Tuesday is French Catch Day: Bollet! Khan! Lecoq! Said!

James McTiffin vs. Johnny Stein 10/2/59

SR: JIP. We get the last 7 minutes of this. Looked like a typical slow paced heatmongering Stein bout, although I liked McTiffin a lot here. He looked good working an indian deathlock and he had this really cool double lifting armlock. He also had a guy at ringside playing the bagpipes whenever he got in trouble, so that is stylish. Another thing that stood out is how he threw Stein with a bearhug for the KO. 

MD: We get a little over 8 minutes of this, JIP. Stein's the best guy in this footage that I'm really not interested in watching. He does everything right and isn't even that dry in his stalking, put off manner, but the matches tend to be very long and a little of him goes a long way. This had contrast at least and I bet all of the early comedy spots we didn't get were enjoyable. What we had here was a series of holds with the bagpipes rousing McTiffin to fight back. Both guys showed fire, McTiffin with revenge punishing and Stein hitting back to regain the advantage, and there was a clear sense that things were likely over when McTiffin rolled back with the flying inverted knucklelock but this was one I was glad we only had the tail end of.

Andre Bollet vs. Iska Khan 10/2/59

SR: 2/3 Falls match going about 35 minutes. This was all about the singular charisma of Andre Bollet. Both guys come in looking like megastars, Khan in his dress, Bollet in a robe that looks like a sports jacket. Bollet is every raunchy heel character you‘ve ever seen turned up to 11 here. He threatens to punch audience members, he slips when he attempts to make his grandiose entrance into the ring, people blow smoke at him through the ropes. When the match begins he is your drunk uncle causing a mess at your sisters marriage as everyone nervously waits for a fight to break out. He slips some more, he flips the announce table for no reason. It‘s an amazing show and the match may have peaked early there. Khan is quite great as a contained gentleman taking on this walking menace. It rules that they let a short asian guy with a Hitler stache be a superstar. The match was a bullshit tour de force, although there was some really fun wrestling, and plenty of Khan going to town on Bollet with those chops. There were a few great bumps, including Bollet getting launched into the audience, and taking a headfirst dive into the turnbuckle. There were also some nutshots which end up weirdly no-sold. For this kind of match it didn‘t build to the kind of epic crescendo it needed but it was certainly a masterclass in showmanship. 

MD: Bollet was a star. There's no other way to put it. We haven't seen him for two years (nor Khan) but he jaunts out to the ring, which had a large open area at ringside for some reason, and just does multiple laps around the ring, basking in it and getting heat. That's basically the whole match, from the moment he arrives to the moment he steals the flowers meant for Khan at the end (only to have Khan smash him with him as the footage cuts off). Between the second and third fall, he threatens Khan with the spit cup he'd been using, causing Khan to brandish a stool at him. Leading up to the end of the second fall, he had taken so much punishment that he just sat in the corner as the fans counted along with the ref, again and again and again until he suckered Khan in finally. It wasn't some grand plan, just sheer persistence. That was Bollet. He stuck to the bit past any reasonable point and the fans loved every second of it. Khan, here, was constantly on too. He was an amiable gent, but every time Bollet tried a tactic, he'd get almost immediate revenge. If Bollet snuck in a low blow knee in the corner (and it's worth noting that this isn't Puerto Rico; we haven't seen many fouls at all so far), he'd return the favor. If Bollet bit his hand, Khan would bite his ear, and so on. It made for a less than even match but certainly for an entertaining one. We have so much Bollet ahead of us, against Hayes and Hunter, against Drapp, against L'Ange Blanc, against Leduc and Gastel (and how does that team work?), against Carpentier so many times. He was a star and now we're stuck with him.

PAS: I could write an entire review about what Bollet does before the bell. He struts around the ring with his hands in the air, climbs over one fan to take a swing a a fan in the bleachers, does a pratfall into the ring, covers his ears with his hands,  leaves the ring because the fans keep booing him, wipes his sweaty head on the ref's shit and dickishly shadowboxes in the corner. He is on a thousand and keeps it rolling, he throws a big overhead belly to belly but flips his way to the ropes catches his foot and gets hit with a clothesline. There is another great spot where Bollet topes Khan in the corner, and goes for it again and takes a crazy bump through the corner. Khan was great in this too, he is all Mongolian chops and cool faces and is a pretty perfect foil for all of Bollet's stuff. The match ends with an orgy of cheating, nut shots from both, biting, and Bollet putting on a front facelock/fishook combo which was just an awesome bit of assholishness. What a blast this was, one of the most purely enjoyable matches in the entire project. 

Pierre Lecoq vs. Arabet Said 10/10/59

PAS: I thought this was tremendous. Lecoq is a new name and he is a tenacious technical heel. He spends most of the match gripping on to a hammer lock like a drowning man with a life preserver. Constantly going back to it, grinding it in, twisting the wrist and fingers. Said finds a lot of different ways to squirm out of it, and eventually it comes down to a great slugfest as these matches always do. Said really lays into Lecoq who seemed out of his depth standing and trading , and Said eventually lays him out with a series of nasty bodyslams into the ropes. Lecoq was landing weird every time, and it really looked like something that could rip ligaments. 

SR: 1 Fall match going a bit over 20 minutes. Another two names you‘ve never heard of deliver an awesome match of the day. Lecoq was balding in the corners and wearing a singlet, and had the look of a real tough as nails dude. He had a real singular focus on grounding his opponent and then either bending the fuck out of his fingers or delivering a straight up beating. Said was this wiery guy who had some fast wrestling movements that he pulled off in a very uncooperative way. You can find 2 guys like these in any amateur wrestling team in the country, back then they had the choice of either living a normal life after their amateur career or going pro and becoming awesome wrestlers working these spectacles, today there‘s no money to be made in local circuit wrestling so these guys all live normal lives now and we don‘t get scrappy violent fights like this anymore. I think Lecoq didn‘t even do a single move in this match besides the hammerlock but I loved him. He was also pretty great at stiffening up and flopping around when Said unleashed his violent retaliations. There‘s another fun crowd brawling segment where audience members were looking to have a go at Lecoq, and the finish was really fun as Lecoq takes a series of brutal slams. He is able to get out of the pin but has to quit the match as it seems his ribs got crushed, something I‘ve also seen in amateur wrestling matches.

MD: I've been waiting for a match like this for a while. We've seen little glimpses or moments of it before, but here it was, a match that was almost entirely built upon body part targeting. Look, it's reductive to point at body part targeting/selling as a true sign of psychology/storytelling as we define it in wrestling but it's an easy trope and something that can be used to great effect and we just haven't seen it almost at all in the footage. If we did see it, like in the Bollet vs Khan match after Bollet tossed Khan and hurt his arm, it was usually just for a minute or two and then they'd move on to some other focus. This entire match was built upon Lecoq grounding Said by working on his arm and Said breaking free, getting distance, and firing back. At times, especially early, he had to wrestle defensively, avoiding Lecoq's grasps with one arm behind his back and darting through his legs or dancing around away from him and ending with a drop toehold onto the ropes as if he was going to hit a 619. Most of his hold attempts were headscissors, out of necessity, and when he lost it, he'd dash right up to Lecoq to try to get him back in. All of this made sense, especially given the speed and intensity of the opening exchanges. Said was dangerous. Unfortunately for Lecoq, his uppercuts and jabs and headbutts still made him dangerous even with a hurt arm. Lecoq did his own fair share of selling, spinning out after getting hit and staggering around the ring, until he was able to land a blow onto Said's arm again or ground him with a hammerlock and toss kicks and knees in there. So this was a novel format relative to what we've seen so far, and guess what? It worked. The crowd was super into Said's comebacks, his striking and his head-twisters. They wanted blood whenever Lecoq went to the floor. That played into the finish actually. Lecoq went to argue with the fans and Said was able to hit a big running powerslam and then a couple of slams in the ropes, with Lecoq unable to meet the count (which makes that the second time we've seen a 10 count finish in a couple of weeks after not seeing it much at all so far). As for the limb focus, once you see something once in this footage, it's fair game to show up again, and with this match, it's almost like a missing puzzle piece snapped in.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Bibi! Bernaert! Sola! Labat! Stein! Allary!

Cheri Bibi/Pierre Bernaert vs. Ami Sola/Jo Labat 9/6/59

MD: I really enjoyed this. If it was just a tiny bit tighter and had a little more heat (not to say there wasn't heat), it'd be towards the 1959 for me. This is definitely the best Bibi match we've seen so far and the perfect role for him, a looming menacing goon in a tag match who is going to cheat any chance he gets. The cheating here actually felt quite different from the roughish and almost playful Delaporte sort. Here it was unrelenting and uncaring. Rules didn't matter. Labat and Sola are guys we've seen wrestle each other and really just a perfect team. Bernaert is a cheapshot artist himself and complemented Bibi (they even had matching prison ring jackets). After a solid technical shine, the heels took over due to Bernaert launching a sneak attack out of a handshake (his second), and they kept control for a lot of this. It was primarily when the faces could incapacitate one or both wrestlers for a time (either due to Sola's crazy jumping tombstones or wrapping them up in the ropes) that they could beat the numbers game and the blatant cheating. Otherwise even fiery moments of comeback would get cut off the second they were driven too close to the heel corner. There was definitely heat, with trash occasionally thrown in at Bibi and he drew a reaction every time he menaced in the corner and the fans were into the comebacks, but it didn't boil over like in some of the other tags we've seen. Both heel falls were due to the faces getting too into their comebacks and slipping on a banana peel. Just really solid and highly accessible tag team wrestling.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. JIP, but it seems like we join right at the start. At this point, we know exactly what we are gonna get from this match up. Bibi & Bernaert are a cheating superteam, and Sola/Labat have rocked the TV screens with their technical matchups. This was very much an A+ face team against a solid C heel team. Bibi & Bernaert are pretty effective at what they do, but they aren't going to surprise you, while Sola & Labat where always mixing all kinds of neat stuff. The highlight of the 1st fall was easily Sola just randomly launching Bernaert around with an out of nowhere Giant Swing. I also liked all the evaded stomps. Evading basic moves is always cool and they always neatly time these things. The 2nd fall felt like it should've ended earlier as both Bernaert & Bibi ate some nasty piledrivers and after some pretty good selling kind of moved on to a pretty standard finish. The same can be said for the 3rd fall which had Bibi taking a pretty cool spill to the outside and things heating up good before a banana peel kind of finish, which I guess was the usual way to have a pair of heels going over on TV. That being said when they started throwing hands this got surely as fuck and everyone here is such a honest to god competent pro wrestler so despite the structural nitpickings this was another highly entertaining romp.

PAS: I am higher on the heels then Matt and Sebastian. I thought they were really nasty jerks who didn't come off as genial or roguish, but just like cheap shotting bastards. Punches to the kidney's, stomps to the head, chokes, not really stooging selling, but getting dropped and stunned when the babyface teams fired back. I loved the final run, with both heels getting flipped into the ropes and getting the heck beat out of them, just a tremendous payoff. The big dropkicks by Labat near the end looked great and the fall on the missed one felt like enough of concussive force to lose a fall.  Labat and Sola are both solid skilled wrestlers, but I thought the goons carried this.


Johnny Stein vs. Michel Allary 9/21/59

MD: Stein is a guy who does everything right but still comes off as fairly dry to me. He engages the crowd, interacts with the ref. His stuff looks brutal. He tends to have compelling holds. He'll feed into bit fiery comebacks. He draws big heat (including getting swiped at from the outside here). I think there's just a limit to the ceiling of a stalking German heel in 50s France when you had so many other different interesting heels. I liked Allary here. Some of his comebacks seemed to come out of nowhere. He just grabbed on and got a neckbreaker at one point and he took the first fall with a lightning power bomb that seemed more like luck than anything else. He was great at fighting from underneath in general though, and he had some of the best selling we've seen in the footage so far, including an extended bit of selling his back after two big corner whips and some focus by Stein at the end of the first fall, even into the break between falls, and excellent selling on the floor and the apron after a fairly low blow towards the end of the match. The finish was, I think, our first tree of woe, leading to a DQ, but the most memorable scene here was Stein going deep on a STF after pulling the hair multiple times and the ref trying to pull him off making for a mass of bodies. Unquestionably good wrestling but maybe not what I was looking for this week.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 30 minutes. This match was like a classical painting. Michel Allary looks like a Greek statue. Johnny Stein has a brow that makes Brock Lesnar look like a normal person. Allary is loved. Stein is hated. Although Steins act has all the subtlety of an anvil dropping on your head, he is quite effective. This was quite simple with lots of tight upper body holds and Stein looking like he would just screw Allarys head off. Dug the nasty chokeholds both guys did here. Stein was a German worker and you wonder if his simplistic wrestling was the result of the language and cultural barrier or if that was simply the style he was used to. Anyway, he was a physical freak who had no problem clubbing and getting clubbed which entertains me just fine, but what do ya know, he got himself DQ'd again.

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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.

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