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.