Tony Halme's Slowly Dying, And I'm Jumping Outta My Jeans

Tony Halme vs. Crusher Bam Bam Bigelow  NJPW 12/16/91 - FUN

ER: Tony comes out clearly made to look like The Terminator, all sunglasses and demeanor, yet with his large puffy leather coat with bullet shells across the front it comes off more like an alternate timeline where Steven Seagal got cast instead. This is a nice pre-cursor to Bam Bam/LT, not worked too differently, from what I remember. Bammer might have had a formula for working against big lugs he had to put over. Sadly this is JIP, as there looks to be a cool early match moment where Bigelow takes a big bump over the top from a Halme punch. What we get is mostly Halme selling, with Bam Bam lighting him up with a dropkick that sends Halme into his own bump over the top to the floor. We get a cool tease when Halme gets back in the ring as he starts dishing out gut shots from the apron and tries suplexing him to the floor, sending a buzz to the floor. Bigelow suplexes him in, drops a headbutt, hits the enziguiri, but then misses a big headbutt off the top with a big crash over halfway across the ring. Halme immediately pops up and starts firing shots, and the camera crew knew how to shoot Halme punches already at this point, filming them from angles that rely more on the selling, and Bigelow takes one big one and staggers from it perfectly. Halme hits a big flying shoulderblock and lands in that way you land when you don't know how to land after doing a big flying shoulderblock. But my man doubles down and hits an even bigger one off the top to seal this deal.

Tony Halme vs. Scott Norton  NJPW/WCW Starrcade 1/4/92 - GREAT

ER: Another big win for Halme, now in front of 50,000 people, going over the guy who would be if not the biggest NJ gaijin of the next 15 years, at minimum the most omnipresent and among the more well protected guys there. And you get the sense that Norton is going to lose here, because the first 5 minutes of this are Norton taking out his upcoming loss in Tony Halme's flesh. Norton is a total monster, running through Halme with lariats and shoulderblocks, throwing knife edge chops that Halme really doesn't like, exploding around the ring and pretty much overwhelming Halme. It peaks with Norton headbutting Halme and blitzing him with a lariat as Halme recoils off the ropes from the headbutt, and as Norton grabs a nasty cravate you see Norton opened up a nice little cut with that last headbutt. Norton's cravate looks great and this is shaping up to be quite a mauling...but Norton gets so, so greedy and gets caught up top. Halme keeps things pretty simple here, throwing a bunch of nice body shots and hitting his great jumping elbow, and Norton leans into the top rope clothesline. Halme came away from this with the win, but Norton looked like a real star here and kind of steamrolled Halme in just the best way. Halme looked like he didn't quite know what to do at a couple points, and Norton filled in those moments admirably. Super fun hoss battle. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE TONY HALME