Tuesday is French Catch Day: Le Primitiv! Gordon! Falcons! Hassouni! DeBruyne! Piranhas!

Kader Hassouni & John DeBruyne vs Les Piranhas 5/11/85

MD: Totally solid tag here. The highs weren't quite as high as they could be but the floor was high enough that you didn't mind much. Hassouni was older, a bit slower, able to move with bursts and then take things back down or to have the heel make the motion for him but he was still quite the pro. DeBruyne was mainly in there to get a few youthful, agile flurries of his own and then to take a beating. The Piranhas had their act down, a lot of ref distraction and hairpulling and clubbering and they had a game target in DeBruyne, who'd charge right in only to get nailed. This had a couple of hot tags and big comebacks by Hassouni and they kept cutting to a very happy crowd that was very into it, with a large number of kids present. The wrestling wasn't quite as complex, the action not quite as heated or spirited, and I'm not sure this ever reached the triumph of good vs evil of classic tags of years prior. It was still probably a love way to spend an afternoon however. It's also important everyone knows that the trumpeter Jean-Claude Borelly was a special guest announcer. 

Flesh Gordon vs Mambo le Primitif (Strap Match) 5/11/85

MD: There had been a tease of a strap match with Bordes and a monster back five years earlier but here's the payoff we get, and it's late era Catch with Flesh Gordon and Mambo Le Primitif. No crown, no drummers for Mambo here. Instead he had a couple of village people looking handlers. This went over twenty and there was probably a great twelve minute match in there. Conceptually, some things really worked and some things didn't. For a good chunk of the match, Gordon used the strap as a way of keeping distance on Mambo and moving him around the ring. He'd whip the ground to keep Mambo back more than he'd whip Mambo himself. Gordon was slightly older, a little rougher around the edges in appearance, but whatever he might become later, he was still spry at this point: able to do the up and over and move and hit big dropkicks and bump around the ring and sell emotively. Mambo would catch him, beat him down, and Gordon would come back as Mambo was posing.

Midway through there was a glorious minute where Mambo took the metal strap connector and dug it into Gordon's eye and if the match had more of that it'd have been many degrees better. Instead, it was all more back and forth. Gordon certainly knew how to present himself as a star and Mambo was constant motion, constantly entertaining, even if there wasn't always substance behind it. Eventually he did take over, including a big dive off the apron to the floor, so that the end of the match was Gordon coming back big by catching him on the top and choking him with the strap to give him a visual win but a DQ loss. 

Mambo le Primif vs Golden Falcons 7/7/85

MD: We get 15 of this and then it cuts off and, I mean, look, Mambo is trained, right? He's agile. He's capable of basing for some complex spots from the Falcons. If I could track down Gerard Herve/Flesh Gordon, the only thing I'd probably ask him would be who Mambo was. He had some staying power when you think about it. He wasn't giant compared to other big masked men or at least the costume made it seem like he wasn't but they sold for him like he was late-era Andre at times. This was more or less what you'd expect. They'd use their numbers game to bump him around. He'd isolate one and take over. Strength spots, falls out of the ring, just grinding down. You can imagine how it would end considering he beat both Angelito and Gordon at the same time previously. I don't know. The world's probably richer and more insane for the existence of Mambo and him leaping throat first onto the top rope so they can run text across the screen saying SPLAACH!!!"

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Primitiv! Frederico! Cohen! Tejero! Angelito! Gordon! Piranhas!

Le Primitiv vs Eliot Frederico 7/18/84

SR: Mombo Le Primitif is among the most surreal things I've ever seen in wrestling. It looks like he got lost on his way to fighting Survival Tobita. OJ didn't even mentioned that they subtitled some of the wrestling moves in that match like it was a comic book. E.g. Mombo would do a kneedrop to the arm and it would display CRAAAAACK! on the screen, or ONK! when he got thrown outside. The guy playing Mombo seemed like a capable wrestler but had no idea how to portray this character. He did all kinds of shit, like a plancha or cartwheeling on the ropes. The crowd has no idea what to make of this and treats Frederico as a de facto face. Frederico actually throws some really nice punches here and I want to see him in a match that wasn‘t a confusing mess.

MD: Let's start with the basic facts. Primitiv was in a monkey suit of sorts. He had tribal drummers with him. They played the whole match and chanted "Mombo". Frederico was "the Rocky of the Ring" with a combo boxer gimmick and leather guy gimmick. This was pretty wild stuff. Narratively, Le Primitiv was able to control the arm early, wildly tossing him around the ring. He had some fun stuff in slamming it over the top rope or whipping him into the corner but somehow hanging on to the arm at the same time. Whenever Frederico was able to knock him out of the ring with a punch or a dropkick, he just bounded right back in like he was Brody or something. Big bump, no sell. Eventually, though, Frederico really got him with a back body drop to the floor and he didn't bounce right back in. Primitiv responded animalistically by leaping to the top and trying to cartwheel off the ropes but kept getting caught by Frederico. So things were going well until Primitiv got him out and crushed him with a dive we barely got to see and just pounded him into the seats. After that, it was basically over. He tried to do a top rope legdrop and it ended up more of a stomp and he did a standing one instead. I'm giving all of this way too much credit but it was still pretty compelling. The crazy gimmicks were almost all super athletic in one way or another and this was no exception. Wasn't as offputting as a La Bete Humaine match but it was still pretty out there. And like Sebastian says, they kept flashing words like "AUGH!" on the screen after spots. Or "SPLAT!" and Batman wasn't even in this one.

Georges Cohen vs Anton Tejero 7/18/94

SR: Fun little match that was basically a showcase for the tricks Cohen still had up in his sleeve, and the fact that even old as dirt Anton Tejero was still a bump freak. Tejero got in maybe 1 minute of offense which makes this pretty much a squash though.

MD: Thirteen minutes of pure entertainment. I'm not sure I'd call this a squash necessarily, so much as an exhibition of Cohen's counter-wrestling. Tejero was the aggressor the whole way through. It's just that Cohen had an answer for literally everything he tried except for that one minute where he was flexing his weight and tossing him about. Even then, the answer was to pull him out of the ring, beat him around the ring as he scrambled back, head back in and beat him. Both of these guys were absolute masters. Tejero was an amazing base, stooge, heavy, and maybe the best bumper-out-of-the-ring in history. They fit so many different spots and exchanges and sequences into every minute of this. They're getting up there but they can still go so fast and wrestle so smooth and bump so big. There was no drama here but everything made sense and had weight and skill to it and the crowd was happy for every second.

Flesh Gordon/Angelito vs Piranhas 3/30/84 or 7/18/84

MD: This was a fun one. The Piranhas were Sleestak looking guys with "tails" around their necks. They'd take them off and use them to choke, leading to an early first fall win as one held Angelito down and the other splashed him off the turnbuckles. One of them was a top notch clubberer and they weren't afraid to bump around the ring and take all of the stylists stuff. Gordon doesn't seem quite as slick and smooth as he was a couple of years earlier but he still does most of the spots expected of him and had a great dropkick. There was a hot tag towards the end of the last fall and he really did a great job cleaning with uppercuts, Bordes' jumping knees, and even Drapp's shoulder shrug attack. Angelito took it even further, using all of the greatest hits of the last thirty years of Catch. He hit the up and over into an armbar out of a top wristlock, had Batman's floatover headlock escape, really just all the stuff. The crowd was feeling this too, with rare chants for a public warning after a pin got broken up (after Gordon's cool flying twisting mare finisher), one fan trying to interfere as the ref was distracted, and fans slamming the mat pissed off after the stylists got DQed for using the Piranhas' rope things against them.

SR: Really entertaining cross between Catch and Monterrey. Angelito looked pretty fantastic here working as a technico. He may have been one of the better lightweights still going in Europe at this point, at least when it comes to athleticism. Gordon wasn‘t half bad here either. The Piranhas won‘t exactly set your world on fire (I think they may have been played by the same guys as Les Maniaks) but they are good enough bases here. They had this amusing shtick where they would use a piece of their attire as a foreign object. Also, the announcer kept calling them „The little fishes“ and you have to love that. Match also had good structure with the rudos taking a pinfall early to increase pressure on the technicos,

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