Tuesday is French Catch Day: Zapata! Castillo! Aubriot! Bayle! Bollet! Delaporte! de Zarzecki! Wiecz!

Pancho Zapata/Vicente Castillo vs. Dan Aubriot/Remy Bayle 11/28/65

PAS: Zapata is Joaquim LaBarba and Castillo is Quasimodo and that is a killer pair of grotesqueries. Twin Igors clawing at faces and slamming skulls into the mat. It is a great act, although this match needed more dynamic babyfaces to really justify it's run time. Zapata seemed to slow down his nutty bumping under this gimmick, but still had great execution, as did Castillo who hit a killer rainmaker elbow along with his stalking and looking creepy. I liked Bayle targeting the growth on the back of Castillo's head. This was good overall, but more a cool look at a pair of creeps then anything that will stand out.  

MD: What a heel side here, the unholy unification between La Barba (as Pancho Zapata) and Quasimodo (Vincente Castilla here). These are, by far, two of the most interesting bad guys in all of the footage, with La Barba able to turn on a dime from being an arch stooge to the most vicious guy in the world and Castilla absolutely fascinating in the way he moves, the way he reacts, his varied and imaginative offense, how he portrays power. Here, when they were in control, they were just a cycling wave of brutality, trading off on holds and controlling the ring. Aubriot and Bayle were spirited in their comebacks. While Aubriot had the cartwheels and more rope running, I thought Bayle looked best out of the two; his stuff was just sharper and his shots were chippier. This didn't feel quite as focused and structured as some of the tags we've seen lately, but that played well into the chaotic nature of Castilla and Zapata. Towards the end, you knew it wasn't going to end clean; I figured i t was heading towards a DQ but instead, Bayle got one last comeback only to get back body dropped over the rope as his own momentum was used against him, rendering him unable to continue. I think this is it in the footage for La Barba and Quasimodo and what an absolute shame that is.

Andre Bollet/Roger Delaporte vs. Warnia de Zarzecki/Eddie Wiecz 1/9/65

MD: The fans absolutely loved this one, and it felt heated at times, but always had sort of a party feel to it that maybe meant that it didn't have the weight you'd hope it would, especially because, for once, Delaporte and Bollet got what was coming to them. I just can't get over how canny Wiecz is here. Sometimes I think I'm reading too much into it, but there are a dozen little things. Whenever someone's getting beaten on here, it's usually Zarzecki. Zarzecki eats the first fall. Wiecz is the one rushing across the ring and allowing for the distractions. He's the one who gets to take the hot tag and clean house with big shots and dropkicks. During a key celebratory moment towards the end, he hits his back flip off the top but then runs over to get Zarzecki's guy too and sort of takes his moment, that should have been equal. Delaporte and Bollet begged off from him far more than from Zarzecki and it's not like Zarzecki was some rookie or slouch. The fans don't care because they love it but watching back, it's impossible to miss. Anyway, this was an arch Bollet and Delaporte performance, as funny as ever, maybe not quite as mean, though when they were stomping and taking liberties, they were as good as anyone. There seemed to be more girls in the crowd than usual and they were horrified by Bollet and Delaporte's middle-aged transgressions and excited for Zarzecki and Wiecz and that added to the feel. This wasn't the most balanced (wrestling and comebacks and cheating and bullshit and comedy) match we've seen, but it was very fun.

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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: Leduc! Quasimodo!! Arroyo! Chaisne!

Josef Kovacs vs Gaby Calderon 10/23/59

MD: We just get a couple of minutes of this but it tells the story. Kovacs is the Butcher of Budapest, a big stalking slugger who whales on his opponents. Calderon spent six months in the Orient and came back without shoes but with chops and throws. He gets his shots in, Kovacs shrugs them off, and ultimately he falls prey to a sort of spinning Atlantida whirlybird.

SR: JIP match with 3 minutes shown. Calderon with his unorthodox style is always fun to watch. And Josef Kovacs was a shaven headed tough guy in a singlet who could kick ass, which is kind of my favourite type of European worker. He worked over the judokas mid section with body section before hoisting him up in an Argentine Backbreaker, spinning round and throwing him like a sack of potatoes for the pin and that is a finish to match. 

Gilbert Leduc vs Quasimodo 10/23/59

MD: I think we've had this one before, a few years back, but we're seeing it in context now, with better VQ and a much better understanding of LeDuc. Remember, we saw Leduc selling and crashing up against walls in Le Borreau's debut as well. Obviously this is our first look at Quasimodo who they bill from America, weirdly enough. He's a different sort of monster, one that will remind you more of Dr. Kaiser than of the behemoths we've seen lately. Skulking, clenching his hands and his face at all times, slipping in gut shots, constantly going for nerve holds and throat shots, with unique, monstrous high spots, and fully immersed interactions with the ref and the crowd. Leduc sells big, both the horror of the nerve hold and ultimately the damage done to him throughout the match. Through much of the match he's able to come back big though, either out wrestling Quasimodo or utilizing the ref's interventions to get some revenge shots in. Midway through, Quasimodo hits his biggest bomb, a draping, over the shoulder, flip of Leduc that lands him throat first onto the ropes. After that, the fight is out of him. His other odd moves are a tombstone position lift that looks strange but painful and a cool arm trap lifting backbreaker. If that pendulum throat shot was the first big turning point of the match, the second is when Leduc jams another attempt of that tombstone position lift by flipping him and hitting some tombstones of his own. That puts him back in the match and they go much more back and forth down the stretch until Quasimodo gets disqualified, presumably for repeatedly attacking, and putting the nerve hold on, before Leduc reaches his feet. It all feels a little dodgy to me, which is probably the point. Cruel, french justice for the monster. This was more of a match but maybe less of a spectacle than some of the other monstrous matches we've seen. Leduc was excellent in it and Quasimodo brought a lot to the table too. Most of all, they were both fully committed to everything that was happening.

SR: 2/3 Falls match going about 25 minutes. It‘s motherfucking Quasimodo. Quasimodo was another Spanish worker with a deformed head. He came in wearing full on hunchback get up. In the ring he was quite a monster. Short guy who hopped around the ring like a gremlin. With monster heels you usually get them big and slow, I quite like the short and aggressive approach. Leduc was on fire here once again. I think he has a serious case for being the best worker around in 1959, not that we have a huge sample. Quasimodo loved the nerve hold, but that is not a detriment when you‘re fighting Leduc as Leduc struggles so hard against that particular hold and makes it meaningful. Quasimodo, aside from all the cheap heel stuff like choking and inside shots, had quite a few wrestling moves. He had this cool slam from a Japanese strangle hold and a sick looking reverse catapult where he whipped Leduc into the ropes. At one point he even went for a reverse bearhug, really ragdolling Leduc. Leduc had his usual slick wrestling moves and when the freak took it too far he tried to bite his ear off. The 3rd fall was really intense with Quasimodo working over Leducs throws and Leduc just clobbering him with those left-right elbows and whipping out a sick piledriver. Inspiring stuff and Leduc looked dead towards the end. I came in expecting this to be more like a silly freakfight, but I thought this genuinely ended up being a really good match. It‘s telling that a guy with a fucking Quasimodo gimmick could be a convincing heel then. 

PAS: I thought this was excellent. Quasimodo was a true old school wrestling character, but also a hell of cool worker. I loved how single minded he was attacking the throat, from his nasty looking nerve holds and strangles, to his electric chair catapult into the ropes, at one point he even palm struck LeDuc in the throat. LeDuc is a hell of a foil, we get to see the master of the headspin break out his headspin a couple of times, and when it came time to dish it out, LeDuc landed big bombs. I loved his combo elbow strikes, if we are going to have to have elbow exchanges in every wrestling match now, they might as well be cool combos like that. Built to a big finish and it was something that protected both guys, I am a Nightmare Freddy fan, but Quasimodo is by far the best movie monster in wrestling history. 

Yvan Doviskoff vs Delacour (jip) 11/20/59

MD: Two and a half minutes of this. Not a lot to see. I get the sense Doviskoff might be a good cog in a tag match, but we're never going to see him again so it hardly matters.

SR:2 minutes shown. Not much here but there was a pinfall happening after a running cross chop. Love the running cross chop as a finisher. 

Jose Arroyo vs Michel Chaisne

MD: One of the best stylist vs stylist matches we've seen. The first half had a lot of the hang-on-to-a-hold sequences that we're used to, with bigger spots in between, but there were slight evolutions and bits of self-awareness here. Things that might lead to a fall, like a powerbomb counter after two 'ranas, led to another counter and things kept going. In that front half, even after long sequences, they'd just throw themselves into the next with verve and abandon.

They'd move from body part to body part, often in response to what's happened to them. After Chaisne kicked Arroyo in the back to get out of holds twice, Arroyo went after the leg for a bit. After Chasine's long headscissors (including a victory roll back into it) worked his neck, Arroyo hit two neckbreakers and a bodyslam tombstone. After Arroyo hit a backbreaker, Chaisne followed up with whacks to the back, a side backbreaker, and a catapult back onto the knees.

Chaisne's selling was excellent throughout, both little things like touching his back after hitting his own backbreaker after eating Arroyo's, the dramatic things, like the way he'd fall into the ropes and just sit there, legs splayed after getting hammered by a huge forearm, and the cumulative things, as you could absolutely feel the exhaustion and desperation with each move in the back half.

There was a slow escalation of animosity and meanness and aggression. The percentage of wrestling vs strikes flipped as the match went on and ultimately went careening towards an absolute slugfest as they hit the 30 minute broadway. Just an excellent example of a stylist match at its best.

SR: 1 Fall match going about 30 minutes. This was another clean match. I certainly prefer this kind of TV booking where its mostly face vs. heel stuff and brawls with the occasional technico vs. technico dream match thrown in instead of dream matches all the time like it is now. This was another really good match. These are two tall looking guys so when they whip out fast huracanranas and slick reversals it all looks super impressive. It was the first time we see Arroyo in a clean match and it felt like a big step up for him. He‘s looked good going hold for hold before, but his bread and butter has been retaliating against vicious heels. Here he looked really good pushing the pace against Chaisne with some big neckbreakers, a piledriver and a nasty neck hanging submission. There was another great body scissors sequence here and a series of ranas that got countered into a spinning powerbomb. It slowly disintegrates into this long series of strike exchanges that is infinitely more compelling than the long strike exchanges you see nowadays as both guys look like they are clearly trying to get more shots in than their opponents. There‘s some big bumping and really good Mantell/Lawler style exhaustion selling with both guys cracking each other hard, really looking like they want to quit after eating some of those shots but their pride won‘t let them, until the time runs out.

PAS:  This was pretty great stuff. I loved all of the neck work by Chaisne, including a rana into a side triangle choke which really should be stolen by Matt Makowski. The body vice by Arroyo had a bunch of nifty counters and moves out of it too. That piledriver by Arroyo was utterly uncalled for, the kind of thing which would be a finisher in an overloaded indy match, and is nuts that it was in a match from the 50s. Liked the big set of strike exchanges, which were so much cooler then the forearm and stare shit we get today. Just cool wrestling. 

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