Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corne! Mercier! Samurai!

Jean Corne/Marc Mercier vs Les Samurai 8/21/82

MD: On this last pass with new footage I am a little wistful. Maybe we find some more later but it's just nice to see Jean Corne one last time, even if it was a bit later in his career. This is obviously early in Marc's career. He's only twenty here, I think, and this was a bit of a showcase for his dropkicks, or it was supposed to be. Some hit better than others, though overall he had a number of spots down and felt like he belonged in there more or less, even if he wasn't near the level of Corne or the Yellow Samurai. 

Really loved seeing Corne do his thing here. At the start, he rolled through a mare, and then another, and then just kept rolling and rolling around the ring. The Yellow Samurai then got rolled right out of the ring on a mare. He could still rope run with the best of them and he had some great step over armdrags and what not. The first fall was a short sprint with the stylists having an advantage until the Samurai went dirty first. That led to an abrupt pin off a slam on Corne. He came back fairly quickly in the second fall, which Mercier took eventually with a missile dropkick and body press. It was pretty back and forth overall and they tried to give Mercier a decent amount of shine. There was some ref chicanery towards the end but not enough to really shift the match too much. I'm not sure this would entirely be a memorable one in the grand scheme of the footage, but it was a nice tag that could have been in 72 as well as 82 (a compliment) and a nice final look at Corne. 

SR: Another one of those early 80s tags. Points of curiosity here: they had young fresh upstart Mercier teamed with old guard Jean Corne. Corne could still go a little, although he was more limited. He got a lot of mileage out of his slick foreward rolls. Talk about working smart. Mercier is talented and athletic enough and there were some good exchanges to start. Next point of curiosity: the heels actually did some damage to Corne early. Maybe they were working an injury angle or something since it seemed Cornes back was messed up from a basic body slam and he struggled to keep going. The Samurai did right thing and immediately began targetting his back, with one of them hitting a cool flip senton. It wasn't super expanded upon as Corne ends up making a fairly simple tag and it's not really brought up again safe for another minor injury scare later, but it's a bit of flavor that crept into the old formula of these tags. Other than that the Samurai didn't do a ton here besides bumping a lot and working some choke holds. It was a bit repetitive here and there but overall a solid effort. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Leduc! Corn! Henker! Samourai!

Gilbert Leduc/Jacky Corn vs Der Henker/Le Samourai 6/13/75

MD: Some old friends here in Corn and Henker (Remy Bayle). We're not entirely sure who Samourai was  but he was pretty good at what he did and we do have various Samourais in other 70s footage. They made sure to note that we had an Axis team on the heel side. I will say this though: the Henker gimmick was a few years in now. He's a monster, a brick wall, someone you're not going to stagger back with even a strong shot, but he's not the monster he was a few years before. Remember, he once took on both Corn and Leduc by himself. Here they needed to take out a leg or use finesse to take him down for the most part (though Leduc could manage it, eventually, with even a headlock takeover worked hard enough). And he ultimately ate a very clean pin off of a very clean slam to end the second fall in the match. Still, most of the time, they had to double team or outsmart a double team attempt to really get him down and they recovered more often than not against Samourai. 

This was probably a little long going ~40 with the introductions but every exchange was good. It just means you ended up seeing Leduc's toupie headspin 3-4 times when 1-2 would have done the trick instead. Samourai was slick, able to do the karate shtick but also keep up with all of the wrestling and feed when he had to. When he was in there against Corn they were able to turn up the speed a little bit. He also had a lot of very fun comedy bits where he slid around the ring and sometimes all the way out to the first row. The first fall was long and didn't have too much peril for the stylists. The second fall was shorter but had them working from underneath (Corn especially) a little more. I'm not saying the stakes weren't there because Henker always was a threat but again, this wasn't the Henker of a few years earlier. Lots of good individual moments and spots because Corn catching Samourai in an unlikely body scissors or Leduc torquing Henker's arm one way and then the other to get him down will always delight, but there was a moment thirty minutes in where it did feel a little much having not watched one of these long tags in a while. Still another enjoyable entry into the Henker vs Leduc/Corn feud (one of the better feuds of the 70s that we have considerable footage of) overall.

SR: I think this is the latest apearance we have of Gilbert Leduc. Cagematch says he indeed retired in 1975, so this might be a last hurray of sorts. He still does the beautiful head spinning escape. Other than that this was notably slowed down. There's some somewhat compelling work but also a lot of holds and the whole thing feels way too long. Give some credit to Le Samurai, its hard to read 'Le Samurai' and not think of Alan Deloin, but this masked guy did a few nifty things. One thing I noticed that masked heels seem less incompetent and outmatched than your typical French heels. Samurai is able to do a bit of neat wrestling, including a rope hanging choke move that was really neat and also those nifty rolling bumps and odd mannerisms, and the Henker is at least hard to get off his feet. There is some of the fun bumping and stooging that we know from the French tags and a few good moments such as a crossbody being caught into a gutwrench suplex. But yeah this was too long and slow paced overall. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Weber! Salah! Don! Trujillo! Bordes! Bouvet! Samurai! Payen!

MD: As a heads up, the audio on the first set of matches is a bit messed up. For me, it worked best if I just listened with my left earbud and not the right. The footage is the footage.

Arpan Weber vs Artif Salah (JIP) 6/14/76

MD: We get the last seven minutes of this. I don't think we have much more Weber but he's looked very good in the two matches we've seen so far. A real slugger, with a tendency to bounce back off the ropes with big shots. He has a lot of stuff: a butterfly suplex (one of the first we've seen?), a backbreaker with a grind, his fall away slam with a float over follow-up, and of course chops and headbutts and an ability to take all of his opponent's stuff. Good presence and I would have liked to see him against LeDuc or Corn or Bibi or any number of other wrestlers from the footage. Salah was game to fight back against him, having more stylist tools like dropkicks and headcissors takeovers but going shot-for-shot when it was called for. They were fighting for the draw here and showed but it was still good hard-hitting action for the seven minutes.

Juan Gil Don vs Tomas Trujillo 6/14/76

MD: This was a totally different animal than the last Don match. It started off much the same with Trujillo feeding into all of Don's traps and spots. Trujilo had his own climb up armdrag which he used here. It looked like it was going to be another straight up Don showcase like the Tejero match. Then it turned hard left as Trujillo tossed him out and posted him, opening him up and taking a real advantage. From there, Don had to use his tricks and savvy to come back again and again as Trujillo leaned on him. It gave the match plenty of drama and made it feel like a complete match, all heightened by the blood, by Trujillo being a good bully, by Don's spectacular stuff (including those flipping mare that someone, anyone has to steal! I never do this, but here's a gif. Steal them!:

You get the sense that they wanted to get him over in the Tejero match and once he was they could do more fleshed out encounters like this. 

Le Samurai/Pierre Payen vs Walter Bordes/Gerard Bouvet 7/18/76 

MD: We had this back in 2014, but it was only the first two falls. Now we have it complete. That's a great word for it, for it really is a very, very complete tag, going a few minutes longer than a lot of the ones we've seen lately. The first ten-fifteen minutes is one of the best shines we've seen, just the stylists pulling out all sorts of spots and clowning the heels again and again. The last six minutes are hugely celebratory with the fans singing and chanting and having a wonderful time. In the middle there are about three separate face-in-peril sequences and comebacks, including one stemming from Bordes absolutely wiping himself out on a missed top rope move.

Bordes and Bouvet made for a great unit. Bordes always kept up on the new moves and spots of the time and here threw a chancery suplex followed by a German suplex, for instance. He also worked the apron quite well showing excitement for his partner on big spots. Bouvet had a lot of fun little variations, leg picks and nice escapes, including a sort of skin the cat headscissors takeover that was deep and measured and popped the crowd huge, and a fallaway slam that almost caved in a skull, but also did a dropkick variation on the bit where both heels are tied up in opposite ropes and the stylist charges in again and again. Because this got so much time, everything felt fairly balanced, even if the drama was done by the end and they were into full on partying. You wish that they had worked out exactly how to time and maximize the hot tags with some of the ref distractions and out of position tags that didn't count, but Bordes and Bouvet always came in fiery and the crowd went up for it. Samurai didn't have too much in the way of complex wrestling, but I thought he was properly theatrical (and Payen properly mean), working very big with chops both missed and hit and doing things like getting into a shoving match with the announcer. Very worthwhile tag and I'm glad we have it complete now.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Manneveau! Le Samurai! More Luna Catch 2000! Cavilliers! Fontaine!

Guy Cavilliers vs. Alain Fontaine 1/3/72

MD: This is a rare episode that seems to be joined well in progress. We only have about ten minutes of this, with no entrances and some talk with Fontaine's family at the end. I do think we've only come in a few minutes late though. The first few minutes of this are the two of them tossing each other out, with  Fontaine getting the better of it and his younger opponent coming back. Once they get going there are a lot of headscissors takeovers and dropkicks though it's a little disjointed relative to what we're used to maybe. The finish has both of them missing dropkicks and then kipping up to crash into one another, a way for the younger wrestler to earn a draw and a novel finish even if one that you don't want to repeat too much. 

Marcel Manneveau vs. Le Samurai 1/31/72

MD: Interesting match. I have no idea who Le Samurai was. Apparently he had red gear with a red and yellow mask. Some of the things he did, like the bowing and chops, and most notably the hangman's neckbreaker where he carries his opponent to the ropes and presses up into them from underneath neck-first were parts of the Kamikazes' game, but other things weren't, and the general style of wrestling seemed different. The first ten minutes, before he devolved into the chops and nerve-holds, had some really good mat wrestling, a lot of wrist control and counters to counters. Occasionally they got overambitious and lost something. Samurai had one absolutely brilliant escape from a headscissors where he brought up his own legs to hold one of Manneveau's. As such, this was a great showcase for just how good Manneveau was on the mat, which we often don't get to see in dirty Blousons matches. Once the match opened up, both guys played the heel, though the fans were more against Samurai than they were for Manneveau. My favorite bits here were Samurai's killer double leg stump pullers, but also some of the abrupt grabbing of limbs that almost made it seem like a 1970s proto-shoot style. The finish was kind of gnarly as Samurai had Manneveau trapped in a sunset flip pin and scored the three despite Manneveau repeatedly slamming his heel against Samurai's head to try to escape. Good match even with the affectations.  

Antonio Pereira/Mota Dos Santos vs. Francis Louis/Jean Claude Bordeaux 1/31/72

MD: Yes, this is more Luna Catch 2000, where wrestler are shot into the ring off platforms with compressed air. I'm fairly certain that this 6 minutes or so that we get (more like 10 with the pomp and circumstance to begin) is actually the debut as the full match that has gotten more attention than maybe anything else we've posted is from April and we're at the end of January here. They started this with the klaxon and the cosmic bowling lights, with wrestlers dressed in silver jumpsuits but no helmets this time and with a countdown to launch them into the ring which was different. The commentator likened it to a scene from a Kubrick movie. We've got the same wrestlers as before, but I think they had the act down just a bit more in April as they were better at both not bumping on their own backs on the way in and also catching themselves then. I don't know what else to tell you. Having seen the week after week quality of the footage, this stuff is a fun novelty but if I had to choose, I'm glad we got the full Manneveau vs Samurai match and just a few minutes of watching these guys soar into the ring, land, pause and then armdrag or slam each other. Basically, while it's cool Bryan Danielson is talking about this sort of thing on a podcast, I'd rather see (and would rather he see!) another Louis/Bordeaux vs Dos Santos/Pereira match without the compressed air and ten foot high bumps than this, as they are pretty spectacular when they get to put together an actual match.

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