Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Richard!

Petit Prince vs Jacky Richard 11/6/66

MD: Both wrestlers were young here, Prince at 23 and Richard at 22. As much as I like the really slick Saulnier matches, my favorite Prince stuff is always him matched up against a bully and Richard is quite the bully here. There's just much more of a sense of build and payoff in those matches and contrast really does make the world go round. 

Here this meant that Richard really ground down Prince. He had five minutes early on where he just tore apart the leg. Prince would try to reverse it, and sometimes would even come up with a reversal attempt (the most memorable had each going for a crab at the same time) but Richard's superior side would combine with the damage already done to keep him down. The crowd was increasingly incensed as Richard used the ropes and really just because Prince was being contained. And the legwork was mostly to punish and contain because when he did come back, he hit one of his amazing flurries of move after move, incredibly dynamic stuff. 

Richard stayed on him however. and really started beating him with stomps and kicks. He'd toss Prince out and when Prince tried to get back in, would knock him not just off the apron but into the third row (where he was caught by a woman who gave Richard the what for). When he tried to get back up again he ended up in the third row again. They moved into another comeback shortly thereafter and you half got the sense it was to avoid a riot. Richard ended up tied up tight in the ropes as Prince hit him with shot after shot after shot. The finish played into all those extracurriculars on the floor as Richard went to knock him off again only for Prince to catch him. The act was still developing but this was still primal, spectacular stuff.

SR:  I think this is the youngest we have seen Jacky Richard, which is kind of nice. Now we know he wasn't always crusty and old. This felt almost like a very mat-based match for the Prince. I mean, the first 5 minutes only had a cool backflip from him, otherwise they were working a modified headlock and step over toe hold. The Prince did get on a few tears with his beautiful athletic offense, but it wasn't all out like we had seen in other matches. The match was more about Richard garnering heat by being a bastard. He really tore up the Prince's leg. It didn't stop the Prince from hitting his stuff but it looked nasty. At one point he kept throwing the Prince into the crowd over and over with folks looking really upset and throwing trash in the ring, so it was a good night of work for Jacky Richard. He also had a great looking lift into a gutbuster. The Prince's comeback was more about beating the shit out of Richard and less about hitting his spots, which was pretty cool to see. A fairly typical French TV match for the time, upgraded with the Prince's cool agility, and Jacky Richard looking like a particularily nasty bastard. Would've blown a few minds if it were the first French match we had seen, still a pretty decent addition to the collection.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corne! Caballec! Richard! Renault! Prince! Bouvet! Sanniez! Tejero!

Jean Corne & Rene Caballec vs Jacky Richard & Guy Renault 10/12/81

MD: This was just go go and more go but everything was mean and nasty at the same time. We've been watching Corne and Richard for years and years now with Renault and Caballec coming in and out of the footage but could they ever still go. You'd get Richard or Renault just feeding and feeding and feeding, bounding off the ropes, bumping around the ring while in holds, in and out and in again. Even when they slowed down, they didn't let up. It'd be Richard grinding on a chinlock and just punching someone right in the cheek and putting it back on or Caballec snatching a bridging headscissors to a standing Renault and the working of it just constant motion and struggle. And they'd move right into an armbar with Renault scooting around the ring and Richard bumping in trying to get a tag. Or Richard would have an arm puller on Corne with Renault continuously whacking him from the outside, eventually Corne would manage to knock him off the apron but they'd work right back into the hold until Corne could roll around into a headlock and kick Richard in the face. They just kept going and going, constant motion. Just one sequence after the next, constantly interesting and engaging and violent.

There were differences. Richard and Renault were the next version of the Blousons Noirs, I guess, now fitting for the early 80s, by way of Adrian Adonis and studded leather everything. I mean, it was still Jacky Richard. He had to be an old friend to most of these fans. There was a quick and out of nowhere first fall where Corne got clocked by him off the ropes, though. Even Delaporte seemed confused by it, but it did add a bit more drama, yes. The only time the match settled down were the real periods of heat where the heels were controlling the pace and beating down the stylists, and there Delaporte helped to bring the motion as ref as he bristled about. That didn't give the crowd any rest. It just ramped up the pressure for the comeback more and more. And that paid off with some big house cleaning moments from Caballec and clowning revenge by Corne. All of the turmoil boiled over into a short third fall as they worked towards the time limit with pin attempt after pin attempt before Delaporte got to partake in his favorite indulgence and declare the stylists the winners. Just a wonderful middle ground between working hard and working harsh.

SR: 2/3 Falls match going 30 minutes. Richard & Renault were donning the leatherman gear here. There were some structural choices here that may confuse people, but the work was undeniable. This kind of insane cardio show from a bunch of crusty old men is just befuddling. I liked the early pinfall to increase tension throughout most of the match, and there was just one entertaining exchange after another. Richard & Renault weren‘t bumping as big as other rudos we‘ve seen, but had no problem going along and looked considerably scummy. The crowd absolutely loved this and folks were jumping up and down anytime Les Celts got the upper hand.

Petit Prince & Gerard Bouvet vs Anton Tejero & Albert Sanniez 7/24/82 

MD: There's some question on whether this is 79 or 82, but given the technological advances (the names on the screen for instance), I'm thinking the 82 date is right. It's strange being in 82 as opposed to, let's say, the mid 60s where we actually have so little footage from the rest of the world. We have a great idea what wrestling looks like all over in 82 and it doesn't look much of anything like this. This was all the hits, once again, but it's amazing that Prince (and his bases, and Bouvet in his own way) were still able to do them 16 years after we first saw him. You can't help but wonder what it'd look like if Sanniez got to team with 82 Dynamite or Tejero with 82 Buddy Rose or with the potential 1980 Prince vs Fujinami match would have looked like.

It's the hits but the hits are so good, crazy wristlock exchanges early where a wrestler will hang on through everything, all of Prince's headlock sequences where you, and his opponent have no idea which direction he'll dart next as he twists around and through and over, so many cartwheels, Tejero bumping out the ring again and again, Sanniez with a chip on his shoulder, Bouvet being slick as can be. There's even the short arm scissors sequences with the Gotch lift and stumble over the top and right back in, with the actual heat in the match starting with Tejero cutting Prince off when he tries to go up and over the second time. That's the big difference between 66 and 82, that they're able to work the heat to a comeback better, with missed tags and distracted refs and everything else. That bit was probably just a bit too short to really inspire hearts and souls to rage though. It all still ends in a celebratory third fall with a lot of stooging, but even in 82 the action here more than holds up against anything in the world at the time.

SR: 2/3 Falls match going a bit under 30 minutes. This exact same match is also uploaded as being aired on 1/1/1979, so it‘s another mysterious case. This was a "more of the same" match with some sequences being replicated exactly as in the previous Prince/Rocca match. That is to be expected, I guess, and there were still like 10 sequences that would have most luchadors drop their jaws with envy. The man bringing something fresh to the table was Bouvet, doing some more technical stuff and even a skin the cat spot. Tejero was a bit more subdued here, so Sanniez stepped up being the
master of the hair pull. There was no intense heat segment like in other French tags and the faces handily bagged this one 2:0, so I guess that disqualifies it from a Best Of list anyways.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Rocca! Tejero! Remy! Golden Falcons! Herve! Lamotta!

Gerard Herve/Tony Lamotta vs Golden Falcons 8/11/80

MD: Herve and Lamotta had matching tights. Saulnier was the ref. I read an article that may or may not have been BS where Herve said Jean Corne discovered him in the mid-70s and he was a Celt for a while. I saw no evidence of that but hey, it's possible. The Falcons were billed as Peruvian here, one larger who could hang a bit more with the faster rope running and spots and one who was smaller who hit a bit harder. Saulnier was the ref, which means Saulnier made his diminutive presence known.  

First third of this had Herve and Lamotta not necessarily control, but escape out of one hold after the next. There were some pretty elaborate exchanges out of wristlocks, but I'm not sure the technique was quite as tight as things we'd seen in years past. Herve's problem was that he was working big and loose for the back row but the back row really wasn't that far away in 1980. They could have brought him in as the French Von Erich cousin and he would have done very well in Texas. Most of the rest of the match was the Falcons controlling by doing nasty things behind the ref's back as Saulnier admonished the other stylist or yelled at the crowd. Not direct heat on Saulnier but certainly indirect. Lamotta, who was super agile and able to kip up a million times in a row, scored a quick roll up to win the first fall but either through Herve going to the mask foolishly or Saulnier intervening, the Falcons took back over. They won the second fall after a double team kick and back body drop which we haven't seen a ton of in the footage. Herve worked well from underneath, firing back to keep the fans in it and selling broadly. There were a couple of sufficiently hot tags here too but it maybe didn't come together as much as some of the other recent tags. Finish was yet one more hot tag to Herve and that amazing twisting armdrag thing we've seen a couple of the Panamanians and maybe Juan Guil Don use. I badly wish someone would steal it. Overall this was still well on the good side but there were some things I wouldn't have mind a bit tightened up.

SR: 2/3 Falls match going about 30 minutes. French pro wrestling was nearing the end, but tag team wrestling could still deliver, and this delivered. Fast intricate exchanges, a pair of masked guys who can stooge and deliver a beating... yeah, this is pretty much Lucha. Also, both teams wore matching outfits, so they understood the crucial parts of tag team wrestling. Gerard Herve is some young stud and a quite polished technico. Lamotta is balding and grey, but still really athletic with great looking ranas and flips, although he wisely leaves the bulk of the work to his partner. I didn‘t know what to expect from the Falcons (what kind of heel persona is that, anyways?) but they were ready to wrestle and bump and had good heel timing. There were some heel ref shenanigans with Michel Saulnier again, but to be honest he may have carried the heel beatdown section with his amusing ways to sabotage Herve. The european uppercuts landed loudly and the crowd was into this. The last fall is really short but the ending move is a good one.

Petit Prince/Claude Rocca vs Anton Tejero/Bob Remy 8/18/80

MD: This was as good as you'd expect. Some bonus heat to start as Tejero walked across the ring pre-match and ripped Prince's spectacles off his face. Once they got going there was a lot of Prince finding ways to fling Tejero to the floor, as he was always willing to get there the hard way, so revenge was had. More little bits of sputtering heat here in the first fall with a lot of comebacks, sometimes at the expense of the ref but often by simply stooging the heels. Prince really understood how to get sympathy and build to moments by this point. Remy and Rocca matched up well, Rocca with a lot of slick stuff and Remy more of a brusier where as Tejero could do everything under the sun. Towards the end of the first fall they really turned up the heat on Prince, with him, at one point, bumping into the third row. It wasn't until the ref missed the tag, a worthless moral victory for the stylists, did they actually pin him. Second fall had a molten hot tag which saw the ref get nailed as well, and then they soared into all of the fun celebratory stuff for the last fall. So it was a lot of what we've seen lately, but more of it, and with four excellent, excellent wrestlers working as hard as humanly possible. French Catch, still great in 1980, just in case anyone was confused about that.

SR: 2/3 Falls match going a little over 30 minutes. The guys were still absolutely killing it. It‘s the same formula as any of these late period French tags, two good guys who will armdrag hard, 2 rudos who will bump like crazy, and an incompetent referee who is made the butt of many a joke. It‘s really nice that we have footage of Tejero from the 1960s up to here. He was getting lumpier and greying, but still an insanely dedicated bumper. He flung himself out and across the ring like 20 times in this. I have no idea what kind of money these guys were getting to work this hard, but it‘s a trip. Rocca looked awesome just running the ropes and the Prince hadn‘t slowed down much since the 60s. I also really liked Bob Remy who was a real fucker tagging guys with punches and stiff punt kicks. This was all action until a pretty intense rudo beatdown kicked in with the Prince taking a beating,even getting flung into the crowd and carried back by a second who didn‘t bother removing his cigarette. The 3rd fall wasn‘t as intense as the first two, but this was a romp.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Hassouni! Tejero! Remy! Angelito! Sanniez! Bordes! Zarak!

MD: Unfortunately, this has more audio issues, but you can watch it without problem with headphones, only using your left earbud and not the right. It's a good week of matches though, so tough it out.

Kader Hassouni/Petit Prince vs. Anton Tejero/Bob Remy 1/7/77

MD: This one is for some cup and well worth watching. Tejero's one of the best bases and bumpers in the footage so having him paired up against Petit Prince is pretty special. Hassouni was slick as could be and Remy was a meat and potatoes slugger bad guy so all of the pieces were right here.

Structurally, this is probably the most perfect tag in the set. Yes, there are some Blousons Noirs (and others) matches with more (or longer) heat, but this was balanced just right for the style and had, finally and I don't say this lightly, the hot tag we've been waiting on for so long. It gets around 35 minutes with the first 15-20 the wrestling we'd expect from these guys, lots of holds and escapes and the stylists looking great at the expense of the heels. The heat really kicks in with Hassouni getting knocked to the floor, with the crowd moving to help him but he ultimately unable to make it back in. From there, even after a tag to Prince, they really dig in, distracting the ref, laying in mean shots, and ultimately getting the ringpost guards off to the point where Prince gives us that rare, rare French Catch blood.

This segment isn't long, but between the blood, Prince's selling, and the fact that they cut off the tag a couple of times, including one where the ref misses it, it really ramps things up so that when Prince monkey flips both heels and bounds back for the tag, the place comes unglued. Hassouni makes quick work of them on the comeback to take the second fall and the third, as you'd expect, is all celebratory stooging double teams to the crowd's delight. This is the style but it's got incredible talents with great personalities and is tightened up to make things mean even more than usual. If you've been following these tags at all, you should put on some headphones, listen with one ear, and watch this one.

Angelito vs. Albert Sanniez (JIP) 2/19/77

MD: We get the last ten minutes of this and it's just wild action. Stylist vs stylist. Juniors. They just really go at it. Counters to counters, big shots, huge spots. Some fun parallel stuff (be it both guys going for a drop down at the same time or later on when Sanniez hits a press slam into a gut buster and Angelito follows with a fireman's carry into one). Sanniez is smoother but Angelito is pretty imaginative. The thing is, Sanniez has to take all of this stuff and make it look good! The absolute craziest thing is a sunset flip bomb off the apron by Angelito to Sanniez. In 1977. Just nuts. Sanniez hits a bomb later in the ring, which I don't think we've seen too much in a while. They're working towards the draw, but they're working exceptionally hard. Sanniez looks like an all-timer here and in a vacuum this is probably some of the most action-packed ten minutes of footage in the whole set. 

Walter Bordes vs. Zarak 3/12/77

MD: Sorry guys, switch to the right earbud on this one until around the 15:30 mark and then go left. Anyway, Bordes had an absolutely undeniable connection with the crowd. It may have been inherited but you watch a match like this, you see him get fiery and just take one swipe at an opponent, not even landing, and you hear the crowd start singing Mamadou and it's beyond doubt. They go even more nuts with the singing when he tosses out Zarak later. He knew it, knew how to play into it, and here, he had an opponent who understood it just as well, for Zarak was our old friend Batman, David Smith-Larsen.

Larsen, here wrestled completely differently but with the same sort of theatricality he brought to Batman. Here he was a strutting, masked strong man with big power moves and mean clubbering blows. He overpowered Bordes' early attempts but ultimately got outwrestled, the first fifteen minutes or so being very entertaining along these lines. Eventually though, Bordes missed a top rope headbutt (or splash) and Zarak really took over with huge power moves, a press slam into a gut buster, a fireman's carry into a slam, Quasimodo's tombstone position press up move. Ultimately, he catapulted Bordes out and forced him to take some really nasty bumps to the outside. But Bordes was a hero true and he came back and tried for pin after pin after pin as the clock ticked down. This was probably the best push to a draw that we've seen, really gripping stuff with Bordes trying everything and Zarak slipping out again and again. It's not the best match we've seen but it truly felt iconic and really gives you a sense of the skill, flash, and attitude of mid 70s French Catch.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Mitchell! Noced! Renault! Schmid! James!

Daniel Noced/Guy Renault vs Petit Prince/Alan Mitchell 10/12/74

MD: Really, really good stuff here. Look, Petit Prince is having a moment this last week due to a big viral tweet. I do hope that when that happens people find their way to the blog and the master list so that they can watch this footage for themselves. There's so much more than just gifs of highspots to these matches. Everyone that's been following along knows that. Spread the word! (And because I haven't linked to it for a while, here's the Master List, updated as of a month or two ago: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2021/05/french-catch-tuesday-master-list.html)

Ok, so this was excellent. Two things became very clear to me from watching it. Most importantly, Noced is the Psicosis to Prince's Rey Mysterio, Jr. He's the perfect base for him, able to take all of his stuff, able to beat him down when it's time, over the top with a red mane of curly hair and beard that the black and white doesn't do justice. He knows all of Prince's stuff and can play into it perfectly. The second is that Mitchell is really Prince's perfect partner. He's a technical brit who knows all the tricks and is all about the close-up magic of tiny bits of limb and joint manipulation. It's perfect contrast for Prince's sweeping acrobatics. This is the only match we have with them as a conventional team and they're just so perfect together.

Mitchell is very close to the top of the list of someone that I wish was in another ten matches. He has ways of clowning his opponent that no one else in France was doing. Bits where he bodyscissors them so they have to walk around the ring with him attached or traps their arms or legs with his arms. There was an exchange where Renault was trapped and it was all he could do not to fall over and Renault kept coming in to pick him up and Prince would come in to knock him back down. The fans loved it. Renault was totally game but Noced was the star in how mean he'd hit and how smug he was after escaping one thing or another (including the ref pulling his ears) only to slip on a banana peel or get his comeuppance from a stylist a moment later.

This had about fifteen minutes of the stylists mostly outwrestling the bad guys, including a great long short arm scissors by Prince on Noced where he was going back and forth with it like a rowboat as the fans chanted, and all of the lift ups/rolls that you'd expect. That led to a brief but awesome bit of heat once Noced was finally able to place him on the top rope. Because of his diminutive size, Prince could really get sympathy bumping into the crowd and getting knocked off the apron. This led to a great earned comeback by Prince and one of the best hot tags I think I've seen in French catch to end the first fall. The second fall was mainly fun and celebratory but led to a ref bump and guest Ring Announcer Jean Robic (a former Tour de France winner) coming in to count the fall to a big ovation. Just great stuff all around. Mitchell/Prince is one of the greatest one-match teams we have on tape.

PAS: Tremendous stuff, Prince is so great in every match he is in, it is hard to rank them. This feels like a high end Prince match, as we have a great pair of rudos, and Mitchell adding his own spice to the mix. Loved all of the stuff with Mitchell's drop toe hold and his weird body scissors. I am a short arm scissors mark, and this was a very cool variation of that spot. The Tour de France guy coming in to make the pin was a fun bit of old school pro-wrestling business, I love a good celebrity appearance, and it is fun to see  a guy who was a big deal fifty years ago but is lost to history now. 

Al-Casi vs Christian Preno 4/13/75

MD: Hey, we're in color now. Stylist vs stylist match that goes a little over ten minutes. Al Casi was 26, Preno was 23. This feels like the French version of a young lions match and it's probably extremely interesting to compare/contrast vs that or a first match on a mid-south card in 83, that sort of thing. Casi was obviously more experienced but Preno was very willing and there was never a moment where they weren't scrapping and trying for holds or escapes or mares or throws and occasionally even shots as it came close to boiling over in the middle before it calmed back down. I wouldn't want to watch these sorts of matches week in and week out at the expense of everything else, but you can't fault their effort here.

Daniel Schmid vs Rocky James 4/13/75

MD: This is just a bizarre scene. We didn't have anything from the end of 74 or the first few months of 75 and thus we're in April here, in color, and I'm not really sure what to make of this. James came out with bagpipers and an accordion player. Schmid had definitely been a heel before. Neither of them played nice. Both were bigger guys with big shots and a lot of aggression. James felt like a de facto face who did heelish things (snuck in a single leg from the ground, played king of the mountain in an unsportsmanlike way, wouldn't break clean, kept getting admonished by the ref) but expected to be cheered for them and sort of did. He reminded me a bit of Otto Wanz actually. Schmid, as always, reminds one of Buddy Rose with his pudgy speed and literal baby face reactions. This never really came together but that just gave everything a more competitive feel. Past a fairly long armbar early where James kept control through a lot of escape attempts, you never quite felt comfortable as a viewer with this one. It was good action with bigger guys but not wildly coherent, even as the band kept playing in the background and the crowd just seemed happy that they were hitting each other.

SR: 1 Fall match going a bit under 25 minutes. This was a match between two guys with fantastic physique. I love that Schmid was like a mini Greg Valentine while Rocky James looked like a more stocky Jerry Lawler. The first 10 minutes of this were pretty much a study of upper body holds and throws which these guys executed at blinding speed. After that Schmid tags James with a punch to the jaw and the match turns into a potatoefest. Schmid looked grizzly here, bowling James out of the ring when he tried a leg stretch and then putting on a nasty Fuchi stretch of his own while stepping on James face. The crowd seemed confused about who the face was, so James made sure to be a bastard and clubbed Schmid hard with nasty forearms and punt kicks. I loved all the body shots that were thrown and the back and forth european uppercuts were some of the funniest we‘ve seen with both guys aiming at the jaw. Basically a mix of really fun wrestling and hard hitting by two barrel chested dudes who look like truck drivers.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Noced! Batman! Klondyke! Montreal! Le Comte! Calcard! Magnier!

Petit Prince vs Daniel Noced 6/6/74

MD: This is the cliff notes version of the touring 74 Petit Prince match, so it's not unlike things we've seen befoe, but it's such a great show. I love the contrast with Noced, who's just a mean jerk. He can feed into and base for all of Prince's stuff, but his own offense is just slamming his head into the mat in a hammerlock or lifting him to the top rope and hammering him. He's a mean bullying bastard and that makes it all the better when Prince runs circles around him. You get all of the big marks: the headlock go behind takedowns, the cartwheels, the back flip off the top, the amazing entry into the short arm scissors, but also just enough selling on the outside during a king of the mountain and a big spirited comeback and a clever stunning move to win. This was less than 8 minutes from bell to bell and it feels like something that can stand up with the best Rey Jr. TV matches along those lines. French Catch is so much more than just the quick exchanges, but this feels like the perfect tiny dose of Petit Prince to show someone reluctant to dig in just how special he personally was.

Klondyke Bill vs Batman 6/6/74

MD: This was a great piece of business. This is the UK Klondyke Bill, though he was billed from Canada. The rep he had was that he was a more athletic (though still massive) predecessor to the giants that would come a few years later in the UK, a guy who could go 30 (or 6 rounds) even if he never made it to the biggest stage at home. You get a real look at that here. Great use of the girth in general, with Batman just bouncing off of him, and earning every shot he got. He'd pry fingers away only to get pressed into the ropes and tossed. Bill would toss these belly bumps at Batman and he'd just bump halfway across the ring for them as the fans went nuts. He'd certainly antagonize the ref, shooting him across the ring as well. He had some gnarly holds too including a sort of a stump puller where he put all of his weight on Batman or just a toehold that looked nasty due to his size. He wasn't afraid to bump big off things you wouldn't expect either though, but he did it on the back half of the match after the tide had turned. Likewise, he'd go to cheating when he lost an advantage. Ultimately he'd get DQed for abusing the ref but the fact this went a smooth twenty with a number of different beats and holds and sections was a testament to how he was a step above his super heavyweight peers.

Jean Pierre Le Comte & Mr. Montreal vs Bernard Caclard & Fred Magnier (JIP) 7/11/74

MD: Nice to see some different guys in this one. We get the last two falls, as the stylists had taken the first one. It felt like one of those AJPW tags where you have one wrestler like Hansen or Spivey who can really assert themselves and know how to handle things and then another foreigner who doesn't quite get it and gets eaten up, so it becomes a tale of two matches. Or Harley Race. Have you guys ever seen Harley Race in an AJPW tag? He manages to be in the ring for about twenty seconds before losing the offense to literally anyone he's wrestling. Anyway, that was Le Compte here. He had the look of a poor man's Van Buyten and had some pretty good stuff when he got to show it: a nice cartwheel, a flurry of dropkicks, some hard shots, but he spent most of the match, when he was in getting destroyed.

And when Montreal was in, he was completely unbeatable. He looked more like Lou Ferrigno than ever here. Early on he did the strength spots, just overpowering every top wristlock and front facelock attempt. When he came in later it was about slamming and bearhugging and bodyscissoring his frustrated opponents. Le Compte took his beating well and sympathetically at least, and Magnier and Caclard were game. Magnier (the Mercenary of the Ring) has that sort of doughy bruiser bodytype that reminds you of Dick Murdoch (or Robert Gastel) and he can really lay it in with high/low shots, knees and stomps. Caclard was slimier and haughtier and more the little dog to Magnier's big dog. When Le Compte was in they controlled the ring and kept him in the corner and on the rocks. So there was some drama on whether or not Montreal could get back in and what sort of revenge he'd get when he did, but I still wouldn't call this a balanced match, even if the crowd did enjoy it.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Corne! Mitchell! Noced! Richard! Renault! Mercier! Menard! Fake Mongolians?

Guy Mercier/Jean Menard vs. Abdul Khan/Chang Li 1/5/74

MD: French heroes vs probably fake Mongolians here. Chang Li was taller and thinner and could have passed for a fake Russian a few years later. Mercier is very good at what he does and had been for decades at this point. Menard we've seen once and we'll see again (but as a heel, I think) and he had the crowd behind him, especially the young ladies. They had a bit of Ben Chemoul/Bordes vibe as one was sort of a younger version of the other. Mercier used all the old tricks, the cross-footed Mascaras twist, the bearhug into a backbreaker, the repeated bodyscissors butt crash followed by atomic drops and Menard was game. He especially did well as face in peril building to an actual hot tag, as the ref had missed a tag and Chang Li and Abdul Khan did well cutting off the ring. They were mostly chop and nerve hold based with a decent amount of chinlocks and cheating. Abdul Khan brought the over the top character flourishes, looking like he was all but electrocuted as he reacated at times and Chang Li's strikes looked pretty good for what they were as he went high low high or low high low. After the big comeback in the second fall, it never quite felt like the Mercier and Menard were in much danger but by that point the crowd wanted to see the Mongolians get what was coming to them anyway. Fun stuff if you're in the mood for fake Mongolians, certainly.

Petit Prince/Jean Corne/Alain Mitchell vs. Daniel Noced/Jacky Richard/Guy Renault 2/9/74

MD: Due to a preliminary match (where the heels cheated) Alan Mitchell can't participate in this match for the first fifteen minutes, so it's three on two. For the first ten minutes, that doesn't really come into play as Petit Prince (and to a lesser but still meaningful extent) Jean Corne run circles around the heels and clown them repeatedly, because they're just that good. The heels base well and take everything, with Noced's reactions especially good. Eventually though, Noced has a very mean control on Prince (drawing a public warning and making it worth it) and he knocks Corne off the apron. That means when Prince makes it to the corner, there's no one to tag. By the time he's back the heels distract enough so that the ref misses a hot tag. They really cracked the code on how to get heat, southern tag style, somewhere in the early 70s and here we really see it bear fruit. That means a huge press slam into a gutbuster by Noced gets them the first fall.

Perfectly timed for the end of Mitchell's penalty period is Prince's comeback however, and the fans go nuts for the tag. The rest of the second fall was full of Mitchell showing off some nice matwork tricks, a bit of heat where the heels try to keep things in the corner, but ultimately a lot of big clowning spots, including all of the heels trapped in the face corner with Prince standing on them, and miscommunication spots, before Mitchell lands a pretty unique sunset flip variation. The third fall was more of the same, with plenty of elaborate spots, lightning quick one after the next like an old lucha match's tercera where much of the drama had passed and now it was time for the crowd to celebrate the prowess of their heroes. All in all, this was a great showcase, maybe one of the best, especially given that they were able to successfully milk the drama of the penalty period.

PAS: This was really great stuff. I agree with Matt about how this is one of the first tags we have seen with the more traditional cutting off the ring stuff which is what we expect from tag wrestling. Prince is a perfect babyface for that role, and a perfect babyface for the later section where he just dazzles around turning the heels into stooges and goofs. All the heels were really cool as foils and I liked the idea of a penalty box in a six man tag. So crazy that Le Petit Prince was basically unknown five years ago, and now we have so many chances to see him dazzle us.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Sanniez! Hassoni! Bernaert! Calcard! Prince! Noced!

Albert Sanniez/Kader Hassouni vs Bernard Caclard/Pierre Bernaert 2/15/73

MD: Another swimming pool match. We've seen some of these that were fairly weak but the last one we saw was pretty funny (though Catanzaro being in it stacked the deck) and this one had some great action, but then again, it had Sanniez who is one of the best juniors we've seen out of France. Bernaert, by this point, was an incredibly experienced tag team worker, a great stooge, and here, actually wrestled a bit more than we'd seen him in a while since much of the action was kept to the center of the ring given the water surrounding them. That said, and while Bernaert took most of the bumps into the pool throughout the match (Calcard's saved for the post match own goal), I'd say it was Caclard who created much of the motion on the heel side, as he was able to base and keep up for Hassouni and Sanniez's quickness. Calcard had a great front chancery suplex throw too. Sanniez' reverse bridging headscissors escape remains amazing to watch and he did it twice here. When it came time for the heels to take over (after Sanniez went flying through the ropes on a tope to nowhere due to a missed move), they were sufficiently vicious as you'd expect. Honestly, the pool didn't limit the action much at all, even when the ring was bobbing violently towards the end given how fast and hard they were going. Maybe this would have been slightly better as a conventional match but it was still very good overall.

Petit Prince vs Daniel Noced 3/16/73

MD: Every Petit Prince match we haven't covered is a treasure and this is no difference. I wouldn't call it the most impressive or spectacular match we've seen, but it's one of my favorite performances of his. He seemed more mature as a wrestler when it came to selling a limb, to squaring up to build anticipation for a move, in knowing when to go all out with speed and when to milk something for the crowd. Noced was exceptional too, both as a base, and as a stooging, bullying jerk, a real contrast to the Prince. There was just a little more stalling out of him than we've seen lately, a little more of that focus on his nose towards the end of the match when you'd expect things to be picking up, but it worked because the fans were emotionally invested and because the Prince played a long, one way to take them down one last time before the finish.

After some quick chain wrestling to start, they settled into around fifteen minutes of holds here, Noced controlling to start, first with a wristlock and then a hammerlock before the Prince took over with a short arm scissors. All of it was brilliant. What people will ultimately know about this match will probably come from the gifs of the escapes and escape attempts, and there'll be yuking it up about how wrestlers are spot monkeys or whatever else, but it's the set ups that make all of this really resonate. It's like chess, with each attempt at an escape built up with three bits of motion to even create that opening, and then multiple escape attempts being necessary before slipping out can occur, and then it's usually right back in so that they can take it back down and build it back up again. Without having two or three minutes to work the hold and slowly escalate upwards, the ultimate bursts of motion and acrobatics wouldn't mean nearly as much. Taken as a total whole, it creates the illusion of believable counters on top of counters, with Noced often not sure which way the Prince will go next and trying to adapt during and after the fact. Looked at as just a gif in isolation, it's going to be an amazing spot, but taken as a whole, there's an underlying struggle that creates the environment for which it can exist. But please, gif this stuff anyway; people should see it. And if it takes them back to the source, all the better.  But without the long dedication to a hold, the ultimate flash would feel far, far more empty.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corn! Doukhan! Les Blousons Noirs! Petit Prince! Saulnier! Genele! Renault!

Jacky Corn/Gass Doukhan vs. Blousons Noirs 10/18/71

MD: Really good match that oscillated between heat and comebacks. I think at one point the Blousons got too deep down the rabbit hole after an extended period of cutting off the ring and sneaking in cheapshots because a fan started to go after the ref. They let the stylists have some more control after that, including some feel good stooging from the heels. Gessat might have looked a bit older and couldn't quite rock the black jacket the same way he did a decade before, but they were picture perfect in the ring. Manneveau had this great belly to belly toss over the top and wasn't afraid to bump into the second row either. I loved this bit they did where Manneveau had Doukhan in a grounded armbar in the corner and Gessat kept stepping on his other hand from the outside. The finish involved the Noirs begging off from some celebrity to the delight of the crowd but by that point Corn had already beaten everyone around the ring in his final comeback so it was fine.

Petit Prince/Michel Saulnier vs. Bobby Genele/Guy Renault 12/14/71

MD: The usual good stuff from d'Éricourt and Saulnier with Renault and Genele serving as bases and bruisers depending on what the moment called for. The VQ here was a bit rougher than usual but with a bit of work you can tell the difference between everyone. The first ten minutes, before the heels started to cheat, was as good as you'd expect but maybe not novel in any particular way. The most interesting holds actually came in the back third, with a long short arm scissors bit by Prince and subsequently a hammerlock he had to work out of. His act where he gets knocked out of the ring repeatedly and has to fight his way back was compelling and over. Saulnier was very effective as a hot that that would rush in and hammer everyone, despite his relatively diminutive size. There was always a sense of struggle here despite the complexity and sharpness of spots. There was a moment where d'Éricourt came in low on Genele and he just jammed him and power bombed him and it came off as incredibly uncooperative. In general, we're quite used to matches like this, but it's like watching a magician manage to repeat a difficult trick: it reaffirms what we know about the greatness of these juniors.

PAS: Prince is really a special talent, really all of these guys are, but he is so unique and incredible to watch. It is crazy that we discovered this guy, and get to watch him perform his magic in so many different ways. I am a huge short arm scissors fan, and this had one of the cooler short arm scissors spots ever. Saulnier is great too, and is a bit shortchanged by tagging with the Prince, it is like that WCW Nitro dark match where Blitzkrieg did all of the same spots as Super Dragon, just higher and faster, if Blitzkrieg wasn't their Super Dragon would have gotten his spot, Saulneir is also a transcendently talented athletic technico, it's just that he isn't the Prince

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Rene Ben! Peruvians! Bordes! Petit Prince! Von Chenok! Mercier

Teddy Boy vs Gerard Bouvet 12/16/67


MD: We get the last six minutes of this after they'd been going for a while and going hard. Teddy Boy is such a glorious jerk and he hits as hard as anyone we've seen. Bouvet might have been a half step slow compared to some of the smaller wrestlers we've been watching lately but he had some slick stuff, including a dive over a shoulder throw right into a cartwheel followed by a dropkick and the usual sort of stylist revenge spots like stomping on the hands and tying Teddy Boy up in the ropes for the rushing headbutt. This was building some momentum as a slugfest when Bouvet tossed Teddy Boy way over the top to end it.


Guy Mercier vs Karl Von Chenok 12/16/67

MD: The thing you need to know about Karl von Chenok is that he's not Karl von Kramer. You'd rather have Karl von Kramer. I'm also not sure I've ever seen a Karl von Chenok match that wouldn't benefit from being ten minutes shorter. There was nothing bad about this and a lot that was pretty good. Mercier, by this point, had developed an awesome array of back crushing offense, most specifically his bearhug swing into a backbreaker. He had a way of holding someone in a leglock and just beating the tar out of them with chops. He worked hard to get the headstand headscissors (Mascaras) spin going and made it seem like real effort. Chenok did one thing, his knuckles-in nervehold, but he did it exceptionally well. He had a way of sidestepping a punch and slipping it on that was as smooth as you could imagine. The match was full of struggle and at some points they were going from shot to nervehold back and forth again and again as Chenok remained dogged and Mercier unyielding. That was pretty novel actually. There was just too much of it. They never lost the crowd. It always felt competitive, even if Chenok was more of an oozing persistent presence than an electric, charismatic one. There was just too much of it.

SR: 1 Fall match over about 25 minutes. This was nerve hold city from Chenok. He had figured out a way to actually counter the european uppercut, so he was basically using that advantage to nerve lock his way through the whole match. Despite von Chenok bringing almost nothing to the table  besides some nice bumping, I‘d still call this a pretty good match simply due to Mercier being an absolute machine. The guy has these awesome greco roman moves, and even when he‘s doing a simple hold he looks like he‘s trying to twist something off. He also just started punching Chenok in the face at a few points and he did a tremendous job selling the nerve holds and chokes like his life was being drained out of him. And, his big backbreaker from a greco roman throw is just awesome and my new favourite move. He was ragdolling von Chenok like nobodies business with that. So yeah, that‘s how you good a good 25 minute match out of a guy as limited as Karl von Chenok. 


Petit Prince vs Bobby Genele 1/22/68

MD: We get the last six minutes of this as well and it's easy for people to miss as it was on the same video as Andre vs Van Buyten which we had covered independently. By this point, the Prince had really developed into a more complete package. His selling here is exceptional. There's a King of the Mountain in the middle where Genele keeps smashing or kicking him off the apron and the way he flies into the crowd and just milks it is Ricky Morton level. It's the same with his comebacks. He's more apt to have a real hope spot and then have it cut off than most people in the footage and because he's so small and so spectacular on offense, the crowd eats it up. That said, sometimes he'll do a backflip off of someone's shoulder to go through his legs and get a mare. There's a lot of wasted motion and the first time he does it, you're blown away but by the fourth or fifth time you see it, you wonder if maybe he couldn't create some more powerful effect at the end, like he does with the backflip off the top after hammering on his opponent in the corner to charge in hard with a headbutt to the gut. I think that's a criticism we'd have of him if he was a modern wrestlers. You can do six spectacular things to set up a move, things spectacular enough to overshadow the move, if you can rationalize it being about positioning, but maybe that move shouldn't be a mare? But in the end, we're just glad to have more footage of it. It's a shame we don't have the start of this as Genele was a great, chip on his shoulder rival for the Prince and what we got here was, on whole, very good.

Rene Ben Chemoul/Walter Bordes vs Inca Peruano/Anton Tejero 3/9/68

MD: Tremendous tag. You could have probably peeled a couple of minutes off the first fall and a couple off the third, and me sitting here in 2021 would have been okay with that, but I'm sure the 1968 fans would have felt robbed. Those two falls were what they were there to see, Bordes and Ben Chemoul triumphant again and again while Peruano and Tejero tried every move and trick in their arsenal to contain the stylists. I thought that maybe, just maybe Ben Chemoul was starting to slow a bit as he was aging, but then he'd fly so high on a top wristlock up and over escape that I felt almost embarrassed for doubting him. Bordes was right there with him with complex chain wrestling escapes that stood up to almost any we've seen so far. Tejero is as good as any heel we've seen in basing and stooging and getting mean shots in, but Peruano is a wonder, one of the most creative and interesting wrestling minds we've ever seen. Here he introduced some awesome headbutts to the back of the head (one into the corner) and an amazing sequence where he turned a full nelson into a whip around and a go under to drive Ben Chemoul's head into the corner. The second fall gave weight to the proceedings as Tejero and Peruano tossed Bordes out over the top again and again. The fans tried to help him, and later Ben Chemoul as he was getting tossed through the ropes, back in but the heels were unrelenting and Tejero ended it with a huge tombstone. The stylists were able to come back in the last fall and not just come back but hit a series of satisfying revenge spots. Peruano had gotten Bordes up in a fireman's carry and chucked him across the ring into a gutbuster onto Tejero's knee, so Bordes did a one man version of the move. They made sure to toss the heels out plenty as well and the fans were not at all quick to help. Ben Chemoul set up up a few celebratory set pieces with the heels tied up in the ropes and the fans loved it, though when the ref dared to give him a public warning for one in the first fall, his overdramatic misery for the injustice of it all brought forth the loudest sympathetic crowd chant we've heard in the footage maybe. Brilliant wrestlers doing brilliant things, with skill and struggle and intensity. Just about everything you want from late 60s French Catch.

PAS: Damn do I love the Peruvians, fell like a team which would get over huge now with their combination of wild innovative offense and crazy bumps to the floor. I can imagine how great Santana/Ortiz versus the Peruvians would be. The Bordes has to have the highest ratio of bumps to the floor per match minute of any wrestler ever, that guy spends a huge percentage of this match eating concrete. I love the use of the hammerlock spins by Peruano, so many cool ways working out of that set up. Rene Ben and Bordes are super athletic babyfaces who spend much of the match flying into cool headscissors and take downs, and take a thumping from the Peruvians when it is their turn. They really knew how to send the crowd home happy too. Loved both heels getting fed into big dropkicks for the dramatic finish.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Petit Prince! Bibi! Husberg! Falempin!James Brown! Corne!

 Le Petit Prince vs. Michel Falempin 5/27/66

MD: Seeing d'Ericourt twice in such close succession definitely exposes him a bit at this very early stage in his career. While it wasn't the same match as the Genele one, a lot of the biggest spots were move-for-move repeats of that match. It was a different arena and the fans ate them up, but even more than that, with a different opponent, it was a different match with the spots layered in different places. While Falempin bullied him, more of this was about him containing Prince with hammerlocks and armbar sequences, and that was probably for good reason. The sheer momentum that he had on with his float overs and back flips had him crashing into the ropes in pretty dangerous ways. He overshot about half of what he was going for here recklessly, but that energy and enthusiasm was just electric. No one was going to look away. Certainly, he made it worth it when he battled back and got to get some revenge. This, more than anything else, shows me his progression into a complete, contained, controlled, wrestler in the years that would follow, as he learned to channel his acrobatics and intensity into a far more honed and polished act. At this point, though, he was like lightning bursting onto the scene.

PAS: I am not holding having signature spots against the Prince, he is electric to watch, and just because Santo does his senton tope in every match, doesn't mean I don't want to see that over and over again. I liked Falempin here too, he really wrenched in the hammerlocks and armbars, and made the fancy flipping counters really count. There definitely is a progression later, and the difference between Prince then and Prince in a couple of years is like 93 Rey Jr. and 97 Rey Jr. Still 93 Rey Jr. is fucking awesome as is 1966 Petit Prince. I liked that some of his stuff threw him into the ropes in weird ways, it added to the level of difficulty of the stuff, it was almost like Olympic diving where the flawed dives are as compelling as the perfect ones. 

SR: 1 fall match going a bit over 20 minutes. The Prince is clearly becoming a TV mainstay. No surprise. This was another beautiful match. Smooth exchanges beyond belief. Falempin seemed a bit nondescript, but he was a great dance partner for the Prince. Look at how fast he moves behind the  Prince when he goes for a hammerlock, or the way both guys would bump. The devil is in the details, and they had them down pat. Falempin found himself outshone and decided to lay some brutal stomps into the Princes head. He took a big bump, too. Seems he would go on to be a technico later but it was a nice solid non descript rudo performance from him here. And they pulled the more beautiful stuff of like magic.

Cheri Bibi/Eric Husberg vs. James Brown/Jean Corne 6/16/66

MD: Fun tag that goes maybe a bit too long at 40 minutes. Bibi and Husberg were a well oiled machine and much better at controlling the ring but save for a moment at the end of the first fall, it never felt like Brown and Corne couldn't just come back at any moment. Of course, Bibi could also retake control at any moment since he was such a bruiser. I liked the organic transition out of that, by the way. Corne had just eaten a fall after being double-teamed for a while and he had to start the second fall since those were the rules. He's trapped in the corner again but escapes when a fan grabs Husberg's leg. It wasn't quite as smooth as that but it was a nice bit of presence that you'd never see happen today. They built to some of those big triumphant babyface moments, my favorite of which was Corne helping Brown get both guys in leg locks simultaneously before running right over them repeatedly. Someone needs to steal it. I really like Brown in these matches. Yes, he has the headbutt like you'd expect, but he can also slug it out and he's very crisp with most things he does and has some big power moves like a one-armed back breaker and the torture rack lift up out of a chinlock and the airplane spin on Bibi (no small feat) that he finally ended things with.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. Nothing much to see or say here. I'm always happy to see James Brown since his style is a bit different from the regular French guys. He had some nice Fujiwara Armbars here. Other than that this was a house show ish effort. The match hinged on the heel act of Bibi and Husberg and didn't really bring the violence in a big way like in their better matches. Okay stuff but skippable.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Cohen! Guisto! Genele! PETIT PRINCE~!

Georges Cohen vs. Pasquale Guisto 5/8/66

SR: 1 fall match going about 20 minutes. It’s the only appearance of Italian worker Guisto, but Cohen will show up many more times. This started with some fantastic technical exchanges. These guys had some serious body control and certainly made all their armthrows and headscissors look effortless. Guisto had some neat counters and unique things, like countering a headscissor attempt into an indian deathlock. Then, Guisto took offense to Cohen slamming him into the mat during a hold and they got really heated slapping the shit out of each other. Both men shook hands and apologized for the occurrence, except Guisto couldn’t seem to quite get over at as he proceeded to act like a jerk, letting Cohen know he considered himself to be above his opponent. Guisto started throwing European uppercuts and soon Cohen started firing back with uppercuts and nasty short kicks of his own. It’s a broken record, but the stiffness was just on another level and there were a few great exchanges were both guys were on their knees raining hell on each other. I don’t know what the deal with Guisto here was, as he suddenly started selling like he was a punch drunk Terry Funk. It gave me the feeling he was supposed to be a skilled, but coked up jerk and was trying to cue Cohen into turning up the heat more, although Cohen remained stoic. They even seemed to ring the bell early, or maybe I’m seeing things. Either ways, aside from the not quite-delivered upon promise there was some damn great wrestling and both guys raining hell on each other was awesome. Good shit.

MD: The first two thirds of this were very good, but maybe a little more cooperative than what we're used to. Some of that you could attribute to sportsmanship. There were lots of clean breaks and handshakes, even if Couistot was a little showy about it at times. Lots of holds that were hung on to and tricked out escapes and blocked escapes, and both guys going for the same thing at the same time. There was a lot of using one hold (like a full nelson) to set up another (like a mare); that sort of thing. Cohen was maybe a bit quicker and slightly more agile, Couistot had a reach advantage and maybe was just a little more skilled in his technique (from a kayfabe perspective). Despite the slight differences, they were very evenly matched. Couistot could go through the legs and Cohen could power him over. Then, after one of the many clean breaks, Couistot started the European Uppercuts and they were nasty and resoundent. Cohen fired back with a quick flurry. And they really didn't look back. There were moments where they went back to holds or spots and moments of deescalation and handshakes, but eventually it all broke down to a thousand nasty shots and the increasing exhaustion that went along with it. It reminded me a lot of the stylist vs stylist matches of the 50s, but maybe just a little more stylized. I'm not sure if it holds up to them on overall quality and competitive technique but it certainly did when it came to sheer enjoyment.

PAS: Very entertaining match, I mean this show had three guys we had never seen before and all three looked like superstar workers (and this was your first Prince match chronologically and he is an all timer). All of the exchanges here were slick and well contested and I loved the French Catch formula of technical wizardry breaking down into stiff violence. By the end of this match guys had abandoned any ideas of sportsmanship and were just unloading with hard shots. You have to love it when violence amps up like this and this match ended on a real note. 

 Le Petit Prince vs. Bobby Genele 5/22/66

SR: 1-Fall match going about 25 minutes. This is probably the earliest full match of Le Petit Prince we have, maybe even his debut since his first TV appearance was this year. It had the feel of rookie action. A few athletic moves of the Prince were there, but not everything landed clean and the match had a rugged feel to it. Of course, that may have been due to Bobby Genele, who was roughing up the Prince like nobodies business. The rugged execution of some sequences didn‘t hurt the match, and Genele, who had the look of an arrogant upper class twit compared to the fairytale like boyishness of the Prince was really vicious when it was time to deliver a beating. His head stomps looked especially brutal. He also did this neat thing where he blocked the Princes floating snapmare by holding onto the rope, which is such a simple cutoff spot that needs be stolen by every rudo worker on the planet. Genele ate the receipt savate kicks and weird electric chair spots from the Prince like a champ too so I think we can certify him as a very good rudo base. They nailed the end sequence too.

MD: It's our first look chronologically at Petit Prince and straight from the start, it doesn't disappoint. This was brilliant stuff, even if it was a little rough around the edges. Genele let himself get outwrestled maybe once before starting the bullying and inside moves and he never looked back from there. You get the sense in this early stuff that the cameramen barely know how to film Prince. Before long, Genele takes over by really going at Prince's arm and that carries a lot of the first half of the match, with Prince selling, including to the point of being too hurt to hang on to holds, which is something you rarely see in 60s France. Whenever he comes back, though, it's absolutely worth the wait. At one point he does a leap over the arm out of a wristlock and ducks a clothesline turning it into a near standing Spanish Fly. There's a real sense of anticipation in the back half, once Genele's beating becomes broader and less arm-focused; Genele's great at keeping the violence and punishment going, but everyone's learning quickly, if they didn't already know, that it's well worth your effort to see the Prince get his comeback. Each one feels a little more spectacular than the last, whether he's backflipping out of a victory roll position to lock in a takedown and a flip into a toehold, or backflipping off the top to hit a shot to the gut. The finish was as dynamic as any rope-running we've seen with Prince backflipping through the momentum of a kick up by Genele and going over and under him at high speed before hitting a sunset flip.

PAS: Goddamn is Petit Prince a revelation, every time I see him I can't believe I am watching him. Genele was a nifty base for all of Prince's insanity, and responded to getting spun on by unloading some violence, which is what you want. I loved him holding on the the hammerlock and not letting Prince flip out of it. Now, so much of wrestling is just counter, counter, counter, I liked that Genele actually made him earn it. We also had a cool short arm scissors spot and a headscissors section. However, you are waiting for Prince to flash on him, and man does he ever. His backflip out of the mule kick, right into the rope running roll up has to be one of the cooler finishing flashes I have seen. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Le Big Chief! di Santo! Zarak! Lecomte! Le Petit Prince! Sanniez!

Jose Arroyo vs. Georges Gueret 10/15/59

JIP with about 5 minutes shown. These two totally have a long awesome main even in them. This was more of a preliminary bout, but we got to see an awesome Arroyo punch combo and Gueret kicking some ass.

MD: We get about six minutes of this, JIP. It's a good showcase of Gueret who's a heel again. A long headscissors by him to start, but he works the crowd in his cutoffs in it. At one point he does that thing where you put your thumb on your nose and wiggle your fingers. Arroyo doesn't get a comeback here after this, because Gueret goes to the eyes and immediately chokes Arroyo in the ropes, tying him in them and jumping on the ring ropes from the other corner which isn't something you see often. When Arroyo comes back it's with flurries of strikes and lots of begging off by Gueret. They go back and forth for the last minute or two, with Gueret launching nice cheapshots and clubbering blows, before ultimately having his leg taken out once or twice and eating the fall on a failed bodyslam. We didn't see a ton of Arroyo here but Gueret came off as well-rounded as ever.

Lino di Santo vs. Le Big Chief 10/15/59

SR: 1 Fall match going about 25 minutes. „Le Big Chief“ has to be the greatest previously forgotten name in this entire project. He was this guy built like a tank who came in wearing a Native American head dress. I‘ve grown to expect war dances and chops from guys like that, but that was not the case for Le Big Chief. Instead Le Big Chief was this absolute violent menace. Boy oh boy. Lino Di Santo can get surely, but the Chief was beating the bricks off of him in a way few other heels in this territory or anywhere else could. Fish hooking, head stomps, nasty kicks and knees, the Chief was dishing out the kind of beating you‘d expect in a Tenryu match. After watching this I‘d say the Chief belongs with Hashimoto in the dome. The Chief had really great looking bumps for Di Santos uppercuts and dropkicks and a neat spot where he flung backwards over the top rope, plus a really amusing moment where he did a no water in the pool dive into the ring, so there was style to the madness. Di Santo gets to have some moments but mostly he is there to take an uninterrupted 20 minute asskicking and then win on a shady DQ. You know they must have had bigger things in mind for this Big Chief, but this is the last we see of him. Talk about abject and inexplicable violence.

PAS: The Big Chief is certainly in the tradition of Wahoo McDaniel as far as American Indians who will kick the piss out of you. One of the craziest things about this project is seeing guys like this, totally awesome wrestlers who feel like all time greats and just pop up once or twice. I would gleefully watch an old school 8 hour comp tape of Big Chief matches, but this is what we have. No big chops, but punches to the back of the head, fishhooks, this kind of downward eye poke strike which looks like it would dislocate retinas. Really felt like Kurisu's mom must have visited a Reservation. The no water in the pool dive was a great high spot and let to di Santo getting in some licks, and I always love the Dragon sleeper stoppage finish. French Catch can be both spectacularly smooth and violently rough, often in the same match. This was more on the gritty side, and I love gritty.

MD: I enjoyed this. Le Big Chief reminded me a lot of Iron Sheik in his prime, just from his body type and bluster. I wouldn't say his stuff looked smooth by any means. A lot of it was clunky and unfocused, but he was relentless on offense and kept things moving. He'd brutally swarm Di Santo again and again and again. It meant that instead of being back and forth, this was built towards a lot of smaller Di Santo comebacks, most of which could be quite memorable with dropkicks and forearms and plenty of revenge. Chief was more than happy to stooge huge in these moments. He'd whip Di Santo's head to the ground backwards twice, but when it was his turn to take it, he'd get whipped all the way over the top. Never giving Di Santo a moment to recover got him plenty of heat, as did the usual bevy of low blows and a fake handshake. Past the missed top rope dive attempt (which is exceptionally rare in this footage, especially for the 50s), the most interesting thing about Chief was the way he moved Di Santo around. He'd whip him off the ropes by his head, or get under him to pick him up and move him and even used a bum's rush type redirection once. He set up his dragon sleeper finish by lifting him with a choke and tossing him into the corner. Everything's so polished and trained and spot-based now that you rarely get something that feels so rough and natural. It added to things. That sleeper ended the first fall and Di Santo couldn't answer for the second. When Chief went after him anyway, he almost caused a riot. There wasn't a lot pretty about this one but it got the job done.

ER: I like Matt's Iron Sheik comparison for Le Big Chief, and I see it. I watched this and saw a Bad News Allen who actually delivered on his coolness potential. A lot of credit is rightly given to Big Chief's stiff ring work, but I came away impressed with his unique bumping and the way he would lean into all of Santo's strikes. di Santo didn't exactly need help making his strikes look good; when you elbow a man squarely on the chin, you are elbowing a man squarely on the chin. But I think we underestimate how uninteresting the fast flat back bump has made wrestling, and how that might be an actual contender for worst WWE stylistic change to make into an industry norm. di Santo brought the strikes, but I don't think they would have been anywhere near as interesting without some of Big Chief's spills. My favorite saw him take a forward bump and fall chest and shoulder across the bottom rope, but not linger on it for comedic purposes. I think that it's important he doesn't treat his bumps as comedic overexaggerated flourishes, as it's a very different vibe to take stooge bumps as stooge bumps while still treating the strikes as authentic. He pulls it off marvelously, utilizing the ropes in his bumps several times, finding neat ways to get his body to the mat after another gorgeous sky high di Santo dropkick catches him in the collarbones.    


Zarak vs. Jean-Pierre Lecomte 10/15/77

SR:1 Fall match going a bit over 10 minutes. Zarak was a British wrestler under a mask. It seems he was popular as he showed up on TV a lot, but he didn‘t quite have the same snap as the masked stars we‘ve seen in the 50s. That being said, he was a solid rudo in the vein of a Fit Finlay. Stepping on fingers and hitting a nasty piledriver. Lecomte was a balding guy with a mustache who was amazingly lithe and agile. He totally looked like dynamite cartwheeling around and running the ropes super fast. I dig any wrestler who looks like a PE teacher and is really athletic and Lecomte in this made me excited to check out his other sole appearance. At this length this was like a Nitro squash but it pushed all the right buttons for the time given.

MD: We're here for the Prince vs Sanniez match, but as a rule we watch whole shows. This is our first look at Zarak, who was a British wrestler under a mask. He's got an amazing heel swagger and strutting nature, and can base pretty well to boot. I'm not 100% sure about Lecomte but he might be the guy who played Der Henker (and maybe even Le Borreau) without a mask and as a spry, older Nick Kozak looking babyface. These guys were not small, but he launched into four or five cartwheels in the match, including one where he reversed course to dodge and grabbed a leg out of it which was really slick. There were definitely some marginal differences from what we were used to. There were more whips, maybe more ref intervention against the babyface (especially when he went for the mask), some of the armdrags felt different than what you'd see in the 50s, but the ebb and flow of Zarak getting ahead with cheapshots and Lecomte firing back big felt familiar. Pre-match, Zarak had taunted Lecomte with the universal, hands clenched up-and-down signal for the pile driver to Lecomte, and after some nice rope running (including that hip toss power slam that ends so many 50s falls), he hit a flip-up tombstone off the ropes for the win. Post match, he strutted and Lecomte got carted out on a stretcher. Wholly entertaining stuff.


Le Petit Prince vs. Albert Sanniez 10/15/77

SR: 1 Fall match going about 25 minutes. The Little Prince was 10 years into it at this point, but he could still seriously go. Sanniez was an athletic tecnico himself a few years earlier, it‘s quite interesting that he went from stellar tecnico to being a stellar rudo. This was like the worlds most athletic crowd pleasing house show main event you‘ve ever seen. It followed a predictable structure and had the old heel ref spots and what not, but the exchanges were so fast and intricate, the bumps so dedicated that you won‘t care. Sanniez was working this like Fuerza Guerrera, cheating from the get-go and coming across as pretty bumbling as he missed backhands and bumped like a maniac. He did show some glimpses of his past skillful persona and those exchanges were the highlights of the match. There was one exchange that lead into a flying short arm scissor that no one in the world now could pull off. It‘s been said before, but the speed that the Prince got on his stuff is a league of its own. Despite the mostly light hearted nature of the match the Prince ended up taking a big beating and being flung around (with a second in a blue jumpsuit who was also looking like a PE teacher and probably working the opening match that night catching him) before taking the finish in a classy fashion.

MD: Great showcase match for Prince. Sanniez was an admirable foil, quick with the cheapshots and hair pulls and bluster, able to mostly hang but always a half step behind in speed and finesse which only served to make Prince look better especially as he had to spend more than half the match working from underneath. Sanniez was able to cut him off effectively, often times having help from the ref. When it was time for Prince to get revenge, he got it big and entertaining. Lots of his flip-around go-behind up-and-over armdrags, some huge monkey flips, a tapatia, and probably my favorite spot of the match where he tied Sanniez up in the ropes and hit two charging headbutts, where on the second one, the ref who was trying to play interference got bumped dramatically over the top. Tail end of the match had some effective king of the mountain heeling by Sanniez, leading to Prince's final comeback and one of the best visual pins in a sunset flip you'll ever see as Sanniez was practically vertical. Huge spectacle with just enough substance to make it work.

PAS: This was maybe the most lucha match we have seen in this footage. We have the super athletic babyface flyer facing off with a bumping, stooging heel with a bit of Tirantes style ref worked mixed in. Prince is one of the most dynamic wrestlers of all time. He's remarkably fast and smooth with everything he does, but Sanniez is a hell of an opponent, getting huge height on all of his monkey flip bumps and eating all of the armdrags and headscissors perfectly. I really liked all of the king of the hill stuff near the end of the match, great way for the match to break down and add some nastiness to the proceedings. Cool stuff and any chance to see the Prince is a blessing.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Robin! Royal! Hessle! Liehn! Petit Prince! Louis! Noced! Richard!

Vic Hessle/Bert Royal vs. Edmund Liehn/Guy Robin 9/11/58

SR: JIP 2/3 falls match of which we get about 23 minutes. We join about just as the first fall is decided with a spinning toe hold of all things. After that, this is pretty much an all out brawl. Liehn & Robin are all over this, buckling the Brits to the corner and taking them apart like a leaner Anderson brothers. This is the only time we see Liehn, and I really liked him here, a car salesman looking stocky guy who looked like he was trying to pull peoples head off and not holding back with punches and forearms. Robin always looks great in these matches drawing heat and being a pesky shit, and he was great here once again diving off the top rope to knee people in the back. The brief bit where he just decided to slap the shit out of Royal with Royal taking him down and looking like he was gonna kill him had to be one of the best moments in this whole project so far. The job of Hessle & Royal was mostly to just hand out great looking forearms and uppercuts, and that they did. Hessle is the father of Bert & Vic Faulkner, so it‘s cool to have him on tape. He didn‘t do much extraordinary but he looked like a surly barrel chested dude from the local pub. He gave one of the heels a pretty painful looking face massage during a pin attempt and that is what you want from an elderly veteran type face in a tough brawl. Bert Royal is once again dynamite in this. He is so energetic when it‘s time forearm the shit out of someone, and his fast, super-vicious arm assault that left the other guy broken on the mat was awesome.

PAS: I loved every second of this, you had three barrel chested brawlers and Royal who was awesome at using his athleticism to hurt people.  Royal has this cool spot where he climbs up his opponent and knees him right in the face and was willing to throw just as hard as his opponents. Hessle had some of the most violent monkey flips I have seen he uses his stubby legs to just fling his opponent on his head. There is a point at the beginning of the third fall where it seems like everyone stepped out of the script. Robin starts slapping Royal, Royal takes him down (after Robin stonewalls a couple of attempts) and grinds his forearm into his face, which brings in Liehn who starts hammerfisting Royal, which brings in Hessle to throw a slap to the ear. It felt like something you might see in a Japanese interpromotional match. Finish was incredible with Royal just ripping and tearing at Liehn's arm with a spinning arm hold and knees.

MD: Very interesting match. It's our first look at Liehn. Robin is one of my favorites. Royal had the amazing match against Oliver and Vic Hessle is actually his dad. This is 2/3 falls and we come in around 15 mins in at the end of the first fall though we have another 20 plus of action. I liked Liehn right out of the gate. He comes off as big stooging blowhard which works well with Robin's manic alacrity. The difference between this and some of the Delaporte tags is more subtle than striking. The general idea is the same: cheating and swarming with big moments of babyface comeback and dominance. Here though, the comeback setpieces were fewer and shorter and the swarming was both more chaotic and somehow less cooperative. Instead of the elaborate counters and escapes of French Catch, the heels had one goal and only one goal, to get their opponents back to their corner. The ref was all but useless even as there was goozling and choking with the tag rope and Robin coming in again and again with knees off the top. In this regard it almost felt like a lucha trios where the tecnicos were just unable to stop the rudos momentum for almost mystical reasons. The heels were akin to rabid animals just tearing away and doing anything they could to keep the advantage. It made sense, for whenever they lost it, they were punished. There just seemed to be less orchestration behind it without someone like Delaporte directing traffic. Hessle was big and rugged, with meaty, satisfying punches. Royal was spirited, showing a lot of the righteous fire we've seen out of visiting Brits in this footage. Ultimately, this had less big moments (though it had a few like a big battering ram in the corner and the miscommunication between father and son that let the heels take the second fall) but created a very vivid feeling of dirty warfare. That'll stick with you, as will Royal's absolute destruction of Liehn's arm at the end, one of the best maulings to end a match and force a submission you'll ever see.

ER: This was nonstop French action that we've come to expect, a breathless pace a year before Breathless. All of this era Catch that we've seen has been great, but every few weeks we pull something out that is a cut above its peers. This was a perfect use of all four men, with Royal/Robin being the real marquee pairing while Hessle and Liehn brought a ton of personality to go with big clubbing arms. This whole thing was a real fight, the kind of match I can watch a few times and notice new things each time. Royal is such a scrapper, undersized compared with the other men but he sure doesn't act like he's undersized. He hits as hard as anyone here and had inventive ways of overcoming any size differences. I loved how he climbed up Liehn, almost like he was going to do a monkey flip and then thought "why stop there?" He climbs up bit by bit, clenching his neck with both hands, one leg at a time, before boosting off a thigh with a great knee. It was nice payback for Liehn practically cranking Royal's head off with a cravat earlier. Hessle brings a cool dad charisma to this, like a Catch Pat Patterson, and his scraps with Robin may have been my favorite parts of the match. Robin took out his hairline on the immaculately coiffed Hessle, locking in one of the sickest chokes I've seen. He hooked his arm around Hessle's neck like he was going for a judo throw but just leaned into the choke, throwing a punch to the kidneys when Hessle almost broke it. I loved Hessle coming in throughout the match to break up the heels, and how Liehn would subtly stooge for him, the best being one punch that knocked him back on his heels and onto his butt, holding his face and head like he wasn't expecting it. The finish was joy filled savagery, Royal twisting and kneeing and leaping on Liehn's arm with glee and a glazed over rage. It almost looked like Robin didn't want to step in and stop it because he didn't want any part of that Andy Capp dust cloud.


Le Petit Prince/Francis Louis vs. Daniel Noced/Jacky Richard 2/22/71

SR:2/3 Falls match going about 30 minutes. The evolution of the lightweight style in France is interesting to watch. Basically, they still did the same moves as 15 years earlier, but everything smoother, and with a formula in place, making these matches approach the same rhythm, similiar to a Lucha trios. You had the Prince and his partner Louis looking fantastic as you‘d expect, with lots of stupidly fast armdrags and everything being executed with a sense of struggle, and also a real standout performance from Daniel Noced. Not only was Noced a great base and dance partner for all the flashy shit in the match, when the time was right he just kicked the shit out of the Prince and even chucked Francis Louis over the top rope. The heel beatdown on the Prince was pretty intense with him eating a ton of kicks to the ribs and body shots as well as getting hammered into the mat over and over. It‘s also the kind of things that people who aren‘t used to European wrestling can watch and easily get into, as there were multiple cut offs building to the Prince finally getting the hot tag and Louis rolling in to give the heels what they had coming to them. The ring being pelted with garbage is an iconic sight too. The Prince remains the focus of the match though, as he soon eats a nasty posting. Noced takes a spill to the outside and a near riot breaks out, with folks surrounding him and the police having to break the scenery up. The ending with the Prince covered in blood looking to get a piece of Noced and towel being thrown in was something else too.

MD: What made this work as well as almost anything we've seen in the collection so far was the marrying of the slickness of Petit Prince matches with the patience and discipline of a narrative-heavy Southern Tag. It's equal parts spectacular and accessible; plenty of style, plenty of substance. We're talking shine-heat-comeback (and a breathtaking shine at that), with the added story element of Prince demanding to get back in, again and again, when he wasn't ready to fight in order to get revenge. When I say discipline, I mean that while there were a lot of illegal double-teams behind the ref's back to build up heat, the ref missing the hot tag didn't happen until right before the end of the first fall. They held it off until it'd mean the most and then almost immediately went to the finish of the fall afterwards. When you have a two-out-of-three-falls structure, you can do that. That's what built the fans up to a fever pitch and that allowed things to boil over as they went into the second fall. By that point the crowd was already throwing things into the ring. Obviously, we've seen that sort of thing before elsewhere. What really made this stand out here, though, was that this was awash in the 70s French juniors style. The hope spots here were Prince utilizing more and more elaborate escape attempts only for his opponent to either hang on to the hold or immediately thereafter cut him off and put him right back in. Basically, it leveraged what we've been seeing all throughout 57 and 58, the way they strung together matches with long, dogged holds and frequent escape attempts, and overlaid that onto the southern tag format. When your face in peril is one of the most athletic and agile wrestlers ever, a smaller underdog, someone who can portray a singular fire and passion, and your heels are a bunch of real goons: Noced who was an uppity bully and Richard who just had this meanstreak intensity to him, well, you're going to get results. Add in some color and that's a riot. The finish was equal parts triumphant and satisfying and heartbreaking and leaving you wanting so much more. Exceptional stuff.

PAS: This was awesome stuff, a true discovery. Much of the Prince we have seen before was like an early Rey Jr. exhibition match, like Rey vs. Psicosis in WAR. This was more like Rey vs. Eddie on Smackdown, a complete violent match with a dramatic arc and huge payoff. We still get some of the crazy takedowns and evasions from the Prince and he also gets the shit kicked out him, including Noced grabbing him by the side of the head and driving him into the mat temple first. We get a real hyped up hot tag with Louis throwing big uppercuts. Prince gets lawn darted head first into the ringpost and comes up bloody, and we get an awesome fired up bloody babyface standing tall moment, with the crowd trying to murder Noced. This is in the highest level of matches we have seen in this project, really an all timer.

ER: This was spectacular, like seeing a Michinoku Pro trios for the first time, except I'm not sure any of them were as good as Le Petit Prince (and those guys were GOOD). His sequences are so tight, so believable in their physics, this small man knowing exactly which way to swing the pendulum to make the most of his momentum. There are plenty of small wrestlers now who just expect larger wrestlers to bump for everything they do, and that's what happens. Most of the time, it looks absurd. Prince connects all those dots and makes it look crazy if one of his big armdrags didn't take someone down. He moves so fast that he makes typical time stand still moments look incredible, like when he crawls through his opponents legs to get the drop on them. He actually scrambles through opponents' legs fast enough that he is back on the attack before they turn around in real time! Noced and Richard are great heels for him to work his magic against, as Noced especially is a great base for his flying, and then cruel as can be when the tables turn. Louis is a wonderful babyface partner, taking a couple big bumps to the floor, always ready to fight for Prince. This whole thing really jumps up another level once the heel team starts cutting Prince off, with Noced and Richard putting the boots to them, like two Sonnys giving Carlo twice the beating he deserved. Noced had this running kick that was greater than any punt I've seen in wrestling the past several years. These two were just burying kicks in Prince's ribs and off the side of his head, to the point where a riot felt like a reasonable reaction. Fans immediately swarm Noced the second he hits the floor, with one tall Daniel Stern motherfucker leaping hard into the fray with a cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth. That was an organic reaction inspired by tremendous ring work, the kind of match where you know you're watching something special the whole way through.


PAS: Hell of a week, which places two matches on our All Time MOTY list, with Le Petit Prince tag beating out  Tony & Roy St. Clair v. Vic Faulkner & Bert Royal for 1971. Bert Royal got bumped out of the 70s, but he stays on our All Time MOTY list with 1958.


ALL TIME MOTY LIST

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Le Petit Prince! Michel Saulnier! Pierre Roinet! Jacky Corne!

La Petit Prince vs. Michel Saulnier 1/1/68

SR: JIP with about 10 minutes shown. Apparently, Michel Saulnier was the Prince's maestro, so I guess that explains the Rey/Psicosis nature of their matches. This was similiar to their 1967 encounter but different enough to be highly enjoyable. It seems their movements got even faster. Just some beautiful stuff on display here. The rope running, the armdrags, the emphasis on basic headscissors and pin attempts between all that, Petit Prince solebutting Saulnier in the face when you least expect it… it‘s all highly enjoyable and make me excited for having their next encounter in full.

MD: The JIP Saulnier vs Petit match we get is very similar to the back part of the full match, just with a different camera angle on some spots (which is a relief, actually, because we miss some of the best spots with the longer one due to the art overlay, like the hang-on-to-a-hold-as-they-go-over-the-ropes spot) and some more comedy ref interactions. They obviously had their travelling act down but so did Rey and Psicosis and Flair and Magnum and it's hard to fault something that people would so obviously want to see again and again. Where it diverged it was pretty much the same idea, just with a different way of getting there or things in slightly different order, but it's not worth focusing too much on that.

PAS: The clipped version of this made it feel like the WCW Pro version of a Rey vs. Juvi match. They kept the big stuff and we didn't see some of the build and interstitial stuff you get in the longer match. I really love WCW Pro matches and thought this was a total blast. Prince is such a unique wrestler,  he is basically Gallic Rey Mysterio Jr. 20 years before Rey. It is pretty crazy that you had a spectacular guy working this style in France, and nothing really like it anywhere else and then it bounces up again in Mexico, its like the wrestling equivalent of Newtown and Leibinz both inventing calculus. Prince had a bit of nasty in him too,  that spin kick looked awesome, I also loved the Saulnier kickout which sent the Prince to the front row.

ER: This did have a touring match feel to it, but it's a good routine. I really liked the beleaguered referee in this one, a guy working practically as hard as Prince and Saulnier due to the unpredictable movements of both. The ref's timing had to be exact as it would be far too easy to get clocked with a boot when either man was doing a sudden back handspring or floatover. There was a lot of timing that was similar to ref spots in midget matches (one midgets kicks out and sends the other into ref's arms or onto the ref's back, midget runs behind back and through legs of ref), except these guys are moving at 3x the speed. I loved the spot where Prince is rolling through an armlock and both start to spill to the floor, the hapless ref keeping them from hitting the floor, revealing that Prince kept the armlock held during the entire struggle and begins rolling again. He even rushed perfectly between them at the finish to break up the action, and if his timing were any worse he would have eaten an uppercut to the ear. And you never knew when Prince would break something wild out like his spin kick. I didn't see that coming and it played great, and when they broke out those uppercuts at the end I thought that was important, showing that all of their hopping around and dramatic shove off kicks from the back could lead to some real blows being thrown.


Pierre Roinet vs. Jacky Corne 1/1/68

SR: 1 Fall match going about 15 minutes. That is like a studio squash compared to the average French match length we‘ve seen so far, but it‘s fine to get a condensed version. Roinet sure had a tough guy look, with his Ahab beard and flannel patterned trunks, but Corne was just walking through him during the wrestling sections of this. It almost made me wonder if there was some legit animosity there, because Corne even forcefully executed moves like a shoulder pin in a way that didn‘t look pleasant. When they engaged in their first strike exchange, Corne just clocked him with the european uppercut. Roinet doesn‘t get much in during the early phase besides a nice bearhug, which Corne quickly worked his way out of anyways. I was starting to suspect a squash, but then Roinet was able to get something going hammering at Corne with kicks and forearm smashes. Some disgustingly thudding shots here. Corne quickly went back to business and finished Roinet off with a rope assisted move that really feels like a heel spot but the fans didn‘t take offense. Short and it got good when it got violent. I guess this does a really good job of making me want to see Corne vs. A high caliber technician or Roinet getting revenche on his opponent, but the more logical explanation for this going short is that they had to keep room for the main event of this show which was Andre vs. Scarface.

MD: I insisted on this one as a palette cleanser for the two Prince vs Saulnier matches as it was the second part of the JIP show. I think I ended up with more sympathy for Roinet than any wrestler we've seen so far in this project. A lot of the heels we've seen so far were just outright villains. This guy held his own for the early going but got outmatched midway and started to resort to whatever he could, mostly frustrated illegal attacks while Corne was grounded, targeting the back or really just anything he could get. It'd work for a minute or so but then Corne would come back twice as mean and twice as mad. It ultimately ended as a mauling. Some of his stuff seemed promising, like a bearhug exchange where he'd toss Corne against the ropes and back into it, but it ended with a cannonball headbutt to the gut. He'd hit a dropkick but then miss the second one. Or he'd just stomp and kick and pummel and uppercut, but then Corne would come back and brutalize him. At one point, Corne won a strike exchange with a spinning kick that sent Roinet sailing out of the ring. When he came back in Corne just grabbed him and sent him out the other side of the ring. So ultimately this was a slight contest but an enjoyable exercise in mastery, brutality, and frustration.

PAS: This kind of nasty fist fight in very much my shit. Having this follow the Prince match is liking having an Ultimo Dragon match lead up to Ashura Hara and Takeshi Ishikawa beating the bricks off of each other. You might buy the tape for Ultimo, but its Hara who sticks with you. This match starts off like a violent Finlay squash, and then turns into Finlay vs. Regal as Roinet powered up and started firing back and was bringing as much heat and he absorbed early. It was a cool story as Roinet was outmatched but was going to go out on his sword. Those forearms he was landing had some concussive thuds and the corner exchange between both guys was pretty thrilling. Man was Corne a beast, Matt and Sebastian mentioned him chucking Roinet out of the ring, but they did mention his knife edge chop to the throat and the face, that was the kind of thing that would make Wahoo McDaniel cringe.

ER: Unfamiliar with both men, I saw the sinister bearded Roinet and thought he was going to murder Corne. What I didn't know was that Corne was one of the hardest hitting motherfuckers that any of us have seen in a ring. And sometimes, after getting knocked to his knees by another Jacky Corne combo, it looked like Roinet himself had no idea how hard he was about to get hit. There was one point where Roinet was on his knees buckled, right arm clutching at his ribs, and I thought he wasn't going to get back up. But eventually he got up and fired back, and it was one of the stiffest matches we've seen from this French footage. I still couldn't get over Corne's combos, as sometimes they looked like they wouldn't have much on them, but they landed flush. Corne doesn't have exaggerated wind-ups or punchy follow through, he comes in short and close and he gets incredible impact from such close range. His chops are among the best chops I've seen, thrown high up by the throat - much too high for my comfort - instead of to the broad of the chest, and they land quick and sharp. He had a body shot that was also a real scene stealer, used as the mic drop moment of a few exchanges, and between his chop and his left to the body it felt like he had enough for a 1-2 finisher. I love how this all broke down, loved Roinet's big bump to the floor and the way he threw himself into a hotshot for the finish, and especially loved Corne's violence which lead to our big slug out. 

La Petit Prince vs. Michel Saulnier 10/4/69

SR: 1 Fall Match going 30 minutes. For some reason, they kept overlaying this match with classical music and paintings, which adds to the flair of what you are seeing. I honestly thought this was another borderline masterpiece that easily stands up to any other level of highly respected wrestling match we've known before. Sure, it‘s transparent that these two had their routine and their go-to spots, but you have to keep in mind that back then people couldn‘t rewatch matches and their previous match aired over a year before. This match was more ground-based and didn‘t have the same level of crazy elaborate spots the 1967 match had (although there were still a few spots that any modern audience would shit their pants at if two current workers pulled them off as clean and fast as they did here) but I think the best part about these matches is not the flippy shit they do but the way they will chuck each other hard to the mat with arm throws and headlocks. And there was plenty of that here. Saulnier really wanted to beat that fucking Prince this time and was grinding him down with headlocks and armlocks hard, which lead to some great subtle selling from the Prince as Saulnier was just wringing his head off. It probably says a lot about me that my favourite moment in all this was Saulnier catching the Prince with an extremely well timed and vicious looking headlock takeover in the middle of a criss cross running spot. Saulnier also has a really great crossbody. People probably won‘t like that none of their matches have a finish but I guess that was kind of the point.

MD: This was tremendous, providing real substance to the spectacle that we've seen with the JIP matches. After seeing the second JIP match, I was impressed, but I sort of wondered if what we saw was all that it was: a bunch of spirited, expert amazing spots, without anything to really ground it or give it meaning. I was already wanting to see both of these guys against bases instead of each other. I was worried about diminished returns watching three of basically the same thing though.

Then this match came and blew me away. The first twenty minutes are basically three extended hold sequences where Saulnier just hangs on no matter what Prince does. We've seen that as a narrative tool in a number of these more serious French matches but nothing like this. They just build it and build it and build it, weaving in more and more elaborate escape attempts and Saulnier either cuts Prince off or just hangs on no matter what. By the time they're going full blast for the part of the match we were more familiar with, that entire crowd badly wanted what the came to see, the lightning quick spots and acrobatic athleticism that they only had bits and pieces and tastes of for the first twenty minutes. That's the joy and the heartbreak of this footage. We don't have another full match between the two. Without this match, we would have never known that they set up that grand finale fireworks display with something so disciplined yet imaginative. Without another full match we have no way of knowing if it was something they always did or something just for this weird art special. But we're so, so much better off for having this match in full, so we swallow the unknown and be glad for what we have.

PAS: It is really cool that we get to see the unclipped version of their signature match. I remember when we would all get clipped NJ TV where we would miss the first six minutes of the NJ Juniors stuff and you always imagined how great it was. When we finally started getting unclipped versions later, it turned out the first five minutes of matwork in NJ Juniors matches kind of sucked. That is the opposite of what happens here, as we get the clipped section and it rules. Saulnier was a hell of flight grounder, and I loved all of the great work he did to keep the cork in the Prince. That grounded headlock takeover Sebastian mentioned was truly a thing of beauty. I also though the Prince was cool on the mat; his two big holds, the headscissors and the keylock were really great to watch. He would use his speed and athleticism to hold onto the holds, every time Saulnier saw some daylight, Prince would close the blinds. I do think it is a little weird that these matches seem to never have finishes, but it is hard to argue with the beautiful stuff we got. Excited to see how both guys work with other opponents.

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