New Footage Friday: CASAS! AJA! MEIKO! SANTO! PANTHER! TARZAN!

Máscara Mágica/Olímpus/Silver King vs. Guerrero de la Muerte/Negro Casas/Rey Bucanero CMLL 6/29/96

MD: I love dropping into a moment in time like this, even for a mid-card feud with some great window dressing. This set up a Welterweight title match between Mascara Magica and Guerrero de la Muerte which would then set up their apeuestas match, and I have to admit, this actually made me want see all of that. They worked well together, with Guerrero standing out as a particularly effective clubbering bully that could still turn it up a notch. That's to say I didn't mind that the focus of this one was on them and not Casas and Silver King, not that we didn't get some great stuff from each individually and together. They played Sharp Dressed Man for both sets of entrances and Negro Casas had fun with it. He danced and hugged the ref with the expected audacity and familiarity so the pre-match is great. There are certain wrestlers you don't want to take your eye off in a match, no matter what is happening. Terry Funk is one. Casas is another. For the primera, they paired Olimpus with Casas and Bucanero with Silver King, which made sense. Young Bucanero, as always, was ambitious but not always entirely smooth. I loved how Casas reacted to basically everything Olimpus did (even when in a simple hold, as Olimpus would go for the chin or the hair or an arm, etc., Casas just was totally on all the time in his complaining and reacting). We did get some good Casas and Silver King time in the segunda and tercera, with the usual rope running trip spots that no one did better and some fun brawling through the ropes to clear the ring for Magica and Guerrero at the end.

ER: Great match, I loved this. I haven't seen much Guerrero de la Muerte, and I'm not sure I've ever seen Olimpus, and that already helps make it a great on paper match for me. It has two of my all time favorites in Casas and Silver King, two guys I've seen a ton and like in Magica and Bucanero, and two guys who are new or relatively new to me, one of each category on each side. The guys I loved did things that I loved, it's fun seeing the elements of Bucanero that stayed as he matured and the small things that didn't, I loved the rope work of Olimpus and the overall rounded professionalism of GdlM. Everybody fit into their cog nicely, the pairings all looked good, and we got a couple of things I've never seen. Casas and King were the highlights, with King especially moving blisteringly fast. I love seeing these two move, and they both looked excellent. King broke out this cool looking spot, where he and Bucanero had been working a nice sunset flip sequence. King kicked out of one and Bucanero went for another one, and King just tried to run away during the flip. The spot looked minorly blown when Bucanero nudged by him, and the spot became something unique and special. If it started as Bucanero slightly missing his mark and sunset flipping King after a delay, the moment Bucanero was sliding down King's back to pull him down by the legs, King starts to move with Bucanero on his back! So Bucanero was being blocked by King while King basically held him in position for Omori's Axe Guillotine Driver. It was a cool visual, pulled off quick, and felt like something innovative we'd see in French Catch. All I see now is 50s French Catch in wrestling, even if there is zero chance those wrestlers ever even heard of French Catch.

Bucanero wrestled more like a junior (and was sized like a junior), and he still had his lunatic fast spills to the floor. Bucanero was a longtime favorite of mine for the many ways he knows how to get to an arena floor, and is still capable of surprising. The peak of his powers was around 2001, when he and Christian were having weekly TV contests to see who could take the most bumps over the top to the floor in a match. Here he is not taking high bumps to the floor, but fast beautiful lucha rolls to the floor, the way a veteran luchador knows how to kind of back handspring through the ropes to the floor after taking a dropkick.  Young Bucanero, wearing gorgeous plate glass tights, had veteran level bumps to the floor at age 21. Olimpus had a couple of great ropes moments with a couple of nice tricks. I loved the moment at the end of a caida where Casas ran in to break up a pin, and Olimpus ran in the ring behind him to spring off the middle rope with a dropkick to the back of Casas's head. in ring springboard senton to a standing opponent is a fun signature spot, and it was hit and reversed in satisfying ways here. I don't think Olimpus has much of a rep, but he has few enough matches that maybe I should go through an under 10 match Olimpus run, while also doing an under 10 matches Babe Richard run, since there is some overlap with each in the same match. Is it stupid to go through and review the 20 or so available Olimpus and Babe Richard matches before I go through and review 20 or so available Javier Llanes matches? Almost certainly! Will that make a difference? Of course not. Casas made Olimpus look plenty good in their exchanges, and King worked fast with all the rudos. Seeing King try to actually take out Casas's feet with dropdowns during a sequence is just one of those signs that guys are taking their best shot at making this match a good one, and I grinned the whole time.

Aja Kong vs. Meiko Satomura GAEA 12/15/01

MD: At the 22 minute mark here I turned it onto 2x speed so I could just get through this. I was pretty much done after the fourth death valley bomb. I was probably done a minute or two before that. It's a me thing as much as anything else. What I post on the blog is basically what I watch: old French wrestling and what we find for NFF which is basically lucha, German Catch, old Japanese TV and handhelds and occasional territory stuff. The other guys watch things more broadly and much more modern wrestling. The point is that I am not at all mentally prepared for twelve minute excess-laden finishing stretches that end up being more than one third the total length of the match anymore. Wrestling isn't math, but I think that's probably my rule of thumb: while there can be exceptions like anything else, a finishing stretch should be a lot closer to 1/6th the length of the total match than 1/3rd. If anyone wants to engage me on this, I'm happy to write a couple thousand words somewhere. Otherwise, let me just talk about the rest and not drag down NFF.

What I love about Aja, especially Gaea era Aja is that her matches tend to be like thought experiments. Like Hansen and to a degree Brock, what makes them so fascinating is watching how her opponent tries to handle the unstoppable force that she presents. Meiko, obviously, was presented as a force unto herself, but she came in prepared for and experienced against what she was going to face and that let them work in some more early counters. Even so, Aja took most of this on the notion that if she can get her hands on you (and that means running into her hands as well), she's going to cut you off. Her opponents are always working from a point of disadvantage, which with a normal monster heel would be a perfectly fine narrative point, but with Aja means even more. She can attack from all sorts of different angles: my favorite here was when she just sidestepped Meiko and tripped her to cut off a comeback corner charge. I also liked how opportunity-driven Meiko's comebacks were. After getting battered around the ringside area, Aja placed her back on the apron and she used the higher ground for an axe kick in a way that felt perfectly strategic. Later on, Aja dropped her onto some metal with a brainbuster, but the ref demanded the object leave the ring before counting the pin, letting her come back with another Pele kick. She went to that well once too often and the finishing stretch (overextended as it was) was entered by Meiko realizing she didn't have the right distance/angle and jamming herself on launching another which let Aja clothesline her instead. The match was full of little touches like that which kept things both believable (human) and interesting for the first two-thirds. And I'll just leave it at that.

PAS: I agree with Matt, this match really could have used an editor. We only had a clipped version of this match before, and I imagine it might have worked a bit better as a clipped match, as it might night have felt as bloated. Still Joshi has a maximilist style and this is a pair of great wrestlers to watch overeat. Awesome Aja performance as she demonstrates again why she is one the greatest monster heel wrestlers of all time. Violent and brutal offense, mixed with perfectly timed moments of vulnerability.  Meiko is awesome in this match too, she has such credible offense, and is great at finding and taking advantage of openings. She has really good boxing for a pro-wrestler who doesn't throw punches. There were awesome moments where she uses head movement to evade shots, and she fires in these killer fast combos to the face. There were lots of moments when this would have have been an all time classic if they had ended there, and there were just too many of them. I did love the actual ending though, Aja's one count kick out is the best one count kick out I have ever seen. Total hubris, like a fighter who stands up too quick from a knockdown, instead of taking the moment to clear her head she bolts back up, only to get put back down. We just needed less nearfalls before that.


El Hijo Del Santo/La Mascara vs. Blue Panther/Tarzan Boy Monterey 1/1/06

MD: If we were going Epic/Great/Fun/Skip on this, it'd be Fun. Mascara was, not unexpectedly, the weakest link, but that's not to say he didn't carry himself well given who he was in there with. You'd get a 'rana that looked a little off but it'd follow three or four exchanges that hit perfectly. My favorite bits in the match weren't the perfectly smooth Panther vs Santo exchanges or the usual joy in seeing Santo's signature spots, but instead his interaction with Tarzan Boy. They had been on the same side of trios and at least one tag back in 98-00 when Tarzan Boy was much younger and after the tecnicos took the first fall here, Santo patted his cheek and shook his hand only for Tarzan Boy to return the favor. That felt like it really paid off with Tarzan Boy catching Santo with a powerbomb for a pin later on. My other favorite bit was Blue Panther using the drop down double leg nelson move we've been seeing from France so often lately to submit Mascara. The tercera was a little loose and free, feeling more like a local show than something for TV, but there were a bunch of tecnico dives and everyone went home happy. A good match with flashes of excellence from two of the best ever, and we're never going to complain about something like that popping up.

PAS: I love formula lucha libre, as a wrestling style performed well it has the highest floor. A basic househow lucha match is better then any other kind of houseshow wrestling. This is a match with two all time greats, a solid young wrestler and a competent hand, so it is going to be super entertaining. Santo and Panther are two of the most perfectly matched dance partners ever and we get some gorgeous exchanges between the two, some classic Santo dives and nifty interactions between Tarzan Boy and Santo, which had a bit more roughness then the smoothness of Santo and Panther. Mascara was pretty replaceable, but didn't do anything giant to drag down the match.

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On Brand Segunda Caida: 1995 WWF

Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Matt Hardy WWF Raw 7/10/95

ER: What a squash! A great 3 minute, one-sided, demoralizing beatdown. And yet despite it being one-sided, Hardy never felt quite out of it. Part of that is because 20 year old Matt Hardy is the exact same size as HHH was at 25, so this match reads more like a violently stiff Lenny Lane vs. Kidman match. We get a long cool firm headlock sequence with some nice takeovers, and some big armdrags. But things really painfully leap up to the next level when HHH just waylays Hardy in the corner, laying in some cruel strikes. It starts with a big right hand, and then another, and then HHH throws two whipping chops that graze off Hardy's collarbones and into the underside of his chin, and as HHH throws these two lightning fast knife edges right with his left arm, he follows up with an impossible to block right full arm shot to the stomach. The whipping shot to the stomach lands so hard, just an echoing slap. HHH was working as a real bully and he came off like same era Dave Taylor at times. I don't think I've ever thought to compare HHH with Dave Taylor, so you know this is a tremendous compliment. Hardy takes the Pedigree nearly as violently as Cham Pain took his famous killshot, but I don't think I've ever seen Hardy's take championed. This was a gnarly diagonal landing, the guy who didn't check the pool was empty before diving in. What a great mauling.


Owen Hart/Yokozuna vs. Razor Ramon/Savio Vega WWF Raw 8/7/95

ER: This was a rematch from the week prior, when the show actually went off the air with a classic "We're out of time!" I had no idea they were doing those in 1995! That first match had a pretty cheap moment, where Razor pinned Owen clean after the Razor's Edge, then Hebner - who counted the 3 - decided that Owen wasn't actually the legal man. I'm not sure why you'd actually make the ref go all the way through with the pinfall. Hebner is a really terrible actor, totally the wrong guy to trust in that kind of situation. He counted the 3 and then immediately was just like "no, no, no, you didn't win the match, dummy!" It really needed a referee who could facially take responsibility for the major boner that had been entirely his fault. A second official coming in to alert Hebner to the problem would have been silly, as the second official was almost always an inconsistent crutch to use, but it at least would have made more sense than Hebner counting the 3 and the immediately telling Razor that Razor should have paid better attention. VERY poorly handled.

So they start off the next Raw with an immediate rematch, and the rematch absolutely smoked. This was the absolute best Owen Hart performance I've seen since I started casually skimming my way through 1995 WWF. Owen is a guy who deservedly gets a lot of love, but consider me underwhelmed as I dive back into mid 90s WWF. Literally the day before I watched this match, I was talking to friends about how I was really starting to think Owen was one of the more overrated workers of the era, and how I don't think I could find a place for him on a Top 20 1995 WWF list. I'm still not certain he has a spot in the Top 20 (there were some GREAT performers on the roster that year and he has a tendency to get outshined within his own matches regularly), but with another performance or two like this it would be pretty impossible to keep him off. His timing is so integral to this match, and this match is a killer highlight of the kind of in-ring charisma he and Razor could have together on the right night. Owen and Razor kept working faster the longer the match went, both taking big bumps to the floor (Owen taking a super fast one that almost flings him face first into the guardrail, Razor getting launched so far over the top rope that several kids in the front row actually leapt backwards thinking Razor was going to fly right into them, just insane), and really laying in shots like I haven't seen him do all year. He hits his spinning heel kick so perfectly that it stops Razor cold, to the point that I thought it could have been the finish. It wasn't like he kicked Razor's teeth out either, the timing was just expert (with a wonderful sell from Razor), and you've never seen him crush somebody like he does while Razor is draped over the middle rope. I've seen Owen bounce off a draped opponent countless times, and here he just flies full weight into Razor.

Yoko was really fun from the apron, grabbing at Razor's hair on rope running spots while laughing gleefully. He took some big spills and got lit up by babyfaces when he was in. Savio's hot tag was fire, throwing stiff chops and punches at Yoko in the corner, just immediately making up that 300 lb. (!!) size difference, then pasting Yoko with his own awesome spinning heel kick. I honestly think the two best spinning heel kicks of 1995, from either Owen or Savio, came during this match. It wasn't just the execution, but their placement within the match. Razor was such a strong babyface, and I love matches like these were he plays FIP and works to all sides of the crowd. He really comes off like a proto-Austin or even Cena, as his fired up big babyface punches are thrown into matches the exact same way those two would, and he has that extra crowd connection those two had. There's an alternate timeline where Razor is the top star of the fed going into the late 90s, and performances like this show that it absolutely would have worked.

Sadly, we also get a bad finish on this one, as Razor and Owen suddenly go to the floor to brawl, one of those very obvious "We need to clear the ring so the finish can happen!" moments. It's not a terrible finish if the execution had been better, but Yoko flattened Savio with a Samoan drop and legdrop, right in front of Razor, but Razor had disposed of Owen too early and then had to occupy himself to make sure he was too late to save Savio. So Razor - only 5 feet away from being able to yank Yoko's leg - runs around the ring and comes in much farther away. Poor planning and positioning, really bad. BUT, this match was a real treasure trove, featuring performances that would rank at or near the top of all of these guys' 1995 output.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 7/29/20

What Worked

-The visual of Stu Grayson's huge tope con hilo past the turnbuckle, hitting the cameraman on the way down (and running right at the cameraman) was awesome.

-Couldn't be much less interested in Zack Ryder as a new AEW recruit, but at least Ryder showed up ON THE GAS. I am more excited for hulked up juice god Ryder than Woo Woo Woo Ryder.

-This show needed Darby in the main event, because this was a real 2 hour drag if you were looking for good wrestling. This was a quick, under 10 minute sprint with a hot pace, totally unnecessary (but fun) weapons, and some classic Darby crash tests. The whole thing starts with Darby doing the Coffin Drop off the entrance tron, so this rules from go. Any match based around Darby dying is going to be cool, so crashing with a Coffin Drop, eating a powerbomb, a German, a nasty spill to the apron, it's all great. Starks and Cage had decent chemistry as a team, but I like Cage a ton more as "guy throwing two men around at once" than "guy going up easily for everyone's suplexes", and luckily we got a bit more of the former. Darby's late match comeback to save Moxley was great, there were a couple good nearfalls, and the finish was fantastic. You give me Darby smashing tacks into Ricky Starks' back by dropping in off the top rope and planting that deck on his back, and that's a finish I'll be into. Starks' sell was awesome, left leg stuck out straight and lifted off the ground while being pinned, shaking like he had spinal damage or like a man who just got his back tacked for the first time. Thank god for Darby tonight. That's a guy you get the ball to with seconds on the clock.


What Didn't Work

-Dang, that opening 10 men sucked, and it had zero excuse to suck. A 10 man given enough time should be the highest hit rate match out there. Any match with 6+ people where at least four of the participants are capable, should be a guaranteed good match. But this was just a sloppy, unfunny, poorly timed mess. People stood around awkwardly, waiting to take offense, missing offense, or just not doing anything. The dive train started well with a cool tope con hilo from Chuck Taylor (who appears to have lost some of his added quarantine weight), but then a long stint with Marko Stunt getting tossed back and forth between Hager and Luchasaurus while everyone just watched. There was a lot of "just watched" in this and it blew. Any time they tried to string a moves chain together it fell apart by the second move, everyone moving at a completely different pace than everyone else.

-I really love the idea of Cody vs. Top Indy Guys, and I have to accept that most of them are not going to touch Cody/Kingston...but I'd like to think that most of them will be better than Cody/Warhorse. I've never been much of a Warhorse guy, the whole thing comes off forced an unnatural, and let me tell you: if something comes off forced and unnatural on small scale indy shows, it is going to look downright bush on a big league presentation. Warhorse looked like a guy who won a sweepstakes, not a guy who earned his shot at the champ. Cody really busted his ass to make him look good, but it's a two way street. Warhorse throws a nice clothesline, and that's about it. Cody is good at taking lariats, and Warhorse had a big running one and a nice flat foot standing one that looked really impactful. Amusingly, JR called him "offensively minded" in a match where up to that point he had only thrown clotheslines and some stomps. Cody did a good job setting Warhorse to shine, Warhorse just didn't shine. His timing was a step earlier than Cody's, and it pulled back the curtain too much on a lot of his rehearsed pins or missed strikes. There were several times where he was already reversing the move he was set to reverse, while Cody had barely started the move. Grabbing a small package off a figure 4 attempt is a smart nearfall, but it looks bad when you're showing your reversal hand before Cody is even in position. Later, he committed to a missed double stomp off the top after seeing that Cody was 8 feet away from where he was stomping. It wasn't a blind leap, he watched Cody move, then leaped into a double stomp to the mat as if a person was there. There's debuting on national TV the way Eddie Kingston debuted, and there's debuting on national TV the way Warhorse did. This was Dancin' Homer debuting in Capital City. We've set each end of our Cody vs. The Indies bar.

-Man has Omega's stock fallen. The tag match was not a long match, but it felt like a long match. That's never good. Omega looks more and more like a broken man in tags like this, but this thing was mildly cursed beyond Omega. There were unfortunate hiccups that you can't really blame on anyone, yet take a match down anyway. Little things like the ref getting in the way of a Page clothesline, requiring Page to completely stop his momentum before continuing the spot as planned. Grayson doesn't always hit with his stuff, but I appreciate a lot of the stuff he goes for. The slingshot senton to the apron didn't fully connect, but it's something that is crazy enough that I want him to keep trying to make it look better. I like Uno's AEW work and dug him here, thought he took the snap dragon like a beast, loved Page wrecking Grayson with a lariat, but this never quite came together as a match.

-I was curious to see some more Diamante after her match last week, even though I was not into her match last week, but now I think I'm good for awhile. She did not look good throughout much of this. Every Shida singles match always has to have these really bad strike exchange sections, always looking like the most brutal slap play. For all I know those shots sting like hell, but I have yet to see a Shida vs. Opponent strike exchange that actually looked ready for prime time. Several of Diamante's chops hit hard, a couple things looked good, but I'm still waiting on an AEW singles match where the participants actually have chemistry.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: LeDuc! Lamban! Modesto! Teddy Boy!

Nikolai Zigulinoff vs. Robert Gastel 10/30/58

SR: JIP match. Zigulinoff is some Bulgarian sheepherd. He had that kind of aura only some mythical figure can have. Robert Gastel wasn‘t quite Les Matraquer du Rings at this point, he was actually quite the blue eye, although he sure had his dirty tricks already. He reminded me a bit of Dick Murdoch. He was dealing some serious hurt on the Bulgarian madman, who just walked through the punishment. Fascinating little clip.

MD: We get about seven minutes of this. We've seen Gastel before, much older, and he's the same guy here back in the 50s. Mean punches, meaner headbutts and hairpulls (including standing on his opponent's giant fro). Stooging. Zigulinoff is quite the character. Crazy hair. Big stocky body. Bulgarian shepherd gimmick. Bearhugs and overhead clobbers and not too much else. At one point Gastel ties his hair to the ropes, as if he was Octagon. This was pretty goofy but the fans seemed to enjoy it and I don't mind our JIP slots being taken up by a few minutes of this sort of thing where we get to see the variety of the characters that were around in the late 50s.


Gilbert LeDuc vs. Rocco Lamban 10/30/58

SR: 2/3 Falls match going about 30 minutes. Rocco Lamban, El Estrangulador~! It‘s a testament to the greatness of the Spanish workers that pretty much anytime one of them shows up we get a great match. Lamban, like Adolf Kaiser, uses the Dragon Sleeper as a finish. While he is not quite as comically evil as the Doctor of Philosophy (though he does look like a sophisticated fellow), he sure was willing to do every despicable thing not in the rulebook to get the advantage. He could wrestle, too, and that makes this such a compelling match up. They go from some nice wrestling exchanges with Lamban earning the respect of the audience with a nice hip throw to Lamban punching the shit out of Leducs ear and Leduc stepping on his face nicely. Leduc is impeccable as a gentleman technician who will forearm the shit out of you in these matches. You can say it about almost any face worker in France, but damn did this guy have great european uppercuts. We also get to see him play Bridge between the falls and that was really cool and now I‘ll forver dub Leduc as „The Gambler“ in my mind. I loved when Lamban decided to try and bite his way out of a hold, Leduc went Tyson on him biting his ear. Lamban is good enough that he doesn‘t have to rely on choking all the time. When they do get to working around the Dragon Sleeper, its some really compelling work thanks to both Lamban having a variety of ways to get the hold and Leduc having a variety of ways to get out of it. When Lamban finally sinks the hold in deep and chokes Leduc out it‘s gritty as hell. One thing I like in these old French matches is even the referees will get violent to get a heel to break a hold, usually facelocking them like riot cops pulling off protesters, in this case the referee just decided to punch Rocco in the face. The 3rd fall was really great and probably the best build to a finish we‘ve seen in this entire project with Lamban trying everything to get the Dragon Sleeper again and Leduc, being clearly wobbly, throwing body punches and left-right forearms. Actual finish was a thing of beauty.

PAS: This was tremendous. We have seen LeDuc before, he is the master of La Toupie (his Santo style spinning headscissors) and there is some really cool stuff early with Lamban blocking and countering his attempts to put it on. This had some of the most vicious breakdowns into violence that we have seen with LeDuc hitting these incredible one-two short forearm combos and Lamban trying to rip, tear and punch off LeDuc's ear. All of the stuff around the Dragon sleeper was elite, with Lamban just brutalizing him with it to win the second fall, and some really cool spots with him trying to get it on and LeDuc flipping and countering out of it in the third fall. Such a cool match, with Lamban being a great villain and LeDuc looking like an all time great babyface.

MD: This is a match where El Strangulador, Rocco Lamban, another master of the pre-1960 Dragon Sleeper, tries to cheat and shove the ref away for cheapshots, and just outright strangle his way to victory, with Gilbert LeDuc just having none of it. At one point LeDuc has him in that revelatory hold, the double leg nelson, and is just slamming Rocco's face into the mat. Rocco escapes with a bite to the leg. So what does LeDuc do? He bounds up and takes a chunk out of Rocco's ear. Immediately thereafter, Rocco uses harsh whips against the ropes into a knee to the stomach, once, then twice, then a third attempt despite the ref's admonishing. LeDuc catches the leg the third time and takes him down. A little later Rocco grinds a knuckle in LeDuc's eye, so LeDuc punches Rocco directly in his. He's got no time for any of this. He was the sort of guy who would attack first on a heel handshake attempt after a cheapshot. That said, later in the second fall, he didn't, and that's when Rocco really locked in his dragon sleeper. There are certain structural advantages of a 2/3 falls match. Having something win an earlier fall can build the drama of it reoccurring in the next fall. By the time the third fall started, Rocco's dragon sleeper was the most dangerous thing in the world and that let them really struggle over it. Rocco would do anything in his power, including rabbit punches and using the top rope as a weapon to lock it in; LeDuc would go so far as to pull the hair to get out. In the end, Rocco went too far to achieve his objective and the ref would break it at key moments. It was, ultimately, Rocco's only viable path to victory, and that certainty let LeDuc finally counter it for another great, 40 years before its time finish.

ER: Loved this, a match that looks like another fun Catch romp before taking a sudden violent left turn at the end of the 2nd fall. LeDuc came out of the gates showcasing all of his great arm strikes, quick forearms, hard elbows, hooking uppercuts, all thrown with different timing. Sometimes he would do a simple 1-2, next time he'd do a 1-and-a-2-3, next time he'd just come in with one hard uppercut. They all looked great, and what really put it over the top was the incredibly strong selling from Lamban. He had that Finlay-like knack for anticipating how hard he was going to be hit and bumping accordingly. Modern strike bumping has turned into bad stand in place selling or fast back bumps, but Lamban treated each strike appropriately. He would get staggered by some shots, get dropped to a knee on others, fall into the ropes, always looking like he was reacting to the strike being thrown. That has to be incredibly difficult, as you have no idea how well your opponent is going to throw a strike, and yet all of his movements felt like the perfect call and response. Lamban's selling was really important to the pace of this match, as LeDuc was so aggressive that this really could have turned into strike overkill. Instead, Lamban was providing space and breath with his selling, making strikes mean more. He had a couple other unique bumps (is there any 50s French Catch wrestler who doesn't have a couple unique bumps?), with my favorite being his belly flop bump after getting bucked from a full nelson. LeDuc popped his hips back, Lamban flew back and flopped on his stomach. It felt like a slightly straight take on a bump Candido would do.

This was shaping up to be a real LeDuc showcase, until Lamban choked the life out of him with his dragon sleeper to take the 2nd fall. And with excellent selling being the theme of the match, LeDuc sold the dragon sleeper as if he had been waterboarded. He was leaning forward, drooling, coughing, rubbing his throat, while ring attendants rubbed his shoulders and toweled him off. All of them were acting like their fighter was just waking up sitting on a ring with no memory of how he got there, and LeDuc's selling made that dragon sleeper hang heavily over the entire 3rd fall. Seeing how decisively LeDuc was put down, it made a quick 3rd fall finish a possibility every time they came into contact. Lamban had cool downward strike elbows, and every snapmare battle felt like something that could quickly end LeDuc. The finish was innovative and unexpected, a snap reversal of a suplex leading to a reverse suplex, a Sliced Bread finish during a time where actual sliced bread was not yet common. I loved the pacing of this match, a match that felt like it was going to be a LeDuc showcase but turned into so much more.


Janos Vadkerti vs. Roland Daumal 10/13/60

SR: About 12 minutes of this were shown. Largely technical bout, and they had some good stuff going on. Vadkerti was a Hungarian wrestler, and that‘s nice to see. Daumal, who was in the veteran role, looked like a good worker. He had a leg stretch that was either cool or stupid depending on where you stand, and his ranas were slick as hell for a guy who looked to be balding and aging. There was also some nice body scissor work. Vadkerti was here to hit explosive dropkicks and he was good at that.

MD: This was the semi-finals of a lightweight tournament, with Aledo vs Teddy Boy the other semifinals. It was an international affair as one might expect. Vadkerti is Hungarian and we only have one more JIP match with him later. I hope it gets some time. This did, about 12:00, JIP. Daumal is French and I don't think we see him again, and in both cases it's a shame since this was a really solid pairing. Athletic, hard-hitting, with some good holds and escape attempts, especially a Daumal leg nelson that Vadkerti was really fighting to get out of and, of course, this amazing but admittedly ill-conceived leg-splitting mutilation thing by Vadkerti that I've never seen before. Even just the bodyscissors and leg-splitters had a lot of fight to them. Vadkerti was so lean that every time his strained you could all but see his skeleton putting up a fight. There was a running, twisting 'rana by Daumal early on that was jawdropping and another attempt right at the end that led to a completely compacting power bomb and the finish. We are somehow both spoiled and starved by this footage.


Modesto Aledo vs. Teddy Boy 10/13/60

SR; 1 Fall match going a bit over 20 minutes. Another reason why this is the greatest footage find ever: Getting to see a guy like Modesto Aledo. Aledo was a Spanish lightweight champion whose claim to faim is fighting George Kidd in a holy grail match in England. You can easily see how he was world champion material. The holds and moves he used weren‘t a ton different from what everyone else (in France) did, but he moved in a sublime way and had a cool unique way to do things. This is also Teddy Boys first appearance, and he gives a rather impressive heel showing. Aledo is a wrestler who just keeps moving and moving, giving his opponent no breaks, so while Teddy Boy got in some slick moves of his own it soon became clear that he would have to use rough tactics to get the advantage. And that‘s just about what he did, punting Aledo with some hard kicks and then doing the unthinkable and overhead throwing Aledo over the top rope. To say that those apron bumps were insane would be an understatement. Boy pulled that move several times and you could tell the crowd was getting really unruly as he kept attacking Aledos spine. Aledos selling was great, not to mention the insane bumping, he was moving hunched over like someone who had trouble moving. Aledos eventual comeback was like the Euro version of a Jerry Lawler strapdrop as he seized the advantage and blasted Teddy Boy with everything he had before a dramatic finish. Really amazing match that went from graceful to super intense. Just insane that pro wrestling 60 years ago was like this.

PAS: Wow was Aledo impressive, he reminded me of some of the all time great grapplers, like watching Blue Panther or Terry Rudge. He spent the first part of the match showing his skill, just countering and tooling Teddy Boy with all of his counters. It was some all time slick stuff that kept Teddy Boy on his back foot, and he responds with vicious results. His belly to belly throws over the top rope were truly shocking, the kind of crazy shit you would expect to see in a crazy indy match or an All Japan 90s match. Super dangerous, really violent and a hell of an escalation. I loved the finish run too, with Aledo throwing big forearms and ducking under Teddy Boy's legs with an upkick. Then he gets tossed one more time to the floor, only to get tossed back in and press slammed for the pin. Great stuff, super skills, crazy bumps, and a wild violent finish. The hits keep coming.

MD: This was absolutely excellent. It was the second semifinal of the tournament. Aledo, the Little Bull of Valencia, is Kamikaze I, who's considered, by rep, to be one of the best Spanish wrestlers of all time and who we had no real footage of. He's a wizard. I thought Teddy Boy was awesome. He came out with a leather jacket with his name on it. He had this Rebel Without a Cause greaser vibe and was just absolutely cruel. Just pure attitude. He also seemed apt to target a body part more than almost anyone we've seen in the footage, though it wasn't the story of the match or anything. Aledo took the early portions with finesse. There were some roll up exchanges which we'd say were well before their time but by now we know that was obviously just a perception issue due to lack of footage. Aledo did one cool thing after another, with my favorite maybe being his cavernaria style straightjacket submission, but he had some breathtaking through the legs spots too, the best of which being tied to a takedown. When Teddy took over, the match changed completely. For the most part he targeted the midsection: front, back, and side, with stomps and rib-breakers and the ref desperately trying to hold him back. There was a point in the midst of this where I thought he was going for a bear hug but he leaned against the ropes and launched Aledo with a belly to belly suplex over the top instead. Then he did it again. And, following the rule of three, he got jammed on the third only to hit a gut punch and actually get it. Mindboggingly brutal. Obviously the fans were going to be engaged after that (not that they weren't given Aledo's slickness and Teddy's unfurled attitude). The finish followed from everything that came before, with Aledo too exuberant in his comeback and Teddy launching him out one last time so that he could pick at the bones after the overeager crowd helped him back in for an easy pin. Just great stuff.

ER: This was so good! And I would have loved it even if they hadn't had that wild gear shift that lead to Aledo flying over the top to the floor several times in between having his guts dented. I mean, really, the match won me over before it even started once I saw Teddy Boy in his cuffed dark denim jeans and black leather ring jacket. Dude looked like the coolest possible Squiggy or like a cool Sha Na Na bassist. Aledo quickly won me over with a ton of gravity defying headscissors and armdrags. I must have skipped back 10 seconds a dozen different times in this match, trying to figure out how they got into the positions they got into, trying to figure out the physics and who was lifting who. Some of them I couldn't even figure out how they wound up where they did, even though every single moved looked to be executed exactly as planned. There was a sunset flip where the man I predicted would come out on top, was the man who wound up being pinned. It's been 25 years and wrestlers are still aspiring to Malenko/Guerrero roll ups, when there was THIS out there 35 years before THAT! Dream bigger, modern wrestlers, there's a world of possibility on French Catch. Now, the best part of these armdrags and headscissors is that there doesn't appear to be any cheating. They aren't going through with a bump if the move isn't delivered properly, they are bumping according to the move being delivered, and it makes the implausible feel and look plausible. Teddy was a great base for all of Aledo's tricks, but when he took over this got crazy.

Teddy was real mean and threw some punishing strikes to the gut, and just started working over Aledo's core any way he could, really softening him up. But nobody could have expected those belly to belly suplexes. As he gripped Aledo in a bear hug it looked like Aledo was purposely walking him to the ropes to force a break, and instead Teddy just launched him straight overhead to the floor. Aledo slowed his momentum somewhat by getting a hand on the ropes on his way down, but nowhere close to enough to break the fall. And then it happened again. Then, it happened again...except Aledo blocked it...only momentarily, because Teddy Boy punches him right in the liver and throws him anyway. I loved Teddy's punches to the liver, and a hard front kick that Aledo sold like it had ruptured his spleen. I loved how those big bumps over the top played directly into the finish, with Aledo going over one last time before getting pinned. When the violence gets to an unexpected level, it's cool when that violence actually results in the finish. We often see matches where things get violent, but the wrestler taking the violence just goes back to his early match strategy and wins anyway. That didn't happen here, and that made it look even more amazing 60 years later.


PAS: Another big week, and we decided to make Teddy Boy vs. Modesto Aledo our inaugural 1960 champion on our Ongoing All Time MOTY List.

ER: The committee also decided to place LeDuc/Lamban as our NEW 1958 champ, bumping off the Royal/Hessle team after just one week! Two matches placed on our All Time MOTY List the same week is cause for celebration, and these two matches are incredibly easy to celebrate.

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For The Fuck-Its The Sorrow is Worth The Redemption

Jollyville Fuck-Its vs. Sean Harddrive/Danny Todd Beyond Wrestling 10/13/12 - EPIC

PAS: This was a carload of Cincinnati guys who drove to Long Island to steal the show. 12 minute spot fest full of crazy moves and really nasty violence. T-Money was just throwing spuds wasting both of his opponents with forearms and kicks to the kidneys. Danny Todd had that power plant agility, jumping from the ring to the top rope and hitting super high super sharp dropkicks to the face. Some really cool combos including Harddrive slamming Russ into the corner at the same second Todd wastes him with a dropkick and a doomsday double knees by the Fuck-Its which looks like it killed everyone involved. Doesn't wear out its welcome and is exciting from bell to bell. Great example of what makes the Fuck-Its so much fun to watch.

ER: This is the youngest and rawest I've seen the Fuck-Its, and I dig it. Everyone here seems raw and I like the risk taking young(er) stupidity on display. You drive 12 hours to make an impression, you make an impression. Everyone had impressive moments here, not an imbalanced match at all, and one that appropriately ramped up the big spots as they went. Fuck-Its are always good at being a part of matches with some insane spots, where none of the spots that come after feel like letdowns. If there is something nasty early in a match, you can bet there will be something to take its place by the end. Harddrive and Todd have some nice flying moves, with Todd doing a couple of no hands springboards (including a nice TAKA style moonsault to the floor), and Harddrive doing a nice imploding corkscrew moonsault to the floor that managed to nail both Fuck-Its while avoiding the guardrail. Money was really throwing mean strikes the whole match, just winging those arms off bodies with punches and clubbing arms, hard lariats, and a cool short spear. Russ was landing full weight on cannonballs: a standing one, and a massive one off the top that leads Chuck Taylor to exclaim "I am never taking that move" on commentary. They worked opposite Chuck Taylor in 2014, wonder if his statement turned out to be true or not? As crushing as Nasty Russ's cannonball was, he takes a wicked flying knee to the face in the corner, and Harddrive also hits a 450 kneedrop that looks like it gave Russ three cracked ribs to think about on the drive back to OH.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE JOLLYVILLE FUCK-ITS

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WWF Raw 4/20/98: A Good On Paper Episode of Wrestling TV

Long Island Street Fight: Faarooq vs. Kama Mustafa

ER: This would have played better as a still photo. I'm not sure if it makes sense, but this was a fairly middling match where both guys looked cool for large portions. The Nation comes out through the crowd, everyone is wearing all black, Kama's street fight gear is black jeans and a black sleeveless T, Faarooq is in black jeans with taped up ribs, just a couple of badass looking dudes. But the match never really matches the intensity of the stip or the look. Faarooq STARTS the match by hitting Kama with a hammer, and it's REALLLL tough to keep up the pace when a fight starts with someone taking a hammer to the head. What doesn't help things is that Faarooq sells a beating like a guy having a restless night of sleep. He's got his ribs taped up, and Kama attacks the ribs, drops a nice elbow, hits him with a heavy ass garbage can (WWF was new to weapons at this point and didn't know to use flimsy cans), and Faarooq sells it like a turtle who realizes he won't be able to get off his back so has given up. This needed a lot more intensity that they gave it.

Dan Severn vs. Mosh

ER: This was really cool, as it was basically worked like a Bloodsport match. Severn shot in with a fireman's carry takedown and double legs and kept Mosh down with his weight, but Mosh was no pushover on the mat. I've never thought of Mosh as someone with amateur wrestling tendencies in the ring, so it was cool to watch him not go limp on takedowns on throws. He was taken down with a reverse waistlock and kept fighting to his right and actually almost pulled off a go behind on Severn. It actually looked like Severn wasn't expecting it and they both tumbled into the ropes. Severn throws him with a couple of cool rolling gutwrench suplexes, and Mosh keeps trying to slow the momentum of them, making them only look cooler and fought for. Mosh even got a big arcing takedown while Severn was distracted, and Severn nearly took a huge head drop off it, like he was Misawa taking a big German. I really dug the two grappling on their feet, ending with Severn throwing what looked like a shoot bodyslam, then doing a similar lift into a powerslam before trapping the arm. The only actual strike that was thrown was a kneelift from Severn (and a really terrible punch on the floor, when Thrasher took out Cornette with a punch that landed somewhere around Cornette's elbow). 

Goldust vs. Bradshaw

ER: This was worked the way the opening street fight should have been worked, and this one didn't need weapons. Well, it did have Bradshaw's heavy chaps as a weapon, and Bradshaw charging Goldust with a big boot and beating him with chaps was more violent than anything in the street fight. Bradshaw was at his most Hansen here, and I swear he whipped those chaps straight across Goldust's face. Goldust is a big guy and Bradshaw isn't going to be able to bully him, so instead we get two guys having no problem working stiff with each other. Goldust is a more generous bumper than Bradshaw so Bradshaw is the aggressor, but the punch and chop exchanges all look good, and they are both really GREAT at making missed offense look like it was supposed to hit. Goldust is really fantastic at moving at the very last second, so when Bradshaw misses an elbowdrop it has the feeling of Bradshaw being actually surprised that he hit mat instead. 

Both guys run face first into boots, Bradshaw throws a couple of wicked corner clotheslines, Goldust hits the best lariat of the match (a leaping one after a fast rope run), and this sadly ends when "Club Kamikaze" (forgot that's what Kaientai was called before they actually wrestled) runs in and attacks Bradshaw. Also, Bradshaw hit a fallaway slam on Goldust at one point, and Michael Cole called it a "desperation move". I think we really need to sit down and ask Michael Cole point blank if he can "What is a desperation move?" Because we now have 20+ years of evidence that shows that I most certainly does not know. Goldust went for a crossbody, Bradshaw caught him, held him, then threw that 270 pound man dead overhead. You could not pause a single frame of that sequence and find anything resembling desperation. For whatever reason, Cole has always used the phrase "desperation move/maneuver" to describe the moment that one wrestler stopped the momentum of their opponent, but never to actually accurately point out a desperation move.

Terry Funk/2 Cold Scorpio vs. The Midnight Express

ER: This was a cool match (one that was somehow given 7 minutes) that the crowd could not have cared less about. I don't think there was anything these four could have done to move this crowd. Bob Holly and Bart Gunn were a bad idea for a Midnight Express team, but we won't go into that because it was obviously supposed to fail. But they were a good team, just a team that the crowd couldn't have cared less about. But I was really surprised that a NY crowd didn't care about Scorpio or Funk. The crowd had just gotten their first Austin appearance of the night, a quick but good promo, and it's probable they were still mentally distracted. I felt bad for Funk, because the old man was out there trying. It felt like he was doing a classic album in front of a crowd who didn't recognize the band. His loud chops got reactions, but his buckled knee selling of Gunn's nice left hands played to cruel silence, his nice neckbreaker got no reaction, his comically wild missed punches got nothing, just a startlingly quiet reaction. 

The Midnight Express could have gelled nicely as a team, but that wasn't what they were there to do. Holly was clearly the most shaken by the silence. The guy dropped Funk with a nice piledriver, and again with a spike piledriver, and THAT gets silence? That would bug me, too. Gunn tried to fire people up from the apron and give us some big slams, but you have never heard bumps this loud because the crowd was just that quiet. Gunn and Scorpio each hit over the shoulder powerbomb - which is a really cool move - to nothing, Holly hits a big huracanrana on Scorpio, Midnights set up a nice drop toehold/elbowdrop double team, and nobody cares. It sucks. Scorpio finally wakes them up at the end by hitting a wild plancha into both Midnights, really flying far out past the mats. And the finish is big for this era, with Scorpio catching Holly's knees on a moonsault but still getting to hit the 450 a bit after. Scorpio's 450 was so beautiful and so impactful that I have no clue why he didn't break out as a guy in WWF. Should have been a super popular midcard guy during the Attitude Era. I'm happy we got his great NOAH run, but I've always wondered what if WWF did Scorpio better. 

HHH/New Age Outlaws vs. Owen Hart/LOD 2000

ER: This was a good longer match that the crowd also iced out, so there was just something with the crowd tonight. They win them over in the end, but LOD gets a big reaction during their entrance, DX obviously gets a big reaction, plus you have Chyna, X-Pac, and Sunny at ringside, so this match should have had some real heat. The opening Owen/Gunn sprint was really good, the two had good chemistry. Owen and HHH always had good chemistry too, so a lot of the pairings were crisp. Owen's spin kick to Gunn looked really good, he had a great drop toehold on HHH (and HHH was always strong at taking drop toeholds, underrated part of his game), and Road Dogg was great getting tagged in at the same time as Animal and doing some "Are you kidding me?" faces. His work with Owen was strong too, and he ran hard into LOD offense. LOD looked a little slow, but still hit hard. Hawk might look clumsy during this era, but he's still going to throw a strong lariat. Animal is a little more energetic, and the crowd does get into the finish. LOD gave Road Dogg a wicked doomsday device, Chyna grabbed Sunny and carried her off like King Kong, Animal decked X-Pac, lots of good action. This was a good trios match with over guys, and a lot of men suggesting oral sex throughout. It should have been hotter.

Steve Blackman vs. Dude Love

ER: This was the weakest match of the night, and it made me realize that there aren't any actually good Dude Love matches other than the two Austin PPV matches. Foley worked the character pretty consistently for a year, mid '97 to mid '98, and outside of those two matches I can't think of a single Dude Love gem. The tag title win was more of an angle, and I don't think he has any other singles matches of note. It's odd that a wrestler as good as Foley could go nearly a whole year with so few quality matches. There aren't even any intriguing on paper matches that I haven't seen, just a bunch of 4 minute matches against guys like the Sultan. This was really dry, and Foley looked like an actual untrained wrestler at different points. The dancing never got over, he paced matches slower, and his execution was loose and uncaring. It was like he was a proto Orange Cassidy except the joke never actually got over. Foley threw a swinging neckbreaker that physically went the wrong direction, and it was one of the only spots of the match. Blackman is another guy who would have been a fun add to modern Bloodsport indies. He had a Zero-1 mostly untrained MMA McCully brothers vibe (but more wooden), constantly looking for new offense that would stick, so he would always try out new strikes or surprise you with a diving headbutt. This mainly served as an angle, with the match kind of just killing time until Austin ran out to blast Dude with a lariat, then throw McMahon hard to the ground. Hot quick angle to end the show.


ER: I was unprepared for the crowd to be so quiet during these matches. The card looked real hot on paper with a lot of good pairings, but the Nassau crowd really didn't care about a lot of this. The strength of a lot of the matches was still there on the screen, but they all would have benefited from an engaged crowd. The unique matches made it well worthwhile.

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WWF 305 Live: Yokozuna! Kamala! Viscera! Prince Albert!

Kamala vs. Yokozuna WWF Raw 5/17/93 - EPIC

ER: This is the kind of match these projects are made for. Literal slapping meat and several staredown moments that made this come off like two walruses fighting over mating privileges. Two monsters eyeballing each other with confusion, square, and charge into each other. Then, after crashing together, both get back even farther to run in again with a bigger lead! Nearly this whole match is them on their feet, Kamala throwing hard overhand chops and Yokozuna fighting back with uppercuts and cross chops. Kamala runs the ropes a lot which looks cool with his size, and he has that way of running the ropes where he looks like he's about to lose his balance, like a toddler getting their legs and running for several steps before plopping gracelessly to the ground. Kamala flies into Yokozuna and I love the force he used to rain down chops. Yokozuna knocks Kamala to a knee, Kamala blocks an overhand chop and delivers one of his own to stagger Yokozuna, and it all plays BIG. Fans in 1993 were so damn into just the concept of a large man FALLING and you could hear that excitement in the crowd. This was already a very exciting night of Raw. There was still the upcoming Jannetty/Michaels match that was set up earlier in the show, and they got to see The Kid upset Razor Ramon, so the crowd is in a good mood. They've already seen a good simple angle and a majorly unexpected win, and now they're seeing two huge giants sprint belly first into each other and then ALMOST fall down. Who among us wouldn't be losing our shit? And they lose it, alright, enough to start a loud USA chant. Why they started a USA chant? Couldn't tell you, but they were united in it because of this match. Fuji grabs Kamala's leg to distract him and allow Yoko to hit two crushing hip attack avalanches in the corner. I wanted this to go even longer, but the visual of the Ugandan savage taking the banzai drop was great.


Viscera vs. Prince Albert WWF Sunday Night Heat 2/6/00 - FUN

ER: Quick match, not quite 3 minutes, but enough to highlight a great aggressive Albert performance. He really kept after Viscera the entire time, even though that meant plenty of things ended terribly for him. The collar and elbows were awesome, as Albert went in for one the second the bell rang and you got a real sense of these two using a lot of weight to push each other around. It's really cool when you can clearly see the power and not just guys casually getting into position. And Albert spends the whole match bringing everything right to Viscera, so the hits are cool and the misses are even better, as that means Albert gets crushed. An aggressive collar and elbow leads to Viscera putting him in the corner and backing into him, charging at Viscera leads to Albert getting dropped by a killer sitout spinebuster (think half rydeen bomb, half spinebuster), another charge leads to Albert eating a big Samoan drop, and Viscera stops *another* charge dead in its tracks by hitting another spinebuster variation (this one more half spinebuster, half belly to belly). Albert's aggression really fueled this, and I was bummed when Big Boss Man's interference on Viscera is what lead directly to Albert hitting his pump kick finisher. With not even a 3 minute runtime I was getting into the idea of where they were going to go with the finish, whether Albert would finally figure out how to not get crushed, or how many more times Viscera could have crushed him before winning. The interference robbed me of that joy, but these two gifted me with plenty of smooshing in the allotted time.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

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New Footage Friday: THESZ! BRONKO! VERNE! FINLAY! SCHUHMANN!

Verne Gange/Bobby Bruns vs. Al Williams/Rudy Kay 5/50

MD: Nice, classic tag here, with cheating heels controlling the ring and fiery babyfaces, but maybe not more than the sum of its parts. It's impossible not to compare these to the French tags we've been seeing and those have just a little more complexity. Quick example: here, Verne is actually able to escape an armbar with a bodyslam. In France, that'd be three minutes of the other wrestler hanging on through it. They did everything right but the biggest stars here were Russ Davis on commentary (he was having a good night) and the young woman in the first row who was all but whacking the heel on the apron with her handbag. That's not to say that Kay wasn't a great stooge, because he was, quick with a punch whenever he was on the losing end of an exchange, sliding halfway out of the ring on amrdrags, letting Verne shake the rope to bump him in when he was on the apron. He was a great foil for Verne's earnest integrity. The bit we see of Williams dismantling Verne's arm at the end of the first fall was great though. He was the more interesting of the two on offense and used the ring well even if Kaye was the bumper. Bruns was more of a charismatic scrapper. Some interesting archaic elements here, like how both partners had to eat a fall (like in lucha) and how the ref flipped a coin at the start to see which partners would start. They'd occasionally shake to tag too. The second fall was so short that I wondered if the fans were throwing trash in because the heels got DQ'd or because they had wanted more out of it. While I thought the end of the first fall was put together well, this didn't really build to any sort of a satisfying finish overall.

Lou Thesz vs. Bronko Nagurski 10/51

MD: Even match up here. Lou was the master, playing with Bronko with false starts. Bronko was dangerous at any and every moment. Each inching towards the ropes could end with his big shoulder block. Thesz gets hit by this early and then makes sure to sell it for the next minute to remind everyone just how potent it is. Lots of posturing throughout but everything's earned. Bronko could use his size and strength to just stand up out of holds. Moreover, he was better able to sit on Thesz and keep him in holds. The first fall ended with Thesz having enough of this and escalating to punches which let him hit the Thesz press. The second had Bronko taking much of the advantage and ending it by cutting off a Thesz hammerlock attempt and hitting a couple of shoulder blocks in and out of the corner. The last fall didn't have a lot of near-falls where Bronko might have had a shot at the title but the finish was exciting, with Thesz actually using a drop down as a tripping move to set up the final dropkick. I'm a fan of matches where one move (be it the heart punch or claw) is treated like a kill shot that has huge impact and must be avoided. It doesn't necessarily matter what the move is, just how it's treated, so for them to at least partially build a match that highlights a simple shoulder block so well was a neat thing to see.

PAS: I didn't think this was very good. I like the idea of the killshot shoulder block a lot more then the execution of it, as it just looked like an OK shoulder block. Nagurski seemed kind of sloppy, and had some moments of showing his power, but most of the time looked sort of lost. Thesz is regarded as an all-time great, but he really should have been able to carry a football player with two left feet better than this, and I didn't think his execution looked very good either. If you are going to end a match on a dropkick it should connect, and his Thesz press looked off too. Still will watch all Thesz I can get, but this was a miss.

Fit Finlay vs. Franz Schuhmann CWA 7/18/93

PAS: This was totally badass, Finlay and Schuhmann working a come as you are streetfight like it is a Jackie Fargo vs. Phil Hickerson Mid-South Coliseum main event in 1977.  Lots of nasty sharp shots with a belt and chain, and just killer Finlay punches and kicks. Schuhmann was an opponent, but landed shots and that is what you want for this match, he also took a totally gross bump on the tombstone. If that had happened on WWF TV it would be a viral gif. Finlay was so good in this, I mentally pictured Fit versus Hacksaw Jim Duggan or Tommy Rich. Total treat, and we really need to watch all of these Schuhmann vs. Finlay matches.

SR: Double juice brawl where they come in wearing jeans and shirts. It's pretty fun to watch two euro guys approximate a distinctly US type match. No idea how they got the idea to do this since I doubt any European TV station aired US territorial wrestling in 1993 but it ended up being a fun match. Schuhmann's punches needed work but the crowd is so into him that I can't call him a blight on the match, and Finlay's basic punches and kicks are so violent looking that it makes up for anything else. Because it's Europe they break out a chain and there are some absolutely sick strangulation spots. Great bump on the finish too.

MD: Here's how good Fit is: this is a streetfight with a dropkick and a power bomb and you completely buy them. I think Bill Watts would have had a hard time objecting. The dropkick came early from Schuhmann and Finlay sold it like a shot to the gut. Finlay's selling makes a lot of this. He was a guy who just got it. When he sold the belt shots from Schuhmann, it only made his own belt shots later (which were both great punches and these nasty short whips in the corner) immediately more potent. The finishing stretch was a bit wonky but also kind of great. Finlay hits the world's biggest tombstone but isn't satisfied with getting the ten count and lays in a few more belt shots instead of taking the W. That ultimately lets Schuhmann come back and they get creative for a beat-the-count ending that let the fans celebrate with Franz but had Fit keep his heat and have a legitimate gripe for a rematch.

ER: This might be my favorite Finlay performance of all the German Finlay we've watched so far. It's a real meat and potatoes street fight, with both men showing up looking like 90s European working class Jack Burtons in their torn light wash jeans (Finlay giving us a show with some tears right under the butt cheeks) and ripped up white shirts (Finlay even has some Asian mysticism on his shirt, just like Jack), and Finlay just lays right into Schuhmann. Finlay punches Schuhmann at a ton of awful angles, kicks him in the meat of the back and the spine, wraps a belt around his fist and punches some more. Finlay is so strong at setting up comeback spots and openings for Schuhmann, building to a big cool clothesline off the middle buckles from Franz. The belt shots were a cool equalizer, and Finlay makes Schuhmann's belt shots feel appropriately nasty. And that's really the strength of Finlay's selling, is that he always perfectly grasps just how much he should be selling something. He's not out there acting like his skin is getting flayed off, he's showing the stinging pain and putting over these shots in a way that makes both of their games look stronger. 

Finlay pulls off a street fight powerbomb and made it look like something you'd see in a MMA fight, a powerbomb that looked like Schuhmann absolutely could not have stopped it. It wasn't Sapp/Hoost where Sapp was able to just lift Hoost however he wanted, it was just Finlay using his expert knowledge of physics to snatch and grab a big dude and quickly plant him. The tombstone was nuts, with Finlay aiming to punish his own knees as much as Schuhmann's spinal column, really leaping and dropping down at a wicked diagonal (and, it must be noted, completely protecting Schuhmann on something that looked crippling). Finlay even made an unsatisfying finish actually satisfy, taking an awesome bump getting sprung from the apron over the ropes to the other side (a less dangerous but more unique and fun bump than his great bump past the ringpost earlier in the match), making it look like Schuhmann had vaulted him 8 feet. I liked Franz more than the rest of the gang here, but Finlay was god level in this match. A truly magnificent street fight performance, from a man who I think makes pro wrestling look better than anyone else.

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Lucha Worth Watching: More 1999 Mr. Niebla!

Mr. Niebla/Brazo de Plata/Atlantis vs. Villano III/Apolo Dantes/Shocker CMLL 9/10/99

ER: This is mostly a big rudo mugging to set up next week's tag, and it works. The entire primera is the rudos stomping down the tecnicos, ending when Dantes gave Porky a headlock takeover and kept choking him (while the others stomped him) until Porky started holding his chest and shaking. I love matches where Porky works in a heart attack spot. Babe Richard can't do much for Porky until the stretcher arrives, so all he does is pull Porky's waistband away from his belly. "Give this man some space, his pants are too tight!" The rudos kick at Porky to roll him out of the ring, and he lands hard on his side. Shocker was great here, breaking out big things like a double springboard elbowdrop, big missile dropkicks, and avoiding Niebla like the plague. The second Niebla would gain any bit of ground Shocker would hightail it out of the ring. V3 was the real thug of the beatdown, walking into frame and punching the nearest tecnico, yanking at Atlantis's mask, and holding guys for Shocker to hit with missile dropkicks. I loved how V3 would hang in to the last second, bumping himself for the dropkick instead of letting Niebla go a split second early. When the tecnicos make their big comeback  (nearly 75% of the way into the match, which had been completely rudo dominated up until then) it's really fun, with Atlantis/V3 pairing off and Niebla finally getting Shocker. Niebla hits a really nice moonsault off the top to the floor on him, and Atlantis/V3 give us a nice sneak preview of their huge mask match just a half year away, with V3 barely kicking out of a smooth rana and eventually getting caught in la Atlantida.

Mr. Niebla/Atlantis vs. Villano III/Shocker CMLL 9/17/99

ER: Great, bloody tag match, the kind where the tecnicos win by default when the refs stop the damn match due to the tecnicos getting their asses beaten too violently. This is a super libre tag, and the Atlantis/Niebla team certainly bleed enough to make it so. Niebla is sporting killer all red gear that I don't think I've ever seen, and after this massacre it's clear that he should have debuted all white gear instead. This is a real mean Shocker performance. He is right on Niebla and gives him a helluva battering, at one point punching him several times right in the ear before Niebla could get back in the ring, always running at him with boots (including his great running full extension high kick), always beating at Niebla with pure scorn. Niebla makes a nice brief comeback, ducking a tandem clothesline and coming backing with a well timed tope en reversa, and a tope that knocks Shocker into the seats. But this was about the rudos being out for all of the blood, and both Niebla and Niebla give us a couple of great lucha bloodlettings. At one point Niebla is hung upside down in the corner and the rudos just use Atlantis as a battering ram, running from the opposite side of the ring, over and over, with Niebla and Atlantis only given mercy when a ref takes the Atlantis battering ram and the thing gets thrown out. After the match Shocker beats Niebla to the floor, booting right in the head several times. Shocker looked like a real monster here, total rudo asshole. It was the kind of beating you might see in a violent apuestas match, not the kind of beating to set up an apuestas match, and that's fine by me.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 7/22/20

What Worked

Eddie Kingston vs. Cody Rhodes

ER: I wasn't sure who to expect when it was announced a "top independent star" would be challenging Cody. My first thought was Hero, my second thought was Kingston, my third thought was "someone I don't care about nearly as much as Hero or Kingston". I think we've been just about the loudest Eddie Kingston drum beaters on the internet this past decade, and not only was he our favorite wrestler of 2019, but both Phil and I agreed that he was the #1 wrestler in the world. This is a great get for AEW, and you can bet the beautiful eyes of Eddie Kingston's mother that I am excited. This is Eddie Kingston, in his debut, getting to do every single thing that makes him great against the top guy in the company, and I can't imagine a better debut. Kingston talks a bunch of trash to Arn (actually surprised it didn't lead to any kind of moment where Arn throws a left at him, especially once it became No DQ), incredibly threatening to gouge his eye out if he keeps "throwing Murder Ones his way", and clowns Cody into accepting a No DQ stip.

This match, again, is everything that any Kingston fan could - and any pro wrestling fan - could want out of a match. Kingston is a great foil for Cody, and Cody wasn't afraid to lean right into having an Eddie Kingston match. Cody goes right in on Kingston's head with hard punches, a straight overhand right to the jaw, and some of the best headlock punches I've seen in a year. Kingston lands heavy chops and the best desperation bar fight offense in the game, grabbing at Cody's face, ear, hair, just digging nails in to break holds. Kingston is my favorite injury salesman in the game, bringing that cumulative damage finer than anyone since Kikuchi. It's not in your face, it doesn't guarantee the match will lead to a "work the limb" match, it's just a 38 year old banged up man not sure what part might give out. Kingston and I were born the same year. I went out jogging after work today and sometimes when I jog for too long I get a twinge on the inside of my right shoulder blade. Don't know why it's there, don't know what caused it, but I'm pushing 40 and I have weird aches. Kingston plays those aches better than anyone. His knee injury wasn't always the focus, but it was used to set up cheapshots and smart attacks. Kingston crumpling on an Irish whip is a spot that I love, but a spot that I've seen played way too melodramatically, and Kingston is a guy who knows how to hit just the right notes. I like how he blurs the lines between doing something like that just to land a cheap low blow on Cody, or doing the low blow as a last resort. It's the sign of a smart, confident wrestler that he doesn't need to show his hand, just leaves us speculating.

I cannot believe thumbtacks got involved, and I can't believe Cody was crazy enough to get powerbombed into those tacks. Eddie Kingston debuted on national television, and powerbombed the face of the company into thumbtacks. What?! I would have liked one more beat before Kingston tapped to the figure 4, something like King grabbing a handful of tacks and grinding them into Cody to force a break, but King played such strong attention to the knee that you can't argue with the quick tap. What an incredible segment, the kind of thing that should put Kingston on everyone's radar.

PAS: Pretty much the platonic ideal of What Worked. Eddie is one of all time favorite wrestlers, and while the EVOLVE show on the Network didn't let him do his thing, AEW gave us every bit of peak King. We got a great promo to start it off, establishing him immediately as a long time veteran tough guy who was going to make the most of his last chance. Then he actually integrated that story into the match, constantly ripping at the eyes, tearing at the face, throwing low blows, even breaking out a bag of thumbtacks. We have written a William Vollmann novel amount of text on Kingston's masterful body part selling. It is the thing he does as good as any wrestler ever, and his knee selling in this match was perfect. Him tweaking it early, attempting to walk it off, stomp it out, and how it slowly minute by minute betrayed him, leading to his downfall. Kingston has always been the guy who has fallen a bit short, that has been the story arc of his career. I am not sure if Eddie gets another AEW shot (if they have any sense they bring him back, #SignEddieKingston was even trending on Twitter), but if this is the only chance he gets I can't imagine a more perfect one match story.


-MJF has been one of the best squash match workers in AEW, always bringing the right amount of stiffness and intensity while showing just enough ass to give his opponent a little dignity. MJF showing that Garrison got under his skin with a "you got beat" comment is a strong aspect of his character, just enough of a peak that he's not quite as confident as he plays.

-Ricky Starks blindsiding Darby looked great, really flying down the ramp and smacking him. Cage hitting that big powerbomb into the ring looked great too.

-Bucks/Butcher and Blade brawl wasn't perfect, but it's a cool thing to have on the show as a change of pace. Blade was good at bumping around a kitchen (shame we didn't get a Sudden Death kitchen fight though), loved Matt Jackson's big flip dive out of the semi trailer, dug Nick getting lawn darted right into his own large face on the truck door. The big stunt spots played well, the fun stuff like Blade eating a superkick and falling into an up escalator played well, it was all fun. You don't need a match like this every show, but it's good to have something like this for flavor.

-Who was that ginger who got his head thrown up through a ceiling tile, landed hard, and then got dumped even harder by Archer into a trash can? Because that guy is awesome.

-Main event tag was good, felt like a cool ramped up house show main event, and Jericho is someone who has decades of experience working crowd pleasing house show main events. Jericho uses slightly different versions of his act depending on which Inner Circle member he's teaming with. I can't decide if I like Jericho/Sammy or Jericho/Hager more as a team, they both bring different elements. Sometimes I'm more into a stooging match and sometimes I'm more into a bully match, and  tonight I was into Jericho teaming with and being inspired by a bully. Hager has the dumbest face imaginable, a guy who always has his mouth open, but when he closes it you wish he would open it, but then he hangs it open again and you know he's unbearable when chewing food. But he's been real good in AEW as nothing but a Mongo Smash type dumb jock. He's not clean and not smooth about it, but I like him just taking guys down and lurching after them. Fun tag match to round out a very good night of wrestling.


What Didn't Work

-I've been really impressed with MJF's AEW work, but that's a tough call to have MJF come out to do a "Get in your opponent's face in the ring" promo in the segment directly following an Eddie Kingston segment doing just that. That's sending Kajagoogoo out on the stage after Napalm Death.

-Cool to see Ivelisse back on TV, but the match as a whole didn't work for me. They went out to have one of those compact "We're in a WAR" epics and it would have been more interesting for them to work a match more suited for the time they were given. I just can't get into a short match that needs to include a slow motion Godspell curtain call heavy breathing stand and trade. Both of their "big" high kicks looks like they were thrown at half speed. This had moments, and I'd like to see them both turn up in the Dynamite women's division, but this fell short.

-Page/Angels wasn't helped by mostly taking place during a commercial break (which is an immediate mute from me), but the timed step sequences didn't look great, Angels threw bad mounted punches (Dark Order need to do a Team Building weekend and work on their mounted punches), and a lot of stuff looked like they were focusing too hard on steps instead of where strikes landed. Page's lariat looked good, but a lot of this didn't.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Robin! Royal! Hessle! Liehn! Petit Prince! Louis! Noced! Richard!

Vic Hessle/Bert Royal vs. Edmund Liehn/Guy Robin 9/11/58

SR: JIP 2/3 falls match of which we get about 23 minutes. We join about just as the first fall is decided with a spinning toe hold of all things. After that, this is pretty much an all out brawl. Liehn & Robin are all over this, buckling the Brits to the corner and taking them apart like a leaner Anderson brothers. This is the only time we see Liehn, and I really liked him here, a car salesman looking stocky guy who looked like he was trying to pull peoples head off and not holding back with punches and forearms. Robin always looks great in these matches drawing heat and being a pesky shit, and he was great here once again diving off the top rope to knee people in the back. The brief bit where he just decided to slap the shit out of Royal with Royal taking him down and looking like he was gonna kill him had to be one of the best moments in this whole project so far. The job of Hessle & Royal was mostly to just hand out great looking forearms and uppercuts, and that they did. Hessle is the father of Bert & Vic Faulkner, so it‘s cool to have him on tape. He didn‘t do much extraordinary but he looked like a surly barrel chested dude from the local pub. He gave one of the heels a pretty painful looking face massage during a pin attempt and that is what you want from an elderly veteran type face in a tough brawl. Bert Royal is once again dynamite in this. He is so energetic when it‘s time forearm the shit out of someone, and his fast, super-vicious arm assault that left the other guy broken on the mat was awesome.

PAS: I loved every second of this, you had three barrel chested brawlers and Royal who was awesome at using his athleticism to hurt people.  Royal has this cool spot where he climbs up his opponent and knees him right in the face and was willing to throw just as hard as his opponents. Hessle had some of the most violent monkey flips I have seen he uses his stubby legs to just fling his opponent on his head. There is a point at the beginning of the third fall where it seems like everyone stepped out of the script. Robin starts slapping Royal, Royal takes him down (after Robin stonewalls a couple of attempts) and grinds his forearm into his face, which brings in Liehn who starts hammerfisting Royal, which brings in Hessle to throw a slap to the ear. It felt like something you might see in a Japanese interpromotional match. Finish was incredible with Royal just ripping and tearing at Liehn's arm with a spinning arm hold and knees.

MD: Very interesting match. It's our first look at Liehn. Robin is one of my favorites. Royal had the amazing match against Oliver and Vic Hessle is actually his dad. This is 2/3 falls and we come in around 15 mins in at the end of the first fall though we have another 20 plus of action. I liked Liehn right out of the gate. He comes off as big stooging blowhard which works well with Robin's manic alacrity. The difference between this and some of the Delaporte tags is more subtle than striking. The general idea is the same: cheating and swarming with big moments of babyface comeback and dominance. Here though, the comeback setpieces were fewer and shorter and the swarming was both more chaotic and somehow less cooperative. Instead of the elaborate counters and escapes of French Catch, the heels had one goal and only one goal, to get their opponents back to their corner. The ref was all but useless even as there was goozling and choking with the tag rope and Robin coming in again and again with knees off the top. In this regard it almost felt like a lucha trios where the tecnicos were just unable to stop the rudos momentum for almost mystical reasons. The heels were akin to rabid animals just tearing away and doing anything they could to keep the advantage. It made sense, for whenever they lost it, they were punished. There just seemed to be less orchestration behind it without someone like Delaporte directing traffic. Hessle was big and rugged, with meaty, satisfying punches. Royal was spirited, showing a lot of the righteous fire we've seen out of visiting Brits in this footage. Ultimately, this had less big moments (though it had a few like a big battering ram in the corner and the miscommunication between father and son that let the heels take the second fall) but created a very vivid feeling of dirty warfare. That'll stick with you, as will Royal's absolute destruction of Liehn's arm at the end, one of the best maulings to end a match and force a submission you'll ever see.

ER: This was nonstop French action that we've come to expect, a breathless pace a year before Breathless. All of this era Catch that we've seen has been great, but every few weeks we pull something out that is a cut above its peers. This was a perfect use of all four men, with Royal/Robin being the real marquee pairing while Hessle and Liehn brought a ton of personality to go with big clubbing arms. This whole thing was a real fight, the kind of match I can watch a few times and notice new things each time. Royal is such a scrapper, undersized compared with the other men but he sure doesn't act like he's undersized. He hits as hard as anyone here and had inventive ways of overcoming any size differences. I loved how he climbed up Liehn, almost like he was going to do a monkey flip and then thought "why stop there?" He climbs up bit by bit, clenching his neck with both hands, one leg at a time, before boosting off a thigh with a great knee. It was nice payback for Liehn practically cranking Royal's head off with a cravat earlier. Hessle brings a cool dad charisma to this, like a Catch Pat Patterson, and his scraps with Robin may have been my favorite parts of the match. Robin took out his hairline on the immaculately coiffed Hessle, locking in one of the sickest chokes I've seen. He hooked his arm around Hessle's neck like he was going for a judo throw but just leaned into the choke, throwing a punch to the kidneys when Hessle almost broke it. I loved Hessle coming in throughout the match to break up the heels, and how Liehn would subtly stooge for him, the best being one punch that knocked him back on his heels and onto his butt, holding his face and head like he wasn't expecting it. The finish was joy filled savagery, Royal twisting and kneeing and leaping on Liehn's arm with glee and a glazed over rage. It almost looked like Robin didn't want to step in and stop it because he didn't want any part of that Andy Capp dust cloud.


Le Petit Prince/Francis Louis vs. Daniel Noced/Jacky Richard 2/22/71

SR:2/3 Falls match going about 30 minutes. The evolution of the lightweight style in France is interesting to watch. Basically, they still did the same moves as 15 years earlier, but everything smoother, and with a formula in place, making these matches approach the same rhythm, similiar to a Lucha trios. You had the Prince and his partner Louis looking fantastic as you‘d expect, with lots of stupidly fast armdrags and everything being executed with a sense of struggle, and also a real standout performance from Daniel Noced. Not only was Noced a great base and dance partner for all the flashy shit in the match, when the time was right he just kicked the shit out of the Prince and even chucked Francis Louis over the top rope. The heel beatdown on the Prince was pretty intense with him eating a ton of kicks to the ribs and body shots as well as getting hammered into the mat over and over. It‘s also the kind of things that people who aren‘t used to European wrestling can watch and easily get into, as there were multiple cut offs building to the Prince finally getting the hot tag and Louis rolling in to give the heels what they had coming to them. The ring being pelted with garbage is an iconic sight too. The Prince remains the focus of the match though, as he soon eats a nasty posting. Noced takes a spill to the outside and a near riot breaks out, with folks surrounding him and the police having to break the scenery up. The ending with the Prince covered in blood looking to get a piece of Noced and towel being thrown in was something else too.

MD: What made this work as well as almost anything we've seen in the collection so far was the marrying of the slickness of Petit Prince matches with the patience and discipline of a narrative-heavy Southern Tag. It's equal parts spectacular and accessible; plenty of style, plenty of substance. We're talking shine-heat-comeback (and a breathtaking shine at that), with the added story element of Prince demanding to get back in, again and again, when he wasn't ready to fight in order to get revenge. When I say discipline, I mean that while there were a lot of illegal double-teams behind the ref's back to build up heat, the ref missing the hot tag didn't happen until right before the end of the first fall. They held it off until it'd mean the most and then almost immediately went to the finish of the fall afterwards. When you have a two-out-of-three-falls structure, you can do that. That's what built the fans up to a fever pitch and that allowed things to boil over as they went into the second fall. By that point the crowd was already throwing things into the ring. Obviously, we've seen that sort of thing before elsewhere. What really made this stand out here, though, was that this was awash in the 70s French juniors style. The hope spots here were Prince utilizing more and more elaborate escape attempts only for his opponent to either hang on to the hold or immediately thereafter cut him off and put him right back in. Basically, it leveraged what we've been seeing all throughout 57 and 58, the way they strung together matches with long, dogged holds and frequent escape attempts, and overlaid that onto the southern tag format. When your face in peril is one of the most athletic and agile wrestlers ever, a smaller underdog, someone who can portray a singular fire and passion, and your heels are a bunch of real goons: Noced who was an uppity bully and Richard who just had this meanstreak intensity to him, well, you're going to get results. Add in some color and that's a riot. The finish was equal parts triumphant and satisfying and heartbreaking and leaving you wanting so much more. Exceptional stuff.

PAS: This was awesome stuff, a true discovery. Much of the Prince we have seen before was like an early Rey Jr. exhibition match, like Rey vs. Psicosis in WAR. This was more like Rey vs. Eddie on Smackdown, a complete violent match with a dramatic arc and huge payoff. We still get some of the crazy takedowns and evasions from the Prince and he also gets the shit kicked out him, including Noced grabbing him by the side of the head and driving him into the mat temple first. We get a real hyped up hot tag with Louis throwing big uppercuts. Prince gets lawn darted head first into the ringpost and comes up bloody, and we get an awesome fired up bloody babyface standing tall moment, with the crowd trying to murder Noced. This is in the highest level of matches we have seen in this project, really an all timer.

ER: This was spectacular, like seeing a Michinoku Pro trios for the first time, except I'm not sure any of them were as good as Le Petit Prince (and those guys were GOOD). His sequences are so tight, so believable in their physics, this small man knowing exactly which way to swing the pendulum to make the most of his momentum. There are plenty of small wrestlers now who just expect larger wrestlers to bump for everything they do, and that's what happens. Most of the time, it looks absurd. Prince connects all those dots and makes it look crazy if one of his big armdrags didn't take someone down. He moves so fast that he makes typical time stand still moments look incredible, like when he crawls through his opponents legs to get the drop on them. He actually scrambles through opponents' legs fast enough that he is back on the attack before they turn around in real time! Noced and Richard are great heels for him to work his magic against, as Noced especially is a great base for his flying, and then cruel as can be when the tables turn. Louis is a wonderful babyface partner, taking a couple big bumps to the floor, always ready to fight for Prince. This whole thing really jumps up another level once the heel team starts cutting Prince off, with Noced and Richard putting the boots to them, like two Sonnys giving Carlo twice the beating he deserved. Noced had this running kick that was greater than any punt I've seen in wrestling the past several years. These two were just burying kicks in Prince's ribs and off the side of his head, to the point where a riot felt like a reasonable reaction. Fans immediately swarm Noced the second he hits the floor, with one tall Daniel Stern motherfucker leaping hard into the fray with a cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth. That was an organic reaction inspired by tremendous ring work, the kind of match where you know you're watching something special the whole way through.


PAS: Hell of a week, which places two matches on our All Time MOTY list, with Le Petit Prince tag beating out  Tony & Roy St. Clair v. Vic Faulkner & Bert Royal for 1971. Bert Royal got bumped out of the 70s, but he stays on our All Time MOTY list with 1958.


ALL TIME MOTY LIST

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Eddie Kingston is Behind The Diner Selling Marijuana to a Minor

Eddie Kingston vs. Thomas Shire vs. Joe Black vs. Matt Kenway AWE 11/3/19 - FUN

PAS: Kingston vs. Shire was one of my favorite matches of the year, but I never think this really got going. I did like that they mainly focused on one on one matchups, rather then running through a bunch of complex four way spots, and Kingston and Shire were really throwing heat both at each other and the other guys in the match. Black has a great look, he looks like an even more jacked Sabian, but I didn't have a great sense of his ring work and had an awesome loony dog collar match in 2020 . This was built up as a big Kingston win because of his history with Black, and I feel like they might have some good singles matches in them, hopefully AWE uploads more of their back catalogue to IWTV


Eddie Kingston/Homicide vs. Butcher and the Blade Empire State Wrestling 11/23/19 - FUN

ER: This doesn't quite rise up to the level I thought it could, but I'm happy we got to see these teams cross paths. Things felt almost a little too structured, especially during the parts where Butcher and the Blade were in control. I was impressed how quick Homicide was moving around, really working quick sequences even when it was setting up stupid stuff for The Blade (like that indy BS where Homicide will get knocked down with a move, hard enough that it makes him get right back to his feet, in time to get put down with another move). Kingston worked great shtick, was yelling from the apron the whole match, tagged in only to whiff on a backfist on The Butcher and gets dropped hard on the mat, then rushes to tag out. Even when Kingston is focusing more on making jokes to the crowd, he's still someone who will take a couple of high back bumps in a match. Homicide and Kingston's energy made this one for me, Kingston throwing big chops before taking a beating, and the finish was really nasty with Butcher suplexing Homicide right across Blade's knees, Blade sliding in at just the right time. This never lagged and had a lot of good, but the high floor didn't make way for a high ceiling. If they ever cross paths again I wouldn't be shocked if they did it even better. This felt more like Kingston and Homicide squaring off against Kazarian and Daniels to me.

PAS: This had it's moments but overall it didn't totally work for me. I thought Pepper Parks was pretty bad in this match. Kazarian is a good comparison, because he had that "old guy trying fast juniors wrestling" vibe to it. Butcher isn't great but he hits hard and the exchanges with Kingston were the highlights. This was house show Eddie, and he is a really great house show wrestler, shit talking, strutting, jaw jacking with the crowd. He still takes some big bumps and such. Didn't love the finish run, but the actual finish was badass. Worth watching for sure, but not a real standout.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

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The Horror Show at WWE Extreme Rules 7/19/20

ER: I am very interested in both women's title matches, and probably not anything else! I do have a perverse interest in how they're going to pull off the eyeball gimmick without making kids hate wrestling.


Kevin Owens vs. Murphy

ER: This was given more time than a typical pre-show match, but I liked the first half of the match a lot more than the second half. The first half was based around Owens throwing stiff strikes, hard shoulderblocks, big clotheslines, and I'd much rather see that. I get less interested by the time we have a too long fight on the top rope and the big nearfalls feel too performative. The best parts were always Owens shaking Murphy with elbows and crushing him with a cannonball, but I was less interested in seeing them have a Murphy match. It played better than a lot of that stuff, so Owens kept the floor high. A spirited and plenty hot opener, just not my preferred heat.

Tables Match: New Day (Big E/Kofi Kingston) vs. Cesaro/Shinsuke Nakamura

ER: This was a big moments match with plenty of cool big moments. Even on moments where the set up was longer than needed, the spot wound up paying off. I liked Nakamura's logical work around the tables, saw him smartly position them a couple of times, liked how he shoved one out of the way when rolling to the floor. I loved the spot where Kingston flew to the ground and smacked face first into a table, held there like a wall by Cesaro and Nakamura. Big E's spear through the ropes to Cesaro looked as spectacular as ever, and we should celebrate that he is still doing that spot. The final table spot looked crazy, Kofi getting drilled through those tables by Cesaro is something that would have played for two years in an ECW intro. Nobody will think about this spot after a couple weeks, but it looked crazy in the moment. The spots with the tables, in the tables match, were good! So this was fine.

Nikki Cross vs. Bayley

ER: I was excited for this one and really liked the how they started it. I bought into the idea that Nikki could pull off a flash upset. Nikki was getting smart quick roll-ups and landing heavy on several straight crossbodies for nearfalls was really engaging. I like Nikki's way of not rolling through crossbodies, but actually treating it like a potential finisher by landing hard. Her crossbody off the apron to the floor was really great, and I liked Bayley being kept on the ropes. They had a couple of fun fights in the ring skirt, and I'll always react to those. But the problem is that Nikki Cross is not good in a lot of ways. It can take her forever to get into position to deliver something, which makes disbelief suspension a lot more difficult, especially since we were supposed to believe that she had the capability of surprising Bayley. She doesn't get the reactions she could on offense because she doesn't seem to know how to peak things. She has been working a vest unzip/vest removal spot for over a year now, and it's like she never quite knows how to use a proper strap removal spot within a match. She makes it look like she's just removing a piece of clothing that got in the way. This match was one I was excited for on paper, but it kind of just wound up exposing Nikki's singles match weaknesses. I'm still into the Sasha/Bayley act, and that kept the bulk of this strong.

Seth Rollins vs. Rey Mysterio

ER: I'm...not really sure how I feel about this one? It's a weird gross idea that feels hard to pull off, while also feeling like something that nobody ever asked for. Trying to stab someone in the eye is a great way to end an I Quit match, but a match where the sole focus will be on pulling out an eye? I don't know who was asking for that. I'd also be willing to bet that someone on the writing team got the idea from watching Fulci's Zombie rather than from watching Magnum/Tully. The thing is, for a match with an insane advertised conclusion, Rey busts his ass to make this work, and Rollins comes along with him. Rey was really great at inserting Rey spots in the middle of eye spots, and he takes some wild bumps to make this match feel even more dangerous. The apron falcon arrow was sick, and he was so good at working spots around turnbuckles and ring steps. Rollins was no slouch, and I liked his ringpost shoulder bump among other things, but Rey is just too good. Trying to gouge someone's eye out on the corner of a ring step is gross stuff, and Rey plays the fear of it really well. He does great with a kendo stick jammed into the corner, really going after that Fulci eye gouge where the gap between eyeball and wood slowly closes (needed more sharp jagged splintery bits). This finish is what the finish was advertised as being. Part of me thinks "Hey that owns!" It looked disgusting and Rollins throwing up after is the kind of apex to the Grand Guignol shit they have been trying to pull off in little ways. But another part of me still just finds the stip odd and unnecessary. Plus, this is a fed that chose to only use Pirata Morgan twice and was uninterested in bringing back old and crazy PCO. I'm not sure I can trust them to know how to properly book pirate Rey.

Asuka vs. Sasha Banks

ER: This was a really great match with a monumentally stupid finish. It's pretty deflating to work through such appealing match with fine drama and an exciting build, and then completely undercut every part of it with a finish that hasn't flown in 25 years. Having a ref get taken out of commission, to be replaced by a heel wearing a ref shirt, is an idea that Vince Russo buried and resuscitated hundreds of times, a man who never learned the lessons of Pet Sematary. Just a weak an unexplainable finish to be doing in 2020. But the rest was great! Sasha has been my favorite to watch weekly these past several months, and I think her and Bayley are doing a great job essentially running television. I'd much rather see them doing what they're doing, than seeing Charlotte clogging up main events. Sasha bumped huge here and really made this feel special. She flew to the floor on a charge and flew again after getting knocked off the apron by a hip attack. She kept building her bumps to mean more the deeper we got, and the way she flew into Asuka's Germans took this to another level. Sasha can come off clumsy on big bumps, but I think she's gotten so much better at body control over the years. These suplexes looked like they really folded her in half, but going back and watching them you can see her land on her back and shoulders and fold in a way that looks like she just got dumped directly on her neck. A safer bump that looks career shortening is a smart move, and it looked killer. Sasha's comebacks were good, and the Banks Statements was used really effectively. It's a great finisher that plays even better with a flexible opponent, and Asuka was really good at making it matter as she scrambled to the ropes. Both of their kicks looked good, I loved Asuka turning a Banks top rope arm drag into a nasty knee lift to the chin, I was really loving all of this. But that finish is a real deflator.

Dolph Ziggler vs. Drew McIntyre

ER: I thought this was really good. There isn't much in WWE I am less interested in than 2020 Dolph Ziggler matches, and yet this was a great title match that made great use of an intentionally lopsided stipulation. The stip (No DQ for Ziggler) made him more interesting. Ziggler throwing chairs at someone's knee in between taking painful throws over the announce table and into hard ringside objects he set up is just going to be way better than a typical Ziggler match. Ziggler was great at turning his normally athletic bumps into actually painful bumps, and Drew was wrecking him with glee. Ziggler took a great bump into the ringpost on the floor, ate several sick belly to belly suplexes in and out of ring (a cool fast on in the ring and a wild one into/over the announce table), and my favorite was probably McIntyre's awesome vertical suplex on the floor that really splatted Ziggler. Ziggler's cut off spots were strong, and I really got into the stip of him being able to cheat to stifle any momentum. The table spot was big, and they parsed out the nearfalls to keep the excitement strong. The finish was good too, and I'm unsure if that's because it's an actual good finish or that many of the other finishes have been bad enough that a competent finish feels like visionary genius. I wouldn't have guessed this would be the strongest match of the show, but it was and that's part of the fun.

Swamp Fight

ER: WWE is aiming, or more likely only capable of reaching, for deep cut straight to Netflix horror and those movies that used to be on the bottom row of Redbox kiosks. They need to surprise us by giving us a cinematic match that is based on Portrait of a Lady on Fire. We all saw the Matt Hardy stuff several years ago and I can't get too excited these days about a weekend Friday the 13th project.


ER: The show underwhelmed and underdelivered, but Asuka/Banks gave us a really good 15 minutes and McIntyre/Ziggler was an unexpectedly strong showing. Rey had a great performance in a weird situation, and other than the Swamp Fight the floor was high. But the show also felt a lot longer than it actually was. And that kind of speaks to the weirdness of this show. A show with a strong men's title match, a strong women's match, and a great Rey performance feels like a show I'd leave behind fondly. And yet we're here.

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