New Footage Friday: ALL EDDIE!! ALL THE TIME!!

Eddy Guerrero vs. Jushin Liger NJPW 12/9/92

MD: I'm not a huge proponent of one or two spots/elements making a match must-see. That said, this match has those one or two elements. First, there's Liger's leg selling. It's such a great balance of him allowing Eddy to stay in control and peppering in comebacks. It colors his decisions whether to dive or not to dive. It forces a post-offense hesitation that lets Eddy take back over. Even when Liger's hitting stuff cleanly, it doesn't feel dropped, just pushed past and there's always a cost, down to when he's leaving the ring after the (stolen) win. When Liger finally hits the dive late-match it feels like a huge deal, but it's also not something he can capitalize on.

The second big thing is the Eddy crowd dive. It was amazing and everyone should see it. There's nothing else to say about that really.

They had a match earlier in the year and it was far less of a complete Eddy performance and much more of a novelty minor Liger match. This is something people should go out of their way for.

PAS: I thought this was really fun, it reminded me of the Eddie vs. Ultimo Dragon WCW house show match I saw back in 97. Built slowly but really solidly with some early mat work, including some nasty leg work by Eddie, where he just cranked every hold. It built to some bigger spots, including a great Tapita by Liger and a huge springboard plancha into the crowd by Eddie which was a monster highspot in 1992. I loved the finish, Eddie just spikes Liger with one of the better superplexes I can remember seeing, it almost felt like a superplex version of the Dynamite Kid snap suplex, and the when he goes for a top rope back suplex Liger twists, lands on top, and gets the flash victory. Eddie comes out looking like a killer, and Liger is protected, great bit of business.

ER: These two hand at least a dozen singles matches together, with only one happening before this one, and that is very exciting. It has the 90s NJ juniors match structure, with matwork dominating the first half and leading to a big rope running exchange leading to some unexpectedly larger things. I say unexpectedly only because this was a house show, and they broke out some pretty big stuff for a house show, no doubt a long running habit of both men. The mat stuff was fun and engaging, both going after legs but Eddy getting the advantage and I thought they had some cool stuff. We all kind of know at this point that NJ junior matwork is more about filling time and establishing control, and they did a good job at that. I liked Eddy rolling Liger into tough pins, crucifixes and grapevined leg pins, forcing Liger's shoulder down (and then calling that back later in the match when he tried it again on a weaker opponent), wrenching Liger's knee (with Liger taking time to stretch it and pay it some lip service when Eddy was on the floor), and we finally opened things up nicely with two killer Liger armdrags, rolling off Eddy's back with a gorgeous Tim Horner style armdrag and whipping Eddy over with a Japanese armdrag, then just blasting him with a hard southpaw lariat. Great sequence. Eddy is one of the greatest armdrag takers of all time, a guy who whips over so fast and compact (and later shows off his  amazing variation where he slides out of the ring under the bottom rope and slams into the guardrail off a similar move, a bump he takes arguably the best of anyone ever). 

They drop some really big things here, suplexes, big exchanges, and the excitement really builds as it feels like the match perfectly ramps up. Nothing really feels out of place, each thing feels bigger than the last, each attack feels like it's advancing everything. We get a dive apiece from each guy, and they are both absolute doozies: Liger hits a crossbody off the top to the floor with Eddy literally standing 80% across the ring. I was looking at how far away Eddy was standing as Liger was climbing to the top, and assumed Liger was just going up there to taunt him, as there was NO way he was going to be able to ever touch Eddy...and I was wrong. That man FLEW. Eddy's dive was spectacular, hitting a springboard off the top and into the crowd, totally nuts to be doing on a show that nobody (except one secret man) was taping. The finish is satisfying, with Eddy setting up a beastly back suplex from the top only to see Liger shift his weight and land hard on Eddy on the way down. This was two absolute legends doing nothing but adding to their legacy. We live in blessed wrestling times. (Also I'm convinced that Phil brings up seeing that Eddie/Ultimo house show match more often than Al Bundy brought up his 4 touchdown game, so I'll just say that this reminded me of when I saw Eddie vs. Rey at a house show in 2005)

Black Tiger/Dean Malenko vs. El Samurai/Shinjiro Otani NJPW 9/24/93

MD: I'm pretty sure this one hasn't been out there. Even if it was, it's well worth watching, even in a sea of classic NJ Juniors matches. I love how mean and focused Eddy and Dean are here. Eddy is pretty much fully developed as mid 90s heel Eddy (which isn't as developed as 97 heel Eddy or 2000s heel Eddy but is still a great thing). Dean's not quite grown out of being a human being yet. There's a charm to the iceman thing, but this unfinished middle ground makes for better, more engaging matches. He actually acknowledged that there's a crowd out there a few times. I really liked the ebb and flow of this. There were constant stomps to break up pins and submissions instead of kickouts. Whenever Samurai and Otani started to fight back, they got double teamed or cut off. Anytime Eddy and Dean focus in on a limb, it's really dynamic and beautiful, just a constant machine gun assault to keep control of the match. It ends up just building and building until the chaos of the blind tag finish.

Sometimes I overcomplicate things, but there are a few easy crutches that can make wrestling narratives immediately better. Otani absolutely gets the value of paralleled spots. The crowd pops big every time he does immediately what he just got hit with, whether it be the heel twist on the face or following up a missed Dean falling headbutt with one of his own.

PAS: This was a great performance by Eddie and Dean, they look like they could have been a classic heel team if they had a longer run together. Just a master class of working heat on Otani, great cut offs, cool double teams and some real great timed comebacks. Loved Eddie jumping Samurai on the apron to keep Otani from making the tag. Malenko had some really smooth takedowns and roll ups and Eddie was really lining up some cool cheapshots. Unfortunately we get some real HH issues and we miss some big spots near the end, although what we saw had some nice near falls, and a great looking spinning DDT by Eddie.

ER: I thought this was mostly awesome, with only an obnoxious juniors tag habit and some unfortunate handheld issues holding it back a bit. Eddy and Dean were absolute damn machines. Otani and Samurai may as well have been up against Stan Hansen and Vader. Dean and Eddy just eat them for lunch, spending much of the match cutting off the ring and absolutely eating Otani for lunch. Seriously it felt like Samurai was in this match a total of maybe 2 minutes. Dean looked fantastic here, breaking out some cool things that he abandoned not long after (that headscissors out of a knucklelock looked like something Hijo del Santo would break out, and Dean hit it just as gracefully as Santito would have). Eddy and Dean both throw several suplexes on Otani, Dean hitting an early and mean jackhammer, Eddy interrupting and Otani spinkick to rudely drop him with a German, and there are tons of rude things throughout by these two, really in everything they do. 

Eddy scrapes his boots across Otani's face, Dean drops him with a gnarly backbreaker that sends Otani recoiling onto his head. Otani would get flashes and comebacks, all delivered explosively. His pescado to the floor was incredible, landing was major impact and smashing Eddy into the guardrail, and the late match moment where he finally hits the spinkick and the scrapes his boot across Eddy's face was an awesome moment. My gripe is that when Otani finally makes the triumphant tag to Samurai, Samurai is in the match barely 1 minute before tagging back out, and Otani had been eating a beating for literally the entire match. Otani had been desperate to tag out for 10 minutes, getting blocked at every turn by Dean and Eddy, then Samurai misses one headbutt and Otani is totally fine to get back in. I hate that. Sadly the end stretch sees a real jerk of a fan stand up directly in front of our heroic cameraman *just* as Otani is about to hit a surely spectacular springboard attack. Doesn't this asshole know a bunch of white people were going to be writing about this match 25 years later? What a POS. I hate those fans who have no forward thinking whatsoever. What about the bloggers, dickhead?

This whole thing ruled, stupid miracle Otani comeback aside. These guys are 4 all time faves of mine, and this was an all time performance from Dean and Eddy. Would have liked to see more Samurai, but thought he had nice moments saving his boy from certain doom. You like these 4 guys - I mean obviously you do - and you will no doubt love all of this.

Eddy Guerrero/Fuerza Guerrera/Jerry Estrada vs. Blue Panther/El Mexicano/Mascara Sagrada AAA 11/13/93

ER: This one really starts as a fairly genial house show style trios, before pivoting suddenly to some wild floor brawling and then turning into a messy (in a good way) assault on the tecnicos. There is no matwork, but we get a lot of time and they clearly knew what the fans wanted to see. I never realized there was so much lucha tecnico offense that revolved around grabbing a rudo's head and just kind of throwing it to the ground, but a ton of the tecnicos' early offense is just that! Estrada is a great stooge, and while he doesn't break out much of his trademark crippling bump style, he knows how to do a goofy duck walk after getting hit, or mugging to the crowd to give his opponent an opening, and any time he gets yanked to the mat by his hair it looks spectacular (as he is the most tasseled wrestler in history). Eddy is part stooge/part lightning fast superworker, taking a fantastic delayed sell faceplant one moment, and then moments later breaking out one of the greatest looking fallaway slams you've seen (the kind where he turns it into an almost physics breaking bridging throw) and working faster than anyone in the match. Fuerza is the smallest man in the match, but he also reads as the total don, the guy who can stroll in and immediately shut down a tecnico, doing not much more throughout the match other than throw great punches and use his mere presence to intimidate. Mascara breaks out his fun "ear boxing" headscissors, Panther breaks out a couple quick headscissors of his own, the whole thing is a very fun house show lucha trios.

And then Panther reveals himself to be a rudo agent, Eddy runs Mexicano the length of the ring and launches him into the crowd (and what a great looking bump into the blackness from Mexicano), and this whole thing becomes Mexicano and Sagrada outnumbered and fighting for their life. Panther spends the rest of the match on the apron selling a phantom leg or ball pain, always about to tag in and help but just never being able to do so, due to his pain. Panther is hilarious in the ways he blocks Mascara and Mexicano from doing anything, my favorite moments include Panther casually grabbing Sagrada's leg when Sagrada is on the top rope, or Sagrada landing a punch and then Panther grabbing his arm to hold Sagrado prone for some shots, all while Panther is mildly scolding him and then appearing to tell Tirantes "he was using a closed fist, you don't want to win by cheating with a closed fist!" Panther is a wonderfully aloof rudo, and it makes the fans even more rabid for any peppered in comebacks the two remaining tecnicos get. Mexicano has several moments where he shines during this two man advantage, really firing up people and throwing nice punch combos, even getting his guardrail revenge back on Eddy. It's all obviously too much for them to handle, but this played out much more interestingly than most other snake in the grass lucha matches I've seen, and it unexpectedly made me want to see Mexicano singles against all the rudos.

MD: This was just constant good stuff. The level of talent here was incredible and while it played out fairly traditionally (exchanges with escalation for a tecnico win, rudos swarm to take the segunda, goozling until the comeback until the weirdness at the end) everything was so fun and full of personality and skill that you can't help but love it if you love lucha.

The initial pairings were great and crowd seemed to just ignite the second Fuerza got in there. And they never really slowed down after that. It was just a constant buzz. Eddy, by this point, was so good at looping in little flourishes like pointing to his head after dodging one move so he could walk right into another (and subsequently flopping). Everything he did seemed to have an interesting little twist. The rudo side here was wildly expressive. You've surely seen Fuerza do the handshake/hug/cheapshot deal a thousand times and it's still as good as the first time you ever saw it. Between the dancing and playing to the crowd, bumping over the rail and coming back with a chair, Mexicano could match. Sagrada kept the quebradas coming at least. It almost felt like the tecnicos were basing for the rudos antics, if that makes any sense.

Panther was in the midst of a turn and that was probably more of a distraction than a plus in how it played into the finish, though the post-match was fun. There were a few spots that didn't quite work out and the tercera meandered a bit maybe in part due to a fight in the crowd, but everything generally flowed well despite all that and you just couldn't argue with the level of talent and charisma that was in the ring.

PAS: Eddie/Estrada and Fuerza are such a dope rudos trio, and I like all the technicos too. Before it succumbed to heel red stuff and turns, there was some really sweet exchanges. Mexicano looked great, not a guy I had searched out before, but man this makes you want to see what hidden Halcon 78 is floating around. Eddie has such explosive execution which makes him stand out even amongst a group as talented as this. Match was there to get heat on the rudos with the crowd and cement the Panther turn, and it does all that business effectively. I would have rather just seen a clean trios, but they certainly riled up the crowd and solidly executed all of the angle stuff.