Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mercier! Brown! Les Gorilles Marsallon!
Guy Mercier/James Brown vs Les Gorilles (Lou/Geo Marsallon) 7/1/65
MD: And we are back for a limited ten week engagement thanks to the efforts of Phil Lions to scrub through the archive one more time. A varied run of matches full of a lot of familiar names and a few new ones. I'm excited for it. Even just hearing Roger Couderc commentate again felt like visiting an old friend.
And this one started off with another old friend, or friends as it was, as seconding the Gorilles here to start were no one other than Robert Duranton and his valet Firmin. Duranton complained about not getting enough TV time, took of his shirt, threatened to go down to his underwear and left. Pretty funny stuff.
The match itself was one of those feel good babyface-heavy French Catch tags full of so many entertaining bits but that suffered to modern eyes because it was so astoundingly lopsided. The clip is 36 minutes. The match is, let's say 33 of that given the Duranton antics to start (not counting introductions and the bits in between falls) and i wouldn't say the heels really took over until the 30 minute mark.
And that's not to say they weren't formidable. They had big clobbering shots. They double teamed well. They had size and presence. There's just not much anyone could do against James Brown and his headbutt. Multiple entertaining comedy bits of them timbering to headbutts or trying to slam his head into each other's foot or trying headbutts of their own. Whenever they did take over due to a double team the stylist partner was quick to come in (usually with dropkicks, with Brown having a sort of shotgun front dropkick with big impact). Lots of dropkicks in this one.
Still, there were a lot of individual bits that I enjoyed, whether it be Mercier doing his thing spinning before a takedown (or going through the legs) or Brown himself going through the legs on a leg splitter. Brown had a victory roll bit where one Marsallon walked him over to the corner for a punch from the other only for that punch to get blocked to set up the victory roll. Lots of miscommunication bits where they ran into each other on full nelson charges too, that sort of thing. At one point one of them went flying through the roles on a missed charge, a tope to nowhere.
I will say that they got a lot of mileage out of these hefting lawn dart hotshots onto the top rope right at the end, but not so much to counterbalance 30 minutes of stylist control. Overall fun candy that kept the crowd delighted and a nice visit back to France for me but a little Brown goes a long way considering how much air he takes up.
SR: The first new French match in a while, and man it is jarring to get back into that world. Flawless, tight execution on everything, everyone a 100% game, constantly engaging the face/heel dynamic, never missing a beat. It's safe to say when it comes to the fundamentals all these guys were on a completely different level compared to todays workers, and the athleticism, fast pace and big bumping still holds up insanely well today. Lou and Geo Marsallon could be Les Marsallons, but they are Les Gorilles, and boy do they look the part. Square, bulky, heads as bald as their chests are hairy, ugly and mean like only the best heels can be. They were dedicated stooges really taking pinball bumping to the next level, flying in and out of the ring for a dozen babyface dropkicks in ways you don't really expect two men so bulky and square looking men to fly around. They were pretty vicious too, occasionally putting back alley beatings on the faces, another thing that is really jarring, in this world something as simple as a stomp or an elbow upside the head was executed like it was intended to maul, and they wouldn't let up, crawling all over their opponents punching, strangling and doing god knows what. It was a quite vicious edge for a match that was largely a dose of fun for the crowd to watch the faces one up the heels over and over and occasionally get heated and kick the shit out of them. Brown and Mercier are a bunch of fun here too. Brown works a bit different from your typical cookie cutter French babyface, perhaps owing to him breaking into the business in Germany if I am informed correctly. He'll get up to a lot of cool things, hitting those nasty Giant Baba style falling armbreakers, a bulldog where he keeps holding on to the head, cool out of nowhere headbutts, perfect european uppercuts, backbreakers from odd angles. At one point he flipped out of a hold and lost his footing, only to immediately dive for the legs with an ankle pick like a seasoned amateur wrestler. Mercier isn't in the match as much but he is reliable as always, beautiful throws, picking guys up with freakish ease and dropping them across his knees in nasty ways. This was mostly a romp and executed extremely well with hardly any letdown. Feels crazy we've seen like a hundred tags like this, even if you are well familiar with the French footage this is a blast to check out.
Labels: French Catch, Guy Mercier, James Brown, Jo Marsallon, Jo Marsalo, Les Gorilles, Lou Marsallon
4 Comments:
Great News ! Welcome back with your french catch treasures and thank you.
Do you have any match of Francis Bertin ? And other matches of Rémy Bayle ( my prefered French catcher ) ?
One new Der Henker (Bayle) match upcoming.
Do you mean that Der Henker was Bayle ?
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