Tuesday is French Catch Day: Ange Blanc! Scarface! Bernaert! Le Magouro! Zafar! Le Mao!

Pierre Bernaert/Pierre Le Magouro vs. Armand Zafar/Henri Le Mao 11/23/68

MD: Very good, well worked tag, with strong wrestling and some big shots. It suffered from the same structural issues that all of these tags tend to suffer from (too much shine, not enough heat, too many resets and easy babyface tags, too long a first fall, too short second and third), though the wrestling was more even for the first ten minutes which helped. On the other hand, the heels never picked up a fall, which both helped and hurt. It probably cut five or ten minutes off the match which let it all flow better but it still falls away from my ideal narrative balance. Thankfully, the heat that we did get was strong, with Bernaert an all-time cheater with great looking shots and Le Magourou another in the long line of second banana stooges. Le Mao is just excellent and I wish we had a dozen more matches with him. This is it though. Just amazing headbutts from him here, too. Zafar had a nice, sweeping way of moving and putting on. While it built to a few crowd-pleasing spots, my favorite bits here (past the headbutts) were probably the announcer menacing the heels by trying to get soundbytes during the worst moments.

PAS: Le Mao is kind of a French Fujiwara, so of course I adore him. He isn't doing the shoot matwork, but is a great old man escape artist and is amazing at evading a move and absolutely open up the skull of his opponent with a headbuttt.  I am a guy who loves a good headbutt and he is up there with the greatest ever coconut clankers. Everyone else in the match was fine, slick wrestling and thumping with shots, but this was a Le Mao show and every time he was in I was engrossed. Too bad we only have three matches of his, he feels like an all time great and with four more matches I would make that argument.   


L‘Ange Blanc vs. Scarface Le Balafre 12/7/68

MD: Yeah, I'm high on this. It won't be for everyone but it's really straightforward, fundamental, primal, well-worked stuff. After so many matches that were worked evenly or with a lot of shine, I love how Scarface spent so much time leaning on L'Ange. He was a good goon, maybe not the best at sneaking in cheapshots behind the ref's back but how blatant he was just got him more heat. He switched it up too, a chinlock, a cobra clutch, a hammerlock, and so on. All the tricks like holding the rope to block the flying mare. L'ange was excellent fighting from underneath and on his comebacks would come back with a few big shots or spots and then it'd be right back into the next hold. They managed this pretty successfully for twenty five minutes or so with the heat building and the comebacks escalating until we got into the finish. Scarface tossed him out in desperation and started a King of the Mountain sequence and a nasty one at that. When L'Ange came back, he just hit dropkick after dropkick to knock him off the apron, drawing the eventual DQ since he just wouldn't stop. That started about six minutes of near-riot as he kept going after Scarface to the elation of the crowd. Eventually, things calmed down to a degree, long enough for the ref to raise Scarface's hand, but the crowd continued to be animated, seething with the same pent up energy that L'Ange, true folk hero, was radiating. I wouldn't want to be Scarface trying to get out of that building that night.

PAS: L'Ange is on the WON Hall of Fame ballot, and he certainly looked like a hall of fame level performer this night. I really enjoy big babyface performance, Bruno, Colon,  Lawler, and Blanc was clearly at that level. Scarface was a fun jerk, ugly hard hitting cheap shotting. The finish with Blanc constantly hitting dropkicks until getting DQed was a fun way for a big star to loose and the post match really did feel a little out of control. Much of the talk about the French stuff is how futuristic it all is, this is classic though nothing fancy, but very effective.