French catch

[David Mantell]

On 6/2/2026 at 3:50 AM, Scarletlikesounds said:

So David, I know this is probably a hard question to answer given youve watched so much, but could I have some catch recs? Im relatively new to the style, but so far Inca Peruano, Gilbert Leduc & Anton Tejero have been my favorites.

My favourite bout is Le Petit Prince Vs Michel Saulnier from 1969 (even though the TV station spliced images of old paintings over bits of it.)

Some other favourites of mine include the masked Zarak (Dave Larsen) late period catcheur Prince Zéfy, sneaky heels Josef El Ars and Black Shadow, mid 70s masked wrestler Le Samourai, 60s Greek lightweight star Vasilios Montopolous early 90s young heel champion Eric Lacroix and Robert Gastel whom I just posted.  Spanish high flyer Angelito, Albert Sanniez particularly later on as a Jim Breaks style "horrid little man" heel. The best bit of Flesh Gordon's career is his tag team with the older Walter Bordes circa 1983-1985.  Oh yes and I've got a soft spot for Mammouth Siki, a sort of 70s French version of Junkyard Dog.

[Scarletlikesounds]

Thank you! That'll give me a lot to look into

[David Mantell]

You'll  find pretty much all of it on this thread.

[ohtani's jacket]

16 hours ago, David Mantell said:

My favourite bout is Le Petit Prince Vs Michel Saulnier from 1969(even though the TV station spliced images of old paintings over bits of it.

Some other favourites of mine include the masked Zarak (Dave Larsen) late period catcheur Prince Zéfy, sneaky heels Josef El Ars and Black Shadow, mid 70s masked wrestler Le Samourai, 60s Greek lightweight star Vasilios Montopolous early 90s young heel champion Eric Lacroix and Robert Gastel whom I just posted.  Spanish high flyer Angelito, Albert Sanniez particularly later on as a Jim Breaks style "horrid little man" heel. The best bit of Flesh Gordon's career is his tag team with the older Walter Bordes circa 1983-1985.  Oh yes and I've got a soft spot for Mammoth Siki, a sort of 70s French version of Junkyard Dog.

It amazes me that you bang the drum for technical wrestling over and over again and recommend a bunch of kitsch stuff. What's next, you're gonna recommend the swimming pool matches?

To the original poster, I recommend you visit https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/ where the matches were originally reviewed and follow Matt and Sebastian's reviews, along with David here. 

[David Mantell]

23 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

It amazes me that you bang the drum for technical wrestling over and over again and recommend a bunch of kitsch stuff. What's next, you're gonna recommend the swimming pool matches?

I can appreciate other stuff besides technical wrestling (although I put a technical bout at the top of my list and clearly had another good one on my mind when I mentioned Angelito and Sanniez together - viz 1977) as they tended not to televise so many of these as Britain, focusing instead on the half hour long tag matches. Most clean bouts seem to have been relegated to dark matches earlier in the night -;It's a pity we didn't get more screenings of bouts like Antonio Pereira Vs Jean Claude Bordeaux 1976.

About the only vaguely kitsch thing on that list was Siki and I left him til last as a guilty pleasure.  The bit of Gordon's career I highlighted you yourself have praised and hell even El-P circa 2014 spoke well (on the Worst Wrestler thread) of Prince Zéfy (and faux cowboy Jessy Texas).

No, I didn't mention any catch á l'eau  matches as it happens (if I had to pick one I'd go for the Mercier brothers. Vs Albert Sanniez & Mario Petrolini on 1984 La Dernière Manchette). They were just another place to do shows and the water had little impact either way on match quality.  Full swimming pools with a floating ring were as normal to the French as a ring standing atop a swimming pool boarded up for the winter was in Britain.

[David Mantell]

On 5/10/2026 at 5:43 AM, Scarletlikesounds said:

Also, weird thing I've noticed but this French stuff translates really differently culturally, because the heels often come off as the faces to me- like every match poor bollet or tejero just wants to wrestle and these gremlins keep refusing to wrestle them and constantly evading them and then they tie them up in the ropes and try to beat on them when theyre helpless before abusing their rightful anger to throw them out of the ring- such dastardly behavior! for shame Buyten, for shame.

Just noticed this.

Not really how I read it.  It starts either with Les Méchants using fouls from the start or else introducing the fouls gradually about 10 minutes in after Les Bons are shown to have the upper hand at clean scientific wrestling. At this point les Méchants get their heat and have a good long run of dominance until Les Bons score the hot tag.

So far, so American. The rope tieing etc generally occurs during the hot tag as retaliation for long persistent fouling by the heels earlier in the bout.  In Britain the ropes spot was frowned on on ITV although subtler retaliation was, according to Kent Walton, allowed for by referees up to a point. In S4C in Wales on Reslo, especially during tag matches with promoter Orig Williams as senior blue eye, it was allowed and commonly took place as a more extreme form of said retaliation.  Referees would allow a certain amount then go "OK boys (or girls) that's enough)" and the duly chastened heel would be released. 

In France or to some extent in Germany/Austria (especially Schurli Blemenschutz tag matches at the Vienna Heumarkt), the same referee who had failed to notice Les Méchants employing all sorts of dreadful Lutte Irregulière would suddenly put their Petty Officialdom hat on and read Les Bons the Riot Act for their rope related retaliation.  This on top of everything else (and starting with Michel Saulnier 8n the late 70s there would be quite a bit of Everything Else) would firmly establish Monsieur L'Arbitre as a Danny Davis style Arbitre Méchant in the minds of both  Les Bons and La Publique, resulting in Bons such as Guy Mercier applying Stone Cold-esque retribution to the wretched referee, using them as a battering ram on the hogtied heels.  Sometimes this would and still does get Les Bons disqualified, a finish which seems to play into a certain French cynicism of the lack of justice in life and The System.

Some tougher referees like Roger Delaporte, Martial in the 60s and even early 70s lady referee Babette Carol would actually administer the retribution themselves to the heels and be hugely popular amongst fans for doing so..  Other clearly honest referees like the fussy but principled Charley Bollet were generally left unmolested.  But obviously bent refs like Saulnier, Otto Weiss and the supremely heelish Louis Deblameque (on regional FR3 wrestling 1982-1987) got regular comeuppances.  One such heel referee Didier Gapp later moved to the CWA and established himself as more of a "jobsworth" referee. Hilariously, German/Austrian fans saw him as a comic icon, often cheering "Didi" 

At least that's how the logic of it all seems to me.  We really need a native French fan who grew up with all this to explain it properly.

Incidentally Andre The Giant was a BIG FAN of the tied up heels spot and often during his Bobby Heenan phase got himself tangled in the ropes, most memorably at Wrestlemanias 4:and 6.

[David Mantell]

On 5/10/2020 at 1:38 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

Le Bourreau de Bethune vs. Gilbert Leduc (aired 2/5/59)

This was already in circulation, but I hadn't seen it in years and back then I didn't have a good grasp of who Leduc was. I thought the opening of this was brilliant. Le Bourreau de Bethune was a hell of a lot better than most guys who done a mask. It was like watching Villano III compared to most of the masked wrestlers I've seen so far. Leduc was fantastic as well. Naturally, it couldn't last. I was kind of hoping that Le Bourreau de Bethune would bloody Leduc, but they did some sort of injury angle where Leduc either had an abdominal issue or some broken ribs. The match screamed to a grinding halt, but it was surreal to see Leduc laid out like that, and a testament to how big a player Le Bourreau de Bethune was during the height of catch's popularity. 

Jacques Ducrez, Le Borreau de Bethune - the Guillotine Operator of Bethune, heel nemesis of l'Ange Blanc in the Masked good guy Vs Masked bad guy feud the was French TV Catch's first major hit. Dressed in red rather than black to oppose l'Ange in white. Unlike Britain where hangmen like Albert Pierre point were celebrities who even owned their own pubs, in France -where the last public guillotining was just 20 years before this match- being part of the chop squad was seen as a lowly disreputable profession, barely one up above garbage collection. Just the sort of job for a nasty slimy Méchant who needs to hide his face.

Here he faces WON HOF nominee and inventor of the Toupie (and yes, that's him doing one in the video thumbnail) Gilbert LeDuc. This is a much younger LeDuc than we e watched on here in the past, right back in his prime.

Ducrez has a red cape to match his mask (and hide the blood stains from the day job, I guess.). He gets some good sharp amdrags but can't keep Gilbert down in the guard  fire more than a split second. He seems to be winning a double interlock test of strength until LeDuc scissors on one arm by the bicep and pulls it away. Borreau gets a top wristlock but Gilbert uses the distinctive French Scisseaux Volees takedown that in Britain just got you thrown off to the floor. Borrreau kips out and gets another double interlock. This time Gilbert picks off one side with a foot, rolls backwards to twist and arm like Steve Grey on the British thread.  He soon has BDB down in the guard armlock. Jacques bridges up and throws Gilbert off but he rolls through.  A third full Interlock sees Gilbert get upside down to to Ducrez  in a handstand with his feet up in the crossed headscissors ready for the Toupie.  The first one comes off but Follow up attempts are shrugged off.  Borreaux  gets a half interlock, twists so LeDuc has to roll through, gets an armhank on Gilbert and maintain,s it some time from Gilbert on the mat to standing. Eventually Gilbert goes up in his toupie and rolls up his arm  to get free.  Borreaux gets a couple of good long throws and Gilbert gets a spinning single legdive that commentator Maurice Durand calls "very pretty". Gilbert still has the leg, making a leglock of it.  He switches to what looks like a botched Indian Death lock with only one leg trapped.  Ducrez tries to sit up but Gilbert chops him down like Flair.   Eventually Borrreau takes a leaf out of Him Breaks' book 22 years later and hairpulls out of the hold (the same first foul by the heels in both this weekend's bouts).   He's not as good at hiding it as Jimmy Breaks and gets a ticking off from Monsieur L'Arbitre.  Durand points out that as a masked man, Le Borreaux doesn't have to worry about HIS hair getting pulled!  Unfazed, Ducrez gets a quick interlock into cross armed grovit. He soon has LeDuc on his back from the hold.  LeDuc focuses on onecstm and, kipping up, gets an armbar on it. He tries to make it into a back hammerlock but Ducrez is too powerful and sauntes away.  Now it's the masked man's turn to get a legdive - into a toe and ankle in the guard switching to a different toe/ankle hold. The crowd are on an emotional down - one calls for la Cagoule to be ripped off, another for un Manchette. Instead LeDuc spiked-boots Ducrez off by his hooded head.  The fan gets their Manchettes - c/o Le Borreau!  Gilbert returns fire and it looks like the science is over for now.  But a  top wristlock battle is decisively won by Bethune's finest beheader.  Then Gilbert gets a half interlock into forced backwards roll  into guard armlock and kneedrops the arm, twisting on the bicep.  Le Borreau curls up and gets a headscissors on Gilbert, turning him. Into the guard and breaking  the armlock.  Gilbert turns the hold upright and tries for the escape Toupie so le B de B capsizes it sideways. Gilbert gets the scissor upright again and tries again but overbalances.  Take 3 and it's definitely Ducrez's doing, he turns over and afterwards cranks on Gilbert's neck.  After that, Gilbert changes tack and more or less pulls his head out the scissors, kneels on the cross legs and gives le Borreau a good solid Manchette, with an extra one any time  the hooded man sits up.  LeDuc rolls off and comes back with Manchettes.  Eventually LeDuc hiptosses out and gets a figure four top wristlock.But Le Borreau gets the advantage and soon he has Le Dec down in the same hold, a figure four top armlock.  Le Duc gets upright.twists the arms round and ends with an armbar with which he gives a high whip and somersault bump.  After some more Manchettes, Bethune's top chopper tries crushing LeDuc on the ropes but L'Arbitre will have none of it and pulls him off.  Manchettes have LeDuc down for 5,,even 8 one time.  One blow clocks LeDuc straight over the skull.  Another time Borreaux headbutts with the head he (unlike his customers) still has. Gilbert fights back with Manchettes and a rear snapmare.  A dropkick and a double legs slingshot into the top rope. Le Borreau regains his heat by pitching LeDuc over the top rope. Battle Royals  didn't exist on this side of the Atlantic in 1959 (did America have them yet?) so that wins the masked man nothing.  Seconds scoop up LeDuc and dump him back in the ring but he's lost his momentum from his comeback.  Le Borreau gets a gorilla press to make Hellwig green with envy, then drop him stomach first on one knee. The count reaches 10 and it's a KNOCKOUT. 

Oddly enough this only counts as one fall unlike Britain. Seconds tend to LeDuc as Le Borreau marches around the ring like a brutal warrior robot.

Astonishingly with only a few minutes of clip left a second fall starts. Borreaux gets to work on LeDuc again, soon flooring him.  It's a straight up brawl if not a straight-up one sided punishment beating.   LeDuc is a fall behind and going down for counts of 5 or 6.  Finally Le Borreaux repeats his gorilla press and over knee stomachbreaker - TWICE. This time L'Arbitre ends the count early.  Ducrez puts his red cloak back on, the winner Two Knockouts to nil. Police pile into ringside to stop a riot as Le Borreau struts about.

Some good technical work for 10 to 15 minutes, then a brawl and finally - appropriately for un Borrreau - an execution. Two KOs to nil in a singles bout.

 

[Phil Lions]

4 hours ago, David Mantell said:

Jacques Ducrez, Le Borreau de Bethune - the Guillotine Operator of Bethune, heel nemesis of l'Ange Blanc in the Masked good guy Vs Masked bad guy feud the was French TV Catch's first major hit. 

Here he faces WON HOF nominee and inventor of the Toupie (and yes, that's him doing one in the video thumbnail) Gilbert LeDuc.

That narrative of Blanc and Bethune being some big TV rivals is something that often gets mentioned in French articles about catch and is complete nonsense. They worked for rival promotions (Goldstein's and Durand's respectively). Never wrestled each other on TV. L'Homme Masque was the big L'Ange Blanc rival, not Le Borreau de Bethune. As a matter of fact, Goldstein sued Durand, before Bethune ever appeared on TV, because he felt Bethune was a L'Homme Masque rip off (which he was). Eventually, when Blanc switched sides, Blanc and Bethune did work together on non-televised events, but that was after Blanc had unmasked.

That Leduc/Bethune match is a great example of how to make a new top heel - by having him dominate the top babyface of the promotion in his TV debut to a point where the babyface has to be helped to the back. It worked like a charm in that case. The network, reportedly, received more than 200 phone calls by viewers asking about Leduc's condition. The match was a real turning point for the Durand promotion (well, the Durand/Leduc/Gastel/Montourcy promotion if are to be precise since they were all business partners, which is something that I've learned only within the past few months).

I don't know about Leduc being the inventor of the toupie. May be, may be not. The earliest footage of anyone doing the move is actually of Frank Sexton in Paris in January 1950 (which is nine months earlier than the earliest footage of Leduc doing it). I haven't done a deep dive into the newspapers to see if Leduc was doing it before that though so it is possible.

Also, it's Leduc. Not LeDuc. Not sure where that spelling popped up from originally, but it's not correct.

[David Mantell]

On 6/5/2026 at 11:53 PM, Phil Lions said:

That Leduc/Bethune match is a great example of how to make a new top heel - by having him dominate the top babyface of the promotion in his TV debut to a point where the babyface has to be helped to the back

Well yes. That is the idea of the Knockout finish. The only odd thing is that we get a 2 KO (one 10 count, one TKO) finish. Normally in Europe in a singles match, the 10 count would finish it without recourse to a second fall.

Still it is more definitive that a falls/submissions finish. Which was my point about knockouts (that got scoffed at by certain people 2 years ago.)

[ohtani's jacket]

You can't compare the finish to Leduc/Le Bourreau de Bethune to the cheap, poorly executed, ineffectual finishes you're talking about. I'm fairly certain those smart people who scoffed at you understand that KO finishes can be effective when done right. Unfortunately, British wrestling had many weak finishes that hurt the overall quality of the matches. It's a reality that you have to factor in when assessing the matches, and has nothing to do with the great finish to this match. 

 

[David Mantell]

You called it "an injury angle." Durand may well have said something about an injury (I'd have to check) but it was a cut and dry Two Knockouts finish, the first where the count reached ten, the second where the ref aborted the count and called the seconds earlier. Either one of those finishes were par for the course across Europe. 

In fairness, Two Knockouts in a singles match and a KO only counting as one fall and Borreau having to TWICE do his devastating gorilla press into  knee backbreaker (ex WWF wrestlers should be grateful Warrior just dropped them on the mat.) to get the win is a new one on me, whereas to or a French audience in 1959 a two knockouts singles match was perfectly normal.

Also I think we've all seen lots of dodgy pinfalls in our time. The dimple drape-yourself-across crosspress in American wrestling has made pinning fairly meaningless.

[ohtani's jacket]

I don't know what the official result of the Leduc match was, but he couldn't come out of the corner for the next round despite being given an extra minute's rest. In my books that's an injury finish. Is it a KO? I dunno. Does it matter? He isn't technically knocked out, but he can't answer the count because of the injury. Whatever it is, it's devastating. The audience were cleared shocked, both at the venue at at home. It's shocking because you don't expect to see Leduc manhandled like that. You can't pretend that it was common place. If it were common place, it wouldn't have received that sort of reaction. Was it more effective than Le Borreau de Bethune scoring two falls over Leduc and winning the bout? Maybe. Either way it would have been a shock. The reality is that Leduc losing this way gives him an out of not having lost by pin or submission. It gets Le Borreau de Bethune over while helping Leduc save face. It's classic booking not some magic European formula. 

Again, for all this talk about technical wrestling, you're once more showing you love for brutality. Come over to the dark side. 

[David Mantell]

6 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

I don't know what the official result of the Leduc match was, but he couldn't come out of the corner for the next round despite being given an extra minute's rest. In my books that's an injury finish. Is it a KO? I dunno. Does it matter? He isn't technically knocked out, but he can't answer the count because of the injury. Whatever it is, it's devastating. The audience were cleared shocked, both at the venue at at home. It's shocking because you don't expect to see Leduc manhandled like that. You can't pretend that it was common place. If it were common place, it wouldn't have received that sort of reaction. Was it more effective than Le Borreau de Bethune scoring two falls over Leduc and winning the bout? Maybe. Either way it would have been a shock. The reality is that Leduc losing this way gives him an out of not having lost by pin or submission. It gets Le Borreau de Bethune over while helping Leduc save face. It's classic booking not some magic European formula. 

Again, for all this talk about technical wrestling, you're once more showing you love for brutality. Come over to the dark side. 

It's two knockouts the same way Clayton Thompson Vs Tony St Clair in 1967 is two submissions. That wasn't an "injury finish" either (even if Kent Walton does go on about an ankle injury having ended Tony's football career.)

Two quick successive Knockouts doesn't get Leduc an Out from anything whatsoever, any more than two quick successive Submissions got Tony StClair an Out from anything

[ohtani's jacket]

Anytime you're too injured to continue it's an out. That's why Joint Promotions bookers ran the finish over and over again. This idea you have about knockout finishes is delulu, or whatever it is the kids say these days. 

[David Mantell]

7 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Anytime you're too injured to continue it's an out.  

So if Vader power bombed and Pinned some enhancement talent and they had to scrape him up off the canvas and the commentators were speculating about him having a broken back, that's an Out for the enhancement talent?

[ohtani's jacket]

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

So if Vader power bombed and Pinned some enhancement talent and they had to scrape him up off the canvas and the commentators were speculating about him having a broken back, that's an Out for the enhancement talent?

We are not talking about squash matches. We're talking about matches where they don't want one wrestler to go over the other cleanly. 

I will say this about knockouts, though. The ones in the 40s and 50s clips are much better than the KO finishes from later on. There are only a handful of British wrestlers that I could convincingly believe could deliver a knockout to another wrestler in the same manner. Pat Roach, Kendo Nagasaki, Fit Finlay. That's about it. 

[David Mantell]

1 hour ago, ohtani's jacket said:

We are not talking about squash matches. We're talking about matches where they don't want one wrestler to go over the other cleanly. 

Knockouts in Europe were considered as clean a way to win as pinfall/submission.

1 hour ago, ohtani's jacket said:

We are not talking about squash matches.

Vader's not the greatest example but what holds true for knockout wins can apply to submission wins (Clayton Thompson Vs Tony StClair) or pinfall wins. 

Borreau/Leduc and Thompson/ StClair are the same finish except for the actual type of score.  Wrestler uses his signature move to score the opener and in the process cause a lot of damage so he gets a quick straight second.

[ohtani's jacket]

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

Knockouts in Europe were considered as clean a way to win as pinfall/submission.

Vader's not the greatest example but what holds true for knockout wins can apply to submission wins (Clayton Thompson Vs Tony StClair) or pinfall wins. 

Borreau/Leduc and Thompson/ StClair are the same finish except for the actual type of score.  Wrestler uses his signature move to score the opener and in the process cause a lot of damage so he gets a quick straight second.

Borreau/Leduc and Thompson/St. Clair are like chalk and cheese. IIRC, Thompson vs. St. Clair is a catchweight contest. It isn't realistic in that context for Thompson to defeat St. Clair, so they have to think of a polite way for St. Clair to win without making Thompson look bad. I can't remember if Thompson held a championship bout at the time, but he was one of the top wrestlers in his weight class. It's a nice little finish where everyone can say hard luck and carry on with their lives. I don't really consider it to be an out.

Borreau/Leduc was unequivocally an out because Leduc put Borreau over in a way where he could claim he was injured and demand a rematch when healthy. He could even claim foul play if they wanted to go down that route. There's nothing clean about that victory, though it is decisive. 

Knockouts can be clean finishes, but this wasn't one of them. And your typical injury finish on WoS is about as far from clean as Giant Haystacks' drawers. Having said that, it was a finish they used a lot, so I imagine most viewers were used to it. But was it ever good? Rarely. I actually think they were limited in how they could apply the KO finishes since ITV didn't allow an excessive amount of violence and so flying over the top rope and injuring yourself led to a lot of the finishes rather than forearm smash knocking someone unconscious. 

[David Mantell]

4 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

It isn't realistic in that context for Thompson to defeat St. Clair, so they have to think of a polite way for St. Clair to win without making Thompson look bad.

It was considered perfectly realistic for Thompson to defeat StClair because he was a vastly more skilled and experienced wrestler (and the British Middleweight champion) and the crowd were aware of that.  Which is why a vocal section of the live crowd gravitated to Tony as the clearly perceived underdog, despite his size advantage which,so the bout demonstrated, was scant defence against a technical master like Thompson 

4 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Leduc put Borreau over in a way where he could claim he was injured and demand a rematch when healthy. He could even claim foul play if they wanted to go down that route

Borreau injured Leduc inasmuch he DESTROYED him with a legal and devastating move, twice.  Both Leduc and StClair might be expected to carry (kayfabe) after effects that they might have to publicly sell for some time after  their respective matches.  Neither would have any recourse to claiming foul play as they were each wiped out with a devastating move (Clay's [American] Figure Four Leglock, Borreau's gorilla press and stomachbreaker).

The only difference between Borreau and Clay was that Borreaux was a brutal sadistic Méchant En Cagoul while Clay was at that point a clean scientific class act (even if he later flirted with being a Masked Villain as the Exorcist in 1974-1975.)

In between those two poles, you had Billy Robinson, a familiar figure on both sides of the Channel/Manchester, clearly a scientific wizard and nominally a blue eye- yet something of a Dirty Harry anti hero who (much like his real life counterpart) admitted to enjoying hurting opponents , rather enjoyed getting into a dirty wrestling scrap (his eyes like up with glee when Roy Bull Davies fouls him in The Wrestlers in 1967) and was known to be friends outside the ring with the man behind Kendo Nagasaki's mask.  He brutalised Lee Bronson in 1978 to the point where Kent Walton was getting decidely uncomfortable until Robinson cut things short and scored the one required fall.

Destroying an opponent and so getting your two falls two submissions or knockout. Giant Haystacks finishing people off with a guillotine elbow as the climax of continuous movement was fair game and another one biting the dust, him doing it on a fallen opponent after a stopping - or doing it between rounds or before/after a match- was not and would earn him penalisation.

4 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

flying over the top rope and injuring yourself led to a lot of the finishes rather than forearm smash knocking someone unconscious

A lot of them were done with some sort of throwing move that either sent the opponent to ringside so hard that, through a combination of distance thrown and impact ("now what sort of a landing has X had?") they could not return in the the ring in their allotted ten seconds. There was the barest ghost of a no throwing rule in the rule against dumping over the ropes at point blank range (penalty one public warning plus no count for the opponent) but flinging your opponent out from a distance was clean and legal.

[ohtani's jacket]

Nobody thought Thompson was going to beat St. Clair in that bout except for Thompson's mother. A draw would have been a good result for Thompson. It's not a matter of technical skill or a reflection on Thompson's ability. It's the perception that the promoters created about the weight classes. Lighter wrestlers weren't supposed to beat heavier wrestlers. That's why they "gained" weight to move up a class. If you want to call St. Clair's victory an upset then yes, the injury was an out. I don't consider it an out since I don't think there was any way Thompson was winning, and I don't think they would have booked Thompson to beat St. Clair in the first place since it doesn't make any sense and doesn't help business. The only way I could see Thompson winning was if they were moving him up a class and wanted to give him an extra push, but I'm not sure they'd use a rookie to put him over. The entire point of the match was to give the new kid a rub without making Thompson look bad. It's so commonplace that you don't batter an eyelid. The Leduc match, on the other hand, was completely out of the ordinary. 

There's a difference between destroying an opponent with two KOs and a typical injury finish. No one is arguing that the former isn't legitimate. You can't seem to distinguish the difference. I don't know why. If you watch the Leduc match properly, you will see the case for foul play. In any event, it's a great finish and there's no reason to turn it into a thesis on why everyone is wrong about the finishes in WoS. They're not even connected. I would be extremely surprised if any booker, or worker, in the UK ever had the finish to that Leduc match in mind when they came up with some cheap way to finish the match without jobbing. 

[David Mantell]

7 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Nobody thought Thompson was going to beat St. Clair in that bout except for Thompson's mother. A draw would have been a good result for Thompson. It's not a matter of technical skill or a reflection on Thompson's ability. It's the perception that the promoters created about the weight classes. Lighter wrestlers weren't supposed to beat heavier wrestlers. That's why they "gained" weight to move up a class.

Sorry, but NO.  Thompson was totally perceived as the dominant one going in and his 2-0 win was the predictable finish.  Tony's size advantage was his faint hope. Smaller more experienced top-skilled wrestlers often best physically bigger newbies eg Johnny Saint Vs Robbie Brookside1987 except Robbie got a consolation fall and didn't get a body part mangled.  British fans perceived the young kid (Tony in. '67, Robbie in '87) to be the underdog.

Kent Walton makes it clear he sees Clay as having the advantage and that Clay's win is predictable.  The fans cheering "come on Tony" because they see him as the underdog.  One or two even boo Clay when he gets his submissions (most clap respectfully)

7 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

. If you want to call St. Clair's victory an upset then yes, the injury was an out. I don't consider it an out since I don't think there was any way Thompson was winning, and I don't think they would have booked Thompson to beat St. Clair in the first place since it doesn't make any sense and doesn't help business. The only way I could see Thompson winning was if they were moving him up a class and wanted to give him an extra push, but I'm not sure they'd use a rookie to put him over. The entire point of the match was to give the new kid a rub without making Thompson look bad. It'

Hang on, in case you've forgotten, CLAYTON THOMPSON WON!!! Two straight submissions, the first of which left Tony StClair with an injured leg which Clayton then capitalised on for a quick straight second.

https://m.vk.com/video498684816_456239061

As you said yourself two years ago "Tony does well for a 20 year old, but this is all about Clay."

7 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

. If you watch the Leduc match properly, you will see the case for foul play.

Borreau does some fouls along the way - hair pulls etc - but his big finish, with the three gorilla presses into stomachbreakers, is legitimate and devastating.

[ohtani's jacket]

Sorry, I was mistaken about the Thompson/St. Clair match. I thought it was brought up as an example of a straight fall finish due to an injury and misremembered it completely.

Mistakes aside, I still don't see the comparison. The only comparison I can see is that they're both straight fall, 2-0 victories. You seem to be arguing that myself and others would only consider the two submission victory as legitimate, but that was never the argument. The argument was about the execution of the KO finish. I think everyone can agree that the Leduc finish is well-booked. I think it's better than the finish to Thompson/St. Clair, which is fairly standard. Thompson/St. Clair isn't an injury finish or a KO finish, so there's not a lot to compare. Yes, it's effectively the same result, but one is significantly more dramatic than the other.

I think Leduc gets an out for the injured "belly." I don't know whether it was his ribs or not. The commentator says he has a cut above the eye. He gets thrown over the top rope by the hair prior to the first finish, and is punched multiple times during the second fall. It's a beating, and a rather stunning one as far a the crowd is concerned. The commentator keeps harping on about the violence. Calling it an out makes it seem cheap, which I don't want to accuse it of being, but it definitely sets up the possibility of a rematch, and I don' think it makes Leduc look weak in any shape or form. 

A lot of the injury finishes in WoS are sold as unlucky. It's a different type of finisher. Off the top of my head, the only thing I remember being similar to Borreau's move in terms of impact is Kendo's finisher.  

[David Mantell]

4 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

The only comparison I can see is that they're both straight fall, 2-0 victories.

In which the winner uses a big destructive finisher for the first score that makes the loser easy pickings for a quick straight second (which he seems in no fit state to come out the corner for anyway.)

4 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

I think Leduc gets an out for the injured "belly."

Since it was the object of the Stomachbreaker finishing move, which the referee treated as perfectly legal, I wouldn't call that an out

In America, Borreau would just have draped himself across Leduc for a pinfall each time.

[David Mantell]

So anyway, the two knockouts finish.  I'm on holiday in Jerusalem in Israel and I had a think about this in the Inbal Hotel Pool today.

I'm guessing the French rules had some American influence (see also no rounds). Two straight count outs in an American best of three falls would be unremarkable except they would not change a title on that (In America knockout moves are validated with a pin instead of a standing 10 count as followdowns are legal in America but banned in traditional European wrestling).

Also perhaps some French fans were of similar mind to OJ and complained to promoters about "dodgy" Knockouts so Knockouts were made Two Required like Falls or Submissions to cut down on "flukes".

[Phil Lions]

44 minutes ago, David Mantell said:

I'm guessing the French rules had some American influence (see also no rounds).

There's no need to guess about that. The French rules were definitely based on the American rules. That was the intention from the very start. They did have some slight differences initially though, for example being able to win the match on points (if there was no winner within the time limit), but that was eventually dropped (I wanna say at some point in the mid 1950s but I'd have to doublecheck).

FFL, the major governing body for wrestling (amateur and pro) in France at the time, actually officially changed the format of the French catch matches to 5-minute rounds in September 1952, but there was a lot of pushback and the decision was quickly reversed.