New Footage Friday: CRYBABY BOB!! SANTO! SUPER PARKA! ! DUSTY! PEDRO! FUJINAMI! INOKI!

Crybaby Bob Corby vs. Sheik Lawrence of Arabia NWA-Los Angeles 2/19/51

MD: Eight minutes of pure entertainment. Corby's definitely my kind of heel: always on, totally committed, and able to be both dangerous and credible with his offense and a complete coward when he loses advantage. He was lightning quick when taking offense, like how he was ready for Lawrence's initial somersault, but then he was just as quick to try to dive behind the ref when the tide turned. And the fans responded accordingly. A group of female fans in the front row throwing jelly beans at a heel because he tried to pull the tights to get a pin is the most 1950s Americana thing possible and a fun counterpoint to all the French Catch we've been seeing lately.

PAS: This was a blast. Corby was a really fun over the top bad guy. I could almost see him as an oafish bank robber in a Keystone Cops short. The fact that he enraged the mothers in the crowd so much that they were chucking jelly beans at him, just incredible stuff. He controlled much of the match with his antics and hard shots, but I liked the little glimpses of Sheik Lawrence we got as well. He seemed really agile, and his Argentinian Backbreaker into a airplane spin into a backslide was a nifty bit of business, someone should jack that finisher.

ER: Loved this look at the LA wrestling scene from a time where my grandpa would have been watching. Crybaby Bob Corby is getting reactions from women in the crowd from the second his name is announced, and it's cool to see a Sheik gimmick as a handsome soft cheeked babyface (as if the next 70 years of wrestling weren't about to happen). This of course is the infamous TE Lawrence, whose pro wrestling career would be made into a real crowd pleaser of a film just a decade later. Lawrence had this fun spinny pirouette bumps off of Crybaby Bob's cheapshot punches, spinning into the mat like he was in a Looney Tunes short. Bob threw several rabbit punches into the back of the Sheik's head, then would run crying and cowering to the ref any time Sheik mounted any kind of comeback. Crybaby had several early variations on Eddie Guerrero's running on his knees to hug his partner at the waist, always trying to get the ref in between he and Lawrence. The ref was a former boxer from the 30s, Cecil Payne. He was billed as 5'5" in his boxing days but he towers over these two like Sterling Hayden, so either those numbers are wrong or Bob and Sheik are 5'2 with good posture. The women of all ages kept getting more loud and upset at Bob's cowardice, and I absolutely adore stuff like that in old pro wrestling. Phil accurately described the awesomeness of Sheik's finish run; some small but strong guy like Lorcan or Gulak could pull that off convincingly and make it work in a match.


Antonio Inoki/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Dusty Rhodes/Pedro Morales NJPW 10/26/79

PAS: Fun opportunity to see two of the most iconic babyfaces in wrestling history work cheap shot heel, and they are pretty great at it. Dusty has such an iconic vibe, and it is cool that we get to see him apply that vibe to evil rather than to good. Match moves along at a nice pace and then really kicks into gear near the end, with Fujinami hitting an awesome bullet tope which sent Pedro flying into chairs. I wonder how many topes Morales took during his career? It can't be a ton, but he took it like a seasoned luchador.

MD: This was a lot of fun. There are only so many heel Dusty matches in existence and while it's a little different when he's a foreigner, he was so good in the role. I don't know if many other heel Pedro matches exist (do any?), and while the first couple of minutes of him being on the wrong end of Fujinami's headlock (which was a strange place for him to be considering he was the one working the shine for most of his career) wasn't exactly dynamic, he seemed to enjoy himself once they started to heel it up. Dusty was great at playing chickenshit and then seizing upon weakness when he saw it. When they did take over, it was by cutting off the ring, making quick tags, frequent double teams, illegal and legal, and goozling there opponent. Once Fujinami made the first hot tag to Inoki, they were just relentless, with the ref admonishing one while the other cheated away and then vice versa. The fans were hugely into this, just a constant buzz, and every time it went to the floor, the beatdown became electric. It had an almost lucha feel with the momentum shifts mattering more than the tags (even rolling hot ones) and with Dusty fouling Inoki from behind once it was obvious he'd taken control to end the first fall. For every cool thing, like Pedro's double stomp or Dusty working over Inoki's stomach through the ropes from the floor, there were certain things that looked iffy like Pedro not making it on a whip or Dusty's hilarious pile driver on the floor, but some of that was counterbalanced by the fact Dusty was doing a pile driver on the floor to get heat, you know? Good look at some legends and a rare look at two of them playing roles that they sparsely played by 79.

ER: I've seen very little heel Dusty, and I'm sure I've never seen any heel Pedro, and I'm pretty sure I'm in love. With the crowd rapturously behind Inoki and an impossibly fired up babyface performance from Fujinami, it was a perfect canvas for two super charismatic babyfaces to show off their heel side. Heel Pedro is a real revelation for me. I've seen enough hot comeback dropkick Pedro, but I've never seen "kick someone directly in the ear" Pedro. Morales was such a thug in this match, it was nuts! He was landing shots on Inoki like Inoki was some young lion, and Dusty was this super cocky opportunist sneaking shots where he could. I loved the spot where Pedro was holding Inoki in a full nelson and trying to let Dusty get in close for a cheap shot, but Inoki keeps kicking his legs out at Dusty, fighting every piece of dirty work. Everything on the floor was really electric, and the Fujinami tope is a real all timer. You can see him building up that head of steam and just letting loose, looked like he flew 12 feet. Matt is right about the outside brawling having a real lucha feel, and that tope just rubber stamped it. I'd love to see how rabid an Arena Mexico crowd would get for a match like this.


El Hijo Del Santo/Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Blue Demon Jr./Super Parka Lucha Libre Reynosa 2/2/08

MD: This was quite the spectacle. A couple of clips but nothing too worrisome. Lots of posturing post match after Wagner turns on Santo, but if you're going to have posturing peppered with post match brawling (and even a dive) these are two good guys to do it. Some overachieving here (Super Parka looked really spry for 2008) and the underachieving you'd expect (Blue Demon's offense looked really good; his bumping and selling less so). The star power carried this though. By 2008, Wagner was a victim of his own charisma and he'd ham it up to an extreme extent but that's what the crowd wanted. The crowd brawling when the rudos took over in the segunda looked good but we were missing a chunk of it due to the camera angles. It devolved first to mask pulling and then to lots of miscommunication between partners, including Santo hitting the somersault senton (pre-dive) on Wagner by accident. That led into the finish and the post-match posturing. Worth watching but something like this is just too weighed down by the sheer mass of its combatants to settle on being great.

PAS: There is no wrestler in history that enjoy watching go through his formula as much as I enjoy watching Santo. He pretty much just breaks out his greatest hits during the wrestling portion of this. match, and man do I love those hits, three great dives, his spinning headscissors, just awesome to watch. Pretty bizarre that Wagner and Demon would go on to have the MOTY 11 years after this match, as their exchanges weren't much here. Super Parka brought some brawling and bumping to the table, and the post match was cool. I didn't really buy the turn, they really should have had Santo hitting Wagner lead to the finish or something, because he just shrugs it off and does some two count exchanges before deciding he was pissed off and attacking Santo. I would be excited to see the singles match this sets up, hopefully that is sitting around somewhere too.