On Brand Segunda Caida: Misawa! Texas Terminator Hoss? Battle Royals! Brauuuuuun!

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Texas Terminator Hoss AJPW 4/14/91

ER: We've been blessed by several new handheld matches over the past couple years, and my favorite thing about them isn't the classic main events that have been unearthed - those are surely the most important things - but my favorite thing is the weird match ups, the kind of matches that would never make TV, the natives I love against the weirdest gaijin. THOSE are my handheld dream matches, odd pairings or unique singles matches from people who only showed up on one tour, those are the kinds of things that set my wrestling heart aflutter. Texas Terminator Hoss (who later became one of the Kongs in WCW) did one AJ tour, but in that one tour got to work tag matches against guys like Andre and The Funks, and got singles matches against legends like Stan Hansen and Dynamite Kid, and future legends like Misawa and Kobashi. Cactus Jack was the other first-and-only timer on this tour, and things went differently for him in his career. Hoss was just a super big tubby guy who looked like John C. Reilly wearing his Oliver Hardy fat suit, in the coolest way. And I love seeing this because how cool is established Misawa going against not only a fairly new wrestler, but a gigantic gaijin wrestler! Misawa vs. Giant is a match I feel we didn't get enough of, so it's awesome we get to see him work opposite a style we rarely saw him against, and it's awesome that a giant gets to work someone as good as Misawa in a singles match.

It's a simple match, but a match I really liked. Hoss is a huge guy and it's cool seeing him work collar and elbows with Misawa, see him hit a big leaping avalanche in the corner, and then work a classic fat guy arm chinlock. Misawa is a guy I like in a chinlock, he always starts awkwardly breathing through his nose and fidgeting, and Hoss pushes forward with his weight. But I really like Misawa finally lacing into him, backing him up with two hard elbows and hitting a crisp chop before sending him to the floor with a dropkick, hitting his big missile dropkick in a cramped corner. Hoss gets his own eventual comeback too, catching Misawa off the ropes with a great full rotation powerslam, but belly flops on a missed standing splash. Unretired Gunslinger era was always a fun "Let's Bring This Home" guy when he was working lower in the card, someone on the apron who would come and and announce he was finishing things by hitting a few elbows and the pin. He had a bunch of great "alright let's end this" faces. It was essentially his resting face. Our finish gives us an awesome glimpse of that Misawa, when he hits one of his best ever spinkicks, cracking Hoss right in the chin with the outside of his right boot. Go back and watch that kick - I did 5 times - watch how there's no contact other than boot to face, and listen to that thwack as Hoss mans up and leans face first into that boot. Misawa finishes with an elbow to the face off the top, a cool rarity for a Misawa finish, though obviously everyone watching at home was dying to know how the hell he was going to give Hoss a Tiger Driver.

Worlds Collide Tournament Battle Royal 1/26/19

ER: This was a battle royal held during a fun Rumble weekend "three brand" showcase, with 5 reps each from NXT, 205 Live, and NXT UK. The show featured an entire tournament, and started with a battle royal, but I didn't expect the battle royal to get a full 20 minutes! I'm a real battle royal queen and really dug this one. We got a bunch of fun match-ups that we don't normally see, and some standout performances from Velveteen Dream and Tyler Bate, among others. Battle Royals are sometimes made by their eliminations, and not only did this have many of the guys really flying out of the ring to elimination, it also had a bunch of high wire act elimination teases. There were probably 10 different times that someone grabbed Dream by the head to chuck him wildly over the ropes, only to see him hold onto that top rope as his body swings wildly. It's like there was an ongoing bet to see who in the match could get more air on a non-elimination. It looked cool and really made it feel like there were constant near escapes. They didn't overshadow the numerous big eliminations, like Humberto Castillo getting knocked silly over the top, TJP getting run down the length of the apron before getting hiptossed over the buckles, Dream hitting a lariat so hard he almost flew out himself, Dijakovic hitting a wild spinning powerslam to toss someone over the top (also, is Dijakovic among the most pointless name changes they've done? Is his gimmick that he's a washed up Croatian center?), Tyler Bate throwing hard strikes on anyone that would come close, just a super satisfying battle royal. We don't get a ton of battle royals on WWE TV anymore, so this was more than welcome.

Braun Strowman vs. Bobby Lashley WWE Raw 2/25/19

ER: This wasn't even really a match, no bell ever rang and Braun just stomped off after he demolished anyone, but this was a great throwback to a favorite style of mine that I feel is underpraised. I really love those 1998 Shotgun Saturday Night/WCW Saturday Night roids guy power battles, just big dudes hitting each other pretty hard for 3 minutes. Throw some older tough vets into the mix and looking back there were a ton of fun short big boy slugfests on those syndicated shows, and this gave me the same rush. Sure, some could argue that Braun (and maybe even Lashley) should be presented a little higher than "cool undercard power guys" but whatever this whole thing worked. Lashley threw a nice beating to Braun, but you know all of that was just building excitement to a Braun Smash explosion, and it was great when we got there. Braun kicked Lashley around and threw a hard clothesline and hit a great big boot. The fireworks come right as the match culminates, with Braun and Lashley bailing to the floor, Braun crashes hard into Lashley with a shoulderblock that Lashley sells like he got thrown away by a strong gust of wind, then Braun turns around without missing a beat and crashes through Lio Rush. This didn't even get to 3 minutes, but a quick power battle like this is going to win me over every time, then send me spiraling into looking for weird Faarooq singles matches on YouTube.