Segunda Caida

Phil Schneider, Eric Ritz, Matt D, Sebastian, and other friends write about pro wrestling. Follow us @segundacaida

Tuesday, July 01, 2025

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Leduc! Corn! Henker! Samourai!

Gilbert Leduc/Jacky Corn vs Der Henker/Le Samourai 6/13/75

MD: Some old friends here in Corn and Henker (Remy Bayle). We're not entirely sure who Samourai was  but he was pretty good at what he did and we do have various Samourais in other 70s footage. They made sure to note that we had an Axis team on the heel side. I will say this though: the Henker gimmick was a few years in now. He's a monster, a brick wall, someone you're not going to stagger back with even a strong shot, but he's not the monster he was a few years before. Remember, he once took on both Corn and Leduc by himself. Here they needed to take out a leg or use finesse to take him down for the most part (though Leduc could manage it, eventually, with even a headlock takeover worked hard enough). And he ultimately ate a very clean pin off of a very clean slam to end the second fall in the match. Still, most of the time, they had to double team or outsmart a double team attempt to really get him down and they recovered more often than not against Samourai. 

This was probably a little long going ~40 with the introductions but every exchange was good. It just means you ended up seeing Leduc's toupie headspin 3-4 times when 1-2 would have done the trick instead. Samourai was slick, able to do the karate shtick but also keep up with all of the wrestling and feed when he had to. When he was in there against Corn they were able to turn up the speed a little bit. He also had a lot of very fun comedy bits where he slid around the ring and sometimes all the way out to the first row. The first fall was long and didn't have too much peril for the stylists. The second fall was shorter but had them working from underneath (Corn especially) a little more. I'm not saying the stakes weren't there because Henker always was a threat but again, this wasn't the Henker of a few years earlier. Lots of good individual moments and spots because Corn catching Samourai in an unlikely body scissors or Leduc torquing Henker's arm one way and then the other to get him down will always delight, but there was a moment thirty minutes in where it did feel a little much having not watched one of these long tags in a while. Still another enjoyable entry into the Henker vs Leduc/Corn feud (one of the better feuds of the 70s that we have considerable footage of) overall.

SR: I think this is the latest apearance we have of Gilbert Leduc. Cagematch says he indeed retired in 1975, so this might be a last hurray of sorts. He still does the beautiful head spinning escape. Other than that this was notably slowed down. There's some somewhat compelling work but also a lot of holds and the whole thing feels way too long. Give some credit to Le Samurai, its hard to read 'Le Samurai' and not think of Alan Deloin, but this masked guy did a few nifty things. One thing I noticed that masked heels seem less incompetent and outmatched than your typical French heels. Samurai is able to do a bit of neat wrestling, including a rope hanging choke move that was really neat and also those nifty rolling bumps and odd mannerisms, and the Henker is at least hard to get off his feet. There is some of the fun bumping and stooging that we know from the French tags and a few good moments such as a crossbody being caught into a gutwrench suplex. But yeah this was too long and slow paced overall. 

Labels: , , , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home