ohtani's jacket

One of my favorite WWE matches. I actually got this on television and it revived my interest in the WWE after four years of being completely disinterested in the product. I initially stopped watching the WWE because I was frustrated by the style that Angle and Benoit were working in 2001. I've since come to appreciate the early 00s more than I did at the time, but this match stands out as the type of no nonsense, hard hitting wrestling that I was looking for at the time. I'll admit that it's not the type of match that your average WWE fan wants to see, but we with so many broadcast hours per week, I'm glad that somebody in creative was able to sneak this one past Vince. They get a decent amount of time too, which was a show of respect. They even made a screwy WWE finish seem decisive. Great match.

Kind of surreal seeing the WWE produce an authentic looking ECW show. Kudos to Rey for working Sabu's style even if it was a slightly watered down version. We never did get to see Rey work in many apuestas matches, but he had some brawling chops to him. It's amusing how much they overstate the importance of Rey's early ECW appearances while completing ignoring his WCW run. The finish was a copout, but if you're gonna cop out then I guess a springboard DDT through a table is the way to do it.

This was Kurt Angle's farewell match on Smackdown before jumping to ECW. It was the millionth match he'd had with Mysterio Jr, but at the same time it was a fitting sendoff given their five year history. They kept pushing Angle as having his competitiveness renewed by his jump to ECW, which was stupid given that Angle was always pushed as being highly competitive. He had a mouthpiece that spelt out the word "machine," which was supposed to mean wrestling machine but could have easily meant roid machine. They didn't break any new ground with this bout, but there were some exciting moments down the stretch. They managed to give Angle the win without making Rey look stupid, and the pair had a nice embrace post-match. I guess what people didn't realize at the time were the problems Angle was having that led to his departure from the company. Well, I guess the dirt sheet readers knew, but the fans didn't. If you tuned into this on a Friday night on June 2nd, you sure as hell didn't know that the end was nigh. I'm an unashamed Angle fan. I like watching Angle matches. I thought this was kind of sad even if it wasn't designed that way. I was glad they embraced at least.

Bob Platin used to spell it Lemagouroux in his videos. It's frustrating because the posters are unreliable. For Mantopoulos, I can never be sure if it's Vasilios or Vassilios. I guess it doesn't really matter, i suppose. Listening to the podcast right now. Neat accent.

Vassilios Mantopoulos/Ischa Israel vs. Billy Catanzaro/Gilbert Lemagourou, 6/19/66 Did we ever figure out how to spell Mantopoulos and Lemagourou's names correctly? That type of shit used to bother me all the time when I was writing up these reviews. This was the type of catch that I fell in love with. Just a bunch of tricked out matwork. You could argue that it was form over substance, but I thought they did a decent job of shaping the match for the studio audience. There was some stooging and brawling that I could have done without, but I realized that it was necessary for the spectators. It was great to see Catanzaro working some holds. Like so many others, Catanzaro was my gateway to catch back when we really only had the one match available. It's cool that he's part of this new haul, and I liked this match a lot better than the other tags he had with Lemagourou. Props to Israel, too. One of the most underrated guys in catch. I'm not as big a fan of Mantopoulos as I probably should be, but I thought having a rock solid guy like israel in his corner helped him do his stylist thing without seeming like he was off on his own island somewhere. Fun match within the confines of the setting.

This was the 1000th match between Kurt Angle and Rey Mysterio, but you can't go wrong with Mysterio and Angle as a matchup. What made this special is that it was wrestled in the Wembley Arena in London, England, site of some famous British wrestling matches. I don't know if I like them pushing Rey as an underdog champ who can lose at any given moment. .That feels like they're cutting him off at the knees booking wise. Interestingly, the Wembley crowd appeared to be pro-Angle. There were even boos for Rey. They worked their usual back and forth bout until Mark Henry showed up and pissed the crowd off by costing Angle the bout. Now we know the heat against Henry was orchestrated by British smarts. You'd think they'd appreciate Henry more given the proud tradition of Daddy's Wembley feats. They were probably pissed that they didn't get a clean finish to a pretty decent match.

This had flashes of what I wanted to see between these two kinds, but I wish it hadn't been worked within the confines of a cage match as it was obvious that it was going to lead to a typical BS ending. JBL was so good at his craft, and their brawling was so tight, that I remain convinced that these two had a classic in them. We just never got to see it because of some sort of shortsighted bullshit.

This started off as a shitty house show style triple threat match. I honestly thought any combination of Cena vs. Edge, Cena vs Triple H or Triple H vs Edge would have been better than the crap they rolled out at the start. I also thought it was annoying that they kept hiding Cena in triple threat matches instead of letting him grow and develop in single matches. The last 10 minutes, however, were full of classic WWE intrigue. Largely because Triple H did the slickest looking blade job I can remember from him. It was clear that Triple H was more versed in how to work the house style than the other two, but the post match revealed that there was a reward to his blood, sweat and toiling. He ended up taking everyone out and leaving with his entrance music playing despite losing the bout. Time to play the game. It's never bad when a match ends better than it started.

Guy Mercier/James Brown vs. Les Gorilles (Lou/Geo Marsallon) 7/1/65 I thought this was decent. It was clear from the get go that Mercer and Brown were the physically stronger team and that the Marsallons would have to resort to dirty tricks to make it a level playing field. That was pretty much how it played out. They didn't take it to any great extremes, but the match didn't suffer from too many lulls. The Marsallons were more workmanlike than super charismatic, but it was fun to see another tag combo from the era. It's always eerie watching James Brown so close to the accident.

Whooa, there are new catch matches?

My favorite thing about that interview is Kent shifting into his public persona. I wonder what Colbeck thought of Walton personally.

Prime Marino is a missing piece of the puzzle. That's for sure.

I watched the backend of that Marino/Yearsley bout, and I agree that it's not as bad as I was making out 10 years ago, but there is nothing that ought to excite a connoisseur. That argument, like so many, is silly. I have championed Marino many times ,but I don't think this match has much bearing on his legacy.

Decent title match. Some nice big man/small man psych. Orton's nasty looking matwork is an underrated part of his game. I liked the way they put the finishing stretch together with Rey catching Orton with the kick to the face then the 619 out of the corner. Taz laid it on a bit thick with his skepticism over Rey's chances but subtlety was never his strong point. For a Friday night TV match, I had no real complaints.

I felt obligated to watch this. It wasn't the worst match I've ever seen but it was still pretty shit. Way too much dicking around to get to the payoff. I could go the rest of my life without seeing Vince McMahon's leathery ass cheeks.

The version I head was from a podcast Debbie did. The footage issue depends on how much stock you put in her comeback.

Maple Leaf Wrestling, 1/15/57 Well, this was a treat. Especially getting to see the iconic Maple Leaf Gardens ring set-up in 1957. It's not new footage as it was uploaded to YouTube in 2019, but I doubt I would have come across it if not for Matt. Baron Gattoni vs. Billy Red Lyons Gattoni was a highly intelligent and cultured man outside of the ring, but he wasn't a very interesting worker inside it. I suppose that's because he was working a strength based gimmick, but there are more entertaining barons in 50s wrestling. It was weird seeing Lyons as a jobber. The Millers (Bill/Ed Miller) vs. Pat Flanagan/Ken Kenneth I've never really cared for the Millers. If you value heel tag team wrestling, you may feel differently. Flanagan was a fun foil and it was cool to see a fellow Kiwi representing. This was a showcase for the Millers who were new to the territory. I wish we'd seen a bit more of the Millers' wrestling skills because they had the credentials and a few of their holds looked halfway decent. Edouard Carpentier vs. Steve Stanlee I prefer this flashy version of Carpentier to the version we saw in France. i have no idea why he didn't work like this in Paris. The match was a pure showcase for Carpentier but Stanlee was the best third rate Buddy Rogers I've seen in a while and earned a few chuckles.

There are countless instances of Walton getting frustrated with the crowd for not reacting to the work in the ring. There are also instances of Walton getting frustrated with the workers for not putting on a better match. However, when Walton would say that a match was one for the purists, that acknowledges the (small) portion of the audience who valued ringwork over shenanigans . All this crap about Walton educating British viewers to be a higher class of fan is pompous. And harkening everything back to American-whatever is jingoism. Look at a French audience from a 50s match where a French guy is fighting a foreign heel. The crowd, probably some of them already drunk, are fired up and on the verge of fighting with the workers not because of the great Catch aesthetic but because they're being worked. I'm sure there were an element of fans who preferred pure Catch and hated the brawling and all of the gimmicks, but that element were clearly in the minority. You are dismissive of brawling, fine, whatever, but you keep painting these false narratives. McManus vs. Pallo was one of the biggest feuds of the 60s in Britain. The work in the FA Cup match pales in comparison to the Jacky Corn vs. Bill Howes match. It's not bad, but I am certain everyone who's seen the footage would argue with me. There's no question, though, that McManus and Pallo were the draw. The reason for that is obvious. It's got nothing to do with projecting American notions onto jack. A large portion of the British audience wanted to see Catweazle not Alan Serjeant. It's okay. It's just want way things are. It's the same reason why more people enjoy blockbusters movies than foreign films. You missed the point on the great matches comment. I didn't say that there aren't any great Catch matches. My point was that the match layout isn't orientated towards the type of structures and match layouts that new fans are used to. In order to help fans who are struggling to get into Catch, it helps to look at the issues from all sides instead of pretending like Americans can't appreciate anything that's different from an American-centric product.

Forget about the skill and artistry of getting out of a hold. That's not what new viewers are looking for. They're looking for ebbs and flows and a dramatic conclusion. It's like pimping a Fujiwara match that has amazing defensive but doesn't feature a dramatic KO finish. The average fan won't appreciate it. European matches of this era aren't built the same way that modern wrestling is. There is a lot to admire about the work, but if your focus is on great matches then it's a tougher sell. I imagine the average Catch worker in the 50 and 60s probably had the mentality of going out there and doing their shit and not necessarily working a great match, but apparently the promoters knew differently and there may have been more of that in the provinces where it was tougher to draw crowds back.

I am well aware of the fact that workers like Pete Roberts possessed finely honed skills. The argument is whether clean wrestling is the archetype. I would argue that it's the ideal, but it was far from archetypal. I don't believe that promoters would have wanted it to be the archetype. I don't think there's money in it being the archetype. I don't believe that everyone in the audience enjoyed it. There are countless examples of it being a hard sell on the television screen. I believe the average WoS viewer and the average fan in attendance wanted to cheer for their favorites and boo the heels. All of this rah, rah, well played technical stuff was a sideshow. Wrestling is built on the personalities. Even at the height of 50s catch, it's not the wrestling that's at the forefront but the masked gimmick workers. I agree that there are distinctly European moves and counter moves. Everyone knows that. The argument is that those moves were not the main draw. As for whether France was a dying territory or not, you can believe what you want to believe. I don't give two craps about comparisons to the US. At least there's an acknowledgement there that the territories died.

Very few workers have signature finishers. There a workers that have signature spot, but typically the workers have an arsenal of moves they use to score a pinfall or submission and sometimes they just use standard moves. Most finishes are BS. They workers lose their temper and it descends into a forearm smash contest and the match is thrown out somehow. Sometimes it went off air without a result because the match was still in progress. One thing that I struggled with when watching Catch was the rhythm and pacing of the falls. WoS was easier because of the rounds system, but the three fall system in Catch often led to long and ponderous matches that lacked the rhythm of lucha three fall matches where the formula is clear as day. The focus is from spot to spot rather than any kind of specific match layout. I'm not convinced they thought about matches in those terms.

Which is one style of wrestling. It's actually my favorite style of French and British wrestling, but to the original point, even the rise of Le Petit Prince, who was a phenomenal worker that's still not getting his due among wrestling fans, and the other great lightweights of the late 60s and early 70s doesn't mean that there wasn't a sharp decline in everything Catch related from the 50s to the end of the 60s. It's a beckon in a dying territory, the same way Grey, Saint and Breaks were in the UK, but Catch as an artform peaked in the 50s.

Le Petit Prince vs. Michel Saulnier is not the archetypal French catch bout. Saint vs. Faulkner isn't the archetypal British bout either. They are one style of wrestling within a myriad of different styles. There isn't a singular style that defines either country's wrestling. A middleweight lucha title bout doesn't define lucha libre just as a lightweight bout doesn't define Japanese wrestling.

Those are characteristics of light weight wrestlers not Catch as a whole.

The decline is noticeable in the footage itself. The average bout from the late 60s pales in comparison to the late 50s with regard to just about everything from the quality of the work to the overall atmosphere and level of crowd engagement. I don't think France was unique in this regard. I think you can drew parallels to the US and the state of wrestling in the 60s compared to the 50s. In both cases, wrestling was a huge draw during the early years of television but gradually faded. Japan was a little different because it took longer for post-war to recover and televisions weren't widely owned until the 1960s. They also benefitted from two next-generation superstars in Baba and Inoki. A deeper dive into the topic would look into what replaced catch as popular TV programming. I'm not sure what happened with US television, and I know next to zero about French TV. I'm simply assuming that catch gave way to something else the way that wrestling did in Japan.