needed more drama or more shtick over all.

Michel Saulnier vs Guy Renault 10/9/72

SR: 1 fall match going about 25 minutes. They wrestled for a big golden trophy in this, and damn the wrestling here deserved a trophy. Beautiful beautiful match. Saulnier is certainly making an amazing case for himself with every appearance. The wrestling didn‘t have the kind of flips or whackiness like the more attention-drawing catch, but their movements were poetry in motion, each throw and running sequence executed to perfection. It‘s really amazing what you can do with armdrags, headlock takeovers and headscissors and varying them slightly. They worked all these really fast throws and ran the ropes, then settled it working control segments building to more elaborate counter sequences, then back to throws and rope running, all seamless. Just the kind of ebb and flow structure you want from a mat classic. Saulnier seemed to overwhelm the taller Guy Renault initially, so Renault worked a segment controlling him with a headlock which has to be one of the greatest headlock control segments I‘ve seen in a long time, maybe ever. Renault started hitting Saulnier with these flying headbutts and drew some boos from the crowd, then Saulnier fired back with a tope of his own that knocked both guys down and felt truly epic. Saulnier made beautiful comebacks and went for broke when it was time to hit european uppercuts. Tempers flare a bit with guys ending up in stalemates and in the ropes and taking offense, but they kept working a clean match but amping the stakes building to the eventual conclusion. These two really looked like masters of the style here, never a slip up in anything they did and they worked this with such a pace that I have serious doubts any two workers in the world right now could rival them. Great great match, every once in a while I go back to check in on French Catch and end up being immeasurably happy that we have this stuff.

MD: This was a title match for a European Super Lightweight title. It felt more special for it and for the fact that Renault's wife and kids were at ringside. They cut to them a few times, though the kids didn't seem super interested and the wife was spoken to fairly deep into the match when Saulnier was grinding his face into Renault's cheek on a hammerlock. Renault was billed a Teddy Boy and was bigger, but he wrestled this more cleanly than we'd seen him in the past. While it got intense at times, it did have that traditional title match feel.

And for the first half of it, I got a little worried we jumped the gun on the 1972 MOTY as it was really sharp action, holds worked in and out of, just excellent stuff. They'd build to faster and faster spots and more and more complex escapes and then fall right back into the hold. That included a lot of fast pin exchanges and rope running, high level stuff of the sort that felt novel with Savage vs Steamboat if only because people hadn't seen Saulnier vs Renault. Some of these were put together with clever and meaningful bookends that utilized repetition in a way you don't usually see in this footage. They may have actually overdid it a bit because it was somewhat evident that they were low on gas by the midway point. At that point, there were some leglocks by Renault that weren't nearly as compelling as what they had lead with. They both picked the pace back up and got a lot chippier in their shots by the end but it was a title match worked clean and it never quite boiled over, instead ending on a series of quick pin attempts. Still this was very, very good and fairly different to what we've been seeing at this point in the early 70s.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andre Drapp vs. Jimmy Dula 4/26/71

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

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

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

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

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