All-Request Friday Night Phaze 2

Bryan Danielson vs. Teddy Hart (MLW, 1/9/2004)
Requested by Jingus

The commentary here is a little less notable. Color commentator Julius is severely undermiced, which seems like a hard production mistake to make, and the play-by-play guy makes reference to Teddy Hart using a "waKEEtaGAMee", which irritates me more than it realistically should. The match is basically fine, if underwhelming. It goes a little over eight minutes, and I have seen guys do a lot with eight minutes. This had a lot of stuff in it, but still ended up feeling short and sparse compared to, say, some of your more pimped sub-10 minute Superstars matches. Also, Danielson really looked like he was just along for the ride on this one. Didn't look bad by any means, but it is weird to see Danielson in a match where he is not actively excelling or trying to excel. He is a guy I have developed abnormally high standards for, and he didn't really meet them here. But again, he didn't look bad. Teddy Hart was both the best and worst thing about the match. All of his big, spectacular offense looked big and spectacular, particularly his springboard into a hurricanrana position which he rolled off into the...*sigh*..."waKEEtaGAMee". Then there's the matter of his pants. There's a noticeable rip in the seat from the beginning, and I wonder if he just tore it, or if that was by design. And then at about the half-way point of the match, I think I get my answer, as Danielson rips Teddy's pants off, which would be strange to begin with, but gets even stranger when you realize it's being played completely straight. It's not even a comedy moment. The announcer is going on about what a serious insult that was to Teddy's pride. It's kinda weird. The main problem with the match, though, was the finish. Teddy comes off the top rope with the Open Hart Surgery, but appears to fuck up his arm on the landing, with the announcer suggesting that he may have separated his shoulder. I've already reviewed Savage/Tenryu, where we saw how the last-minute tweaking of a body part can lead to a kick-ass finish. This is how not to do that. Teddy sells it to the back of...wherever it was MLW was shooting on it's deathbed. I wouldn't have been surprised if he starting shouting "heavens to Murgatroid" at some point. But then he guts it back up to the too rope, but guts his way through...his pre-move taunt where he raises his arms to to the side. Two seconds prior, he was clutching his arm to his chest in agony. Now it's instantly healed to the point that he can do his pre-move taunt. I mean, it was a less dynamic taunt, but come on, man. Priorites. He goes for the Hart Attack (shooting star press...not the double team move, obviously), but Danielson moves and locks on the Cattle Mutilation...which horrifically injured Teddy can somehow hang on to long enough to not only escape, but procure another "waKEEtaGAMee" - which required the use of his possibly separated shoulder - to make Danielson instatap. Well, what the fuck was the point of that? Still, this was a basically enjoyable little match, with Teddy bringing the fun highspots and Danielson being solid if unspecatcular.

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Terry Gordy (AJPW, 6/1/1991)
Requested by TimLivingston

Looking at Misawa vs. Gordy on paper, you get a certain image of what it might be. And well, this match is exactly that, and by extension, it's the probably the best match I've reviewed on All-Request to date. This is two bomb throwing guys throwing bombs, and every shot is super nasty looking. Gordy is a lot less bump happy here than he was in the States, but I think that works to the match's favor. He basically approaches this like he did his matches with Brody, where he is all about toe-to-toe brawling with his opponent. But Brody was a really big guy who didn't bump or sell a whole lot. Going toe-to-toe with him was almost a necessity for a good match (though Brody's final World Class run was probably the least shitty run of his massively overrated career, but that's neither here nor there). This is Misawa we're talking about. Specifically, this is Misawa in '91, still one year away from his first Triple Crown win, two years away from establishing himself as "The Man" in All Japan, and three years away from achieving wrestling immortality. He's still the scrappy youngster chasing after Jumbo at this point, but uh-oh, here's a big-ass Georgian roadblock that he's about to run headfirst into. So whereas Gordy vs. Brody is compelling because neither man will give an inch, Gordy vs. Misawa is compelling because Gordy won't give an inch, and Misawa will repeatedly be knocked down, but will keep coming back giving as good as he gets. The punches, elbows, kicks, and lariats thrown by both men are absolutely brutal. The tide turns when Misawa lucks into an enzuigiri that busts Gordy open, and they both end up spilling to the outside soon after. Misawa goes for a Tiger Driver on the floor, but Gordy back body drops him and goes for a Powerbomb on the floor, a sore point for Misawa stemming from a prior tag with Kawada against the Miracle Violence Connection. Misawa won't go up for it, so Gordy lets him go and then knocks him out of his boots with a lariat instead. From there, the second half of the match is Gordy trying to hit the Powerbomb vs. Misawa trying to hit the Tiger Driver (back when the plain old Tiger Driver could actually win Misawa a match), and both of them are unafraid to punish the other for not going along with their plans, including Gordy dropping Misawa with a nasty DDT when he blocks the Powerbomb. Gordy eventually manages to stuff him with it, but Misawa grabs the rope, so Gordy returns to lariating the fuck out of him before Misawa turns it around and drops him with the Tiger Driver for two. He then procures that odd facelock thing that he's used as a resthold in a billion matches, but in '91, it constitutes a legitimate nearfall (What was the timeline on All Japan taking submission holds seriously, anyway? Gordy breaks out the scorpion deathlock a couple times in this match, too.). The final stretch is actually Misawa's facelock vs. Gordy's lariat of all things, but it works quite well. Gordy looks like he's trying to decapitate Misawa 18 years early, and Misawa is just doing the best he can he wear the monster down. He actually gets a really big nearfall after trapping him in the facelock for a while. Gordy kicks him in the face from his back, sending Misawa tumbling into the corner, but as he makes it back to his feet, Misawa comes roaring out with a huge "fuck you, whitey" elbowsmash that puts Gordy down just long enough for Misawa to score the pin. Gordy recovers pretty quickly after that, and the ring crew rushes in to hold him back, while Misawa is still splayed out exhausted on the canvas and Fukuzawa starts going hoarse screaming on commentary. It really comes off as a big win for our new hero, which I'm guessing was the entire point. The match itself really feels like a lost classic. I got my copy from Ditch's site, so if you're in the know, you definitely want to track this down.

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APW TV Workrate Report: 3/12/11

1. Rik Luxury vs. THE DEBUTING Mikey Jay starts us off. Luxury is one of my favorite Bay Area guys, and his manager Markus Mac is actually really good. He's a thick guy wearing a fur coat working a kind of wigger/thug/Suge Knight and he rarely fumbles over words, has some fun goofy slang and invests fully in what he's doing.

Backstage interview with Mikey Jay, and Matt Carlos interrupts!! And does nothing but compliment him! That dude is out of control!

Luxury starts with some headlock work and breaks it with a club to the neck. Crowd is way behind Jay in his debut. Jay is skinny and wears emerald green garbage bag pants with silly lightning bolts on them. This is actually one of the bigger reactions I've ever seen a crowd give to an APW wrestler. On his way to the ring is is hugging girls and he grabs and shakes some poor kid who was just looking for a high 5. Jay is bumped and the crowd is loudly chanting "Mikey Jay". This was a pretty basic "veteran controls debuting rookie" match. Luxury controls with nice punches and forearms, and dumps him with a nasty Saito suplex at one point. Luxury worked real stiff in this one. Jay got some hope spots, hit some nice clubbing forearms, through a nice butterfly suplex, and eventually Matt Carlos comes out and distracts and Jay gets the roll-up upset win. I couldn't really get much of a read on Jay, but he sure seems to have a lot of fans there live, and gets a lot of creepy youtube posts on episodes that he's on (e.g. "mikey j has nice abs" written all skeezed out, clearly typed by a weird old man with one hand, since he didn't use any capitalization. Ewwwww.).

2. Timothy Thatcher vs. Jody Kristofferson with World Of Sport Rules!! They start off with a bunch of forearm exchanges and Thatcher throws really nice forearms and European uppercuts. Jody's weren't shabby either, and he throws a REAL mean knife edge chop. No closed fists so both guys are hitting each other with palm strikes and it looks pretty cool. Nice sequence with Thatcher reversing a backslide into the Thatcher Stretch, with Jody reversing that into a really nice high cradle. First round ends in a draw. 2nd round starts with some cool body scissors matwork reversals, struggling in and out of them, and then Thatcher starts working over the arm, which is something he does really nicely. Has a lot of different arm takedowns and does cool stuff like dropping knees on the arm. Thatcher also escapes a pin by kneeing Kristofferson in the head from the bottom and that rules. Round 2 also ends in a draw.

Round 3 starts with Jody just hitting some arm drags and hip tosses, but eventually hits a spear to win the round. Jody really dives WAY into his spear and it looks pretty awesome, really looks like a good way to end a match. Round 4 is controlled mostly by Jody. Thatcher gets yellow carded trying to gain a cheating advantage, but it doesn't get him very far. Jody throws him around a bit, but he's eventually able to muscle Jody to the ground with a Fujiwara armbar, then deliver elbows to the head before forcing him into an AWESOME looking full nelson pin to win Round 4. Round 5 has a kinda silly German suplex trade off where each guy hits a nasty suplex and screams and then we doing it again. The suplexes looked great, but the shitty Japanese Juniors-ness of it all felt out of place in what had been really awesome stuff so far. Though right after that Thatcher misses a running headbutt and gets German'd into the turnbuckles which looks nasty. Thatcher makes it up at 9 and eventually locks on a REAL tight sleeper, then does a sweet sleeper takeover into the Thatcher Stretch and gets the win.

I wasn't sure the match would work, but it actually worked really great. Jody is starting to get actively good and has come a long way since his debut, and Thatcher is one of my favorite APW guys. They worked real stiff in this and had some cool stuff on the mat, and made the concept work nicely. One of the best APW TV matches I've seen, for sure. Worth checking out.

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Indy TV Sampler- NWA On Fire

Kind of a odd show. NWA On Fire is run out of Maine, but this show is from the Bodyslammers gym in New Jersey

Episode 2611

Mike Sydal v. Keegan Collins

Fun juniors match, Sydal is really flexible and there is a cool spot where Collins puts him in a crazy split as a submission move. There were a couple of moments where you could see that these guys are a little green, and the finish looked slightly blown, but otherwise this was solid stuff.

Showtime Shawn Sheridan v. All American Nightmare Dan Murdoch

Hey its Dan Murdoch from this weeks NWA-MS show, he is all over the local WB networks. Shawn Sheridan has one of the worst wrestling looks I have ever seen, he is working some sort of 80's video game fan and looks like a slightly less athletic Todd Berry. He did have some nice moves, a blue thunder bomb and a curb stomp, as this was fun in a spotfest Beyond wrestling kind of way. Murdoch does have a really pretty top rope elbow where he jumps over the wrestler and lands the elbow on the other side. His finish is some sort of handspring stunner which Nova would call too contrived.

Steve Off/Glen Ulrich v. Darius Carter/Magic

Dairus Carter is a guy I really enjoyed in Beyond Wrestling, and Mutherfucking MAGIC is a totally awesome big fat guy from the old JAPW days, member of the Shaolin Wrecking. He actually looks a lot like a bigger version of this guy I used to box with, who owned a clothing store and a new BMW and possibly didn't make all of his money from selling sweatpants. So I automatically buy Magic as a badass. Steve Off is another overlapping guy from NWA-MS and apparently Glen Ulrich owns BWO wrestling. The Shooting Stars team weren't much, but I dug the fuck out of Magic and Carter. Carter takes all of his bumps really well, and does a lot of little things I enjoy, Off tries to work an armbar and Carter responds by smacking him in the mouth. The match ends with the Shooting Stars applying some crazy double team thing which Carter takes like a champ and a Magic and Carter break up angle. Really would be into a match between the two

I really liked this show, entertaining matches and actual good commentators including an old guy from Maine who excitedly yells like a NESN WWF announcer from the 80's. This feels like a show I am going to watch some more of, even just to see more Dairus Carter and Magic.

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