This was a commissioned review via longtime blog supporter @beenthrifty on twitter. You too have the ability to pay for me to watch and then write about wrestling matches of your choice (i could write about them without watching them, if you really wanted, just go on vibes alone) over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. Going price is $5/match, and a bonus $3 if you’re going to clearly request something I’m going to hate, which none of you have done in a while.
This was a Hair vs. Hair match.
Unfortunately, this is not the same Batman as one might find in CAW matches adjacent to some reviews I did once upon a time. He is also not in a mask at all, simply a cape and a sort of familiar get up, leaving one with the thought that it’s an old Shutdown Fullcast bit brought into real life, decades early, the joke of referring to superheroes named Batman or Aquaman or Superman in the way that you would talk about your neighbor named like Goldman or Spellman or something like that. No pause between the previous letter and “man” at all.
The problem with the French Catch footage that I ran into last time is still there, which is that without graphics (it is a recording from 1967, I am not blaming anyone for this) and so it is hard sometimes to differentiate people in an era where most gear was fairly similar and in a contest where nobody has any real outstanding physical characteristics. The Blousons Noirs are easy to pick out initially, if one is willing to do a second’s worth of translation work, but then they remove the jackets to wrestle, and the only person immediately identifiable is our guy Batman. You pay attention and eventually, things become clear as you listen to commentary for the names and notice physical features at the same time and put things together, but for anyone who likes to watch along after I publish a review of a match, it’s the sort of slight barrier to entry that I feel warrants mentioning.
(Interestingly in digging up more information here, I found that Blousons Noirs is also the name of a French band from a few years earlier, so in my dogshit little baby brain, I assume this was their theme song.)
The match itself absolutely RULES.
Like the previous French Catch match I wrote about, there’s a unique sort of pacing to the thing, more back and forth than anything we might be more familiar and comfortable with after over half a century’s worth of evolution and growth in the medium. However, unlike that match, which I think got a little too exhibition-y for its length at times, this is a match that still does a whole lot within that sort of a style to not only differentiate itself and keep things interesting, but also to tell an easy and wonderful story.
Firstly, and maybe the most important thing to note here, is that Les Blousons Noirs are nasty and foul, absolute mother fuckers. It’s not the earliest example I’ve ever seen of absolutely vile scum and villainy, but it’s the first example I’ve seen of it in a tag team setting. It’s not exactly an original thought given that it says so in the file description on Youtube, but Marcel Manneveau in particular gives off a real FTR Bald vibe, this total slimeball who does so many awesome things. As great at stooging as he is at throwing these remarkably gross shots all match. Gessat is very much the lesser member of the team, in that far less of the really cool stuff here comes out of his performance, but he doesn’t let the match down by any means. He’s still a good stooge and a good striker and a really loathsome piece of shit, just not quite as much so as his partner.
The other side of the match is just as gifted.
Gilbert Leduc in particular is an absolute revelation, and that’s not just because he makes a clear appeal to the name of this blog…
Leduc is full of cool stuff like that all match, and more than any of the other three, he really walks that fine line here, escalating in pace and intensity while still working the match in this sort of style. The things Gilbert Leduc does in early back and forth exchanges is not what he’s doing at the end. There’s more of a frantic nature, if not outright desperation to his behavior in the back half. Simple and easy communication that the part early on where they’re comparing skills is over and that, at least relative to 1967 French wrestling, these black jacket wearing dirtbags need get their asses beat. That primarily means real hard European Uppercuts and the aforementioned nasty mat stuff, but there’s a sense of righteous anger conveyed, and so it really does work.
Batman is a level below clear match MVPs Manneveau and Gilbert Leduc, relying on a lot of the same set pieces, but his explosions of high flying and occasional karate choppery may be the most charming section of this match. It very much feels like someone put real thought into the question of “turn Batman’s skillset into pro wrestling”, and in like 1967, that means crossbodies and martial arts stuff, and things of that nature. Bold and a little daring, but there’s a science behind it too. There’s something so endearing about the idea behind the thing, translating this character into actual physical combat, like the real life version of someone deciding fifty years later to throw Bruce Lee in a UFC game or Leatherface in Mortal Kombat, this character from another medium thrown into something else and trying to figure out what that looks like. A lot of time it doesn’t work, and I guess if you’re some sort of big nerd who thinks Batman should be darker and more aggressive and you forget that this was made in the time of the Adam West show that this character takes its costume design from, you can hate it, but I got a whole lot out of it.
It’s through this sort of framework that the match still works in a more modern sense. Disreputable scum against two ultra-likeable good guys. The heat segment, as we might thing about it, comes in the first fall and a little of the second, it’s ostensibly “back and forth” after that, but the Blousons are constantly cheating as wildly as possible, being as rude and as mean as ever, and the match always retains some story because of that. It’s a match filled with tension, and that tension turns from if Our Heroes can survive this and more into if the Blousons can keep escaping like they do in the back half of the match.
That first fall is wonderful though. Classic setting the stage kind of stuff, immediately communicating the pertinent information that Gessat and Manneveau are these rotten scoundrels, and that Batman and Leduc are more admirable, and slightly more scientifically skilled. When those god damned rats cheat and isolate Gilbert though, that doesn’t matter quite so much. The fall goes to the Blousons after a series of attacks to Leduc’s back via gross punts to the back and whips into exposed buckles, before a schoolyard trip spot into a deep folding press (with Manneveau making sure to also grab into Gil’s hands on the mat to make it harder to kick out! I love him!) gets Manneveau the pin over Leduc.
In the second fall, the control work on Leduc unfortunately doesn’t go all that long, and they go to a longer run of back and forth exchanges now that lasts for the entire match. As previously stated, I don’t have a major problem with it, although it is certainly a foreign sort of a thing, less because it’s very French, and moreso because the past is another country. It works though, for the reasons previously stated about the Blousons being rotten to the core, but also because everyone in the match brings up the level of intensity and the pace of the things they’re doing. Bigger hot tags from Our Heroes, meaner and more creative cut offs from the Blousons, and great little bits paying off the latter.
This is perhaps best expressed in this wonderful little bit from the middle of the second fall, when Leduc is trapped in an armbar, and keeps trying to stand up out of it. Initially, he’s foiled, before being foiled in a new way that builds up on top of the previous moment, before figuring out a really gorgeous and creative way out.
The more important recurring bit of mischief from the Blousons may be the most classical bit of double team nonsense in history. Time and time again, when Batman or Gilbert try to run the ropes, the other Blouson will grab them. Stunningly, given how often this trope is reversed not only in wrestling, but also just like in all sorts of media featuring that spot, it actually works. Leduc and Batman get caught and held for punches to the stomach or a chop or, most nastily, a real mean looking shoulder to the body. It works time and time again, for most of the first and the second falls, leading to yet another gorgeous payoff.
It’s in finally reversing this bit that Our Heroes eventually take the second fall as well, not only somehow getting more out of this spot than I’ve ever seen before, but also working it into the match better than I’ve ever seen before. The World’s Greatest Detective finally figures out a way to do the same thing, after Leduc finally counters the bit himself. One of the Noirs is tied into the ropes to simulate the spot without having to make the protagonists cheat as well, leading to Batman and Leduc hurling themselves into one opponent while he’s stuck. They send the other Blouson into his trapped partner, before Gilbert lands a catapult into the opposite ropes, leaving the trapped member of the Blousons Noirs unable to do anything while his partner is pinned, evening things up in one of the more satisfying ways I can recall.
There’s another really interesting change here of what you’d normally expect, and that’s that in the third fall, it is almost ENTIRELY about Gessat and Manneveau eating shit. They’re finally tired and beaten up, and keep walking into these ultra violent uppercuts and throws. They have to constantly dive in for save after save, doing it on basically every move. When that hadn’t happened quite so much — if at all — up until that point in the match, it’s another simple trope that we take for granted now that they’re able to squeeze a whole lot of meaning from. A great shorthand for them having been caught at the end of the second fall finally, and now brutally paying the price for it. Like with the double team spot, the save is also eventually turned around on them. Gilbert Ledouc finally has enough, and trips one of them up trying to come in from the floor. He simply holds his legs there, and forces the one on one contest between the remaining Blouson Noir and the caped crusader.
With one Blouson being tripped and held down to avoid the umpteenth save in a row, Batman outmaneuvers the other over and over until hitting a hip toss that’s more like an especially nasty Judo throw, and wins the third fall for the team.
The villainous rubes finally eat shit, and have their heads shaved. A wonderful ending to a wonderful story.
Next to the 1966 film and a supercut of all of Tom Hardy’s line reads in DARK KNIGHT RISES, one of the best pieces of Batman media I’ve ever seen.
Really though, it is one of the more charming matches I’ve watched recently. I bumped this one up to be released the day after I watched and saw it, because I wanted it out there quick, but also because I’d like you to watch it too.
HANDWERK 