Yay! My account finally went through. I had been stuck on the "awaiting approval" stage for some time. Thanks!
It's been a good year or two since I've seen this one, but I remember being quite impressed with Le Big Chief too. In fact, I would even go as far as to call him one of my favorites from the catch stuff that I've seen. Not because he was the best wrestler or anything, but because he had a great presence and an aura of danger about him. Also, there was this one moment where Di Santo flipped him over the top rope, which was quite impressive for a guy of Chief's size. Didn't expect him to try a flying body press either. No idea who Le Big Chief was, but wish there was more footage of him.
Admittedly, I am biased since Zigulinoff is one my favorite characters from that era in European wrestling, but I quite enjoyed this one. In terms of actual wrestling it wasn't any good, but I thought it was some good comedy, especially the stuff with Zigulinoff knocking Gastel on the top of his head and Gastel tying up Zigulinoff's hair in the ropes.
Yeah, Tarres was all about the headbutts and knocking people out with them. So much so that in addition to being known as "Cabeza de Hierro" (Iron Head), in Spain he was also known as and sometimes billed as "El Noqueador" (the Knockouter or something along those lines). That worked quite well for him since usually in Spain, as best as I can tell, the matches were generally shorter and more action-packed so Tarres constantly trying to knock people out with his "cabezazos" fit the Spanish style quite well. That's probably part of the reason why he was such a big star in his home country. The biggest one for quite a few years, in fact.
One final thought. I recently watched the April 6th 1968 six-man tag with Cheri Bibi, Eric Husberg & Jo Gonzalez vs. Gilbert Leduc, Guy Mercier & Le Batman. What an interesting piece of business that match was. Tons of tags. In and out, in and out. Constantly. The first half of the match, and most of it really, was almost all babyface shine. Almost too much so. Then you have Batman, who completely disappeared for half of the match, which was odd, coming back to win the whole thing for his team. It wasn't one of those matches that has a lot of actual wrestling in it or much of a structure to it, but it was pretty faced-paced and fun. And you had a super hot crowd that was eating it all up. This kind of felt like a French house show main event, that's meant to send the crowd home happy, broadcast on TV.
