New Footage Friday: Finlay, Steve Wright, Piper, Rude, Savage, Duggan

Roddy Piper vs. Rick Rude WWF 11/1/89

ER: This is the kind of house show bullshit that would leave me driving home from a wrestling show in ecstasy. It has a long Rude headlock in the middle that maybe could have been shorter, but it built to such a hot comeback and finishing run that it felt appropriate. This had it all: Classic bullshit, perfect house show schtick, a couple unique moments I don't remember seeing before, exciting babyface sequences, big heel stooging, big heel bump, just a total checklist of "satisfying damn match". We get the kind of Rude sells we want, going to the atomic drop early, Piper following behind Rude mocking his butt out tippy toes perfect sell, looking like Bald Bull when you catch him during his Bull Charge. Rude goes down with quick bumps off lariats and punches, sells his balls after a gnarly inverted atomic drop, and works some awesome timing sequences with Piper. Piper is fiery as hell, attacking Rude at the bell with a kilted matador routine, throwing clothing in Rude's face and punching him through it. They worked this sequence that I don't ever recall seeing Piper do, where he practically works a karate sequence with Rude, Rude blocking a series of punches and slapping down Piper's arms almost Three Stooges style, with Piper spinning around and hitting Rude with a freaking spinning backfist to the neck! Holy cow. Rude has some great worked right hands, and they also do some actual clever ref involvement where Piper is dragging Rude while Rude clutches Hebner's leg for dear life and they're both dragged around. Very impressive seamless ref bump timing when Hebner gets backed into a corner and squished as well. The finish was a dumb confusing house show finish but we got a big Rude bump to the floor out of it, and the kind of match that I would love to see live in any year of my wrestling fandom.

MD: These two had been going at it for two months around the loop and you could absolutely tell. I absolutely loved how outlandish this was. It felt like Piper spent half the match just following Rude around as he walked funny mocking the swivel. These two against other opponents always brought a sense of heightened reality, but against one another, everything was blurry and askew as each seemed to try to top the other. Ultimately, Rude was a great stooge, but Piper was a human firework and you couldn't look away as he abused physics and violence to keep the world entertained.

PAS: I saw a live cage match between these two around this time, which was my all time favorite live match right up until seeing one of the early Flair vs. Hogan matches a couple of years later. This had such satisfying layers of BS in it. Rude taking an atomic drop is one of the great signature sells in wrestling history and that gets a couple of fun variations. Piper is great on offense too, his babyface fired up routine had him unloading like a 25 punch combination and even a backfist. Finish was some grade A house show BS which I appreciated. Piper grabbing the concussed ref's hand to count out Rude was a blast even with the overturning of the decision.


Randy Savage vs. Jim Duggan WWF 11/1/89

ER: This was a fine Coliseum Video level match, one that probably could have accomplished what it did in a shorter match, but you cannot argue with that fan reaction through the very end of this. Sherri put in overtime making those fans cheer Duggan, and damn did they. Savage wasn't over the top with bumps, taken less snap bumps to the mat, but peaking with a bump I've never seen him do before where he bounced off the middle rope when Duggan moved, hitting the back of his head on the fall. It was like an 80s heel stooge version of the Psicosis bump. During the match Savage is more tricking the easily distracted Duggan to fall for another axe handle to the back of the head, and it keeps working. Sherri comes up with a half dozen different attacks from the floor, picking her shots but picking them frequently. Dressed the entire time as Magica de Spell, she yanks Duggan's leg, claws his back, nails him with her purse, even runs him into the damn ringpost! By the time Duggan is finally chasing after Sherri and Sherri goes scrambling into the ring and crawls across it, the fans are absolutely losing their minds as she gets her comeuppance. Duggan takes his fun oafish bumps (especially like how he takes Savage's top rope neck snap), Savage saves his biggest bump for Duggan's post match rampage, and the crowd reaction for a Duggan nearfall kickout is all you need to hear to know people were invested in this one. The shot of a bunch of people standing up and yelling at pointing at Sherri when Duggan kicks out is a great pro wrestling moment.

MD: In some ways, this is a perfect match. Look, in some ways, it's obviously not. Half of Duggan's clotheslines are ridiculously bad. This is exacerbated by him getting multiple phantom pins off of them. His offense is so limited that he has to hit the huge atomic drop twice to different effects at different moments? There's nothing special about his selling? The ref is way too blind when it comes to Sherri, especially on the finish? They have the exact same ref bump that the Rude vs Piper match had on the same show and that was a DQ? I'm sort of straining here.

This is pretty much the ultimate 1989 WWF style dark match. It has Duggan hot to start, foiling Savage being underhanded but wild. Eventually, Sherri is used to perfection first to turn the tide and then to lay on the heat. It's never on her either since it's always Savage directing traffic. When the comeback comes, Sherri is front and center and it feels like a backfire, even though it's not really. Duggan still earns the comeback with a couple more twist. That leads to the ref bump, the phantom pins, and the last twist on the crowd with the handbag. This is a sort of match that can't exist in 2019. It's simple and straightforward and entirely committed. Yes, there were execution issues, but the broad strokes were so primal and the characters so larger than life that it's hard to care all that much. This is a thing that wrestling can be and those kids in the first rows on the near side of the camera that kept raising their thumb up and going hooooo definitely didn't want it to be anything else.


Fit Finlay vs. Steve Wright 1991

ER: I can’t actually fathom a world where I wouldn’t be seriously into 12 minutes of these two doing their thing. Both of these guys are excellent minimalist wrestlers, guys who could work a great match around a very specific set of parameters. There needed to be a kind of Dogme 95 among accomplished European wrestlers where they gave themselves different challenges, different ways to specifically shape a wrestling match. It felt like we were going that way with mid 2000s Indy wrestling but they eventually just decided to make the shittiest 90s All Japan style ever. But I was there live for the Bryan Danielson/Claudio headlock match, and I remember thinking live that we were about to enter a bad fucking ass period of guys working matches around super specific injuries and weird shit like 93 minute matches that I’ll never watch. I even remember there was a 60 minute draw Masa Chono match during that early 2000s period where I was devouring as much VHS Japanese wrestling as I can squeeze into a day. Wrestling was weird as fuck and everybody was discovering World of Sport and people were trying out stupid shit in a modern setting. Finlay and Wright were good enough to pay too close attention to details, and it made them so eminently watchable. This is two experts running into each other, stomping hands, throwing clubbing shots to the back of the neck, and making each individual moment mean something. Both took a big bump to the floor (Finlay flies into a ringpost so fast, one of the more violent looking missed charges I can think of), and there is a moment on the apron where Wright is throwing elbow shots at Finlay, and not only were these great looking elbows but Finlay sells the shots as well as it is humanly possible to sell an elbow. The way Finlay goes down, increasingly harder, for these elbows...honestly they didn't need to do anything else and the match would still be something I love.

MD: This one's a bit of a cheat. It's been out there, but this channel is amazing and this is an easy in. Early 90s Finlay is a treat because he's a middle ground between the valet-wielding, heatseeking, stooging and stalling WOS foil and the bruiser, brawler monster we'd eventually get. You get a bit of each world and it makes for a great package. He'd hit amazing knees or uppercuts or just bruise his opponent in a corner, but would also get on one knee to beg off a ref. It also meant that he could sell big for Wright the whole match, which meant his successful possum play late in the match completely believable. Wright was a twenty year vet at this point and maybe shouldn't have been trying missile dropkicks, though he gets points for the effort. What he's best at here is portraying a real babyface fury, getting carded multiple times but staying wholly sympathetic and having the crowd playing along. I have to admit I was a step behind on some of the rules with all the cards and some of the stoppages, but it did se up a very cool finish that felt a little like a sudden death overtime. That doesn't feel like an easy thing to emulate in wrestling; I haven't seen it often, so it was cool to see here.

PAS: German Finlay is really close to peak Finlay, and this feels like an awesome WCW discovery. Wright is a bit past his prime, but knows how to fire up a crowd and make the most of the athletic abilities he still had. Finlay is a great frustrated wrestler, he really sells aggravation great, and you know he is going to take out that aggravation on his opponent. He is just so great at the little things and I am glad we added another brushstroke on his career.