Tuesday is French Catch Day: Bibi! Bernaert! Sola! Labat! Stein! Allary!

Cheri Bibi/Pierre Bernaert vs. Ami Sola/Jo Labat 9/6/59

MD: I really enjoyed this. If it was just a tiny bit tighter and had a little more heat (not to say there wasn't heat), it'd be towards the 1959 for me. This is definitely the best Bibi match we've seen so far and the perfect role for him, a looming menacing goon in a tag match who is going to cheat any chance he gets. The cheating here actually felt quite different from the roughish and almost playful Delaporte sort. Here it was unrelenting and uncaring. Rules didn't matter. Labat and Sola are guys we've seen wrestle each other and really just a perfect team. Bernaert is a cheapshot artist himself and complemented Bibi (they even had matching prison ring jackets). After a solid technical shine, the heels took over due to Bernaert launching a sneak attack out of a handshake (his second), and they kept control for a lot of this. It was primarily when the faces could incapacitate one or both wrestlers for a time (either due to Sola's crazy jumping tombstones or wrapping them up in the ropes) that they could beat the numbers game and the blatant cheating. Otherwise even fiery moments of comeback would get cut off the second they were driven too close to the heel corner. There was definitely heat, with trash occasionally thrown in at Bibi and he drew a reaction every time he menaced in the corner and the fans were into the comebacks, but it didn't boil over like in some of the other tags we've seen. Both heel falls were due to the faces getting too into their comebacks and slipping on a banana peel. Just really solid and highly accessible tag team wrestling.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 35 minutes. JIP, but it seems like we join right at the start. At this point, we know exactly what we are gonna get from this match up. Bibi & Bernaert are a cheating superteam, and Sola/Labat have rocked the TV screens with their technical matchups. This was very much an A+ face team against a solid C heel team. Bibi & Bernaert are pretty effective at what they do, but they aren't going to surprise you, while Sola & Labat where always mixing all kinds of neat stuff. The highlight of the 1st fall was easily Sola just randomly launching Bernaert around with an out of nowhere Giant Swing. I also liked all the evaded stomps. Evading basic moves is always cool and they always neatly time these things. The 2nd fall felt like it should've ended earlier as both Bernaert & Bibi ate some nasty piledrivers and after some pretty good selling kind of moved on to a pretty standard finish. The same can be said for the 3rd fall which had Bibi taking a pretty cool spill to the outside and things heating up good before a banana peel kind of finish, which I guess was the usual way to have a pair of heels going over on TV. That being said when they started throwing hands this got surely as fuck and everyone here is such a honest to god competent pro wrestler so despite the structural nitpickings this was another highly entertaining romp.

PAS: I am higher on the heels then Matt and Sebastian. I thought they were really nasty jerks who didn't come off as genial or roguish, but just like cheap shotting bastards. Punches to the kidney's, stomps to the head, chokes, not really stooging selling, but getting dropped and stunned when the babyface teams fired back. I loved the final run, with both heels getting flipped into the ropes and getting the heck beat out of them, just a tremendous payoff. The big dropkicks by Labat near the end looked great and the fall on the missed one felt like enough of concussive force to lose a fall.  Labat and Sola are both solid skilled wrestlers, but I thought the goons carried this.


Johnny Stein vs. Michel Allary 9/21/59

MD: Stein is a guy who does everything right but still comes off as fairly dry to me. He engages the crowd, interacts with the ref. His stuff looks brutal. He tends to have compelling holds. He'll feed into bit fiery comebacks. He draws big heat (including getting swiped at from the outside here). I think there's just a limit to the ceiling of a stalking German heel in 50s France when you had so many other different interesting heels. I liked Allary here. Some of his comebacks seemed to come out of nowhere. He just grabbed on and got a neckbreaker at one point and he took the first fall with a lightning power bomb that seemed more like luck than anything else. He was great at fighting from underneath in general though, and he had some of the best selling we've seen in the footage so far, including an extended bit of selling his back after two big corner whips and some focus by Stein at the end of the first fall, even into the break between falls, and excellent selling on the floor and the apron after a fairly low blow towards the end of the match. The finish was, I think, our first tree of woe, leading to a DQ, but the most memorable scene here was Stein going deep on a STF after pulling the hair multiple times and the ref trying to pull him off making for a mass of bodies. Unquestionably good wrestling but maybe not what I was looking for this week.

SR: 2/3 falls match going about 30 minutes. This match was like a classical painting. Michel Allary looks like a Greek statue. Johnny Stein has a brow that makes Brock Lesnar look like a normal person. Allary is loved. Stein is hated. Although Steins act has all the subtlety of an anvil dropping on your head, he is quite effective. This was quite simple with lots of tight upper body holds and Stein looking like he would just screw Allarys head off. Dug the nasty chokeholds both guys did here. Stein was a German worker and you wonder if his simplistic wrestling was the result of the language and cultural barrier or if that was simply the style he was used to. Anyway, he was a physical freak who had no problem clubbing and getting clubbed which entertains me just fine, but what do ya know, he got himself DQ'd again.