New Footage Friday: Heenan, Larry Z, Jumbo, Tenryu, Lawler, Beau James, Dirty Dutch, Goldens

Jumbo Tsuruta/Giant Baba vs. Killer Karl Kox/Dick Murdoch AJPW 2/25/81

PAS: This is a 2/3 falls match where we get parts of the first two falls and the whole third. Mainly worth it to see Kox and Murdoch as a team, and they rule. nothing is more of a natural heel team then two guys that look like racist southern sheriffs in the 50s, you almost expect them to interrupt the match to go firebomb a black church. Kox is one of my all time favorites, and there is so little footage available. Fun to watch him team with Murdoch, when you watch them together it is almost like Murdoch is Dick Slater to KKK's Terry Funk, Kox has all of the Murdoch shitck and does it even better, his punches are a bit more awesome, elbow drop is even more throat crushing and his Brain buster is even more brain busting. I really like the double team that Baba and Jumbo use to finish the fall, and I dig the cheapshot finish, but this was more of a showcase then a great match.

MD: This is cool because one of the few significant Kox performances we have is the match against Murdoch. There were times here when he was out on the apron pantomiming what Murdoch was doing where he was almost like Dick's dad or older brother. They both have that same larger than life over the top-ness both throwing offense and eating it, even if they are completely different physically. Past the entrance, we basically come in on a long Jumbo, FIP, with Murdoch and Kox as a well-oiled machine cutting off the ring. It's amazing how commonplace and obvious something like this, that's virtually a lost art was. Now we're in a world of all-action tornado tags with 3/4th of the match being a finishing stretch.

Anyway, they had some great stuff, be it the brainbuster or the elbow drops or the suplex. The end of the first fall was just great with Jumbo floating over to escape a suplex and hitting the world's hugest flying knee after a Baba big boot. The second fall was the heels staying on top after that little blip and Murdoch making short work of Jumbo. Baba finally got involved towards the end and I thought the finish, while abrupt, was actually pretty cool. I wasn't expecting it and it definitely got over the Americans while protecting the Baba and Jumbo. I hope we come across a lot more of Killer Karl in the hunt for footage. It feels like we've just scratched the surface.

ER: Goddamn this was good. I love Kox so much (Ed: Find a better way to say that), he looks like the absolute toughest old white dude. He's 50 and looks 75, like a tougher version of Robert Duvall's Reverend EW in The Apostle, and Robert Duvall beat a man into a coma with a baseball bat in that movie. Kox is a man who looks like kids his in his neighborhood are scared of him, a guy who owns a mean dog, a guy who keeps things that fly over his fence. And he never ends up saving any of you from burglars while your parents are away. Kox reminds me of a meaner, more grizzled version of my grandfather, the late great George Yost. And my grandpa was grizzled. He was a lumberjack with 6 of his brothers. Two of them died as lumberjacks. He worked hard and was a millionaire, but lived in a trailer for most of the years I knew him. He lived until he was 91, and he wore those periwinkle old man jeans that I've never seen in stores, yet many old men in my life wore them. He was old and grumpy and perpetually hard of hearing. He loved pro wrestling when my mom was young, which is why she hated pro wrestling, because it was on a LOT in Riverside, CA in the 50s and 60s. He never learned my sister's name, even though she was 25 when he eventually passed away. He would call me Eric when he came down to stay with us, and called her "The Girl", but not in a mean way, in a "I just genuinely can't remember" way. He was vain. He kept himself at 170 lbs until he was 90, wanting to maintain his waistline so he could wear his favorite clothes (his light blue jeans and thick flannel shirts). And when he turned 90 he assertively told his Church to not print his birthday or age in the Church Bulletin, because he "didn't want people to know he was old." When I was still young enough to live with my parents, he would watch wrestling with me when he was visiting us for a couple days. He watched and seemed intrigued by Cactus Jack and Terry Funk getting pushed off the stage in a dumpster. He hadn't watched wrestling in decades, but Freddie Blassie was his favorite when he watched. He called my mother's school principal a pencil neck geek to his face. Karl Kox is a mean version of George Yost, and I've watched every single available match we have of him. So any time we get any new Killer Karl Kox footage it's some of the best wrestling news I can get.

Murdoch and Kox are so cool, jumping off the ropes way to much for round-middled southern boys, jumping with great elbows and axe handles, even Baba looks like he's gonna go off the top rope at one point. These two were such tough bruisers, and really scrambled to put a beating on Jumbo. I loved Murdoch going after Jumbo and missing on a fast elbowdrop. The finish of the first fall is one of the all time greats, with Murdoch running so damn hard into a big Baba boot, truly making it one of the most effective and nasty Baba boots in history, then stumbling back face first right into a smashing Jumbo high knee. We even get a slo mo shot of that great finish and it reminds you of the first non-deathmatch tapes you bought or traded for, watching thunderbolts ripple through Misawa's body as he got dumped on his head, watching sweat fly off Kawada's head as Misawa smashes him with an elbow, and now seeing Dick Murdoch spray spit after running into Baba's size 22.

The second fall is an absolute murder. Jumbo is in complete punching bag crash test dummy mode, and Kox and Murdoch look like literally the best tag team I've ever seen. Murdoch throws the best back elbow, hits an awesome running powerslam, the greatest worked kneedrop. He and Kox have this great thing going where Dick throws Jumbo face first into Karl's knee as he's tagging in, Kox drags Jumbo's limp, heavy corpse over the top rope and bodyslams him halfway across the ring, Kox throws a short fast uppercut that would get an OOOOOOOO reaction when it showed up on a Great Punches mixtape. By the time Murdoch finally lays Jumbo out with a brainbuster, the pinfall is a mercy killing. Thinking of 2/3 falls tag team wrestling in terms of boxing and MMA, this fall would be an absolutely legendary round.

Third fall sees these great old men (HA! I called them both old, even though Murdoch here is younger than I am now. However older, I have not yet become nor will ever become the exact, specific kind of man that Dick Murdoch was, for better and worse). Kox gets to show of his somehow better than John Tatum stooging, as Baba gets involved and throws awesome chops at Killer's throat. After each chop Kox comes drunkenly firing out of the corner, throwing punches at nobody. But before long Murdoch and Kox are having an elbowdrop contest on Baba's chest, with Kox throwing the finest leaping elbowdrop you've seen, outgunning Murdoch's excellent take on the falling elbowdrop. Kox even gets to finish the match, gets to have a hidden weapon finish. How fucking cool is that? 50 years old, getting to use a hidden weapon to knock Giant Baba out and pin him in Tokyo in the main event. How cool is it to thing of Kox 20 years after that, telling people about this match while wearing a plaid shirt tucked into his jeans, and a hat that he got while visiting a decommissioned Naval aircraft carrier.

This match is honestly my favorite wrestling match I've watched all year. This is some great pro wrestling. It's what I get joy from, this thing I've been obsessed with for much of my life. We need to make this thing public and make sure anyone who wants to see it, will be able to. This is what it's all about people.

Jumbo Tsuruta/Genichiro Tenryu vs. Bobby Heenan/Larry Zbyszko AJPW 7/4/81

PAS: Pretty awesome to see two of the greatest wrestlers of all time team up to take on Jumbo and Tenryu. As you might imagine we get lots of shenanigans from the AWA dream team, cheap shots and chinlocks with the strap wrapped around the throat. Heenan is great when he realizes the jig is up and he takes a great flip bump on Jumbo clothesline. I would have liked to see the finish be a little more competitive, it felt like Tenryu and Jumbo just decided to stop with the nonsense and end the match, but it was fun to see The Brain and The Legend in a different context.

MD: Obviously it's great to see any interaction between Larry and Bobby. Heenan was super demonstrative with the tag rope. In most matches you don't even notice it, but here he was using it as an open symbol for all of the chicanery and his heart. He was so over the top at times that you could confuse him for Percy Pringle, but it worked in front of this crowd. Obviously, he wasn't going to offer hard hitting or monstrous violence. What he had to offer was being as Bobby Heenan as possible. That included, apparently, taking a perfectly believable flip bump off of a chop. Larry, at this point, was an absolute king of feeding into offense too. Everything felt fluid. Yeah, it would have been nice to have a little more of this, maybe a six month run against the High Flyers, but I'm glad we got anything at all considering that the community's never even seen this pairing before. 


Jerry Lawler/Beau James/Dutch Mantel vs. Jimmy Golden/Eddie Golden/Jeff Tankersley SSW 9/18/10

ER: Man this was 12 good minutes of tag that I wish went 30. What a fabulous trios team we get from the babyface side, with Beau James at his biggest, 320 lb. (that just means his punches land harder), and the on again off again feuding legends Lawler and Dutch. Jimmy Golden is in great shape for 60, although his nephew Eddie is the one in 80% of this. We start with Beau, Lawler, and Dutch all getting to show off their skills against Eddie, showing off who has better shots in 2010. Beau throws such a great right hand and a stiff shoulderblock, Lawler and Dutch...well you know what those guys bring, and I loved when Jimmy got involved as he had a couple of fun stumbly, arm swinging bumps (especially when he went face first into the buckles, he stumbling back bump was sheer perfection). We get good moments of Eddie accidentally taking shots at Jimmy and Tankersley, and really the Goldens only take over when Lawler and Dutch collide and start fighting amongst themselves. Lawler is FIP throughout, taking boots and other shots from all of them, getting run into the ringpost still better than maybe anybody, taking a big backdrop, and Golden looks good taking over. Lawler comes back when Golden goes for another backdrop, Lawler stops short and punches him and tags Dutch (there was kind of a silly moment earlier where Dutch pulled his tag hand away) and then everybody swarms the ring. Beau tees off on Jimmy and Jimmy takes a couple more stumbling bumps, and we wrap things up in satisfying fashion. They clearly had the material to double this thing, and I wish we got some more (would have loved the Goldens surviving the Dutch hot tag and going through another control segment) time, and I wish we got more Beau James. His shots on Jimmy in the corner were great, loved his headlock punches, and I wanted to see more from the big guy. Still, this was what I expected, and made me smile the whole way through.

PAS: Man that babyface trio is a group of all timers. I loved all the early bumping around by the heels, especially Eddie Golden who was an awesome pinball and could turn vicious in a moment. With James and Eddie Golden you have a pair of all time born too late guys, this should have been a regional feud for the ages in the 80s, but they were both guys out of their time. Lawler is amazing at taking a beating and building to the hot tag, his post shots were brutal looking, and the punches by the Goldens and Tankerlsy really looked like they were brutalizing him. Jimmy Golden is just ageless, and I think there are probably some real Golden Gems among this SSW footage I agree with Eric that this really could have used another 5 or 10 minutes, but that may be just us getting greedy.

MD: Lots to like here. I think this may have peaked at the entrances though. The Goldens came out to All Hell's Breaking Loose. I watched the first year of Continental last year and Golden/Fuller coming out full of swagger to the near spoken word beginnings of that song was probably the best part in the midst of a year that was full of best parts. Dutch looked like the coolest old man in the world. As for Lawler? The venue, with a crowd that was by no means huge, felt electric, like it was hundreds of people more than it was, when he walked down.

The match itself was fun though, running the old "Partners who don't trust each other" gimmick. I like how they played it out, though, setting it up with two heel miscommunication spots, teasing it with one for the faces that was averted, and then going through with it off of a heel-driven shove that sent Lawler into Dutch. The arguing that ensued explained the heels taking over. Them taking over was Lawler eating a solid beating inside and out, with ref distraction and Dutch refusing to tag in. Ultimately, though, the heels get too big for their britches, hit Dutch, and he tags in and ends it. Exactly what it should have been and thoroughly enjoyable for what it was, just classic character driven storytelling that never gets old, well executed. Eddie particularly grew into a great stooge and Lawler has that immortal ability to sell every moment as meaningful and important to him (and if it's important to him, it's important to the crowd).

ER: I must find contention with Matt saying Dutch looked like the coolest old man in the world, as earlier in this post we witnessed 50 year old Karl Kox wearing a tight blue t-shirt hugging his near-retirement belly, the worlds KILLER KARL KOX written simply in white. White bubble lettering.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE JERRY LAWLER