French Catch Catch-Up

 Batman vs. Cesar Leoni, 9/26/1970

Man, it never ceases to be funny that they had a Batman running around in the French wrestling scene. The fact he doesn't wear a mask makes it even weirder. Batman is a great worker though and Leoni looked like a really good rudo too. These guys have really fast armdrags that they bump hard for, really good arm hold work that looks good even after you've seen a million workers do arm hold work. Batman is such a fun technician, he will do a whacky escape and then suddenly bust out a fast Fujiwara armbar. Leoni is clearly a really good wrestler too, and then suddenly he just increases the violence by smacking Batman hard in the jaw and following up with really nasty stomps and kicks. They keep wrestling but Leoni would always try to cheapshot Batman and punch him in painful places. He even removed the corner pads but it ended up costing him and he ate a nice decisive tombstone for the finish. Really nice 15 or so highlight reel of what made French wrestling so cool.

Le Hippie du Ring vs. Gilbert Bernaert, 9/26/1970

It's the Hippy of the Ring, baby. And well I did not expect this to have a bunch of awesome greco roman work, but it did! Bernaert just grabs and shoot suplexes the Hippie and they scramble to the ropes right at the start, and it's clear that Bernaert is not much on board with peace and love. But the Hippie could grapple too and they had an intense contest with some great greco roman throws. Eventually Bernaert starts brutalizing him with cheapshots, really lighting him up with kicks to the back, the chest... Bernaert was quite the stocky baby faced fucker here. Add a cool boston crab finish and a big bump and you have yourself one hell of a match. This ruled, honestly.

Guy Cavillier vs. Albert Sanniez, 2/1/1969

1 Fall match going about 18 minutes. It‘s Cavilliers second match on TV in about 12 years (that we have). Weird how that happens. Cavillier seems to have filled out a bit and was rocking a singlet here. This was the kind of smooth, beautiful lightweight style we‘ve come to associate initially with French pro wrestling. Cavillier drew some boos when he threw the first european uppercut, but they kept the bout in a light hearted direction, even doing some ref comedy (which, thankfully, did not derail the contest). Sanniez was stunning here, doing some excellent bridging work. Cavallier looked more secure too than he did 12 years earlier (shocker!), bouncing around in agile fashion. Like many of these friendly European matches where the referee becomes the butt of jokes there was no winner, so keep in mind that the journey is more important than the destination here. And there was some quite excellent wrestling on that journey.