Tuesday is French Catch Day: Zarak! Bete Humaine! Di Santo! Mores!

Zarak/La Bete Humaine vs Michel Di Santo/Eddy Mores 9/30/81

MD: Let's just say that this is a rare, rare match that took place on what is undoubtedly one of the most important days of my life. I guess I'm glad Zarak and La Bete were doing their thing on that date somewhere in the world. Couple of real characters here. Zarak was, of course, Dave Larsen, aka Batman, who passed away October of 2024. You have to love just watching him move as he puts theatricality in every step. I have no idea if this is the same La Bete that we saw in 71 and I'm not going to go back to compare/contrast but he's a guy in basically a cowskin costume and mask but one that can, when he is called upon to do so, work the style very naturally. Di Santo is a few years older than we last saw him and I'm not too sure about Eddy Mores except for he's older and dubbed the Captain.

Start and end of this were quite good but I thought it had some issues in the middle. We'll get to those. The best stuff in here was when La Bete was really wrestling. Some very slick exchanges around wristlocks and what not, especially with Mores. He'd generally then fly across the ring with an axe handle or put on a choke before they'd go back to the wrestling. So long as the balance was there, it generally worked and was probably additive overall. Zarak was more prone to picking his spots, laying in a kick or a knee and prancing around in a subdued but affected way. He had some nice, caring interactions with La Bete which again were additive overall. 

When they were in control, it was a bit too choke and grind heavy without enough variety or actual heat. Part of the problem there was the referee who would get in the way and allow for tags when they should have been building heat again or to cut off a comeback without any real narrative gain to it. Just too overbearing overall. Both fall finishes were good though with Zarak and La Bete taking two in a row. Solid ceiling on this one but the floor was just a bit too low maybe. 

SR: I missed La Bete Humaine during the last French mega-watch, so this is actually my first time seeing him. This is in colour so we see that La Bete Humaine has white-brown fur, and kind of looks like a cow, but his head is dark and furry and kind of reminds me of the wolfman. Is he a cow? Does he dress himself in cow fur? That doesn't seem very beastlike. Regardless this is a pretty fun match. La Bete Humaine definitely has the vibe of something that Survival Tobita or Goro Tsurumi would face. But this is a very mannered French match. The two masked monsters bump around for a lot of snappy armdrags, and the two technicos are a lot of fun.  Eddy Mores has a cool vibe with his greying look and being really athletic, Michel de Santo is a bit non-descript but he is as solid as any French technico. They both were fast, technically skilled, and a had a lot of fun comebacks against the monstrous onslaught of La Bete Humaine and Zarak. The two masked men were good as you expect from French heels. La Bete doesn't bring quite as much flavor as you expect, he does like the claw hold a lot which is unique for Catch and he would do these graceful technical arm takedowns into claw holds because it's France, daddy. He even looked quite bumbling like when he throw one of the faces to his own corner accidentally and then was stuck adjusting his mask. Not everyone can be the Anderson brothers. In the end it was a fun match with a lot of cool wrestling and the funny sight of La Bete Humaine will Zarak did his best to maintain his classy swaggering. Technicos looked very good. I wouldn't mind seeing more of either of them here, and I imagine La Bete Humaine might be pretty fun in a singles match so I'll probably have to go back and watch that at some point. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Aubriot! La Bête Humaine! Ben Chemoul! Bordes! Tejero! Montoro!

La Bete Humaine vs. Dan Aubriot 9/3/71

MD: In general, this went better than the last Bete Humaine match. I'd say there were specific periods of it which were actually quite good, most especially the first five minutes or so when Aubriot was trying to contain him in holds and was using every wrestling trick he had to stay in it. There was real and compelling struggle there. And of course, what La Bete could do here was considerably impressive. His cartwheels were impressive. How he jumped to the top rope (not to actually do anything, but...) was impressive. His flips back up and over Aubriot, including out of a hammerlock, definitely impressive. And some amazing dropkicks. Throughout the back two-thirds of the match he just didn't sell anything and with that in mind, it probably went on too long. The big spots where the ref jumped on when La Bete had Aubriot up in a fireman's carry and where both of them got dumped over the top were big crowd-pleasers. In general, La Bete was incredibly athletic and portrayed a wild monster well, and Aubriot held up his end in getting him over, but we have two matches of build and no payoff in the footage against someone who could stand to him so he'll end up as little more than a bizarre footnote of French Catch.

Rene Ben Chemoul/Walter Bordes vs. Anton Tejero/Antonio Montoro 9/20/71

MD: Ben Chemoul and Bordes vs Tejero/Anyone has been a pretty wonderful formula so far. Here, though, Montoro was very impressive. Tejero had put on some more weight but could still bump around and had big hammering shots and really a great look, but Montoro came off like an all timer. He could not only keep up with Bordes (whose stuff was more and more tricked out each time we see him) but managed an actual handspring off the ropes during one fast exchange (a gif of which went pro wrestling twitter viral over the weekend actually, thanks Allan and Emil). He had some cool stuff too including a conjuro (arm hooked spinning backbreaker) and really, just his ins and outs with Bordes had a lot of satisfying wrinkles and counters. Ben Chemoul and Bordes debuted a sweeping headlock series on top of their repeated headscissors and dropkick spots down the stretch. Tejero and Montoro bumped and stooged all over the ring and out of it and Bordes had one amazing bump over the top on a catapult. Structurally, they started fast and leaned into holds before picking things back up in the long first fall. The second was mostly heat, cutting off the ring and quick exchanges by the heels until the faces made the comeback, and then things were pretty celebratory in the last fall. Nothing groundbreaking but the fans loved every second of it and the action was good throughout with Montoro doing everything you could possibly want him to.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Le Bete Humaine~! Catanzaro~!Lemagourou~! Sanniez~! Remy~!

Jacky Montalier vs La Bete Humaine 2/8/71

MD: Young Jacky Montalier had a few things going for him. He really laid in his shots. He had any number of holds mastered and could hang on to them when needed. He had a cheering section of young ladies in the audience in a way we hadn't really seen. He even had a cool jacket with JAKY on the back (no C). Unfortunately, he was up against Willy the Shepherd, recently from Texas, also known as the deranged masked creature, La Bete Humaine, the human beast. We've seen pretty out there characters: Quasimodo, multiple headsmen, a hippy, a cannibal, even the Martian on the outside, but this might be the strangest. I had rushed this one out a couple of years ago and I called him a cross between Tom Magee, the Missing Link, and the Ultimate Warrior, and I'm still sort of feeling that. La Bete, despite being huge, could do a lot of the more athletic stuff you'd expect: leap to the top rope, hit ranas, do the over the top backflip out of a cravat, hit lunging dropkicks. And he was certainly full of out of control antics: pulling the ref's shirt off or tossing him over the top, tossing Montalier out repeatedly, tossing a fan over the top post-match. Mainly he liked to toss people out of the ring. So there was some skill here and Montalier tried to stay in it, but one thing La Bete didn't like doing a whole lot was sell, and that made this a few minutes of real curiosity and awe, and a lot more of awkward gawking at whatever the heck they were trying to accomplish in there.

Billy Catanzaro/Gilbert Lemagourou vs Albert Sanniez/Bob Remy 3/12/71

MD: Kind of amazed we haven't already done this one. Sanniez is someone I'm really looking forward to as we still have a half dozen matches with him remaining and he's been great so far. Lemagourou was a solid stooge here, hitting hard when in control and taking everything with enthusiasm, but it's impossible to stand next to the dynamo of energy that was Catanzaro. He just swallows up all the air around him, like a Jim Breaks on speed. He complained about every shot he took, only to run right into the next. He took every advantage like it was the most natural thing in the world. He fed every spot. He'd eat a dropkick right in the face, but not until scrambling around like a madman for positioning first. When they took over around the middle of the match, they controlled the ring well, drawing in their opponent and distracting the ref and put on a very credible beating. Catanzaro's tombstone set up facebuster and then the tombstone itself led the commentator to speak about crushed vertebrae, which is always what you're looking for in such a move. This never reached the level of the most insanely quick lightweight tags of this era, but they did pick up the pace well and then made things resonate with the character work so it was a good balance. Sanniez had some great escapes but Remy was able to hold his own too. I think we have one Catanzaro match left to go in 72.

PAS: Cantanzaro really has the feel of a guy, that if we had five more matches we could make a top 20 of all time argument. He has the Cesca classic, nothing for over a decade and then a couple of tags where he is working as a manic athletic heel and he is just mesmerizing. In perfect position for every big spot, bumping feeding heeling. Everyone else was good in this too, but man what a talent. 

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