Tuesday is French Catch Day:Khan! Gentilly! Amor! Rouanet! Horst! DiSanto!

Monsieur Montreal vs. Jack Rouxel 9/15/61

MD: We get the last 5 minutes of 20 here. It's our first look at Mr. (Marcel) Montreal. Pretty straightforward. The crowd was against Rouxel and he, after quickly escaping the full nelson we start with, just mauled Montreal. Forearms and simple throws and a few kicks for good measure. I half through the ref should call it at one point (he gave Rouxel a warning instead) but then Montreal ducked a running forearm and Rouxel went sailing over the top and the entire match turned. Montreal got plenty of revenge, to the point where both guys seemed fairly blown up from all the slams, before locking in a bearhug for the win. We have a Rouxel/Bernaert vs Sola/Montreal tag in a few weeks that sounds like a lot of fun.

Iska Khan/Serge Gentilly vs .Yves Amor/Pierre Rouanet 9/15/61

MD: Not a lot of brand new fooage this week. Just the JIPs, I think. But we're going through this stuff as we encounter it for the most part. This was a very fun tag with a lot of fun pairings. Amor and Khan are both such interesting wrestlers to watch, very talented, multifaceted despite their sort of singular gimmicks, both able to lay it in and go at it when they're not doing the highly affectated stuff. Both men were consumate performers with great connections with the crowd. Gentilly and Rouanet worked extremely well together, lots of quick exchanges and holds that were either repeatedly hung onto or escaped from, including an excellent hammerlock/flying mare exchange. Likewise, Amor vs Gentilly was a lot of fun with Amor's size and reach advantage up against Gentilly's slickness. What we saw of Khan vs Rouanet was a slugfest as much as not. When the heels decided to finally act like heels, they controlled the ring well and demolished Khan's back. As the guy who ate the fall has to start in the ring to begin the next one, it let Khan work from underneath a bit to get a quasi-hot tag and the comeback was fun. The last fall was back and forth, with a couple of flashy things like a cool triple strike combo by Gentilly and Khan's stepover spin kicks, including the one that knocked Amor out of the ring to end the match, and great straightforward ones like Amor's kneeshots in the ropes. Good mix of straight up work and fun character stuff here.

Remy Bayle vs. Al Gamain 10/5/61

SR: We get about 1 minute of this featuring lots of heated slugging and a cool spinning canadian backbreaker finish. Wouldn‘t have minded to see 2 or 3 minutes more.

MD: Just a minute of this, but they went hard for the finish. Good striking. Gamain had a great, abrupt headbutt to the gut, and won it with an over the shoulder backbreaker whirlybird which was nice to see.

Kuti Nador vs. Michel Allary 10/5/61

SR: 13 minute match going one fall. I am pretty sure Kuti Nador is Hungarian wrestler Micha Nador, since that guys real name is actually Kuti. Nador I think was mostly active in Germany and Austria. It‘s nice to have a full match if him in his prime. He also showed up in NJPW in the early 80s, somehow. He seemed like a cool worker and I would‘ve liked to see him in a 30 minute match like they gave every other worker. This was face vs. Face, with them going through the usual solid wrestling with Nador having some unique twists on the established holds and counters. Then, Nador decided to work over Allarys face with thai clinch knees and lock in a nasty sleeper. The he just dropped him with a gnarly piledriver. That was unexpected for sure. They get heated for a minute before a nasty bump occurs and the match is thrown out.

MD: We're in tournament mode here, I guess, as this only goes 10 minutes. It's a good ten minutes though. Nador is bigger and relies upon his strength. He's a little awkward but has just enough technique to be extra dangerous. Allary is super technical and generally the aggressor here which serves him well right to the end when he KOs himself through the ropes in a charge. Good stuff up til there, however, with them trading hammerlocks, a Nador full nelson, and some nice leg holds by Allary. He had one great rolling takedown into a short leg scissors of sorts (including using his knuckle to grind the knee). Nador was generally able to power out though. They escalated to bombs (a Nador bodyslam tombstone followed by an Allary neckbreaker and heated strikes), before Allary went sailing out. Good, quick sampler if you wanted to show someone a bit of the style.

Lino Di Santo vs. Horst Hoffmann 10/5/61

SR: 1 fall match going 20 minutes. It‘s Horst Hoffmann, baby. Hoffmann may be familiar to people from his work in AJPW in the 70s. He was a young Mitsuharu Misawas favourite and inspired him to wear the emerald green tights. This Hoffmann was in his 4th year as a pro wrestler, but he was quite the specimen. In Germany, Hoffmann was promoter Gustl Kaisers boy and basically The Man. Needless to say having this match alone is a blessing. And it‘s a very good bout. Hoffmann really wrestles like a bear. He would wrench the shit out of Di Santo and just throw him around. After so many cartoonishly evil fake Germans, it was nice to see a real stoic German being a straight up bulldozer. Hoffmann didn‘t do anything evil but you get the sense he was demolishing the Italian. At one point, Di Santo denied a wristlock escape and Horst just kneed him in the gut. Hoffmann also had this amazing overhead suplex that looks far beyond the scope of normal humans. I thought Di Santo wrestled a great match, too. He really put over the overwhelming force of his opponent and fired back with big impact moves of his own, including that sick looking neckbreaker of this. There was some cool grappling, too. By the end Hoffmann was just dropping the Italian hard over and over. When the time runs out, it feels like Di Santo survived a storm.

MD: I don't think we have much more, if any, of young Hoffman in the footage and it's a little strange as Di Santo was going way out of his way to showcase him here. There was a lot to showcase too. He was a beast that brought a lot to the table. Di Santo would keep holds on (like a hammerlock) to show how many ways Hoffman knew to try to escape it and he kept things equally interesting by going for frustrated shots first and having a bunch of stuff, a good backbreaker, a neckbreaker, etc. Hoffman had it all though. Size and power. Pretty solid strikes. Some interesting holds like a bow and arrow. And big, big throws including one of the first gutwrenches we've seen and his fall away slam. This stayed more even than you'd think, even though Hoffman had a clear advantage on points by the end. Just a good showcase with a solid journeyman highlighting a younger guy with huge talent.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: James Brown?!? Kovacs! Quasimodo! Rabut! Costella! Allary! Lasartesse!

James Brown vs. Robert Gastel  1/14/60

SR: JIP match, but we get about 20 minutes. I think James Brown was a US guy stationed in Germany and became a wrestler there. If his performance here is any indications of the standards of German wrestling, then it wasn‘t much worse than French wrestling at the time. Brown was super athletic, both in terms of agility and strength. At one point he did this straight lift from a headlock into a torture rack which was inspiring. He seemed a little green here and there, but overall he looked a good babyface. And Gastel is really good opponent for that kind of worker. Gastel really is the Dick Murdoch of Catch, working opponents over with a variety of punches while demonstrating impeccable timing and crowd control. It‘s European wrestling so the punches are to the body but the point stands. His sell of a simple headbutt to the mid section was a thing of beauty. I also loved how he pushed the referee. Really fun match.

MD: I didn't love this. I thought Brown was super athletic and had a lot of skills and tools, but he just needed to let Gastel lean on him more. He'd let Gastel get an advantage through chicanery but it'd be gone a moment later. Because of that, there was never really any drama to this except for whether or not Gastel might get some sort of banana peel win after giving up most of the match. Gastel's a great stooge and a great heel and to see him get knocked around and stymied by Brown was entertaining at times but even with some good spots it was just too much of the same.

PAS: I agree with Matt that Brown took a ton of this match, but I was really enjoying the hardest working man in French Catch doing his thing. Countering a headlock with a deadlift into a torture rack is one of the coolest spots I have seen in all of the French Catch and there have been some amazing spots. I also really liked how he landed on his feet on every throw. I expected James Brown to have more splits based offense, but what he did was very cool. 

Josef Kovacs vs. Quasimodo 1/14/60

SR: 1 Fall match going a bit over 20 minutes. Two guys whom we saw on different matches on TV before face off. I guess it was a bit of booking that just made sense. Kovacs is big and towering and he reminded me a bit of Pat Roach here, which is a very good thing. From British wrestling I am used to Hungarians being brilliant technicians, but Kovacs was a bit more blunt force in his style. He did some cool wrestling around blocking Quasimodos throws, and when the little freak got too uppity with his dirty tactics he was made with some big European uppercuts. He wasn‘t kidding around with his bodyslams, too. Kovacs is not as charismatic and fiery as Gilbert Leduc so the match wasn‘t as exciting, but it was a good match, and that spinning torture rack drop sure is one hell of a finish.

MD: This was a war of two very different monsters, an unrelenting and bitter winter rainstorm and the hulking, groaning inevitability of a slowly rolling boulder. Kovacs is announced as the Eagle of Budapest here instead of the Butcher, but he's still a big nasty behemoth. We'd seen previously how Gary Calderon's judo skills couldn't chip away at Kovacs' strength. Quasimodo, however, is a dogged wrestling machine, rusty, jagged, oddly shaped and creaking, but a wrestling machine nonetheless. He's like a festering ooze that creeps around Kovacs, looking for an eye, a throat, a leg, hair, anything that would give him an advantage. He adds to this a low center of gravity and surprising wiry strength, able to sneak in these nasty gutbusters and an electric chair drop onto the ropes. What I like the most about him is how he's able to create advantageous situations, turning a top wristlock into a backbreaker, things like that. The problem is that it's impossible to press an advantage against someone as strong and impenetrable as Kovacs for long. All he has to is get his hands on him and Quasimodo goes flying across the ring. Quasimodo does chip away at him as the match goes on, grounding him with a nervehold, flipping him over the ropes to stomp on his head, but all Kovacs has to do is catch him, which he ultimately does with his torture rack whirlybird. I thought the mismatch and the heel vs heel nature of this was going to make for a poor match but I ended up liking this a lot.

PAS: This was cool stuff kind of like when Yokozuna would beat King Kong Bundy or Nash would beat Wrath. Establish a monster by having him take down another monster. I am an unabashed Quasimodo mark, so I wish my dude would have gotten some more shine, but he did deliver some really creeper offense. I like his backbreakers and clawing, grasping offense, but eventually the beast was going to catch him.  I agree that finishing move was a finishing move, big time impact for sure. 

ER: I love Quasimodo, truly the role this man was born to play. He wrestles with a hunch (which is really no different than the freestyle wrestler's hunch that someone like Mark Schultz had), he's ripped like gassed old man Kurt Angle, but he has the face of Rondo Hatton. I thought he looked super impressive here, especially with the size of Kovacs. He used that low hunch to muscle him into corners, and was always pawing and clawing around his face and shoulders. He takes big bumps when Kovacs does get ahold of him, getting tossed especially far on a Biel throw, but he was plenty punishing to the bigger guy in the killer one strap singlet. He had cool gutbusters and backbreakers and a single leg crab that really looked like it was cranking Kovacs knee. Towards the end of the match Quasi powered Kovacs over the top rope, flipping him over and catching his neck over the bottom rope, then started standing and jumping on Kovacs' neck as it was over the rope. It looked like some sadistic Greg Valentine tough guy offense. 

Jean Rabut vs. Ventos Costella 1/22/60

SR: JIP match with about 10 minutes shown. This was in that fast paced French lightweight style. Not everything was tightly executed and I thought nothing they did topped the initial sequence built around a kip up headbutt (probably my favourite uniquely French spot), but they knew they had to have matches like this to contrast with all the heel spectacle main events.

MD: Even in the context of what we've been watching, this felt a little like seeing Blitzkrieg for the first time on Nitro, or watching that Brian XL/Divine Storm vs SAT/Red match using Real Player. In both cases we could sort of see where things were trending, but this felt like fireworks flying over the heads of it. The sheer speed that they were working, how quickly they got back to their feet, how quickly the momentum shifted, the rapid fire pin attempts and reversals, and just the constant motion. Everything wasn't always smooth but there was always a sense of competition and struggle. There was never any winking. Sometimes after a reversal or a recovery, they'd take a second to catch their breath, but then they'd be slamming their bodies into each other once again. All of the sunset flips were the leg-hooked sort which feel so much more impressive than the standard model. It wasn't all rope running and up and overs and sunset flips. Costella had a great forearm and Rabut did this amazing torpedo headbutt to the gut in the ropes, but what you're going to remember about this is the sheer movement about it. I wouldn't want every match to be like this, but by this point, the richness of the French footage is the overlap between constant variety and constant quality.

PAS: This was more of an exhibition of speed and execution then a structured match, but man were they moving fast. A ton of really cool sunset flip roll ups and ranas, and that kip up headbutt is an absolute killer spot.

Jack de Lasartesse vs. Michel Allary  1/22/60

SR: 1 fall match going about 25 minutes. It‘s the debut of Jack de Lasartesse, who went on to be kind of a phenom. And he may very well have been in his prime here. He was a bodybuilder before turning Catcheur, so he didn‘t have the kind of skill other wrestlers we‘ve seen have, but he had no problem going in a long heated slugfest. His swaggering, self assured mannerisms here were certainly a sight to behold. It sure got the crowd riled up good as people were looking to storm the ring 5 minutes into the match. There seemed to be 300 people in that building but they sure wanted to see Michel Allary beat the shit out of this arrogant bleach blonde aristocrat. And that he did. Tons of nasty uppercuts and forearms in this match. It didn‘t develop any kind of story but they sure knew how to keep the heat coming which is what counted at this point. Lasartesse had fantastic body language and excellent sense of timing which can totally carry a match like this. It was funny to watch him do a few things he would still do as a crusty old corpse 25 years later in Hamburg. Anytime he was eating shots from Allary he would throw a punch or just jab him in the throat. All the throat work felt super violent and the throat knee drops were just insane. Brutal fucking finish too.

MD: And here we have Lasartesse, finally. The announcer says he's been in the States buying cowboy outfits and cadillacs, but he comes out in his cape with its royal seal on it, the very picture of a guy who'd lose his head in the Terror. What a perfect heel for 1960 France. We've seen him off and on through the years, of course, but here he's everything you'd want him to be. Lanky, using his size to the utmost advantage, both on offense and as a tool for drama and emotion. Deliberate, filling negative space as well as almost anyone in the history of wrestling, chewing gum, strutting around the ring as he has to wait for Allary to get up, it almost becoming a dance as the crowd chants at him. This has some elements we've been slowly starting to see creep into the footage, both focused segments on a limb with a lot of various offense targeting it and a couple of top rope moves, Lasartesse first missing and then later, to end the match, hitting the bombs away kneedrop. Allary is yet another fiery babyface with great strikes but I do wish he sold the bodypart work a bit more. Instead, he opts for more revenge. Lasartesse attacks the back; Allary does the same in revenge when it's his turn. Anyway, as I said, Lasartesse was everything you'd want him to be: menacing, stooging, infuriating, imaginative, petulant, smarmy, vicious, and craven. We're endlessly lucky to get to see him in his prime.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Bibi! Bernaert! Sola! Labat! Stein! Allary!

Cheri Bibi/Pierre Bernaert vs. Ami Sola/Jo Labat 9/6/59

MD: I really enjoyed this. If it was just a tiny bit tighter and had a little more heat (not to say there wasn't heat), it'd be towards the 1959 for me. This is definitely the best Bibi match we've seen so far and the perfect role for him, a looming menacing goon in a tag match who is going to cheat any chance he gets. The cheating here actually felt quite different from the roughish and almost playful Delaporte sort. Here it was unrelenting and uncaring. Rules didn't matter. Labat and Sola are guys we've seen wrestle each other and really just a perfect team. Bernaert is a cheapshot artist himself and complemented Bibi (they even had matching prison ring jackets). After a solid technical shine, the heels took over due to Bernaert launching a sneak attack out of a handshake (his second), and they kept control for a lot of this. It was primarily when the faces could incapacitate one or both wrestlers for a time (either due to Sola's crazy jumping tombstones or wrapping them up in the ropes) that they could beat the numbers game and the blatant cheating. Otherwise even fiery moments of comeback would get cut off the second they were driven too close to the heel corner. There was definitely heat, with trash occasionally thrown in at Bibi and he drew a reaction every time he menaced in the corner and the fans were into the comebacks, but it didn't boil over like in some of the other tags we've seen. Both heel falls were due to the faces getting too into their comebacks and slipping on a banana peel. Just really solid and highly accessible tag team wrestling.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. JIP, but it seems like we join right at the start. At this point, we know exactly what we are gonna get from this match up. Bibi & Bernaert are a cheating superteam, and Sola/Labat have rocked the TV screens with their technical matchups. This was very much an A+ face team against a solid C heel team. Bibi & Bernaert are pretty effective at what they do, but they aren't going to surprise you, while Sola & Labat where always mixing all kinds of neat stuff. The highlight of the 1st fall was easily Sola just randomly launching Bernaert around with an out of nowhere Giant Swing. I also liked all the evaded stomps. Evading basic moves is always cool and they always neatly time these things. The 2nd fall felt like it should've ended earlier as both Bernaert & Bibi ate some nasty piledrivers and after some pretty good selling kind of moved on to a pretty standard finish. The same can be said for the 3rd fall which had Bibi taking a pretty cool spill to the outside and things heating up good before a banana peel kind of finish, which I guess was the usual way to have a pair of heels going over on TV. That being said when they started throwing hands this got surely as fuck and everyone here is such a honest to god competent pro wrestler so despite the structural nitpickings this was another highly entertaining romp.

PAS: I am higher on the heels then Matt and Sebastian. I thought they were really nasty jerks who didn't come off as genial or roguish, but just like cheap shotting bastards. Punches to the kidney's, stomps to the head, chokes, not really stooging selling, but getting dropped and stunned when the babyface teams fired back. I loved the final run, with both heels getting flipped into the ropes and getting the heck beat out of them, just a tremendous payoff. The big dropkicks by Labat near the end looked great and the fall on the missed one felt like enough of concussive force to lose a fall.  Labat and Sola are both solid skilled wrestlers, but I thought the goons carried this.


Johnny Stein vs. Michel Allary 9/21/59

MD: Stein is a guy who does everything right but still comes off as fairly dry to me. He engages the crowd, interacts with the ref. His stuff looks brutal. He tends to have compelling holds. He'll feed into bit fiery comebacks. He draws big heat (including getting swiped at from the outside here). I think there's just a limit to the ceiling of a stalking German heel in 50s France when you had so many other different interesting heels. I liked Allary here. Some of his comebacks seemed to come out of nowhere. He just grabbed on and got a neckbreaker at one point and he took the first fall with a lightning power bomb that seemed more like luck than anything else. He was great at fighting from underneath in general though, and he had some of the best selling we've seen in the footage so far, including an extended bit of selling his back after two big corner whips and some focus by Stein at the end of the first fall, even into the break between falls, and excellent selling on the floor and the apron after a fairly low blow towards the end of the match. The finish was, I think, our first tree of woe, leading to a DQ, but the most memorable scene here was Stein going deep on a STF after pulling the hair multiple times and the ref trying to pull him off making for a mass of bodies. Unquestionably good wrestling but maybe not what I was looking for this week.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 30 minutes. This match was like a classical painting. Michel Allary looks like a Greek statue. Johnny Stein has a brow that makes Brock Lesnar look like a normal person. Allary is loved. Stein is hated. Although Steins act has all the subtlety of an anvil dropping on your head, he is quite effective. This was quite simple with lots of tight upper body holds and Stein looking like he would just screw Allarys head off. Dug the nasty chokeholds both guys did here. Stein was a German worker and you wonder if his simplistic wrestling was the result of the language and cultural barrier or if that was simply the style he was used to. Anyway, he was a physical freak who had no problem clubbing and getting clubbed which entertains me just fine, but what do ya know, he got himself DQ'd again.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Gilbert Leduc! Zarzecki! Di Santo! Allary!

Gaston Maujean vs. Guy Cavillier 5/30/57

SR: JIP with about 6 and a half minutes show. Cavillier is a weird looking guy in leopard trunks. He seems to have a freakish wingspan and a big head. The much shorter Maujen mostly beats the piss out of him. It almost has the flair of a rookie beat down because Maujean kind of blows off Cavillier's attempts at offense and continues to slap and stomp him like a bug. Cavillier had one really cool armlock takeover. Despite mostly taking a beating here, he manages to secure the win when Maujean eats a nasty upkick.

MD: At first glance, and this was admittedly not much of one, Cavillier was the least impressive guy we've seen so far. At the very least he had the worst uppercuts. Good wild clubbers though, and some strikes that were actually unique in a positive way. Some. A lot of what he did seemed like trudging through molasses, and when Maujean took over, he really brutalized him, to the point where you have to wonder a bit (which at worst is just good believable wrestling, right?). Even the iffier of the matches we've seen so far had some cool stuff, like Cavillier's takedown where he trapped Robin's arm with his leg off the ropes, or the finish which had a dire back body drop into a kick off and deep pin. I'd have to see more of Cavillier to really tell, but I don't think we have more to see.


Gilbert LeDuc vs. Warnia de Zarzecki 5/30/57 - EPIC

SR: 1 fall match that goes a little over 30 minutes. This was face vs. Face, not something that you saw on TV much. It felt a bit like something you‘d see in 70s AJPW, two guys doing some nice stuff in a long quality contest. Because it‘s France they do really try to take each others heads off with european uppercuts here and there and once in a while a guy will eat a nasty kick or elbow in the middle of an exchange, but they play nice all the way through. The wrestling was classy with both heavyweight looking guys busting out cool flying headscissors and working hard. Leduc is introduced as a world champion, while he didn‘t show a ton of charisma, he looked like a classy worker, and his escape where he headspins out of an armlock is spectacular. There was some excellent bodyscissors work and a handful of fantastic rope running exchanges that you would‘ve bought as plausibly ending the match. One of my favourite spots in old euro matches is the hip throw where the other guy has his arm behind his back and lands on his shoulder in nasty fashion, it‘s so simple but brutal looking. The match also had some of the more elaborate double leg nelson work I‘ve seen, which is one of the coolest old school holds. Great finish, too.

MD: This was excellent. It was a hard hitting technical match with a number of holds worked in and out of with extended "hanging on" spots. LeDuc was the de facto favorite as the Frenchman (my favorite bit of applause was when he hung on to a leglock while de Zarzecki was taking his face off with his foot repeatedly) but the match was worked cleanly and they'd begrudgingly give de Zarzecki applause for a solid counter.

The mid-match bodyscissors by de Zarzecki was one of the best sequences of its kind that you'll see (and we'll have a direct comparison in this week's other match too). The struggle as Leduc tried to escape and was slammed around the ring was perfect and they completely got me on a 'hope spot' out only for de Zarzecki to catch him again on a leaping pin attempt. And how he got out? It was that same sort of cradling lift up that we've seen previously, but this time instead of turning it into a slap, LeDuc just clobbered his skull with a forearm.

They then followed it with a bunch of mean strikes and a kip up that was reversed by an 85% complete Code Red. This is the sort of stuff that just happens in these matches, almost as commonplace. To great effect too. Here's a sign of how into this the crowd was: they count along with the ref to the ten count after LeDuc clobbers de Zarzecki with an Andre the Giant style knee to head crusher. I don't think we've quite seen that in any of this French footage so far. The match keeps building and building, escalating to this really cool LeDuc waistlock pick up into a submission with a leg behind the head that he seasons by peppering de Zarzecki's skull with lightning fast kicks and rubbing his face on the mat. The inevitable escape gave us our first French footage Boston crab. Then the whole thing finishes with an amazing flip up 'rana-attempt-into-an accordion powerbomb finish. Just top notch stuff. I feel like we get to say this every other week but this is one of the best matches we've seen.

PAS: Apparently LeDuc was the master of a La Toupie which is his headspin counter out of a headscissors, and it was awesome to see him break that out a couple of times to big acclaim. He also broke out the headspin when he put on the headscissors, and there was this great moment early when Zarzecki brick walled the attempt only to get smashed with an upkick. So many cool counters and reversals in this match, and also more chippiness then we see in the match next week. It breaks down multiple times including some really nasty forearms as ways to counter out of holds, and LeDuc doing some nasty smashing of Zarzecki's wrist and grinding into his face. Felt like Zarzecki was a bit of a dance partner in the LeDuc show,  but man is it a great show, and I am excited to watch much more of him in this footage.


Lino Di Santo vs. Michel Allary 6/7/57 - GREAT

SR: 1 Fall match going about 27 minutes. Well, seems we have hit a friendly stride in the French TV year, because this was another clean, fair contest. Maybe even the friendliest match so far, because not a single forearm smash or European uppercut was thrown until about 25 minutes into the match. This wasn‘t as good as the match between Leduc and Zarzecki the week before, but it was a neat match in it‘s own right: you had the theme of grizzled, older looking Lino di Santo trying to deal with his young, athletic opponent. Lots of good technical work throughout as we know it from the French grapplers. The key moment came when Allary locked in the short arm scissor and Di Santo, after trying several one armed deadlifts was unable to escape. Di Santo looked mentally defeated at that point, he tries to hit some uppercuts, but is too worn out. One of the coolest uses of such a simple hold I‘ve ever seen. Di Santo narrowly avoids defeat, sinking in a double leg nelson and hitting his brutal neckbreaker, but Allary has him on the ropes soon. In the end, Di Santo was able to survive just long enough until the time limit runs out. I‘m not sure whether this match had a 27 minute time limit or something, but it seems complete enough. This kind of „young, good looking guy gets the rub by going to a draw against a veteran“ is a staple of European wrestling, and Di Santos performance made it very worthwhile.

MD: Weirdly similar to the last match, worked friendly, with another long bodyscissors spot with a similar, but not as good, rope-running escape, and that same waistlock pick up into a submission with a leg behind the head but without some of the cool flourishes LeDuc utilized. Some of this was just too similar to be a coincidence even if I can't figure out exactly what was going on. This one suffered from LeDuc vs de Zarzecki being so good and so comparable, but picked up big in the last few minutes, with some great dead-arm selling by Di Santo (even as he was trying to throw forearms) and some big spots like a leaping 'rana and two killer Rude Awakenings.

PAS: I am a huge fan of the short arm scissors, and this had some of the niftiest short arm scissor work I can remember, with Allary really locking in this super tight scissors and DiSanto trying multiple methods of counter before finally maneuvering Allary into the ropes,  his arm is so numb that he can't even hit forearms which was a cool bit of selling. Much of this was solid technical wrestling although I don't think either guy did much to distinguish themselves amongst the pool of great French technical wrestlers (it's a great pool though, that is no dis). I did love the jumping rana into a kind of triangle. So much of this French footage has been on the shoulders of great heels, so naturally a face versus face match like this is going to miss a bit of spark, although the work was still very good.

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