New Footage Friday: PSICOSIS!! FINLAY! HERO! CLAUDIO! ST. CLAIR!

Fit Finlay vs. Tony St. Clair CWA 11/22/94

PAS: Midcard Piratenkampf match which would have been better as a main event, still its 1996 Finlay. It is really fun to watch Finlay break out his signature spots and adding a chain to them. He lays St. Claire chest over the ring apron to slam it, but adds a chain wrapped around St. Claire's neck. He throws his amazing forearms and adds a chain to the thud. This also has a bunch of fun leverage spots with the chain, with both guys taking nice yanked bumps off the top rope. The finish is kind of a dud with a run in and interference finish which feels like a cop out. Just have someone grab the bag.

MD: We've seen our share of these matches by now and the very best of them are the ones that get mean and bloody with a big beatdown and a big comeback. In this regard, it's not that different from a bullrope match. Sometimes, you're going to get matches where the guys actually try to win instead of kill each other, and this one was more like the latter than the former. That said, if you're going to have the latter, this was a pretty good way to do it. Finlay and especially St. Clair kept going for the pole and the flag. That created an opening and the opening led to comeuppance. Finlay was the meaner of the two, choking and laying in nasty shots with chairs and on tables, but he ate some pretty brutal receipts on the floor late in the match. The one good thing about them going for the win repeatedly was that the finish was fairly exciting because of the frequent attempts.

ER: I thought this was great, acknowledging that it could have been a violent bloody war, but loving that instead we got a kind of exercise in Finlay minimalism. It felt like Finlay was trying to craft the most interesting match possible while spending most of the match acting like 75% of the ring didn't even exist. Finlay seems to create those kind of interesting problems or challenges in his matches, and for a match based 80% around climbing up one corner of the ring I don't know how much more interesting he could have made this. I like fluffy Garry Shandling hair babyface Tony St. Clair, and loved the big tumbles he would take as Finlay would yank him away from grabbing a...pouch? Grabbing a pouch of something that I assume is worth winning? Finlay is awesome at working tug of war moments, the kind where he plants his feet and really makes it look like he's pulling with all his might to desperately prevent St. Clair's climbing. It's weird seeing a chain match where the chain is around the wrist instead of attached to a dog collar, but I like how Finlay still wraps it around St. Clair's throat, and bumps to the floor with a chain attached to your wrist are still impressive as hell. All of the floor brawling looked really great, especially Finlay battering St. Clair with a molded plastic chair. Finlay even does an early version of hitting the ringpost when your opponent moves, hitting the post with the chain. St. Clair's fired up shots looked great, and really it was all betrayed by a needlessly stupid ending. You can't have a clean-ish finish in a "grab the bag off a pole" match? Just let one of the guys take the coin purse after the other gets yanked off the ropes. Silly finish, but the rest was great.


Ultimo Dragon vs. Psicosis AAA 6/2/96

PAS: This is a matchup we saw a bunch of on WCW syndie shows and twice on PPV, so it was cool to see them in a singles match in Mexico. I don't really think this worked though. There were individual cool moments: I loved Psicosis's baseball slide bump, and there was some very fast rollups and exchanges. However, I think the heavy ref stuff and random interference didn't work at all, and really kept the match from having much momentum. Their Bash match is still a way better example of what they can do against each other.

MD: This was a glorious little piece of lucha indy bullshit. Psicosis, to me, was hugely underrated at the time. Hugely. He was so good at stooging, at working to the crowd, at being an absolute jerk while on offense. He might be the best base there ever was (up there with Fuerza, who does so much of the same stuff well, just from a slightly different angle), because everything he does adds to the match and about two-thirds of it is wholly selfless in setting up stuff for his opponent. It's more than just catching someone. It's acting as contrast, acting so that your opponent can hit all of his stuff as a reaction and this match is full of that. My favorite bit in this was probably a sequence with Dragon on the inside and Psicosis on the outside, where he basically bumped himself three times to set up Dragon's plancha. In this match, he was also getting the ref over as big as anyone, which tells you the other half of what you need to know about this one. Still, super fun.

ER: I liked this a lot more than Phil too, as it played like an awesome Psicosis broomstick match. I don't think Ultimo brought anything to this, as every single Psicosis bump I could have easily pictured him doing in a ring with nobody else in it. The ref stuff was entirely stupid, as at this point we've all seen the exact same rudo ref shtick for as long as we've been watching lucha (I have seen this same shtick live in 2019, there aren't going to be new jokes or scenarios added and it's not going to get more entertaining), but that was just another burdensome load for Psic to carry here, only adding to his legend. This whole thing was filled with Psicosis missing Ultimo by *this* much, splatting face first into turnbuckles, the ring apron, the ringpost, everywhere. This had every wild Psicosis you've seen plus a couple more, with him taking one of the highest hang time Jerry bumps I've ever seen early in the primera, throws himself onto his head at least three times, just crazy how on this guy was every single show. He mixes that in with playing off comedy with the ref, while Ultimo basically stands in place half the time and lets Psicosis work around him. Seriously, so much of this match is Dragon basically getting moved around like a child while Psicosis tumbles and splats around him. Legendary Psicosis performance, while everybody involved was working against that happening.


Chris Hero vs. Claudio Castagnoli Toryumon Mexico 3/4/06

PAS: You could tell that Hero and Claudio were super amped to be wrestling in Arena Naucalpan. This was basically Hero showing off all of the fancy armdrags and headscissors which Skayde taught him, and Claudio showing off what a world class base he was. I especially liked Hero's front flip rana to the floor, and tope rope cartwheel armdrag. Hero wasn't as heavyweight as he would get, but it is still crazy to see a guy that big rip off Mascarita Sagrada spots. Really joyful match to watch, thrilled wrestlers, amped up crowd, awesome stuff.

MD: Very interesting match. It made me wish, more than anything else, that these two had a chance to work a few months together in Mexico in this style, because the end result of that would have been amazing. Even here, with a bit more of a draft version, there was a lot to like. I could be wrong, but you have to figure the crowd wasn't super familiar with either of them. Claudio was constantly working to the crowd, making sure to engage them in between almost every move and ensuring a connection. Hero especially was working big, throwing out the most complex armdrag variations they could manage, shooting for the high "difficulty" score from the judges. Put those together and Hero's flip dive into a frankensteiner on the floor drew an honest and earnest chant from the crowd. One other thing I really liked was how, during his come back, he used the springboard armdrag not just for the sake of doing a big spot, but to create distance so he could hit the boot, which was really the move that got him all the way back into it. A lot of the lucha we see is with guys who run the same spots again and again in front of crowds week in and week out, and they didn't have that luxury here. With that in mind, this was a hell of an effort.

ER: I knew there was one short Hero in Mexico stint out there but I'd never seen any of it until now, and I love it. I love that to the Coliseo fans they just looked like two young Skayde students going through and working a Skayde match, and who could want anything more? Hero is so good at that style and can throw out mirror perfect versions of classic Skayde sequences all while peppering in his own charms. I'm not sure what the crowd was expecting when they saw a couple of tall white boys get in the ring, but you can tell by the third gorgeous pendulum armdrag they were fully onboard. The early applause honestly felt like "okay they get what we're into seeing". Claudio is one of the greatest flyer bases of our time, the guy with freak strength who came up with a ton of tiny flippers, and Hero is one of the greatest style chameleons of all time. The whole match really played like a fun greatest hits showcase of what they could do for fun. These two probably at least a couple dozen singles matches and I've seen many of them, and this is easily the shortest and most worked like a cool showoff exhibition. And a cool exhibition between two guys with cool bags of tricks is precisely what I wanted. This was all joy, all the hits, in front of a crowd that wanted to see that. Hero's armdrags were perfect, but him breaking out the handspring dragon rana is just a whole different level. Claudio was there to base and that alone was impressive, but there was joy to be had in both small things he did (his excellent cravate snapmare) and big things (his running diving uppercut to Hero's back), all while holding firm for every flip Hero tossed his way. Love these two, glad I finally got to see them in Coliseo, although I wish we had any footage against any era luchadors.