[1957-01-17-France] Joachim La Barba vs Inca Peruano

[Jetlag]

A 30 minute contest 2/3 falls contest, JIP about 7 minutes into it and both guys are already at each others throats. It‘s a battle between rather mysterious figures. We‘ve seen Inca Peruano before as a bumping rudo, although he is in the tecnico role here. Joachim La Barba is mentioned as „The terrible champion of Mexico“ on a fanpage. Genickbruch.com lists him wrestling in Germany as „Abdul Khan“ and in Mexico as „Pancho Zapata“. No guarantee about these facts since there was also another luchador named Pancho Zapata. I really wonder about the background of Inca Peruano – is he actually Peruvian? A Mexican worker with an Inca gimmick? Was he trained in France? No matter where he came from, he shows up a lot in this footage and is clearly a great worker.

This was an absolute slugfest. The kind of match you‘d never see on British or German TV at this point. But here, the announcer was cackling like a madman at these two trying to put some serious hurt on each other. Both guys were really laying in those trademark European uppercuts, cracking each others ribs with thudding kicks and using holds so they could hit the other guy from a safe position. Joachim La Barba was an absolute beast here, throwing punches to the back of the head, constantly stepping on his opponent, walloping him with kicks. At one point, he was driving knees into Inca while holding on to the ropes like a PRIDE fight. He came across as a guy it really sucks to fight, and Peruano's stoic selling performance enhanced the grittiness of the match. Between beating on each other, they work the mat (usually leading to more shots on the ground) and other nifty spots. One of the things they do that you can‘t just do in modern wrestling anymore is the use of the ropes, which were really loose to allow for tying up spots. The „tie up the other guy as revenge“ spot is a staple of German wrestling, but they did some pretty unique shit here. Peruano takes the horrifying looking spill into the ropes where he gets his head tied up and is nearly strangled, later he uses the ropes to hit several Toyota style dropkicks to Joachim's chest, there is also a really swank and well timed head scissor over the ropes. I am absolutely amazed how workers from nearly 70 years ago find unique twists on spots we‘ve seen plenty of times in other matches, such as said rope trickery or La Barba unexpectedly landing on the rope when they went through the classic „pull them off his torso-armbar“ sequence. Also, there is a real sense of bomb throwing towards the end of the match. Both guys hit some flying moves off the top rope which set up the finishes to the falls, and one guy takes a big missed back bump that is put over in a big way. I especially liked how they seemingly improvised Inca Peruano who was slow to get to the rope working a fun cutoff before Barba could catch him.

Even though this was by far the least pretty of all the matches from France we‘ve seen so far, this was a baffling and amazing match, great mix of a violent fight and some pretty unique wrestling, with state of the art finishes.