New Footage Friday: SANTO! TANK! BABA! JUMBO! DANDY! MOGUR! ICEBERG!

Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Giant Baba AJPW 5/14/77

MD: This was the final of the 77 Champion Carnival and I'm pretty sure Baba came into it worn down from dealing with Abdullah. Jumbo sensed his moment, his big opportunity, and threw everything he had to win. For the first minute or two, unfortunately, that meant containing headlocks. I was sort of regretting this one showing up. I've been spending a lot of time with 88-89 Jumbo lately, and it's a little hard to go back. Once Baba really started to fight out of it, however, the match opened up. Jumbo was determined to give him zero openings, meeting him more than half way with forearms and pure athletic aggression. Instead of the usual momentum shifts, Baba got hope spots, but Jumbo would close the gap and take back over. Ultimately, it wasn't his moment, and it took one good move for Baba to get the win. A few years later, it would have taken two or three and the match would have been the better for it. (Of course, twenty years later it would have taken ten or fifteen and the match would have been the worse for it). Still, everyone in that crowd knew what they had just witnessed: Jumbo dominating even a weakened Baba. He may not have won the match but he took another step towards what he would soon after become.

ER: This was maybe the most I've ever seen Baba dominated in a match, and while I'm not big on Jumbo from this era, it's a cool sight to see. Jumbo goes after him and keeps muscling Baba down to the mat with headlocks and then yanking forward on his neck. Once Jumbo even did a Phillie Phanatic kind of trick where he tripped Baba, and Baba did this athletic roll backward over Jumbo and wound back up on his feet. You got this sense that Baba was kind of biding his time, and was going to come down on Jumbo twice as strong, and then when that time came there was this great buzz where the crowd realized that Baba was supposed to be coming back strong, and wasn't. Baba was being effectively outstruck and outmuscled by Jumbo and that sense of buzz and panic was really exciting. It was cool seeing Baba getting hope spots, to see him completely outgunned. It was the hierarchy at the time, but I wish we got a couple extra nearfalls at the end, let Jumbo kick out of a couple big boots or something huge. I loved Baba's spry big left boot here, and how he hung Jumbo out on his flying clothesline, but I'm picturing the crowd reaction had Jumbo gotten a shoulder up ONE last time, and I just love how great the AJPW hierarchy style worked for so long, how well trained the crowds were to recognize when someone was exceeding their usual standing. 

Kato Kung Lee/Hijo Del Santo/Mogur vs. Hijo Del Gladiador/Kung Fu/Supremo CMLL Late 80s

MD: We're obliged to watch any new Santo that comes down the pipe. This was clipped but in a sort of "good parts only" way. You still got the sense of what was happening (primera = rudo beatdown; segunda = tecnico come back; tercera = exchanges with tecnico advantage). Santo and Kung Fu were captains, and while he took the time to bully Kung Fu pretty soundly, including at least three times of just casually walking across the ring and whacking him in the skull, Santo was able to have exchanges with all the rudos. We didn't quite get enough of everyone else. For instance, the camera completely missed whatever Hijo del Gladiador used to win the segunda, we don't get much Mogur at all, and while they teased the usual Kung Fu vs Kato Kung Lee battle, it ended with the rudos taking a powder and eating the countout. What we got here was good and iconic but it just made you want the rest.

El Dandy/Gran Cochisse/Hijo Del Santo vs. Pirata Morgan/Blue Panther/Bestia Salvaje CMLL Late 80s

MD: Another clipped affair where you still get a lot of good stuff but probably not quite enough of it. We got a lot of Dandy, Cochisse, Panther, and a bit less Santo and Bestia here. Past catching a Dandy dive like a brick wall, I barely remember Pirata being in this. Cochisse was pretty game for an older guy and at least tried a bunch of stuff (the best of which was urging his body to pull off a 'rana out of a standing stretch), though he had Panther to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Dandy looked like the best guy in the world, with a beautiful comeback punch out of nowhere and a killer clothesline. Panther was good all around but it was particularly striking when they spent a good fifteen seconds highlighting him gnawing upon Dandy's hand on the outside. Not the sort of Panther you were expecting.

PAS: This was a pretty wild brawl from what we got, with a chance to see some all time greats. Santo is cool in this kind of chaos, you don't expect him to kick your ass, but he is always ready and willing. Assuming this is late 80s Dandy is going to deliver at an all world level. He hit a enziguiri with Bestia running off the ropes, which was as cool as I have ever seen that move hit. We also get the wild Dandy over the top rope floating tope, which was one of the great dives of the 20th century. This is all chopped up sadly, so you lose some of the subtle flavors, but it is great we got to see what we got to see. 

Tank/Iceberg vs. Azrael/Rainman NWA Wildside 10/30/04

MD: We don't watch a lot of death matches around here and even then, I probably see less than the other guys. The appeal is fairly obvious. Wrestling is all about helping the crowd suspend their disbelief, not necessarily to make them feel like what they're seeing is real, but to accept it in the moment as its own sustainable reality. A lot of things can help with that, logical storytelling, compelling selling, great looking offense. Presumably, however, nothing is as quick and easy as people really getting hurt and there's no proof of that quite like blood. It's like injecting that suspension of disbelief into the fans' veins instead of crafting a beautiful picture that makes them feel it naturally. The premise are that there are weapons on poles in each corner. The camera vantage point means that we see a lot of violence but not necessarily any close-ups of the result of said violence, which I'm more or less fine with. Early on, Rainman and Azrael were able to get the weapons first as they were smaller, more agile, and that allowed for the only equalizer possible against Tank and Iceberg, but it wasn't going to last. It's a lot of violence that all escalates to the last corner and the thumbtacks. They serve as a certain center of gravity pulling the last third of the match towards the center of the ring. There's a moment where the ref hurts his hand on one during a count which actually helps the overall atmosphere and feeling of danger. The finish is completely believable with a flaming boot doing half the work and a huge double team by the NWA Elite off the top and into the thumbtacks doing the rest. It's not the sort of thing I want to watch every week, but it definitely got the job done.

PAS: Really cool to see some handheld Wildside show up, especially a gruesome brawl like this. Iceberg and Tank are such formidable babyfaces, that you almost need to come armed with implements of horror to have any chance at all. Every time I see Iceberg I am amazed at the agility he had for such an enormous man, he was really on the level of Vader or Jerry Blackwell. He takes a psychotic assisted powerbomb here, and hits one of the most devastating sit out spinebusters I have ever seen, it look like it powdered Rainman's spinal cord. We got a lot of gross stabbing and carving, and some fun stuff with thumbtacks which weren't completely played out by 2004. The flaming kick to the face was one of the cooler looking fire spots I have seen in a while and the finish had the violence and chaos you want from Cornelia GA. 

ER: I could watch Tank and Iceberg do anything. These two would have been a legendary team from another era, and watching them is always just a crushing reminder of the big fat man dearth we're dealing with now. At a certain point WWF just stopped seeking out fat guys, and fat guys stopped seeking out wrestling. There should be a steady pipeline of football guys who weren't good enough for the NFL, who are now also rapidly gaining size due to no longer having two a days in their life. How does NXT not have 7 of those guys? At some point the wrestling world changed and it unfairly passed over two real talents. Iceberg and Tank were the kind of guys who you could tell would have been great workers no matter their size, and I'm so happy they were big fat guys. They're two of the better bleeders of the 2000s, and throw right hands with their entire body, two guys who threw hands like they had never seen any wrestling past the territory days. You take their bleeding, and their big right hands, and insert them into any 1985 territory, and you have a big time drawing heel. I don't think you even need the death match portion of this for it to work, but Tank and Iceberg are great at integrating weapons. The thumbtack bumps all looked sick, loved that seated spinebuster right into the tacks, and Tank's STO followed by picking tack shrapnel out of his wrist was awesome. Tank eats a flaming kick, and that might be one of my favorite ever Wildside spots, just a killer moment that would have have me leaping out of my chair live.