New Footage Friday: POWER TWINS EXPLODE! MASCARITA! FLAIR! OLE! GRUNDY'S EXPLODE! VAMP! CHICANA!

 Ric Flair vs. Ole Anderson NWA 10/17/81

MD: I've never heard anyone talk about this one, so it's new enough for our purposes. We don't have nearly enough 80-81 babyface Flair for my liking, so every bit helps. There's a different energy to him than in later years, or the same energy but channeled differently. It's a strap match where they spend the first chunk with Ole trying to grind on holds (maybe because this followed what was likely a chop-heavy Wahoo vs Piper match) and then later escalate to the win attempts and using the strap as the weapon. The crowd and the later match violence make the earlier parts ok even if they're not what you immediately want. They flub it once and Ole touches all corners and that gives the fans some confusion but everyone recovers and the run-in finish still feels pretty satisfying. 

PAS: I always enjoy when Ole works an arm, he has a really workmanlike sadism to him, like a cruel prison guard in a movie.  He doesn't really care this is a strap match, he is going to tear up the arm and there isn't much anyone can do to stop him. Babyface Flair has a real kinetic energy too him, and his fired up comeback is like something you would expect from Eddie Guerrero. The strapping near the end was nasty stuff and I like how both guys got more desperate. This was a really good match, a chance to see Flair against a rare opponent and see how he adjusts to a different type of match. 

Vampiro Casanova/Sangre Chicana vs. Solomon Grundy/Aaron Grundy 92

MD: Hey, if we count Flair and Ole as cousins, this is a family feud week on NFF. This was a parejas match where the losing team had to then fight in an apuestas match. Aaron is Mike Shaw and he starts out hugging Vampiro before going full rudo on him. Chicana bumped and stooged for Grundy well enough but he was definitely the least featured guy in this one. I liked Shaw's vertical big splash foul as it felt like a very appropriate lucha finisher. They built well to Grundy vs Grundy though there's never a lot to these post-tag apuesta matches. This was fun but not as fun as a straight tag between these guys would have been.

PAS: You want to see more Sangre Chicana in the mix when you look at the on paper match up, and we got a whole heck of a lot of Vampiro. I enjoyed the Grundy's use of their fat, and I agree the splash foul was great stuff. Still this underwhelmed for a big stips match, and the final showdown was much more about the outside interference than two fat guys in overalls hitting each other. 

ER: I actually thought this was a great Vampiro performance, which isn't really a sentence that I find myself typing that often. Vampiro bumped all around the ring and ringside for Aaron Grundy's fatness, and when it was time to fire back he threw actual good punches and then shook his fist out after! It is wrestling fact that any wrestler who shakes out their fist after a punch - regardless of quality of punch - is automatically a Good Wrestler. There are zero examples countering this. You shake out your fist after a punch, you are good. Similarly, if you are a heel and point to your head after doing basically anything, you are automatically a Good Wrestler. This whole thing is chaos, as the Grundy's are attacking each other and Vampiro is attacking Chicana, loved when Aaron hit Solomon on the apron with a chair and then turned right around and hit Vampiro. This is a man with a strategy! The chaos was fun even though it made for a bad traditional match, I loved how the big splashes looked and loved the constantly shifting allegiances. Also, looking at Shaw, and it's unfathomable that Vince didn't get excited seeing him as an overalls wearing hillbilly. That is a wrestler look Vince adores, and it's so weird he opted to turn him into Bastion Booger, with gear that just cannot be explained by anyone. Shaw looked cool with the shaved head and beard, but apparently Vince saw him with the shaved head and thought "You know? Ditch the beard. Also, the eyebrows."

Konnan/Mascarita Sagrada/Wendi Richter/Power Twin 1 vs. Mario Savoldi/Espectrito/Madusa/Power Twin 2 IWAS 7/93

MD: Absolute blast. There was so much going on here, so many spots, so much riffing and goofing, with Ted Petty (unmasked) being a grade A stooge. You could hear a ton of chatter here, and some of that was Konnan directing traffic, but a lot of it ended up sounding like a Popeye cartoon or Army of Darkness or whatever, with Madusa muttering at everyone and just all sorts of foolishness. Power Twins explode was not something I knew I wanted to see but they really leaned into it. This was all over the place, from some really good mini action to Madusa just ambling around the ring with no one letting her do anything, and it fell apart multiple times, but it was so wildly entertaining that it was exactly what we needed during this insane week.

PAS: This was a bunch of fun, really the perfect kind of touring match to bring to a place like the Philippines. I am really surprised that these kind of AAA mixed matches never caught on in the US, great way to fill a card and multi man matches are a great way to hide limited workers. I think Power Twin vs. Power Twin was my favorite part, as they had almost a Brazos interaction with each other with both guys alternating as the aggrieved Super Porky. I thought the heels playing catch with Mascarita was fun, and the payoff of Espectrito being too heavy to lift was great. Fun Petty performance too, it is strange he ended up only getting to big leagues late in his career, he was such a talented performer.  

ER: I agree with Phil, the AAA man/woman/mini/exotico match was one of my favorite match formats in lucha, and always played great in front of non-lucha crowds (I always remember the great version of that match that happened in Hustle). This one is a bizarre and cool twist on that format as it replaces the exotico on each side a freaking POWER TWIN! Adding a large adult twins to either side of a multiman just automatically makes a match recommendable. One unheralded great thing about the Power Twins was that not only did they wear matching singlets and have the same shaped body (I've never understood that, do they eat they exact same meals and do the exact same exercises and walk the same number of steps? How are twins this old still this identical?) but they are also balding in the EXACT same way and that rules. It's easy to like a match where it looks like everyone is having a fun time together, and these people were clearly loving performing in front of this crowd. The fans ate up all the Sagrada/Espectrito exchanges, and they brought a lot of unique shtick that really impressed me. What impressed me was the fact that it seemed like everyone in the match was wholly involved in the shtick, they were all working the bit. Often you get one guy who is good at it (and here that was Ted Petty and stunningly Madusa) and the others work a straight match and let that guy work his shtick. But we had some great group effort on bits here, and that's where the match excelled. I loved Madusa's chatter, she was so good at setting up cheating or setting up Petty to do something fun. Ted Petty worked this match like a more pratfall comedy version of The Sheik, and well, obviously that was going to be great. My favorite thing was when he ran into the ring to attack a Power Twin, and then immediately after paused, wondering if he had attacked the correct Twin,. Honestly the main thing this was missing - and would have been legendary - is if the Power Twins had switched teams at some point and then did a "we're upset because nobody noticed" bit.