New Footage Friday: Funk, Abby, Big M's, Twin Devils

Mando Guerrero/Carlos Mata/Al Madril vs. Twin Devils/Coloso Colosetti Olympic Wrestling 1979?

MD: Let's start with the good. This was not just fun but impressively fun. It goes close to thirty minutes and feels, more often than not, like a fast-paced 80s lucha trios where the tecnicos clown the rudos. They manage this without the three fall structure, however, and without any real period of long heat. Despite that, it never feels incoherent or meandering and never wears out its welcome. It never really feels excessive. I'd argue that it's even more impressive because you have two vaguely interchangeable guys on the heel side in the Twin Devils. Their gimmick is that they're the same, so past a little bit of the heat that does exist and one illegal switch, there's less variation on the heel side to work with. Basically, everything worked just like it was supposed to from the introductions to them raising the ref in the air and celebrating at the end.

That said, I'm going to harp on Mando some more. The guy coasts through the entire match not taking any offense at all for the first twenty minutes and then when he finally ends up in a hold, he picks up his opponent in it, powers to the corner and tags. Then when he ends up in another it's only due to the illegal switch and it's still just for a short time with him never really at risk. Sure, this was a face-dominated comedy match for the most part, but his partners handle things much differently.

Look at the start of the match with the initial exchanges: Mata works fairly evenly, taking a bit but getting the upper hand, with his opponent looking competent and he looking all the better for overcoming him. Madril teases vulnerability but only to clown his opponent, but it's still elaborate and carefully orchestrated (while seeming natural). There's anticipation and payoff to it and at least the threat of danger. Mando just eats whoever he's in there alive with spot after spot. They're impressive spots but it's so one-sided. That repeats basically every time he's in the ring and follows the pattern I always see with him. You can't unsee it once you realize what's going on. Honestly, I think it was ultimately detrimental to him in the match. Mata's stuff felt much more earned and ultimately, Madril's was much more memorable. Anyway, I won't harp on it here but if Phil keeps tossing me Mando matches, I'm going to call Mr. Guerrero on what he's doing. Yeah, I'm a killjoy.

Still, I'm going with "impressively fun" on this one.

PAS: Fun chance to get a look at a bunch of well known guys without a ton of footage available. We certainly get a lot of time to see what they can do, although it basically stays in one gear the entire match. It is like the first fall of a house show lucha match with the technicos doing all sorts of tricks to make the rudos look foolish. I really dug them three stooging a Twin Devil in the corner, and the spot where the technicos kept dogpiling on both Twin Devils. Madril looked the best, his punch combos were especially spicy. Still this never cranked up into something special and it is a lot of time to invest in something which stays this inessential.

ER: This match simultaneously felt like not a whole lot happened over almost 30 minutes, but also didn't drag a whole lot over 30 minutes. I don't think it was great, at times it felt like they were going long to stall for time for some unknown reason. The whole 30 minutes felt like a feeling out process, and the match was like 85% for the tecnicos, which is really odd for a match this long. The Twin Devils come off as both lazy and fun, bumping big to the floor one minute, slowly walking into place for spots the next, or doing a weird spot with Madril where Madril is lying on his stomach and a Devil lifts him into the air and drops him back on his stomach. But it just looks like Madril is jumping up into the air and landing on his stomach. Colosetti had a ton of energy in this and fed Mando really fast, and generously. Sadly he disappears for most of the last half of the match so we don't get to see a lot of what he can do. But I really liked Madril in this. Madril is a guy I've seen enough of, but had no opinion of. This is the most I've liked him and he puts in a super charismatic show. There was this really fun and really silly (in the best way) moment in the corner where a Devil is backed in, and Madril throws these short tiny shots to the ribs, like a brother annoying his sister on a too long car ride, and then starts poking him in the face and plucking at his eyebrows. It's preposterous and looked like a ton of fun. The match is probably too long for what it is, but I imagine if I had been there live with friends we'd still talk about that 30 minute match where everybody just kinda fucked around and told jokes the whole time. The Dean Martin Roast of fading territory wrestling.

Dusty Rhodes/Junkyard Dog vs. Ted DiBiase/Matt Borne Houston Wrestling 2/11/83

PAS: I loved every second of this. We have two of the greatest "Walking Tall" wrestlers ever, walking tall over two great heels willing to fly all over the ring for every punch or kick. Awesome performance by the Rat Pack, they stooge like total All-Stars and then flip to vicious when they need to. They have great looking stomps and punches. Most of the match though is the Superteam running rampant. Dusty is dancing and throwing punches and dancing and elbowing, and the Dog comes in and lays waste as well, he unloads an awesome punch combo in the corner. They even break out a Star which is something you rarely see outside of WOS and Lucha, DiBiase and Borne really sold it like they were tearing a groin. Totally satisfying send a crowd home happy match, and a credit to the performance chops of all four guys.

MD: New Houston is the best. We have a gap late in 82 and early into 83. It was just one of the periods that wasn't covered as much, definitely a shame because I can't be the only person who really wants to see that Bockwinkel vs Johnny Rich main event, right? Right? We miss a bunch of Stagger Lee and almost all of Borne.

Flaws first: Some of the hot tags could have been set up/timed better. You have two singles wrestlers on one side and sometimes that happens. It's not the end of the world as the crowd didn't care, but they would have cared all the more if a bit more work was put into that. This simply wasn't going to be a match with a lot of heel control. More blatantly, this was noticeably sloppy at times, with stuff downright and obviously missing, more so than usual, more so than you'd expect from guys at this level, and generally when JYD was not in the ring. I don't think it mattered all that much, though. While a whiff might be sold, they made sure not to sell it too much (some of that was just because the faces weren't going to sell at that much in this match anyway). Moreover, it added to the wild and desperate abandon that Dibiase and Borne were portraying.

Honestly? The whiffs aside, this is one of my favorite vulnerable heel Dibiase performances. He was in craven beg off mode basically the whole match, feeding and feeding and feeding, and he was just so over the top that he sort of transcended the usual black-gloved technical bad guy ted. He'd always bump and stooge but when you're in the ring against two beings as larger than life as JYD and Dusty, in front of a crowd that was absolutely crazy for them, it gives you a certain ability to take it up a few notches higher. There were certain faces Ted made in this match which were all-time great and he turned his head into a heat seeking missile for Dusty and JYD's fist in the most unbelievable but effective ways.

I'd call this just a really good (though certainly not perfect) house show style star-studded main event. Remember, a couple of years ago we were getting two or three of these a week.

Terry Funk vs. Abdullah the Butcher NWA-NJ 5/12/95

ER: I love when this kind of 90s indy wrestling shows up, even if it's not actually technically "good". I love the snapshot it provides, always love seeing the crowd and wondering what kids in the crowd were thinking as a really fat guy stabs an old guy in the head with a fork. I have no idea how I would have reacted to something like this in person. The match itself is about 6 minutes, most of it Funk and Abby locked in an eternal struggle, Abby struggling to stab Funk in the head with a fork, Funk struggling to not get stabbed, Abby drops his fantastic elbow and later misses one with almost as much force. Tony Rumble is around, so Abby doesn't have to take bumps into the timekeeper's table or take a sloppy DDT onto the floor, many members in the crowd are modeling previous years' New York Giants Starter clothing line, a dad holding a baby laughs and points as the two large sweaty men brawl right past them fighting over a chair, and the ring announcer repeatedly warns fans to stay in their seats and the more he says it the more he feels like Leslie Nielsen in Naked Gun telling people to move along, nothing to see here, please disperse. 

It gets thrown out when both men shove the ref but continues long past that. We get a good look at the lobby of the rec center as Funk wildly wings a chair towards an area with too many people, as Abby hides in the dressing room. In the background on the wall, there's a hand written flyer that screams "POGS R HERE!", which, if we hadn't known the date of this match already, would have given us a decent idea. Funk hits himself with a chair and gets Abby to come back out of the dressing room, but they almost immediately fight back into the dressing room. We fade to black as other wrestler's try to save their duffel bags or jackets from getting rolled on by both of them as they brawl through the dressing area. We fade out with images of Dan Severn and Devon Storm and other wrestlers, amused in the background.

PAS: I thought this was a blast. Exactly what you would want if you paid for a ticket at an indy show to see Terry Funk vs. Abdullah the Butcher. Stabbing, Funk beating up Tony Rumble, Abby dropping his meat cleaver elbow. Both guys bleeding on fans. Funk is in the tail end of his third prime and is still willing to take a beating and bumps. Abby is a terrifying force of nature and I can imagine how great it would have been to see waddling towards you holding a bloody fork.

MD: I'm completely in sync with Eric on this. What will stay with me years from now is the announcer repeatedly calling for safety and calm in the blandest tone imaginable. It was both completely in line and completely dissonant with what we ere seeing. The words lived up to the unpredictability of Abby and Funk just going at each other with pulsing violence, waxing and waning as they orbited one another around the ringside area. That said, this wasn't a Puerto Rican soccer arena packed full of people. There was space for everyone to move in and around the action, so that there was violence and unpredictability but never quite the danger that ought to go along with it, certainly not enough to justify the frequency of the message, yet still deserving far more than the tone it received. This was the sort of thing that could only have existed exactly where and when it did.