Tuesday is French Catch Day: Rene Ben! Cesca! Teddy Boys! Leduc! Montourcy! von Kramer! Gastel!

Rene Ben Chemoul/Gilbert Cesca vs. Teddy Boys (Aldophe Sevre/Robert Le Boulch) 5/9/65

MD: I get that everything is high end at this point, but this still stood out more to me than it did to Sebastian. This has been out for a few years, but it's great to see it in context now that we know these guys better. Ben Chemoul and Cesca come off as one of the great tag teams of all time in the few appearances we have of them together, certainly one one of the most talented. Ben Chemoul had such verve and timing, such showmanship, working for the back row and the front row and everyone in between. He manages to do all three up and over variations off the top wristlock in a tag match at different points, and fills the match with little moments like throwing one of those no look spin kicks to a guy just hanging out on the apron. He fills the match with entertaining stuff while never losing the plot. Cesca's just as solid as they come, hard hitting especially when it's time to get revenge, sympathetic in selling, smooth in complex spots, quick with the dropkicks and 'ranas. They'd also share spots: Ben Chemoul would stooge le Boulch by turtling early and then Cesca would outsmart le Boulch when he himself tried to do it later. It all came together. The Teddy Boys were such an ideal heel unit too, with le Boulch an opportunist coward and Sevre having the hugest chip on his shoulder imaginable, though they could also switch those roles on a dime. Sevre hit hard and jawed well with the crowd while le Boulch spent a lot of his time shadowboxing. They were able to work around the ref to endlessly stomp: when the ref shoved Sevre, he'd come back and pat the ref on the shoulder. At one point, Sevre got knocked out on one of the bevy of catapult-into-partner spots in the match so he sat down in the front row while le Boulch recovered. He tried that again later and got into a fist fight with the crowd. The ending might have felt a little abrupt, but that was the general pacing of these things as much as them maybe wanting to move things to a finish before the crowd rioted, but over all, this was high end stuff to me.

SR: 2/3 falls match going a bit over 30 minutes. This was another French lightweight tag with all that exchanges. Plenty of quick exchanges. The Teddy Boys didn‘t move me as much as other heel tandems. I mean, they were really good at making the C‘s uppercuts look great and had some nice punches and stomps, but it‘s France everyone is a GOAT, you gotta bring a bit more than that. Chemoul and Cesca as usual just had endless stuff to do. I liked Chemouls punch combo, and Cesca busting out a spinning argentine backbreaker and a back elbow combo that was like something Misawa would do. Highlight of the match was the crowd getting unruly and the police stepping in. I am probably making this match sound worse than it was, it wasn‘t top tier French stuff but there was enough entertaining stuff happening and some sickeningly stiff blows that will easily make this the best match you watch this week.

Gilbert Leduc/Claude Montourcy vs. Karl von Kramer/Robert Gastel  5/26/65

MD: Unique presentation here. I know nothing of 1965 French demographics and geography (Puteaux is in the western suburbs of Paris but I'm not about to watch 1961's The Long Absence to get a sense of it), but this felt more provincial than what we're used to. The crowd was awesome though, as much of the star of the match as the four wrestlers, as good as they were. The sound was a little off here, and it's amazing we don't see this problem more often, so it anticipated the action a bit. This was (wisely, I imagine) mostly a crowd pleaser for some sort of cup. There were moments of heat throughout, but nothing prolonged until the second fall. Even those moments felt a little perilous. The crowd absolutely hated Kramer, who looked brilliant here. He had so many interesting ways of taking someone down or keeping a hold, and just threw cartwheels around like they were nothing. I was expecting endless nerve holds (which could be fine if the heat's there, and it would have been) but he went another way with things. He stooged, but only occasionally, so when he got caught in the ropes towards the end of the long first fall, the fans went absolutely nuts. He got taken out by a catapult over the top to end the first fall, never to return. 

A stretcher job mid-match was probably the safest way to get him out of there. LeDuc more or less gave us the usual greatest hits (the headstands, the leg nelson after seeing how badly the fans wanted Montourcy to whack Kramer in a cross arm breaker, etc) but they're all great. Montourcy had a few more interesting takedowns. Gastel let Kramer do most of the heavy lifting in the first fall, but turned on the heat after he got taken out, absolutely demolishing Montourcy with headbutts, bloodying him up before crushing him with a tombstone and basically taking him out of the match. The fans were furious here. The third fall, then was just Leduc getting revenge on Gastel before they moved into a slick finishing stretch including Gastel catching a Leduc cross body block (the block itself not being something we've seen much in the footage) and planting him with a tombstone, before Leduc came back with a flip up power bomb for the win and the huge pop. I don't know if I'd feel the same about this one in a different setting, but in front of this crowd, I thought it was great. I do sort of wish they had leaned harder into Kramer getting advantages though, but they may not have lived to the next day if they did.

SR: 2/3 falls match going a bit under 30 minutes. Hey look, it‘s Karl von Kramer. Haven‘t seen him in a while. Karl looked really good here with his freak bumping and unorthodox throws. For a hard nosed evil German, he also wasn‘t afraid to make a fool out of himself and get his chest hair torn out. The first fall of this was the usual mix of fun wrestling and rough heels tactics, with von Kramer stealing the show and Leduc and Montourcy being formidable technicians. Von Kramer takes a big bump to the outside and doesn‘t make it back after that, leading to Gastel being in a 2 on 1 situation so Gastel just goes crazy with headbutts on Montourcy, bloodying him and KO‘ing with a tombstone piledriver. This leads to the 3rd  fall in which both von Kramer and Montourcey are out and Gastel and Leduc slug it out in an epic Mantel/Lawler style battle. Really cool glimpse at Gastle living up to his name and being a violent bludgeoner who ends up with his opponents blood all over him, and when Leduc hits those double elbows he‘s like Lawler doing a punch combo. Really really good match with a pretty unique layout for French wrestling.

PAS: I love how this match moved from comedy, skill and stooging to really heavy violence. It is one of the hardest transitions in wrestling to nail, and this match nailed it. The heels were masterful here, Kramer is a heat seeking pinball, getting twisted up the ropes, getting his chest hair ripped out, flying for all of the headscissors and takedowns, and hitting these deep cool looking flip throws. He gets tossed out of the ring to the floor taking a big bump and getting sent to the back. We get a Stone Cold Gastel section where he obliterates Montourcy including a fair amount of blood which is pretty rare for this era. We then got a big showdown between Gastel and LeDuc, which was pretty epic. I didn't like LeDuc basically no-selling the tombstone, it was a move which won Gastel the second fall, and LeDuc jumps right back onto offense right after taking it. Still everything else about this match was at a super high level, and while that one spot kept it from MOTY status it was still a classic. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corne! Le Boulch! Delaporte! Villars! Amor! Gueret!

 Jean Corne vs. Robert Le Boulch 9/3/59

SR: 1 Fall match going about 16 minutes. Robert Le Boulch is short, has a massive skull and is balding, and he has a funny little mustache. He decided to cheap shot Corne some, and Corne outwrestled him easily, then Robert threw some more cheapshots, and Corne unleashed a full blown retaliation that had Robert Le Boulch flying all over the place. Le Boulch was a bump machine and a fun enough discovery to carry this short match in which Jean Corne showed even less character than usual.

MD: To make sure everyone's clear on this, Corne is not Corn, though he was already middleweight champ and is announced at 22 years old. I don't think he was quite as smooth as many others we've seen so far (Corn included) especially when it came to his timing, but we have a lot of him so we'll see him come into himself later. There were some rope-running bits that seemed weird, and he didn't stay down quite long enough to draw excitement for his comebacks. At one point, le Boulch put his head down and Corne dropkicked him head on and that didn't quite seem right. Despite Le Boulch getting plenty of heat, there weren't big pops for the head twists, for instance, which was out of the norm since the French crowd loved those. I thought Le Boulch was great. He's another in the line of those Jackie Gleason looking put upon, stooging heels. He was congenial enough in the beginning, pulling hair but offering handshakes, as if it was just a job, you know? When Corne started to get fiery, he started to get mean back. He had a lot of fun stuff, like tying Corne's shoelaces to the ropes and yanking on the other leg, of having a sequence where he missed a few dropkicks in a row. Probably the most memorable bit here was Corn dropkicking him into the ropes and following it up with a monkey flip repeatedly. It wasn't that the crowd disliked Corne, but the story of this one was le Boulch, his performance, and how he got under their skin by the end.

Roger Delaporte/Paul Villars vs. Yves Amor/Georges Gueret 9/5/59

SR:2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. You look at this match up and you know exactly what you are getting. 4 guys who have no problem being bastards and trading massive beatings, doing just that. That being said, this had a pretty clever layout. Most of these matches start like a house of fire but kind of fail to build to an epic conclusion. Here they start slow with some fun wrestling and build really well to all hell breaking lose. We‘ve seen Amor & Gueret as heels before, but they work this pretty much as straight faces. All their shots come as retaliations to heel tactics from the mustached superduo of Delaporte/Villar. They won‘t do anything athletic, but they sure knew their way around the holds. There is a fun structure with the 1st fall ending early and much of the 2nd fall being spent working face in peril sections before Gueret and Amor are able to stage their comeback. Gueret once again looks pretty great here, he is great as a tough bad guy beating the shit out of good guys, and he is great as a tough good guy beating the shit out of bad guys, and the same goes for Amor really. The 3rd fall is pretty intense with some really great Mantell/Lawler feeling exchanges, including Amor and Delaporte beating the shit out of each other on the floor with the police having to get involved, and of course these guys were hitting each other so hard they make pretty much everyone in the world right now look like pussies. Delaporte deciding to take out Amors leg was another instance of his sudden brutal assaults that he has a real knack for. Another entry in the stream of great French tags.

MD: Another high quality 50s Delaporte tag. We've seen Gueret and Amor before, but they were both heels then. I thought they brought a lot in this role. Amor was relatively giant, but able to get down and wrestle. He had a lot of presence in general. Gueret had a tough, rugged look and for the most part, he backed it up. Villars was, as always, the perfect, resonant goon for Delaporte, and Delaporte, is basically the Satanico of France, if Satanico was 10% more a coward and a stooge. Rudo numero uno, basically, able to direct traffic, to beg off and prevaricate only to come back in with an earnest, merciless brutality. This one sung the loudest when they were dismantling Amor's leg, which was both well executed and made perfect story sense. Though it led to a transition as Gueret was able to convince he ref he tagged as he was breaking it up, the tandem STF was a thing of vicious beauty. Amor's selling was excellent and lingered on to the finish where he re-damaged his leg during the great brawling on the floor. Delaporte and friends walked the balance between conniving and opportunistic and outright dangerous exactly as a lead heel carrying a territory should.

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