Mantopoulos is one of my favourite guys in all of the French footage. I guess the easy comparison would be Le Petit Prince and some of that is probably warranted, but Mantopoulos has a little more shtick to his game, a little more Johnny Saint than Rey Jr. Still absolutely spectacular, still as graceful as just about anyone you'll ever see, but WHIMSICAL in a way those other guys aren't. Right away he was twisting and spinning out of headlocks and yoinking Rouxel into a headscissors, rolling through on snapmares before planting Rouxel with his own. You knew after about 40 seconds that Rouxel wouldn't be able to stomach it for long and pretty soon he started using his size to take liberties. When he cut loose he tried to stomp Mantopoulos into the mat, these big exaggerated stomps to the chest and neck and head. They were great, great stomps. Then when that wasn't enough he clobbered Mantopoulos onto the apron and then clobbered him again and Mantopoulos went flying into the crowd! Mantopoulos never lost his cool though, and instead would sort of goad Rouxel into attempting a hammerlock before getting spun around and armdragged all over the place. Just like you knew Rouxel would eventually play dirty, you knew that sooner or later Mantopoulos would use enough of the speed and trickery that Rouxel wouldn't be able to shithouse his way to a viable response. When they started running the ropes and Mantopoulos was leapfrogging and pirouetting away from every charge I figured it was only a matter of time before Rouxel ran himself into a wall. In the end it wasn't Rouxel's own momentum that Mantopoulos used against him; instead it was his size as he waited until Rouxel had to pause and just tied his arms to his legs.
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