Jim Breaks vs. Young David (Davey Boy Smith), 2/23/1980
This was a great piece of pro wrestling. Breaks in his bumblebee trunks just carrying a barely in puberty Davey Boy like it's nothing. To be fair, David looked good in parts here, doing a decent job struggling out of Breaks holds and taking a big unexpected bump in the last round, but it was plainly obvious that he could only do a handful of things. Most of his comebacks are just him bodyslamming Breaks over and over. He did however do a great job palm striking his way out of a submission and bloodying Breaks nose. Breaks was great here at first playing a more subtle version of his usual character before turning it up to 11. His submissions were just ridiculous, trying to sprain Davids ankle at first and then zoning in on the arm and bending it as far as humanly possible. This just lead out in a great way. Fun post match too with Davids mentor Alan Dennison coming in to smash things over Breaks head.
Pat Roach vs. Pete Roberts, 2/13/1980
Pat Roach always looks like the hardest man on the planet to me. This was a pretty excellent contest with some nifty heavyweight grappling. Roachs judo throws rule, as well as his overhead arm suplex. Roach was playing nice early on, and Roberts was doing a really neat Fujiwara-ish performance trying to crack the giant. Once Roach was outsmarted, he just went beast mode and ragdolled Roberts about the ring. In the 3rd fall, Roberts made excellent use of ring positioning to chop Roach down. I liked the finish more than OJ as Roach was limping and in trouble only to launch an overzealous Roberts over the top rope, taking an insane bump on the outside. The smart player Pete Roberts being outsmarted himself was neat.
Jeff Kaye vs. Tony "Banger" Walsh, 1/28/1980
This was a battle between two great looking wrestlers. Walsh is pasty with a bowlcut and Kaye has kind of medieval mid length hair and is dumpy looking. Kaye is super fired up here cartwheeling around and Banger Walsh was looking to give it to him, throwing shots and grinding Kaye down with basic moves. Walsh has really good basic stomps and clubs. If you are familiar with these type of European give and give back face/heel matches you won't be surprised by the structure here but they worked in so many high end exchanges that it stayed entertaining. Unique finish too. Really really fun sprint.
Fit Finlay/Ian Gilmour vs Guy Mercier/Alan Mitchells 9/25/80
2/3 Falls match over about 25 minutes. Browsing through hundreds of French matches, and just out of nowhere a 22 year old Dave Finlay pops up in what is maybe his first ever televised match working like a seasoned veteran heel. Pretty cool. The saying about European tag wrestling is that they didn‘t quite know how to do it, but this match had pretty much the kind of structure you want: Fun babyface shine segment, followed by a heel beatdown before a series of cut offs before a comeback succeeds and then a finish. They fool you a bit here by doing a really long shine with the heels making several attempts at starting the beatdown and being cut off, but in the end the structure is there and even the 2/3 Falls formula is integrated well. This was a bit more holds and takedowns based and less about armdrags and ranas, similiar to what we know from British wrestling, but don‘t be fooled the pace in this match was lightning fast. These guys really do an absurd amount of stuff even in a long match, but everything is executed effortlessly. Guy Mercier is a former European champion and legit Greco roman wrestler with a look and aura that just screams tough old man, and while there wasn‘t a ton of extended wrestling in this match he looked like a classy worker. It speaks for the creativity of these old workers just how much they could do with moves like a body slam or hip throw. Finlay also did this cool thing where he misses a big splash in about the first minute of the bout and spends the next few minutes scurrying away while the faces twisted up his leg and launched him into the ropes. It didn‘t pay off in the long run, but it was a fun bit of selling to make the opening minutes more interesting. Once the heels got something going after what felt like 15 minutes of highly entertaining bumping and stooging, they basically focussed on getting the faces to the corner and stomping the crap out of them. Really simple and effective stuff that made me wish modern workers paid more attention to making simple things like a stomp look good, because Finlay had damn great looking stomps here. Another layer to the match was Michel Saulnier, who was grey and a referee by now. The match had some heel ref antics and comical amounts of babyface retaliation against Saulnier, while that is something that can ruin a lot of these Euro matches it was actually executed in a really fun manner here. The thing I loved most how delighted the fans were at the trick the heels used to get a pin here. No hard feelings, it‘s all good fun in France.
