New Footage Friday: Lawler, Rude, PG-13, Rich, Dougie, Koko, Bruno, Baron, Bruiser, Ladd

Dick The Bruiser/Bruno Sammartino vs. Ernie Ladd/Baron von Raschke WWA 8/25/73

PAS: This was a no DQ match with Sam Menacker the play by play announcer as the special referee. Apparently according to Cagematch the Bruiser/Bruno tag team was called Annihilation Inc. which is a hilariously Progress Wrestling tag name for the early 70s. This a pretty great big star tag match with Bruno and Bruiser walloping the heels and Heenan running around bumping and getting in the mix. It was kind of odd to see Bruno take a subsidiary role, he is usually such a titanic force, but he was definitely the B-Side of the tag team. Bruiser is a trip, super expressive with some fun Stooges spots, including making Ladd punch himself. Finish was wild with Heenan splitting Menacker open with a foreign object and the heel working over both faces with the ring microphone, kind of odd to have such a non-finish in a no-DQ match but it certainly got the crowd into an appropriate lather.

MD: Where to even begin on this one? Apparently Bruno and Dick the Bruiser were called Annihilation, Inc. I sort of loved Bruiser here. He was far enough along that he could be a big ham, but not so far along that he had become a self-parody like he would into the 80s. Bruno might have been the outside attraction but Bruiser was the guy who was the most over with this crowd. He had this way of adding an extra pause to everything, almost freezing time for just a little too long to be believable but just long enough to transcend belief, to push it from faux realism to borderline mythic.

The heel side here was great. Ladd was just larger than life, with an athleticism he'd lose later. He threw himself into Bruno's punches and back out with the bumps. He had this way of maximize his physical presence, not just on offense, but on selling, taking up as much space as possible to get over his writhing and pain, especially by the ropes and on the apron. I also love the idea of a guy so big needing to utilize a loaded thumb gimmick. There's something underhanded and insulting about that. The Baron was more chickenshit than you might expect. I think he was back body dropped about fifteen times in the match.

Menacker was all over this match as the special referee. It was no dq, so he was mainly there to stop Heenan from overtly interfering. If this was a title match or something more serious, it would have grated, but as an over the top tag, it fit perfectly, really didn't take any heat or credit away from the babyfaces, and the fans loved it.

ER: This was a blast and there's so much to cover that I'm not sure where to begin. I haven't seen any Bruiser or Crusher from when either were closer to their peak, so it was wild seeing Bruiser getting reactions like he was all four Beatles in 1964. Every time he would move an inch he would get wild shrieks from the fans, it was insane. I'm not sure I've seen a large crowd in love with a wrestler this much, pure adulation. He clearly loved soaking it up, but I just couldn't get over how much people screamed when he would do something as simple as go for a pinfall (imagine if Bruiser was in the USWA 10 man below, just doing pinfalls! The event would sound like an absolute massacre with all the constant screaming). Due to Bruiser's impossibly huge popularly, Bruno really could have been any man. I don't think I've ever seen a legend as big as Bruno so clearly relegated to second banana status, sheerly due to the popularity of someone he's teaming with. Imagine Hogan and Rock teaming in 2002 and seeing fans flip out for Rock and then look at Hogan as someone who is standing in front of the Rock and could he please move because we can't see the Rock when you're standing there. Bruno is the cute sheep wandering back into frame in front of the cutest sheep in the petting zoo.

The heels basically stooged for 20 straight minutes, which is fine by me. Ernie Ladd looked gargantuan. Obviously the guy is big, but he looked like freaking Andre here. He also took 3 bumps over the top to the floor, was made to punch his own face by Bruiser (and bumped big for it) and was a real great foil for Bruiser. Baron isn't really a great bumper, he has a long awkward body and falls more like 2010 Akira Taue, if Taue was also constantly getting a chair pulled out from under him. But those bumps work tremendously well in a stooge setting, buckling at the waist from kicks to the stomach, falling on his butt after big punches, taking a ton of backdrops, all of it great. Two different times he does this awesome apron pratfall: He's standing on the apron and takes a shot, and his legs fan out so he's basically doing the splits heels first on the apron, holding onto the top rope while his butt is hanging over the floor, before dropping to the floor. The second time he did this bump was when he was holding Bruiser prone and Ladd naturally accidentally clocks him, just an all time great pratfall. Heenan is fantastic at ringside, kicking at officials, running in with sneaky and not so sneaky punches, causing total chaos and distraction, introducing a ringside microphone cord to choke Sam Menacker and others; Menacker got a couple little Walking Tall moments too, got to slide Baron's foot off the ropes during a pinfall, stuff the fans could get into. This was great, real crowd pleaser. Nobody went home disappointed by this one.

Jerry Lawler vs. Rick Rude CWA 8/27/84

PAS: This is from a commercial video tape of USWA cage matches and seems to have fallen through the cracks, no other reviews, didn't make the DVDVR Memphis set, etc. This was worked kind of like a Bruno cage match with Lawler beating the bricks off of Rude for much of the match. Lawler laying in punches to someone is going to be always worth watching and Rude took an appropriate pasting. I am never going to be down with no-selling a piledriver and one of the great things about the Lawler hulk up, is how he remained vulnerable during it, popping up after a piledriver is the opposite of that. Still despite that this was a pretty heated brawl and really fun discovery.

MD: This was just a mauling. Every wrestler in his mid-20s should probably have to take ten minutes of Lawler's offense in a cage while the crowd gets more and more into it. It builds character. Rude already had a lot here, though, and you can hardly belief this is the same guy that started the year off as a bland babyface in Mid-South. I love his attempts to escape, especially the ones that are futile, either trying to go under the cage or in between the two slats. He wanted nothing to do with any of this and it's glorious. His little bit of offense comes late in the match, almost entirely because of Lawler's own hubris, mostly groin-related and wholly appropriate to his character. The no-sell on the pile-driver is fine because Lawler was still so fresh you figure he knows his to protect himself. It's worth it as the place comes unglued with the strap. It wasn't a spot he overused and here it meant a ton. Nice, refreshing violence with Rude coming off as a guy who deserved the comeuppance he received.

PG-13/Spellbinder/Tex Slazenger/Brian Christopher vs. Tommy Rich/Doug Gilbert/Jesse James Armstrong/Tracy Smothers/Koko B Ware USWA 2/6/96

ER: This match was plenty fun and also so so so so so stupid. It's a USWA vs. SMW 10 man anything goes tornado cage match, most pinfalls in 30 minutes wins. If you knew that info, and didn't even know the participants, you'd know that you'd want to see it. And then you see the names. PG-13! Tommy Rich! Smothers! Thicccc affffff KOKO! And then you realize that this is on USWA's home turf so PG-13 and Brian Christopher are working babyface, and you know this is going to be 8 stars. This match seemed too big to fail. These 10 names, in a cage, weapons, anything goes, the easiest win. The match doesn't even go the full 30, comes out to more like 22 minutes, just more condensed violence right?

And then they go and have almost SEVENTY PINFALLS in 22 minutes. That is not a typo. This was a match almost wholly comprised of pinfalls. Every back bump a guy took, that guy would get pinned. This started happening in the 2nd minute of the match, and kept going until the very end, when they hilariously tried to build drama with a last minute kickout. The kickout was absolutely hilarious, a genuine laugh out loud moment, because it was literally the ONLY kickout that happened the entire match. This was a match that had some guy getting pinned in some part of the ring literally every 15 seconds, and most of the match guys would be waiting in pinfalls for waaaaaay too long while a ref finished counting another pinfall at some other part of the ring. The pinfalls were so plentiful that the ref finally just stopped getting down to count some of them. The pinfall kickout was so hilarious because it made me desperately want JC Ice to yell out "Wait...THAT'S an option!?" Whoever it was that kicked out (video is pretty washed out and guys frequently are blocking other guys) was like the first ape in 2001 to learn how to use bones as tools/weapons. More guys got hit with a hubcap AND a cowbell than kicked out of any move. There were more referees in this match than there were kickouts. It was awful. The participants clearly were working under the rules of "Anything Goes, 'Cept Kickouts".

This was the worst All Japan battle royal I've ever seen. Now granted, the All Japan battle royal is one of my favorite gimmick matches, and they always leave a ton of room for personality to shine through. This is like if someone watched a couple of All Japan battle royals, and came away thinking the key to those being fun was the pinfalls. Or a computer noted when the biggest pops occurred on a card and determined that people cheer loudest during ring entrances and winning pinfalls, so the computer spit out some dot matrix paper stating that the most successful crowd reaction would be for a match that is only ring entrances and pinfalls. And for all the guys in the ring, and all the potential action that was happening, and all the guys spending more time on their backs than all the whores in Tennessee, we spend the whole match in a real tight shot from a ringside handheld camera. A match with this match participants needs some distance to put everything into scope, to follow the action. Watching this much action in a tight frame is like showing up late to the movies and having to sit in the front row, needing to turn left and right to follow action across the screen. 

Even with an entire, match long constantly annoying series of pinfalls, there were some small, tiny gold nuggets in this. Maybe not super nice gold, maybe tooth gold, but still it would be impossible to put these 10 guys into any pro wrestling situation and not get *something* out of it. These 10 guys have good enough schtick that you could have made this a "Hands Tied Behind Back, Must Wrestle on Knees" match and it probably would have turned out better than this. But still, there were moments. Tommy Rich looked like a guy who I want to see in more (better) multiman garbage brawls; it was fun seeing PG-13 as babyfaces, their usual (wonderful) schtick being cheered wildly instead of booed; Christopher hits a big dive off the top to the floor, Dougie hits people with a chair, Koko clonks a few guys with a cowbell and drops someone with the ghostbuster, I thought Jesse James actually showed a ton of charisma and was always super active, and we get a cool spirited post match run in with some skinny dirtbag guy in cut offs talking a ton of shit, Miss Texas eating a piledriver from Koko, and coming off far more violent than anything in the actual match. I cannot imagine a worse match featuring all 10 of these guys. I mean seriously put these exact 10 guys in ANY match other than this one, run that fucking simulation a thousand times, and I just can't picture it being worse than what we got here. Literally any singles match combination from those 10 names would have been better. Pick the least enticing singles match (Jesse James vs. Spellbinder?) and I'm positive it would be better than what we got. This was improbably awful. There's no way this match should have been this bad.

MD: Yeah, look, I don't even know what to say about this. Eric's got it covered, right? Ok, I do sort of occasionally enjoy how malleable the rules of wrestling can be. There are norms that everyone agrees upon and when people break those norms, it has the potential to screw up everything for everyone, because it shatters the social contract that allows for suspension of disbelief. Sometimes, however, you can be in a situation so unique that the norms don't apply. Old Survivor Series matches kind of work like that. You can definitely get eliminated on a bodyslam in an old Survivor Series match. This sort of had the makings of that. You had two companies feuding. It was in a cage. It was falls count anywhere and no DQ and chaotic.

Still, this was absolutely nuts. They should have made it so one counts worked as falls. If normal marathon matches are the equivalent of soccer games, low scoring with a lot of defense and very much a test of endurance, this was a basketball game, with everyone hitting layups and running back across the court. There was some cumulative selling as things went on but it was dangerous because anytime you fell down for more than a second, you were going to get pinned. Maybe it was more like Pro Wrestling Calvinball. Of the things I'm fascinated by in this match, it's not really the structure or any specific spots or performances. I wonder how they convinced someone like Tommy Rich to get pinned fifteen times on tape. Was it because he was going to get to pin someone else fifteen times? You know these guys weren't getting paid much for this. How did they put this together? The announcers could barely keep track of the score. It sort of crescendoed to a final moment. It wasn't like a battle royal where you could remember the order of elimination. Somehow they got to where they were going, so more power to them, I guess.

Last thought, this was a cage match where the cage was solely used to corral the participants and keep them in an area. It served a purpose, pushing everyone together so closely that there'd be constant action and constant pinfalls, but it wasn't uesd in any other way.

PAS: This was a mess, such a cool looking match on paper, with all time great guys like Tommy Rich and PG13, plus awesome fun dudes like Koko and Doug Gilbert, hard to fuck it up, but they fucked it up. This reminded me of an All Japan Battle Royal, where Misawa would get knocked down and dog piled to get eliminated, those were light hearted undercard fodder, this was a main event with guys going down to eye rakes and bodyslams. USWA was always trying weird stuff, a lot of times it worked, this time it really didn't. We have very few arena matches from 90s Memphis, so I was amped when this turned up, it could have been left on the cutting room floor.