Black History Month DAY 2

Johnny Valentine v. Bearcat Wright



Merciful crap was this awesome. Just pure angry violence. The first part of this match has the single greatest front face lock I have ever seen. It legitimately looks like Wright is going to rip Valentines head off. He leans all the way back and then slams Valentines back into the turnbuckle. In a world where every indy schmuck does a 630 splash or a burning hammer on a chair, it takes a lot for a move to make you mark out, but Bearcat Wrights front face lock does it. When Valentine final gets out they just start pounding the piss out of each other. Nasty forearms, punches, elbows to the back of the head, I love 70's stiff wrestling like this. It isn't flashy kicks to the head, it is a forearm across the chest which looks like it collapses lungs.

Wright was one of the early black stars who would wrestle white wrestlers. Along with Bobo Brazil he refused to only wrestle other blacks. Even ballsier though, he was the first black wrestlers to work heel in the South. Watch the cops come to ringside as Wright is headbutting refs and choking Valentine with a rope and you can imagine there might have been a close call or two leaving an arena.

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Black History Month DAY 1

Virgil v. Diamond Timothy Flowers- Pro Wrestling Fury (date?)

I have always had a soft spot for Mike Jones. I was a guy who watched a lot of late 90's WCW, for a long time I reviewed Thunder, I would rarely miss WCWSN and more often then not I would at least watch Dean's comp tapes of Pro and Worldwide. Jones was one of those random WCW guys who you could always sort of count on to entertain you in a random tag. There were definitely points where he was the best wrestler in the NWO, and would be the only guy in the stable willing to take any bumps.

Here he is working his WWF gimmick against local Canadian heel Timothy Flowers. Flowers has that Zandigish look of a guy who used to be really cut, but then stopped lifting, but didn't stop the roids. For that guy he is way better then Glen Osbourne or Nate Hatred, but not as good as Smackdown run Animal. He takes a lot of bumps for a guy who I imagine owns the ring. Virgil has fun looking punches, and is willing to take some mid-level bumps on the floor, including getting run into the bleachers. You also have the spot where Flowers tries a headbutt and is thwarted by Virgil's hard negro head. I imagine that will be a leitmotif in this set of Black History Month reviews. Shit finish, with Virgil getting the knucks from Flowers and getting DQed for using them. Seems like you could put Virgil over. Really a much better match then it has any right to be, and if I went to a Canadian Indy I would be fully satisfied with this as a main event

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