Tuesday is French Catch Day: Kurt Kaiser! Lasartesse! Calderon! Mercier! Kiyomigawa

Kurt Kaiser vs. Remy Bayle 2/21/70

MD: I was wondering when this episode was only 27 minutes and this match wasn't joined in progress. This was one minute and twenty-seconds of outright murder. Even when they've debuted monsters in the past, whether they were the cerebral sort like the good Dr. Kaiser or outright monsters like Quasimodo, it was usually in extended matches where they got to show a lot and their opponents at least tried to fight back. Here, it was a series of haymaker forearms, a series of slams, and one double underhook suplex. They certainly built him up for a big match against some stylist or another.

Rene Lasartesse vs. Gaby Calderon 2/21/70

MD: On paper, I didn't love the look of this as a little bit of the judokas goes a long way, but it was actually a great matchup. Lasartesse supplied the contrast and force required and Calderon went at him with a different intensity and less of a spirit of exhibition than usual. It was a contest between Lasartesse's size, strength, and unrelenting underhandeness and Calderon's skill. Lasartesse would strike down upon him, would go for slams and backbreakers, and would sneak in eyerakes, chokes (most especially while in the backbreaker position), and would even undo the corner ring guards, and Calderon would come back by catching or redirecting the arm, laying in shots like knees, and unleashing varied submissions, including a great stretching double armbar and a 1970 Crippler Crossface of all things. Ultimately, Lasartesse chipped away at him by going after the throat, but drew the ref's ire in the process and earned himself a DQ by launching his signature bomb's away kneedrop straight down upon Calderon's windpipe. This was absolutely the matchup Calderon needed.

Guy Mercier vs. Kiyomigawa 4/11/70

MD: They'd introduced rounds matches earlier with Mercier vs Le Foudre early in 70 and this is the second match in the footage that follows the style. They still announce it as new and try to explain Kiyomigawa refusing to break in that he's unfamiliar with it. Before the match, he has a plate breaking demonstration and he has a couple of Japanese valets or observers at ringside but there's a communication gap between them and the announcers. This ends up being six rounds of around five minutes and the pacing works out better than the Le Foudre match. Kiyomigawa was as stereotypical worker as you might with chops and nerve holds, but I like the chops generally. They look good and he has some combos with them. Mercier is quick to get a leg pick and work a toehold but there's never any selling from Kiyomigawa to give it any weight. Kiyomigawa's always able to go to the eyes or the ropes and get a break so he can chop and choke again. Mercier tries for a bearhug and maybe a belly to belly a couple of times and usually pays for it; even when he gets it late in the match, it's without weight (back to the eyes, back to the nerve hold and chop). There are a couple of rounds I liked a lot, 3 where Mercier really got to fight back from the chops and 4 where there was a bit of a role reversal with Kiyomigawa going for the toehold and Mercier the chinlock but this was all quite a bit of the same, even if the same was generally good. If you're going to have a fairly repetitive match instead of push for an escalating boiling over, the rounds probably do more good than harm.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mercier! Montourcy! Yokouchi! Kiyomigawa! Masque! Drapp!

 Guy Mercier/Claude Montourcy vs. Chati Yokouchi/Kiyomigawa 2/20/66

SR: 2/3 falls match going a bit over 30 minutes. Mercier and Montourcy looked like dynamite here. The Japanese guys, not so much. Kiyomigawa has these fun swinging chops and they both cheat, but that‘s it. Mercier and Montourcy have lots of great throws and technical moves. Merciers backbreakers ruled. They looked like they required zero cooperation, and he was ragdolling Yokouchi. Dug the pretty arm throws and his deadlift belly to belly, too. Bit long for a match where one side added very little, but by the end Montourcy and Kiyomigawa were busted open and some fun chops vs. forearms battles occurred.

MD: On paper, this one sounds pretty good. Our chance to see Chati Yokuchi, another look at Kiyomigawa. Legitimately good stylists in Mercier, who we haven't seen in ages, and Montourcy. Some fire, a little bit of blood, an engaged crowd. And it's ok, but it doesn't live up to a lot of the tags we've been seeing. The Japanese were dogged and persistent and mean, but mainly chopped, chinlocked (often with a face rake) and snuck in chokes. They tagged in and out quickly, played up the chops well, and fed though. Mercier and Montourcy were a lot of fun, fighting back from underneath and with plenty of "stuff," Mercier's triple variation backbreakers (one-armed, bearhug, waistlock) and Montourcy's submissions (a twist out of a sunset flip type position and a literal leg nelson where he got the legs behind the head). Mercier fighting out of the corner with forearms or clearing house after a tag was more than solid. The problem? The faces were able to come back a little too much so while the heels drove things, it was never sustained. It was a rare two fall match, with the faces taking both and the second one being very short. Maybe a little too much on the choking and chopping from the heels. Even the blood from the chops was more of a tease than anything else. The action was okay but this one needed a little more drama relative to the excellent tags we've been seeing week in and week out. Speaking of week in and week out, we have a sense of the different arenas now: The Winter Circus, The arena named after Leo Legrange, and this was at the Wagram Room, and someone more attentive than me might be able to speak to the different crowds at each but I loved that they interviewed some regulars here between falls and they said that they came every Thursday because they lived in the neighborhood and knew all the wrestlers by their first name.

L‘Homme Masque vs. Andre Drapp 3/4/66

SR:1 fall match going a bit over 20 minutes. This started out fun with both guys going hold for hold before Drapp decides to light the Masked Man up with some tough looking punches. It got pretty meandering after that, though. Lots of time killing working over a guy in the ropes and corner. Drapp starts hitting some fun jumping headbutts before L‘Homme connects him with a foreign object for an easy 3 count. Not very exciting match sadly given the talent in it.

MD: Drapp's an old friend we haven't seen for a bit, the valiant Lion of Lorraine. The last time we saw L'Homme, he was sans mask. He has it again here and is unmistakable either way, a towering behemoth who Couderc claims is a mix between the Phantom and Superman. I liked this as a heavyweight slugfest with a lot of character. Drapp carried himself like a main eventer, never backing down despite L'Homme's size. They started out with an almost shoot-like competitiveness, but as the match went on, there was a lot of stooging, that sort of dissonance of a giant needing to (or wanting to) cheat despite his size. He would go from tossing Drapp all around the ring to rolling this way and that as he was getting his comeuppance. Probably the most enjoyable bit here was when L'Homme got stuck in the ropes and Drapp arranged the mask so that he couldn't see and then just dropkicked him like he was in a shooting gallery. The bit at the end where L'Homme loaded his mask with a coin was a pretty distinct bit as well, as was Drapp getting the coin himself and running him off with a loaded punch. There was a bit after the mask twisting and L'Homme tossing Drapp out so he could restore his mask where Drapp's foot got stuck on the way in and L'Homme turned to target it that I wish, by 66, had turned into more consequential selling, but in general, this, while hardly technically smooth, was a perfectly fine heavyweight outing.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Falaux! Elandon! Caballec! Puydebat! Charles! Guguliemetti! Brown! Kiyomigawa!

Albert Falaux/Bob Elandon vs. Rene Caballec/Gilbert Puydebat, 2/22/63

MD: Welcome, friends, to what feels like the end of our golden age of footage. Today we're covering February and March 1963, having just covered November and December 1962. After this point, we'll have one show in May 1964 before skipping to a silver age, beginning in January 1965. More on why that gap exists next week (and really, it goes back to 61 relative to the years prior, though not nearly as dramatically as this) and some of the scant stuff that we might be missing from 1964, thanks to what we've learned from Phil Lions's research.

This was another nice, long tag, with some guys we haven't seen much of before. Elandon is the person you'll remember the most here, as he alternated between cowardly and blustering, quick to attack, quick to retreat, quick to kick the ropes in frustration or jaw with the crowd, and well served in a setting where he could tag out at the first sign of danger. Definitely a heatseeker. The other three brought a lot of more conventional wrestling to the table, though all of them had a number of tricks we haven't seen much of before in the footage, if at all. That could vary from Falaux's bulldogs or missed dropkick that let him flip off the ropes to set up the finish or Caballec's flying cravate mare or neckbreaker twist or the victory rolls the stylists were throwing around. Puydebat had a real energy and verve to his work that made me want to see him more. Unfortunately, this is it for him, I think. Even Caballec we won't see again until the late 70s. This all came together well with Falaux playing along with Elandon's antics and heeling it up as well and the faces firing back with one interesting exchange after another.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. This was another solid solid long French tag. Plenty of athleticism and asskicking here. These guys are like springs the way they would bounce around the ring while looking tough. Falaux and Elandon were the rudos. Elandon was this straight forward asskicker, who had a cool section working a strangle hold at one point where he would yank the other guys chin. Falaux was interesting as he could do some athletic and technical moves of his own. He wrestled like he once was a technico himself but took a liking to sneaking in inside shots. It made for a cool dynamic and there were some quality exchanges. The finish with Falaux doing some Psychosis like leap into the ropes only to bounce back and land on his feet was baffling even by French standards.

PAS: I thought this was really excellent stuff, four completely new guys all of them really impressive. Liked the rudo team a lot, and the technicos had some really flash. One thing I especially liked about this were good finishes for each fall. Even the best French matches don't always have great finishes, but this one really did. Callabec and Falaux face off and Callabec gets totally rocked with a knee to the back of his head. He tries to shake it off several times but goes to a knee, only to finally get his bearings, rock Falaux with some uppercuts and a crazy neckbreaker. Falaux is able to bound off the mat with a leaping forearm, hits this great flip rope fake into a jumping tope for the three count, spectacular finish for an excellent match. 

Tony Charles vs. Giacomo Guguliemetti 3/29/63

SR: We get about 8 minutes of this. Tony Charles we have seen on World of Sport and in Memphis, making this a cool sighting. He doesn‘t show off his technical skill here, instead we join right into the asskicking portion of this match. These two just smacked the shit out of each other. Not pretty but heated and very intense. Wish we had the whole thing.

MD: We come to this one 12 minutes in and get the last nine minutes of it. Charles is in his late 20s, which is fun to see. He's pretty go-go-go here, spending a lot of the match just tossing himself around the ring and it's really on Guguliemetti to just try ground him. He's never able to do it for long. He'll redirect Charles out over the top in a big bump and Charles will just rush back in and fly at him again. He'll hit a huge forearm off the ropes and Charles will kip up and ram him with a driving headbutt. He'll stomp Charles in the face and keep him down for a minute, only for Charles to rush back up with a backbreaker and flip him about in the ropes. Definitely not one of the best selling performances we've ever seen but it's exciting and not quite what I was expecting from young Charles. This ends with a nice dropkick, a back handspring celebration, and a fairly happy crowd. Good action and hard hitting but given Charles' penchant to pop right back up, I think nine minutes of this was the about the right amount to have.

James Brown vs. Kiyomigawa 3/29/63

SR: 1 fall match going about 25 minutes. Kiyomigawa was a Japanese ex-sumo. He co-founded one of the first Japanese promotions, All Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance, and trained some joshi legends. He wrestled in Europe and the German speaking countries a lot. Having him on film is neat, especially against a German trained US guy. And well this was a really good match. Brown is clearly a pretty great pro wrestler. Just a classy athlete, and really good at selling holds, struggling, eating offense and firing back. Lots of nifty work here where they work in and out of holds and into strikes. Kiyomigawa was this lanky guy who liked to throw chops to the neck and sometimes throat. I wouldn‘t say he was great, but he was a breath of fresh air to the generic clobbering heels you usually see in France. He also knew how to use a nerve hold in interesting ways. Lots of cool european uppercut vs. Chops battles here. Kiyomigawa ends up bloodied after a series of nasty headbutts and we got some cool exhausted strike exchanges before the match is thrown out due to Kiyomigawa not breaking a stranglehold. Disappointing finish but Kiyomigawa shaking Browns hand after the match was cool. Quality work here.

MD: Interesting look at two figures we don't have much, if any footage of, in James Brown and Kiyomigawa. Brown was a multi-level threat, able to wrestle with some interesting holds like a bow and arrow and this lifting vertical STF that felt like one of those lucha holds that seem devastating but that they can only hold for a few seconds; powerful enough to wrench out of holds and lock in backbreakers and bulldogs (two show in a row, which it seem like the new hot move of 1963); to strike, including great forearms and his awesome headbutt; and some athleticism, including standing dropkicks out nowhere. Kiyomigawa was persistent, with a lot of nerve holds and chops, slaps, and throat attacks. In some ways, I thought they were matched up well. They worked their holds and escapes snug and their shots stiff, with wicked slaps followed up almost immediately by jarring receipts; the battles between chops and headbutts were actually quite compelling, more so than I expected. In other ways, though, you kind of wish they were up against different opponents. Brown had an answer to everything and Kiyomigawa might have been served better by a LeDuc or Drapp or Corn; Brown on the other hand would have been better off with a heel that stooged more. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the match-up we got though.

PAS: This was a battle of racial stereotype offense, with Kiyomigawa hitting chops and nerve holds and Brown landing big headbutts. Kiyomigawa had great looking chops though, hard nasty shots right to the side of Browns neck, and Brown laid in those headbutts too. Brown seemed to have some real mat skill including a crazy STF which he lifted off the ground, felt like a Hechicero spot. I thought the finish was a bit wonky, felt like the ref wasn't clued in or something. This was hard hitting stuff though, enjoyed it a bunch

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