Tuesday is French Catch Day: Bordes! Gordon! Falcons! Mercier! Montreal!

Walter Bordes/Flesh Gordon vs. Golden Falcons 8/13/83

SR: 2/3 Falls match going about 25 minutes. I am totally fine with young Flesh Gordon and an ancient Walter Bordes carrying French TV at this point. Gordon is really spry doing these luchariffic exchanges and I am loving Bordes in these matches, just bouncing around and mixing in all this cool shit while being old enough to be everyone's grandpa. This also had a nifty heel beatdown where Flesh Gordon was laid out like an All Japan tag and Bordes took a big beating. In a nifty moment, the Falcons even stole the "wrestler gets catapulted into his own partner“ spot which is usually reserved for babyfaces. Gordon comes back in the 3rd fall wearing a bandage and just uppercuts everyone a lot, and all is right in the world.

MD: Yeah, this was just chugging along like any other match, with some great bridges by Gordon and Bordes blocking some throws in cool ways and having really nice hanging-on arm holds. Some of the spots seemed a bit recycled from the last time we saw these two teaming but it was all good stuff that they were continuing to build upon so that was ok. The Falcons took all of it and had a certain bit of cheek that you appreciated in heels (also a diving headbutt which is also appreciated in hold footage). Then, after Gordon won the first fall with his spin around mare thing that people need to steal, everything got wild in the second fall.

One Falcon catapulted Bordes into Gordon (held by the hair by his partner) and Flesh (said with a possibly straight face to be a distant cousin of Flash, by the announcer) did a human stretcher job from the bump off the apron. After that they leaned hard into the heat. Bordes would fight back but the numbers game was too much. He'd get knocked off the apron or tossed into the crowd. The Falcons had some strong stuff here, including this punch that knocked Bordes off the ropes and right back into a back elbow. After they took the second fall they hit a double team, one Falcon holding Bordes in a full nelson and the other coming off the second rope with a headbutt to the gut. They went for it again, but Bordes moved and Gordon flew back in, his bloodied head bandaged, and it was a big iconic moment as they fired back and took the win and won a tiny little trophy as the crowd went wild. 1983 French Catch? Still rousing stuff.

 

Guy Mercier vs. Mr. Montreal 8/27/83

MD: Three or four big, long, incredibly well worked holds in, halfway through the match, Montreal was hanging on to a headlock so tightly that I thought Mercier's head was going to pop off. Then Mercier started to slam him, uppercut him, drop elbows (rare for the footage) and knees and slam him some more. Montreal dodged one and came back with huge whips and huge shots and slams. They end up slugging one another, until they crash into one other and both hit the mat hard. And there's still ten minutes to go!

There are a spattering of matches like this in the footage, especially once we got into the 60s, but they were always something absolutely exceptional. The holds are so tight, so mean, so thoroughly worked. There's not an armbar here which also doesn't have a shin grinding onto the cheek. There's always motion, always an attempt to escape, but it takes three or four motions to even get to the escape attempt and then that gets cut off, and then it's that many until the next, and that gets cut off, and so on and so forth, so expertly worked, until the opening finally is earned, as is everything else in a match like this (And when what is earned is Mercier's headstand spinout? It's as good as it gets). And the shots? The shots hit so hard and resonate so deeply. They're not the end, but instead a response to the last affront and a prelude to the next hold. During the stretch as time was going out, three, four hard forearms or uppercuts would lead to a headlock takeover or a body slam or even Mercier's fallaway slam, but all to no avail. You could say that this was Montreal's strength against Mercier's leverage and skill, but it was really just two aging masters putting everything out there and it stands up to just about anything we've seen during this entire journey.

SR: 1 Fall match going a bit under 30 minutes. This was a clean technical match, a rare occurrence by 1983. The fact they still had matches like this at that time made me wish there was more 80s French TV around. This was super minimalist, two guys struggling over basic holds for 30 minutes without a fall. It was something you‘d expect out of the 60s. The holds were simple, but they were really cranking them. The whole match felt clinical and the fact Montreal was squeezing Mercier so hard with those headlocks his veins seemed about to pop emphasized that. I imagine this kind of contest was more Mercier's specialty than the heatmongering face/heel style. His suplexes ruled. Both guys seemed to get increasingly agitated towards the end, really cracking each others jaws with the uppercuts. I‘ve seen a lot of 80s Euro draws like this, but seeing this go 25+ without rounds or falls was impressive. I could see most people finding this boring, but I enjoyed the show.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corn! Bibi! Aledo! Dula! Monsieur Montreal!

Jimmy Dula/Jean Martin vs. Monsieur Montreal/Leon Minisini 11/16/62

MD: Long tag that we miss the start of, and it's good. The last time I saw Dula, I wasn't 100% sure what to make of him. He hit hard but seemed to appeal, ironically, to the crowd after each shot. Here, he held that to between falls and it was pretty funny when he did it and made poor Martin do it with him, plus some fanning antics with the two of them as well, but otherwise, he remained fairly focused and helped to make a 40+ minute tag almost constantly entertaining. He just had this odd way of coming at you, weird angles, a lot of charisma, but hit super hard with his clubbering and headbutts and whatever else, while still being able to work holds. I think he'd improved since last time we saw him. Martin was a persnickety bully, no question, feeling like a guy trapped in a world he didn't make, just being swept along for the ride with Dula and taking it out on his opponents. Big stooging power when he was taking offense too. We won't see more of him, which is a shame. Montreal continues to show me a bit more than I was expecting out of a muscle guy. He works well in this environment, is more than willing to take his opponents' offense, but has some big set pieces to come back with, whether it's a belly to belly toss over the top or big catapults out of the ring. This is it for Minisini too and he was fine and fiery, with big shots when warranted, but a little bit interchangeable with all the others we've seen. Anyway, they kept this moving, kept it entertaining, with Dula almost constantly finding ways to keep himself involved and active. It felt unique in a sea of great, long, hard-hitting tags.

PAS: I thought this was totally excellent. Martin and Dula are cool looking guys, they look like a pair of Sam Cooke bodyguards, and made a really fun team. With Dula as the big bruiser and Martin as more of a frenetic ass kicker. I loved Martin's low angle in ring topes, and he took some fun bumps where he missed them and flew into the crowd. These long tags are very long, but the Martin and Dula team had a bunch of different ways to work exchanges so the time flew by. The finish got super exciting, including an all time great slugfest exchange between Martin and Montreal, it was Lawler vs. Dundee level stuff, with the combos and feints and variety of shots, blew me away. 

Jean Rabut vs. Modesto Aledo 12/14/62

MD: You look back at this footage and it's Modesto Aledo and Tony Charles we really, really wish we had more of. This is it for Aledo though. 3 glorious minutes of he and Rabut really going at it, with clever call back spots (turning the second knee crusher into a shin breaker, turning the second headbutt to the gut off the ropes into a knee lift) and something we've definitely never seen before as he jammed a 'rana, turned it into a power bomb, jammed the press up 'rana attempt, and turned it into a powerbombing backbreaker. This ended with one of the best sunset flips I've ever seen. And that's it for Aledo. Ah well. At least we got a glimpse.

Jacky Corn vs. Cheri Bibi 12/14/62

MD: Totally iconic match that tells you everything you need to know about two of the greatest characters in French Catch. Corn might be the best, most sympathetic seller we've seen, though what holds it all together is how he can turn it on when it's time to fire back. He's excellent technically, though maybe not in the top, top class, but as a total picture wrestler, he's as good as anyone in the footage. He's in those stylist vs stylist matches less because he'd almost be wasted there. You want to see him dominate on the mat early, take a beating in the middle, and them come back with thunderous, battling shots in the stretch. Bibi's come a long way as a tag worker over the years we have footage of and I think that held true in this singles match as well. He's still got that monstrous, almost ever-present look of enjoyment, a bulky way of constantly cheating and leaning on his opponent, but the timing and the purpose of what he does seems tighter and better than what we saw out o f 57 or 58 Bibi. It gave Corn one of the best possible foils to battle against here and they gave us a twenty minute or so match that was focused and pointed, that took the crowd up and brought them down again, and ended clear and clean and definitively in the center of the ring.

SR: 1 Fall match going about 24 minutes. The way I saw this described, I thought this would be like a miracle performance from Bibi in a technical clinic. It wasn‘t that, but it was still pretty great. It was pretty much a mix of tight, simple wrestling and some of the sickest slugging it out in this whole project. Jacky Corn reminds me a bit of a Shinichi Nakano type guy, not the most charismatic and doesn‘t do much fancy, but he will execute his technical moves a little tighter, crank his holds a little harder than everyone else, and engage in some disgustingly violent back and forth strike exchanges. And Cheri Bibi was just a tank here. He didn‘t do anything that made me think he was a genius worker, but he was quite impeccable here as a massive, barrel chested evil dude. The 2nd half of the match is mostly them slugging it out and it was spectacular, with some shots being thrown that would look crazy in a FUTEN match, and both guys lacing each other up with those nasty short kicks. Corn has a lot of things to dish out, at one point he was kicking the shit out of Bibi's shoulder, later he chops him in the throat. And Bibi took and gave as good as he got.

PAS: Pitched fist fight which started at 10 and kept cranking it higher and higher. Bibi looks like Bob Hoskins and has shocking Hoskins in Roger Rabbit level agility when he is taking moves. He is mostly a banger though, hard forearms to the throat, jaw and kidneys, powerful ring shaking slams, he feels like a guy it would absolutely suck to have to wrestle, you are just coming out of it bruised and sore. Corn matches him shot for shot, and even starts exceeding him in violence including some razor chops right to the throat, before finally dumping him with a fast violent tombstone for the duke. This actually felt like a Johnny Valentine match to me, which is about as big a compliment as I can give. This snatches that 1962 slot from Aubriot vs. Bernaert.

ER: You know a match is stiff when the referee works as stiff as the participants. My favorite part of the match - and the most exquisitely filmed shot of the entire match - was the referee throwing some disgusting stomps at Cheri Bibi's wrist and fingers as Bibi's hand gripped the bottom rope. It really made me notice how fearless the ref was the rest of the match, whenever he had to step in between these two to break up a skirmish in the ropes. This guy had uppercuts being thrown inches from his face and he had no problems getting his body in there. Now obviously the referee wasn't the star here, but it certainly added to the presentation for me. Bibi is our favorite Buzz Sawyer/Bob Hoskins hybrid (Buzz Hoskins?) who throws punishing uppercuts, hard combos (love his right punch to the body/left clubbing shot to the back, great rhythm), and full arm shots to the body. His body shots are basically standing clotheslines, a straight arm thrown from different angles about a broad section of Corn's body, and I suspect we'd see some mighty bruising if we had color footage available. 

French Catch tecnicos are always impress me with the amount of punishment they can take, always building to a big comeback, but Corn's selling really put over Bibi's beating. I love how both men sell in the ropes, and how they sell each strike appropriately. The bumping is never over the top, and they don't overuse the bigger bumps to put over bigger strikes. I love the butt drop sell after a particularly nasty uppercut, and each man used it once, really a great way to separate and get across the severity of a particular strike, which wouldn't be as special if they had done it throughout. The tombstone piledriver that Corn finishes Bibi with was on the shortlist of most violent things we've seen in this entire series. The drop happened below the camera line, but you can see where Bibi's head was in relation to Corn's knees, and the way he dropped down fast you can tell Bibi really got crunched. Somebody might have beaten Corn to the drop though, as Bibi's big round head is already square on top of his big round shoulders. This match takes over the crown as our 1962 All Time MOTY, in our list linked below. New champs are always a cause for celebration, and these two earned it. 

ALL TIME MOTY MASTER LIST

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Delaporte! Bollet! LeDuc! Gastel! Montreal! Sola! Bernaert! Rouxel!

Roger Delaporte/Andre Bollet vs Gilbert Leduc/Robert Gastel 12/14/61

MD: Great tag with four great guys. I have no idea why Gastel was on the side of the angels here but he came off as a folk hero and the fans loved to cheer for him. He would just mow everyone down with forearms and headbutts and the crowd ate it up. Leduc took a nasty bump on a fireman's carry into the heel turnbuckle early on and they just unleashed the most brutal, long beating on him with quick tags, slams and backbreakers, stomps, and even a somersault senton by Bollet that spelled his doom in the first fall. Eventually, in the second, Gastel had enough (they had done a good job goading him while in control) and rushed in to a big pop. From there it was fairly back and forth. Leduc sold his back for the rest of the match but had moments of fire. They built to a few big comeuppance spots like usual. Gastel had a way of taking the crowd back down after comebacks to set up the heels taking back over which were well and fine but he held one armbar for over four minutes without them working in and out of it and that was a bit much. Still, past that, these guys were masters and the match was masterful.

SR: 2/3 falls match. We JIP about 20 minutes into a 60 match. This is one of those matches which is heated as we join, and it stays heated for almost a full 40 minutes from that point forward. This was all about Delaporte and Bollet throwing hard punches and stomps, and our man Gastel being a real one and helping poor gentleman Leduc through the match by fighting fire with fire. Gastel being excepted wholly as a babyface by the audience is heartwarming. Bollet was doing those flip sentons to peoples backs like Tenryu being in a funny mood. This had quite a bit of back work, which didn‘t pay off in a major way. In fact the match had some unusual restholds and may have suffered a bit from being nothing but all these guys beating the hell out of eachother for 40 minutes, but these guys are great at beating the hell out of each other. The last 10 minutes or so are great though with Gastel throwing some awesome looking headbutts. I would‘ve liked to see the full thing, as these kinda heatfests suffer a bit when you don‘t get the early build. But knowing these guys, they may have gone for full on heat from the get go.

PAS: This was great stuff, it is really impressive the pace these guys can set in a 60 minute draw, we tend to mentally think of 20th century 60 minutes draws having long rest hold sections, but this was a go go pace. All of what we got were hard exchanges. Liked the contrast on the face team, with Gastel working like a third heel, and LeDuc being more of a technician (although in French catch even the technicians throw heat). We got two classic LeDuc headspins,  one the Santo style headscissors, one a spin out of a arm stretch, which was especially awesome. I loved Gastel's final heat segment, tying both heels up in the ropes and wailing on them with forearms. No real finish, and long matches suffer if they don't build to anything, although the work her was super strong. 

Monsieur Montreal/Ami Sola vs Pierre Bernaert/Jack Rouxel 1/12/62

MD: Another week, another show, another great tag. This is our second or third match with Rouxel and I really like him so far. He had this upstart attitude in how he'd disengage or lay shots in or interact with the ref or the crowd. Montreal leaned hard into the strongman gimmick (using the bear hug and a lot of his opponents making him look good by flying around the ring on normal exchanges) and at one point, he picked up Rouxel out of a headlock, deposited him on the apron, and knocked him off. Rouxel made sure to land in a woman's lap which popped her and the crowd. I like the guy. Bernaert (who wasn't teaming with Bibi here since Cheri was in training for another match apparently) was a perfect partner, a smarmy mentor in cheating and underhandedness. Yes, he managed a fake handshake into a forearm once here. Sola was as savvy as we've ever seen him, delighting in Montreal's strength spots, working the apron well, orchestrating a lot of the revenge spots; the best of those was probably a series of arm stretchers in the heel corner where they kept kicking Sola down when he tried to work to his feet. When he got an arm of his own, he yanked it back to the face corner and they repeated the spot on the heels in an over the top manner. It's interesting to watch things develop over the years. By this stage, limbwork/bodypart work is 100% a thing. It really wasn't a couple of years earlier. The first fall ended with the heels really targeting Sola's back. That led to a fun little moment (again showing Sola's presence and experience) when he rushed in to touch his opponent so that he could immediately tag back out to start the second fall, as you can't tag until you touched at least once. Good moment in a match full of good moments. Everything really came together here to make for yet another good tag. Others might disagree with me but I think the overall quality of the tag scene is better than a few years earlier, where there would be heat and intensity and big moments, but less tricks and narrative shortcuts, like the heels cutting off the ring or stopping babyface reversals from the apron or using the ref being distracted. In 61-62, there was just a great balance of the two elements.

SR: 2/3 Falls match going about 35 minutes. The Montreal/Sola team is pretty fun. Sola is pure technique, and Montreal is all about strength. Rouxel on the other hand looked like a slightly less blonde version of Bernaert. A classy guy who could wrestle but was simply more interested in cheapshotting guys. This built for quite a bit and there was some nice skill on display from Rouxel and Bernaert. Of course, their bread and butter is cheapshotting guys hard, and when it got to that they looked great. Especially liked Beraneaert loosening Solas jaw with a knee only to get giant swung seconds later. And well, Mr. Montreal and Ami Sola are great pair of faces to play off those vicious tactics. This wasn‘t as heated as the other tag but it felt more complete (not just in terms of how much we got to see) and well rounded.

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