[1972-01-17-France] Rene Lasartesse vs Franz van Buyten

[Jetlag]

  I got stupidly excited when I saw this match in the archives. Two guys who had an awesome match series in the 1980s (when Franz was nearing 50 and had recovered from a paralyzing back injury, while Lasartesse was looking like a corpse) fighting each other in their prime, what could go wrong? However, the match was lacking focus, and didn‘t play to either guys strength. They were noticeably struggling to kill time, so I guess they did get wiser with age. Still, there was plenty to be enjoyed here: the match takes place in a ring that is floating in a swimming pool, and they send the wrestlers there in tiny little boats while a young Atsushi Onita was furiously taking notes at ringside. Of course the whole match was building to someone getting thrown into the water. For something that could have been a light hearted spectacle, the match was quite violent. After some initial feeling out, Lasartesse quickly took over the match and started working over van Buyten's throat with nasty stomps and elbows. He also busted out plenty of offense, too much offense really, he uncorked like 5 Tombstone Piledrivers on Franz which no matter how much they tried to cover up the following pinfalls should have ended the match. Also, Lasartesse is notorious for not being very good at the actual wrestling and his suplexes looked like shit. Once Franz made his comeback, a heel ref got involved to kill more time. Even when Lasartesse hit the dreaded diving knee to Franz, he couldn‘t end the match. It‘s very strange for a match between two guys who stood out before working no frills story driven matches to suffer from 2019isms such as too many finishers, but here we were. At least we got to see Franz hitting his cool in-ring topes and throwing the evil referee headfirst into the shallow pool.