Tuesday is French Catch Day: Rene Ben! Jarret! Bibi! Bernaert! Cowboy Jack! Guettier!

Rene Ben Chemoul/Michel Jarret vs. Cheri Bibi/Pierre Bernaert 7/22/60

MD:I am floored by how good the Bibi/Bernaert team have gotten by this point. They're just a mauling, stooging, cheating, heat-seeking unit, totally on the same page, garnering reactions, well-balanced as they each bring different things to the table but wholly focused in that both of them can do a ton of damage. Ben Chemoul remains very impressive. Some of his big spots are becoming a little more familiar now but most of them hit with a lot of flash and plenty of substance. This is our first look at Charret (I think we get one more) and he was okay, standing out the most for punch flurries in the corner and the way he twisted his body back and forth to escape from holds. He did do a triple up and over on a top wristlock which was more elaborate than I've usually seen that spot.

Bibi and Bernaert's heel antics were great. They had a long stretch of controlling Ben Chemoul and Charret with hammerlocks, either grabbing onto the rope or each other in order to stop the flying mare counter attempts. All of their stuff looked brutal. Bibi has gone from being an immobile clod in the middle of a style he couldn't keep up with to a center of gravity that lines guys up and knocks them down, with Bernaert there to creation more motion when need be. Bibi doesn't sell much, but when he does, towards the end of the match, it means all the more. Just knocking him down and getting the best of him means something because he's presented as so strong. And all the while, the crowd is jeering him and, at times, swiping at him and trying to trip him. The momentum shifts here were pretty good, with the faces getting solid revenge at times only for the heels to cheat and scheme and take back over. The finishing stretch felt more like an old lucha trios where everything reset and the tecnicos got to clown the rudos. Here, the fans loved it and everything ended on a high energy note. Just another super entertaining 40 minute tag match from 60s France that looked absolutely effortless.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. This was, naturally, extremely similar to Chemoul/Cesca vs. Bibi/Bernaert we reviewed a couple weeks ago. It followed the same structure as usual, faces shine, heels start cheating, rinse and repeat till all hell breaks loose. I was theorizing that I was getting bored of these guys because I didn’t find the first 20 minutes or so not terribly engaging, but then Bibi and Bernaert started salvaging the match by dishing out some big damn beatings. The faces retaliated in kind and suddenly you had Chemoul trying to break peoples arms and Michel Jarret throwing headbutts and punch combos. The intensity turned up to as the falls kept dropping and it felt like the ending really delivered. I shouldn’t doubt this crew.

PAS: I thought this was dope, Chemoul is such a fun tag worker. Great at using his athleticism to wrong foot the heels, takes a monster beating, and has big exciting comebacks. His leap frog mule kick owned, popped Bernaert in the jaw. Bernaert was a monster in this, totally vicious and frantic. At one point he stops Jarret from countering a hammerlock and just starts smashing the side of his head on the mat, what a mean fucker. We get a big build towards the end with the babyfaces matching the violence of the heels. Chemoul and partner versus Bibi and Bernaert seem like a total guarantee.

Roger Guettier vs. Cowboy Jack Bence 9/15/60

PAS: Really not sure what the hell was going on here. The ring is covered in trash as we join the footage before the entrances even happen, and throughout the match every time Guettier does even a basic bit of heeling he is pelted by garbage. Weird atmosphere which kind of fucks up the match. Bence has some fun escapes, including a backflip, which was less Ricochet and more Jimmy Valient. They do some cool stuff working out of a leg lock, take some big spills to the floor and tee off on each other. Still it has to be weird to try to wrestle like that, and it was more like watching a skilled standup deal with a blackout drunk bachelorette party, then an all time memorable match. 

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 25 minutes. This was good solid pro wrestling, and I continue to be impressed by Bences ability to match the French athleticism, but there was something rather disturbing going as there was a group of snotnosed kids ringside that kept throwing trash into the ring. Normally that’s an excellent sign of someone getting great heat, but in this case the stuff just came flying with no relation to what was going on in the ring. Not that Guettier is not a good heel. It approached some kind of surrealist theater as referee and wrestlers were trying hard to ignore the fact that the ring was starting to look like a trash bin and newspapers kept flying at their heads. If you can get over that, there were some pretty sweet European uppercuts vs. punches exchanges in this match.

MD: So far, between 57-60, we've seen very little sign of kids in the audience. Here, there's nothing but kids, a legion of rowdy newspaper boys who make their presence felt like you'd not believe. They spend the entirety of the match, the entirety, tossing paper into the ring. That's not to say they're not reacting or, if Guettier does something whiny and scummy in his babyfaced heel (as in a heel who has a pudgy, baby faced look) manner, the intensity of the paper doesn't increase, but it's a constant. Mid-way through the match, they're really tying each other up in tricked out holds and wrenching and it's just in a sea of paper as they roll around. Bence is even more a showman here than the last time we saw him, coming off like the old rodeo star traveling through Europe with trick lasso moves that he might have been able to pull off twenty years before but full of so much gumption that you wouldn't dare tell him to stop now. I'm not sure they entirely adapt the match enough to the crowd they're in front of, though the end of the first fall was absolutely perfect. See, Guettier ends up on the floor. That's not where you want to be on this day as dozens of kids rush up to pelt him over and over and he doesn't make it back into the ring before the count. The wrestling is good, with Guettier mean and sneaky and Bence getting plenty of revenge, but it's the paper flying into the ring and the kids revolting against societal norms that are the real stars (maybe the real heels?) here.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Rene Ben! Cesca! Bibi! Bernaert! Delaporte! Cowboy Jack!

Rene Ben Chemoul/Gilbert Cesca vs. Cheri Bibi/Pierre Bernaert 5/6/60

SR:2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. This matchup is kind of the French Rock’n’Roll Express vs. Anderson Brothers where you know exactly what you are getting. The predictable layout was that the Chemoul/Cesca tandem were the far superior wrestlers, so Bibi and Bernaert had to even the score by being absolute pricks. That could get tedious in such a long match, but I thought Bernaert and Bibi kept this interesting simply by continously escalating the beatings. It started with something like a forearm to the back of the head and by the end they were stomping the shit out of their opponents. Loved that big swinging bodyslam from Bibi, who may have carried the heel side. Needless to say, Chemoul and Cesca were incredibly slick. This was going along until the 3rd fall which got pretty crazy with Chemoul busting out something resembling a springboard dropkick and multiple double stamp where he planted guys hard.

MD: Fairly exceptional, if by the books, tag. The books are the books for a reason. As best as I can tell, this was out there but it was the 80s version with clipping and cut outs to a "modern" crowd watching in color and making comments. This longer version went over around 40 minutes and a few things will stick with you. This is the best Bibi and Bernaert have looked as a unit. I'm not saying I ever dreaded seeing him, but in the early Bibi appearances we had, it was much more about seeing how his opponent dealt with him and his limitations. In this setting, he shined as a bullying, mean-mugging spoiler, cutting off the ring and laying in some really nasty offense. He'd really pinball and opponent back and forth, either into the ropes or into Bernaert. Their cheating was more subtle and refined than a lot of what we've seen so far from the footage. The rest of the story was Ben Chemoul though. I know our invisible fourth, OJ, has gone deeper into the footage and has been sort of disappointed by Ben Chemoul based on his rep, but he was absolutely electric here. High energy. So much of these tags are about the big babyface revenge spots and he made them sing. At one point, he did this leap to the top followed by a twist and a tight missile dropkick which would be an awe-inspiring spot even today. All the while, he was able to balance it with that full body selling that really got across the toil of the match. I'm sure the clipped version of this was fine but the full match was excellent and you should check it out even if you'd seen the existing version previously.

PAS: Really cool stuff, Sebastian compared it to R+Rs versus Andersons, but it had way more modern offense (despite being 25 years earlier). I loved all of the hammerlock stuff with Bibi and Pierre locking in nasty hammerlocks and Cesca trying to flip his way out and failing. Very cool way to control the opening of a match. Both heels took big nasty bumps into the ropes with Bernaert getting hung by the neck as Rene Ben ran the ropes to jar him. That Chemoul top rope dropkick was awesome stuff, it felt like something you would see from a Fenix or Ricochet level flier today. An exciting babyface tag team against a pair of brutish heels, just pro-wrestling at it's finest.

Roger Delaporte vs. Cowboy Jack Bence 5/26/60

SR:2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. Cowboy Jack Bence was a US worker who toured the globe. I don’t know if my eyes were playing tricks on me but he looked like he had ridiculously long legs and almost no upper body, like he was 3/4ths legs. We have talked about how ahead of their time the French workers were, but looking at Jack Bence here reinforces how little we actually know about what pre-80s wrestling anywhere looked like. He had no problem doing some really athletic shit, including the bridge up that I thought only European workers and certain joshi wrestlers did, and at one point he fucking backflipped out of an attempted leg trip. Bence looked quite the top flight worker here and knowing guys like him that I never even heard of before this project were this good just makes me think the greatest match of all time happened somewhere between 1950 and 1970 and had no chance of ever being taped. Delaporte was at the top of his usual underhaded, stooging game and they had quite a great old school match. Bence had really fast throws and I loved all the complex control segments through wristlocks where Bence would grab a fast takedown in the middle of an exchange. Delaporte finally got the upper hand when he was able to twist up Bences leg in the ropes badly. That usually led to a quick finish in past Delaporte matches but In this case we got this great extended selling performance from Bence building to his triumphant comeback where he near twisted Delaportes leg off in return. Seeing so many French babyfaces blow off limbwork made this feel like a distinctly American touch. After that Andre Bollet in a suit came into the ring looking to have a go at Bence and ended up getting thrown around and taking an awesome bump to the crowds delight, with Delaporte forfeitting the 3rd fall seconds later. If this was Jack Bences TV debut it was enviable as he got to look like a million bucks taking out a top heel and setting up a match with another. 

MD: This is our only look at Bence and he's got sort of a babyface Dick Murdoch (to balance Gastel's heel version) vibe to him. Maybe in another setting he'd be a heel, but it's hard to be a heel against Delaporte with his cowardice and whining and dangerous, dangerous cheapshots and advantage-taking. Bence's selling was fairly excellent throughout. I'm not sure if it's because he came from a different school of wrestling than most of those that we've been seeing, but he was good at letting the effects of Delaporte's offense linger for a bit, and, of course, for the long-term selling of the leg mid-match, especially when he went back on offense. While that faded later on, it came back to lead into the finish and there's no way that would have worked so well if he didn't put the time and effort into it. He wasn't always the smoothest when it came to some of his holds and escapes, and I think his ambition outweighed his ability, but it all sort of worked in a gritty, competitive way. There was a rustic charm to his stumbles, a yee-haw fortune seeking Amerian bootstrap ambition, maybe? Delaporte didn't surprise here, but he did delight. I'm not sure I can name a wrestler better at begging off in the corner; just amazing facial expressions as he portrays fear, pain, or pig-headed viciousness.

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