New Footage Friday: Beau James, Frank Parker, Cactus, Kawada, Juicer!

Cactus Jack vs. Toshiaki Kawada AJPW 3/31/91

MD: 1991 Foley was the most game wrestler ever. Yes, he hit the plunge. Yes, he spent a good portion of the match running into Kawada's strikes. It got a bit too chinlocky in the middle, which isn't a huge issue but the nature of a HH is that you can't really get in on the action and see them work it. I think he would have been an amazing Lawler opponent at this point and it really shows why he was a great Sting opponent the next year. He did feel somewhat plugged into an American formula though, which didn't completely work in this setting and with this opponent.

ER: Well, we now have tape of both times Kawada and Foley squared off, and neither one of them are very good. It's pretty unfathomable to watch this match with hindsight and think "That bad-bodied guy who can't throw a good looking clubbing forearm will have finished a Hall of Fame career in less than a decade". Completely incomprehensible. Imagine these two matching up in 94-96. That said, even though Foley hasn't looked great in the available footage from his lone AJ tour, I'd still be interested in seeing every singles match he had on the tour, especially the Taue and Ogawa matches. So yeah, Cactus threw a lot of iffy forearms that looked like he was holding back, and locked in a couple different long chinlocks, one barely a minute into the match. Brutal. As a bonus to these long, do-nothing chinlocks, they had their backs to our thankless director, meaning we just saw a minute plus of Jack's melty body leaning on Kawada. About 1/3 of this match was spent lying in those chinlocks, so thank god Kawada had no problem kicking Jack's ass whenever they were on their feet. Kawada fired off 3 great sidekicks with Jack on the ropes, a couple nice spinning heel kicks, and an awesome lariat to the back of Jack's head. Jack hits the elbow off the apron, and takes a bonkers bump into the crowd off a reversed Irish whip, really throwing himself over the guardrail with a cannonball. This felt like a very odd mismatch, but that was probably also its best feature. You take out the few minutes of lying around, and make this a 4 minute match with Kawada kicking Jack around the ring while Jack stumbles and flies into the crowd? I'd watch it again with friends.

The Latin Fury vs. Juicer WWF 1/8/92

MD: There are two sorts of tryout matches, the one where they barely do anything and the one where they do way too much. This was probably the latter but in this case, who cares, because it worked. I'm really curious what the hell Barr was doing there. He was fully in the Juicer gimmick with a shirt in support of Pee Wee Herman which is the most non-1992 WWF thing I've ever seen. Konnan in 92 had a lot going for him. All the pieces never really come together but he can do a bunch of stuff relative to later in his career, has charisma (at least enough to get two clap alongs with him), and a decent enough look. They could have gone with him (and not just as Max Moon #1 or what not). He could have teamed with El Matador against Money, Inc. or gotten beaten up by Borga a year later? Something. Anyway, the most important thing was how thoroughly the TV taping crowd was into this by the end for two guys that weren't big TV stars. You rarely see that and it definitely built and was because of what both guys were bringing to the table, Konnan's clunky plethora of stuff and Barr's feeding for him and general jerk attitude

ER: This was a bunch of fun, and I'm not sure many other people could have gotten more out of Konnan in this situation. Fully agree with Matt here that Juicer did NOT look like a guy wrestling in WWF in 1992. I bet there were hundreds of camcorder-shot home movies of people getting themselves ready to go to a KISS concert or a Raiders game, and every one of those people had better looking face paint that Art Barr. His face paint has a real shot on video regional slasher movie vibe to it, helped in no small part by face paint over a bad mustache and a mullet that would get him free access to any Molly Hatchet show (and by free access I mean you could just walk right back to the loading area and nobody would question that you are a load guy for Hatchet). And that Pee Wee shirt? Save Pee Wee? This was well after the scandal, and after the public tides turned much more sympathetic. This was after his MTV appearance. Barr clearly had this shirt for a year and it's weird they would even allow him to wear it in a dark match. And yes, I'm wearing my Free Winona shirt as I type this, but I really don't see why that matters. These Challenge tapings must have been absolutely brutal to sit through. Imagine all the bored as hell parents that got dragged to these by their kids, and had to sit through a few hours of 2 minute squash matches. And then you had this weird little gem from two unknowns, both with excellent fringe on their tights, both with bad hair, and Barr stooges his way magnificently through the whole thing. Konnan was pretty spry here, even if 80% of this offense would have looked horrendous with someone lesser than Barr across from him, but Barr was great at both taking complicated juniors spots (always winding up in the right place, even when it looked like Konnan wouldn't be anywhere near that place), bumping big for arm drags, hamming it up while in submissions, throwing himself crotch first onto the top rope with glee after being tripped off the top, hitting some kind of big dive that the camera completely misses, just great timing and great bumbling heel charisma the whole way through, even lingering hilariously in the ring long after Konnan had left, wandering around the ring completely speechless at his own loss. Konnan tried a lot of things that probably would have made 10 year old me flip out, and the match ending springboard lariat works out far better than it should have (Konnan looked like he was going to land way short, but somehow leapt farther than expected, and again Barr knew exactly where to meet him). This was undoubtedly the best match the crowd saw the entire taping, and a great glimpse at Barr shining somewhere he just wouldn't have fit in.

Beau James vs. Frank Parker SSW 9/27/14

PAS: Old fashioned nasty Southern chain match. Parker had put James on the shelf with a back injury and attacked his family, and this was Beau James out for revenge. Nothing fancy here, just lots of nice looking punches with chains wrapped around fists. I especially liked James' wife coming out to check on him when he got punched in the spine. Both guys bled a bunch (Parker's blade work was a bit obvious, you could see every part of the magic trick), James is great at a Southern babyface comeback, and the post match where he breaks Parker's arm with the chain was especially nasty. SSW wasn't afraid to have some crimson flow and I am really looking forward to checking out more of their brawls.

MD: I haven't seen a match like this in a while and on those grounds, it was appreciated. The blood started almost from the get go. All of the offense was based around the chain. It peaked with James' comeback midmatch. There are plenty of different ways to "hulk up," and James' is the rarely seen dead-eyed fat guy perfected by babyface Crusher Blackwell. They went on for a bit after that, including some very, very unfortunate pantomime by Parker where he just couldn't get rid of his blade. Things sort of petered out after that. Also, it was pretty weird that they made such a big deal out of James' back at the beginning with his wife coming out, only to never go back to it. Past that, this was focused and effective and violent. I just thought it peaked midway through.

ER: This is my kind of thing, a couple of beefy 40 somethings hitting each other with a chain. I don't know if Beau James actually had back surgery (as his nephew was talking about on commentary), but he is shaped similarly to a couple people I've known who had to get back surgery, and wrestlers are crazy people who work hurt, so I bought into the back injury. The chain shots to start looked a little weak from both men, which is the catch-22 of a chain match: even shots that probably actually hurt, might not read. But once we got to Beau's back pain I was in, loved Misty running out and thought her reactions were great, loved ref Brian Logan (would not have recognized him as the former Damien in OVW) decking a potential run-in with a short right hand, and dug James getting his forehead worked over with a chain. Parker looked good working over Beau, both threw nice punches (this was to be expected with these two), and I'm not sure if I've seen a more obvious blade job than Parker's. Damn son, this was Abby at Heroes of Wrestling level bad. I have a feeling southern workers would shame backyarders for doing something like that, but we got that out of the way and Parker at least got good color, and was good at playing the heel who got busted open and then regretted everything he'd done once the tides turned. Finish worked real well too, as Parker climbed to the middle buckle but got yanked off by James, then James hit three nasty shots to Parker's chin with both hands and chain. In an era where we get MMA-style ref stoppage finishes, I bought into James' match ending shots. Post-match might have been the coolest part, as James wraps the chain around Parker's arm and the middle rope and keeps tightening and yanking the chain to break Parker's arm. I've never seen that, and THAT was some chain work that read well. I wanted more from this, but I also really enjoyed it. But I also can't imagine a world where I wouldn't enjoy fat guy punches.