Tuesday is French Catch Day: Ange Blanc! Scarface! Bernaert! Le Magouro! Zafar! Le Mao!

Pierre Bernaert/Pierre Le Magouro vs. Armand Zafar/Henri Le Mao 11/23/68

MD: Very good, well worked tag, with strong wrestling and some big shots. It suffered from the same structural issues that all of these tags tend to suffer from (too much shine, not enough heat, too many resets and easy babyface tags, too long a first fall, too short second and third), though the wrestling was more even for the first ten minutes which helped. On the other hand, the heels never picked up a fall, which both helped and hurt. It probably cut five or ten minutes off the match which let it all flow better but it still falls away from my ideal narrative balance. Thankfully, the heat that we did get was strong, with Bernaert an all-time cheater with great looking shots and Le Magourou another in the long line of second banana stooges. Le Mao is just excellent and I wish we had a dozen more matches with him. This is it though. Just amazing headbutts from him here, too. Zafar had a nice, sweeping way of moving and putting on. While it built to a few crowd-pleasing spots, my favorite bits here (past the headbutts) were probably the announcer menacing the heels by trying to get soundbytes during the worst moments.

PAS: Le Mao is kind of a French Fujiwara, so of course I adore him. He isn't doing the shoot matwork, but is a great old man escape artist and is amazing at evading a move and absolutely open up the skull of his opponent with a headbuttt.  I am a guy who loves a good headbutt and he is up there with the greatest ever coconut clankers. Everyone else in the match was fine, slick wrestling and thumping with shots, but this was a Le Mao show and every time he was in I was engrossed. Too bad we only have three matches of his, he feels like an all time great and with four more matches I would make that argument.   


L‘Ange Blanc vs. Scarface Le Balafre 12/7/68

MD: Yeah, I'm high on this. It won't be for everyone but it's really straightforward, fundamental, primal, well-worked stuff. After so many matches that were worked evenly or with a lot of shine, I love how Scarface spent so much time leaning on L'Ange. He was a good goon, maybe not the best at sneaking in cheapshots behind the ref's back but how blatant he was just got him more heat. He switched it up too, a chinlock, a cobra clutch, a hammerlock, and so on. All the tricks like holding the rope to block the flying mare. L'ange was excellent fighting from underneath and on his comebacks would come back with a few big shots or spots and then it'd be right back into the next hold. They managed this pretty successfully for twenty five minutes or so with the heat building and the comebacks escalating until we got into the finish. Scarface tossed him out in desperation and started a King of the Mountain sequence and a nasty one at that. When L'Ange came back, he just hit dropkick after dropkick to knock him off the apron, drawing the eventual DQ since he just wouldn't stop. That started about six minutes of near-riot as he kept going after Scarface to the elation of the crowd. Eventually, things calmed down to a degree, long enough for the ref to raise Scarface's hand, but the crowd continued to be animated, seething with the same pent up energy that L'Ange, true folk hero, was radiating. I wouldn't want to be Scarface trying to get out of that building that night.

PAS: L'Ange is on the WON Hall of Fame ballot, and he certainly looked like a hall of fame level performer this night. I really enjoy big babyface performance, Bruno, Colon,  Lawler, and Blanc was clearly at that level. Scarface was a fun jerk, ugly hard hitting cheap shotting. The finish with Blanc constantly hitting dropkicks until getting DQed was a fun way for a big star to loose and the post match really did feel a little out of control. Much of the talk about the French stuff is how futuristic it all is, this is classic though nothing fancy, but very effective. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Blousons Noir! Aubriot! Bayle! LeMao! Kocheski!

 Dan Aubriot/Remy Bayle vs. Le Blousons Noirs (Manuel Manneveau/Claude Gessat) 4/9/66

MD: Excellent tag, but there's no reason to expect less from Les Blousons Noirs. By this point they have the balance down perfect, especially relative to their peers, losing even, fair (but quick and stylish) exchanges, but going quick to the cheating and double teaming and controlling most of the match by controlling the ring. The comebacks were big and spectacular. The match was full of big spots like Manneveau launching Bayle out of the ring with a belly to belly or Aubriot doing this amazing sequence of hitting a handspring, headbutting one guy off the apron and then putting the other into a tapitia or the finish to the first fall where they invert the revenge spot of tying a heel up in the ropes. Once the tide turned in the second fall, it was all but over which is the big issue with some of these: long first fall, much smaller second, and tiny third, but it was still pretty satisfying. Manneveau is an all time stooge and Gessat is an absolute pitbull but they can both go and give and take it equally well. Good stuff all around.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 25 minutes. A nice mix of Aubriot and Bayle doing some pretty outstanding wrestling and the Blousons being vicious pricks. Licked the opening tumbling a lot. Marcel Manneveau looked great as usual. Mostly because he is an absolute fucker, but also because he really knows how to pick his spots. He attacked the fingers and wrist, suplexed people over the ropes, and did about everything a ghastly French heel needs to do. This didn't turn into some brilliant frenzy like the best French tags but there was plenty of violence, plenty of quick exchanges and it was pretty lean at only about 25 minutes.

PAS: Blousons are just incredibly entertaining, vicious killers, big bumpers, goofy stooges, everything you would want from a heel team. I loved the nastiest of their arm work stomping on the elbow in a over hand wristlocks, kicking faces, landing uppercuts. Aubriot and Bayle had some really slick shit too, the Aubriot finishing run to the first fall is the kind of thing which should be giffed and sent around the internet. The bar for French Catch tags is impossibly high, but this was a real treat even if it wasn't the super high end. 

Henri LeMao vs Zadi Kocheski 4/17/66

MD: Another look at the great Henri LeMao. If the world was just we'd have another dozen of his matches. We don't. He was a wizard and with excellent takedowns, holds, counters, striking. Kochecki was a loudmouth and while it was fun to watch him get more and more frustrated as the match went on, he never came across as particularly dangerous except for the very end when he tossed LeMao out and was playing King of the Mountain.  My favorite bit was an exchange where LeMao got Kocheski caught in the ropes only to graciously let him go; Kocheski immediately followed suit by trapping LeMao in the ropes and hammering him; so, of course, LeMao got revenge by trapping him again and hitting the charging headbutts to the crowd's delight. All in all, it felt a little like a fairly equal Zoltan Boscik vs poor man's Jim Breaks. It's not that I didn't like Kocheski; he was emotive and engaged and active and really got under the crowd's skin but I think I would have rather seen both of these guys against different opponents, LeMao against someone who could hang more and Kocheski against someone who was more of a scrapper like Jacky Corn.

SR: 1 fall match going a bit over 20 minutes. This was like the prototypical face/heel match. LeMao is a balding gentleman and a brilliant technician. And Kocheski was pretty much throwing inside shots from the go. LeMao had some great technical moves and escapes and Kocheski kicked the shit out of him. The crowd got really heated, LeMao fired back in kind and a good time was had. That's about all I have to say here, but both guys looked really good.

PAS: I was into this. Really fun to watch LeMao have an answer for everything Kocheski threw at him, before Kocheski lost his temper. I especially loved LeMao's headscissors into a neck crank cool vicious twist on a spot we have seen a lot. We get a solid slugfest finish with big uppercuts and LeMao dropkicks right to Kocheski's face. Not as good as the previous LeMao match, but I am glad we got another look at him, really fun talent. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Rocco! Gasparian! Le Mao! Israel!

Henri Le Mao vs. Isha Israel 8/22/65

SR: 1 fall match going 30 minutes. Holy shit this was great. A technical match with a serious violent streak. It‘s not about the things they do, but the intensity at which they do them. They did the usual French style hold for hold work, but in a grinding fashion. At one point, Israel put this hold on Le Mao where just pushed his knee into his eye. There are a few chinlocks and headlocks in the match, and while these are not normally exciting moves, they were here as these guys just tried strangling the shit out of each other. During one hold exchange Israel really wrenched Le Mao with a headlock, then dragged him up and dropped him with a sick neckbreaker. Le Mao looked rough after that and it got the crowd buzzing. Israel put another headlock on Le Mao, and it looked painful to break out of. The whole match was like that, hold exchanges building to explosions, and really great at that. Later Le Mao reverses a throw, tossing Israel into the ropes where he almost got strangled in another sick spot. Israel came back groggy but was able to sink into another sleeper hold which looked as deep as any other sleeper in history. It looked like he was about to pop Le Maos head off. By the end both guys were engaging in some strike exchanges that were up there with anything else in this footage. Israel popped Le Mao with some Futen level headbutts, bloodying him. Both guys seemed punch drunk and Le Mao carried on with the stoic determination of a true catcheur as the blood streamed from his brow. His big comeback forearms were awesome. Some rough as hell turnbuckle bumps come into play, too, and they have the crowd by the balls working narrow nearfalls. Really an ultra physical match, and while the match didn‘t have the most tricked out technical moves it felt up there with the best in this style due to sheer intensity.

PAS: This was right up there with the very best stuff we have seen from this footage. Israel was a complete fucker in this, reminded me of Tony Oliver. He really took most of the early part of this match with really punishing holds, tight chokes, nasty armlocks including one where he drove the point of his knee into Le Mao's eye. Le Mao had some fun escapes, but was mostly getting violently steamrolled. He was able to get back into the match when he tossed Israel into the ropes and Israel flips into a Foley loses his ear strangle hold. We get some hyper violent strike exchanges including Le Mao getting split with some gross headbutts and Israel driving his forearm right into the cut. This ends in a draw but I have no problem with a match ending with both guys trying to rip each others heads off with uppercuts.

MD: About halfway through this one, and knowing it was heading to a draw, I had a write-up in mind talking about the sheer, overall quality of the footage. This seemed like just another match. I'd never heard of Le Mao before and while Israel seemed to have put on a little mass, it was a lot of what we'd seen before: excellent holds hung on to, deep struggle, clever (and as the years go on more elaborate counters), a real testament to just how good any random match in the collection seems to be as we're a year and a half into the project and around ten years into the footage. Le Mao was definitely able to hang, no question there. There were some fun specifics like Israel's neckbreakers or the fact that the chinlock, which I really swear I haven't seen much before 65, was treated the same way the rear naked choke was treated when it first got used in pro wrestling, a sort of mean and a nasty move to be feared, as opposed to something we're so complacent about now (I'd argue that it' s the single move we take the most for granted in pro wrestling having watched a thousand 80s WWF matches). Usually with a draw like this, they'll build to the slugging over the last few minutes, or they'll take it up a few times earlier and bring it back down and let it start to boil over as the bell was about to ring. Here, though, they shifted gears with around ten minutes to go and it became a much fiercer, more contentious bout for the whole way in, only slowed down in the last few minutes due to exhaustion and selling the damage already done. Ultimately, it ended up one of my favorite stylist vs stylist draws in the footage.

Bruno Rocco vs. Gasparian 9/5/65

SR: 1 fall match going about 20 minutes. This wasn't bad, but not all that good either. They just had about a regular catch bout. Lots of technical work for two heavyweights. Rocco was this Italian guy and acted like quite the ass. He really liked the nerve hold and kicked the shit out of Gasparian here or there, but the match never turned into an all out brawl. Bit repetitive, but all in all decent catch that suffers from the match the week before being a whole magnitude above.

MD: When you get a match between heavyweights, you really want a lot of hard hitting and big thumping and you get that in the last couple of minutes here, but the twenty or so minutes before that doesn't quite live up to what you'd want. Of the rest that we do get, the best of it is Rocco cheating, a lot of nerveholds turned into eyeraking, and Gasparian mounting spirited comebacks, be it stepping on the hand or tying him in the ropes. There's a couple of fun short arm scissors moments and a few spirited headbutts here and there throughout, but in general, I left this thinking I would have rather seen Rocco bully someone smaller or maybe get flummoxed by someone like Ben Chemoul or even one of the judo guys.

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