Vassilios Mantopolous/Ischa Israel vs Billy Catanzaro/Gilbert Lemagourou 6/19/66
MD: This was part of "Télé Dimanche", which was a popular variety show, and it took place in the show's studio. There's a white backdrop behind them and the crowd is all facing them from one side. There's a musical artist (Johnny Hallyday) sitting in on commentary at times and, interestingly enough, Catanzaro's wife and two kids were there as well. They ask her questions now and again but she doesn't seem particularly bothered or interested in any of this, even when he's getting routed. She's used to it. She does note he's also a delivery driver and does weight training every Thursday. His kids don't seem to think he'll win. Considering how often we've seen the stylist win these matches (most of the time really) that doesn't surprise me.
It's a fun setting and there's maybe a slight but only slight exhibition-y feel to it. In general you get the real deal and in 1966 I'm not sure if there were two wrestlers as good in the world as Mantopolous and Catanzaro. It's a welcome blast just seeing Mantopolous scrunch down as he entered the ring before pouncing forth and Catanzaro met him in kind. They did so many acts, so many bits, all sorts of little moments of trickery where Mantopolous would draw him in. It's not just that some of the bits are things I'd never seen before, but it's that they perform it so well. Mantopolous ties up Lemagourou towards the end and while Catanzaro breaks it up, it was the most believable I've ever seen the spot done. Likewise some of the Lady in the Lake bits.
Lemagourou played his part well, a bit more of an oaf or a stooge. The straight man to Catanzaro's inflamed and put upon character actor. He'll walk right into Mantopololus' traps (or Israel's European Uppercuts) while Catanzaro charges into them, though he was also more apt to take big bumps over the top (including right into the judges which everyone loved). And Israel did well too, hitting hard when it was his turn and getting swept under by illegal doubleteams by the heels, though he was overshadowed by Mantopolous, but then most people would be.
There was real familiarity between Mantopolous and Catanzaro which let them do the bit at the end of the first fall where Catanzaro hit a tombstone position press-up facebuster only for Mantanpolous to reverse the second attempt for a tombstone or when Catanzaro hit his spinout backbreakers twice on Israel only for Israel to tag out and Mantopolous to hit Robinson and Conjuro backbreakers. There was once or twice where things seemed to get off the rails just a bit, but in general, this was meant to entertain and it absolutely did.
SR: Well, it's another 25 minutes of pretty amazing popcorn wrestling from maybe the most reliable crew in all of wrestling when it comes to this stuff. Seeing all these guys again so suddenly after we only got a few glimpses at them a few years ago is kind of a crazy occurrance. But here they are, doing their thing. They probably had this match like 500 times, that's how seamless and never lost they go about their wrestling. This had a cool setup being in a TV studio with a white background, tall referee in a smoking, you just can't have this stuff anymore. This had the typical formula, lots shine from your technicos, some rough moves from the heels, an absolute crap ton of sometimes comedic stooging and bumping to entertain the audience. You get the sense that this was probably a deliberate kind of TV psychology, give the audience something joyful to have a romp with.
And these guys have endless shit they can do to fill the 25 minutes time. Mantopoulos with his endless bag of George Kidd style tricks, and Catanzaro and Lemagourou with their stooging, bumping and muggig. Catanzaro actually did some brief work reminiscent of his classic with Gilbert Cesca and it was cool to see that he could still do the crazy bridging. You can tell he lived this shit, both the classy gymnastic wrestling and the part when it was time to grab someone by the hair and stomp on their face. Mantopoulos is always made to look nigh invulnerable in these matches and its doesn't annoy me because he is so convincing, amazing how he still appears to treat the match a 100% serious with his body language, he never turns into a grinning clown like some of the british technicians will. I dug Israel as the more straight forward counterpart of Vasilios, he had this really great wrist takedown at one point and threw a sneaky punch that looked great. As far as the wrestling goes there wasn't a ton that we haven't seen in other French tags, but there was one piledriver sequence that was really crazy, and the stuff that lead into the finish was downright insane.
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