New Footage Friday: DiBiase, Brisco, Thesz, Longson, Gotch, Masked Russians

Wild Bill Longson vs. Lou Thesz NWA 6/7/52

PAS: Cool chance to look at Longson who was a four time NWA champ in the 40s. He has a bruiser style with some nice headlock punches and big clubbing forearms. We get to see both guys uncork their signature moves to win falls, Thesz hits a Thesz press to win fall one, and Longson hits a couple of short piledrivers to take fall two. We didn't really get to see much of master grappler Thesz, although there was a cool leg stretch, and I really like how Thesz works into lock ups. Kind of an odd match structure with Thesz responding to losing the second fall, by bum rushing Longson with dropkicks and getting a third fall in two minutes.

Masked Russian vs. Karl Gotch/Rene Goulet WWWF 1/22/71

MD: Take lovable Frank (Wupperman) Morgan from The Shop Around the Corner, add in Hecule Poirot, and overlay it with 300% of Dan Severn into the mix and you get WWWF Karl Gotch. This is a long 2/3 fall tag title match with a heels-shove-the-ref DQ finish but it's all about the two major Gotch segments. In the first, he's an absolute mat wizard, grabbing limbs from out of nowhere. He knows it. His opponents know it. The fans know it. Everyone pops for everything. It's awesome. The second, however, is amazingly surreal. He does all that but with this wild comedy streak, like a Les Kellett or a Catweazle. You can almost hear Bavarian accordion music behind him. It's the most credible, over the top Oktoberfest imaginable and I've never seen its like. He banks on both that credibility and the obvious skill and deftness to add outrageous punctuation to every movement and the masked Russians play along to the crowd's delight. I've seen very little Gotch in general, but it's absolutely perfect for the WWWF setting, not rock'n'wrestling but polka'n'wrestling in the best possible way.

Oh yeah, Goulet was in this match too. He gets one and a half sentences: He gets credit for utilizing every wrestling trope at his disposal but brought absolutely nothing unique or interesting of his own to the table; he was just there.

PAS: I haven't seen much Gotch (don't think there is much to see) but the stuff we have is from Japan and he works as a master grappler, that is not what we get in this match at all. Here Gotch is a high end dancing babyface, more like Mr. Wrestling 2 or Bullet Bob and he is incredible at it. The Russians run around and stooge as he throws spin kicks or does ole's or throws them down with lighting fast takedowns. Outside of Gotch this is a bog standard 70s WWWF tag, but man he lights the screen on fire every time he shows up.

ER: This was certainly a WWF tag match from the 70s. I think this was actually the first time I've seen Gotch, and I certainly wasn't expecting flamboyant dancing babyface Karl Gotch. I'm less of a fan of the dancing babyface, though I am sure there are exceptions. Gotch had some fine moments and since he and Goulet spent 95% of the match on offense, it was really impressive the energy he brought to things. He was moving practically the entire time whenever he was in, helluva gas tank. I was expecting suplexes and holds, but his work was a lot of strikes, some of them stiff (like his European uppercuts) and others were worked but thrown well (his punches). Gotch was fun, and kind of weird, but I did really enjoy one of the Masked Russians. Was it Igor? Was it Ivan? Nobody will ever have any way of knowing. There's a chance those two guys didn't even remember which one they were on a given night. But one of them was quite a bumper, tumbling expertly on Gotch's beal throws, stooging better than the other Russian, and taking an awesome bump over the top to the floor off a Gotch uppercut late in the match. That bump was easily my favorite thing in this match. Rene Goulet expertly filled in the "hold an arm lock for minutes at a time in a WWF 70s/80s tag match" role, annoyingly.

Danny Hodge/Jos LeDuc vs. Pak Song/Toru Tanaka CWF 11/12/74

MD: We get the last seven minutes of this and we have so little of Hodge that even a couple of minutes is a big percentage increase. Really, the only thing worth mentioning of his, though, were his house afire comeback punches, which were plentiful, endless really, and sort of goofy, Backlundish maybe? The crowd completely bought into them though. 30 year old babyface LeDuc on the other hand was just a pure bumping hoss. He's the story here.

ER: This was my first time seeing legendary wrestler and boxer and strong man Danny Hodge, someone we've read nothing but great things about, and my reaction to it is that I would like to see more Jos LeDuc. Big bumper, loved a spill he took towards the ropes, and add this to his legendarily great look. Hodge working as a more spirited old Jimmy Valiant was odd; I was expecting him to grip Tanaka and squeeze his head until it pops.

Ted DiBiase vs. Jack Brisco Georgia 2/5/84

PAS: Another complete match from the Omni, every time we get one of these I just salivate more about the stuff we aren't seeing. I was a low voter on DiBiase when I was putting together the Mid-South DVDVR set, and this kind of match was the reason. It was 10 minute match with one long chinlock from each guy and a loaded glove finish. There were a couple of cool moments, I loved DiBiase dead-weighting on a bodyslam attempt, and then bumping huge on the second try, and Brisco had a great looking backbreaker. Still this match structure is pretty lazy and not particularly interesting to watch, and was emblematic of my problems with DiBiase as a top guy.

MD: By the books heel Dibiase against an over opponent. Honestly, this was paced like it was going to go twice as long with long holds without a lot of movement in and out. I will say this about Dibiase: he was fully committed to everything that happened. They teased a slam. Then they hit a slam. Then Dibiase sold it. Build meaning. Pay it off. Sell that it's important. It's not rocket science, but again, no one takes the time for it anymore. If we're going to watch this much old footage, I'm going to point that out now and again. Unfortunately, there's not a ton else to point out here. I did like the loaded glove finish, and again, how Ted made sure to dramatically sell the figure-four as he was crawling over for the pin. I wish they'd upload these Omni matches as whole shows, but I'm just glad we have them at all.