Tuesday is French Catch Day: Gerber! Di Santo! Pellacani! Dula! Duranton!

Rene Gerber vs. Jean Rabut 12/13/58

MD: Back when we last saw Gerber, a few months ago now, I lamented that we only had one more match with him and it was a JIP one. At least it's one that goes about 15, though. He's a great stooging heel. There's a moment in here, towards the end, that really sums him up. After spending the brunt of the match tossing Rabut out of the ring (and getting tossed out himself) and eating revenge spots tied up in the ropes or eating torpedo headbutts in the corner, he managed to dodge Rabut getting his feet up on some shoulder thrusts. He hobbled back and tapped his head to show his smarts. There was an almost congenial moment between the two of them despite all that had occurred and he asked for a handshake. This was the third of the match, with the first being clean and the second being a cheapshot. After a moment of shared competency and luck, Rabut decided to go in for it though, and he was immediately incapacitated with his arm over the rope and punched hard in the gut twice. That was Gerber for you. Rabut had some great athletic spots we've barely seen, backflips after dropkicks and a novel handstand headcissors takeover. He didn't quite get the chance to fully shine against Gerber though. The crowd wanted more of the rapid-fire elbows to the skull or punches to the gut in the corner, instead. Gerber got great heat, all but brawling with the ref, shoving people in the crowd, having trash thrown at him. Great heel. It's a shame we don't see more of him. We do see more of Rabut though, including against Chaisne, so I'm interested to see what he'll do against a different sort of opponent.

Lino Di Santo vs. Liano Pellacani 12/13/58

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 30 minutes. It‘s the last sighting of Liano Pellacani (for now, who knows what has yet to be digitalized), who sure made an impression. And this was really worked as a long Pellacani showcase. He did more wrestling than usual, engaging in some greco roman work with Di Santo. He was acting like pure brawler before, so it was nice to see that he had the chops. I also totally did not expect him to just savate kick Di Santo in the throat. After that it was asskicking city as Pellacani was demolishing Lino with those unforgiving forearm smashes. Di Santo was a quite great dance partner too, as his stoic selling really accentuates the nasty beating he was taking, and his comebacks gave back as good as he was taking. This was probably the most asskicking we‘ve seen Di Santo do so far and his forearms and dropkicks looked amazing. These kinda matches can easily get repetitve, but they knew to threw in a number of interesting spots. There was a particularily great rope running sequence that lead to a nearfall, as well as Pellacanis general use of the ring ropes (the slingshot to throat is such an amazing little spot), and Lino Di Santo hitting the most neckbreaking neckbreaker. I should add that anytime Pellacani lands outside is tense as you expect him to get jumped by someone from the crowd. Both guys throwing body punches was great, and Di Santo ducking the savate kick to forearm Pellacani into another dimension felt like a spot that was 25 years ahead of its time. Nasty finish too which ended up a fitting swansong for Pellacani.

MD: Of all the footage we've seen so far, I think this might be the night I would have most liked to be there. Not the best matches but maybe the best heels in back to back matches. Both Gerber and Pellacani in the same night. The crowd was already heated at the start of this and by the end, they were more than happy to throw trash into the ring. A guy like Tony Oliver was a consummate heel, likewise Delaporte who was just incessant. Pellacani, however, had this deep understanding of himself and portrayed a sort of passive aggressive quiet fury about the state of reality itself. It wasn't his fault that he did what he did. It was the world that drove him to it. He feels like the promise of Professor Boris Malenko, like Abe Weissman's evil brother. He wrestled the early bit of this clean, things escalating until he managed two monkey flips in a row, only to eat a running 'rana for his trouble. After that, he flipped the switch, unleashing the wickedest clubbering blows you can imagine. As the match went on, he'd take his advantages and act both offended and furious when called out for them. Di Santo would come back but the cut offs were quick and vicious, merciless even. He was always in the moment, which made every second feel organic and real. Di Santo might hit an atomic drop and his trademark neckbreaker, but Pellacani was quick to grab on to the top rope and jam the second attempt, always thinking, always on. All the way to the end where he had enough and drew a DQ, and the last look we'll ever have at him in this footage, teasing an attack on Di Santo after the bell only to draw back, satisfied at the disdain of all around him, to place his robe back on and give the crowd a bow, unabashedly himself no matter what they thought.


Jimmy Dula vs. Robert Duranton 12/26/58

SR: Jimmy Dula is someone I‘ve only seen a few mentions of on tiny fan pages. I wouldn‘t have thought I‘d ever see him wrestle, let alone in a 2/3 falls match that goes nearly 40 minutes. I guess this was a reminder that sometimes the mythical guys you only see looking badass on one or two photos are sometimes just regular wrestlers. This was solid Catch, very much like the stuff we could see on WoS or IWE. Not super tricked out, but there was some intense hold for hold work. I expected Duranton to bring the heat as we had seen him doing before, but instead it was Dula who assumed the role of the shit stirrer when he took offense to Duranton kicking his way out of a hold. Next thing he did was try to pry Durantons nose from his face. The face attacks looked really nasty, and Dula had really good looking forearm smashes and uppercuts. I also really liked his constant use of the cravate, constantly wrenching Durantons head. It‘s a bit of a long match but the fact Dula kept going back to try and wrestle Duranton kept it interesting and we get lots of cool strike exchanges down the stretch.:

MD: Sebastian might have thought that this was business as usual but this was a pretty odd one to me. Duranton is one of the more unlikable guys we've seen in this project (in a good way). At this stage of his career, I don't think he's the sort to carry someone entirely though. He's been a bit more stylized so far. After a bit of clunky wrestling, Dula started to go straight for the eyes and mouth, however. He had this thing he'd do where after every break, he'd salute to the crowd as if everything was perfectly lovely. Sometimes he'd use it to stall. The crowd didn't know what to make of it. It got a reaction, but it was mainly amused bewilderment. Ultimately, this had a fairly uncooperative feel which didn't bear out positively in the holds but did with the strikes. The saving grace here was that they really beat the crap out of each other. Duranton was especially mean. We'd seen that streak before, but here he was a wall that would not break (at least not too often), and the meaner he got with his shots, the meaner Dula got in return. I think Dula's act probably would have worked pretty well against one of your more standard French babyfaces. It's just that he was paired with Duranton who modified his act to be tougher, maybe, but I don't even know if that's a good thing, as the charm of him is how haughty and arrogantly dismissive he can be. He didn't get much of a chance to be that here while his opponent was walking around and saluting no matter what had just happened.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Luis El Gayo! Rene Gerber! Inca Peruano! DR. ADOLF KAISER! Cheri Bibi!

Luis El Gayo vs. Rene Gerber 5/11/57

SR:2/3 Falls match over about 25 minutes. We see Luis El Gayo again. Rene Gerber is introduced as Swiss, but not a champion. After using some foul tactics against Jacky Corne, Luis El Gayo gets to play face in this match as Gerber pretty much foregoes the usual hold for hold work and goes for brawling almost immediately, landing tough looking kicks and knees and it‘s a big hit and get hit contest from there. The bar for heels working France in 1957 was pretty high, Gerber had nice kneelifts and I liked the spot where he did a chinlock and kept switching around so he could punch Luis in the kidney, and he also does the amazing „pretend to tie your shoelaces but go for the attack“ spot. Luis is veritable in the babyface role and provides some slick wrestling moves. Most notable here were the fan reactions with excited teenagers and working class joes threatening to storm the ring when Gerber got too cute. We understand this kind of match is bread and butter French material by now, although it is really fun to watch, basically a 25 minute sprint with lots of violent shots and moments.

MD:  My compatriots rightly noted that Tony Oliver was one of the best one-off match heels that we might have on tape. I'd argue that Gerber's another. We have a JIP match later, but this is basically it. El Gayo, he of the cool Rainmaker set up into moves, we saw earlier as a heel. When you get foreigner vs foreigner, a guy who might be a heel vs a Frenchman can go face. There's a lot going on with this one, but the general premise, like a lot of what we've seen so far, is that Gerber gets outwrestled early and goes dirty, very dirty. El Gayo manages to come back by outslicking and outquicking him and fires back with a ton of big shots until Gerber does something else unexpected and then they repeat. The most memorable moment here is Gerber hitting a foul punt out of a double knucklelock set up, and the crowd just absolutely going nuts. We're talking first-row trying to fight him and getting some shots in nuts. I watched a recent match the other day, one of the very few I've seen as I'm neck deep in this footage, and it had a great little heel-takes-over-due-to-shoelace shenanigans transition would have absolutely fit into 1957 France (hell, in this very match, Gerber gets a leg dive out of pretending to mess with his own laces). How do the 2019 fans respond? They cheer for the heel. The past is lost to us, yet this book has been pried open for us once again. How lucky are we. Anyway, what made the riot even better in the moment? It's the distraction of fighting with the fans that lets el Gayo come back with a fury here. Wrestling does not get better than that.

El Gayo has some really slick stuff early, including an escape where he detatched Gerber's arm from a hold, brought his own legs up to encase it, and then rolled forward. Gerber's heeling was so good once showed his true colors. On a handshake, he dove forward and tackled el Gayo, rushing in after with stomps and kicks and never looking back. It was the sort of multifaceted, giving and taking heeling that had him both almost getting into fisticuffs with the ref because he wanted to stomp el Gayo instead of breaking clean and happily trying to ambush el Gayo, only to dive headlong into a shoulder throw (that happened a few times).

El Gayo has lots of great-looking, potent offense whenever he took back over, solid forearms and uppercuts and knees, all coming from fun directions. He'd flip Gerber over and trap him in the ropes so he could wallop him. He'd tap him on the shoulder and nail him when he turned around. He picked up Gerber's hand and drove it into his knee. And sometimes he'd just wail away and look to the crowd for support. There's a little late match arm-bar work that seemed a little out of place, but you're not going to remember that. You'll remember Gerber tossing el Gayo around by his ears, the close-ups of el Gayo's revenge-laden forearms, the fact that towards the end of the match, Gerber was ballsy enough to brawl with el Gayo on the floor right in the midst of that riotous crowd, and yeah, the 1957 slingshot-from-the-outside finish. In a crystal sea of matches with great heels and fiery, super technical babyfaces, this one stood out to me.

PAS: You have to love a guy like Gerber who can walk into a ring and within five minutes have people in the crowd trying to jump him. Most of the matches we have seen will start with the heel trying to wrestle with the babyface before losing their cool and going to shortcuts. Gerber forgoes the preface and just starts banging away. El Gayo is a really great expressive babyface too and they match up perfectly. I loved the spot where Gerber ties up El Gayo in the ropes and goes to jump on the turnbuckles to crank in the hold, only to get waylaid by a freed up El Gayo. Felt like an unseen Midnight Express spot. Gerber seemed to get such joy in the fury of the fans, he wanted to fight the entire arena and that totally made this one stand out


Dr. Adolf Kaiser vs. Inca Peruano 5/17/57

SR:JIP with 6 minutes shown. I would‘ve liked to see this in full, because these are two of the more unique workers showing up on French TV at the time. Inca Peruano has been a heel in other matches but easily becomes the babyface against the nefarious Doctor of Philosophy, Adolf Kaiser. This was a fun match up with Kaiser having cool ways to lock in his dreaded Dragon Sleeper and Inca having cool ways to escape from it. Peruano works some submission nearfalls of his own, and there are some cool hold escapes. I also really like Kaiser diving all over the ring trying to catch his opponent like an animal, and Peruano really gives him the business with fast uppercuts and kicks.

MD: Now without me understanding a lick of French and thus potentially lacking context, this felt straight on heel vs heel. For the six minutes we get, these two beat the crap out of each other with full on abandon. What was striking about this was how much it felt like a modern finishing stretch. Kaiser tried to lock in his dragon sleeper choke out multiple times; Peruano had clever escapes that would have seemed novel in a 1997 Ultino Dragon match, flipping over or climbing up the ropes, to lock in a hold of his own. Meanwhile, Peruano actually hit the elaborate arm-trap sunset flip (without the flip) pin he used to beat Comache but too close to the ropes, and a lot of the last couple of minutes were centered around his attempts to hit Kaiser with a monkey flip. Once he finally hit it (and a superkick for good measure), he went back to the well once too often, got jammed and meanly concussed for his trouble, and Kaiser choked the life out of him. If we're just going to get a 6 minute burst of action, this is the stuff we want.

PAS: I adore both of these guys, and was pretty bummed we didn't get more of this. The bit we get is pretty great though. I agree with Matt that the finish run did feel super modern, with multiple finisher teases before Kaiser finally locked on his Dragon sleeper. The rope assisted flip up by Peruano was especially cool, this is the first time Kaiser didn't lay his opponent completely out, although he remains unbeaten, I wonder if we get the match where he receives his commupance.


Ami Sola vs. "Cheri Bibi" Roger Trigeaud 5/17/57

SR: Roger Trigeaud is Cheri Bibi. A stumpy legged bald guy with a massive upper body. Roland Barthes was right when he wrote that at most 1 in 5 wrestling matches is „fair“. This followed the same formula as usual, wrestling to start, Cheri Bibi would start throwing, and they would keep the heat up until the finish, but it was a very good match with both guys adding to it. Ami Sola is a bulky looking guy with a mustache and wrestles similar to what we saw Gilbert Cesca and Billy Catanzaro do – cool flying headscissors, solid european uppercuts and kip-up headbutts. Cheri Bibi would do a spot where Solas dropkicks were bouncing off of his massive chest, and he also found an answer to some of the stuff Sola did. They didn‘t go for an all out european uppercutfest and went back to the wrestling. At about 20 minutes, this was pretty lean as well with a neat finish.

MD:  It's tricky to talk about this the same week we have Gerber vs el Gayo. In a different week, I think this would stand out more. It had a few things going for it. Bibi (and we'll go with that name since we'll be seeing a lot of him in this project) was more clearly defined than a lot of the heels we'd been seeing, deeper instead of wider. He was a big muscleman goon, the sort that can shrug off two of Sola's dropkicks like they were nothing but that would still turn to jaw with the crowd afterwards so that Sola could dropkick him a third time from behind and knock him out of the ring. I'd say he felt a little more like a base than we're used to in this footage. We do have a good deal more Sola and I'm glad for that; I'd like to see him more. He had some fun tricked out takedowns and a great 'rana which he followed with an even more novel bridge up sort of 'rana. There were some memorable callbacks in the match, the sort that again, makes the narrative feel more complete and meaningful: Bibi has this front facelock necktwist that we don't really see come to fruition because Sola pops back up with a headbutt the two times he tries it; the second time though, Bibi's ready and he clocks him. Then, the finish is all about the dropkicks, with Bibi catching Sola again in yet another really good finish. It should be noted that as opposed to a lot of the other heels we've seen Bibi raises Sola's hand after the match. You get the sense that he, like Bollet, will be more of a lovable scamp to the crowd over the years than some of the foreign heels we've seen.

PAS: I just love this stuff, I don't think this is high end French Catch but the floor on this footage is so high. Bibi is a blast, I loved how he used his barrel chest as a weapon, the spot that Matt described where he shrugged off the dropkicks, only to stooge on the third was great, but he also used it as a battering ram to Sola's face. There was some super nifty mat exchanged here too, one long section built around a short arm scissors, including some real wrenching of the arm, and one section built around a reverse leg stretch. Sola had some fun arial stuff including a cool rana, which he hung onto almost a triangle choke and some nice drop kicks (which Bibi bumped huge for) and was perfectly game when it got time to start throwing. Cool finish too, with Bibi hitting a nasty powerbomb out of a rana attempt. If this was the first Catch thing we ever saw, we would be losing our shit, but after seeing a bunch, it is just an example of how great the baseline was.

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