New Footage Friday: Johnny Smith, Miracle Violence, Bossman, Bad News, TA, Ladd

Magnum TA vs. Ernie Ladd Houston Wrestling 11/9/84

PAS: This is a matchup we have seen before, but a new match. Really dug fired up babyface Magnum, and dirty tricks Ladd. The opening was great with Magnum jumping Ladd at the bell and throwing these lighting face overhand rights in succession, with Ladd flopping into the ropes horizontally.  Ladd was all cheap shots and foreign objects and broad pantomimes which made the crowd rabid. Ladd kind of worked like a heel late period Baba, two old and arthritic to move fast, but the size and timing makes up for a lot. Would have liked to see a real finish, but this was a pair of great role players, playing their role.

MD: New Houston footage is gold. We have a couple of Ladd vs Magnum matches and they're generally good. This is no exception. Ladd was such a master of creating meaning. He's brilliant, even broken down, at using his size to its full advantage. He just gets it like few others his size have. It's one thing even for a guy like Terry Funk to crash out of the ring and end up with a chair around his head (that enhanced by his credibility), but it's another thing for a guy as lanky and huge as Ladd. You have to love how he needs to resort to illegal objects and chicanery and cheapshots to get over on Magnum too, even given the size and the fact he's champ. That just makes Magnum look all the better and gives Ladd extra heat because it frustrates the (always great Houston) crowd. Magnum holds his own here, just a mean bullying face, the sort that crowds will always love because it's a tough guy wish fulfillment. The finish was BS but it sets up a no DQ match and a cage match after it, so you can't be too down on it.


Bad News Allen vs. Ron Simmons CWF 12/16/86

MD: This is interesting almost solely for Bad News leading Simmons through the match. Lots of standard babyface stuff from a guy who had only been in the business for a few months. You got some sense of Simmons' star power already but he wasn't there with the expressions and the crowd interaction yet. Bad News, on the other hand, was super giving, surprisingly so if you've seen him in other environments. Some of his stooging (like complaining about a hair pull) was just tremendous, and he made sure to do little things to get over Simmons strength (such as doing a test of strength but with two hands to Simmons' one). The belt shot at the end was more of a whip with the strap, but to the face, and just brutal. I'm not sure I've ever quite seen that done with a title belt before and you wonder why not, since it was such a great visual, except for that it probably hurt like hell.

ER: Phil and I were talking a couple days ago about how Bad News was somebody who should be the absolute coolest, has the coolest look and the coolest background, but doesn't have a lot of matches I really like. Feels like he should have cool matches, usually doesn't have cool matches. But he was really popular at my school among my friends in the late 80s, because he looked cool and he rarely lost. I remember him losing to Hogan on SNME, but that was Hogan so none of us faulted him for that, obviously he couldn't beat Hogan. Every other PPV he would either win or go to a double DQ, just a guy who we all saw as way higher up on the hierarchy that he actually was. And he only became more popular due to a lie that I started. So keep in mind that I was 8, and 8 year olds have no clue how the world works or if a lie is plausible or not. Some kid at camp once told me that he found an uzi in "somebody's" house, and took the uzi. He said he had the uzi in his bag, but couldn't show it to me because he also had $10,000 in the bag and didn't want people to see it. All of this seemed perfectly plausible to me, a stupid fucking child. So I *may* have told people that Bad News Brown was...Shel Silverstein. We had a few Shel Silverstein books in our classroom, and to an 8 year old it wasn't too much of a stretch that a black and white photo of Silverstein looked like Bad News Brown (or Sid Haig, but none of us would have known that), and none of us would have known that "Silverstein" isn't a really a common name for black people. Those books were really popular in our class, so Bad News Brown then became even more popular among those of us who watched wrestling. And then years went by and I didn't think about it and I ended up tricking myself into a false memory, as I saw a picture of Shel Silverstein a decade later and thought "wait I thought he was black".


Terry Gordy/Dr. Death Steve Williams vs. Big Bossman/Johnny Smith AJPW 7/18/93

ER: It's so cool seeing Bossman come out to Hard Times in some community center looking building in Osaka. Oh, and remember when Paul Heyman brought Johnny Smith in to work an ECW PPV main event opposite RVD, but got cold feet at the last minute that fans wouldn't accept Smith so replaced him with Balls Mahoney? Wouldn't accept Smith? Here's Smith 6 years prior going toe to toe with Doc and Gordy, and literally knocking both wobbly with shoulder blocks, but yeah probably would have looked overmatched against RVD. There are two kinds of MVC matches, the kinds where they gobble people up and club and smash their way through, and the kind where they hang back a bit and lie in some holds. This is more the latter than the former, but not much to the match's detriment. Gordy hangs on the apron a lot, and Doc seems off a beat in several moments and particularly doesn't seem to know the rhythm and timing of Bossman's spots.

We get a nice babyface performance from Smith carrying this through, with some explosive bursts from Bossman. Smith really gets the crowd behind him by not backing down to MVC, slamming into them like he was the size of Bossman, throwing cool elbows between the eyes, cutting low on clotheslines and landing a couple nice ones to the back of Doc's head. He's the guy clearly taking the pin, but the crowd keeps getting more into him the more he refuses to stay down. Bossman gives him welcome respites, coming in and throwing his in-contention-for-best-ever uppercuts and moving quicker than anyone in the match. We get some awesome moments, like Doc muscling up the HUGE Bossman for a press slam (I thought he was going to quit on it but he kept powering through and even tossed in an extra rep), or Doc catching a Smith crossbody off the top and running him into the buckles for a Stampede, only to turn around and run into a Bossman elbow to get a great nearfall for Smith. Smith runs a big gauntlet down the stretch, taking powerslams, a powerbomb, a chokeslam, and gets a surprising last gasp kickout after a tandem chokeslam/backdrop. Bossman and Smith only teamed a few times, only once making tape, so this match doubling our footage count was a nice treat showing a cool complementary set of bruisers.

PAS: Not at the level of the Bossman tag we reviewed a couple of weeks ago, but this was a fun big boy battle. Smith is built like a block of firewood, and never lets the MVC eat him up, he takes a pretty big thumping, but keeps coming at both guys. I mentioned in the previous Bossman tag match (and will mention over and over again if we do the rumored Bossman in AJPW C+A) how great he is at doing complex sequences. And we get a great one here as he slides out of the ring and slides quickly back in misses a clothesline, gets both feet up and nails Doc with a windup uppercut. He is so smooth with that stuff, that it really makes me wish I saw him work El Hijo Del Santo. The presslam by Doc was an all timer, and although it felt a bit awkward, I dug how hard it was to take out Smith at the end.

MD: Most memorable here will be the two big spots, Doc somehow getting Bossman up with the high effort gorilla press and the awesome blocking of the Oklahoma slam with the forearm. More on the former in a minute. Smith really held his own here, staying in it. I thought it was all a little too headlocky in the end and it certainly wasn't the bombastic affair that the last Bossman match was, but it was still good, and maybe attuned to the crowd. Back to the Press slam spot. Yes, it was a huge effort by Williams, but one thing I loved about it was how they teased it a moment before. Bossman locked in a headlock (a lot of that here) and Doc tried to lift him up and over with the belly to back but couldn't do it. It's a little thing but that tease made the press slam that immediately followed mean all the more. That's the stuff in wrestling I live for.