New Footage Friday: HASH! STATE PATROL! BLUE PANTHER! RAY GONZALEZ! JUNJI HIRATA!

Blue Panther/Blackman/Valente Fernandez vs. Lobo Rubio/Ricky Boy/El Indomito UWA 90

MD: This was a nice surprise. It had a buzzing crowd, a pretty perfect crowd-pleasing primera with a lot of fun match-ups where everything had zing, a little bit of heat, and then a comeback with a memorable finish you won't forget anytime soon. Valente is not a guy I'm super familiar with but past his tendency to meander in the wrong place at the wrong time, I thought he had great fire. He threw himself into everything he did. Panther managed to fit a lot into a short period of time, primarily some tricked out holds and this great front facelock drop that he should have been using up and down a few years later when he was a beloved hero against Art Barr. He also threw an axe kick of sorts which was pretty nasty whatever he was going for. The exoticos were good foils in there but didn't necessarily stand out. The finish was wild with Valente getting lawn darted out of the ring, his head disappearing behind a desk at the edge of the crowd.

PAS: Total standout Fernandez performance. He is a guy with a really great kip-up, and he found a bunch of ways to mix in his kip-up, plus he takes a fucking insane bump at the finish getting hurled over the top rope and smashing the back of his head on the concrete. Honestly a top ten lucha bump to the floor, which is a tough list to crack. This is mostly fast moving Panther, which isn't as cool as hard mat wrestling Panther, but still pretty cool. Matt mentioned his combo DDT/Facebuster move, which was cool, something he did a lot in this match, and something I have never seen him do before or since. Really strange, you don't normally see someone break out a signature spot for just one six man tag match in 1990. The rudos were solidly in place to eat the technicos spots which is what they should be there to do. Nifty match with an absolute all time highlight.

State Patrol vs. Ray Gonzalez/Ricky Santana WWC 8/24/91

MD: We've gotten so much Puerto Rico in the last month that it's almost overwhelming. Reviewing the State Patrol in strange places is our oeuvre though. This was really just a glimpse of a TV match but it was good for what it was and it's too bad we don't have more of them there. Puerto Rico could make giants out of the meek. Look at how great the Rock'n'Roll RPMs were there. This was well balanced, with an opening that didn't outlast its welcome, a good hot tag even if I don't know what Parker was going for and a finishing stretch with a good cutoff and a very satisfying ending. Next time I see a State Patrol match I want to pay more attention to Wright on the apron because he was really good here.

PAS: This was fine. It didn't really have the insanity you want from a Puerto Rican match, it was basically the third or fourth best match on an episode of WCW Worldwide. Decent hot tag, solidish heat segment, fun finish. Utterly forgettable stuff, but kind of cool to see the State Patrol on tour.

ER: Puerto Rico is fairly unrepresented on match lists, and so it's always a favorite thing of mine to find out which workers from the States would occasionally show up there. I've watched the existing Rougeaus PR match at least a half dozen times, and probably watched the Jamie Dundee match at least four. The Puerto Rico that shows up is pretty patchy, as it's not like we're getting full runs from any of those guys (and I assume they didn't fly down there just to work one match). But we've been getting more and more PR uploads and it looks like we're slowly filling in some gaps. State Patrol were never presented as a strong tag team on US TV. They did a couple All Japan tours and were weirdly dominant on one of them, getting a bunch of TV matches and winning all of them. It would be like Well Dunn or Disorderly Conduct going on an AJ tour and beating everyone's asses (Well Dunn/Southern Rockers kind of did this, and it was weird). I think the State Patrol gimmick would work even better today, the kind of gimmick that would make them faces or heels depending on what town they were in. House show in Missouri? Babyfaces. House show in Oakland? Heels. There has been a rotating group of at least 2-4 guys working a Border Patrol gimmick in the Bay Area dating back 25+ years. But seeing State Patrol working anywhere but America always strikes me as funny. I'm not sure if Adam-12 played in syndication in Puerto Rico, but it's safe to say that Buddy Lee and James Earl would have been heels by virtue of their whiteness anyway.

The match itself is essentially like most State Patrol WCW matches. When I was younger I thought Buddy Lee was the better half of the team, but I've been moved firmly into the James Earl camp the past few years (seems that's been a lifelong trend with me, originally liking Edge in '98 before quickly moving over to Christian, Jeff before moving over to Matt, Enos before moving over to Bloom, basically I never should have trusted my initial childhood/teen instincts about any tag team, ever). This is all armdrags, dropkicks, and punches, and that's fine. Buddy Lee looked a little off in this, stutter stepping a couple of armdrags and going for a weird move off the top where he just landed on Ricky Santana's knees (Santana was lying and facing the turnbuckles, meaning Parker was jumping directly on him like a mirror, so I have no idea what move I was supposed to think he was even doing). But James Earl was a real stud here, stooging for Gonzalez and Santana, getting infuriated from the apron (watch him take a silly leaping bump to the infield after getting knocked . I loved the spot where Santana was knocking back and forth between them with punches and back elbows, loved teen superstar Ray Gonzalez's little mustache, and loved the "WCW putting over their new Latin tag team" vibe of this match. It's like they saw what State Patrol were doing in Georgia and were like "yeah that will work here!" I can't wait for a Disorderly Conduct match to pop up in this Puerto Rico footage. It will happen.


Shinya Hashimoto/Kensuke Sasaki/Tadao Yasuda/Yuji Nagata/Junji Hirata vs. Shiro Koshinaka/Kengo Kimura/Kuniaki Kobayashi/Michiyoshi Ohara/Akitoshi Saito NJPW 2/11/96

PAS: New Japan 10 man elimination tags have been some of the most consistently excellent match styles in wrestling. This was sort of a lower end version of that but had some really fun moments.  I think some of the steam was out of the Heisei Ishingun feud at this point, but that crew has some fun dudes on it. Anytime you get to see Hashimoto rip shit is going to be cool, and I really enjoyed him coming in a clubbing guys, only to get blindsided by Koshinaka's rock hard tailbone. This had some of the problems that are endemic in elimination matches, where guys get eliminated by weak sauce stuff to keep it moving, but for a longish match it kept me pretty engaged.

MD: Very fun house show ten man elimination that doesn't rise to the level of the classics, with Nagata especially getting a ton of time to shine. They built him up early by having him survive a spike piledriver and have to fight hard out of the corner and then went in on him really hard after Hashimoto and Sasaki were eliminated. After he survived eating a wayward Hirata diving headbutt that was supposed to be a save and the subsequent Kobayashi fisherman's suplex, the fans really got behind him (though he'd fall soon after). Lots of good spots and sequences including a top rope double stomp train in the corner and a pretty elaborate set up for Hashimoto getting eliminated. While Hash was suitably larger than life in this setting, and Koshinaka his usual jerk self with butt butts coming from every direction, the match survived the two of them getting eliminated. The balance was a little off in general as can be the case with big elimination matches (the weight of some moves mattering less or more than they should), but they hit the underlying story well enough with enough peaks that it's hard to care too much.

ER: This was great fun, with a structure that is pretty hard to mess up. It was a little sloppier and loose than these things tend to be, but I like that loose atmosphere in a setting that can be stuffy. These matches always wind up having some unexpected heroes, or big contributions from unexpected sources. I really liked Yasuda here. He's a big lummox with a Mr. Potato Head, but he got given some cool moments to shine. He looked mammoth compared to everyone else, hit his nice big boot, big avalanche, great butterfly suplex, basically got to do his big spots before getting out of there. The double stomp train was awesome, and structured perfectly. They saved the two big dudes for last, so as I'm watching it I'm saying outloud "Oh yeah Hashimoto is doing it!! Wait YASUDA is doing it!?" Junji Hirata looked like a total beast, and he's a guy who ALWAYS looks like a total beast and should be talked about more when we have "what guys are total beasts?" conversations. He throws a ton of great clotheslines here, no sold a nut shot from Ohara (who threw out a couple nut shots here) and it's pretty clear from watching him that this was the guy that Kensuke Sasaki became a few years later. When I looked at these 10 guys I was not expecting Koshinaka and Hashimoto to disappear so early, but I love when these matches let others shine. They gave the stage to Yuji and he's the whipping boy for the first half and then gets to come out on first on the second, throwing exploders and overhead suplexes, his kappo kick is perfect, just lighting up anyone who tests him. Saito was a disappointment, felt like half of his kicks missed, and missed at the worst time. The finish run of a 30 minute match is not the time to be pulling kicks, but Saito whiffed on three straight and the crowd got noticeably restless. Really took the air out of what should have been a fun finish. Still, this was a 30 minute match that did not feel at all like 30 minutes, and there was far too much good to let Saito's iffy kicks mess it up.