New Footage Friday: Kaientai DX! MX! Sabu! Sasuke! Armstrong! Hamada! Candido!

Midnight Express vs. Brad Armstrong/Terry Taylor WCCW 1/14/85

MD: This match has been out there if you were paying attention to season sets of Ft. Worth TV but no one in our usual circles seems to have seen it or written about it. It's a long 2/3 falls MX in Texas match which seems at the very least underlooked and against a couple of fairly unique opponents. Taylor wasn't quite there yet but he had the crowd and you'd like to see him get pounded. The MX were still getting established in the territory and a good chunk of the match was meant to showcase them but they had game opponents. The 2/3rds structure made this a little weird in as you had four hot tags and only the first was really hot. Armstrong and Eaton worked really well to begin. They did the spot later on where Eaton was checking his nails on the apron and Taylor clobbered him. Eaton just had absolutely perfect timing throughout. He'd get his foot up on a corner charge at the last possible second that sort of thing. They filled a lot of time here and it may not have made things as clean as possible. You ended up with unsteady heat but it ultimately did its job in getting the Express over as a threat.

Dick Togo/Terry Boy/TAKA Michinoku vs. Gran Hamada/Gran Naniwa/Great Sasuke CWA 2/16/97 - GREAT

PAS: This was a greatest hits MPRO match, but MPRO playing their greatest hits is like the Rolling Stones playing their greatest hits, they are some amazing hits. This is in a Boston Indy show underneath a Jimmy Snuka vs Kevin Sullivan main event, and you can tell the crowd and the announcers had never seen anything approaching this (although the amazing Boston Sport Radioesque announcers do suggest Devon Storm and Ace Darling as possible future opponents, which I actually wouldn't mind seeing). TAKA and Sasuke were the standouts, both getting big dives (TAKA's spaceman plancha is a contender for best dive ever) and even brawling into the parking lots. Also Gran Hamada running through his signature spots is a reminder how amazing Hamada's signature spots were. As usual I loved all of the KDX triple teams, and wild Sasuke rope running. This is a match I didn't know existed and you love to see it.

MD: Around this time, there was some benefit at being geographically close to a Sheldon Goldberg associated promotion. I caught a Sumie Sakai vs Mercedes Martinez match in NECW a couple of years after this on the same card that had Doug Williams or Fleisch and Storm or something. I think I would have rather had this match though. It was pretty much what you'd expect as they all came to work and didn't hold back even with an unfamiliar audience and a hard floor on the outside. They hit the usual triple teams and the big spots and built to a big comeback and by the end, the crowd was pretty into it. Where the real joy comes from is seeing it in this setting, hearing it with these announcers, who couldn't get over how it was the best match they'd ever seen in the promotion (not a thing to say out loud, maybe?). Very lucky crowd to get to see this and I'm kind of annoyed I wasn't part of it.

Sabu vs. Chris Candido vs. Crowbar NWA-New Jersey 8/17/00

MD: This was glorious noise. I don't think a single person in the building understood the rules of a triple threat last man standing casket match and that's before Sabu flew into it and broke it into a bunch of pieces. Everyone was the most of themselves that they could be. Candido stooged and hit cheapshots. Sabu flew all over the place. Crowbar took a bunch of bumps (but so did everyone else). The fans chanted for tables while a guy was actually in the casket since they didn't get how the rules were supposed to work either. Some of the bumps and chairshots were nasty and not the things you'd want to see today but this is a historical relic and we can't change it by clicking play. Everyone called spots in a way that the mic picked up which was sort of fascinating in its own right because it peeled back a layer or two of thought in a match where they basically just did a ton of entertaining stuff.

PAS: This was dumb shit, but in the best way. Devon Storm is a guy who was basically doing Sabu's shit on Northeast indies which couldn't afford Sabu, so it is fun to watch him hurl chairs and get stiffed by his idol. Candido takes some sick bumps in this, big flip to the floor, a totally unnecessary Misawa german suplex bump and a bunch of wild chairshots. Sabu in a casket match is as great as you want it to be, it ends up splinters by the end of the match, and I loved him propping it up in the corner putting Candido in it and doing a diving springboard kick and smashing the shit out of it. Couldn't have been fun to be in that casket and knowing that Sabu was going to do something dumb.