1970 Match of the Year

Gene Kiniski/Johnny Valentine vs. Giant Baba/Antonio Inoki JWA 2/1/70

PAS: I thought this was delightful, just an absolute banger of a match, with all four guys just unloading on each other. We don't have much Valentine footage, but every time he shows up, he looks like an all time great. He and Baba especially just go to war. Baba is so fast moving in this match, it is really jarring, and he goes toe to toe with Valentine and matches his stiffness. I loved his little chops to the neck, chest and head, total rapid fire and nasty. Valentine really knows how to make it hurt, the series of elbow drops he finished the second fall with felt trachea smushing, especially the second rope one. Kiniski is a great sneaky cheap shotter too, with some great looking body shots. One of the stiffer 70s matches I can remember seeing, Johnny Valentine was working on a whole different frequency of nasty.

ER: At some point - literal decades ago, by this point - I assumed all wrestling pre-80s was just one guy holding a headlock for 45 minutes before getting a pin with a bodyslam. Time has, again and again, proven me wrong, in more ways than just my teenage pro wrestling opinions. This is a special tag that is nothing but 4 tough guys smacking each other around the ring, and that's always going to be my favorite thing. I love Baba, but I have never seen Baba move like this. This is maybe the most "larger than life" I've ever seen Baba, as he moves as quickly as a normal size human and hits as hard (harder?) than anybody in the match. Baba feels like a boss battle in this match, and you've never seen Baba chops more violent than this. Johnny Valentine isn't someone I've seen a ton of, but to me he feels like one of the greatest strike salesmen in history. He's known for his legendary toughness, but watching him put over strikes this whole match was maybe my favorite thing about it. Baba's chops had enough mustard that you wouldn't really have much of a choice to sell them, but Valentine had a ton of different ways to whip his head around, squint his eyes, grit his teeth, absorb shots quietly or dramatically, really a guy who felt like he knew exactly how strong to put over his opponent with just his mannerisms. I wouldn't have thought Valentine vs. Baba was a war made in heaven, but here we have 30 minutes of proof (with sadly 20 minutes lopped off the front).

Gene Kiniski is a legend, and a guy I've barely seen in his prime. Here he is in his early 40s and he has a genuine claim to being the best guy in the match. The fireworks were Baba and Valentine trading shots, but Kiniski was the generator powering this whole facility. He had a real workmanlike attention to details, no half routes from him, the difference between practical effects and CGI. There are men who approximate pro wrestling, and then there are guys like Finlay who show you exactly how and why every move works. Kiniski is obviously in that camp. He's got hunched shoulders and a mug that looks like it's changed shape over the years from fighting, and the man understands how to make a move mean something. He does a drop toehold in this match that looked like it could fell a tree. He also whips up the crowd into such a lather with his bullshit, that fans throw actual garbage at him. Have you ever seen fans throwing garbage during a match of a major promotion IN JAPAN?? Kiniski and Valentine have big reputations as asskickers and tough guys, and they deliver on that, but their ability to work a crowd and be MORE than tough guys was amazing to see.

I loved the babyface hero team of Baba and Inoki. We get to see Inoki the charismatic hero before he made the most cocky and important decision of his life. You watch him with those eyes, and he looks like a megastar. It's also alarming that Baba felt like so much more of a star in the match than Inoki did. Baba looked stronger, faster, AND like a bigger star than Inoki in this match. The first one isn't as surprising, the second one is very surprising, and the third of those might be most surprising of all. Seeing these two teaming together during such a formative year of their lives was special. No wonder people love pro wrestling.


ONGOING ALL TIME MOTY LIST

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Getting Ahead of the Whole Mantaur Thing

So Mantaur is going to be wrestling on one of the Joey Janela shows this upcoming Wrestlemania weekend. Mantaur has never been a thing, there have been no darkened corners of the internet where I've seen Mantaur referenced in hushed reverent tone. So let's get ahead of it. Let's see how much excitement Mantaur is worth!

Bruiser Mastino vs. Rambo CWA 9/23/93

ER: I had no idea what kind of crowds CWA was pulling in 1993! This is a pretty big set up, and this match completely rules. It's a "Bodyslam Contest" and I love the tricks and teases they use to make one of the more common moves actually seem special. I love stuff like this, like the amazing Kabuki/Adams superkick match, or the Austin/Flair no punches match, this match just ends whenever one of them hits a bodyslam. Mastino is a guy I haven't seen a ton of. He wasn't in WWF that long, and I'm a west coast guy so missed any east coast indies or ECW. But he's good here and I only imagine he'll be even more improved by his WWF run. This is also exciting because it's THE TRUTH COMMISSION EXPLODING! How odd that they'd wind up on a short-lived team just a few years later. Rambo became Sniper, Bruiser became Tank, but the WWF are fucking cowards so they never pulled the trigger on Mantank or Tanktaur. Anyone who has seen the 1986 gem Eliminators needs to go out and watch that after you watch this dope bodyslam contest, then we can grouse about the incredible missed opportunity of a Mantank.

Anyway, this is great. We get a bunch of fun teases around a bodyslam, Rambo turns a slam attempt into a crossbody, later he hits an actual cross body and Mastino tries to steady himself to turn it into a slam before falling backwards, Rambo gets him up for a slam but Mastino grabs the top rope to save himself, all great stuff that played well in the match. And the match works because it's not just 12 minutes of guys shoving one hand into their opponent's nethers to try for a slam, they actually work a nice match with slam attempts peppered in. I think my absolute favorite deep psychology part of the match is when Rambo goes on an offensive sequence that almost always ends in a bodyslam. Picture any hot tag where the opponents are charging the hot tag: you get guys running into hiptosses, dropkicks, and usually a bodyslam or two. Well Mastino starts running in, eats a couple hiptosses, and then when he runs in for what our brains have been conditioned to think "this is the bodyslam", Mastino just rolls out of the ring. Brilliant. Rambo was so so here but the crowd was into him. Mastino though, I really liked. He hit and missed a nice avalanche, threw lariats with a heavy arm, had a nice stout guy standing splash, a good smothering chinlock....Huh. There is some fire to this smoke.

Mantaur vs. Jason Arndt WWF Raw 1/9/95

ER: This felt like an important note to hit, as it was Mantaur's Raw debut, and it was against a guy I really like in Jason Arndt (the future Joey Abs/C&A candidate with the Mean Street Posse). So it's a big debut against a guy I like, and it's a fun squash! It's under 2 minutes, and Mantaur does a lot of running avalanches and body attacks, which is obviously something he *should* be doing. His avalanches look good, and the running body attacks could use a little more quick burst. Think of Vader leaping into someone with his belly, his arms also move forward as if he's hurling his body at his opponent, even though he's not attacking with his arms. Mantaur just runs in belly first, arms outstretched, and it looks kind of funny. But he's got a nice powerslam, and an amusing standing splash (not leaping so much as just falling onto Arndt). There is still some fire to this smoke.

Mantaur vs. Leroy Howard WWF Raw 1/23/95

ER: Our next logical step was Mantaur against a BattlArts guy. Howard is a large guy who did mostly job work on US TV but somehow got the BattlArts gig as Rastaman. This is another Mantaur squash, and we get a bunch more really nice avalanches, a big belly to belly, and two great spots where he catches a Howard crossbody and gives him a big powerslam. The first was really impressive, with Mantaur catching a crossbody off the top rope like he was Mark Henry, and the next was catching a crossbody running off the ropes. So the power spots look good and the avalanches look crushing, and he committed nicely to a missed elbow. But he does seem to have trouble filling time, which can be problematic. There was a moment that looked very first year wrestler, where Howard was on the mat, Mantaur threw a half-hearted stomp, bent down to lift Howard but didn't, walked a couple steps away, looked around, walked back, and then picked Howard up. It looked like he got lost and didn't know what to do next, which is weird since his offense is almost entirely made up of avalanches and powerslams. A fat guy shouldn't ever get lost and wonder what to do to an opponent on the mat. Step on him. Drop an elbow. Sit on him. Do anything. The fire may be going out.

Mantaur vs. Razor Ramon WWF Superstars 2/21/95

ER: We get a chance to see Mantaur against a major name, but it does not go great for Mantaur. This is basically an extended Razor squash. And I get it. There weren't many guys the crowd was into more than Razor, and Mantaur was an egg shaped man who moo'd and wore Future Ronda makeup. The competitive parts were really fun and showed what this match could have been. There's a great early spot where Mantaur keeps shoving Ramon into the corner, only for Ramon to casually walk out and slap him hard. You don't see shoving a lot in wrestling, outside of Flair matches. It can be an effective way to build a spot. And when Razor takes over it's really fun. He hits a cool Rick Steiner bulldog off the middle buckle, and a nice back suplex that looked extra cool because it's a fat guy splatting on the mat from a back suplex, duh. I figured we weren't getting a Razor's Edge to finish, because holy cow (right?), but the actual finish is even more spectacular: Razor tosses Mantaur over the top to the floor like he was eliminating him from the Rumble, and Mantaur takes a HUGE bump, flying way past the rope and crashing hard to the floor, getting counted out. This was a major bump and totally made the match.

Mantaur vs. Bob Holly WWF Raw 5/15/95

ER: This was actually really good, definitely the best match of the Mantaur that I've retroactively watched. This match shows the potential the Razor Ramon match had. Mantaur getting to maul Holly while Holly bumped effectively, with some peppered in Holly nearfalls and a triumphant Holly win, was a really fun match structure. Mantaur got to show his power and did more nice elbow drops than he's done in what I've seen. He has a nice elbowdrop and should do it more. Holly bumped around impressively for all of it, good babyface. Holly takes an especially big bump to the floor and it was the first time I'd really seen Mantaur come off like a monster. Holly's comebacks were all good, with a convincing school boy and a really great missile dropkick that I don't remember him having. Mantaur really leaned into it and it added to the harder than average hitting feeling of the match. Mantaur loses in convincing fashion, but it felt like Holly got an upset. This was a good TV match.

Mantaur might actually be a thing.

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New Footage Friday: Tully, Fujinami, Johnny Valentine, Kiniski, Baba, Inoki, Shawn, Austin

Giant Baba/Antonio Inoki vs. Johnny Valentine/Gene Kiniski JWA 2/1/72

MD: There's a lot to unpack here. First, we're lucky to have this footage at all. Second, we're impoverished for having so little Valentine and so little younger Kiniski while we're at it. They were complete stars here, sneaky, goony, mean heels, the sort that you wouldn't really be able to have in Japan even ten years later. There's as much of this match with them and their seconds complaining about things that happened as there is action. It gets to the point where the crowd starts throwing things at them. All of that is ok because even joined in progress, the action is still lengthy and it's so good.

Valentine somehow manages to be punchable and aggravating while still coming off as the toughest guy in the room. He was absolutely the total package. Everything he did, from sneaking in gut shots to locking in a crazy 1970 cross-arm breaker jumped off the screen. Kiniski showed a lot here, whether it be with endless knee thrusts, the cruelest stomps, the unforgiving reverse headlock, or just the constant menacing of the ref or the crowd and trying to constantly sneak into the ring. Inoki brought the dropkicks and some fire but it was unmissable, even in 1970, the difference between him and Baba. The latter was far more confident in letting himself sell. Inoki had to constantly fire back no matter what. Hopefully there's more Valentine in either the AJPW or WWE archives, because he's absolutely someone who lives up to the hype.

PAS: I thought this was delightful, just an absolute banger of a match, with all four guys just unloading on each other. We don't have much Valentine footage, but every time he shows up, he looks like an all time great. He and Baba especially just go to war. Baba is so fast moving in this match, it is really jarring, and he goes toe to toe with Valentine and matches his stiffness. I loved his little chops to the neck, chest and head, total rapid fire and nasty. Valentine really knows how to make it hurt, the series of elbow drops he finished the second fall with felt trachea smushing, especially the second rope one. Kiniski is a great sneaky cheap shotter too, with some great looking body shots. One of the stiffer 70s matches I can remember seeing, Johnny Valentine was working on a whole different frequency of nasty.

Tully Blanchard vs. Tatsumi Fujinami MUGA 10/29/95

ER: Well, this ruled. I had no idea Tully had worked in Japan, and after seeing this match I have no idea why he didn't work Japan more often. He was just over 40 when this match happened and was still in great shape, and didn't seem to be any less Tully Freaking Blanchard than he was 5 years prior. I'm not sure how this match was proposed to him, how it was set up, finalized, don't know any of the details. I don't know any of the other gaijin posing in the ring with him (Shane Rigby? Darren Malonis? They worked other Muga shows, but they're a weird footnote in pro wrestling), but I'm so glad that this happened. We've all seen Inoki or Fujiwara exhibition matches, and I assumed this would be something like that. Instead it's a great 15 minute scrap that would have easily made a  Segunda Caida '95 MOTY List. I think Muga is a style that a lot of territory guys would excel at, but I'm sure others would use it as an opportunity to lie around in a headlock for 10 minutes. 

But this isn't that, as it's engaging as hell and comes off far more like Tully working shootstyle than Tully taking a night off. This whole thing has some great hard fought struggle, and there was no headlock here that felt like it was just trying to kill time, not even close. It's cool seeing Tully work the mat in this specific way, like when Fujinami is setting up an arm break spot by extending his leg against the arm and then kicking his other leg into it, and you see Tully make his arm go limp to absorb the blow. Those are some cool detail points. And it's fun seeing Tully be Tully within a more rigid setting, see him arguing with the ref over breaking holds, or bailing to the floor after a pinfall and trying to yank Fujinami out by the legs. This whole thing was a killer catch fight, real energy being exhausted during grappling, a back suplex that drops Tully flat and hard, a dragon sleeper held a couple seconds after the ref calls it; I went in thinking this was going to be Tully getting a cool payday out of retirement. I left wondering why we were deprived of a ton of great mid 90s Tully Blanchard.

PAS: Technical Tully is a real trip, you think of him as as the ultimate smarmy sleazy heel, but he worked this mostly hold for hold. Fujinami is a master of this kind of match, and he only needs a game opponent to have something magical, and Tully was more then game. I really liked Fujinami kicking at the arm, and the two suplexes felt big enough to be the only two suplexes in the match. This kind of stuff is even cooler than holy grails, we didn't even know we wanted this, and all of a sudden here it was.

MD: This match is magic. I'd never heard about it. It just appeared out of nowhere. It has Tully Blanchard from 1995. It's MUGA. We really do have the best hobby. I loved this. It was worked as gritty as you can possibly imagine, just mean, uncooperative straightforward matwork, lots of struggle with nothing fancy. I love how much effort the two of them exerted for every little thing, when so many of the things in the match were little. I love how the characters still shined through despite that. Tully's ref fake out to lock in a front facelock was great, and him calling Fujinami a "sleepy boy" while in the hold was even better. Fujinami staring Tully down when he attempted a cheapshot was just as good. None of it detracted from what they were trying to accomplish in the least. I loved the escalation where Tully's butterfly suplex towards the end felt like a big deal but not so big given the pace of the match that the finish, with Fujinami rolling out then immediately back in to catch Tully in a belly-to-back wasn't totally believable. I'll take gift matches like this out of the sky any day.

Shawn Michaels vs. Steve Austin WWF 3/10/96

MD: I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this was really good, especially considering that it's a dark match for a TV taping. In fact, keep that in mind for everything I say next: this was a dark match for a TV taping. Austin had already wrestled a couple of times. The purpose was to make the crowd happy. There was no issue or feud to generate heat, etc. I get that people (not necessarily us, but you know, people) are generally high on Michaels' 96 run, but I've always been hot and cold on it. There are things I really like, such as the Goldust ladder match and some of the stuff with Vader, but there's a lot of formula as Michaels was trying desperately to channel later WWF Hogan and prove to the world that he was a legitimate main eventer, despite his relative size.

That's not at all what this match was. This had much more of a NWA Title Match structure than you'd usually get in WWF and I don't know if that was 'relatively fresh out of WCW' Austin calling it or what. That sounds commonplace, but was a real novelty for this setting and for Michaels. The first third was basically worked out of a headlock with a number of spots of Austin almost getting out but getting cut off. After this awesome hammer blow out of nowhere, the second third was Austin in charge and this was a bit more routine WWF. It had chinlocks (though they were still working it and the crowd) with escalating hope spots and cutoffs (and an elaborate ref-assisted low blow spot), with the tide turning after a pile driver attempt on the floor, and a really great transition/comeback with Austin avoiding crotching himself as Michaels moved away from the ropes and a kip up out of nowhere. Totally different than the usual Michaels formula (though I couldn't tell you if it was a spot they used in their other matches because I haven't seen any in a decade, at least).

The crowd was heavily into Michaels; this was both his home state and the honeymoon period where he had the momentum towards Wrestlemania XII. They were into his comeback but it meandered just a little. There was a weird moment of Michaels messing with his hair before realizing he should be charging at Austin. They were running around the ring for a surprise clothesline spot at about half speed. Michaels did get a revenge clotheslining of Austin on the guardrail which was nice. The finishing stretch had a couple of wrinkles to it (including a stun gun) but didn't quite live up to the match. Austin was in hybrid mode here, still half Hollywood Blondes stooge, mocking Michaels' pose and hamming it up a bit, but all of that was additive. He filled space between shots so well, really at the height of his power as this particular sort of heel. For what this was (again, a dark match with no issue on a TV taping between two guys who had only worked together once or twice ever, over the few days prior), I thought this was actually kind of great.

PAS: I enjoyed this more then I was expecting. I really liked the house show feeling of it. Working the first long section out of a babyface headlock is classic wrestling trope stuff, but not what you would normally see out of a PPV or TV match. Austin is really great at letting his frustration build. The forearm Austin landed before taking over was a big one, and set the tone for a pretty nasty beatdown. I liked the bump on the floor, and the finish run, Austin avoiding crotching himself and bouncing up is a super cool bit of business I hadn't seen before, and I thought they built to the superkick really well. Lothario at ringside just made me wish this was Austin vs. Super Sock, but it was pretty good stuff, toned down Michales may be better for everyone.

ER: I loved this. I love "House Show Feel" WWF. It's so much better than most of actual onscreen WWF. I used to attend most TV tapings than came through our area but sometime a decade ago I started only being interested in attending house shows because the matches were more satisfying, pro wrestling actually worked towards the crowd. House Show Undertaker wrestles completely different than every Undertaker match you've seen. And here we get to see Austin and Michaels working differently than they ever worked on TV around this time. I recognize this is not a house show match, but it's incredible how much different the match structure becomes once the TV cameras aren't around. Michaels is toned down in the best way possible, and Austin works spots - both offense and stooge spots - that I've never seen him do before, especially not in his WWF run. The slow build portions of this with arm locks and headlocks were really satisfying, and by the time Austin absolutely pastes Michaels with a swinging axe handle (damn did that look nasty, best version of the Polish Hammer I've ever seen) I was fully on board. 

Austin is so great at jawing with fans - watch this WCW house show six man if you somehow missed it to see even more - and this is in a way that you just don't see from WWF. Austin is great at mocking Michaels and the match includes one of my absolute favorite spots I've seen in a WWF ring: Michaels is draped over the middle rope, and Austin runs in to jump butt first onto Michaels, Michaels moves, and Austin bounces butt first on the ropes and then lands on his feet and calls for the SAFE sign. I had to pause the video I was laughing so hard. It was pure pro wrestling heel genius, and he pauses the perfect amount of time to let the fans soak up his genius, naturally leading to him getting absolutely decked. The work is simple, the match long build to the match ending superkick is excellent, and it's a match type that WWE like has hundreds of just sitting in their vaults. Them not recording house shows is a true tragedy, so many lost performances and unique match-ups, but if they have recorded every match listed as a Dark Match then we'd have enough fresh new content to keep us happy for a decade.

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Ki is Carving Initials on Your Forehead, So Every Night Before Bed You See LK Shine Off the Board Head

Lokey vs. Monster Mac vs. Ken Sweeney vs. Indian Chief Tango LIWF 10/10/98-FUN

ER: I used the name spelling used by the Long Island Wrestling Federation's own graphics department, and this absolutely has to be the earliest Low-Ki match that I've seen. He and Monsta Mack are both fresh faced teenagers (!) and this is a fun snapshot of a transitional period for east coast indy wrestling. There were guys like Ki and Mack who in just a year or two would be accepted as the new popular style on the indy scene, and here they are as teenagers working an indy show underneath Bill Eadie and Jimmy Snuka. Nineties indy cards were littered with old WWF guys in their mid 50s (or worse, guys in their mid 50s who were never even in WWF but they owned a ring). Phil once described going to a late 90s east coast indy show as "You'd leave going 'Well, Axl Rotten threw a couple of nice chops.'" So something like this - four guys throwing out a bunch of spots in a chaotic Texas tornado style match - would have really stuck out as something fresh.

Ki and Mack are still in a gestation period. I found an angelfire page saying this was Ki's FIRST MATCH, and that page was also selling all 3 volumes of BUDMAN316's Ric Blade compilations, which is a sentence funny enough that I couldn't have actually thought of it myself. It's fun seeing early footage of guys you've watched for almost 20 years, see how completely different their moveset is. Ki's moveset here wasn't any more or less spectacular than his current moveset, just different, like when you watch Wildside era AJ Styles and he does a lot of legdrops. Ki hits missile dropkicks different, does a springboard frog splash and a frog splash off the top, hits a moonsault press off the top to the floor, moves entirely different on kicks (appears to be throwing X-Pac kicks in the corner) and even tries an ill-advised RVD terrible looking single leg dropkick off the top. It could have gone terribly as Mack tries to catch the kick meaning Ki lands awkwardly on one leg. Mack is such a baby here, hadn't yet grown into a true monster, but still had no problem yelling at a Puerto Rican girl at ringside and dropping guys with powerbombs. The Indian guy has the worst chops in the match, which I think might constitute a hate crime, but he has a nice standing spinning heel kick and so naturally does that to the other three.

Ken Sweeney is perfect. He's such a flawless New Jersey metalhead cosplayer that there is zero chance of any cosplaying actually taking place. There is a dearth of speed metal indy wrestlers, and here's Ken Sweeney showing up in sick as hell torn pink tiger striped fringe tights, Iron Maiden shirt, apology mustache, and a thick as hell blowback mullet. I'd bet a days wages that Ken Sweeney has a vest with a Saxon patch on it, and I'd love to drink tallboys and talk Piece of Mind with this dude. Watch him almost trip on the ropes getting into the ring, and then back the fuck off because he's mine. And Sweeney works like a dude amped up on British speed metal, working a fast pace. He doesn't have the technical precision of say Adrian Smith, but he comes at you like Bolt Thrower, trying guillotine legdrops and a superplex and a plancha to the floor. This match inexplicably goes to a time limit draw, but we're all made better for watching it. Up to you whether or not to stay for the Eadie match. I'm staying (and Eadie fought Tito Santana and it actually ruled because 1998 Tito still ruled).

PAS: Cagematch has one earlier Ki match listed (9/25/98 JAPW Nation of Immigration (Homicide/Kane D) vs Low-Ki/Ron Zombie) but this is definitely baby Ki. Ki and Mack are cousins and they basically matched up 95% of the match, Ki has eye black under both eyes and looks like he is at JV football tryouts. This had a bit of an ambitious back yard feel to it. They didn't blow anything, but it felt like they were just running through every spot they practiced, with out a ton of thought put into the sequence. There were some fun moves, Mack press slams Ki to the floor, Ki hits a couple of big height frog splashes, and a spinning double arm DDT. Mack also splats him with a couple of big powerbombs. The other two guys in this match kind of matched up with each other and stayed out of the way. Sweeney looks just like I imagine Cyrus and Jeff looked like in The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Nick Patrick: Best American Wrestler, 1996

This weekend I decided to throw on WCW World War 3 1996. My excuse? It was the only PPV that Roadblock ever appeared on. Also, Tony Rumble was on a PPV for some reason. Felt like something I needed to see. What I didn't expect, was that I would be seeing a performance that would change my life. Apparently, Nick Patrick was the best worker in WCW in 1996. Did you know that? I sure as hell didn't know that, before this past weekend. Has everybody else known this and decided to not tell me? I'm always the last to know. But if you're out there, and you didn't realize what an incredible worker 1996 Nick Patrick was, if nobody told you yet, here I am, telling you. Now you know, and now your life like mine own life can be forever changed.

Nick Patrick vs. Chris Jericho Pt. 1            Nick Patrick vs. Chris Jericho Pt. 2

Goddamn this match rules. This makes me so pissed that we didn't get a run of Nick Patrick as a worker during this era WCW. He's like a god tier Danny McBride character in this match, just a magnificent stooge who genuinely looked like a better worker here than most of the active roster (and WCW had an impressive as hell roster). This match is brilliant. Jericho has one arm tied behind his back, Patrick is wearing his neck brace, and they work a fantastic match not only based around Jericho with one good arm, but Patrick doing mean offense to a guy with one arm while also convincingly taking a beating from that same man. Both guys' offense looks really good in this, Jericho pulling out a really impressive performance with use of only one arm, breaking out with a cool corner kick combo, a big leaping shoulderblock, actually some pretty impressive stuff with your body balance thrown off.

But Nick Patrick is the real marvel here. He works like a classic Memphis worker, throwing nice submarine angle uppercut right hands and quick, excellently worked left jabs. He has as many doofus stooge faces as John Tatum, and any wrestler who tips the Tatum Scales for me is going to immediately be a guy who I champion. Patrick is also somehow not only a great bumper, he's able to take great bumps while conveying a guy who isn't someone who should be taking bumps.

I remember seeing an interview with Martin Landau talking about his wonderful performance in Ed Wood. He talked about how seriously he took the role of Bela Lugosi, how he thought Lugosi was a true legend whom he wanted to honor, so much so that he thought out each aspect of the character in detailed fashion. And he talked about the crazy method depths he went to properly capture Bela, down to the fact that he didn't just want to do an accurate Romania accent, he wanted to do an accent of a Romanian man who was insecure about his accent so tried to cover his accent. Nick Patrick seems to understand his role in this match as well as Landau knew what tone to use to play Lugosi. Nick Patrick brawled like Windham and stooged like Tatum, and that's a wrestler I'm going to want to watch.

Patrick uses the World War 3 setting really well, brawling to the floor, hitting a cool ring post bump into a ring post joining two rings, setting up a spot where Jericho missed a punch and decked the joined ring posts (Jericho played into all these transition spots great); Patrick found cool ways to take this match into a couple rings and show off to several sides of the arena. That's an AMAZING skill. Patrick throws a ton of great punches throughout, great quick jabs and body shots, and then to show you how much of a rebel badass he is Nick Patrick does the Curt Hennig rolling neck snap! Patrick even takes a back drop bump, with Jericho setting it up impressively for a guy with one arm. Patrick had a full range of theatrical stooge bumps: drop to your knees and faceplant, googly eyes into faceplant, arms above his head slow fall, dropping fast to his butt, a guy who seemed like he could have come up with a dozen comedy spots at any point.

This match was an absolute blast, I can't believe it isn't some kind of cult favorite. It's really great. Patrick is a legend and there's no sign that he'd even worked a match in the prior decade, and then he turns in this incredible performance?? I would have this super high on a 1996 MOTY List, as ridiculous as that sounds. If two guys put this match together in 2019 I would have it high on a 2019 MOTY List. This was not just a superior gimmick match, but a superior pro wrestling match. And I have no idea how it was possible.

At this point Nick Patrick hadn't been an active worker for over a decade. It's not like he was working indies on the side while reffing in WCW. Why did this match happen? And, why weren't there more of them? When they booked this match NOBODY could have predicted it would be this great. So that means that somebody booked this match, got a result FAR BETTER than they ever could have hoped for, and then decided to not ever capitalize on it by having Patrick wrestle again. There are 50 guys on this roster I'd want to see opposite Patrick after seeing him here, and we got to see zero of those matches. I need to know everything that went into this. I need to see training footage of Patrick at the Power Plant. I need to know what other wrestlers thought of it. I need to know what Patrick's motivations were. His performance is so great that there has to be ONE PERSON in the back whose face he wanted to rub right in the shit. Somebody in WCW put down Nick Patrick somehow, and Nick Patrick was going to get to walk up to that person with as much smugness as he wanted, and ask him "How about that?" We need to find Nick Patrick, we need some answers, and I need some closure. Everything about Nick Patrick in this match - from his sleeveless ref shirt right down to every single mannerism - was an absolute pro wrestling clinic. It's been hiding right in plain sight for over 20 years, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt:

Nick Patrick was the Best American Pro Wrestler of 1996

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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Worldwide 10/23/99 & 10/30/99

10/23/99

Scotty Riggs vs. Adrian Byrd

ER: I hate when WCW episodes have the ambient noise vacuum running throughout matches. There's no way the live crowd sounded worse than this static. This was a decent match until a couple clunky moments during Byrd's brief comeback caused a flat ending. There was a fun story going on (that likely only existed on commentary) that Byrd had just won a match on the previous episode, and this was his chance to put an actual winning streak together. Riggs had some nice controlling offense, I liked his crossface shots in a chinlock and he had a nicely timed dropkick. But Byrd's comeback was too brief and his dropkick was a less interesting version of the same dropkick Riggs already did in the match. Riggs looked like he was trying to throw punches Lawler style, those low rising angle looping righthand uppercuts. I don't totally remember Riggs punching that way all the time, wonder if it was something cool he had picked up in USWA years before and was airing out. Finish didn't look great as Riggs went for the Showstopper (a Rocker Dropper) and Byrd dropped early. They still showed a replay of it.

Barry Darsow vs. Luther Biggs

ER: Darsow is in his Blacktop Bully gear and comes out yelling how he doesn't know who Barry Darsow is, he's the Blacktop Bully! And who was Luther Biggs anyway? Was he a Power Plant guy or some producer who got to do an occasional onscreen role like Big Dick Johnson (who was never a guy I actually saw but remember reading about in the Observer). Biggs' onscreen roles coming in WCW and TNA make me think he was some kind of writer or something. He had size (he wasn't much smaller than Darsow, and Darsow is a big guy) but no kind of good look. But you know what? This match was a ton of fun. Biggs is really good at playing a non-wrestler learning to wrestle. Darsow worked over his arm in fun ways, and Biggs finally came back with a great eyepoke and two nice body shots (the first one with his bad arm - which he then sold - before switching to his good arm). The whole thing was very satisfying and you could tell Biggs was actually pretty decent. Darsow hits a nice lariat, falling to his knees similarly to a Dustin lariat. He also gets Biggs up high for a nice backdrop suplex. Finish was a well executed 1999 finish, with Johnny Boone getting bumped and taking a really fast folding back bump across the ring, then Bully getting cracked with Coach Buzz Stern's clipboard so Biggs could get the pin. A weird match I didn't know existed, a couple different angles that existed only on WCW's C and D shows.

ER: Also, we may have only had two matches this episode, but that means every match was able to feature a Riggs or a Biggs. That some agent didn't feel the need to swap opponents for two meaningless matches, shows the cruel insides of a truly joyless human. Imagine having the opportunity to give me, 20 years into the future, Riggs vs. Biggs and not taking it.


10/30/99

Hardbody Harrison vs. Chuck Palumbo

ER: During the entrances to this match Larry Zbyszko drops a real gem:

"Hardbody Harrison's a mean guy, he could really hurt someone."

Boy, when Larry's right, he's right. Palumbo would later become a favorite of mine in WWE. His WCW jungle boy persona is a lot more raw, but in hindsight you could see the big potential there. My buddy Jason was an early Palumbo backer, got him some bragging points by the time Palumbo was throwing everybody's favorite big right hands up north. Palumbo was more about showing off his vertical leap in this portion of his career, so we got more leaping spots than ass kicking spots, which aren't as interesting. Several times his leap actually detracted from his offense: He hit a light crossbody that could have landed heavy, but he opted to float over Harrison; later he hit a flying shoulder tackle that focused way more on how much hang time he got on the tackle than how good the tackle looked. But he still had good punches this early on, and his shoulder tackles looked like they would improve with time (and they did). He had a great powerslam here and a cool Booker T spinkick that finished it. Harrison wasn't ever very good. His best feature was that he looked like a total sleaze, and thinking of that as his best feature now just reminds us all how awful pro wrestling is.

La Parka/El Dandy vs. Kendall Windham/Curly Bill

ER: It really doesn't get more exciting on paper than this, for me, when I throw in a disc of WCW. These are four of my syndicated WCW favorites, and it's such a fantastic styles clash that winds up being nothing like a styles clash in the least. And that is because Kendall Windham is a man and treats Dandy and Parka as his equal. This is among the highest in ring respect I've ever seen a heavyweight treat Dandy with in WCW, with Kendall going toe to toe in and excellent punch exchange, Dandy rightfully standing with the big Texan. Kendall is straight fire in this match, maybe his greatest match in WCW. He puts on a total clinic. He felt like CW Anderson working more like Barry Windham, and if that doesn't make you want to see this match then I have no idea why you would be reading this review. His punches all look great, he hits a real bulldog, a big diving lariat, kicks guys right in the gut, looks like a total star. The bulk of this is Kendall/Dandy, and it's awesome to see Dandy not eaten alive and treated like an actual big punching brawler. But this is the Kendall show, he works like someone slipped truckers speed into his beer and he whipped around the ring like this was a handicap match. It was everything I ever could have wanted.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WCW B-SIDES

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Late 90s Kawada!

Toshiaki Kawada/Masao Inoue vs. Kenta Kobashi/Yoshinobu Kanemaru AJPW 1/2/98

ER: I love these Kings Road hierarchy tags, where there's typically no doubt about who is eating the pinfall, the veterans appropriately sell the young upstarts' offense (i.e. not much), it's always fun to see how the vets work their young charges into the match, and the crowd ALWAYS responds to them in big ways. This is not a great match, but the crowd is on fire by the end of it, fully invested in seeing young Kanemaru get more offense in a match than he'd probably ever gotten at this point in his career. The meat of the match is Kawada and Kobashi throwing heavy leather: boots to the face and heart stopping chops; but the fun of the match is seeing Inoue and Kanemaru get involved, seeing them get minor success against Kobashi and Kawada. Kanemaru isn't quite good at this point of his career, but I like that he tries a lot of things. A lot of it lands pillow soft, soft moonsaults, light crossbody, diving lariats that we all know were supposed to be lariats but would have a hard time explaining to non-wrestling fans who don't know wrestling body language. But he busts open Inoue's mouth with a missile dropkick and that only makes Inoue's inroads look more awesome. If you're ever triumphantly yelling about something, it's going to look exponentially cooler if you're doing so with a mouthful of blood, darkening your teeth. Minutes later, when Inoue throws a couple of hard lariats into Kobashi's neck, blood dripping down his chin, it adds so much more to those lariats. This whole match is such a simple formula, and this kind of All Japan match is something I'm always going to be in the mood to watch. I mean, just look at Inoue snap off that Argentinian backbreaker on scrawny, barely adult, mushroom haircut Kanemaru. It's the stuff that joy is made from.

Toshiaki Kawada vs. Yoshihiro Takayama AJPW 7/17/99

ER: In retrospect it's weird how more of us weren't big fans of Takayama until 2003 or so. He was a guy who worked UWFI and All Japan during a really fun era, but he really wasn't spoken about nearly as much as his peers. Then he got his face turned to lumps by Don Frye and suddenly does a G1 and we all loved him. Going back and watch a lot of these underdiscussed late 90s AJ guys and it's pretty clear we took a lot of their skillsets for granted. Now that puro isn't something I actively seek out the way I did in '98-'08, it's shocking to see how much better 1998 Jun Izumida looks than many Japanese wrestlers who get a lot of hype today. I was there when people really started talking up Takayama, and nobody was into Takayama in 1999. See Honda, Tamon. These guys were hiding in plain sight in the promotion we were all getting tapes of. Maybe it was Takayama's lumbering horror movie monster awkwardness that made him invisible, but this match is the kind of gem you hope for when you click on a link. This is a 7 minute slugfest that sees these two throw the gnarliest knees to the guy you've seen and ends with Kawada kicking Takayama's ass so hard that he falls to the floor and gets counted up, and it feels like an appropriate ending. It feels like I really wouldn't have to write more than that last sentence to convince anybody who was GOING to watch this match, to watch this match. Takayama gets a cool showcase for his horsey lumpishness, and his kneelifts are truly all time great, here and after. Every one of them looked like Kawada would get his feet lifted off the mat, and Kawada did a great job of conveying some actual concern that this big goon was going to smother him. So we had some good grappling and good struggle, and it wouldn't have been a stretch to see some insane Takayama upset here with how effective Kawada was selling for him. We even got a great moment where Takayama punches Kawada right across the cheek and Kawada plays the greatest hit and drops down to his butt in pained disbelief. You knew Takayama wasn't coming out on top here though, and soon enough Kawada is throwing his own knees and kicking Takayama's ass to the floor, dropping him with a heavy as hell backdrop suplex and throwing more strikes, and Takayama ends it with this great awkward corpse bump, rigidly falling onto the bottom rope before spilling to the floor. This is great, one of the coolest sub-10 minute matches around.

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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Worldwide 10/8/95

Bunkhouse Buck vs. Ric Flair

ER: My god this is what you LEAD OFF an episode of Worldwide with? And this 100% delivers as an all time syndicated classic. This is a straight up asskicking. Buck beats the absolute hell out of Flair here. This is honestly the stiffest I've ever seen Buck work and Flair leans into a pretty mean beating. Buck is throwing hard back elbows, hard forearms shots to the chest, big punches, a real great corner clothesline, he rips at Flair's nose and mouth, kicks him in the face, drops a boot right down onto Flair's head in a way that Flair looks like his brains rattled, just a total mugging. This looked like Buck got underpaid for a couple of Birmingham, Alabama NWA title opportunities against Flair a decade before, and he's said nothing about it until this match. Flair takes an absolute beating here and it's great. Flair puts on this great big bumping sympathetic performance, with Buck as a real imposing monster. Flair takes three different bumps over the buckles, and they're escalated in a real satisfying way and important to the match: First time he's whipped into the buckles and goes upside down, falling hard back into the ring; second time he goes upside down and falls down the apron and takes a nasty spill out onto the Worldwide stage (with Buck hitting a kickass forearm off the apron); third time is during his comeback when he goes upside down in the corner, but runs the length of the apron to hit Buck with a top rope axe handle! An awesome usage of a signature bump to escalate the story of the match every time it's done. And to put the absolute most perfect cherry on top of this delicious Sunday, Flair wins this match with a running elbow, like he was dispatching of Donovan Morgan on a house show. This was perfection and one of the all time greatest matches in syndicated WCW history.

Kamala/Zodiac vs. Scott D'Amour/Terry Morgan

ER: This completely, unironically RULED. This was total chaos in front of a bunch of Florida elderly people and 12 year old kids in large size t-shirts, and that's kind of when pro wrestling is at its best. Kamala is shrieking around the ring throwing overhand chops and big stomps, Zodiac is running around babbling and fishhooking Scott D'Amore while Kevin Sullivan keeps stomping on D'Amore's fingers. This felt more like a crazy cult doing a home invasion than a wrestling match. Terry Morgan has this great jobber mustache, and Kamala picks him up over his head doing a two handed choke and it looked like he was lifting him up 10 feet in the air before dropping him. This whole thing was ugly and ridiculous and completely great.

Tim Horner vs. Diamond Dallas Page

ER: I always forget Horner got a little WCW run around this time, lots of singles and several matches teaming with various Armstrongs. He's an always fun classic babyface, and he milks a few different convincing surprise nearfalls in this one, a guy who never wins who always has an energy level that feels like he just might win. There was a rolling prawn hold in this that was held super snug, really looked like Horner was going to get the win even though that was obviously not happening. Kimberly  Page was a flat out absurd babe in October of 1995, oh and Tim Horner threw a great babyface dropkick. DDP gives Horner 4 different nice pinfall almost wins here, and then simply puts him away with his nice tilt a whirl slam. I wish Horner was around a year later so we could have seen him against some of the luchadors.

Dick Slater vs. Randy Savage

ER: This show was so going so great that you just knew this wasn't going to let you down, and it does not. This a similar kind of asskicking to Buck/Flair - not as good, but same spirit - and made me really hope for a Savage/Flair vs. Buck/Slater tag that gets more than 10 minutes. Seeing what the 4 of them did on this episode makes that tag a lost classic, they could have worked a legendary street fight as evidenced here. Slater and Savage throw nice 80s street fight punches, Savage takes a big bump to the floor, takes hard flat back bumps around the ring for Slater, and the finished has some inspired silliness: Slater puts Savage down and then tries to cheat to win, by removing his cowboy boot to give Savage a good clonking. The Corporal has the ref distracted, and Slater CANNOT get his boot off. He's yanking at it with both hands, kicking at it with his other foot, shaking is leg to get this damn boot off of him, getting more and more desperate to beat Savage with it. He finally shakes it off and Savage gets it and hits a wicked shot right off Slater's forehead. A picture perfect flying elbow finishes it.

This ranks up with my all time favorite episodes of Worldwide that I've watched. A ton of fun from top to bottom, and my review doesn't even cover the genuinely terrific Flair, Johnny B. Badd, and Kevin Sullivan promos that aired throughout, NOR did I cover the three different commercials for 1995 sexpot potboiler JADE, produced by Robert Evans, written by Joe Eszterhas, starring David Caruso fresh off of quitting one of the more lucrative gigs in TV history (which would have been far more hilariously tragic if he didn't somehow land an even more lucrative TV gig a decade later). This episode is what all syndicated WCW should aspire to. And YOU need to watch the Bunkhouse Buck/Ric Flair match linked above. It's genuinely one of my favorite matches I've watched out of allllll the syndicated WCW landscape.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WCW B-SIDES

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Hama vs. Sekimoto

7. Ryoto Hama vs. Daisuke Sekimoto BJW 1/2

ER: BJW is clearly now where the big boys play, and Hama is the biggest boy in all the land. It's kind of shocking Hama hasn't become a very specific fetish at this point (you know, I'm not even going to Google it, I'm just going to assume he has), as I really don't understand how he exists. Some evenings my knees hurt just because I played sports and dicked around on a skateboard. I weigh 165. Hama is THREE of me on approximately the same frame. But I will never tire of seeing him smash and smoosh into guys, and Sekimoto post squishing might be the best possible use of his bug eyed face. Sekimoto attempts big crushing forearm blows to the chest, but Hama crushes Sekimoto like he's gonna do, standing on him, running into him with size, hitting his great rolling senton, falling straight on top of him when Sekimoto attempts to slam him, all the things you want to happen. You expect these to happen, so the real joy in Hama matches is when something of his gets reversed, or he reverses something by fat. It's always a big moment when Sekimoto is able to budge Hama, when he crashes into him with a lariat that would cave in a smaller man, or when he muscles him over into a cool hiptoss. And both guys have these big fat baby faces, and it adds to things like Sekimoto locking in a half crab, and we see Hama's chubby face in anguish, a big chubby baby who is breaking down because his mom forgot to pack a baggie of Cheerios and he's getting restless. Sekimoto is a glutton for this punishment by fat, and I flipped when Sekimoto came firing off the ropes with a lariat only to be met with the greatest Thesz press that Thesz himself couldn't have ever imagined, and follows up with a big splash off the ropes. When Hama goes up top for the Banzai Drop and gets caught, Sekimoto throws clubbing forearms at Hama's ample backside, and then GETS UP AND UNDER all of that...hangdown...gets right up in there and powerbombs him. Sekimoto lies on the mat after this, a vacant Rust Cohle stare burned into his eyes. "I've...seen things." Sekimoto continues merely outlasting Hama, eventually getting him over for a big suplex and a crushing lariat. I love how BJW typically keeps their big matches to 15 minutes, as something like this is just 15 minutes of squishy joy.

PAS: Hama has gotten so big, he was a fat guy when he started and he is seemingly 200 pounds heavier than a couple of years back. He looks like a McGuire twin at this point. He was always great at using his bulk and there is so much more bulk now. His Thesz press looks like an airplane flying into a cloud, Sekimoto just disappears underneath a cumulus of chub. Those sentons look so brutal, it felt like a car being smushed by a monster truck. I loved the powerbomb to counter the banzai drop and don't understand how the ring didn't collapse. I am not really a Sekimoto fan, but he is perfectly acceptable in these kind of minimalist matches, he is just going to try to topple a blubber boulder and stay out of the way when it lands.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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New Footage Friday: WE DECLARE WAR!!! 6/25/93

WAR 6/25/93

This is a six match series with WAR vs. Heisei Ishingun. Sort of a border skirmish in the WAR vs. NJ conflict, with Koshinaka's band of outsiders taking on a group of WAR defenders. Weird show, having a WAR card in 93 with no Tenryu, but tubby interpromotional asskicking is about the best thing in wrestling and this had it in spades

Show starts with sort of a drawing of straws to set up the match ups


Koki Kitahara vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi

PAS: This was the longest of the matches on the show, and goes into several different phases, all of them pretty great. It opens with both guys throwing taters at each other, they spill to the floor and wildly fling chairs. One of the things that made this match so great is the raggedness of it. There isn't very many smooth exchanges, and lots of the time they are just grabbing each other by the hair and sneaking in punches and headbutts. Large parts of this feel  bar fight, where both guys are a little unskilled and a little unsteady. I loved Kobayashi just throwing multiple fisherman's suplexes and not going for the pin and Kitahara's dickish little kicks to the head. Finish was cool with Kitahara DDTing Kobayashi on the floor, rolling him in and locking in a bodyscissors sleeper for a but until Kobayashi passes out, it wasn't really a dramatic pass out, and it almost felt like a questionable UFC stoppage, I loved the shoving and the "hold me back" from both camps. Thought it worked really well for the opening of a series like this.

MD: I love the dissonance of a tug of war rolling right into this match. It's a twenty minute match that's almost entirely uncooperative all the way through, which feels pretty long for this sort of thing. It's brutal and it's great. Kitahara took the brunt of this, coming off like an absolute killer, with nasty headbutts, chair shots, and kicks, but throughout most of it, he couldn't really lock in a hold. Midway through Kobayashi comes back with these amazing running headbutts, really just a momentum-laden collision and then finally locks in a leglock which feels like a big deal given the struggle up to there. They roll into the finishing stretch not long after with Kitahara hitting a German, Northern Lights, and Backdrop Driver all in a row. It felt like a clear moment of escalation which means Kobayashi popping up almost immediately thereafter to hit three fisherman's suplexes of his own felt a little unearned. It was somewhat forgivable due to the unclear death match rules but it did take me out of the match a bit. Thankfully, it set up the further escalation with the three DDTs on the floor and the rear naked choke to close it all out so it more or less worked out in the end. Anyway, the sheer brutality more than makes up for that. What a way to start a show.

Ashura Hara vs. Akitoshi Saito

ER: Tenryu may not be on this show (which is weird for a WAR show, but I see Tenryu worked a Hashimoto singles match a week before this show and then didn't work again for a month, so taking a month off work after 20 minutes opposite Hash does make sense) but Hara is clearly the Tenryu proxy as he works this match almost exactly like I think Tenryu would have, and even has a bunch of great Tenryu selling moments. It's almost as if Hara was ALSO great or something. This is the kind of match you want out of a WAR/NJ showdown, Hara roughing up the relative newbie, beating him down with chairshots on the floor and lariats to the neck, and there's a great moment where you hear the buzz of the crowd building as they anticipate Saito finally hitting his first big spinkick of the match. Hara is running to set up a killshot lariat, and the crowd knows exactly the mistake he's making, and Saito hits that spinning heel kick that is arguably the best spinning heel kick of anyone who does a spinning heel kick, and that sets up the next several minutes of Saito kicking Hara a TON. Hara's selling of Saito's kicks is downright lordly. He leans into brutal baseball bat shots to the chest, Saito comes off the ropes with a punch right to the guy that sends Hara staggering beautifully into the ropes. Saito stops him in his tracks with a couple high kicks, throws a couple of crescent kicks that glance off Hara's temple (loved Hara's selling of a glancing blow) and Hara gets literally moved back on his feet like a tackling dummy by a couple of Saito lariats. We get a couple great moments of Hara eating kicks and occasionally catching one, only able to toss Saito away to get a couple seconds or reprieve before eating more kicks. And the longer Saito kicked him I knew Hara wasn't just going to just keep getting kicked and NOT pay him back for it, and when we got to the Hara payback it delivered. Hara throws the three meanest kicks of the entire match, one to Saito's ribs and two more right to the face - the kind of thing that would make Futen main eventers blush - and then gets to show off a couple more lariats of his own. This is the match I want to see when I sit down to watch WAR.

MD: Great, straightforward nine minute match. Hara's initial demolishing of Saito was great, straight up to the nonchalance in his nasty clotheslines and chairshots. I liked how he kept tossing him out of the ring. There was just so much personality to the violence. Saito's comeback spin kick was a thing of beauty. I'm a sucker for matches that can turn on a dime on one big move like that. Speaking of personality, Saito losing the gi and then posing before every kick like he was charging up was definitely memorable and seemed to work for the crowd. Hara willfully absorbing kicks (gritting through) is a much preferred method of selling than just eating three suplexes with no real effect and the finishing flurry of clotheslines felt like the inevitable destination the match had to go.

PAS: This was pretty much a poor man's Tenryu vs. a poor man's Hashimoto, but you can match up poor man's versions of those two and have it still be fucking incredible. I loved Hara hurling Saito to the floor and plastering him with chairs, Saito's big spin kick was incredible, and he really leaned into those body kicks, those are the kind of things which would turn ribs into popcorn. Hara just grumping his way out and chucking lariats was great stuff too, I love a larait to the back of the head and Hara was just cracking Saito with them. WAR as fuck.

Masashi Aoyagi vs. Super Strong Machine

ER: I both liked this, and was disappointed by this. I didn't love the layout, there were a couple dodgy moments from Aoyagi, and the finish is literally the exact same finish as the Hara/Saito match that happened right before this match. What I liked, is further evidence that Super Strong Machine may be one of the more under discussed ass kickers of this era. He is not flashy, his offense is simple, but he executes the offense with a Finlayesque reasonable recklessness, hitting his body slams hard, sitting down fast on his piledriver, throwing running and standing lariats with a full arm, the kind of guy with a vertical suplex you can set your watch to. He's a real bully in this, beating Aoyagi through the crowd and battering him with a chair. Now that I think about it maybe the entire layout of this match is a lesser executed version of Hara/Saito. But SSM is a fun smotherer, I can really get into a guy with a nice headlock or chinlock, and he really looks like he's hooking that arm to suffocate Aoyagi. Aoyagi throwing fast kicks over his head to escape was a great touch. Aoyagi's kick section isn't as nice as Saito's, he even whiffs a kick over SSM's head by several inches, but he hits a couple really nice rolling kicks and I always love his out of control corner spinkick that ends him spilling to the apron. The leaping knee to the back of Strong Machine's head is just icing. It is strange to me that Machine finishes this in the exact same way as Hara, even bouncing off the same ropes in the same order. And the match had flaws, but really played as a nice Super Strong Machine showcase for me, made me want to dive into some more.

MD: Context has an impact on this one. As a standalone match, it was definitely good, but following the two matches that it followed, it came up a bit lacking. I liked the opening exchange with Aoyagi rushing SSM and the paralleled violence on the outside, though the punctuation of the DDT on concrete felt like it came a bit early, especially considering how it was used to end the first match. I suppose it did set the stage for Aoyagi working from underneath for most of the rest of the match, though with no particular focused selling. I like SSM because he stands out relatively with the clubbering and power moves and presence, but I don't necessarily want to see Aoyagi fighting from underneath because his stuff is so good (like that knee to the back of the skull off the ropes!). The best parts of this was when they were going toe-to-toe and there just wasn't enough of that. At least Aoyagi got to take it out on the ref after the match. Again, still good, just not "this card" great.

PAS: I agree with Matt and Eric, this basically felt like the same match we just saw, just not as great. I dug chunks of this, Aoyagi is a C+A guy, one of our all time favorites, and had a bunch of fun athletic spin kicks and I loved his early bum rush. There was a great heads up section with both guys throwing bombs at each other, but man was that finish hurt by comparing it to the previous match. Hara is looking to decapitate with his clotheslines, and SSM just didn't deliver that. This was solid WAR undercard stuff, but we are getting bigger and better then solid on this show.

Tatsutoshi Goto vs The Great Kabuki

MD: Whereas the SSM vs Aoyagi was more of the same as the first two matches, just not as good, I thought this was a nice palette cleanser on the card. Goto rushed in early (though instead of a killer knee to rush in on, it was more hugging and rolling) and took an early advantage on the outside. He pressed that into the armwork that would take up the entirety of the match. There was a great consequence-laden hope spot early into this where Kabuki punches with the bad hand/arm and immediately drops down selling it. Past that, Goto working on the arm wasn't super varied but it was focused and mean with Kabuki selling well. When he finally was able to fire back, late in the match, the crowd was definitely into, but then things sort of meandered to an out-of-nowhere finish. If they had tightened this up by a couple of minutes or let Kabuki get a more sustained comeback at the end, it would have been better. I liked most of it for what it was though.

PAS: Very different match with this being mostly just Goto working over the arm of Kabuki and Kabuki selling. The arm work was fine, and Kabuki's selling was great, the moment where he finally hits his uppercut only to collapse in pain was awesome. Still Kabuki is a so much more dynamic offensive wrestler then Goto, it was a bit of a bummer to see him smothered for most of the match. I liked the surprise roll up pin, but I just felt a little robbed of a big Kabuki explosion. 

Hiro Saito vs Kengo Kimura

MD: Another very solid match. This one felt just as violent as the others (especially everything that happened on the outside), but at the same time, somehow more cooperative, or at least conventional. I think that says more about the rest of the card than about this match in and of itself. The first third of the match was focused around chairs, beatings on the outside, one brutal whip into a tiny table, and the setpiece of the exposed corner buckle (Kimura's attempt to expose it partially lets Saito come back, Kimura cements one transition by tossing Saito into it, etc.). The exposed buckle is a non-factor for the rest of the match, which is a shame. The finish is set up by Saito missing a top rope senton out of that exact corner. Kimura diving to crotch him on it to set up the exact same finish would have been more rewarding. Small thing. Also, this was probably a good spot on the show for color with Saito's head rammed into the buckle a few times. (Note after the fact: PWO's Jetlag got to these before we did and I went to check his review on this and he had the exact same notion. That makes me feel less monstrous). Some of Kimura's jumping knee offense looked muddy with the fancam, but I really love his double axe-handle clubber. He throws himself into it more than anyone I've seen. This was a good mix of brawling and more conventional moves and transitions.

PAS: I dug this, there is something very appropriate about sitting in the front row of a WAR show and having fat ass Hiro Saito flying over the railing and landing on top of you. No reason to think that this feud should respect the fans anymore then the wrestlers respect each other. Hiro Saito doesn't do a lot of different things, but does the things he does exceedingly well. His senton is honestly one of the greatest looking individual wrestling moves ever, just pulverisingly beautiful, the standing one looked bad enough, but that second rope one was like an anvil hitting Wile E. Coyote. If Kimura didn't move out of the way of the tope rope attempt he would have looked like spilled condiments. I do think this was the match that could have used blood, but otherwise this show keeps delivering. 

Shiro Koshinaka vs Takashi Ishikawa

MD: This was one-third a really good match and two thirds an excellent one. I loved how Koshinaka took it right to Ishikawa to start, but that first third got dragged down a bit by holds that lacked struggle (though, once the armwork started, not necessarily direction). What it did manage to have, however was Koshinaka being the only guy on the card really to play to the crowd and just enough brutality to keep things somewhat interesting. They get way more interesting when Ishikawa takes over. Everything he does here is great. He can't transition from one piece of offense to another without making sure to pepper in a stomp on Koshinaka's face. In the middle here, it breaks down to a lumberjack match of sorts with both camps going at it. We only see bits and pieces of this as the camera stays with Koshinaka's selling. That's ok, I think, because that was another strong part of the match. He's definitely a guy who could get the crowd behind him and they pop big when he hits his comeback butt bump (and as goofy a move as that always is, it has a symbolic power with the crowd so it absolutely works). His offense on the back half was a lot better with nothing seeming meandering in the least. Instead we get some nice knee drops and an unforgiving double stomp off the top.

I liked how smart the end of the match was too, with clever use of repetition and payoff. As much as anything else, the key moments of the match were the transition points: Ishikawa armdragging his way out of an armbar (followed by a huge stomp, of course), Koshinaka countering a three point stance clothesline attempt with a butt bump, and then late, when Ishikawa turned the third butt bump attempt in the match into a snap clotheslining on the top rope which allowed him to set up a series of chokeslams and the second three point stance attempt clothesline (this time successful for the win; I need to work in how great his rapid fire clotheslines to the front and back of the head were earlier in the match so I'm sticking that here). A match like this didn't need that sort of narrative cleverness. It could have just been these two guys killing one another. It's a testament how good this was and how well it closed out the show that they went a step beyond.

PAS: Takashi Ishikawa's WAR run was one of the great short term wrestling runs of all time. He was there from 92-94 and was uniformly excellent including several all-time level matches. This was a step below that level, but not a huge step and his performance was excellent. Koshinaka was really great as a underdog babyface (which is weird because this was a WAR show) and takes a big time bloody beating from Ishikawa and really rallies the crowd behind him. Matt is right about how awesome that butt but is as a momentum shifter. I loved all of Ishikawa's nasty stomps, he really looked like he was trying to extinguish a brush fire on Koshinaka's head. The spot were Ishikawa blocks a hip toss, lands a judo throw and just stomps Koshinaka in the eye was good stuff. Loved the die on his sword performance by Koshinaka at the end, as he is able to string some big stuff together before getting absolutely smashed by a big clothesline.

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Bradshaw and Barry: To Blackjacks And Beyond

Blackjack Bradshaw vs. Philip Lafon WWF Shotgun Saturday Night 6/7/97

ER: Lafon only worked 3 singles matches during his WWF run, which is weird considering he was there for over a year. He worked a house show match against Owen in Quebec (that I would love to see), a house show match against Phineas Godwinn (that I would love to see), and this match, the lone televised singles match of his WWF run. And it's kind of a lackadaisical affair for Philip, but not really to the match's detriment. Some of the set ups were a little too weirdly telegraphed and it always seemed like Lafon was the one doing it, but who knows. I really liked Bradshaw's aggression during his Blackjack run; he was clearly trying to work like Hansen, and he wasn't as good as Hansen (obviously not, but I'm saying he wasn't as good as same-era 48 year old Hansen), but he was really big and imposing and swung nicely for the fences. Lafon is a guy who can be a real assbeater, and I was hoping for that here, two guys who could work like bullies colliding. Lafon is half asleep and lethargic throughout, though still breaks out a couple cool tricks: He had a cool yank of the tights to send Bradshaw crashing to the floor, and a cool rabbit lariat right to the back of Bradshaw's head. But there were a couple moments where he visibly sandbagged Bradshaw, not getting up on a backdrop (that makes it cooler, as Bradshaw just pancakes him to the mat instead) and coming in lazy and heavy on the powerslam that finishes the match. He also took this weird timberrrrr bump off a big boot, looked like he was bored and trying to make Bradshaw look bad. Either Lafon and Furnas had a shooter aura, or Bradshaw had none of his later asshole personality and confidence, because any one of those things looked like something that any jobber would have caught a serious beating for pulling.

Bradshaw vs. Barry Windham WWF Raw 3/23/98

ER: THE BLACKJACKS EXPLODE!! WWF bringing back the NWA for a few months in early '98 was really weird, and I'm pretty sure I remember reading that it was all just to make fun of Cornette. We get a pretty cool mini video package before this match, something they don't do now as interestingly as they did here, and definitely not as efficiently. Within a 20 second video they had already explained why the Blackjacks broke up, how Barry was jealous of Bradshaw, showed several clips of Bradshaw murdering people, Bradshaw chasing Barry up the ramp after interference, and then we cut back to a smug blonde Windham in the ring. They had me at hello. This feels like a match that would have fit nicely onto the WM14 card, though I get why it wasn't on the card. Windham seems pretty broken down by this point, which is weird as he was somewhat resurgent not too much later in WCW. Still, this was 3 fun minutes with a dozen different moments of two giant dudes smacking each other with vests and chaps. Seriously, I'm pretty sure half of this match was them removing their respective vests and chaps, and smacking the other a few times with each removal. Take off a vest, smack your opponent with it. Get them chaps off, smack your opponent with them. It's the 2019 LA Park formula, 20 years prior. I dig it. Barry is moving a little slow and those knees seem to be barking, but he takes a couple of awesome bumps into the ring steps, getting run knees first in nasty fashion, eats a big boot from Bradshaw and falls into them again. Windham hits a cool DDT in the ring and we get a goofus roll up finish (damn, at least let one of these two hit their diving lariat), and for some reason we all collectively wonder why we never got these two working a cool surfer gimmick as Barry 'n' Brad.

Barry Windham vs. Erich Sbraccia NWA New England 9/20/98

ER: Here's a fun glimpse at Barry Windham - same age as my present age - wrestling an indy show in between his WWF and WCW stints. Erich Sbraccia was a Good 90s Indy Wrestler, coming out with goons like Tony Rumble and Knuckles Nelson, all of them looking exactly like Late 90s East Coast Indy Wrestlers. And man I wish this match went longer. It's only 7 minutes which is a shame, as they clearly had material to work longer, and the crowd was hot and reacting to Barry like it was 1993. Sbraccia throws some armdrags to surprise Windham, then slams him (looks like Barry came in expecting an armdrag so Sbraccia had to muscle him into a slam, which looked impressive). And of course then Barry comes back with the same and it's great seeing Windham throwing fast armdrags. I said Sbraccia was good, and he did a lot of basic things I like out of my guys: There's a fast rope run exchange where he really swings low and for the fences on a missed lariat, and he takes a really great backdrop bump; later he eats a couple nice punches from Windham and takes a wonderful pratfall bump onto the apron, his boot getting hung up on the top rope. Windham was really hustling too, taking a fast bump to the gym floor and landing with a thud, and really whipping off the ropes with his diving lariat. The finish is all mumbo jumbo run in from Knuckles, and it was annoying in that way you can tell a match is going home a minute before they arrive home. This delivered as a 7 minute match, but it really could have been a great match with 14 minutes. Both guys seemed game, but this was just about the end of Indy Windham. Indham.

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Ishikawa & Fujiwara Team Up

16. Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Yuki Ishikawa vs. Minoru Tanaka/Hiroyoshi Kotsubo Holy War 2/8

PAS: Even in 2019 Fujiwara and Ishikawa are a true dream team. This is an exhibition rather then a super heated tag, but if it's an exhibition you want, Fujiwara and Ishikawa are going to exhibit some things. I really liked the standup exchanges with Tanaka and Ishikawa, Ishikawa uses head movement nicely to avoid some shots but eats a big high kick. Kotsubo (a BattlArts guy who also worked as Tsubo Genjin) and Fujiwara do a lot of matwork with Kotsubo using power, but falling into Fujiwara's little traps, I especially loved him using his foot to put on a leglock from the guard. A good start for the year of Ishikawa!

ER: I actually had no idea Kotsubo was also Tsubo Genjin. I remember seeing him on a 2005 Futen show and thinking he was an untrained former amateur wrestler. Whoops. But this is a fun 10 minute falling out, me watching Minoru Tanaka and Yuki Ishikawa go at it in 2019 like teenage me getting into shootstyle so many years ago. Tanaka is a guy I loved then, whose style didn't age with my tastes, but I sure liked him and Yuki going at it here. I loved him popping Yuki with a high kick, and Yuki's slip and fall sell in the ropes before Tanaka hits him with a great hard dropkick to the chest. Kotsubo matches up nicely with Fujiwara, and it's fair since he and Tanaka were the young lions of this match (at a combined age of 97), and some of the best parts of this were Fujiwara and Kotsubo rolling on the mat with Fujiwara trying to catch a limb. Kotsubo even smacked the hell out of Ishikawa with a couple of brutal palm strikes down the stretch; you can really see Yuki's head whip back hard on one of them, a great combo. The finish was so cool it actually made me exclaim aloud, watching alone, a total classic Fujiwara moment: Kotsubo goes for a single leg takedown and Fujiwara throws his weight forward, hooking Kotsubo's outstretched arm with his own leg and stretching it for the submission. I didn't realize what Fujiwara was pulling until Fujiwara was already pulling it, and it felt like I realized Kotsubo was sunk the same moment Kotsubo realized it.


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My Favorite Wrestling: WCW Worldwide 10/1/95

Disco Inferno vs. Barry Houston

ER: Did you know that Disco once got a Goldberg-type security entrance? I sure didn't, but it happened here. His music played for awhile, and he wasn't coming out, and we cut to the back to see Doug Dillinger knocking on his dressing room door. The door opens and Disco is combing his hair in the mirror like Tony Manero, and then he breaks out a hilarious "Ayyyyyyyyy, I'm not done combin' muh hair ova heeya", and then he does some dancing in the mirror, and then we get the long walk of Disco from his dressing room to the ring, where he takes forever to fully undress (he is also wearing the Tony Manero white suit during this era) and the music has been playing for minutes on end and Rachel calls from downstairs "What are you watching up there?" and I yell back "I'm watching WCW and it's an extremely long Disco Inferno entrance obviously!" Barry Houston is always a guy you want to show up on TV, and this is no exception. The match honestly wasn't much, all Disco quickly running through some simple spots and winning with a swinging neckbreaker. But it really made me go on an outloud tangent about how Barry Houston should have got some kind of larger role somewhere. He was too talented to wind up where he wound up, as occasional WCW TV wrestler. He got a lot of WWF attention and I remember reading about him being in their Dory Funk dojo, he was a guy clearly on everybody's radar, who never broke through. Do we know why? Is Barry Houston the best non-Gambler surprise choice for SCI? I want answers!

Kurasawa vs. Scott Armstrong

ER: I love the idea that some WCW writer took a film class in college that showed Rashomon, and a few years later gave the newest evil foreign heel the name, presumably because he couldn't remember   the name Mifune. And my god I was in. to. this. Kurosawa was really cold here, and then explosive in the right moments. He oddly had a kind of Jake the Snake vibe, but replace more of the mind games with bullying. And Armstrong is a great guy to be a bully against, because he'll fight back believably and have nice babyface comeback punches. Kurosawa caught a crossbody that wasn't easy to catch, low around his knees, and then hoisted up Armstrong in one clean and jerk, really no help from Armstrong, just yoinked him up over his shoulder. Kurasawa hits a nasty shoulderbreaker, and it's a move he could have finished with. Instead he throws Armstrong into the ropes and catches him in a great Fujiwara armbar, and holds it for 7 seconds after the ref calls for the bell. There was something incredibly satisfying about seeing that shoulderbreaker set up --> Fujiwara finish.

Alex Wright vs. The Grappler

ER: I don't think I know who the Grappler is here. I think it might be Vern Henderson, but it could be someone younger. I don't remember Grappler as a regular, so it has to be someone pulling double duty. This is kind of messy, but they pulled out some things I didn't expect, and the crowd was amped for Alex Wright, which was fun to see. Also, Bobby Heenan kept making amusing jokes the entire match implying that 19 year old Alex Wright was wearing a hairpiece.

Bobby: "How do you think he keeps his rug on when he does those armdrags?"
Tony: "He's 19 years old! He's not wearing a piece!"

It was a genuinely funny bit they were doing. There are a couple cross ups in the match, at one point Wright just runs into Grappler and get tangled up as Grappler just falls over. But he whips off fast armdrags, gets incredible height on his nice hooking heel kick (crowd especially reacted to that), he  front suplexes Grappler onto the top rope in super impressive fashion, then plants him with a great superplex. It was cool that WCW gave Wright the shot that they did.

Goddamn there have been three commercials for Jade during this episode of Worldwide and I've NEVER SEEN IT and I now really want to make it a point to watch Jade. The 90s was filled with that steamy crime trash, and it's all bad and always makes me want to see more. And Jade was like the penultimate 90s trashy detective romance sleaze, and I know that I will be watching straight to video Jade ripoffs before I ever watch Bicycle Thieves or Tokyo Story.

Big Bubba vs. Johnny Drayton

ER: This goes about 40 seconds, and is the kind of beatdown that makes me proud that this guy was one of my childhood favorites. He was a big fat guy whose belly hung over his pants in the exact same way my dad's belly did, so Bossman to me looked like my dad as a big cool wrestler instead of as a smart, polite dentist. It makes me so happy that Bossman holds up. We've all liked a ton of things at various points in our life that do NOT hold up. I'm sure we've all enjoyed things within the past 5 YEARS that don't hold up today. So 38 year old me still enjoying a wrestler that 8 year old me enjoyed? That's a special thing. I am not familiar with Drayton, but he gets attacked pretty early by a grizzly and we don't recognize the body afterwards. Bubba throws some great uppercuts and a heavy lariat, hits that polo punch lariat you wanted to see, then absolutely STICKS Drayton with the Bubba Slam. You work a 40 second match, you work it like this.

Arn Anderson vs. Sting

ER: Arn is wearing a cool gray/black scheme that I don't remember seeing him in. Looks awesome. He comes out like the best version of "guy bringing cups to a cookout" meme, just raising his hands and apoplectic at the Worldwide crowd's boos. This feels like a really big match to have on Worldwide, and there's a ton of time left in the episode. Now, this doesn't wind up going 15 minutes. Pillman runs in and jumps Sting 5 minutes in, and then Flair comes out to run them off. But up to that point we get the greatness you'd expect, with Arn being someone you couldn't take your eyes off. He stooged and fell on his butt, traded Beat It punches with Stinger, dropped a great elbow onto the top of Sting's head, and the feeling out process alone would be something you'd be into. We even get the great spot where Arn goes for the DDT but takes a hard back bump as Sting holds onto the ropes. Sting hits one of his most joy filled leaping elbowdrops afterwards. He was like a kid jumping into his swimming pool at his already-deemed-kickass 10th birthday party.

We end the show with an absolute barnburner of a promo from Flair. Flair is up on the Worldwide stage with Sting and Okerlund (and they rarely did promos from the Worldwide stage this late, in fact I don't think I've ever seen it on Worldwide after this), begging Sting to be his friend. Sting doesn't trust Flair for a second and Flair is doing all of this incredible foot stomping and demanding Sting shake his hand, begging from his knees, jumping to his feet to have a fit that Sting won't shake his hand. Flair even tries to settle for a high five and Sting won't let him have it, and we fade out with Flair finishing one of his all time great moments in comedic timing. This was no hyperbole one of the best Flair promos I've seen, total megastar. He knew the right amount of seriousness, bombast, and comedy.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WCW B-SIDES

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WXW Ambition 3/9/19

This is the annual shootstyle show which WXW runs 16 Carat weekend. The quality of these show usually veers wildly, but it is always interesting to check out. This of course has an all time dream match Superfight, but I figured I would check the whole thing out

Rico Bushido vs. Veit Muller

PAS: Bushido has these really flamboyant kicks, they don't always land with the appropriate amount of thud, but they are flashy. His destiny should have been a guy carried by Masakatsu Funaki in a early PWFG show. Muller is another of the seemingly endless fash looking WXW guys. Their whole roster looks like they are about to burn down a mosque. Muller is able to get through the kicks and take him down with a nice judo throw, and hits some nasty body shots and stomps on the interior knee. There are a couple of other nice scrambles with Muller landing some nasty elbows and headbutts to the sternum, his offense was definitely less dynamic, but more painful looking. Bushido wins with a jumping enziguiri which didn't land full, but looked OK. Compact and fun.

Punch Drunk Istria vs. Danny Jones

PAS: This was pretty good too, mostly grappling, which was solid, with one really great taking of the back by Jones. We get one exchange of slaps which rang out, with Istria landing one on the ear and transitioning into a cross armbreaker for the tap. Too short to really get a great idea of either guy, but certainly solid.

Laurance Roman vs. Shigehiro Irie

PAS: Another short but solid match with Roman trying to wrestle with Irie and getting tossed around the ring. Irie does nice job of using his power here, and eventually smothers Roman with a choke. Really hard to get any idea of Roman who basically gets overwhelmed.

A-Kid vs. Chris Ridgeway

PAS: This was the longest and fanciest of the first round matches. Most of the Ambition matches feel like guys just sort of sparring until a finish, this was a match with spots. There were some cool ones, Ridgeway hits a high kick which A-Kid does a great crosseyed sell of. Ridgeway was really throwing heat.  Kid does a cool Minoru Tanaka armbar take down into a crossface, and Ridgeway hits some big chest kicks into a Fujiwara. The shortness of Ambition matches kept this from bloating and it was pretty good stuff. Wouldn't mind seeing more of both guys.

Punch Drunk Istria vs. Rico Bushido

PAS: I really liked this, much more mat work from Bushido then in his first match, and he looked perfectly content. He would do a bunch of really athletic pass attempts to try to get mount, while Istria would grab limbs and twist. He spent most of the match twisting the arm and working for a chicken wing. Finish was great with Bushido countering the hammerlock with an exploder and then hits a thrust kick to the stomach for a body shot KO.

ER: This was a fun bit of twisting, agree with Phil that the passes in this - which made up the bulk of the big moments - were fun and aggressive and it was neat seeing the risks taken. Bushido would roll in like an impatient Sakuraba, one time doing a shoulder roll and trying to come up with an arm, another time sliding in on his back which allowed Istria to shift his hips and affect Bushido's landing. We get several fun scramble moments, I really liked at the beginning of the match where Bushido accidentally fell hard out of the ring; I never know if things like that are planned or if that was a built in way to make him more aggressive, but either way I liked it. Istria kept looking like he would lock in something nasty about Bushido's arm or wrist, and I loved the surprise exploder with just a simple front kick to the stomach being the finish. Taking a big foot to the lower abdomen would surely put me down, and I thought it worked great as the finish here.

Shigehiro Irie vs. Chris Ridgeway

PAS: This was worked like a poor man's Vader vs. a poor man's Takada which is a fun match structure. Irie is eating his opponents up a bit in this tourney, so we didn't get to see as much of Ridgeway in this match as his first round. I really liked Irie's clubbing forearms, and the forearms to the back of the head are a hell of a finish. 

Yuki Ishikawa vs. Timothy Thatcher

PAS: An Ishikawa master class, the kind of all time performance we can expect from one of the true greats. Thatcher tries to hang on the mat but gets out thought over and over, and eventually just starts throwing big shots, he has the size advantage and is going for the KO before Ishikawa can wrap him up with a submission. Or he would use big shots to set up simpler submissions hoping to stun Ishikawa enough so that Ishikawa couldn't trade with him, but found opportunities to sneak in a body shot or a nasty chop to the shoulder blade. At one point he ties up Thatcher's limbs and cracks him with a headbutt. The finishing run was totally awesome, Thatcher slips out of a guillotine, gets mount and starts raining down big forearms, Ishikawa evades, grabs the leg and transitions from leglock to Fujiwara to leglock, to STF for the tap, everytime Thatcher would try to counter, Ishikawa would shift to a different attack, some of the coolest counter grappling I have ever seen, what a legend. Great, great match which is going to be in contention for a top of a MOTY list all year.

ER: Magnificent match. As I was watching it I was thinking this might be the best shootstyle match this decade, and by the time the match was over I knew it was among the best shootstyle matches all time. This really stands proudly next to the best fake fighting has to offer, a fully exhilarating use of 15 minutes. This may be the most actual offense we've ever gotten from a Yuki Ishikawa match, which is a weird thing to be happening now that he's in his 50s. I always viewed him as more of a Fujiwara-like defensive wrestler, and here even when he's taking shots from Thatcher it feels like he's setting something up. And both guys to lay in some savage shots, with Ishikawa dishing out hard downward strikes to Thatcher's trap and collarbone (while tying up his head and arm) and we get a huge KO punch moment that was timed perfectly. Thatcher threw some chilling strikes, a gorgeous combo when Ishikawa pulls guard and Thatcher punches stomach while immediately following up with an elbow to the jaw, and several punches right to Ishikawa's neck. Strikes seemed like the only way Thatcher had any kind of advantage. His slaps landed harder, he threw more elbows, but almost all of them seemed out of desperation because Ishikawa was sending him regularly scrabbling for the ropes.

Ishikawa is so masterful here, turning any pass into a dangerous submission attempt, and turning every submission attempt into two other submission attempts, some at the same time! There were several moments where Thatcher looked about to tap, and I wasn't sure what specific hold at that moment was going to be the breaking point. Ishikawa looked filled with glee as he would trap Thatcher's leg, work an STF, pull an arm aside and start bending that while never letting up on his original hold. We get great moments of Thatcher desperately reaching for ropes only to have Ishikawa grab his reaching arm and start punishing it. This honestly felt like the most master class of all Ishikawa matches, improbably arriving in his 52nd year. I loved the aggression from both, with every strike thrown with the intention of opening up an opponent for a more dangerous follow up, and every sub getting worked as a possible finish. There are several years where this would have been the #1 match, and this is now two years in a row where we've been presented with a very difficult to beat MOTY contender very early in the year. If any matches start approaching this one for the #1 spot, we'll be viewing some class.

Shigehiro Irie vs. Rico Bushido

PAS: That last match is a nearly impossible act to follow. I appreciate how they tried to work a much more theatrical and flamboyant match, and while it didn't fully work for me, I think it was a smart choice. Bushido really leans into the Bruce Leroyness of his attack, lots of lightning strikes and wild kicks. Irie probably oversold some of the goofier shots which took me out of it. I did really like the finish, with Bushido leaping into a crazy choke, only to see Irie backpack bomb him on the turnbuckles. Bushido does this really fun concussion sell and falls right into the Kata Haji Me for the tap. Fun if not a little silly, and a fine finish to a nifty card.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Blue Demon Jr. vs. La Parka vs. Dr. Wagner Jr.

12. Blue Demon Jr. vs. La Parka vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. AAA 3/3

ER: This might be the oldest triple threat match that I've ever seen, every one of these dudes is in their 50s. Blue Demon is the baby of the match at just 52, and it's fascinating to me that Blue Demon only became a remotely interesting wrestler at the age of 50. He hit 50 and suddenly decided to start bleeding and bumping and it's one of the more bizarre career transformations we've seen. A lot of this is Parka and Wagner beating Demon around the building, ripping at his mask, busting him open big time, throwing sturdy as hell chairs off his face, throwing him into those same chairs, really killing him. Demon is somehow now a guy who takes a really great beating, again totally bizarre, but undeniable. He really draws some great tecnico sympathy here, and by the time he makes his big comeback I'm sitting here actually rooting for freaking Blue Demon Jr.! His tope into Wagner is truly a fantastic old guy tope. Now, this is AAA, so we need about a dozen more guys to run in for shenanigans. But when one of those guys is Rey Escorpion, you know the run in will feature enough potatoes to feed a Thanksgiving soup kitchen. Escorpion and Texano target La Parka (as well as any masked fliers dumb enough to try to stop them), with Texano throwing nasty bullrope shots and Escorpion punching him and beating him with chairs. Demon and Wagner brawl through the crowd and Wagner taps his own massive gusher. It's so wild to see these old dudes spurting blood and crashing into chairs, falling over the barricade onto concrete floor, while a half dozen guys get dispatched by two stiff maniacs who aren't even in the match. The whole thing is chaos and plays out like the best of 1995 ECW, but if everybody was as old as Terry Funk when he was in ECW.

PAS: This was a quality bit of lucha mayhem and is about as entertaining a match you can get with basically one good wrestler, although old man Blue Demon is really weirdly turning into a great brawler. It's like when Flair went to ECW and started taking all of these crazy garbage bumps, if Flair was a 30 year veteran who sucked, like instead of Flair it was Jeff Gaylord who turned himself into a cool garbage guy. This match made me excited to see Demon vs. Wagner mascara contra cabellera which isn't something I thought I would say. I dug Escorpion and Texano wrecking half the roster, while Wagner and Demon traded good looking punches and leaked all over each other. It is a good example of what a bloody half ripped mask can add to a match. Overbooked goofiness which shouldn't work but weirdly did.


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