On Brand Segunda Caida: Non-WCW Barry Houston

Barry Houston vs. Primetime Daryl D 1998?

ER: So this was great. It appears to take place in some kind of food court, goes about 6 minutes, and has some great bumps (one of them accidental!) from both guys. Daryl D is most famous for being the corrections officer who got MVP into wrestling during his incarceration. He also has "I Wanna Sex You Up" on his tights. That's a choice in 1998, and confusingly, Barry Houston has "I Adore Mi Amor" on his. But this match is all about the bumps, and it rules for that. Houston starts us off with a sky high backdrop bump and a big spill to the shopping mall floor, but Primetime ends up accidentally outdoing him. There's supposed to be a missed corner splash, and Primetime misses...but the top rope breaks and sends him tumbling ass to elbow hard to the floor. My god that could have been bad. Houston kills time by bringing him back in and hitting a great delayed vertical suplex, and with no ropes they decide to spill to the floor (Primetime looks to take another hard - intentional - bump to the floor, but the camera mostly misses it). We build to some really fun floor brawling, and you don't get to see a ton of food court bumps, so this is special. Houston sets up some kind of moveable condiments station or trash kiosk (like a presentable square island that can comfortably house two trash cans, so people don't have to see trash cans), goes to whip Primetime into it, but gets reversed and goes flying into it the way Raven would fly into guardrails. Houston rules. There's also a big bronze statue of a rhinoceros in this food court for some reason, and Primetime gets tossed right into the horn. Houston had a bunch of nice punches, both guys get counted out, great punches continue, I leave after getting exactly what I wanted and more.

Barry Houston vs. Scott Taylor WWA 8/20/98

ER: Man these WWF Dojo shows looked cool. How often did these run? I remember reading about the WWF Dojo guys in WWF Magazine, but some shows in Salem were not going to be seen by mine teenage eyes. Only the fans in Massachusetts were getting to see those Glen Kulka and Shawn Stasiak matches. I would have to wait. And I'm not sure I ever would have made the connection had I not actually seen them working a match, but Scott Taylor and Barry Houston were very similar wrestlers. Both were great at making opponents look good, had an excellent command of basics, and had cool offense when allowed to show it. Those things are all pretty vague descriptors, but they really did wrestle similarly, with the difference being that one of them was a year away from being a huge star and the other was a year away from not wrestling anymore. Both throw nice punches, both throw nice lariats, both take hard suplex bumps, they are the pointing Spider-mans. Taylor really was great. I'm not much of a Scotty II Hotty fan (though obviously all hats off to him for making millions) but 97/98 Taylor had really matured into a great wrestler. Here he eats a big lariat and bumps to the floor, and shows off a couple of really great suplexes. Early on he hits a nice pumphandle, throwing Houston right over his head, but the gem of the match is him catching a hard Houston lariat and turning it into a trap arm belly to belly. Honestly it looked far more like something you'd see from Tamon Honda than Scott Taylor, but nobody thought Tamon Honda was cool during this era either so obviously we were all just idiots. Now we are idiots with better opinions.