Tuesday is French Catch Day: Bout! Van Dooren! Montourcy! LeDuc! von Chenok! Gastel!

Jean Bout vs. Jack van Dooren 5/7/59

SR: 2/3 Falls match going a bit over 30 minutes. We get some nice graphics before the match and a strange segment that appeared to feature van Dooren between the falls. The outstanding thing about this was its discernible structure. The 1st fall is straight wrestling, wherein van Dooren gets the advantage and is able to catch his opponent in a powerbomb for the win. The 2nd fall sees Bout starting to fight dirty, throwing punches, before grabbing a surprise spinning toe hold for the tap. The 3rd fall has more dirty fighting and Bout going for takedowns with van Dooren desperately fighting off that dreadful toe hold. It was pretty close to what we have seen from US workers, plus this had the French touch where they move through the holds much faster. There wasn‘t much in terms of athleticism, but van Dooren looked like quite the tank retaliating with big headbutts and Bout adapts to working as a bastard quite well. Van Dooren liked to go for a cross choke, and Bout had a few nifty ways to work out of it, there was also another short arm scissor that was sold in a significant way. Also, that toe hold was about as deep as you can work a move like that.

MD: Van Dooren is a bit snakebitten with this footage. He was in one of the first matches we saw (vs Di Santo) but then two of the only listed matches from the archive that turned out to be not there were Van Dooren matches (vs Allary and Tarres, the latter of which probably would have been really interesting). Ah well. Maybe they turn up some day. Bout, on the other hand, is a guy that I'm liking more and more. Which means, of course, this is the last we see him. Important note: Van Dooren's day job is real estate and we get a profile skit in the middle when he tries to sell houses. Amazing stuff.

The first ten minutes of this is Bout completely eating Van Dooren alive. Van Dooren will try holds and escapes but nothing works. There's a slight mean undertone between the two of them even early. Right before the ten minute mark, Van Dooren tries an armlock and Bout just clobbers him. I really felt for the poor guy. That leads to a nice transition however, as they repeat the spot, but this time, Van Dooren ducks it and is able to put on a short arm scissors that lasts a good three minutes, in and out. Van Dooren can't capitalize on it however, and when Bout's back up, it's with some brutal shots. Van Dooren fires back with two great headbutts, and they build to rope running, a killer dropkick and more Bout mauling. He ultimately slips on a banana peel, unable to get the flip up 'rana cleanly and gets power bombed to end the first fall. The second two falls devolved repeatedly into a slugfest, with more great Van Dooren headbutts, and some awesome low kicks to the legs by Bout. The best part was when they went out to the floor and brawled like total madmen. While it wasn't his sole focus, Bout did go for the legs when he could, and ultimately took both remaining falls with a spinning toehold. Considering that Bout caught him with gut shots or kick ups during certain attempts to go low, it felt natural and opportunistic. Ultimately, yet another really good match.

Claude Montourcy/Gilbert LeDuc vs. Karl von Chenok/Robert Gastel 5/23/59

SR: 1 Fall Match going 60 minutes. Yes, you got that right, it‘s a broadway. Gotta admit, even though I know how great the wrestlers at the time were and matches going 30-40 minutes not being unusual, I was a bit skeptical whether they could pull it off. And well I‘m a damned fool, because they just do. The heat for this was insane. It seemed like a big crowd and the folks were super engaged from the beginning. It only took von Chenok & Gastel 1 cheapshot to have people threatening to jump them. The heat is a big part of why the match works, but also all 4 guys were absolutely on that night. Gastel had fully transformed into a stooging, grimacing prick heel here, and he was absolutely fantastic. He really struck me as Murdochian again, knowing exactly what to do when, having all these fantastic exaggerated bits of selling, and looking like an asskicker when it was time to crank up the violence. Von Chenok is a bit weird, as his sole intent is to nervehold guys which should normally be off-throwing, but I have no problem calling his performance here great. The man had no problem taking some insane punishment and bumping his ass off. His bump for the european uppercuts was like the 1950s version of the Rikishi clothesline bump. I also loved his Ohtani like crybaby selling when his hands got stomped. He also went absolutely savage at times, including a bit where he went straight for an eye gouge and then dished out several knees to the balls. He did go for the nerve hold a lot, but for the first half of the match, the hold was pretty much broken immediately, so when he finally got to sink it in later, it felt like a big deal. Also, undoubtedly he worked great with Gastel in cutting off the ring.

Leduc and Montourcy were fantastic as well. We‘ve seen how great Leduc can be, but Montourcy really stood out as well. He had ton of slick moves, including a great roll through into a boston crab, and something that was like a grapevine atomic drop that Hechicero should steal. Both he and Leduc also had a variety of ways to escape von Chenoks nerve hold, which kept things fresh. Of course the main job of Leduc and Montourcy was to hit explosive dropkicks, punch combos and forearms, and they do that rather well, my god. At some point in the 30 minute mark, the match just turned into a frenzy and all 4 guys were dishing out serious punishment. It wasn‘t exactly Holy Demon Army level structure (save for Leduc hitting multiple powerbombs as the time was running out) and the match may have peaked with the initial heel beatdown on Montourcy (culminating in an insane tombstone piledriver followed by some BattlARTS level near-10 counts and nerve hold nearfalls), you could tell they ran out of ideas towards the end and just kept repeating their stuff, but with a match this great I‘m not complaining. These guys just beat the shit out of each other and in between that you had shit like von Chenok stomping someone in the back of the head or Leduc trying to bite someones ear off again. Also, Gastel refusing to go down and just getting hammered towards the end was awesome, as was his bump over the top that landed him in the audience. Also loved that they only started going for pinfalls like 55 minutes into the match and before that it was all 10 counts with the crowd counting along and the wrestlers being awesome selling near Kos. I could go on and on but I will just say that everyone in this match ruled and it was really great.

PAS: I have very little interest in watching a 60 minute match these days. Give me a solid 16 and take it home. This, however, was fantastic, and in the discussion for the best 60+ minute matches ever. All four guys are great in this, with a bunch of individually awesome moments and also a weaved together structure. I loved what von Chenok brought to this. A lot of the great French Catch guys are stylistically similar, which can bring a bit of sameness to even incredible matches, having a bald weirdo just trying constantly for nerve holds was awesome. I really came away from this wanting to see a LeDuc master of the headspin versus von Chenok master of nerve hold singles match. Gastel was a total package too on the heel side, vicious mean prick, who when it came time to bump and stooge went for it. Those piledrivers were gross and he really threw then with disdain. You can tell a great French Catch match if I am sending Daniel Makabe DM's about moves to steal and that Montourcy octopus thing got the DM treatment for sure. This is standing as our 1959 MOTY and we will be truly blessed if anything outdoes it.

MD: Sebastian covered this so well that it's actually hard to add a lot, which is crazy when you think about a 60 minute broadway. Let me reiterate a few things and try to add something though. The level of difficulty on this one was extremely high. It's one thing to structure a long match, a long tag match, when you have some fall breaks to build to. Here they didn't have one single fall and more over, like he said, they didn't even really go into the pinfalls until the last ten minutes. They had the crowd (announced mid match at around 2387) into it the whole time, booing, cheering, chanting! There was a moment where Leduc was able to time the grinding of his toehold with the chants even as Von Chenok kept grabbing at his head. There were underlying themes both in general (like the heels controlling the ring with VERY quick tags and the babyfaces able to fall dramatically towards their corner for tags with bruising forearms and uppercuts to follow) and specific (such as Von Chenok going for the nerve hold, or Leduc getting justice with the catapult), and maybe they ran them a bit into the ground, but the crowd never cared and it's hard to care too. Instead of falls, they built to big moments of babyface comeback and fire. Then they brought things back down either with the heels controlling or some longer, excellent holds around the 40 minute mark.

Everyone brought something to the table: Von Chenok's begging off, cruel and desperate attacks at the eyes, selling of his hand, and the single-minded cross-choking and nerve holds; Gastel's stooging and bumping, his bullying chops and great cut-off headbutts, those tombstones, the way he'd constantly try to cheat or get frustrated with the crowd; Montourcy's jumping knee attack, his dropkicks, his backbreakers late in the game, the way he'd cheer on Leduc from the apron or pull the rope back to give extra oomph to those catapults, and yes, that Canadian maple leaf style crab and the amazingly cool stretch drop into the rolling cradle; and Leduc being Leduc, headstands and forerams, the leg nelson, those crazy power bombs at the end (the angle on one being insane), the vicious elbows to stop the nerve hold, and just both babyfaces' selling when in peril around the 35 minute mark, which is some of the best we've seen in all of the French footage.

There were times where I was wondering if this was going to hold together, but ultimately it did, driven by the constant struggle, the quick tags and heel cutting off of the ring, by the triumphant babyface comebacks and revenge punishment, by taking the crowd down and then bringing them back up, and then by escalating things towards the finish by introducing pins and bombs. Then with all of the small details that tick past along with the minutes. Truly an accomplishment of a match.

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Bout! Stein! Leduc! LE BOURREAU de BETHUNE!!

Guy Mercier vs.  Robert le Boulch (JIP) - Leduc Profile - Robert Gastel vs. Gaby Calderon 2/5/59  

MD: This show was formatted a bit differently than usual. We came in at the very last seconds of Mercier vs le Boulch. There wasn't enough to say anything about Le Boulch but we'll see him a couple of times later. Mercier won with a clunky but still impressive float-over fall away slam. Then they were supposed to go to Leduc vs Le Bourreau de Bethune and showed us a Leduc profile piece to set it up. We've gotten a few of these so far and they're always a nice surprise. Here he was driving a small chariot of horses as part of his training and then had a little interview where he talked about his favorite authors and what not. When they cut back to the ring an impromptu Gastel vs Calderon match was going because they claimed the fans were preventing Le Bourreau from entering the ring/arena. This is what google translate is telling me at least. It's the most Memphis studio TV I've ever seen French catch. Anyway, this went just just a few minutes and was anchored by Gastel being his usual cheapshot clubbering jerk self. This was our first look at Calderon and he had no shoes and long pants and maybe had a martial arts thing going? He had one neat reversal of an arm wringer into an armbar and won with some chops and a stepover armbar which led to a great post-match moment where Calderon had to put Gastel's arm back into joint, which I'm not sure I've ever seen before. We'll see more of him later too. After the match, they asked Gastel about how he felt, which got over the hold even more, but also felt like another weird departure.

SR: We get about one minute of Mercier vs. Le Boulch. Le Boulch does a somewhat elaborate bumping and rope running routine before Mercier hits him with a nice overhead suplex.We get about 5 minutes of Gastel vs Calderon. It‘s Robert Gastel, baby, and every second of him is a treasure. Gaby Calderons barefoot look with the cut off tights is questionable, but he did seem like a competent catcheur. And young Gastel will club the shit out of anyone. It is telling how awesome he makes a simple punch to the jaw look. Calderon seemed to be doing a martial artist gimmick, which can be tough to pull off, but when it was time to chop and arm lock Gastel he did chop and armlock the shit out of him. Wouldn‘t mind seeing more of that fellow.


Gilbert Leduc vs. Le Bourreau de Bethune 2/5/59

MD: What an amazing debut. I was a little hesitant on us covering this one because it had been out there for a bit, but seeing this in context, following from L'Ange Blanc's debut, knowing LeDuc as we do by now, just having a sense of what French Catch of this period is like, this is a puzzle piece that just fits into the broader tapestry. LeDuc is masterful here, a wonderful counterpart to Villars in L'Ange Blanc's debut. There, Villars took holds and let his opponent escape. Here, LeDuc let himself get overpowered again and again, and had to really work for his escapes. When LeDuc takes a punch, he sells it like he's been hit with a hammer. I don't think we've seen anyone who wasn't a giant portrayed as such a powerhouse like this. Moreover, almost immediately after the escape Le Bourreau was right back in to try to get an unfair, bullying advantage. When LeDuc finally has him down, Le Bourreau goes to the hair to escape a hold and the crowd, ready for this moment, jeers wildly. Ultimately, Le Bourreau locks in a cobra and won't break it in the ropes, which lets him really unload with clubbering blows and headbutts. LeDuc mounts a big comeback, ducking a blow and firing back, only to get tossed over the top. He's weakened and vulnerable and this allows Le Bourreau to unleash his killer blow, a press slam gutbuster, which is definitely something we haven't seen before. LeDuc sells it like death, taking a ten count, but demands to fight on into the second round. Le Bourreau swallows him up immediately, hitting two more gutbusters for the brutal win. Great debut, following another great debut, and if I was part of that crowd, I'd have been chomping at the bit to see L'Ange Blanc vs Le Bourreau de Bethune. This may have been the most effective match we've seen so far at accomplishing what it set out to do.

SR:  2/3 falls match going a bit over 20 minutes. It‘s the Hangman of Bethune, baby. Really cool how we get masked guys who look like straight up luchadores by now. Match wise the Hangman didn‘t do much out of the extraordinary, though he did a good job looking like a menacing masked evil dude, complete with a signature pose and all. I liked how he powered out of Leducs arm holds and when it was time to deliver a beating, he got pretty violent hitting Leduc in the face with headbutts and forearms. I always enjoy watching Leduc so the match was easily enjoyable, although it ended in a rush when the Hangman finished off Leduc 2:0 with his military press into a gutbuster which is a hell of a finisher in 1959. Apparently the Hangman doesn‘t show up again, which feels like a bummer as we just got a taste of him here. 

PAS: This was a heck of debut. We have seen LeDuc eat up his opponents before, so it is was something to see him dominated like this. He tried to use his patented headspin several times but it was mostly stymied by Bethune. The hangman really wore him down with his headscissors, and cracked him with nasty headbutts and overhead forearms.  LeDuc took a big bump over the top rope and fell hard with that press slam stomach buster. It is a shame we don't have anymore Bethune, because after debut like that you really want to see how someone could stand up to him. 

ER: One of the joys of French Catch is that, nearly every week, I get to write some variation of "this was not what I was expecting, but in a good way" and mean it. LeDuc is not a site favorite, and just a few weeks ago we made LeDuc's showcase match against Rocco Lamban our MOTY for 1958. This LeDuc match is just a few months later, and it was wild seeing LeDuc massacred by this masked executioner. The early match headscissor blocks and attempts were enough to sell me on this one, as LeDuc's Santo-esque head spins have been a highlight of French Catch, and every time Bourreau would block them I could feel muscles straining and backs and necks getting tweaked. It's like when you have to crack your neck, and really lean into the attempt, but nothing actually cracks and you just end up making your neck feel worse, only times five. Bourreau was bulkier in the arms and shoulders than most men we've seen from the era, looking more like a shorter Clint Walker than any of the wrestlers we've seen, but he amusingly minces around the ring like Mil Mascaras. He takes little short steps with his toes pointing inward, butt clenched, waist sucked in. You'd expect him to stomp around, but I was endlessly entertained watching him draw heat just by walking around the ring constantly flexing, taking those little steps. He uses small heat tactics to maximum efficiency, and hearing the crowd erupt in rage after a hair pull is pure joy. His brazen cheating is something to behold, made more special when placed in context of just how uncommon it was during this era. The press slam gutbuster was a real shock, something that would absolutely hold up as a finisher 60 years later, and at the time (and with the help of LeDuc's expert selling) it must have felt like LeDuc was dying in the ring. The straight falls finish was handled brilliantly, LeDuc coming off like an ultimate babyface for demanding to continue, only to get wasted with the same gutbuster. I can only imagine how molten the rematch must have been, and we can only imagine how LeDuc would have handled that. At least we got this, but it's cruel knowing how fired up the rematch would have been. 

Johnny Stein vs. Jean Bout 2/27/59

MD: Long, but very good, albeit quite straightforward, match. Stein is the future Kurt von Stroheim and the second Kurt von Brauner. Bout is a real meat and potatoes guy for this footage. Could take a beating. Could hit a running 'rana. Expert technician. Cound mount fiery comebacks. He did all of that and more here, but it really was the Stein show. He was completely immersed in his character, a lumbering stormtrooper, one of the prototypes of a dozen post-war German heels, mixing style and substance. He had any number of holds working over the head, the arm, the back, the legs, and sometimes multiples at once, including a nasty STF. He had a way of moving from one to another after cutting off a bit of hope. On defense, he was quick to try for a rope break, though he'd never give a clean break himself. One one of the big spots of the match, Bout had enough of that and flipped him over while he was in the ropes. This had a ton of time and after a more technical beginning, flipped between holds and clubbers by Stein and big comebacks and revenge holds by Bout. Bout had a great variety of strikes, including knife-edge chops that we actually don't see a lot in this footage. And yes, as per the French way, they were trying some new things in this episode, starting by playing Witch Doctor, with some weird lighting throughout that really deemphasized the crowd (though it's hard to do that when they're chanting or throwing orange peels at Stein after a heel tactic), and with piano occasionally highlighting a moment in the background.

SR: 1 Fall Match a little over 40 minutes. For some reason, they kept playing piano solos over this. Johnny Stein is a bald headed German with a massive physique. You can tell he is hated right from the get go, and this was a niggly bout where they do some tough, simplistic hip throws and headscissors wrestling and lots of beating on eachother. It doesn‘t add anything new to this common formula of French wrestling, but I enjoyed myself. One thing that stood out is how dark this was, like the ring was basically this claustrophobic bright chamber in a dark hall. You basically never get a look at either guys face, and Steins hunched over stance gave him a sinister aura. The only time you see the audience is when Stein goes to throw Bout over the top rope and a bunch of people rise up to catch his fall. One of those examples of how invested fans were into the babyfaces then. Bout seemed to have the upper hand, being fired up and blasting away at Stein with big chops and forearm blows. The match seemed to ramp up the intensity at the 30 minute mark with Stein starting to pick apart his opponent, but after some heated back and forth (including a great rope running sequence that lead to Stein eating a sick dropkick) the match deflated with a lame DQ finish. Not a great way to end a 40 minute long match to say the least.

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Finlay! Gilmour! Mercier! Mitchells! Pellacani! Bout!

Jean Bout vs. Liano Pellacani 2/15/57

MD: I'm exceptionally high on this. It's my favorite match out of the lot so far. Very straightforward contest where you have an absolute master in Bout vs. an uncouth scoundrel in Pellacani. Bout stood out in a sea of great talent. He reminded me a bit of the promise of Dean Malenko fulfilled, an unassuming looking wrestler who started out cool and collected but that could light up with righteous fury when wronged. He had, however, this sort of physical charisma that tied it all together.

It wasn't enough that he'd do a hip toss. He had to hook you deep with his leg and whip his opponent around. It wasn't enough that he did a mare. He had to bridge up to torque his opponent like you've never seen. His dropkick? Angled up and in to come up at a chin. A headlock escape? He'd flip his way out somehow. Monkey flip? Low and deep and tight to make it a head bump. That's before he unloaded, too. When he went at his opponent in fury, it was with fists and forearms, jumping knees and charging knees. When it was time to finish a fall, he did it with two slams and the punctuation of driving his opponent's head into his own knee like a deranged modified shoulder-breaker. Then he sold the knee which made it matter all the more.

Pellacani was just as committed, quick to go to a hundred shortcuts, ranging from hairpulls to biting to those all time great resounding clubbering blows. He espoused a wicked frustration but instead of making him sympathetic, it made the crowd loathe him for tarnishing Bout's exquisite wrestling. I've never seen a crowd go from relatively apathetic to trying to set a guy on fire so quickly. Then, as Bout made comebacks and punished Pellacani for his crimes against art, the fire transferred from the exploding cigarette projectile back into the crowd. The banana peel finish was something you'd see a lot later in the UK, an unfortunate stoppage due to an overzealous blue-eye and a lucky, tenacious villain. This was absolutely excellent, the middle point between technique and ingenuity and character and story and fierce fighting, and everyone should go out of their way to see it.

SR: 2/3 Falls match over 30 minutes. Really heated, intrigueing piece of TV. Pellacanis birthplace is listed as Italy, and supposedly he won the heayweight title of Europe at one point. I cannot stress enough how awesome it is to get a long glimpse at workers like this. Bout is a stoic babyface, and he really dominates with athletic wrestling ability typical of French wrestlers. Pellacani has no real answer but to clock him with thudding forearms. While Pellacani didn‘t show much wrestling, pretty much anytime Bout had him in a hold he would scurry for the ropes, but he was absolutely bumping his ass off, really good pinballing performance. By the second fall Bout was really making minced meat of Pellacani, throwing punches, dropkicks to the face and cranking a nasty sleeper, all of which the crowd loved. By the end Pellacani looked overwhelmed and was taking frustrated swings at the crowd who threw lit cigarettes at him. It looks like another 2-0 blowout like other 2/3 Falls matches we‘ve seen so far, but then a huge, potentially crippling apron bump happens and things turn around. Really in our modern world apron bumps have become so meaningless that the way they put it over here stands out as really memorable, and what a ballsy move to go from Pellacani being outgunned to going over.

PAS: This was really fucking great, I loved the story of this, with Bout as the slick tough wrestler and Pellacani as heater. Early stuff with Bout landing these cool judo throws was dope, and Pellacani was just crushing Bout with hard forearms, some of the better clubs I think I have ever seen. French matches often break out into slugfests and I loved how Bout got more and more violent as it went on, his choke sleeper looked like something that would end an MMA fight, and I loved how he mixed in body shots and headbutts. 95% of strike exchanges in modern wrestling look like crap, and every strike exchange in 50s French wrestling is incredible. Loved the pair of big bumps to the floor, the first one taking over all three guys, leading to a pretty heated brawl on the floor. The second has Bout taking a big backdrop right on his tailbone on the ring apron for the ref stoppage. Add another pair of awesome guys to the list of new wrestlers we are discovering with this footage.

ER: Another week of Catch, two more guys I've never heard of who are apparently total legends. The setting for this is great, and the crowd really stood out to me as different from other Catch crowds we've seen. This really felt like more of a working class crowd, which added to an actual real fight atmosphere the longer the match went on. We've seen matches in front of men in suits and wives in coats, we've seen matches in front of a more kid friendly studio audience, but this crowd felt like it was filled with guys who all had bread or produce routes. Late in the match when Bout and Pellacani spill over the top to the floor and take the ref with them, things get heated as hell, and you can physically see that this was absolutely real to these fans. Pellacani threw these great clubbing shots that seemed to keep landing harder as the match went on, and he also bumped wildly for Bout. Bout didn't need help looking like a killer, but Pellacani certainly helped. Bout had a really great sleeper and one of those great upward angled dropkicks, and we get some big slow release Argentine backbreakers for good measure. This is maybe the least "pretty" match we've seen so far from French Catch, and instead it was memorably ugly.

Fit Finlay/Ian Gilmour vs Guy Mercier/Alan Mitchells 9/25/80

SR: 2/3 Falls match over about 25 minutes. Browsing through hundreds of French matches, and just out of nowhere a 22 year old Dave Finlay pops up in what is maybe his first ever televised match working like a seasoned veteran heel. Pretty cool. The saying about European tag wrestling is that they didn‘t quite know how to do it, but this match had pretty much the kind of structure you want: Fun babyface shine segment, followed by a heel beatdown before a series of cut offs before a comeback succeeds and then a finish. They fool you a bit here by doing a really long shine with the heels making several attempts at starting the beatdown and being cut off, but in the end the structure is there and even the 2/3 Falls formula is integrated well. This was a bit more holds and takedowns based and less about armdrags and ranas, similiar to what we know from British wrestling, but don‘t be fooled the pace in this match was lightning fast. These guys really do an absurd amount of stuff even in a long match, but everything is executed effortlessly. Guy Mercier is a former European champion and legit Greco roman wrestler with a look and aura that just screams tough old man, and while there wasn‘t a ton of extended wrestling in this match he looked like a classy worker. It speaks for the creativity of these old workers just how much they could do with moves like a body slam or hip throw. Finlay also did this cool thing where he misses a big splash in about the first minute of the bout and spends the next few minutes scurrying away while the faces twisted up his leg and launched him into the ropes. It didn‘t pay off in the long run, but it was a fun bit of selling to make the opening minutes more interesting. Once the heels got something going after what felt like 15 minutes of highly entertaining bumping and stooging, they basically focussed on getting the faces to the corner and stomping the crap out of them. Really simple and effective stuff that made me wish modern workers paid more attention to making simple things like a stomp look good, because Finlay had damn great looking stomps here. Another layer to the match was Michel Saulnier, who was grey and a referee by now. The match had some heel ref antics and comical amounts of babyface retaliation against Saulnier, while that is something that can ruin a lot of these Euro matches it was actually executed in a really fun manner here. The thing I loved most how delighted the fans were at the trick the heels used to get a pin here. No hard feelings, it‘s all good fun in France.

MD: Thankfully, we're lacking familiarity because in this case, I think it would breed contempt. We had a combination of heel in peril and a heel ref that made himself the center of the show. I had no problem with the 80s WWF heel-in-peril style as a kid, not until I saw a lot of it to evaluate. The first time I saw a heel ref doing his antics in lucha, I was probably delighted.

This was fresh enough to still be delightful. Gilmour was the star of the show, charismatic and bold, a real villain who knew just how to be the center of attention at all times. Finlay came off as his muscle, Otis to Gilmour's Lex Luthor, Chumley to his Tennessee Tuxedo. He was in there to bump and stomp and hammer, but it'd just be a few years later that he'd be playing Gilmour's role with Princess Paula at his side.

What they did here wasn't bad by any means. They filled time well. Everything hit, with a lot of it being complex and compelling. Mercier and Mitchells were very good and Gilmour was somehow everywhere at all times filling the screen. The heels got their comeuppance in satisfying and amusing ways during the long shine, but you kept waiting for the switch to flip while watching. Not every bit of wrestling has to follow the same formula but when the faces dominate for the first 2/3 of a long match even good work tends to tire you out.

PAS: This was primarily noteworthy for our earliest look at Fit Finlay. He had a real explosive athleticism about him here, he actually remind me a bit of Dynamite Kid, which isn't a comparison I would have made before. The speed he got up to the top rope for the missed splash was really noteworthy. Gilmour isn't a guy I had heard of before, and he was really great as the Alpha of the team, he didn't do a ton of really noteworthy individual spots, but he really could fill the screen with his presence. I agree with Matt that we could have really used more of a Southern tag structure, this was a lot of the babyfaces on top, and an occasional fire back by the heels. I did really enjoy Mercier taking his shots at Saulnier, I wonder if that is an old feud being dredged up, we have a ton of Mercier in this footage, going all the way back to the 50s so it will be neat to see a big sample size of his career.

ER: When the neverending pile of French Catch was discovered, it never actually crossed my mind that FIT FINLAY would turn up in the footage. Finlay is arguably my favorite wrestler of all time, a wrestler responsible for really taking my specific brand of fandom to a new level. He set such a high standard of quality execution and time management that I'm not sure I could name 5 people better. I've never been disappointed in a Finlay performance, ever, and I have watched an absurd amount of Finlay. But the thing is, before now the earliest Finlay match I've seen is probably from 1985 or '86. For me seeing Young David, 5 years earlier than I ever have, was tantamount to us getting to see 1968 Andre (which was at least 3 years earlier than any prior Andre footage we had). So here's this young man with a buzz cut, already showing a shocking amount of polish for someone so young. Part of me was looking forward to Finlay looking like a not very good wrestler. I've seen hundreds of instances of Finlay looking like an all time great wrestler, I wanted to see a green as grass Finlay who had flaws. But this motherfucker was apparently good from go. He's different than the Finlay I would later love, but even if *this* was the best he ever got in the ring, he would still clearly be an awesome wrestler. I loved Mercier locking in the Santo headscissors and the absolute arms waving feet stamping panic that Finlay sold it with, loved the big bump he took off the apron when Gilmour got run into him, loved his wild missed splash early off the top (which I believe is the only time I've seen him attempt any kind of splash off the top), and it was amazing to see him throw his all time great bodyslam with the exact same motion and follow through that he would still be using to perfection 30 years later. The match had other joys, including kids and adults squealing with glee every time Saulnier would physically get involved, or the fact that maybe 60 total awesome uppercuts were thrown over the length, or the young French version of Sean Young in a ship n shore blouse being briefly interviewed before the match. But this match got bumped up this early in our review process for Young David and it's just insane how much he was already delivering.


La Complète et Exacte French Catch

Read more!