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[1957-01-11-France] Luis El Gayo vs Jacky Corne


Jetlag

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A 23 minute contest in 2/3 falls. Luis El Gayo may also be „El Gayo“ or „El Gallo“ (it would fit his hair) or El Galio since the announcer keeps calling him something like that. One of the cool aspects to the old French footage is that there are a ton of Spanish wrestlers featured, so getting to a glimpse at that is really something special and something I never would have hoped to see, since the Spanish scene ended in the 1970s with a few later revival attempts failing. Jacky Corne is someone who shows up in matches all the way to the 1970s and 1980s, so it‘ll be cool to watch him for a nearly 30 year period.

This was the 60s lutte libre style that we saw in Cesca/Cantanzarro, both guys working holds while mixing in cool arm whips and headscissors. It wasn‘t quite at the transcendent level of Cesca/Catanzarro, as they didn‘t seem to have some things fully worked out, but they knew not to expose the business when a spot wasn‘t hit perfectly. El Gayo was right there working the French style, he had some graceful escapes, a cool headwringing snapmare and he did these awesome BattlARTS style 8 count near KOs when Corne started dropping the bombs on him. He also launched Corne to the outside with a cool throw from the ground in a nasty moment, then later took a big bump himself flying over the rope. Both guys were moving fast and really making their hip tosses and body slams look good. The first fall was going nice until Corne caught El Gayo with an awesomely timed powerbomb and then took him to town dropping him with some more before El Gayo would seemingly come back only to be caught. The second fall gets chippy with both guys really cracking each others jaws with thudding european uppercuts and elbows, the high quality audio and video that the French preserved really adding to each exchange. One of the cool things El Gayo does is he will move in like a Greco wrestler, grab a hammerlock behind the other guys back and use that to set up a move, in one case he uses it to drill Corne with a nasty tombstone piledriver which was pretty mindblowing even by 1957 French standards, unfortunately Corne didn‘t go to the Spanish school of selling and just kind of moved on in the match. I liked the feel that El Gayo was pushed to the limit and had to resort to making things chippy. After Corne threw him to the outside in a heated moment that lead to several cigarette smoking fans helping El Gayo back in the ring, both guys shook hands only for El Gayo to start throwing elbows and knees the next moment. Seconds later the Spanish wrestler had to resort to throwing a punch to the mid section, seemingly apologizing to the audience and being frustrated with himself for having to resort to such tactics. Once again, I really liked the rope running sequences and the finishes were good although I was hoping for the match to go a little deeper, I thought El Gayo was done a little dirty here although he did a great job telling the story of the match. Still, good shit and a threat to see.

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  • paul sosnowski changed the title to [1957-01-11-France] Luis El Gayo vs Jacky Corne
  • 1 year later...

I adored El Gayo in this. His character work was very subtle and smartly worked into the narrative of the match. He started well, staying one step ahead of Corn on every movement; hanging on to the hammerlock, escaping Corn’s headscissors attempts while busting out some awesomely innovative bearhug into move combos before losing the advantage to the craftly Corn and losing the fall. After that, he got more underhanded and while never fully cheating, he was more sneaky than the classy Jacky Corn, who replied with beastly hammer throws. Eat your heart out Tomohiro Ishii, this is how you throw an elbow. And his uppercuts were sublime, too. Luis El Gayo’s selling of the strikes was excellent as well. He’d fire some off himself but when he got rocked, we, the audience, knew it. The result of the second fall was surprising as Gayo fell once more to a Corn bridging pin. Obviously not every match is 50/50 and these results happen to establish hierarchy, which is valuable when exploring a time like this with seemingly no other data to give context, but it still shocked me. Corn offered his hand and Gayo shook it with grace. The great character work continued until the very end. And oh, before I forget, RIPDCORD TOMBSTONE! ****

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