Tuesday is French Catch Day: Swimming Pool Matches! Lamarre! Montreal! Mantopolous? Hassouni! Mystery Wrestlers!

3/22/74 (All Matches) - Thanks to the community for helping us identify some of the wrestlers here.

Pierre Bernaert vs Gilbert Wherle

MD: I have to admit, I'm not sure who we're looking at here. If this is a card with three matches televised (even over multiple shows) then this is third from the top which seems to be something we rarely see? There's no announcer. This is a draw with 9 minutes left when we come in. The heel kind of reminds me of Bernaert with his hair and cheating and confidence in movements, but he's a little bit too short (Edit: It was!). Hopefully we can crowdsource some answers. Anyway, they were working towards a draw here, in this swimming pool match, so it was very back and forth. The crowd seemed younger (teenagers and twenty-somethings) than what we usually see. The heel would get mean shots in, the face would come back with some revenge shots of his own. There was a pretty good chinlock in here and the face had great arm-wrenching holds, including something akin to the first cross armbreaker we've seen. The heel's attempts to cheat varied from nefarious to absurd (repeatedly grabbing the ropes on a pin as the ref kicked it off). We've seen in draws that the ref will just decide for someone, generally the face, and when that happened here, the heel complained to the point where the ref just pushed him off of the apron into the water. Any ideas on who these two are?

Ted Lamarre vs Mr. Montreal

MD: This got a decent amount of time, but was overall quite good, especially for a swimming pool match. Lamarre, in some ways, mainly the mustache and the tactics, comes off as a less whinging Delaporte, and I do think this was Delaporte's promotion since last time we saw Montreal, he was up against him. But it was a solid act, especially for this crowd. Montreal controlled with his strength early. It wasn't just tossing Lamarre around either. H

e used the strength to make the holds look great and to counter every escape attempt definitively. They were able to move in and out of things well. When Lamarre took over, it was with a lot of cheating and cheap shots, especially draping Montreal's neck over the top and pulling the rope back. Montreal would try to hammer back at times but Lamarre was quick to get the next bit of cheating in. When Montreal did come back, he often took things too far and the warnings started to pile up. Everything came to a head in the celebratory last five minutes when Lamarre (who had skinned the cat once or twice) finally hit the pool on a huge back body drop. At first Montreal wouldn't let him back in. Then he tied him up in the ropes and kept running into him head first. On the third one, the ref got in the way and ultimately, really got in the way and Montreal picked him up to almost drop him in the pool as well. All this lead to a DQ win for Lamarre but the fans hardly cared. Past the ref getting soaked, they got pretty much everything they wanted out of this one.

Kader Hassouni/Vasilious Mantopolous? vs Bernard Caclard/Albert Sanniez

MD: I wish I could do better on this one. I did a little cross checking. One of the heels is an Elisha Cook Jr. looking guy who I'm sure I've seen before. The other one has a goatee and a buzzcut and I'd believe could be either eastern European or Le Vicomte Joel de Norbreuil by looks alone. Unfortunately, he doesn't actually look like him but he looks like someone he could be NAMED him, monocle and all. If I had time, I'd go back through some more matches to cross-check but hopefully you guys can come through. One of the stylists is definitely Kader Hassouni. The other wrestles like Mantopolous, with the hand behind the back feints and spin kicks and a great roll up at the end, and that confidence that was despite his size but I never get a good enough look to be 100% sure.

The match itself is good though. We come in during the second fall, I think, and the heels manage to do a great job cutting off the ring in between fast exchanges. Someone asked me the other day if the quality of the footage has dropped off yet and I said no, but that it was different. One element of that is that they got better at getting heat in tag matches in a more "southern" style. It didn't always pay off well but it was better than just giving up tags whenever. I wouldn't say we had a lot of long holds here either but all of the ins and outs were good, and when things really picked up in the third fall, there were some great pool bumps that the fans absolutely loved, first Hassouni launching a tope suicida right in and then the heels ending up one after the next, ending with the ref. They did a ton of these shows and the fans really did seem to love them.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Batman! Inca! LeDuc, Gonzalez! Mercier! Lemarre! Marsalo!

3 on 3 series: Batman vs. Inca Viracocha, Gilbert LeDuc vs. Jo Gonzales, Jean Corne vs ??? 12/20/69

La Batman vs. Inca Viracocha

MD: This was a three on three event where they drew names (or threw names) and then went one-on-one. The announcer claimed this was a brand new thing they were trying. This was the first pairing and it was very good. Batman isn't the very best stylist we've seen but he had some size and charisma and could really hit a lot of stuff effortlessly. He had some signature spots no one else did, like his up and over to get out of a headlock. Viracocha, as we're quickly learning, may not have Peruano's flair but he was a quality cheapshot artist and stooge who could hit an extra gear on rope running and feed into all of Batman's offense. Lots of little counters and jockeying for positioning. This went a little shorter than normal given the format and ended with very rare interference from Gonzales to explain how Viracocha could take the first fall for his team.

Gilbert LeDuc vs. Jo Gonzales

MD: Gonzales (who I think was Jo) was dressed like Viracocha with the pancho and similar pants. I feel like we haven't seen LeDuc for a while, but he still knew how to work from underneath exceptionally well and had the trademark headspins. They worked some long holds where Gonzales held on well, and Gonzales certainly stooged like a champ, including teasing a hand behind his back like Mantopolous only to get kicked in the face by LeDuc who was too old for that crap. LeDuc was a real crowd pleaser, especially when he put on a leglock, whacked the knee to bring Gonzales to a seated position and then chopped him as he sat up. Repeating that a couple of times got the crowd chanting. He had all of the older French spots (like the repeated body scissors drop) and the leg whacks on the rolling leg nelson and they were all used to high effect. He took the second fall, but unfortunately we ran out of time before we could get the third: Corne vs whoever he was lined up against (which was some guy with a top hat that I never caught the name of).

Jacky Corn/Guy Mercier vs. Ted Lamarre/Jo Marsalo ?/?/70

MD: Excellent, excellent wrestling here. This was nominally stylist vs stylist with guys who were very experienced. We haven't seen too many stylist vs stylist tags. It's usually singles, and that gave this an interesting dynamic where it got heated, especially towards the end, but would lead more to holds than hard shots throughout the match. Lamarre and Marsalo were more the aggressors maybe, quicker to go mean if not dirty, with Mercier and Corn doing more of the firing back. Lots of great sequences. I thought Mercier had plenty of fun stuff, lots of leverage throws and takeovers. Lamarre kept up with his opponents and worked some of the best chinlocks I've ever seen, amazingly tight, amazingly competitive. In general, they spent a lot of the match rolling all over the place jockeying for position. Marsalo was more of a bruiser, bigger and stockier with a slam to Corn over the top rope or bearhug attempts, but the tag nature of this meant that it kept moving. Instead of Corn's usual big comeback, he built to a hot tag after the second fall and a very quick third fall which was Mercier cleaning house. Top notch match of its style and now I wish we had more stylist vs stylist tags.

PAS: Yeah this was nifty stuff, this didn't have the lighting fast exchanges of the lighter weight wrestlers, but lots of cool technical wrestling including lots of cool spots working out of Lamarre's chinlocks, and an extended short arm scissors section which is one of my favorite things in wrestling. We got some solid clubbing when it broke down a bit as well. The pacing of this was a bit weird with the long first and second falls, and the 90 second third fall, but the actual work was top notch

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