French Catch-Catch-Up

Petit Prince & Jean Corne & Alain Mitchell vs. Daniel Noced & Jacky Richard & Guy Renault, France 2/9/1974

Really cool French take on a lucha trios. Like those matches, you had a lengthy technico shine, a rudo beatdown building to a hot 3rd fall with plenty of comeuppance. And you had a real money match up to carry the whole thing, and that was Petit Prince vs. Daniel Noced. Holy fuck the Prince is an absolute trip to watch, just the fastest trickiest wrestler ever, and Noced looked great both bumping for his crazy arm drags as well as trying to kick the Princes chest in. Everyone else was good too and I especially enjoy Jacky Richards stooging who is Infernales level when it comes to eating technical offense. It wasn't a deep match and the fact that Cornes initial absence barely played a role was a bit weird but it was a rousing good time in total.

18/01/1973 Rene Ben Chemoul & Walter Bordes vs. Anton Tejero & Inca Viracocha

Another week of French TV, another 30 minutes of stupidly high end pro wrestling. It‘s quite fascinating how closely these matches mimic the layout of a lucha trios. You get about 10 minutes of fun one up manship exchanges, followed by 10 minutes of a rudo beatdown and then 10 minutes of high quality back and forth. Everything executed with ridiculous tighntess and perfection. There are so many little things here that make these exchanges great – the technicians cranking up the viciousness just a little bit more than your typical friendly babyface shine segment, the way these guys will sell a basic shoulder block just being thrown back only to get up immediately and into a rope running segment, the way these guys will not kid around with their european uppercuts and body punches etc. Some of the technical moves were just blindingly fast. Beatdown segment was good with the faces taking lots of bumps flying to the outside, and the ending section was fun and unpredictable. I‘ve learned that big finishing runs centered around heels stooging and trying to throw inside shots with the faces bowling the heels into eachother are way more entertaining than back and forth 2.99999s. Ref has some heel antics but never gets into derailing the match. The French crew is starting to rise in my estimation to be up there with the Michinoku Pro or BattlARTS guys where you could throw any permutation of them into a tag match and it would be MOTY if it happened now. And they did just that week in week out.

 

Georges Cohen vs. Chico de Oro (2/23/74)

1 fall match going about 25 minutes. Chico de Oro is announced as a Spanish champion. If Spain still had workers that good around in 1974, it’s pretty sad that Spanish wrestling died around that time. This was a technical match up with a fast pace. Both man engaged in some intricate wrestling and fast rope running. Chico de Oro played nice and sportsmanlike, but the French crowd was firmly on the side of their boy Cohen. It almost annoyed me a little how they kept siding with Cohen even when he kept kicking Chico de Oros ass. The Spanish champ ended up taking a few bumps to the outside and fought back valiantly, even throwing out some flying headbutts, but he had no chance winning that crowd over. There was also some weird controversy with the referee where he gave Cohen a public warning for breaking out of a pinfall. All that said, it was a very good match.

 

Catching up with French Catch

 

Gilbert Leduc vs. Bert Mychel 4/16/73

Gritty as hell grappling match between two guys who look like dock workers or pup owners. That is kind of the best kind of old school match, and this was a really great version of that. Mychel is a Belgian greco olympian. He‘s built like a bear and looks a bit like Dick Murdoch, with a mean scowl. I think I‘ve yet to see a Belgian wrestler who wasn‘t awesome and Mychel did his country proud. This was low on flash but high on slow, gruelling struggling in and out of holds. Sometimes smooth and slick can be cool but there‘s an art form to working a slow headscissor or headlock that makes these kind of matches really engrossing. Both guys legit skill came into play too, as there were some cool quarter nelsons and some more uncooperative than usual scrambles over pins and holds. Highlights include some really painful looking handwork, Leduc deciding to hit lightning fast takedowns 20+ minutes into the match and one of the most painful looking, shoulder popping struggles over a butterfly suplex attempt that i‘ve ever seen. The fallaway slam over the rope was also totally unexpected an an absolutely insane bump that really ramped up the drama for the finish. Also, while the match never broke out into a complete slugfest, but they do slug it out here and there, and when they do they just smash the shit out of each other like it‘s France or something. Insanely skillful match that was real engrossing and one hell of a match overall.

Maurice Dumez/Georges Cohen vs. Antonio Montoro/Anton Tejero 4/30/73

Another absolutely beautiful match from France. Chock full of wonderful exchanges. Yes, you‘ve heard it before, but the match had a few outstanding moments. I think Cohen is one of the best technicos on the French scene, but Dumez completely stole the show from him here. Dumez was this lithe, athletic stud who had amazing grace on all his stuff and threw the most brilliant armdrags in the universe. He threw one hell of a suplex, too. The Spaniards were excellent stooges as usual. They did a good 10 minutes of straight wrestling to open this which is always nice, and went back to competitive wrestling even after trying heel shenanigans. Montoro was this aged technico who wrestled like an old bastard who still knew a few nifty technical moves, which is a really cool character, and he threatened to steal the technicos thunder with some of his moves. He‘d come flying off the tope, even leaping at people, and busted out some ridiculously elaborate throws and a great version of that spinning backbreaker we all love. Tejero had grown out his hair at this point making him look pompous and he bumped and stooged as hard as he always does, what a truely dedicated professional wrestler. All falls had really good finishes and the ending was a hoot with Montoro getting pounced across the ring by a miscommunicated move and then Cohen doing a feverish exchange and just darting outside the ring. Another gem from the French trove, if you ask me.

Billy Catanzaro/Pierre Bernaert vs. Mr. Montreal/Vasilios Mantopolous 6/5/72

This was a swimming pool match. All these guys displayed some amazing footwork and timing considering they were wrestling in a shaky, floating ring. This was pretty much a 30 minute comedy squash, wrestled at the highest possible level, like you are watching a couple gods taking a night off and making jokes to put some smiles on their audiences faces. Can you imagine if All Japan had undercard comedy matches like this?! With this kind of obscene workrate and athleticism?!? I really enjoyed the contrast of the Montreal/Mantopolous team, having Mr. Montreal a big body builder type who specializes in freakish strength spots and Mantopolous who is a lightning quick junior. Heels were amazing stooges as you expect, with Catanzaro being brilliant as usual. The man really had all time chemistry with Mantopolous and they breezed through one brilliant exchanges after another. Mantopolous George Kidd style technical trickery looked good in this kind of match. I also really enjoyed how Catanzaro kept teasing the falls into the water, like he was really a master of just barely hanging on to the ropes by his toe, he teases that plunge for 20+ minutes while Bernaert just kept falling into it through miscommunication spots, these two had a fun dynamic. There were a few vicious bits of Catanzaro on offense but they made less than 10% of the match. Jokes were funny, and the match stayed interesting through out as they kept mixing up things to do. If you want to lean back and watch a light hearted 30+ minute workrate sprint, check this out.

Kamikaze vs. Nicolas Priore 5/22/72

Kamikaze (possibly Modesto Aledo, or some imitator) is a really cool character. The creepy look that kind of reminds me of Fantomas, the strange mannerisms coupled with the esoteric martial arts bullshit and unorthodox athletic moves, it makes for a really compelling package. I love martial arts bullshit, and this was some high grade martial arts bullshit. Loved his re-entry into the ring, as well as how quickly he would dive to and over the top rope to attack his opponent. Priore was a good straight man to this weird monster, and they got tremendous heat and drama for their stuff. Kamikaze took a huge bump to the ring apron and seemed done but Priore apparently ended up bleeding from Kamiakzes karate chop assault and the referee ended up stopping the match which is always a memorable ending. Nice introduction to the Kamikaze character.

Assorted World of Sport

 Pete Roberts vs. Caswell Martin (WoS 4/4/1973)

I thought this was a great match. It’s not for the faint of the heart though, being essentially 30 minutes of almost uninterrupted matwork. But these guys are great at what they do, and there is no more wrestling that feels like this, really. Really elegant hold for hold wrestling, and they really wrench in the holds so that you care when someone breaks out of them. They really torque in those basic wristlocks and hammerlocks, and they move into more elaborate spidery holds quite nicely. Roberts was doing a ton of cool shit in this match, at one point Caswell goes into a bridge and Roberts puts on a crucifix neck crank, there’s also some STF work that feels esoteric by the standards of european wrestling. Martin is such a supremely athletic wrestler that he can make stuff like flipping out of a leg grab look fantastic. Really dug all the nearfalls throughout the match. I would’ve liked the match to get a little more rowdy, Roberts was working over Martins shoulders pretty hard at one point and there was never really a serious heating up moment, but that’s not what they were going for. The crowd ate the match up, anyways.

Romany Riley vs. Lenny Hurst (2/13/1980)

Really good, heated little match. Riley is some tough looking barrel chested dude with prison tattoos, after some elegant escapes he catches Hurst with a thudding forearm and then turns to Walton as if to quip. Hurst promptly pins him to score a fall in the 1^st round. That pisses Riley off and he goes to town on Hurst. I really dug the build to the explosion here, Riley is overzealous in trying to get a hold of Hurst, just grabbing holds before Hurst is back on his feet, until he decides he’s had enough of the niceties and just kicks the crap out of his opponent. The great thing about World of Sport matches is how riled up the crowd got for simple things like kicking a guy when he’s down. Riley kicks the hell out of Hurst and throws him to the outside, then he gets a warning and immediately does the same thing while Walton says he’s going berserk, really intense moment. The whole second half was really intense actually, with Riley throwing super stiff european uppercuts and Hurst coming back throwing punches and headbutts. Hurst looked like a really good babyface here, throwing some fantastic dropkicks. He also had some really good selling, at one moment he looked like he seriously had his bell rung, trying to keep it together and the crowd was willing him on to take it to Riley. Really simple, super effective entertaining match.

Steve Veidor vs. Gordon Corbett (11/16/1976)

Gordon Corbett was a boxer turned wrestler and this was his only TV match. Corbett looks like really only a wrestler on world of sport can look, dumpy, balding, totally non-athletic looking guy. But he knew the usual holds and all his stuff looked good, proving posture and well-drilled movements are key to being good at wrestling. He had some fun tricks in his bag here. The crowd was firmly on the side of Veidor, even though there were no foul tactics from Corbett, and you can tell why Veidor was so popular based on the way he wrestled here. Really graceful wrestler for a lanky guy. There was a a really cool extended armwork sequence, and Corbett one-upping Veidor at the end and getting nearfalls felt a bit like Momota trying to pin Liger. Fun match, here’s to you Gordon Corbett.