1993: UWF-I, Vader Ain't Got No Alibi

Super Vader vs. Kazuo Yamazaki UWF-I 8/13/93

ER: I love the energy for these matches, love how the Japanese workers act like they loathe Vader coming onto their turf, love how the fans seem resigned to the fact that Vader is going to smoosh their favorites, and so they absolutely lose it whenever their guys are aggressive or gain a momentary advantage. Something as little as Yamazaki going for a go behind, even though there was not even a tease of him being able to throw Vader, gets a major reaction. So when Yamazaki actually starts landing on Vader the crowd is going absolutely bonkers. And the stuff with Vader landing shots is just fantastic. Yamazaki keeps throwing kicks that are too catchable, and Vader starts off almost too nice, just kind of working a catch and release program with the kicks. But things change when Yamazaki somehow picks a leg and Vader ends up on his back. It doesn't feel totally honorable but I fully understand Yamazaki kicking at Vader's head while Vader is grounded. The fans don't care either as any advantage is an advantage. 

Yamazaki is so good at being right on top of it, as the second Vader gets to his feet he lands a huge spin kick that sends Vader crashing into the ropes. Vader is so great at falling into ropes, through the ropes, getting backed into a corner with precision kicks to the face, and the way he's staggering and falling makes it immediately look like Yamazaki has a legit chance. We get an absolutely nuts moment where both men tie each other up and fall into the ropes, tumbling fast and violent over the top to the floor. You don't often see someone fall through the ropes in a fight, but when you do it always feels like a big moment, and this felt like the biggest, pro wrestling version of that moment. But all it takes is Vader catching one kick for Kaz to accept that Vader is not messing around. He decks him with a huge punch, flings him with a slam, locks on a huge standing choke (imagine one of those arms hooked under your chin!!) and just buries him with a uranage. Vader is an absolute tidal wave in this environment.

Super Vader vs. Naoki Sano UWF-I 10/4/93

ER: Definitely the strikiest of the UWF-I Vader matches we've seen so far. Vader catches a kick early and Sano slaps Vader while Vader is HOLDING HIS LEG! Then Sano falls back into the ropes for the break. The balls on this man. But we get a ton of punch and kick flurries the entire match, from both men. Vader is less about catching a leg and landing a huge bomb, and more about throwing hard palm strikes to the head and body. At one point he fakes a downward righthand strike, Sano takes the bait and Vader hooks him in the ribs with a left. So awesome. Sano is not bashful about trading, and the fans get way into it, and when he knocks Vader down the fans are still thirsty for that big first Vader loss. Vader just starts crushing him though, dropping him with a couple of big Samoan drops (I would have bet money that Sano was going to grab some kind of choke when Vader went for the second one, shocked it didn't happen), and Vader's chokeslam is really becoming quite the finisher. Sano's opening was really great in this, as he low bridges Vader over the top to the floor, and Vader takes a mammoth (wooly mammoth?) bump to the floor. The buzz in the crowd whenever Vader goes down is super exciting, but Sano will not be the one to vanquish the Mastodon.

Super Vader vs. Nobuhiko Takada UWF-I 12/5/93

ER: A huge main event to cap off a huge stadium show. Takada was wildly over and hadn't lost a singles match in over a year and a half. Vader looked mostly unstoppable and was one of the biggest wrestling stars in the world. I love how Vader came into UWF-I and worked like Vader. There was no shootstyle here, it's just his style - that of a 400 pound mastodon - being dumped right in the middle of shootstyle workers. And he was such a giant boulder standing in the way of the native stars' success that it was the perfect style clash. Vader was a megastar and was treated as such, and there was electricity throughout this entire match because the fans saw Takada as unbeatable, yet also saw Vader as unbeatable, and they were having a hard time reconciling those two conflicting results in real time, so they were just vocally excited the entire time. Takada is vicious with leg kicks here, and Vader is so phenomenal at selling those leg kicks that - whether he was or not - I fully bought that every muscle in his thigh was getting completely knotted up. Vader had used a pretty successful tactic in his other UWF-I matches where he would walk through offense and just land big strikes, work to catch a kick and then throw a haymaker. But Takada's leg kicks are too strong. 

Vader works a more aggressive mat game than in his prior matches, here actively trying to land on Takada and working vicious grounded palm strikes and trying to pop Takada's head off with awful headlocks. He even rushes Takada with a takedown at one point, which he hasn't done so far in UWF-I. And his leg is getting so knotted up that he can barely stand, and does great theatrical things like pushing himself back to his feet off his good leg, and at one point he even gets himself to his feet by using the referee to push off of. Vader wisely abandons the tactic of trying to catch Takada's kicks, and starts immediately closing gaps during stand up, not giving Takada space to fire off kicks. Vader runs in close and just muscles him into slams, any one of which feels like Takada won't get up from. Vader attempts to fight Takada at his own game, wrestles him to the ground with an armbar, but Takada is slippery on the mat and Vader's size is more exploitable there, and getting Vader to tap was a monumental moment in wrestling history. Takada didn't get there easy, and he even fought a little dirty down the stretch, kicking Vader while he was down, kicking him in the chest and gut, really sadistically picking him apart before going after the arm. He didn't set out to win this way, but it was what he had to do to win. Two unbeatable men, doing what they had to do. Vader's arm gets a fucking  stretcher job, and it's the greatest. There are two men, holding Vader's injured arm in a stretcher, one walking in front of him and one behind, his injured arm nestled on a tiny stretcher.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE VADER IN UWF-I

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Mini Complete and Accurate: Vader in UWF-I

Vader's 1993-1995 run in UWF-I is one of the most unique runs in wrestling history. The current WCW champion going over to Japan a few times a year to headline shows for a shoot style fed that drew way more fans than WCW was drawing. There were arcade fighting games based around this kind of concept. Some with characters that looked like Vader. He was shoot style Godzilla catching leg kicks and throwing chokeslams. He was too big to fail, and the 12 match run felt like it needed to be formally documented. There will be no listed rankings of these matches as since they all rule, the exercise would be pointless.

1993

Super Vader vs. Tatsuo Nakana 5/6/93
Super Vader vs. Kazuo Yamazaki 8/13/93
Super Vader vs. Naoki Sano 10/4/93
Super Vader vs. Nobuhiko Takada 12/5/93

1994

Super Vader vs. Masahito Kakihara 5/6/94 
Super Vader vs. Kiyoshi Tamura 6/10/94
Super Vader vs. Nobuhiko Takada 8/18/94
Super Vader/John Tenta vs. Gary Albright/Kazuo Yamazaki 10/8/94
Super Vader/John Tenta vs. Gary Albright/Kazuo Yamazaki 10/14/94

1995

Super Vader vs. Gary Albright 1/16/95
Super Vader vs. Nobuhiko Takada 4/20/95

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New Footage Friday: Funks, Cactus Jack, Flair, Murdoch, Race, Wahoo, Choshu

The network continues to disappoint, the first week was Daytona and now we are deeply in the period where Nas is rapping about how vaccinations cause autism. We will not be swayed though, as we continue to dig around and find cool unseen stuff. 

Harley Race/Ric Flair/Masked Superstar vs. Blackjack Mulligan/Dick Murdoch/Wahoo McDaniels MACW 6/18/78

PAS: This was spliced together from several clips on different Jim Cornette garbage tapes, but it gets pretty much the whole match. Really fun big star house show six man. Most of the early part of the match is the heels stooging and bumping around for the faces, and these are all time excellent stoogers and bumpers. Also if you are going to watch guys throw hands, Wahoo, Blackjack and Murdoch have great hands to throw. I loved the Murdoch and Race interactions the best, which included Murdoch press slamming Race and hitting him with a brainbuster which Race sold like he had his neck broken (it actually looked like a ref stoppage on the old Fire Pro Wrestling game). Just a total blast, and the kind of match that could main event a touring show and leave everyone in the audience feeling like they got their money's worth.

MD: There's a two minute span where Dick Murdoch is controlling the action against the heels where he looks like the best wrestler of all time. Look, everyone's great here. The heels stooge like you wouldn't believe. There's an extra bounce to everything Flair does. He's younger and frenetic and wild. Mulligan isn't broken down yet and the crowd is rabid for him to get in there with Flair (so, of course, they milk it for all it's worth). The crowd's rabid for Mulligan in general. He could do so much with so little with the claw and we don't give him nearly enough credit for just what he was in the late 70s in Mid-Atlantic. We lose a big chunk in the middle when the heels are decimating Murdoch's arm, but it looks like this thing had a crazy, bombastic start, at least two and a half heat segments, and a hot finishing moment that makes me want to see the Murdoch vs Race match that this surely set up.

Salman Hashimikov/Riki Choshu/Kengo Kimura vs. Wayne Bloom/Brad Rheingans/Steve Williams NJPW 11/26/89

PAS: Total WAR trios lineup here. Including Hashimikov teaming with Japanese guys which basically never happened. Totally great heavyweight sprint, with all six guys just hurling each other around the ring. Choshu is one of the great sprint wrestlers of all-time, and I loved his first dance with Steve Williams, knocking him out of the ring with two crowbarish lariats and Williams flying back in and rushing him like a pit bull let off his leash. Salman was awesome in this, throwing these huge Greco suplexes on legit huge dudes and having a couple of fun amateur scrambles. Choshu hits an all timer Choshu Lariat on Wayne Bloom, I expected his head to pop off like Beetlejuice, and we have a heated finish with Bloom apparently shoot kicking out at two, and Williams and Hashimikov talking mad shit to each other. Killer stuff.

MD: The cons to this one are the camera angle, directly behind someone's shoulder with moments of impact where it blurs out like a snuff film, and as much as I hate to say it, Bloom. Look, he's fine. In some other match he'd be perfectly fine. He's got an expressive, lanky way of bumping, and yes, there's one absolutely all-time bump off of a Choshu clothesline. It's just that the match is absolutely electric when he's not in there. It begins with Choshu and Williams in a massive battle of the titans. Heel foreigner Rheingans continues to be a revelation in these, willing to take the fight right to his opponent and just toss people around. Hashimikov, unsurprisingly, has this incredibly natural way of dumping you off your feet and onto your head. Short, sweet, dynamic, with Bloom (and to a lesser degree Kimura) slowing things down without the benefit of grounding a story.

ER: I fully disagree that Bloom was any kind of weak link to this match. It's a 7 minute match and he's in the ring for 2/3 of it, and takes almost all of the bumps for the gaijin side. Doc is in right at the beginning for an awesome scrum with Choshu, both men throwing wildly and flinging each other around, but then mostly disappears until the post-bell pull apart with Hashimikov. Rheingans is a fun Hashimikov doppel and we get several big fun throws from him, kinda got the feeling that he and Hashimikov were trying to one up the other with throws, and that's something I can get behind. But the bulk of the match is Bloom, and while we miss what happens on the floor with him and Kimura (and one of the other gaijin), I like what we got from him. He's clearly there as Rheingans' youthful ward, and handles the role great, even hitting a cool top rope Doomsday Device style lariat (with Rheigans holding a bearhug on the opponent). A little moment I loved, rewound a couple times, was right into the finish run where Bloom throws one of the best missed clotheslines I've seen. He cut so fast and low and swung with his full arm, something that either would have broke Kimura's neck or his own arm had it actually connected. I love that kind of commitment and dedication and trust on missed moves, it always adds so much to a match for me. Bloom was pretty early in his career still and to see that confidence to miss a move so violently was really cool. That missed clothesline leads to Kimura hitting a spinkick, and then the Choshu lariat that everyone is rightly talking about. Bloom doesn't take a graceful planned flip bump, but clearly takes the bump he intended to take, high on his shoulders with his lanky momentum naturally carrying over. Short match, but tons of fun.

Terry Funk/Dory Funk Jr. vs. Cactus Jack/Texas Terminator Hoss AJPW 4/6/91

PAS: Cactus and Funk is one of the great feuds of the last 30 years, and this was their first ever match up (Cactus had a feud with Jimmy Jack in USWA). They already had some pretty great chemistry, with Terry doing a great set of dancing babyface jabs to Cacti's face and Jack hitting the hip buster and both guys brawling into the crowd. It isn't what it was going to be, but it was pretty great. Hoss was a Kong and didn't give us much besides a nice clothesline. Dory was Dory although I really dug the finish with Dory hitting the spinning toe hold on Cactus, stops Hoss from interfering with the spinning toe hold and then putting it back on Cactus.

ER: We heard for years about the legendary Battle of the Bam Bams, and now Finally! The first legendary battle between Hoss and Hoss! And to throw another Hoss into the mix, it appears than T.T. Hoss is even wearing Dan Blocker's old hat. Also, I wasn't actually aware that Terry Funk wrestled at all in 91/92. I saw Tag League matches with him in 1990, but then my brain skips to him in ECW or FMW, so it's cool to see dead era Terry. Terry is in a fun goofy mood, hopping around on the apron, and we get a nice elbow and punch exchange with he and Cactus, and who could have guessed what this would blossom into in just a few years. Cactus looked slightly out of his element, but part of the fun in 80s/90s All Japan was seeing out of their element guys show up on a tour. He seemed a bit overwhelmed but still dropped a couple big elbows off the ring apron. I liked Hoss here, dug his clothesline, nice standing splash off the ropes (with a hilarious moment of Terry leaning over the ropes to try to tag Dory, but then acting like he was hit by a monsoon once Hoss bounced off the ropes), huge high up bearhug; he also really sets a great tone for all the Cactus/Terry crowd brawling, with one of the coolest ringside mat removals in history. Hoss just picked up the whole section of blue mat and sent it flying, like a big blue tidal wave. Ending was fun, and I liked Terry skipping around after, celebrating.

MD: Definitely a story of two matches. Foley and Terry were as compelling as a pairing as Hoss (one of the Colossal Kongs) and Dory were not. Foley brought something wild out in Terry, even though this would be a couple of years before the death matches. Foley wanted nothing more than to feed for Funk and Funk obliged with punches and headbutts and just posturing around the ring like a fired-up madman. Hoss could move around the ring (and he had a good splash) but most of his stuff lacked the oomph you want from a guy his size. Sub-Ottman. 91 Krusher Kong vs 91 PN News would probably have been the worst match of the year. If it happened, don't tell me. I'd definitely be up to seeing more 91 Foley vs Funks though.

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It Was All Night Pouring Rain, Pouring Rain, But Not a Drop on LA PARK

LA Park v. Caristico Lucha Elite 10/21/16 - FUN

ER: Weird match with some odd pacing, squirrelly logic shifts and a couple awkward transitions, but damn was the spectacular stuff spectacular. Most of the match is Park just beating the ever loving hell out of Caristico, blasting him with chairshots, hitting a boss overhead belly to belly suplex while also holding a chair to his back, hitting a sick powerbomb into a few set up chairs, and hilariously spearing Caristico threw a bunch of chairs that he had spent all his free time setting up. The spear was so epic. Caristico even seemed like he had a special plan to trick Park into going into the chairs, and Park just steamrolls him into that pit of metal. A guy that was as big a draw as Caristico shouldn't feel the need to take this kind of damage. Park continues beating him with a chair, then whips him with his belt. Eventually Rey Escorpion runs in to attack Park, and Carisitico has apparently been trapped in a cage with his attacker for so long that's he's developed Stockholm Syndrome, and begins attacking Escorpion. Confusion ensues. Park somehow beats Caristico to his feet after Caristico hits a crossbody off the top of the cage, not everything makes sense. Caristico even takes an absurdly dangerous pacakge piledriver from Rey that plants him right on his head, surely shrinking a couple of those pesky vertebrae of his. But Park was a total boss in this match, really knows how to control a ring, and Caristico was just a lunatic with the damage he took. Flawed and epic at the same time.

PAS: This was a mess, but an undeniably compelling mess. Lots of great individual moments broken up by long replays and then another big moment, add that to a really dumb finish it would be hard to call this a great match. Still there are some really memorable awesome spots. I loved Park doing his old Rey Jr. exchange, pinching Caristico on the cheek like a baby and eating a rana. The spear into the chairs was true lunacy, and it is nuts that Caristico turned down a lifetime of easy WWE money to take those kind of bumps and bleed like that. I also dug the big cage dive, although it was goofus that Park got up first. This might have been the best lucha cage match I have ever seen, and it was still only OK.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LA PARK

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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Worldwide 6/23/96

J.L. vs. Brad Armstrong

ER: So like...nobody really knew who Jerry Lynn was...and he's under a mask...so why were they married to acknowledging what his shoot initials are? He's under a mask, fucking call him anything. Bobby Heenan, on JL: "I...I don't really know anything about this guy." Brad Armstrong's mullet is the embodiment of "business in the front, party in the back". The front looks so damn professional, a nice high and tight, and a one millimieter turn to either side makes him immediately look like a total degenerate. Like, straight on he's a nice guy your sister met at church, then he turns and he's that nice guy's speed dealing ex-friend from high school. And this is pretty great as Brad doesn't actually work heel, but he gives JL most of the offense, takes some nice rolling Tim Horner armdrags and eats a tough missile dropkick (man I can never spell "missile" right on the first go through. My fingers just move in all the wrong directions), Lynn really shotgunned him to the chest. But they do that spot I hate where JL hits a flush crossbody off the top, Armstrong splats on the mat fully 100% taking the crossbody, hits the mat hard...and then rolls it through for a 2 count. That takes me so far out of the match. The Russian legsweep does look nice, but they took a dumb route to get there.

Arn Anderson/Taskmaster vs. Leroy Howard/Bill Payne

ER: Ohhhhhhh shit Leroy Howard is Rastaman from BattlArts!! IS THIS THE ONLY TIME ARN ANDERSON HAS FOUGHT A BATTLARTS GUY!?!? He somehow only has ONE listed match opposite Valentine? None against Backlund...There's got to be a really obvious one that I'm forgetting or a completely bonkers one that nobody would know ("oh yeah I think he wrestled Urban Ken on a charity show"). This is history! I had also forgotten all about an Arn/Sullivan tag team. And this match was kind of weird. Howard is only in this match for the first 20 seconds, and the rest is basically Arn and Sullivan stomping Bill Payne. Sullivan gets all rowdy when he tags in, and goes for a fucking headscissors! Like a Ricky Morton/Marty Jannetty style headscissors where you pose for a bit with your legs around your opponent's head while your body is jutting diagonally away from his torso. There's a major problem, which is that Kevin Sullivan has zero hops, so when he comes running in, his legs make it somewhere around Payne's waist. And BLESS BILL PAYNE because he grabs onto Sullivan's leg and is holding Sullivan upside down, and still manages to take a bump as if he had been headscissored. Sullivan kicks him in the eye as a thank you. Later Arn would hold him in a Boston Crab and drag him to the ropes so Sullivan can kick him in the head a bunch. I liked Arn in this, which shouldn't be a shock. He dropped a nice knee and obviously hit a great spinebuster. I do wish we could have seen more of Leroy Howard though.

ER: There's a Mean Gene promo segment promoting the upcoming (June 30th) WCW house show at the MSG theater. This feels like a big deal, and BRUNO is on the card as a guest ref. I'm sure there's a 6 hour Between the Sheets pod that covers this house show in detail. WCW touring into New York City feels like a big deal (even if running at "The Theatre at the Garden" feels like a pretty good self-own, like laughing about doing a merely passable job at ironing your exes' clothes), and a quick check shows that this upcoming house show will only be the 2nd time WCW ran NYC in the 90s. AND they only ran NYC *FOUR TIMES EVER*! And the two shows in 1998 were free PR events, one of them a free show with a few matches in Bryant Park and the other an event in conjunction with MTV called MTV Ultimate Video Bash, which was a flat out absurd event. It was an outdoor event in the pouring rain, maybe a hundred fans in attendance, with the original idea that wrestlers would represent bands whose videos would play throughout the show (Barry Darsow represented Run DMC!) in a tournament. But it was pouring so hard that the only match that happened was Public Enemy, representing LL Cool J, which...I...you ARE ALREADY NAMED AFTER A LEGENDARY HIP HOP ACT. Anyway, PE fought High Voltage (representing Will Smith, which feels like a MAJOR missed opportunity to not be representing Public Enemy) in the rain, while we got the (probably?) never again commentary team of Shiavone, Zbyszko, and Matt Pinfield. The match is a couple minutes long, but High Voltage are great in it. This two minute match would have given them a standing on a DVDVR500. The ring is soaked and slippery as hell, and there are no mats around the ring, and they both go full speed on a spot where they get Irish whipped into each other, Rage bumps big to the floor, then takes an awesome tumbling bump into the barricades (remember, no mats) AND gets a Drive-By through a table. High Voltage owned this event.

Anyway, yeah, WCW only ran 4 times in NYC, in their entire history, and only two were "real" shows. This upcoming show on 6/30 was the realest, as the other was from 1993. This show was when they were much bigger as a company. The show looked good on paper, but it feels like a weenie move to only run the Theatre. Run MSG, even if you "only" get 4,000 people in there. Was there a deal in place where only WWF could run there? This whole show feels like a major moment in the promotion's history, and it's treated in this promo like just another house show. You'd think they would be advertising Bruno's name more. They bring it up and Mean Gene sounds like he thinks it's a big deal, but it only gets a quick mention. Before this I had zero idea that Bruno had ever done business with WCW in the mid 90s. I can't believe they didn't even have an onscreen graphic.

Chris Benoit vs. Eddie Guerrero

ER: I know it's easy to make these kind of statements after the fact, but my god can Benoit look like a dead-eyed soulless psychopath. Here he came out with Arn and Arn promo'd to the camera while Benoit just vacantly stared. Yeesh. I have a real hard time focusing during this one, but Eddie was a machine here. Benoit came off really sadistic - my perception or real, not sure - with some casually tossed off violent dead eyed offense; suplexing Eddie onto the top rope gut first a couple times, mean chops, hard knees to the stomach, all with this joyless killer face. Eddie bumps huge for all of it, but his comeback is a little bit too convenient. He just kind of snaps and then comes back with a snap suplex and hits a knees to the ribs frog splash. Kind of unsatisfying but it was hot as hell with the crowd. I don't like crapping on something the crowd is clearly hot for, and Eddie had great fire, just thought Benoit went from ice cold killer to overwhelmed a bit too quick. Arn Anderson had a great ringside cheat by pulling the top rope down to send Eddie flying to the floor. This was hot but I guess I just wasn't in the mood for it, but nobody could have any arguments with the move execution here.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Kensuke Sasaki

ER: A kid mugging for the camera by the entrance gets surprised when suddenly large thick Asian man with a mullet and leather jacket walks by an inch from his small head. DDP’s gear seemed so dated in 1996, I still think it is completely unfathomable that he became as big a star as he did. Two years after this he was huge, and here he’s coming out in lime green tights with a shiny pink vest, smoking a cigar and wiggling his fingers at the camera. Who was this look based on? What type of person was he mimicking for his character? I love how well it ended up working out for him. And this match rules. It has an unexpectedly hot start that it can’t really maintain, but DDP knew exactly what he was doing and how to work through with a Japanese guy who Florida tourist fans would automatically boo just for being Japanese. DDP made Sasaki the clear face despite Sasaki not being great at playing to fans, at all. DDP takes a nice amount of time to get Sasaki to agree to a handshake, then as their hands have barely touched DDP is already booting him in the stomach and throwing hard elbows, Sasaki hits a sharp back elbow right under the chin, DDP eats a fast lariat that sends him to the floor, and he writhes on the floor on his back, comically. It’s a great start to the match. DDP’s basics are nice, throws a good kick to the stomach, nice stomp to he gut, a couple nice short elbow drops high on the chest, and his long gangly limbs almost whip around when he takes offense. Sasaki was a short little bull, hits a nice big rotation powerslam, and takes the Diamondcutter really well. His sell was one of the best I’ve seen, landing normally, but slowly lifting his face off the mat like he was a cat running into a sliding glass door. He naturally rolled over for the pin, really expertly getting into position after the cutter. Very nice.

The Mauler vs. Sting

ER: The Mauler is Mike Enos, not called Mike Enos on the onscreen entrance graphic, but instead called The Mauler. His hair is breezy, chin length and flops when he walks. He has a small mustache, and looks to be the inspiration for Buck, who likes to Fuck. And this match is an absolutely perfect 3 minutes of wrestling. Flawless. It crams everything you want to see into 3 succinct minutes. These two (three, with Col. Robert Parker out with Mauler) could have worked much longer than that, but a perfect 3 is sublime. Sting gets to shine early and Enos bumps big all around for him, ending with him being tossed hip tossed and stumbling and bouncing through the ropes to the hard stage, then having Parker hold him back for running recklessly back into the ring. He eventually does, and he ends up taking an even bigger, more spectacular bump over the top to the floor, onto that hard freaking stage, and the fans are flipping out for Sting. Sting even grabs Parker’s cowboy hat and sees which side of the crowd is loudest so he could throw it to them. Every time Sting pretended to throw the hat, ref Randy Anderson would jump in front of him like he was Secret Service jumping to stop a bullet from hitting the president. Sting then threatens to stomp the hat and Parker is flipping out, but Mauler has snuck quietly around the ring and sneaks in and lariats Sting in the back of the head, a hard backbreaker, then hits a HUGE powerslam that gave him a nice strut as he walked by Kensuke Sasaki later that taping. THAT’S how we do powerslams in Florida, motherfucker. We end quick but it's a quality ending, as Parker gets up on the apron to cheat by Mauler gets reversed into him, then Sting kicks Mauler’s leg out and locks on the Scorpion Deathlock. This was aces, 3 minutes of the best stuff.

Faces of Fear vs. Sgt. Craig Pittman/Jim Duggan

ER: Weird, disappointing match. It’s almost entirely Duggan and Pittman, and Duggan is working pretty light, Meng acts afraid of Pittman, Barbarian fights with Teddy Long over Duggan’s 2x4 for way too long, just an unsatisfying match. There is early intrigue in the Meng/Pittman sections, Pittman goes for a couple cool amateur takedowns, and the best part of the match was the two of them getting tangled in the ropes, but neither wanting to break. So Meng had gone to the ropes to break a hold but then had a standing grapevine on Pittman’s leg and neither man was budging. It could have gone somewhere interesting, but it didn’t. Faces of Fear kind of looked like doofs here which just isn’t totally what I wanted to see. I bet there’s a cool match between these two teams. Duggan isn’t always a lame, and the potential for some amateur tough guy shenanigans seems high.

COMPLETE & ACCURATE WCW B-SIDES

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Family Feud in Naucalpan

38. LA Park/El Hijo de LA Park vs. Dragon Lee/Rush IWRG 6/17

PAS: Watching Park and Rush work their feud in Arena Mexico is sort of like when a great mixtape rapper releases his studio album, it is going to have the same feel, but it is going to be a bit more produced, a bit less grimey, maybe they will get Chris Brown to sing an R+B hook. Rush and Park working that feud in IWRG was the real street shit, you could hear the DJ Drama tags being yelled out. It starts out with some wild Arena Naculpan brawling, folks getting hurled recklessly into chairs, random pieces of wood being slammed into people's heads, at one point Rush fills a bucket full of beers and hurls it at PARK's skull, later Park uses one of broken bottles to gouge up Rush's forehead. We get some great double team taunting by Rush and Dragon Lee, including some fake soccer and lounging poses. Match drops off a bit in the third fall when Dragon Lee and Hijo do some PWG juniors wrestling, but we do get a huge PARK spear before the inevitable ref nonsense. I doubt CMLL ever lets it get this filthy, so I am glad they took their act into the gutter.

ER: I was going for something similar to Phil, but I like his better. There's a taco truck a few blocks away from our house that is always packed with Mexican families, going there on a Friday night is insane, and there's like one picnic table and questionable cleanliness, but they are legit. Up the street from that (among the 7 other Mexican restaurants on the block) is a "cantina" that is also busy, has good Yelp reviews and will no doubt make you a nice meal at 3x the price. This is street tacos and it is delicious. Get this, Park and Rush brawl around the ring and it's predictably good, and I was flipping out when Park emerges from the crowd with a flat of water bottles, and then a heavy as hell looking metal bucket filled with ice, both aimed at Rush's head. That thing looked SO heavy, totally something I would walk into an arena - knowing I was seeing Park throw down with Rush - and go "Oh my god you guys I hope one of them hits the other with that heavy bucket!!" These two are electric and you know Park is going to bleed and take falls that look impossibly painful because you know he's carrying a lot of extra weight so his knees are killing him and he probably has sore feet. Plus the dude makes towns for life so he probably has a semi-permanent case of driving butt. This up close handheld footage is really good because while thigh slaps are used liberally, you do really get a sense of how hard and fast these two are crashing into each other. The parts with Lee and Hijo were not my favorite, but I do really like Lee working rudo. It makes his flippy stuff come off more cocky, and that makes embellished flipping infinitely more interesting. The close up handheld gave the offense a fun surprise feel, seeing Dragon Lee fly into the frame with a rana or Rush came crashing into frame with a dropkick. It made the match feel more out of control than it might have been, and you get real close-up looks at the agitated Dianabol topography of Rush's back. We get what feels like a lot of mirror exchanges, but they're not bad, and Park is better at it than I assumed. It gets a little taxing once we go through the dueling reverse ranas that are both deadly and yet also cause a man who takes one to spring to his feet to also deliver one. But rudo Lee is great with his bro and Park is a great fat guy to storm triumphantly back into a match. His spears are the best in history, and it would take a lot to make this match-up not work.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Tijuana Undercard Insanity

26. Black Danger/Ultimo Maldito/Mirage vs. Arkangel Divino/Black Destiny/Genio Del Aire AAA 4/20

PAS: Six indie luchadores who have been hanging around the Crash undercards get a shot on AAA and just say fuck it. 8 minutes of mashing down the gas pedal and throwing it all out there. I clearly need to trowel youtube for more Arkangel Divino, as he was throwing out some of the prettiest armdrags I can remember seeing, and his la mistica to end the match looked like it was in 3X speed (although a lot of that was Maldito basing like 70s Richard Pryor.) The doomsday tope by Black Destiny with Black Danger on Divino's shoulders (pretty sure about these names, but it is tough with a HH with no entrances and six guys I haven't seen before ((of course someone is going to point out that I have reviewed 8 Ultimo Maldito matches or something))) was completely nutso and a spot I have no idea how the pull off without killing everyone involved. Fun stuff, and totally a match US indy promotions should be importing wholesale.

ER: How about going into a trios where I'm pretty sure I don't know anybody at all! I recognized none of the names, and in that situation you hope one of them has a cat gimmick or something, and you work from there. "This guy has cat ears on his mask, he appears to be teaming with at least that one guy who is wearing...black..." Without remembering his name I have seen Arkangel Divino before, at least once. I remember the guy in the hood snapping off physics breaking ranas and armdrags (though to be fair, I believe I've also seen Freelance and his kid wearing similar hooded garb, which makes nothing easy). But I'm probably (?) not the only one who just thought this was what lucha was, before I had seen any actual "in Mexico" lucha. I assumed lucha would be an even more hyperactive speed fueled version of the WCW Souled Out '98 8 man. It's pointless to call or even describe action here; I don't know the guys and the moves had so many twists and turns that it would take me a couple sentences to describe something that happened over the space of two seconds. Divino is Freelance on bleach-cut truckers speed, and Black Danger? Maldito? is base as all hell. We get wild springboards, a completely stupid (but charming in a mid 90s M-Pro comedy spot) flipping piledriver marathon, someone (Genio??) gets their head drilled into the mat by a snap crucifix, the Doomsday Device spear was just...I mean that's probably the spot of the year. Phil is right, all of them attempting that should be at minimum very injured. A guy getting speared while on someone else's shoulders, while the guy doing the spear is setting himself up for a 7 or 8 foot drop to the floor!? What!? Divino's La Mistica to finish rotates approximately 20 times. It's all so good, just a total fireworks extravaganza.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Stuka Jr. vs. Hechicero: A Feud of Relampago

While looking through some matchlists I saw that Stuka Jr. and Hechicero have now had 4 lightning matches over the last 4 years, and being that they are two of my very favorites in CMLL I figured it would be pretty easy to knock them all out. Given CMLL's roster, there are an absurd number of potential lightning match combos, so it seems odd that they've matched up 4 times, and I'm curious how much they mixed things up match to match.

Stuka Jr. vs. Hechicero  CMLL 2/1/15

ER: A fairly easygoing start to our feud. Much of the early matwork felt perfunctory and uninterestingly cooperative. The matwork still has some cool segments like Stuka going for an armbar and Hechicero turning it into his one armed deadlift, which Stuka then rolled through for another shot. Hechicero takes two big bumps to the floor, one over the top tumbling, the great one a Fuerza bump that he lands butt first. Yeowch. Stuka hits a big quebrada and gorgeous hands-to-side springboard crossbody; Hechicero hits his inverted monkey flip and a hard dropkick to Stuka's ear, and Stuka finishes a little too easily with his torpedo splash. This was a pretty basic intro to these two, but nothing really outside of what you might expect out of these two in a typical trios. Let's see where we build this.

Stuka Jr. vs. Hechicero  CMLL 9/27/15

ER: This match is much more Hechicero-controlled than the first one, and features more overt rudo work from Hechicero. The first match was pretty genial, this at least has Hech taunting the crowd and picking on Stuka as both do some fun tumbling, and Hechicero breaks out a fast dropkick through the ropes to the floor and a slingshot tornillo back into the ring. Hechicero pulls out two even bigger bumps in this one, getting thrown under the bottom rope and landing stomach first, and then peaking when he whiffs on a charge and wraps himself around the ringpost to the floor. Stuka follows with a completely bonkers moonsault over the ringpost to the floor, just wild. I always love Stuka's dedication to roll-ups and he always stays tight on sunset flips, really reminds me of El Dandy in that way, and it made the finish look good. Hechicero catches Stuka on a rana and deadlifts him up to powerbomb him (which itself was used earlier to toss Stuka into the buckles), but Stuka just keeps the momentum going and rolls right over the top, Santo style. We still haven't had any WorldWide classic between the two, but it's in there somewhere.

Stuka Jr. vs. Hechicero  CMLL 7/28/17

ER: Closer to the second match in the series, but less satisfying. The ending is a little more modern lucha for me (Hechicero misses a moonsault, Stuka moonsaults into boots, cut to spinning backbreaker win for Hechicero), but the big stuff plays big. Hechicero takes a fast rolling bump through the ropes to the floor, and Stuka hits a locomotive of a dive, and later we get another nasty Hechicero bump past the ringpost with another great Stuka moonsault over that ringpost. You got a crazy spot, you do your crazy spot in a lightning match. I liked the way they tied some things together, loved a silky tilt a whirl armdrag from Stuka, a nice springboard elbow to a standing Stuka, but this one felt a little more hollow.

Stuka Jr. vs. Hechicero  CMLL 6/8/18

ER: I figured with 4 different singles matches between these two, we would get one good enough to land on a list. Well, I don't think they did it. This was probably the best of the 4, but it felt more like a fun collection of stuff than an actual complete match. This felt like probably the best combination of the best parts of the other matches, with all their nice offense and a nice callback finish. This match felt weirdly saved by a minorly flubbed spot. We basically get all of the same things we've seen in the other matches, some nice Hechicero strength spots, big dive, torpedo splash off the top and moonsault to the floor from Stuka, Stuka flying halfway across the ring off Hechicero's inverted monkey flip, all cool stuff. They got a bit crossed up and saved it by snapping off a couple of nice spots right away to immediately distract, with a nice headscissors by Stuka and then a fast Code Red. That immediate covering for a flub quickened the pace from there out, not sure if that moment was the catalyst or not but it felt possible. The finish was cool and not one typically used in CMLL (that I've seen) with Stuka going again for his torpedo splash and landing right in the waiting arms of a Hechicero armbar. It's a cool finish and maybe because I haven't seen it in CMLL, it surprised me and felt like a big deal.

So, all four matches were fun (and short, these are lightning matches after all), but nothing MOTY list worthy. Now, the series is evened up 2-2, so I'm sure someday we'll get the conclusion to this best of 5.

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Ronda Rousey's European Vacation

So Ronda has now had two PPV matches, and they are among my favorite matches of the year. So now I'm thirsty for more. I'm greedy for the verse of Rousey. But there just isn't very much Rousey footage out there yet. WWE did a European tour last month and it looks like half the trios matches with her are online (these are the Vienna and Paris matches, very possible the Switzerland and Italy ones are out there) so I dove in.

Ronda Rousey/Ember Moon/Natalya vs. Mickie James/Ruby Riott/Liv Morgan WWE 5/17/18

ER: An already short match with a big chunk clipped out of the middle. Was the clip 5 seconds? Was it 5 minutes? I'm not sure but we never see Mickie's tag in and don't see her much at all. Even in its 5 minute form the match is plenty of fun. I really liked Liv Morgan as the Ronda antagonizer. Natalya did a long Ronda tag tease while holding Morgan by the hair, reaching out to get Ronda in, and Morgan used it to her advantage to get Natalya out of the way and then taunt Ronda with bad shadowboxing. Morgan also took a big bump to the floor when things were breaking down, a nice little performance and the only one stooging. Moon had a cool legsweep and I liked Natalya's dropkick to Morgan's face after running up her back and head (and Morgan really whipped back on the kick making it look worse than it was). But the big payoff is obviously Ronda, and she came in like the coolest hot tag around. She dumped Riott with a couple of nasty throws that she makes look so effortless, but would probably give me vertigo if I tried taking them. Her final takedown on James was awesome, doesn't even look like she's throwing people in there due to her leverage making them weightless, and she's doing these safe takedowns where the person taking them looks like they have no control over their landing, just an awesome set of throws. I wish this had been twice as long, but it had plenty of rewarding moments.

Ronda Rousey/Ember Moon/Natalya vs. Mickie James/Ruby Riott/Liv Morgan WWE 5/19/18

ER: I love watching these house show matches close together, as it's always cool to see ways they opt to mix it up from prior matches, while also seeing things they opted to keep. This match (the Paris match) is worked very differently from the Vienna match, with a long heat section on Natalya, minimal Liv Morgan involvement, some good near falls off of roll-ups, a couple of fantastic/hammy showcase moments from James, and essentially the same beginning and end. We still start with Ember Moon doing the same nice leg trip and slingshot splash to Riott, and we eventually settle down to Natalya getting beaten down and trying to tag Ronda. There is a great Morgan moment where she cuts off a tag, taunts, then almost gets rolled up for the loss. Mickie was used more prominently here (and she could have been in the last one, but her time got camera phone clipped out), and she soaks it up. Talk about someone who I haven't sought out in years who is now putting out her finest work. James has been on fire in 2018. Here she knocks Ember off the apron with a crescent kick, then flies into Rousey to knock her off. We build to a GREAT house show moment, with Mickie slowly loosening her belt while Natalya is slumped in their corner, and Riott is running and gleefully highstepping the length of the apron, and James whisks that belt out, runs towards Natalya...and the ref catches her by the belt to stop her. Awesome spot. Ronda gets in and runs through approximately the same stuff in the same order as Vienna (this had the addition of a short straight jab to knock Morgan to the floor), but I do think the throws felt bigger in that match. We do get an extra Mickie James bonus roll up, going high on the cradle like she does and making it seem for two seconds that they could feasibly give Mickie James the pinfall win over Ronda Freaking Rousey....but alas, James ends up almost losing that arm moments later. Also, can we just stop recording things in portrait mode? Turn your phone sideways, people.

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New Footage Friday: UFC vs. Memphis, Blackhearts, Can-Ams

Shinya Hashimoto/Riki Choshu/Ricky Steamboat vs. Big Van Vader/Animal Hamaguchi/Bam Bam Bigelow NJPW 10/11/90

MD: We went with this because it had Vader in it so it was timely. It's not the best showcase match for him, though. There's some exciting brawling with Choshu to begin but this one is really much more about Bigelow, Steamboat, and Choshu. Vader and Hashimoto just aren't in the ring as much. I love Bigelow from this era. Vader may have been more willing to ham it up with crowd interactions than he would be later, but Bigelow takes it a step further. He does a flip bump on a Choshu clothesline. How great is that?

Steamboat really is the X-Factor here, though. He's as Steamboat-y as it gets, providing the heart of his match with his selling, allowing for a stretch of heat that you'd never get in a match like this without him, but also realizing he's in Japan and being double tough in his attempts to fight back and way, way over the top in his offensive bursts. There's this clothesline duck-jumping kick to the head-karate pose that he does against Bigelow that is the most flawless bit of pro wrestling imaginable Post-match angle goes on forever but Hamaguchi makes it worth it with his unexpected charisma. I imagine most people would be glad to watch this.

ER: I've not actually seen any Steamboat/Vader matches in WCW, but I don't think they matched up that often and I certainly didn't realize they had matched up before WCW. But I don't seek out a lot of Steamboat, so this is not something I likely would have known. I am definitely low vote on Steamboat, and didn't think he looked good here, but it worked because everyone treated him like Kikuchi in the classic AJPW six mans. He was nowhere near as good as Kikuchi here, but his light chops and almost connecting dropkicks made him the easy choice to isolate from the group. At one point Bigelow is throwing nice right hooks and has to remind himself to acknowledge Steamboat's little chops. Bigelow had a really great performance and never tried to out-monster Vader, who looked like an outright monster. Hamiguchi would tag in and work like an actual animal let out of a cage. This heel team probably only teamed up on this show, but man that is a winning trio. Bigelow was there for big man bumps (even taking this great banana peel bump onto the apron after the pinfall), Vader looked gargantuan and completely unstoppable, and I loved Hash and Riki as the guys running in to save little Ricky. Bigelow and Vader are a fun team and I loved them using their fat, like Bigelow holding onto Steamboat in the corner while Vader just squished him in a fat sandwich. We didn't get a ton of Hash, but he made his presence felt with a squarely planted DDT, and not many people are better than Choshu at tagging in and blasting folks with a hot tag lariats. I also loved Hamaguchi hugging it out with Choshu after the match. "Hey, no hard feelings, I just teamed with who they told me to" leading to Bigelow and Vader immediately calling him out on his bullshit. "We were still here dude. We saw you."

PAS: I thought this was great and mainly great because Steamboat was spectacular in it. I thought he was a great face in peril, he is an all-time great seller, and I loved how he kept fighting back during the beatdown section, he gets pounded by Bigelow or Vader, but he always fires back with a chop. I loved the section where Bigelow and Steamboat kept exchanging and each shot was faster and harder until they were just unloading on each other. That is a matchup I can't remember seeing before, and I feel like they would have had an all time singles match. The Vader vs. Hash sections were awesome, although it was more of a taste then a meal, but man is that an all time battle of badasses. The finish run was great, with every body running in a throwing big shots ending with a classic Choshu lariat.


Can Am Express vs. The Blackhearts AJPW 9/4/91

MD: This got a lot of time and was big and dumb. Kroffat is one of my favorite AJPW 90s guys because he is a hugely natural de facto heel in a place where you don't always get that. Here, though, the Can-Ams were playing de facto babyface, and they don't hold up as well. Furnas is a solid muscleman hot tag in that role, but Kroffat, even with some flashy flourishes, was playing against type.

The Blackhearts deal is that they have a great entrance in the dark, will bump big, and have so, so many ridiculous tandem double teams, none of which actually look good. The sum of it all gives them an A for effort but this was far more fun than good.

PAS: This was an amusing big dumb heavyweight tag spotfest. It was more Eliminators then Steiners, but it was some big dudes with ideas. Some of them looked bad (the Blackhearts double bulldog was conceptually interesting, but looked dumb), some of them looked cool ( the assisted face buster by the Can-Ams was nifty) but they were all kind of thrown out there without a ton of substance. Still I enjoyed large parts of this in a turn off your brain off kind of way. I could see an ECW video montage of this match set to an Alice in Chains song being pretty cool.

Dustin Starr/Din Thomas vs. Derrick King/Matt Serra 6/15/18

PAS: This was a match in the long storied southern tradition of the sold show money mark tag match. Instead of opposing high school football coaches, we have two ex-UFC guys Thomas and Serra working with old Memphis hands Dustin Starr and Derrick King. This was part of Dana White's Looking for a Fight travel show. Starr and Thomas work heel and Dana White and Jerry Lawler are at ringside along with Starr's valet. Fun shticky match, with King and Starr having really great punches and Thomas and Serra doing some nice amateur rolling. The stuff with the UFC guys against the Memphis guys was a little awkward (Thomas looks like he might have gotten knocked silly by Starr's axehandle), but I am always going to enjoy this kind of match.

MD: Well, this was something. The best thing about this was the fact it felt so Memphis. Really, the first twenty odd minutes or so (out of 27) were pure Memphis. Calhoun was ref. Lawler switched the sides and big timed Dana. Starr is pure throwback, not the Brian Christopher we want, but probably the Brian Christopher we deserve in 2018. There was stalling, jawing, strutting, pretty good punches and over the top selling. The next best thing was Serra and Thomas sparring, with Serra throwing Thomas all over the place. And the last best? Probably Dana White's shit-eating grin as he watched Starr stooge all over the ring.

It all fell apart in the last few minutes with Serra and Dana spending the entire run-up to the hot tag just talking to each other casually as King struggled his way to the corner. That was pretty much the worst hot tag in wrestling history. There was maybe one too many bits of White getting involved with Maria post-match but ultimately this was fine. I was curious how they were going to protect the UFC guys, especially when they were in with the wrestlers and that all worked pretty well. Serra bullied Starr. Despite Serra having the cartwheel, Thomas was the one who seemed more natural for wrestling. He was having a blast, even relishing a bodyslam. And it all ended with a reminder that everyone should spend some cash on Jerry's food. It's the most Memphis thing I've seen out of Memphis in a while

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It's Old Vader Time!!

Vader vs. 2 Cold Scorpio  Pro Wrestling Syndicate 6/1/12

ER: Vader ceased working full time in 2003, 15 years ago! And I can't recall anybody talking about his post-NOAH career. Now Vader was a late starter who didn't get to WWF until he was in his early 40s, and was still working full time in Japan into his late 40s. His career had to wind down at some point, so it makes sense that a really large guy working occasional matches in his 50s wasn't getting the same amount of attention. Outside of a couple other Japan matches and random appearances in WWE or TNA I know I wasn't seeking out post-prime Vader. I saw this match out there and knew these two were always on the same side in Japan so never fought there, really only crossed paths during Scorpio's Flash Funk run 15 years earlier. Vader was in his late 50s at this point and by far the biggest I'd seen him, Scorpio looked...well, the exact same as he's looked for the past 15 years. I wasn't expecting a lot out of this one as I assume there was a conversation before the match that went "I can't bump anymore, so I'm just going to throw a lot of hands." It's gotta be tough going into a match knowing that you're going to take a beating without getting a lot of glory, but man did I dig this match a LOT.


Vader is REALLY big here but still knows how to work a match, still knows how to build to things, knows how to make his few bumps matter, doesn't attempt anything that he can't pull off, etc. And Scorpio does take a beating nicely. They start off with a nice slow build but it's always tense as you know both guys can throw big shots. Vader is first to do so, and we start getting some chest puffing as both guys take turns seeing who can hit the other harder with a short arm clothesline, a harder version of what they would do before tag matches in NOAH, and the fans win. After Vader hits him with a big lariat and bear attack we get more classic Vader shots, and it's awesome seeing him older, fatter, but still using that same Vader muscle memory. I've made a big deal about Vader being in his late 50s, but Scorpio is in his late 40s here and spry as hell, bumping around big for Vader and springing quickly back to his feet. At one point Vader hits a mean kick right to the balls, and the announcer covers nicely with a "well who's going to tell Vader that you can't do that" explanation. Scorpio lands some stiff punches to the face, and works in some cool big moments like attempting to lift Vader only to get flattened with a crossbody. Vader is smart enough to make even the obvious resting spot of the match engaging, not just holding a chinlock but fighting over a Rings of Saturn while shoving on Scorpio's jaw. Vader was clearly breathing heavy but doing cool work, getting his weight on Scorpio, Scorpio fighting to not let up his other arm, turning it into a cool part of the match when it could have been a drag. We get some cool moments out of big Vader misses, like a nasty missed elbowdrop right into the mat. Scorpio misses on a big moonsault and in a moment I was completely not expecting, Vader absolutely crushes him with a Vader Bomb. Even more impressive, he appears to protect Scorp. This match was so much better than I anticipated, and until otherwise informed I will promote this as the last awesome Vader match. I could not imagine fans of both being disappointed in this one.

PAS: This was great, exactly how you want to work a match with a minimal number of bumps. If you aren't going to bump (well Vader didn't bump, Scorpio landed damn hard on a couple of throws), beat the shit out of each other and the definitely did. Feels like the kind of match you would expect old buddies who are tough as shit to have with each other. There are lots of moments where Vader throws a potato, Scorp throws one back and Vader smiles a bit and just pastes him. Scorpio's missed moonsault was gorgeous and that final Vader bomb was a splatterer. I remember digging this match back in 2012, and it was great to revisit it.


Vader/2 Cold Scorpio vs. Jay Lethal/Devon Moore  Pro Wrestling Syndicate 6/2/12


ER: This was just unexpectedly great. With no exaggeration Scorpio and Vader work as quickly here as they worked their last NOAH tag match a decade prior. Except now their combined age is 104. Old Vader was not in any way old Andre. There was no built in sad vulnerability, no constant pain etched across his face, no moments where it looked like he couldn't bend down to climb through the ropes. Vader looked linebacker quick here, and Scorpio looked as agile and graceful as literally any time you've ever seen Scorpio. This match is just outright shocking. Vader doesn't just stand in the middle of the ring and let people bounce into him, as you might expect from a 400 pound man with AARP eligibility. Vader RUNS and still has quick burst speed, still is an actual wrestler on the offensive. He and Lethal start with a rope running exchange that sees Vader pivoting and moving just as quick as ever, and when he's lacing into Lethal with clotheslines, big Vader arm attacks and punches, we get actual footwork and skill, not just "hold still and walk into my fist". When Moore is in Vader just absolutely FLATTENS him with two of the best elbowdrops you've ever seen, dropping them fast and hard across the upper chest, laying out with full extension, not once approaching gingerly dropping down. He continues squishing Moore and working a nasty arm submission while I actually giggle. Scorpio was just phenomenal here. He's a guy with some of the wildest high flying and strikes around, and he clearly aims to use ALL of it. His ringwork is so lightning fast, he throws this great violent spin kick, hits an awesome rolling heel kick, several variations on a twisting splash, all great. He and Vader are such an awesome complementary team, love Vader just slamming these guys then slingshotting Scorpio into the ring with his heavy flying. We get a hilarious violent stretch, where Vader hits a full extension Vader Bomb on Lethal, but Moore makes the save, so Vader hits another one, and Moore makes the save. Vader is looking at more like "Are you serious?" and while Vader is yelling at Moore we get Scorpio sneaking in with a slingshot legdrop on Lethal, then a rolling splash. Lethal is just a total grease stain on the mat and Moore keeps saving him, and it's great. Lethal and Moore do get a brief but nice comeback, ending with Moore hitting a nice shooting star press. Vader comes in with the save, just hammerfisting the back of Moore's head and clearing the ring with a violent chokeslam on Lethal. Scorpio is truly crazy and drops the bomb to end the match, crushing that moonsault legdrop. This match was just a total shock. I really dug the Vader/Scorpio singles the night before, but to see the two of them here working as if a decade hadn't passed since their last tag match, I was just flipping out the entire match. This one delivered some completely improbable thrills. These are the last of the great Vader matches.

PAS: Devon Moore must have broken some old school locker room rule or something (maybe he didn't share his drugs) because he gets merked by Vader and Scorp in this match. Lethal gets a chance to do some offense and work exchanges with Scorpio, while Moore just gets smashed. That chokeslam by Vader looked like he was trying to Joe Thurman Moore. I was amused at Devon continuously breaking up the pin while Lethal was getting flatter and flatter. The Drop the Bomb may be my favorite top rope move ever, it is so beautiful and lands with such violence, fun match and both the oldsters looked awesome. Colorado represent!!

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RIP Mastodon

Big Van Vader vs. Tony Halme NJPW 5/17/92

PAS: This is a fun battle of monsters, which is exactly what you want it to be. Halme may have the best body shots in wrestling history and he really is digging in into Vader's big belly here. There are very few wrestlers Vader has ever fought who you buy going toe to toe with him. It was a battle of those great looping Vader hooks against the those thudding body shots. We also got a big Halme top rope clothesline and a body slam. I loved the finish run with Vader throwing big clotheslines and Halme refusing to go down until he finally does. The actual finish run was a bit of a banana peel, but both guys are so imposing, banana peel seems like the only way.

ER: I just saw the movie Rampage (again...) and this is the large white men version of that. I'm with Phil on this one as how many guys can stand opposite Vader and make it look like a fair stand and trade? How many guys can stand across Halme and do the same? Also agree that Halme's hard right to the stomach is my favorite body shot in wrestling. It's thrown perfectly, lands and explodes. It's the best strike he throws, but it's also the best strike almost anyone throws. Even in his earliest matches Halme had a great elbowdrop, and he throws a perfect one here, and Vader takes this great sprawling bump across the ring off a top rope clothesline. Vader is a savage though and our finishing run is just lariat after lariat after avalanche after lariat after bear attack. Vader appears to be attempting to crush Halme's collarbones, dropping a big butt splash and a standing splash directly across his upper chest, and then some more lariats to that chest. At one point while lying on his back, Halme appears to feel for his heartbeat. The finish is a flash, with Vader missing another butt splash and immediately getting rolled up (and appearing to kick out), and it is a little disappointing not seeing these guys just murder each other to completion. Halme has this great aloof smug face though, so it's funny to see him immediately selling the victory like he hadn't spent the previous 3 minutes getting crushed. Halme is not one of the all time great wrestling titans like Vader, but he's damn sure a guy you want to see opposite a titan.

Super Vader vs. Tatsuo Nakano UWFI 5/6/93

PAS: This is Vader's debut match in UWFI and Nakano is a great opponent for a short sprint semi squash. He is a fat Elvis looking dude who always comes forward and fights, which is perfect for a guy getting mauled by a Grizzly Bear. He gets one great bit of offense, where he trips Vader and starts pounding him in the back in the head with some really stiff forearms. Vader lays in a big time beating, with a huge german suplex and a running smash where he obliterates Nakano and the ref. He finishes him with two big body shots and a hook. Great debut which makes Vader look unstoppable and Nakano like a tough bastard.

ER: Crowd is straight RABID for Vader, and why wouldn't they be? There's a roar through the first few minutes of this that practically sounds like the Beatles playing Shea. Nakano shows why I could never be a wrestler, standing chest out as Vader walks up to him...and Vader just looks enormous. He looks comically large. We all know how large Vader was, but here he just looks absolutely larger than life, like he's about to just swallow Nakano whole. Nakano is a man and takes his beating, trying some leg kicks that could have been effective the longer the match lasted, and getting Vader momentarily off his feet which is the only place Nakano had a shot. But this is a debuting monster, and that monster is gonna eat. Vader hits two of my absolute favorite avalanches here, one the second the bell rings (just to show Nakano how this match is going to go) and another as Nakano is getting back to his feet and Vader just decides to steamroll him AND the ref. The UWF-I points system just makes it look like Nakano's health meter is constantly draining, which, yeah, is accurate. The German is big, and he even pulls back on it a bit, rotating to the side at the last minute so it's more of a flat back suplex, when he could have just planted him dome first by going straight over the top. His strikes looked impossible to take, and the body shots to end the match look like something that could end any match ever.

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Ronda vs. Nia

14. Ronda Rousey vs. Nia Jax WWE Money in the Bank 6/17

PAS: I was actually pretty optimistic about Ronda as a pro wrestler, MMA is a pretty great base for wrestling, and folks like Bas Rutten, Shayna Bayzler and Dokonjonsuke Mishima were pretty great from the jump. The ways she is so good are pretty surprising though. I was expecting some cool Judo throws (and we got some awesome ones here), and maybe even some big bumps (and there were those too), but I was blown away by how good she already was at the little things which separate cool wrestlers from great ones. I loved how the match started with Jax overwhelming her with power and size, and how good Ronda was as reacting to that. A big part of the story of the match was conveyed in her facial reactions, she did a great job appearing overwhelmed, and she was awesome when she got her confidence and went to work. I loved her going to the top rope, almost falling off and steeling herself and hitting the bodypress. I think her martial arts experience makes her super compelling at working holds, no one would ever lay in a hold in a Judo contest or MMA fight and she doesn't every stope moving in a wrestling match,  every time she is placed in a hold or applies one she is constantly fighting for an advantage or a counter. Her battle out of the bearhug was one of my favorite spots of the year, and her attacking the arm was full of cool little adjustments. We are high voters on Nia Jax on SC, and this was a hell of a performance from her too, she was great at making everything look violent and I loved her arrogance, this is her sport and she wasn't going to allow an interloper to take her title.  Ronda has such a built in history with the armbar that even a tease of it gets a huge reaction, and I loved how the final fight for it was worked. Of course we can't have good things, and they do a stupid Money in the Bank cash in, and Ronda and Nia have to sell for mini who can barely lift a briefcase. I actually think Alexa can be effective in the ring, but having such a physical, athletically impressive match derailed by someone so tiny and unimposing really was dissonant, are we really supposed to buy Nia being pinned by that splash? Hornswoggle wasn't ending title matches.

ER: Fully agree with Phil here on just how surprised and impressed I am with the ways Rousey has excelled. We've now seen several MMA transitions and they all have the body language and the air of legitimacy, and we've seen some really quick learners (Riddle and Baszler recently, but we can also look at the New Japan Russians from 30 years ago as crossover quick learners). But what I wasn't expecting from Ronda is her being so great with timing, with selling, and most importantly has a range of facial characteristics that I wasn't expecting. There are people who I think are decent wrestlers who have been doing this for many years, who still get that look in their eyes that they're trying their best to remember what's coming next, to think about where they have to be standing, to remember what major note to hit next, and she just comes off so natural. I knew she had potential to be good, I didn't actually think she would be this good, this quick. Her move execution is great, her selling and reactions are great, but I love that she still has the stiffness of a celebrity Raw guest host when she takes offense. She exudes tons of confidence when she's dishing out shots, but there are also moments where she feels like Kevin Federline about to take an FU, and that's awesome. I'm always surprised when I see us as the high vote on Nia. I think people just hate her voice. I don't know, I think she's a great powerhouse who can believably work in drama for smaller opponents. She's a big bumper, but doesn't just fly around doing fast back bumps for anything, instead saving them for big cascading tumbles that open up her vulnerability.

I loved all the offense in this, loved the structure of Nia just powering through painful shots to land big wrestling moves. Ronda's strikes all looked great, loved her punch flurries, and she was so smart about throwing in little things to avoid dead time, like when they were both on the mat close to each other, and Ronda threw a grounded kick to Nia's back. That kind of thing reminds me of when someone wouldn't be too quick getting back to their feet and Finlay would stomp on their fingers. I thought Nia sold the shots well, absorbing at first but later the same shots thrown the same way had a bigger effect. At one point Ronda hit a right to the body that staggered and dropped Nia to a knee, allowing Ronda to leap with a high knee to the jaw. The whole sequence looked great, from both women. Nia's power offense was awesome, a big bear huge (which Coachman idiotically said was great for Ronda to rest during. Why the fuck is this guy here again?), press slams, avalanches, and a couple big Samoan drops, aiming to squish Ronda like a bug. Nia throws one of the favorite legdrops in wrestling, and I liked how the missed legdrop was used to give Ronda an opening here. Ronda is crazy with the punishment she takes, and I noticed myself leaned way forward on the couch while they were fighting on the floor, Ronda awesomely trying a rana before Nia swung her about as violently as you can swing someone into a barricade. I loved the work around the arm, thought Nia was great at showing how desperate she was to keep those hands clasped, loved how she slyly fed Ronda her arm after missing a corner charge, loved the zoom in on her hands slowly getting unclasped (though it would have felt even bigger had I not seen a great version of that exact same thing the night before on NXT), and maybe I'm wrong but as they were fighting through what would have surely been the match finish armbar it looked like Nia was trying to muscle out of it by holding her arms and leaning forward with her weight, trying to break Ronda's grip the way Zampano would break an iron chain across his chest.

I expected a not clean finish, but had less of a problem with Bliss' performance than Phil. She is obviously not as physical as Ronda or Nia, but I thought she was really effective swinging that briefcase, and I didn't see it as her having a hard time lifting it, it felt like she was giving it some weight to pay off the shots. John Cena was always really great at giving the ring steps weight, always losing his footing in a different way when picking them up. That briefcase probably weighs 3 pounds tops, but the way Bliss was throwing her whole body into shots, swinging the edges into Nia's arm and plastering Ronda, really made it feel bigger. I buy the Twisted Bliss finishing, as Nia's focus was solely on her arm, which set up a big DDT before the splash, and no matter how big you are it's going to smart when 100 pounds gets dropped on you.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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If You Plant Ice, You are Going to Harvest LA PARK

LA Park/Volador Jr./Hijo de LA Park vs. Rush/Terrible/Bestia del Ring CMLL 6/1/18 - FUN

ER: A sloppy follow-up to the first clash, with Park's son replacing Flyer, but this match felt a little more misguided and had a lot of timing issues, a few multiman set pieces that required awkward waiting around. I think Rush has come off like a megastar in these matches, and Park is a great foil. Park has found numerous entertaining ways to get his face bounced off a ringpost or a barricade door, and the big moments played big, like Park hitting his big fat skeleton dives, Park getting hit with his kid's dive, Rush landing a big flip dive, all dives looked good. We get some greatest hits, Rush kicks around Hijo's head like a soccer ball, pastes Park with a corner dropkick and  stops short to trick him into getting kicked. But nobody was very good at getting into position for offense. There's a cool moment where Park and Rush start to square off, and Park takes off his gloves for some chopping, and you sense things are heating up...but then Rush goes and stands on the apron and challenges Park to follow...and then just stands there the whole time while Park bounces off the opposite ropes and kicks Rush to the floor. We blow threw some ball shots that don't mean much of anything, only to get to an immediate and poorly constructed revenge spot where all three Ingobernales argue with ref Edgar for an extended length of time so Familia Real can set up a silly triple ball punch roll up spot, with the cameras focusing on Volador loudly counting the timing for everybody. I don't look to these guys to work a match based around tandem spot timing, I want some unprofessional brawling. I thought the finish was flat but understandable, with Rush attacking everyone with a stretcher, but the stretcher comes off flimsier than stuff Rush typically attacks guys with. Park also built some drama with an attempted martinete, but I'm wondering why they expect me to still care about martinetes on a show that had a few different flipping piledriver variations for nearfalls. While this did have Park coming through the crowd in a kilt, overall this is feeling a bit too sanitized.

PAS: This was a pretty big step down from the previous week, which was a small step down from the heights of this feud.  Park is universally entertaining, I am going to enjoy him in everything he does, the dives looked great, the spear looked great, but this really did feel like a throw away trios match, which is a shame this early in the feud. Super disappointed to see La Commandante come out with the glass picture of Jesus and not have it smashed over someones head, the whole point of Chekov's gun is that it goes off. They really need an out of control brawl to heat this up again, Volador doesn't need to hit all of his armdrags in every match.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LA PARK

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Gallagher vs. Gulak

4. Jack Gallagher vs. Drew Gulak WWE NXT 5/10

PAS: Holy hell what an awesome bit of grappling. Pretty crazy that something so stylistically odd awesome ended up on a WWE produced show. Gulak has been training as he looks way more muscular then the last time I saw him (I clearly need to go on a Gulak run). The first six minutes of this are all matwork and it is some all time great stuff, cool mix of traditional pro style, World of Sport stuff and point jujitsu. There is this truly epic leg lock battle with Gallagher adjusting a step over toe hold in multiple cool ways, and Gulak looking to roll and attack from the bottom. The attacks here were way more Volk Han then Johnny Saint, and while I actually really like Zach Sabre Jr., the technique here was on a whole different level. I loved how both guys would use front chokes and can openers to counter the leg locks They get up off the mat and have a great rope running section with both guys attacking from odd angles, and then a great striking section which was super stiff, and ended in a Gallagher KO headbutt which looked like a Fujiwara KO. I loved every second of this, the skill level of this match is unlikely to be matched by anyone, anywhere in the world.

ER: Truly in the running for best under 10 minute match in history, and once you started parsing that time down I'm not sure how many better under 7 minute matches there are. This was some next level stuff and without seeing Phil's thoughts ahead of time, as I was watching it I was also thinking how wild this was to just be happening in WWE. The match is 6.5 minutes and we don't get a strike thrown until around minute 5, and before that we get the best headlocks and leglocks and some of the coolest worked shoot wrestling I've seen. I loved all of this and won't go through a play by play, but there was no wasted movements from these two. Gulak worked headlocks early and that also helped him later, early on he locked on one and circled around Gallagher, like he was running a Three Stooges spot and trying to screw Gallagher into the mat. Gallagher looked like a little pale Terminator on the mat, calmly knowing where to reach and what to work for the entire time, with Gulak looking slightly behind while trying to not get his ankle snapped. None of Gallagher's sub attempts looked gimmicky, all was airtight and looked wholly uncooperative, stepping down on Gulak's right ankle while twisting his left, mindful of how Gulak was swinging his momentum on the mat to see where he could make his counter step. The leglock position brought too many cool little things, with Gulak using the toe of his boot to annoy Gallagher's face and allow slight room for shifts, and that great extended series of Gallagher maneuvering Gulak's leg over his own, working in the other one, grabbing an arm, all done so snug. That Indian Deathlock figure 4 was a thing of vicious beauty, and Drew grabbing a desperation headlock and immediately trying to twist Gallagher's head off to get him to break legitimately looked like Gulak's only chance at escape. The strikes section is perfectly timed and just the right amount, with Gallagher kicking at Drew's leg, Gulak responding with huge elbows and chops and a thrust headbutt to the chest, all of which seemed designed in equal parts to hurt and to create distance. The finish couldn't have ruled any harder, with Gulak going for a death blow with a tornado elbow and Gallagher putting him on dream street with THAT headbutt. This was really special. I'd probably go 70 stars on this one, since I can watch it 10 times in the time it would take someone to watch a 7 star match.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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NXT TakeOver: Chicago II 6/16/18

Roderick Strong/Kyle O'Reilly vs. Danny Burch/Oney Lorcan

ER: Holy shit this match starts off my night go go go go. They are taking no breaths and it is hot as hell. Burch is working fast and everybody is whipping around the ring, and we get an awesome early match exclamation point when Burch catches O'Reilly on a leapfrog and catches his ankle, slamming it to the mat. Strong is working a weird MMA bully style, grounding Burch and peppering him with mounted punches, and O'Reilly works that too with a nice hardway double leg. O'Reilly's mounted elbows look pretty lousy, but his palm strikes have a nick smack. I'll allow it. Strong has a super underrated dropkick and he absolutely scalps Burch with one. But this match is all about the Lorcan hot tag, one of the hottest we've seen in ages. Lorcan throws a lariat straight outta hell, a couple of massive flying European uppercuts, sick fast flip dive onto everyone, total house on fire. They dump Strong on his head for good measure, Lorcan takes a disgusting bump off the top rope to the apron to the floor. We get a great dramatic 90s direct to video action movie moment with O'Reilly locking Burch in an armbar and a slow camera zoom as Burch is holding two fingers together to keep his arm from being fully extended. Lorcan re-eneters the match to hit a double blockbuster off the apron to Strong and O'Reilly, and then hits a bonkers doomsday device European off the top. Good lord that sentence is a mouthful and this match is really fun. I didn't love the Adam Cole interference and thought it slowed the match down a bit too much, and I didn't like the phone booth fighting spot, but the end run picking apart Lorcan was great. Strong saved his most vicious shots for the death blows, a nasty chop to the neck, a leaping knee to the face, a great diving lariat while O'Reilly hit a legsweep. A lively match, hotly paced, real crowd pleaser.

PAS: Lorcan is a blast, one of the better guys I can remember at pure intense sprint wrestling, actually reminds a bit of Sting as a hot tag, just an intense explosive killer. Lorcan sprints have been some of my favorite things in wrestling for the last couple of years, and I am glad he got a showcase match finally.  That bump to the floor was totally nuts, the kind of thing we might praise Jerry Estrada or Cactus Jack for, it felt like an all time bump freak bump. I am pretty lukewarm about the other three guys in this match, although they all had moments I dug. I am into Burch and Gallagher bring the barfight headbutt into the WWE, I have been in fist fights with Englishmen, that is a move you always have to be weary of.  I am with Eric on praising that cross arm breaker spot. So much of NXT is built around these cinematic moments, sometimes it comes off as hokey (as it does later in this show for example). Here though  I thought the two finger hold worked really well, and would have actually made a great finish, although the actual finish with Lorcan getting pounded from all sides until he collapsed was really great, reminded me of a cinematic death, I could see that being the way Jon Snow dies at the end of Game of Thrones (if he dies, this isn't a spoiler).

Velveteen Dream vs. Ricochet

ER: This is really rope runny but not in a too annoying way. They're both kind of slithery so it works as a fun style battle. Dream has some fun throwback offense, like a great clubbing double axehandle over the bridge, and modern flash like a ankle flip somersault senton, and hits a cool Aerostar-like springboard flip dive that just floats. Ricochet hits his own big tope and a no hands moonsault that kinda misses, but Dream sells it like it totally upended him. There's a little drag in spots and it's a tough pace to work after the previous long tag. The crowd maybe doesn't react as strong because of that. Dream is a loon though and really throws his body into a middle rope death valley driver, properly selling the damage by bumping almost just as big. His rolling dvd is a legit thing of beauty. I don't really love the stand and trade stuff, kind of goes on a bit long and some of the response bumps are a little too planned. But again this crowd is absolutely on fire for this so who am I to be the joyless crap sack? But I don't know, I think Ricochet doing his own just as good rolling dvd is a little silly, and then he hits his own elbow (and we don't even get the best elbow in the business from Dream!?!?), but he eats knees on a crazy far shooting star press, but then Dream whiffs on his elbow, literally landing almost completely across the ring a couple feet from the ropes. It was a bit longer and slower than it should have been, but they kept the crowd through most of it and that counts. A solid if flawed match.

Nikki Cross vs. Shayna Baszler

ER: Nikki's crazy act takes up the first couple minutes, and it's cheesy, but she's committed and it works enough. But once Baszler takes over then I get into this, dropping her in a backpack on the ring entrance ramp and kicking her around, locking in snug chokes, but then giving generously on Cross' comeback, taking a big bump on her shoulders on a back suplex. Baszler throws such awesome knees, but the finish came off a bit too cheesy to me. Shayna locks in a great choke, but Cross lasts way too long in it and ends with Cross eventually passing out while smiling a big inauthentic Joker smile. Baszler almost saves it while screaming crazily during the choke, and her black mouthguard screaming is a pretty great heel gag. Short and not bad, but I think it comes down to me not liking Cross a whole lot.

Lars Sullivan vs. Aleister Black

ER: Fun quick start after a staredown with Sullivan catching the Black Mass again, but bumping to the floor and eating a double knees and a high knee in the ring. There's a lot of near miss back and forth but it's been done well so far. We've not yet gone full do-si-do. Love the spot where Sullivan runs through a clothesline as if he's breaking the tape at the end of a marathon. Sullivan catching Black on the quebrada to the floor is a great strength spot, and we get a cool powerslam into the barricade and a crushing avalanche. Black is so much fun, I really stupidly want a RAMPAGE battle against Braun Strowman. Love that pop up powerslam but I don't know if I love him going up top. I kind of hate when big guys go up just to get caught, felt a little too cheap Hogan Nitro spot. But the clothesline from the apron was devastating and Sullivan does do a big awkward diving hippo splash off the top, catching a knee to the jaw. It looked messy but that may have been to its benefit. Black has some fun 2006 fast indie offense and I like his kicks to various parts of his legs. But Sullivan has some cool tricks too. You don't usually see big guys with neat offense tricks. His chop block to the front of Black's leg is sick, and a giant dude doing a stretch muffler is a wonderful sight in wrestling. The flying headbutt is stupid as all hell to be doing in 2018, Race was saying to cut it out like 30 years ago. And then it gets a 2 and is it worth it Lars? Lars missing the chop block and eating a double stomp to his lower back is a great Jackie Chan moments, and Sullivan sells for Black's kicks better than maybe anybody else in NXT. Fact. He has 4 different crumbling sells, like he's Kawada with a pituitary gland condition. I thought there were a couple minor missteps, but this felt like a pretty great Street Fighter II tournament final. This worked for me.

Johnny Gargano vs. Tomasso Ciampa

ER: This starts off like a fun 1997 ECW Tommy Dreamer brawl, I mean as if they were following a script, with a crowd brawl that sees Gargano get handed a Gargano sign from a fan, that has a stop sign hidden in it. It's so ECW that the crowd ends up doing an ECW chant. My word. The Gargano dive was big, filmed in a way that made it look like he flew 15 feet. Such a TNN garbage brawl, which is hitting the right spot on a Saturday night after a couple cold drinks. I mean this is taking me right back to some 2001 wrestling in college, watching Benoit doing rolling Germans and worked with that Crash aesthetic. Ciampa gets tossed over the announce table and he essentially spin kicks Percy on the way down. We're going through a bunch of greatest hits from 80s to 90s, Gargano whipping him with a belt and we still get a bunch of 90s garbage trash can spots, trash can lid spots, feels late 90s but violently so.

I love the exposed ring as a prop. It doesn't get used that often so it really does have some freshness and mystery to it. It feels like crossing a line. The vibe with the mat pulled back and exposed padding and glossed wood made it feel like two guys doing a drywall job in a halfway built house and getting into a fist fight over who has a nicer car. We get some nice set pieces here, feels like a really intricate stage fighting scene, tons of props. Gargano attacking that knee gives this some edge, both guys not afraid to go low. There is some wonderful soap opera drama on display. I'm sure there were at least two episodes of Passions that had someone remove off someone's wedding ring and spit on it. End gets really silly. They tease a big Gargano jump and don't pay it off, and I think Gargano goes to "nerve damage" selling a bit too often. But he cuffs Ciampa and delivers a bunch of superkicks he can't defend. The move that finishes the match is something that plays even better the more I see it, with Ciampa hooking Gargano by the neck as Gargano is getting back in the ring, and planting him with the DDT on the exposed ring. I really loved it because they exposed that ring 10+ minutes ago, and I love that exposed ring as a looming danger, and it went just long enough and just far enough away from the ring that we weren't thinking about it anymore. It was a quick power outage and Ciampa came off really hatable. This felt a cut below the other TakeOver Gargano main events, but I liked it's overblown style.

This was a good but not overly good show, but it never felt like a bad show. Everybody was working hard even if they were working at something that I wasn't digging. I think all the matches essentially accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. I also think a couple of these matches could improve on a rewatch, so it always felt like a show that mattered.

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New Footage Friday: Dandy, Shu, Takada, Kobyashi, Armstrongs and Horsemen

Bob Armstrong/Brad Armstrong vs. Tully Blanchard/Lex Luger NWA 4/11/87

PAS: This is pro-shot, with commentary uncut from the 1987 Crockett Cup. Really fun match structure with a long heel in peril section opening up with the Armstrongs working over Tully. You get a bunch of a close call missed tags, and cheating, much like you would if Tully was a face. Here though Tully is so loathsome that the crowd is enjoying watching him get screwed. Tully was so awesome here, I loved his fake test of strength, wild cheap shot swing, and he was great getting hoisted on his own petard. Really dug the Bullet of course, he has a ton of 70s babyface flourishes, knowing just how to egg on the crowd as he twists a wrist or throws a punch. His K-RATAY hot tag near the end of the match was class stuff. Loved JJ cheating too, what a smarmy prick he was, one of my all time favorite guys on the outside. He has the charisma of an ex-congressman turned pharmaceutical lobbyist.

MD: So we had this from out in the crowd with far worse VQ and we had a five minute clipped version that was on the official Crockett Cup video. This is pro-shot, with Tony announcing, and complete with great VQ, so we're covering it.

Generally, I'm wary of tag matches that lean too heavily towards heel-in-peril, but there are a number of things going on here that serve as mitigating factors. For one, this was part of a two day tag tournament, so there needed to be some variation in style and tone between the matches. Them doing a fun, face-heavy quarterfinal match here meant that they could lean further into the heat in other matches. Frankly, the crowd probably should have been burnt out and that they weren't was a real testament to the match. A lot of it is about the participants and the execution though. Bob and Brad are the folksy trickster family come up from the mountains, pure Americana. There's a charm to them that you wouldn't see in your mid-80s WWF face tag teams doing a lot of the same things. Tully is the king of stooges, who tries to cheat first and then deserves everything he gets. Luger's just oafish enough to fall for their tricks on the apron. JJ's always gold as the stuffy manager getting more and more infuriated and flustered on the outside. Of course, the heels are going over, not just here but in the next match too, so they don't need to be protected as much, while the guys coming in from outside in Bob and Brad likely do.

The execution being great helps. Tully is constantly trying to worm his way to the corner. There's nothing valiant about his fighting (even if it's still a little tough). Bob's 100% committed, charming in his cheating and crowd interaction. Brad's picture perfect, always exactly where he should be, including with a great shoulder spear cut off to a Tully tag attempt. When Luger finally gets in and shows off his strength, Brad shines with finesse in dodging and weaving and firing back, and the crowd comes unglued when Tully tries to take advantage only to eat a lightning quick missile dropkick. The heat is brief but the transition is good (JJ pulling down the ropes), Brad fights well from underneath, with a hot tag and awesome JJ-assisted double clothesline for the screwy finish.

Not brand new, not my ideal tag structure, but crystal clear VQ for a charming match with everyone playing their parts and a hot crowd. I'll take this over a Kane OVW match anyday.

Kuniaki Kobyashi/Norio Honaga vs. Nobuhiko Takada/Kazuo Yamazaki NJPW 3/19/88

PAS: Really heated interpromotional battle with Yamazaki and Kobyashi especially trying to rip and tear at each other. It opens with a stare down between both guys, leading to a Yamazki high kick and some very sharp ground and pound leading to both partners and a bunch of seconds separating both guys. Very well done subtle worked shoot, no wrestling reason to have seconds run in, so it conveyed the possible unprofessionalism without shouting it from the rafters. Takada then tags in and slaps on a kneebar, sometimes that guy is a dunce. Match has a bunch of those mini explosions between Yamazaki and Kobyashi, and by the end you really want to see those guys unload on each other (they don't appear to have a singles match after this, so sort of a weird tease which went nowhere).

MD: Going through these NJPW handhelds is a archaeological experience. As most of these matches have not been watched by the community as a whole, there's no telling what you'll get. We came across this one because it was adjacent to a Fujiwara tag vs Ron Starr and Scott Hall. Unfortunately, we only had a minute or two of that. In finding the match, however, I stumbled into this.

A house show/handheld match with three or four intercessions from the seconds in order to keep competitors apart raises red flags immediately. This was a boiling pot of a match, one that in another setting might have frustrated me because it never quite boiled over, even after Yamazaki and Kobyashi finally got their hands on one another. As an unearthed handheld though, the anticipation is palatable and satisfying. It's a shame we don't have another match full of payoff though.

El Dandy vs. Shu El Guerrero IWA Japan 6/23/94

PAS: Rob Bihari continues his killer upload streak with this IWA Japan HH from 1994. El Dandy is an all time great, and like most luchadores has a pretty limited number of on tape singles matches. Shu El Guerrero is a guy who worked most of his career in the UWA so his tape footprint is pretty small, very cool that this showed up. It is more of a nifty discovery then a great match however. It feels like Dandy and Shu trying to work a Puro Juniors match then importing a lucha match. The opening matwork could have used some more llave, I have seen both guys work maestros matches and they can be electric, this was more armbar/kneebar stuff and sort of dull. There were some very cool suplexes by Dandy, and a nice tope, but I wanted this to be more. Still who would have thought this was something we would ever get to see?

MD: Hyper-competent mat-driven exhibition lucha in Japan with guys we're always glad to get more footage of. I don't think we have more than a handful of Shu singles matches. I question the logic of working ten minutes of primera caida title match matwork in front of a crowd that's come to see Yukihiro Kanemura and Shoji Nakamaki in a barbed wire barricade chain match, but (I pause here wondering if Phil will let me get away with the "who am I to doubt" line? I decide against it) the crowd was quiet but appreciative, especially once the pace picked up towards the end.

ER: I didn't actually know before this that Dandy had worked Japan, so it's cool seeing him in that environment, even if this environment felt pretty icy. And this never felt like more than an exhibition of moves, but it was a 21 minute exhibition of moves and both guys showed a pretty deep offense pool. But moves - no matter how nice - done deep in the vacuum of space, and I'm pretty sure Matt is right about people watching these two do a series of sunset flip variations while silently waiting for barbed wire. Also, the crowd had just watched a Joe Gomez match. I can't think of many WCW workers I care less about than Gomez. But IWA and those other early 90s death feds were always a cool variety bag, you'd get young American indy goofs, a couple old American guys, shamed native guys ousted from their original fed, just a cool mix. On paper if you knew you were watching a card with Dandy, Dick Murdoch, Headhunters, and a barbed wire chain match, you'd probably be pretty stoked.

But the crowd was silent until towards the end, and as great as some of the stuff looked here there really wasn't much of an interesting story to the match. It was pretty much Dandy breaking out a bunch of great looking pin attempt rollups, and Shu doing his cast canon of power offense. There were a couple clunky moments and a re-done spot, but also a lot of truly great looking stuff. The main problem with the match was that they essentially worked the same level the whole match, which is impressive, but you need peaks and valleys. This was move trading without much rhyme or reason given to moves after the kickouts. Dandy hits 7 or 8 awesome roll up variations, including one of the absolute fastest wheelbarrow rollups I've ever seen (I rewound that spot three times) and the smoothest possible crucifix roll through, but he was doing them from beginning to end with all of them getting the same exact 2 count until one got a 3. Dandy hits a fantastic lawn dart dive over the top, and I absolutely loved a spot with Shu doing a big surfboard and Dandy upside down in the surfboard reaching out both of his hands for the ropes. Shu always comes off as heavy and impossibly solid, like a guy who doesn't look cut but looks like he's made out of stone, like Masa Saito, and alot of his power offense lands with a big thud. Dandy was young and lithe here and his roll ups are among my favorite of any wrestler. They are always so economical and look entirely physically sound, love how snug he keeps his legs to his opponent, love the aesthetics of his legs locking perfectly into place over his opponent's arms. Really I can only think of Hijo Del Santo as someone with tighter roll-ups, but Dandy's could be better. So we get 16 minutes of a 21 minute match, and if you had seen some of this in GIF form I bet it looked like a banger, and while it was never boring at all, it just didn't play out. Still couldn't be happier that it got uploaded.

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