New Footage Friday: ANDRE~! PIPER~! SNUKA~! BORSHOI~! CHENE~!

Larry Chene vs. Bobby Nelson Chicago 1954?

MD: This was young, Leaping Larry Chene, though Davis never calls him that and he didn't do any leapfrogs and just hit one dropkick. He did launch a headscissors out of nowhere which caused Nelson to land on him with a shoot Death Valley Driver so that was something to see. So, no leaping, but what we got was a flash babyface, hugely explosive and endlessly scrappy. Nelson was a balding bruiser, with big clubbering blows, mean slams, and every dirty trick in the book, including a signature tights pull headlock takeback into a choke or press pin. He'd win rope running shoulder block exchanges, but seemed more at home launching a headbutt or leg dive from a kneeling position. Where Chene stood out was how quick he was in returning favor, going after the nose or not wanting to break clean off the ropes. Davis said that despite being such a crowd pleaser, he was the sort that you wouldn't want to meet in a back alley. Chene would hold an advantage for a lot of this, going back to a grounded inner toehold where he could get in some gut shots as well, whereas Nelson would go for the hair again and again to get out. Over time, Nelson seemed to wear Chene down to the bit to the point where he could unleash a few more throws and slams, but Chene was unrelenting and Nelson eventually got frustrated enough to get DQed. Unsatisfying finish but good showcase for Chene, with Nelson giving him a lot as a contrast and foil.

Andre The Giant/Jimmy Snuka vs. Roddy Piper/Dr. D David Shultz WWF 3/25/84 - EPIC

PAS: Total blast of a match which really demonstrates the greatness of Piper and Andre. Really fun start with Shultz and Piper being flummoxed by the immovable Andre, stooging big for all of his spots, while Andre smirked at them. Shultz is able to get a bit of an advantage which leads to Piper working over Andre like a heavybag with punch combos. Piper then pulls out a pair of brass knuckles and splits Andre to the white meat. Andre is leaking and gets helped to back, and we get a bit of Snuka taking on both before an enraged Andre comes rumbling from the back and clears the ring.  We get both immoveable and vulnerable Andre, a big time blade job and Piper ruling the roost. Great discovery. 

MD: This came out with the last MSG dump, actually, but we overlooked it because a clipped version had showed up on a WWE DVD. This is the full thing though and it's a big spectacle at a very specific point in time. This was early in Piper's run and directly between the Piper's Pit where Andre pulled him out of the chair - which just aired - and the Piper's Pit with the coconut angle, which would tape four days later. It chugs along like you'd expect, with Piper dodging Andre and Schultz mystified by him and walking into all of his spots, including some scrappiness by Piper when Schultz is able to get Andre from behind. That was part of Piper's deal. He was chickenshit until he saw an opportunity but then he'd strike, and if it didn't work, sunk-cost fallacy won the day. Once Piper was in the water, he'd do his best to swim. It gave him a sort of rabid credibility that you wouldn't expect at first glance. 

Anyway, it went just like you'd expect, right until it didn't. Snuka was drawn in. The ref was distracted. Piper unloaded on Andre with some knucks and the rarest of things happened: Andre's blood began to flow. They targeted the wound doggedly until the match grinded to a halt as the doctor came in. Andre stretchered out but Snuka refused to quit, causing MSG to erupt. At that point, they had them and could do no wrong. I think, despite how big and strong he was, people had less reason to expect Andre to come back, just due to the effort it took to get him out and how much girth he had to bring back. Come back he did though, and the place erupted doubly for the image of bloody, bandaged, monstrous, unleashed one-man Brute Squad Andre coming down for revenge. Schultz took the beating. The heels escaped both with their lives and a DQ win, and the wheel kept on turning with Piper's ascension. They milked everything in this one for all it was worth, though, and you have to love the effect it had on the crowd.

ER: This was great and really managed to be a showcase for the specific ways all four are great. You can look at every minute of this match and make the case that a new guy was the best part of this match. This was one of the most fun David Schultz performances we have, and his whole extended routine with Andre was the best. Schultz looks like and wrestles like house show Steven Austin (only with top ramen hair) and has a bunch of great stooging comedy. They have some real great chemistry together and it sadly only produced one (very fun) singles match. There is an incredible spot here where Andre does a dropdown in a surreal visual, but also smart because once he drops down to trip a running Schultz and Shultz really has to leap to clear him on the run. The moment jumps to incredible when Andre is getting to his feet after, and a rebounding-off-the-ropes Schultz runs straight into Andre's gigantic bent over three point stance ass, Schultz selling it like he was a cartoon character who got a bowling ball thrown into his midsection. If you want to see Andre doing what looks like a legendary Super Porky spot better than Porky could have done it, then you need this. 

Schultz is great at taking things right to Andre regardless of getting his ass kicked, and he transitioned to offense in a cool way, eating a huge Andre shoulderblock in the corner but getting his knee in the way of a second block. Schultz is fun on offense, but Andre is a megastar at taking offense too, and it leads to another incredible spot where from his back Andre straight legs Schultz out of the air to block an elbowdrop. Schultz was in full lean to drop an elbow, and Andre timed the kick perfectly from his back. Who knew we had Randre Gracie working from his back over here? When Schultz and Piper really lay into Andre it's a glorious thing, and there's never been and never will be a wrestling who is as good at Andre at being a dying wooly mammoth. The way Andre can animalistically stagger around the ring while taking shots from all angles is second to none, and when he takes the first knux shot his fall is such a beautiful tumble. By the time he's lying against the middle rope bleeding his acting is second to none, he provides non-stop incredible visuals as he bleeds out, flattening the bottom rope to the mat with his resting weight. 

I always love what a spectacle it is to see Andre taken from the ring. Pat Patterson is perfect on commentary through it all, laughing at the thought of how many men it's going to take to get an incapacitated Andre to the back, and what they would possibly use as a stretcher. And he's right! I love when Andre needs to somehow be moved somewhere and you get a lot of men standing around scratching their heads like they're on a job site and the boom truck tipped over. Snuka gets his great moment during Andre's absence, insisting the match continue and getting insanely loud reactions from 22,000 people as he sends Piper and Schultz bouncing with his leaping headbutts. When Andre does return it's almost impossible to believe. He roars out from the back looking - honestly - the scariest I've ever seen him look, his head wrapped in this disgustingly sloppy head bandage that makes him look a freak failure of surgery or and insane lost Hammer Studios Mummy/Frankenstein crossover film. This whole thing was nothing but spectacle, nothing but perfect pro wrestling. Everyone was so dynamite and at the top of their game, and a match where everyone's stock is raised will always be a special thing.  

Command Bolshoi vs. Hanako Nakamori Pure J 1/14/18

MD: The first third of this where they kept mostly to the mat was great. The rest had a lot to see with big bombs and exciting nearfalls and a lot of stiff kicks but I would have been happier if they never stopped chain wrestling. They started with dueling front facelocks, well worked, and then Bolshoi started to chip away at the arm. Nakamori was forced to resort to kicks, which went ok for her until Bolshoi caught a leg. Lots of really tricked out hold attempts here, but it all looked more painful than cooperative. Nakamori had to end up throwing everything she had at Bolshoi just to stay in it, and that worked for the match pretty well until they started trading DDTs. The selling after that was spotty, even as the bombs were huge and the kicks plentiful. Given the frequent time announcements, you got the sense they were working towards a draw, and they were, but I would have been perfectly fine with this ending after Bolshoi's second Tiger Suplex, as she had worked hard for the first. This definitely had build and escalation and it was obviously the match they wanted to wrestle, but I liked the first half of this more than the rest.

SR: Another excellent match, which felt like one of the best joshi matches in years. I haven‘t seen Nakamori before, but she was this big lady who liked to throw stiff kicks, and she was pretty good. As usual with Bolshoi matches there was some great, tricked out matwork, with Nakamori also bringing stuff to the table such as locking in a cool Takogatame. There was an absolutely sick Volk Han-like sleeper from Bolshoi that left Nakamoris face turning blue. The later goings of the match were exciting with Nakamori landing some FUTEN level kicks in Bolshois face, and Bolshoi firing back with her trademark shotais. The most impressive thing was how well the match flowed, there were sections were one of them was focussing on attacking an arm or a leg but it never went long and never felt like filler, and all the transitions fell into place naturally. Just a tremendous pace for a 20 minute match without feeling go-go.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE THE GIANT

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Mr. Condor, Black Terry, a Junkyard, and a New #1

1. Mr. Condor vs. Black Terry ZONA 23 12/5

PAS: I don't even know what to say about this match. Black Terry is 69 years old, Mr. Condor is - in comparison - a youthful 64, this is a fucking junkyard somewhere in Mexico, and dear god is this one of the wildest fist fights I have ever seen in pro wrestling. These two just absolutely unload on each other with incredible looking rights and lefts, slam each other into the sides of cars, break beer bottles and stab each other with them. The pace of this is incredible. I mean guys this old shouldn't even be able to walk slowly on a treadmill, much less fight at this intensity for this long, especially while spraying blood out their heads. At one point Condor breaks a fucking pane of car safety glass on Terry's head! There are punch exchanges in this match which are as good as any punch exchanges in wrestling history. The finish is slightly unsatisfying but doesn't do much to mitigate the hellstorm which preceded it. Eric and I just did an hour plus podcast on how much we loved Eddie Marlin vs. Tommy Gilbert and old man punchouts and then THIS fucking drops. Just watch it. It is unbelievably great.

MD: I made a mistake in the first seconds of this. Mr. Condor had come down in full regalia that made him look like a younger man. I thought Terry might do the same, so I looked away and took care of something else for a moment. Alerted by the crisp yet moist sound of bone hitting flesh without hesitation or remorse, I glanced back at the screen. In doing so, I immediately realized that I needed to jump back fifteen seconds to watch Terry, and the violence he draped himself with as casually as his red Flash shirt, arrived fists-first. I should have known better. I didn't make that mistake again. For the rest of the match, I didn't look away.

This was about the sights and the sounds and the sensation. Sometimes, looking away wasn't my choice. They occasionally cut wide to the crowd, showing us this outside venue, adorned with a burnt out remnant of a car, raucous, chanting people huddled all around, and clouds of dirt bursting up through the air and into the ring. It was during one of those wide shots where we heard the breaking of glass and the gasps that had followed. Mr. Condor had escalated the situation by breaking a bottle, which we saw very clearly as we returned the action, the action, in this case, being the rending of Black Terry's flesh. Condor followed it up by placing Terry's head upon a chair and bringing another down upon it. As Terry was battered, dust came flying upwards, as if an almost 70 year old rug had been smashed against a wall for the first time in decades.

Terry would come back, winning a strike exchange which was exactly what you might expect it to be: two old, hard men standing their ground with no recoil, no give, not moving an inch as you could see their skin compress from the impact. As Terry got the better of it, Condor reached for another bottle, smashing it. You could feel the immediately changed mood through the screen and on the faces of Terry and all of those around him. Terry found a bottle of his own and it became detente, a necessary deescalation to prevent mutually assured destruction. Bottles discarded, they finally moved back into the ring; destruction would come anyway, at the hands of Condor, his constant need to escalate, and a giant glass plate. By this point, there was blood everywhere, coming off of not just foreheads but shoulders and backs as well.

Terry would win the one exchange in the match that truly mattered, picking up and dropping Condor to set up a submission, but the ravages of a lifetime of this slowed him down and neither could claim an advantage on the hold that would follow. Terry would recover first though, would manage to drop back into a pin, but just as with the leglock he had attempted, no human that had been through what he had, not even the toughest, most reliant 69 year old man alive, could be expected to hold the bridge. All four shoulders ended up on the mat. All four shoulders were counted out together. In the end, nothing was proven between these two men. There was no resolution. But does that mean that nothing mattered? For fifteen minutes, these two withered, gnarled legends showed that they had more life within them still than men half their age. If that doesn't matter then what does?

JR: This match made me think about eye contact in wrestling. Generally, there are two moments that stand out in terms of eye contact, and both are things that I could do with less of. The first is when it is done in order to start or continue some overly choreographed spot, both wrestlers lock eyes and then begin something they discussed backstage at great lengths, like a silent countdown. The second is the mid match staredown, which has now become such an emotional short cut that it tends to lower the stakes rather than heighten them.
 
But here, I think about eye contact in a new way. The majority of this match is two men punching each other in the jaw and in the chest and in the face. And throughout, Mr. Condor stares at Black Terry, looking at him with hate in his heart. The camera is so close. You see him do it. You see which punches hurt, which punches rock him, which punches he braces for. And during each one, he stares at Black Terry. It is riveting in a way that is totally unique.

And again, what can be said about Black Terry that hasn’t already been said here? I feel like we said it earlier in the year with the Marvin match, and I think there is chance, at least upon first watch, that this match is just flat out better. I think that the more Terry I watch from the past few years, the more I think he is the greatest sound maker in wrestling history. He is like Jim Breaks, in that you can listen to a Black Terry match and it elicits a feeling. Of course, Breaks used this gift to make whine and cry and give a crowd someone to hate and laugh at in equal parts. Terry’s grunts and sighs and yells and vocalizations are the edge of suffering. Terry breathing hard and loud while you hear his fist hit bone again and again is like the camera whirr at the beginning of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It makes you queasy with your eyes closed, and if you dare to open them, you see only violence.

There is nothing else like this match this year. It’s the first match I watched and immediately texted people about. It’s something else.

ER: Sometimes there's a match. Sometimes there's a match that's the most anticipated match all month in the group chat, the one. multiple people spent 4 weeks wondering whether that day would be the day that this match would appear in full, wondering if we would get a Christmas bonus drop, reassuring each other that we *usually* get full Zona 23 shows.

Sometimes there's a match. Sometimes there's a match that so perfectly defines a connection formed by two friends over the past 20 years, that Phil Schneider calls me at 9 AM - at least 105 minutes earlier than I have ever fielded a call from Phil Schneider in my life - the day that match finally drops. Sometimes there's a match that makes you answer the phone at 9 AM with total concern, immediately wondering why your friend - who has never called you before the morning fog has broken before in your history together - is calling you on a weekday while you're getting ready for work. Sometimes there's a match that feels so noteworthy that it prompts a phone call reunion between two great friends who met because of pro wrestling, but haven't talked on the phone in at least 5 years. 

Sometimes there's a match. Sometimes there's a match where two AARP eligible men, one who looks like the toughest possible Richie Aprile and one who looks like the coolest most violent Glenn Greenwald, have a fistfight with punch exchanges that you could sincerely, soberly argue are the greatest punch exchanges of any wrestling match in history. Sometimes there's a match where a man who lost his mask to Rey Misterio Jr. 30 years ago throws at minimum 12 different right hands in a dirt lot junkyard that are as fine as any right hand thrown by Lawler, Eaton, or Murdoch. Sometimes there's a match where two grandfathers each drip so much blood out of there heads that it makes you wonder how high the percentage of men this age have lost this much blood and not been on an ambulance within 5 minutes. Sometimes there's a match so stiff, so gleefully violent, a match that's more than its punches; a match where the chairshots are just as painful, where the punches hit so hard that you swear you can see facial swelling minutes in, where you genuinely don't know how far they will take this blood feud and it makes you actually shift in your seat with unblinking eyes wanting to know. 

This is that match. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WCW Starrcade 12/29/96

1. Ultimo Dragon vs. Dean Malenko

ER: It's a bold move to start your Nashville PPV with a AAA minis dark tag and a 20 minute cruiserweight match. This is the first 12 minutes of a strong cruiserweight match, with a lot of mid 90s juniors matwork to start, and quick exchanges that don't really go anywhere but give us something to build off. They build to some quick rope running exchanges and some snap suplexes, and it plays like a very crisp New Japan juniors match. The Nashville crowd isn't really on board with it until Ultimo starts working a little more than just de facto heel. He had been the automatic heel by virtue of being Japanese in Nashville, but they wake up a bit when Dragon starts landing nice looking kicks to the grounded Malenko's ribs and a little toe kick to Malenko's temple. Once Ultimo is actually working with mild disrespect the crowd picks up on it immediately. It peaks with a great spot where Dragon feints a dive with Malenko on the floor, landing on his feet in ring with a quebrada and turns that into a flat footed tope with emphasis on making it look like a flying headbutt. Dragon even started selling like a heel, taking a couple of nasty Malenko back suplexes on his shoulders and acting like a heel getting punished. 

It's a match that is building to something strong, but Malenko makes the decision to throw some ice on things by grabbing a kneebar for a couple long minutes, really getting things silent in the arena. It threw off their vibe as Ultimo HAD been working as a luchador working as southern heel, and then in a couple minutes Malenko started working heel legwork while Ultimo valiantly kept having to struggle to the ropes and work a knee injury. It went instinctively against the fans' instincts to cheer the legwork the way it was being worked, as Ultimo was clearly face in these exchanges. A couple of awkward cross ups when they came out the other side of the legwork only extended the weird vibes. Malenko hits a body press with Ultimo leaning in the ropes, but Dragon stays put on his feet while Malenko tumbles to the floor, with Ultimo feebly rolling out after. Crowd is getting silent by the second and suddenly snaps awake in unison when Malenko looks like he has the match suddenly won after a nasty tombstone. The entire Nashville Municipal Auditorium thought they were seeing a Malenko win. With the crowd now suddenly heavily invested in a Malenko win, it really added to the closing stretch. I think they went with a couple too many nearfalls and the Onoo interference to break up Malenko's center of the ring cloverleaf weakened things, but there were some good nearfalls that the fans bit at. A Malenko release sitout Tiger suplex got a huge reaction, he plants Dragon with a disgusting brainbuster for another, and there was a great match-winning go behind waistlock battle that ended with a fantastic Tiger suplex for Dragon. This was the kind of PPV opener that a lot of WCW fans came to expect, with a lot of big moves and nearfalls. There were some stretches that didn't work and felt out of place, and they didn't really explore the stories they set up, but a lot of the action looked really good.

2. Akira Hokuto vs. Madusa

ER: This was not the match the crowd wanted to see. The crowd was far less familiar with Hokuto than they were with Ultimo Dragon, but even a Japanese competitor against a white woman wearing a sequined stars and stripes aerobics thong couldn't inspire them to get involved. Hokuto works holds with a short match they probably would have had a better chance going straight to fireworks. By the time they build to some big German suplexes and a couple hard missile dropkicks I was expecting them to react but it was still real light. The best reactions came from two pieces of Sonny Onoo interference, yanking Madusa's ankle from ringside to allow Hokuto to take over, and coming in later with to smack Madusa in the back of the head with a full American flag on a pole. This was laid out pretty heavily for Hokuto, never really feeling like Madusa was going to win, and Madusa's big moments on offense came off flat when a tornado DDT didn't really get pulled off. Hokuto wins with a nasty northern lights bomb, and it come off like an easier victory than the crowd was expecting. This was not the show to have Akira Hokuto win the inaugural WCW Women's Title Tournament, and an omen for how the Women's division would eventually wind up in the coming months. 

Roddy Piper does an interview with Mean Gene, and well, Piper's interviews in 1996 were really bad. He had taken coked up 1986 Hot Rod promos and now it felt more like a man performing comedic impressions of Cocaine Rod. He makes weird references to Strangler Lewis and Sky Low Low, says that he and Hogan ("can I call him Hogan?") are the only two icons, makes a joke about Roseanne Barr that barely felt like a reference (let alone a joke), and hops out on one leg when asked about his hip injury. This was like a hopped up Roger Rabbit promo that made the heavily promoted "Match of the Century" feel like it was about to be a tremendous disaster. 

3. Jushin Liger vs. Rey Misterio Jr. 

ER: This match was a major deal among tape traders, a first time (and last time, it turns out) singles match between two of the very best. So, of course this match starts with an enthusiastic USA chant, which Misterio happily accepts as his, and that's just fine. It also becomes apparent pretty early into this match that this crowd is tired of seeing a Japanese wrestler against a WCW regular. The commentary has some real wild tone shifts too, as Tenay starts the match talking about Liger's brain tumor surgery, and within minutes we take a weird sidetrack. Dusty ends up going on for far too long about Liger "looking heavier" than the last time he saw him, and none of the four man announce crew picks him up. He keeps trying to get anyone else to chime in, repeatedly asking whether or not he's crazy for thinking Liger is heavier. The crowd pays about as much attention to the match as commentary does, but it is surprising that people don't react louder for the beating that Misterio takes. Liger is very punishing, hitting an in-ring powerbomb about as hard as you can powerbomb someone, hits a crazy vertical suplex to the floor (and Rey really splats on that floor), then hits a powerbomb ON THE FLOOR! The actual wrestling in the match is great, it's nothing but offense, but it doesn't draw the crowd in like it should. They occasionally get them to notice, but they don't keep them hooked. 

Liger is super dominant here, brushing aside a missile dropkick and locking in a stretching surfboard, a release German suplex that folds Rey, a kappo kick in the corner, a dragon screw that would snap the surgically repaired knee of 2021 Rey Mysterio, and a really sunk in half crab. Rey had some comebacks, some flash to counter Liger's dominance, but Liger keeps effectively cutting him off. When Rey goes on a big tear with a headscissors and beautiful Asai moonsault, I foolishly thought that all of Rey's offense got backloaded into the match. But Liger immediately blocks a top rope Frankensteiner by hopping down to the mat, nails a kappo kick, and then drills Rey's head into the mat with a definitive Liger Bomb for the win. So far this PPV has had three Japanese wrestlers win the first three matches, and it is clearly not what anyone in attendance expected or wanted. This match was as good as could be expected with no fan involvement, and a suitably entertaining Dream Match with Liger really assaulting Rey and Misterio flying and splatting in cool Misterio ways. But, this also seemed like a match where Rey was to be the OBVIOUS winner, and even the finish looked like he kicked out before 3, which didn't help the reaction. Liger wasn't around in any way in 1997 WCW, so letting him destroy Misterio like this on WCW's biggest PPV of the year was a really strange decision. 

4. Chris Benoit vs. Jeff Jarrett

ER: This was kind of a peculiar match, as it was billed as No DQ but was not worked in any way as a No DQ match. The match didn't need the stip to work, as we find out that they really only made this No DQ to allow for a rush of outside interference right at the end. The match started like a strong Benoit/Jarrett match, both working some nice mat exchanges and Jarrett getting lit up by chops, but there's a weird tone as both men are clearly working as heels. Benoit rubs Jarrett's face in the mat and grinds his boot into the back of Jarrett's head after getting the best of a mat exchange, and later when Jarrett does the same he runs up the length of Benoit's back and then struts around the ring. Jarrett is the Nashville boy but isn't rallying the crowd behind him, and every single thing Benoit does is delivered as a heel. So the crowd doesn't get into this match the way they could have. They both work the match with a lot of aggression, and the pace feels really good, even if Benoit has a lot of strikes that show noticeable light. Benoit's stomps in the corner all whiff by 6" or more, and it's odd that the guy known for working stiff appears to be pulling his shots so much. Woman interferes from the floor, except her and Benoit continue to act like they don't realize the match is No DQ, as she sneaks in her interference behind Brian Hildebrand's back, and later on Benoit does the whole feet on the ropes bit with Hildebrand just missing his cheating each time. 

This is a match where Benoit could have just choked Jarrett with a chair, so holding a grounded headlock with his feet on the ropes behind the ref's back made zero sense. At a certain point Benoit didn't even have his arm wrapped around Jarrett's neck, looking more like he was just pinning him across the shoulders. Jarrett's comeback doesn't get a reaction, since he didn't decide to show the fans of Nashville that he was their guy, but he looked good. I liked his clothesline and super high belly to back suplex, but that's when everything goes to hell. Woman gets on the apron, Arn comes out, Hugh Morrus and Konnan attack Woman, she kicks Morrus in the balls while Konnan holds her in a snug headlock, Kevin Sullivan breaks a wooden chair over Benoit, Arn DDTs Jarrett, and somehow through it all Jarrett just gets rolled back inside and pins Benoit. So we had a No DQ match where it seemed like neither guy realized that was the case, all the DQ worthy events were caused by guys that came out at the very end of the match, and even after the match the crowd had no clue which one of them to cheer for. This felt like nobody knew what role they were actually playing and the match fell apart because of it. 

Arn Anderson and Jeff Jarrett blow off Mean Gene's interview requests after the match, but Steve and Debra McMichael have no problems repping the Horsemen on the mic. McMichael says Benoit is getting too distracted by Woman, and Debra says that Woman is looking rode hard and put up wet (to which Gene covers the microphone) and then calls her plump. I really wish we had been given a Woman reaction to being called "plump" by Debra McMichaels' perfectly slurred judgmental Alabama Christian voice. 

The Outsiders vs. The Faces of Fear

ER: This was heading towards being a truly great big man tag match, but a slow third act that dropped all the big man clubbering left us with a kind of unsatisfying finish. These guys all have great chemistry and have no problem hitting hard, and the match forgoes a lot of structure and instead mostly just exists as four tough guys hitting each other hard. You don't really need to cut off the ring with guys this large, as it's incredibly satisfying to have them constantly cutting each other off, able to turn any tide at any time with a hard clothesline or harder headbutt. It's hard not to get excited for a tag match made up wholly of big guys hitting each other hard, and commentary gets into it as much as the crowd does. The action is steady and nobody remains in control long. Nash really punishes Barbarian in the corner with kneelifts and heavy back elbows, hits a lariat to the side of Barbarian's neck when Nick Patrick steps in. Meng and Nash come off like superstars, with Meng having no trouble standing up to either Outsider and Nash getting roars whenever he gets into the ring. 

Meng's chops look like something that Hall and Nash legitimately hate taking, and you get some cool bigger spots like a Hall second rope bulldog on Meng, a great missed middle rope elbowdrop from Barbarian, Meng fighting to get Hall up for a piledriver before finally spiking him, and not long after that a big Barbarian powerbomb on Hall. The match also has a bunch of cool clotheslines and lariats from everyone, like Hall running the length of the apron to nail Barbarian in the corner, or Hall whipping Barbarian into a Nash apron lariat and then hitting one of the hardest possible diving lariats as Barbarian is reeling. Everyone in the match is showing stiff shots from the apron whenever an opponent gets anywhere near, and I love tag team fights like that. Things do take a bit too much of a cool down when Barbarian locks in a LONG nerve hold on Hall that the match didn't really need. 

The only formula the match had settled into by then was four guys kicking ass, with Hall and Barbarian each being briefly separated from their partners. But this late in the match you don't need a long nervehold to build to a Nash hot tag, as the crowd was hot every time Nash had been in and the hold went on so long that the hot tag was literally Nash's quietest part of the match. The hold cooled things down too much and took the energy away, and then for whatever reason Barbarian didn't make his own hot tag out when Nash made his big tag in. Hall and Barbarian had clearly been building a long sequence that was supposed to build to Meng and Nash absolutely wailing on each other, and instead Barbarian just stays in the ring. It's a bit anticlimactic as Nash tags in and Hall immediately drags Meng to the floor, and Nash fairly easily beats Barbarian with a jackknife. The match deserved a finish that was a bit more thought out than that, but the bulk of this was hard hitting heavyweight wrestling that I loved. 

Hogan cuts a truly unhinged promo backstage with Dibiase and Vincent laughing along with him. If you show this promo back to back with Piper's promo earlier you get 10 minutes of what feels like it is going to be the craziest match you've ever seen. He keeps building towards a big ending but keeps getting derailed, until he's just shouting out the names of celebrities and calling Piper a woman. This kind of manic old man insanity is making this match come off far more exciting than I've been lead to believe.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Eddie Guerrero

ER: This was the finals of the WCW US Title tournament, a very fun match that is perhaps too long, but finishes strong. It's always best when a match goes out on a high note, and the finishing stretch makes this worth seeing. This is cool because Page fights Eddie as an equal and makes it work, going toe to toe with both throwing elbows and chops as heavyweights (even though Eddie is much smaller than DDP here). DDP is great at doing fast armdrag and leapfrog exchanges, and both know how to salvage minor miscommunications by taking big bumps. DDP takes an awesome backwards bump through the ropes off a dropkick, both good at working a back and forth match without it ever feeling like they're just trading moves. It's really hard hitting, with Eddie getting harder than expected impact an avalanche, pescado, and big back suplex. Page has a bunch of cool offense - a couple of unique gutbusters, nice right arm clothesline immediately following a missed left arm one, and a nasty kneeling piledriver - so it's a little disappointing when he locks in a too long abdominal stretch. 

The match had kind of been babyface/babyface and DDP wasn't working heel enough to build to a big Eddie comeback. But things really do come alive for the push to the finish, when DDP starts really throwing himself back into offense. He hits a hard shoulderblock in the corner and then misses another into the turnbuckles just as hard. Eddie sweeps DDP's legs and DDP takes it on the back of his head like Psychosis, Eddie lifts him in the air with a European uppercut (that makes Dusty lose his mind),and then drops DDP with a brainbuster. We get a crazy run of bigger and bigger spots, like Eddie catching DDP in an atomic drop off the top rope, and DDP hitting a bananas spinning powerbomb. There were several great nearfalls off of Eddie backslides (set up nicely by DDP's missed spinning clothesline or Diamondcutter attempts). The finish itself is a bit of a stretch, as the ref had to be distracted for far too long so that Scott Hall had time to run in and hit DDP with an Outsider's Edge (for turning down the nWo's invite), and then Eddie hits the frog splash for the title. This match could have gone 12 instead of 15, as trimming out the bullshit would have easily made this the tightest and best match on the card. As is it was strong, and the peaks lift it higher than its valleys lower it. 

The Giant vs. Lex Luger

ER: This was great, the best Giant singles match and performance so far (easily), and an excellent Luger performance that completely rewards the loud crowd. The Nashville crowd were cheering louder for Luger before the first lock-up, than any other babyface so far this PPV (Nash got the loudest cheers, but that's just because people are going to cheer the coolest guy in any room). Giant had a year of ring work at this point and was improving, but having a guy like Luger in there to guide the match really elevated this. Luger knew exactly what to do and the fans were behind him doing just that. I loved Luger's lock-up to start, getting a low base, taking big super ball bumps when Giant would throw him away. Every time Luger got thrown off, he would come back in with left and right elbows, and then began measuring Giant with right hands. Luger would rear back and throw one big right, send the Giant rocking and wobbling in the corner, then throw another. It was a great way to start the match and they used the ring incredibly well to make this feel like a big fight. Luger would get bumped to the opposite corner, and the camera would pull back and show the distance between the men, making Luger look like even more of a walking tall babyface every time he would stomp back across the ring to punch Giant. Both were good at selling the early fatigue, and I liked how Giant shut things down by just charging out of the corner with a straight arm clothesline to the chest. 

I thought Giant looked good in control, and Luger looked great bumping for him. They worked a long control section and the Giant has a lot of ideas on how to fill time, and Luger's selling keeps the crowd interested. The Giant gets insane air on an elbowdrop, throws a stiff kick to Luger's ribs (that Luger bumps through the ropes to the floor) and brings him back in with a big delayed vertical suplex. The Luger comeback teases are good, like a quick bodyslam attempt that ends with the Giant flattening him and then hitting another elbowdrop. We're over a year into the Giant, and he's still trying weird  things and I love it. He weirdly does the Shawn Michaels "draped over the corner ropes" spot after missing an avalanche, struggling to get his legs into position but even getting turned over by kicks the way Michaels would. I don't think I've ever seen a 400 lb. guy do that spot - probably because it looked pretty stupid - but I am all for wrestlers taking a risk of looking stupid. Even better, is how Giant sets up Luger's comeback by missing a running dropkick in the ropes when Luger moves out of the way. Giant really just ran and threw a dropkick into the ropes like he was a luchador, top foot nearly getting tangled on the top rope and sending him to the mat head first. Giant was lucky the landing was better than it could have been, but a giant doing crazy spots is impossible to hate. 

Luger starts punching the reeling Giant and really knows how to milk the reaction, the crowd getting louder and louder whenever it looked like Giant might fall over, and when Giant is reeling back far enough Luger gets the loudest reaction of the night by taking Giant down with a Rude Awakening style neckbreaker. It's a great nearfall, fans literally jumping up and down in their seats after seeing a neckbreaker. It's beautiful. Luger gets pressed onto Mark Curtis during the kickout, and this allows all the bullshit to start, and I loved all the bullshit. Luger finally has the advantage over Giant, but with no ref we get Nick Patrick finally showing up (with Syxx), and I love it when Nick Patrick shows up. I'm someone who is sick to death of rudo lucha refs, and yet I love Nick Patrick's stooging and idiocy. Luger bodyslams Giant and gets him up in the Rack (an awesome feat) and Patrick actually kicks Luger in the back of the knee! Patrick gets thrown across the ring and Luger Racks the Giant again, this time eating a spinkick from Syxx and unceremoniously dropping Giant again. To add to the great bullshit, Sting comes through the crowd, a man who looks like Jimmy Del Ray but with the flat out craziest eyes actually bumps faces with him before being pulled away by security, man looking like he actually wanted to fight or assassinate Sting. There's a great moment where Sting gets in the ring and shoves his bat into Patrick's chest, throws Patrick again to get him out of there, and Patrick punches a still ailing Mark Curtis in the face on his way out! 

The bullshit leads to a really great finish with some great theater, when Sting whispers separately to both Luger and Giant and leaves his bat in the middle of the ring. Commentary was strong this entire match, putting over and questioning everyone's motivations and getting fired up for Luger and Giant, making it really feel like a clash of the titans. They nail all of the visuals, with Luger reaching the bat but Giant getting there right after and standing on it. The crowd really seemed frozen in excitement waiting to see what was about to happen, and finally Luger just punches Giant in the balls and then beats him in the legs and body with that baseball bat. Mark Curtis dramatically drags himself over and counts the pin, and the fans rightly lost their minds for all of this. Luger cannot be denied. 

Hollywood Hogan vs. Roddy Piper

ER: Commentary calls this the biggest match of our lifetimes, and Michael Buffer manages to top that by calling it the Match of the Century. It's ridiculous, sure, and got mocked by smart fans at the time, but over 9,000 people in Nashville all bought into it to some extent. Buffer's intro is one of his best, genuinely adding to the match hype. Hogan looks like he's having a blast as a heel, with his broad MJF-esque "I'M a HEEL" shtick playing out like Hogan had been dying to do house show heel routines for a decade. It's a really great Hogan performance and it really felt like both men were playing up to their current abilities. Piper moves older than his actual age (and it's crazy that Hogan and Piper were only 43 and 42 here, respectively) and so Hogan really carries this by having a super active performance. Piper was limited but spirited, and he's good enough to make that work, but Hogan was the one working to make this big. Hogan stalls and stooges and tries to avoid Piper, slaps him on breaks and bails to the floor each time. Piper is mostly limited to punches and clotheslines and can't move quick, so Hogan avoiding him works and it makes it better when Piper finally tees off. Piper used a few different eye pokes and I love how Hogan sold each one. 

Piper is not going to be above fighting dirty and the crowd was fully behind Piper fighting dirty to combat Hogan's dirty fighting, and Piper moves stiffly enough that he draws a lot of sympathy, and he's able to pull off the performance of an old dog dragged back to another fight. Things get great when Piper gets knocked to the floor, tumbling hard, but fights back against Hogan and Dibiase. Piper gets his belt and whips Hogan around ringside like in a great LA Park match. All the belt shots looked really nasty, Piper not holding back and Hogan leaning into all of them. The whole match was an escalation of dirty fighting, and it peaked when Hogan started kicking at Piper's long visible hip surgery scar, even locking in an abdominal stretch while hammering on that scar. They don't quite know how to transition into the finishing stretch but there are some big moments, like Piper pulling off a vertical suplex while Schiavone wondered if his legs would hold, and a big missed Hogan legdrop. Schiavone was great at covering for things while keeping the excitement live, and his excitement really added to the chaotic ending. 

The Giant comes out and lifts Piper for a chokeslam, but a fan also charges the ring and grabs Hogan's legs, so the Giant has to keep Piper in the air while security roughs up the fan. It throws off the timing but still plays huge when Piper bites Giant in the face and dumps him to the floor, then somehow beats Hogan with a sleeper, with Randy Anderson delivering a great shocked face when Hogan's arm drops a third time. I was really into this match and thought it was far better than most thought at the time. The moment was hurt by being non-title. I'm not actually sure they ever said it was non-title, they just never announced it was FOR the title and didn't talk about it during the match, like they were intentionally avoiding it. Dusty even calls Piper the champ after the win, with some immediate awkward silence as Dusty clearly gets corrected off-mic. 

This was not the great workrate PPV that it has the reputation for being, a rep that it mostly got by having two long singles matches early in the card between cruiserweight legends. This was still a good in-ring show, but not to the level it has been written about being. The two cruiserweight matches have flaws that weren't as glaring in 1996, but even though they aren't the MOTYC that people wanted them to be in 1996 doesn't mean they aren't still entertaining as hell. The Hogan/Piper match doesn't deserve the bile that it got at the time as I thought it was an excellent Hogan performance, working around a guy who hadn't wrestled an actual match in 10 months. It was a top to bottom mix of styles and matches, and that gives a show a high floor. 

Best Matches:

1. Lex Luger vs. The Giant

2. Outsiders vs. Faces of Fear

3. DDP vs. Eddie Guerrero

4. Jushin Liger vs. Rey Misterio Jr. 

Weakest Matches:

1. Akira Hokuto vs. Madusa

2. Chris Benoit vs. Jeff Jarrett

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Kurt Kaiser! Lasartesse! Calderon! Mercier! Kiyomigawa

Kurt Kaiser vs. Remy Bayle 2/21/70

MD: I was wondering when this episode was only 27 minutes and this match wasn't joined in progress. This was one minute and twenty-seconds of outright murder. Even when they've debuted monsters in the past, whether they were the cerebral sort like the good Dr. Kaiser or outright monsters like Quasimodo, it was usually in extended matches where they got to show a lot and their opponents at least tried to fight back. Here, it was a series of haymaker forearms, a series of slams, and one double underhook suplex. They certainly built him up for a big match against some stylist or another.

Rene Lasartesse vs. Gaby Calderon 2/21/70

MD: On paper, I didn't love the look of this as a little bit of the judokas goes a long way, but it was actually a great matchup. Lasartesse supplied the contrast and force required and Calderon went at him with a different intensity and less of a spirit of exhibition than usual. It was a contest between Lasartesse's size, strength, and unrelenting underhandeness and Calderon's skill. Lasartesse would strike down upon him, would go for slams and backbreakers, and would sneak in eyerakes, chokes (most especially while in the backbreaker position), and would even undo the corner ring guards, and Calderon would come back by catching or redirecting the arm, laying in shots like knees, and unleashing varied submissions, including a great stretching double armbar and a 1970 Crippler Crossface of all things. Ultimately, Lasartesse chipped away at him by going after the throat, but drew the ref's ire in the process and earned himself a DQ by launching his signature bomb's away kneedrop straight down upon Calderon's windpipe. This was absolutely the matchup Calderon needed.

Guy Mercier vs. Kiyomigawa 4/11/70

MD: They'd introduced rounds matches earlier with Mercier vs Le Foudre early in 70 and this is the second match in the footage that follows the style. They still announce it as new and try to explain Kiyomigawa refusing to break in that he's unfamiliar with it. Before the match, he has a plate breaking demonstration and he has a couple of Japanese valets or observers at ringside but there's a communication gap between them and the announcers. This ends up being six rounds of around five minutes and the pacing works out better than the Le Foudre match. Kiyomigawa was as stereotypical worker as you might with chops and nerve holds, but I like the chops generally. They look good and he has some combos with them. Mercier is quick to get a leg pick and work a toehold but there's never any selling from Kiyomigawa to give it any weight. Kiyomigawa's always able to go to the eyes or the ropes and get a break so he can chop and choke again. Mercier tries for a bearhug and maybe a belly to belly a couple of times and usually pays for it; even when he gets it late in the match, it's without weight (back to the eyes, back to the nerve hold and chop). There are a couple of rounds I liked a lot, 3 where Mercier really got to fight back from the chops and 4 where there was a bit of a role reversal with Kiyomigawa going for the toehold and Mercier the chinlock but this was all quite a bit of the same, even if the same was generally good. If you're going to have a fairly repetitive match instead of push for an escalating boiling over, the rounds probably do more good than harm.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 12/20-12/26

AEW Dark 12/21 (Taped 12/3)

Eddie Kingston vs. Colin Delaney

PAS: Delaney and Cheech have been one of the best tag teams in the world in To Infinity and Beyond for the last several years, and would be perfect regulars on Dark and Elevation at a minimum. I can imagine their young guys like Private Party and Brock Anderson would improve by leaps and bounds if they got a chance to regularly work TIAB, and Delaney would be a great utility player on his own as well. This was a fun short match which let Delaney get in a bit of offense before going down. His springboard stunner is a nifty move and he certainly takes a nice beating from Eddie. The Delaney fan in me would have liked this to go another 2 minutes or so, but this was still solid stuff.

MD: You got the sense Kingston respected what Delaney could do. That bled through in the ringwork itself. I could have used a few more minutes on this but again, hierarchy says probably not and Kingston understands hierarchy as well as anyone on the roster, even as he peppers in opportunities around it. There are too many cutters in AEW but there's probably room for Delaney's springboard stunner. It's always fun when Kingston just starts to unload with the suplexes and I liked the little wrinkle on the finish. This ended up a bit like a Tenryu vs Teranishi type match. Tenryu (or in this case Kingston) was going to give him everything he deserved based on who he was, but not a lick more than he should have based on his role in life and on the card.

AEW Dynamite 12/22

Darby Allin/CM Punk/Sting vs. The Pinnacle (Dax Hardwood/Cash Wheeler/MJF) 

ER: This was a long match paced out over three different hot tags for our heroes. It sometimes felt a bit long, and not every sequence worked, so it basically came down to a series of whose hot tags worked and whose heat segments were the best. Darby always has the best of both, and Sting continues to do the best work of his last 20 years on hot tags, while the Punk stretches all felt like they underdelivered. Darby can make anything come alive, so while the focus for awhile was on MJF running from Punk (even going so far as getting Punk to blow himself up chasing up and down the concourse stairs of the Greensboro Coliseum), Darby is doing small things like aiming for Cash's eye socket with a back elbow and wrenching him around by the neck on snapmares and cravats, but then takes the Punk/MJF chase up a huge notch. Darby - as he does - hits one of the hardest topes possible into The Pinnacle while they're starting to approach a heaving abdomen Punk. Darby's topes are almost always the best reason to rewind a wrestling show, and this one looked like a helmetless tackle. He twisted his body at the moment of impact and it made him crash perfectly through all three of them. 

Sting has been so fun in ring, and I loved how he took fight to Cash as well. That legsweep kick to set up the Scorpion Deathlock is a cool thing I don't remember 1998 Sting doing, and his tug of war with MJF avoiding Punk was paid off nicely with a stiff short arm clothesline. Sting really seemed like he had it out for Cash here, boxing his ears and raking his back, then bringing him into the ring with a hard landing vertical suplex. Sting somehow throws a vertical suplex like a 30 year old, honestly a crazy spot for a 62 year old to be doing (and this was before he did something much crazier). Darby making his transitions back to opponents' control as entertaining as his own time on offense is something Darby does best, getting stuck in enemy territory and thrown recklessly by Cash hard and fast over the top rope (bouncing off the edge of the apron on his way down) and FTR shine when they're hitting combos on him. I thought things dipped a bit with Sting's ring time going on a bit too long and Punk's long portion not fully clicking, but an awesome FTR power plex on Punk and an unhinged Darby crossbody that took him and Cash to the floor kept this constantly threatening to be spectacle. Sting and MJF had a couple of chippy moments (loved how Sting took a bulldog to break a Scorpion Deathlock) but things peak incredibly when Sting hits an insane hiptoss that throws MJF headfirst to the floor into FTR, the guardrail, and the floor, and then unleashes one of the oldest man planchas to the floor. Insane. The match might not have needed the full 24 minutes, but they still kept managing to keep upping the ante and making this a big main event. 

MD: As celebratory attraction matches go, this was up there. It felt like bringing Andre or Dusty in for Xmas to team with Watts and JYD, but in some ways, it was even more effective than that because it furthered storylines better and paid off other things. One advantage of the AEW style of not doing a lot of rematches is that the Punk interaction with Darby and Sting still feels fresh and unresolved. They had one match. Punk won it. Maybe a year from now, Darby beats Punk. Maybe not. But here they could team and all all honor one another and feel like a unit with a connection because of that one prior match. The Pinnacle doesn't always seem the most unified stable, but here it all came together with the matching yellow trunks and MJF really taking the fair weather camaraderie to extremes, celebrating FTR at every opportunity. He took everything to extremes, coming in off of the big win against Dante and the big workrate performance against Darby, and felt the freedom to go full chickenshit heel, teasing a lock up with Punk before tagging out, hitting Sting before immediately begging off, letting Punk chase him around the arena, and later on doing things like teasing a punch on a held Sting only to tweak his face instead. Like everything else in the match, it paid off, though not with Punk getting his hands on him, which will come later, but instead with Darby's dive from off camera or Sting lawn darting him out of the ring.

The structure of this worked pretty well. They had all of the feeling out process (with a new match up in FTR vs Punk, which played out both early and late) and antics, with the actual shine on Cash during the first commercial break, taken nice and slow with things like Punk's ten punch in the corner and cutting off the ring. When they came back that transitioned to heat on Darby after he got taken out with the top rope, the first hot tag to Sting and then the second heat on him during the second commercial break. Then they went into the big comeback, first with Punk vs FTR (including the Powerplex which Excalibur was really happy to call) and then with the MJF lawn dart and Sting dive, before Dax took the bullet for MJF and ate everyone's finish.

Everyone got their moments, even if MJF's were mostly underhanded and they missed Darby taking him out through the timekeeper's table. Punk seemed a little bit off with his timing and execution now and again, more so than in a lot of recent matches I've seen of his; maybe half a step behind at times and it added up, just not enough to really detract from the match as there was so much else going on. In general, both sides worked together well. I loved all the bodyslams. It's like Punk's infected everyone around him with them, but they were all used in important ways, setting up BOTH hot tags for instance. For something that is organic and accidental, it's striking to me how much FTR are like Les Blousons Noirs, with Cash as dangerous Gessat and Dax as Manneveau. Dax stooged all over the place in this one and Cash was pretty slick, including one little moment where he won a wristlock by slipping a knee in that was right out of 60s French Catch. So good big moments. Good little moments. Nice commercial management. Solid structure, though maybe it went a half segment too long. The good guys win. The fans are sent home happy (well, they would be if not for the Rampage taping that followed). And the bad guy gets to escape and to live another day and bluster on the way out. Nice piece of business that knew exactly what it was trying to accomplish and pretty much nailed it.

PAS: I think this would have been a strong MOTY level match at 15 or so, but felt a little draggy at 23. Still excellent, big star, super entertaining stuff. The Greensboro Coliseum saw a ton of these kind of matches over the years, whether it was Dusty, Steamboat and Dick Slater vs. Tully, Black Bart and Ron Bass 12/29/84, Dusty and the Rock and Rolls vs. Arn, Tully and Flair (4/20/86) or even Shelton Benjamin, Charlie Haas, Eddie Edwards, El Generico vs. Roderick Strong, The Briscoes and Michael Elgin (12/4/11) (actually that match went an hour and twenty minutes?!? What the fuck was going on in 2011 ROH?). This delivered all of the big beats of a great big star six man main event, and even some shit like the Sting plancha which we had no reason to expect. MJF was fun as Jimmy Hart (which is actually a pretty good role for him), and FTR are way better in this kind of cut the ring off stuff than when they try to do PWG shit with the Young Bucks or the Lucha Bros. Also, what a treasure this AEW Sting run has been. I have loved every single second of it, and Sting in tag matches with workhorse partners seems like it could go on forever. 

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AEW Dark Worth Watching: CIMA vs. Darby

Darby Allin vs. CIMA AEW Dark #1 10/8/19 

ER: Going wayyyyy back to the early days of AEW Dark, and these were the kind of matches that filled out Dark in these early episodes, when it was used less for squash matches. Allin/CIMA not being on at least Dynamite is pretty amusing in retrospect, but these were large shows in a full attendance world. And this was a really good "only happened once" kind of match, not sure when these two would ever be in the same place at the same time again, already seems like an oddball one off 18 months later. CIMA has been having fun matches like these for 25 years now, his entire adult life, and he's a cool different version of Darby. Darby packs a lot of insanity into a 7 minute match, with this awesome wrecking ball tope and a coffin drop that lands him squarely onto CIMA's knee. He makes all of CIMA's offense look great, like when he gets torpedoed into the middle buckle and crunches the back of his neck, then crunches it right after when CIMA dropkicks him back into it. CIMA locks in a great stretch muffler/bow and arrow that looks even better with Darby's flexibility. CIMA also blasts him in the back of the head with a cool meteora, which leads to a great moment where CIMA goes for another meteora and just does a hard missed double kneedrop. I'm just a couple years younger than CIMA and the idea of jumping up and landing on my knees for anything at all sounds like certain death. There's a fun transition where CIMA is bringing modern puro into things and starts a mid match chop exchange, but Darby just punches him and throws body shots when it's his turn to derail a match with a dumb standing exchange. Not taking the bait on a pointless chop exchange? A babyface after my own heart. Darby's comeback is really great, and has him landing fast hip attacks at CIMA's knee while CIMA is in the tree of woe, and the match finishing coffin drop is a beauty. Darby has such great accuracy with the move, and the match finisher is so high arcing and perfect.  

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NXT UK Worth Watching: Tyson T-Bone vs. Joe Coffey! Devlin vs. Mastiff!

Jordan Devlin vs. Dave Mastiff NXT UK 10/5 (Aired 10/31/19) (Ep. #66)

ER: It's pretty surprising we got this far into NXT UK without a Devlin/Mastiff match, as it feels like one of the bigger singles matches they could run. Not that they need to run every single marquee match within the first year, but the roster is only so big and these two have been two of the best presences on the brand. My brain just assumed it was a match that had happened a lot but these two really don't cross paths much inside or outside of NXT UK. It just feels like a match I've seen several times before on this very program and it clearly has not ever been seen by my eyes. Devlin bumps around for Mastiff (expected) every time he tries to get in close. He gets his leg caught and gets flipped onto his stomach, takes a big high backdrop,  and I loved how Devlin finally slowed the big man by torturing his arm. Devlin wasn't so much going after the arm as he was humiliating Mastiff, standing on Mastiff's face and chest each time before snapping the arm back to the mat like Harley Race. Devlin getting both boots on Mastiff's face while controlling the arm, then scraping them across as he hits the mat with the arm is some awesome stuff. Mastiff had a great Gotch lift to finally break the armbar and also tossed Devlin to the floor in a big bump, and splatted him with a Finlay roll on the floor. Devlin was strong at setting up every piece of Mastiff's offense, from foolishly going for the Devil Inside on a man twice his size (with a great finish callback to that), to hitting a great moonsault and getting greedy catching knees on a second to set up the cannonball. And what made a lot of the size difference stuff work was that Devlin hits as hard or harder than Mastiff, so even though Mastiff could easily flatten him, Devlin was always able to knock him back with an elbow, but we never had to pretend this was 50-50. The suplex finisher off the top looked nasty, loved the visual of Devlin yanking Mastiff off the top by the arm into his Saito suplex, great finish to a smart match.  

Tyson T-Bone vs. Joe Coffey NXT UK 10/5 (Aired 11/7/19) (Ep. #67)

ER: I don't have a ton of NXT UK dream matches, but this was one of the matches I really wanted to see. Tyson T-Bone is the NXT UK undercarder who most deserves to be in the main event scene. He's the most underutilized guy on the brand, and this is his first 5 minute bombfest in a year. He had a great one in 2018 against Dave Mastiff, and this is our great 2019 T-Bone match. T-Bone is probably the best bomb thrower in NXT UK, but it's a style that is one they seem to actively avoid, at least to the point where a match like this stands out as incredibly unique. It's a 5 minute match comprised of mostly bombs, without one hint of stand and trade. Coffey and T-Bone both hauled off, with some shots whiffing and others hitting clean and others hitting dirty. T-Bone has more precise fists and that's the story of the match, as T-Bone has the ability to land cleaner strikes and can punch through Coffey's fists to repeatedly outlast him standing, so Coffey's only chance is to get in close for throws. T-Bone is really damaging up close, with great overhand rights and body shots, with headbutts, hard kneelifts, and quick movement. Coffey gets a belly to belly and a backbreaker, and smartly goes after T-Bone's arm. If you can't block the fists at least try to take away the fist delivery system. I mean, Tyson T-Bone is still going to punch you, but maybe they won't have as much mustard on them? Coffey hits his low pounce and a hard damn lariat to win, and there's really no reason this same match couldn't be happening on a TakeOver. 

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

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New Footage Friday: WWF on MSG 4/25/83

Mr. Fuji vs. SD Jones

ER: This match was quite fun and mainly notable for its EXCELLENT finish. I thought SD Jones was going to pull this one out (not an impossibility) as he hit two massive headbutts on Fuji. Fuji sold them in this fun knee-buckling way and Jones worked a real nice headbutt, grabbing Fuji's melon with both hands and rearing way back before safely whipping his head forward. The headbutts played as a nice payback for Fuji's great falling headbutts to SD's "midsection" earlier in the match. But just as I thought SD was going to get a newly seen win from 40 years prior, he comes off the ropes and Fuji powers him over with a super fast belly to belly suplex that made Fuji look like Yoshiaki Yatsu. 

Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Johnny Rodz

ER: I like this kind of brainlessly active 10 minute Garden undercard match, where Sharpe will complain about his announced weight (here he was announced at 282 but screams about how he's 292 "and all muscle") and then bumps around for Rodz' dropkicks and sunset flips. Rodz gets tangled in the ropes in a cool way to sell a strike, and I love how Rodz' fast tough guy shtick plays against Sharpe's dumb meathead shtick. There's a great moment at the end where Sharpe gets tied in the ropes like Andre and has to make a bunch of stupid faces while Rodz fires up MSG for an attack that never comes. Rodz is dancing around and doing a hammock routine over the corner ropes, and the whole time Sharpe has to stand there screaming while his arms are tied in ropes. When Rodz finally attacks he runs right into a boot, then Sharpe hits one of his trademark ugly straight arm lariats for the win. 

Ray Stevens vs. Tony Garea

ER: Stevens has a pretty disappointing list of matches in his lone consistent WWF run, really only staying for 6 months and matching up a lot against Strongbows and Garea. But this might be the most I've seen a wrestler do with the typical Garea undercard match. It's the same Garea match you've seen if you've ever bothered to see more than one Tony Garea match, but Stevens is so good that he knows how to sell and bump for Garea's side headlocks and dropkicks and headlock takeovers and surprisingly stiff shoulderblocks, basically working like Bill Dundee against a stiff. Stevens' movement and the way he throws punches and kicks really reminds me of Dundee too, and despite being 47 here was hardly washed. His bumps are interesting, not just flat back bumps, but throwing himself back into the ropes and really making it look like he's getting knocked around by Garea and his bad body shots. I really loved Stevens keeping Garea on the floor with pointed kicks and punches, with Garea bumping multiple times off the apron. It could have been really good if Garea had bladed, but Stevens really built it up nicely for a potential Garea comeback, and Garea's fast sunset flip (with Stevens really whipping himself over on it) looked like a finish. Strong nearfall. The actual finish was Garea hitting a crossbody but Stevens rolling through for a quick pin, leaving this great visual of Garea angrily storming around inside the ring while Stevens gets his hand raised from his back, just like in the Fuji/SD Jones match before it. Stevens looked really great here, great enough where I think there should be an actual list worthy 1983 WWF Stevens match. His 80s AWA career is written off due to a leg injury and age, but 1983 Stevens looked like a guy that would be one of my 2021 favorites. 

The Wild Samoans (Afa/Samula) vs. Chief Jay Strongbow/Jules Strongbow

ER: This is the TV debut of Samu (here as Samoan #3) and it's a real fun showcase for him and his speed. Both Strongbows work this with a fun energy, and with Samula doing big flat back bumps with every tomahawk chop, making the Chief look like a real fun lesser Wahoo. Samula took bumps like a man testing out a hotel mattress, leaping up and backwards like every chop was taking the legs out from him. He works the entire first fall without tagging in Afa, and his energy keeps bringing out a great active side of the elder Strongbow. Is Chief Jay Actually Good? This match seems to point to that, and I wouldn't have guessed there were really fun Jay Strongbow matches from 1983. The Indians win the first fall after eventually hitting a big double chop and Samula, and then do the same early in the second. Samula had already been taking big backsplash bumps and here he got to show off his high dropkick. Jay really leans in to take the double headbutt for the finish of the second fall, and I loved his staggered blinded selling of it when the third eventually began; it felt similar to how Lawler would woozily fight back while knocked out standing. It all builds to an amazing spot where Strongbow and Samula hit heads, but it sends Jay on an incredible backwards bump over the top to the floor. Chief Jay basically leapt backwards over the ropes and went tumbling down in a great bump. Both teams handle the hot tag in cool ways, with Jay falling flat backwards after a collision and landing close enough for Jules to fall in, and when Jules tags in and hits Samula with a hard overhand chop he flies backwards halfway across the ring and tags Afa and his flight. Afa's fast rope running cross up was a neat burst of speed for the sudden finish (which was handled a bit clunkily as Jay was breaking up the pin after the one count and the ref just ignored it). So, what's some recommended Chief Jay Strongbow? 

Rocky Johnson vs. Don Muraco

MD: Rocky Johnson is a guy that absolutely got it. We don't have a ton of him from the 70s, but when he pops into a territory like Houston or Portland, he has a larger than life energy that doesn't really get talked up enough. It's probably because most people know him from this run, and then more from 84 on than 83 back, but he's probably a wrestler that deserves more of a look. The first few minutes of this were picture perfect in that regard. Muraco came down in Steelers gear with Albano. Johnson wanted the mic to call Muraco "Brother" which apparently was part of the program here as that offended Muraco. Albano ate a headbutt, both of them got double noggin' knockered from the inside out. Johnson started with the slaps that led to punches and Muraco took a powder. Then they moved on to strength spots where Johnson just stopped Muraco's whips like they were nothing. All great stuff. All got a reaction. Muraco was stooging all over the place. The finish worked too. After some solid beatings by Muraco, Johnson came back and ultimately hit this amazing standing dropkick onto Muraco who was perched on the top to get the countout win. The big problem was a bizarre structural approach probably having to do with Muraco as a vulnerable champ. After that shine, they had Johnson lean on Muraco with a long chinlock instead of the other way around. If that was part of Muraco's control, with them moving in and out of it with hope spots, it wouldn't have wowed anyone, but it would have still worked given Johnson's level of being over and Muraco's heat with the crowd. Instead, everything just ground to a halt for a few minutes. Pretty bizarre. That's 80s New York for you. The rest of this was good though.


Bob Backlund vs. Ivan Koloff

MD: If you're someone who like Bob Backlund matches, this will probably be something of a lost gem for you. They were very well matched. Koloff was slimmer than his 70s WWWF run and we know that he was still very good at what he did from his run in Crockett over the next few years. Instead of leaning into forboding strength, he played up his canny, and they built slowly and gradually and with great payoff to Backlund's strength spots, specifically a lift up out of a full nelson reversal and the gotch lift out of the short arm scissors. Say what you will about Monsoon on commentary, but him dismissing so much that happened in the ring did make it matter all the more when he really put something over, as he did with these. He and Patterson were both calling them the most impressive feats imaginable. Backlund was very good at knowing when to be beat down or to sell the aftereffects of something and when to just shrug it all off and go up for the crowd. He got out of Koloff's big bearhug by pressing Koloff's head down low enough so he could launch a knee. I've never seen that before and I might not believe it from anyone else. That was the thing with Backlund. He was so deep into his own character that it had to be hard for the crowd to do anything but believe along with him. He followed up his escape with this amazing crumbling pile driver. They made too much of the slow counting ref in the back third, but it was a pretty solid finishing stretch with an exciting calf branding near fall and Koloff going to the well once too often to see a suplex reversed for the clean as a whistle finish. Between how well these two were matched and that the crowd was into it, even chanting USA at times, they could have definitely gotten more than one match out of this one.

Jimmy Snuka vs. Superstar Graham

MD: I wasn't going to watch this but it was 3 minutes long and I figure someone's interested. Snuka remained on the rise and Graham fed for him and took all of his stuff and got beaten clean in the middle of the ring in 3 minutes. He looked withered and terrible, of course, but this was an effective use of a former champion to further get over the molten babyface and build his credibility. Just a very giving performance by Graham while still being a pretty embarrassing one given how he looked and moved and the shoddy kung fu stuff that was mainly just waving his hands around.

Swede Hanson vs. Pedro Morales

ER: This was a cool little 4 minute match with a couple neat surprises. I really liked Swede Hanson's lock-up and headlock game, even if it doesn't always go anywhere. He's a really big guy and his size during lock ups and headlock sequences always makes me sit up a bit, like I'm not expecting a huge old guy to effectively scramble to maintain a front chancery. Morales breaks an early smothering headlock by working his way to a knee breaker, which is where that sudden scramble from Hanson comes from. Morales takes a huge backwards bump through the ropes to the floor off a strike from Swede, and looks like he hits the back of his head on the timekeeper's table while basically doing Harley Race's bump. Morales comes back eventually with some solid body shots but then catches knees on a charge, eating a great Hanson running kneedrop for a close nearfall (in what I thought was the finish). Hanson had hit a couple other nice kneedrops earlier, those old school worked knees that were worked and throw with the full shin. Morales wins with a small package, but if this got a couple more minutes it would have been a great Velocity match. 

Eddie Gilbert vs. Jose Estrada

ER: This was right before Gilbert's serious car accident and it's fascinating the kind of reactions Gilbert was getting as a young babyface in WWF. Gilbert looks and works like young babyface Portland Roddy Piper, throwing energetic corner punches and surprising Estrada with a Thesz press for a near win, and is getting the kind of crowd reaction that Owen never got in the early 90s in a similar role. Gilbert and Estrada have a fun chemistry, and I especially liked how Estrada kept cutting off Gilbert with a punch to the head or stomach. Sometimes Gilbert would charge in and jet get stopped by a punch to the guy, other times Estrada would actually pause a hold he was doing just to punch Gilbert, or punch Gilbert in the face right when Gilbert was working his way out of a hold (Gilbert starting to break a headscissors? Cut your losses and just punch him!). Estrada doesn't wrestle without scruples, but it sure makes him look smart to not cling to a failing hold. This is a show with a lot of really well done finishes, and this was no different: It's a quick bit of rope running where Gilbert tries to catch Estrada with an O'Connor Roll, but Estrada holds on and bumps Gilbert, then runs at Gilbert for his own sunset flip, which Gilbert rolls out of and falls into a double leg pin. 

Andre the Giant vs. Big John Studd

ER: This is actually a neat footnote of a match to appear, as Studd had to be Andre's most frequent opponent over his long career. Studd and Andre feuded for parts of a decade in WWF alone, and this was the first time this attraction had played New York. Studd/Andre would have been a big attraction here, and I love how Studd riled them up by throwing down a $10,000 challenge. This motherfucker was challenging 10K over bodyslams *this* early into their WWF feud? Studd just started at 10K and only went up to 15K by the end of the decade. More guys on the Indies should challenge people for the money in their pocket. But this is a big match, starts and builds like a big match, but has a cruel dismissive count out finish that gets actual garbage thrown in the ring in MSG. 

The story is minimalist but very satisfying. Andre gave Studd a few laughing one handed shoves when he got in the ring, and kept shooting Studd these great Kubrick stare death looks like "No, please, keep talking, let's see what happens." Studd throws punches aimed at Andre's left arm, and Andre is good enough to work a Sell the Arm match as the largest man in his sport in 1983. He throws clubbing punches at the side of Studd's head and neck, and throws heavy chops that physically move Studd when they connect (and they always connect). But Andre throws all of those strikes with his right arm, and is great at selling pain when Studd is working a Fujiwara and dropping weight onto the arm. Andre is great at keeping active in holds and reacting to micro movements and changes in Studd's leverage. I loved how Andre trying reaching back to grab Studd in a headlock with his free arm, with Studd tucking his chin so Andre couldn't hook it, but still having to get his face smothered by Andre's big arm. Studd really got knocked around by Andre's comeback, really getting moved by his strikes and taking a couple bumps falling through the ropes to the apron. But Studd's strikes also got louder the longer the match went, with one axe handle blow to Andre's back sounding like a gunshot. Andre rams Studd into the corner, using ass and shoulder, and all of Studd's strikes to fight for a breath look hard.  

There are two great bodyslam teases, with Studd really getting his hand buried to get Andre off a leg, and an even better one as the very finish to the match: Andre grabs Studd on the apron to bring him back in over the top with a bodyslam, and Studd blocks it by just hooking his feet around the top rope! Studd is holding on for dear life with his toes glued together, and when Andre can't pull him free he just drops Studd, then plops down leg and ass first on his chest. Studd roles out of the ring and Nopes his way right down the entrance way without looking back on time. Fans are furious, and it turns out this was the only Andre/Studd match that would ever be run at MSG. They deserved a bit better than that finish, but I really dug the match as a big early moment of a long feud. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE 305 LIVE

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1993 WWF Surprises: Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Virgil

Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Virgil WWF Mania 1/23/93

ER: I don't think we've written much about Iron Mike Sharpe on Segunda Caida, but this was an unexpectedly special match. A few loud adults in the Manhattan Center crowd get behind Sharpe and it somehow transitions into a Hometown Hero performance for him, and it's great. The kids in the crowd kept cheering Virgil while their parents - who grew up seeing Sharpe work 15 minute draws with Tony Garea - cheered louder. Adults vs. Kids crowd heat wasn't really a thing in 1993 and the spontaneity is welcome. Sharpe works heel but catches onto and gets into the role of hometown hero, soaking in his reaction and giving them a match with the most Mike Sharpe offense in 3 years. It was a nostalgia reaction when those weren't a common thing, and a pure version of that because it wasn't advertised or intentional nostalgia. Nobody in production knew Sharpe was going to get the first babyface reaction of his northeast run, and there was no attempt to capitalize on it. Although, you could say that just the fact Iron Mike Sharpe was one of the few guys on TV older than Hogan AND kept employed through 1994, that was its own reward. When he was brought back in the early 90s, Sharpe was frequently on TV but never to the level of showing up on Coliseum video or getting a 10 minute Bret Hart match. So, digging up a 1993 Iron Mike Sharpe gem is the best kind of unexpected treat. 

Virgil is no pushover and is still going to get his babyface reaction, and a match where two guys are getting loud cheers and chants turns into a real scrap of a fight. Mike Sharpe isn't a pretty wrestler. He is big and hunched and bumps sideways sometimes and executes familiar offense in weirdly rigid ways. But Sharpe works this match more stiff than any other Mike Sharpe match I've seen (does anyone have a link to his Backlund title challenge?), and Virgil never needs an excuse to add some stiff punches and a rude suplex into a match. Sharpe works his bullshit, his nice headlock punch, basic stuff like bodyslams and shoulderblocks, and then keeps upping things with a great heavy crossbody and these Vader like standing clotheslines to Virgil's head and neck. Virgil fights back and convincingly knocks the bigger man around the ring, and the ragged messy charm is absolutely undeniable. The crowd really begins to react like Sharpe might actually pull off a win, and it's a great moment when Sharpe gets verbal with the them to feed their response. Virgil never worked like a heel in this match, but he did work like a guy who wasn't going to be upstaged, while also giving Sharpe the longest match of his second WWF run. It made for some great nearfalls, with a close kickout after a Virgil clothesline a couple minutes in an early signal that this was something beyond typical. 

Mania was like an early version of Velocity: filled with good matches and unique pairings that only happened on that show. Mania was on episode three here, and had already presented us with two one-off gems in a great Bill Irwin match and a great Iron Mike Sharpe match. Mania is the kind of wrestling that reminds me of tuning in at 12:30 AM in 2003, hoping for a Paul London gem.  

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Doom Patrol vs. Kingston/Homicide

95. Eddie Kingston/Homicide vs. Chris Dickinson/Jaka Beyond Wrestling 11/25 - GREAT

PAS: Really fun old school vs. new school NYC indie battle. I really liked the trash talking, with Dickinson calling Homicide grampa and daring Kingston to try his bullshit jujitsu. It felt a little good natured at first, but it started to get a little sharper, the way a pick up game can all of a sudden turn into a fist fight. This really did turn into that fist fight with Kingston tagging in and rag dolling Dickinson in a really disrespectful way. Those two especially brought it right to the edge in ways that I always love from both guys: a lot of chops to unsafe parts of the neck and sharp looking kicks. There is a great spot near the end of the match where Kingston is in the corner eating kicks, chops and punches from all angles by both guys while throwing his own shots back. It's one of the cooler strike exchanges I can remember seeing. We get a 2010s tag near fall run, which is what it is, but the big moves were appropriately big and it ended when it should. I am a big fan of all four of these guys and this really delivered. 

ER: I think we've had this sitting in drafts for over a couple years, waiting on me to force myself to watch some of my favorite guys. Obviously it's filled with things I love, and I knew that it would, but wrestling fans are weirdos and we can't always predict which direction our wrestling viewing hours will be spent. The match built well within the framework they established, veering into directions I didn't always like but always kept my interest. It starts with some cool dickhead kneebars from Dickinson with Homicide offering little defense, leading to Dickinson asking for Eddie Kingston's "fake jujitsu ass". Homicide having little ground answer for Dickinson and Dickinson being a loudmouth quickly leads to Homicide going after eyes and fighting the way we love to see Homicide fight. Dickinson and Jaka were great at getting Homicide away from Kingston and it felt like the whole match could have kept that formula, with Dickinson wrapping his arm around Homicide's neck from the apron while Jaka kicked and chopped away, and Eddie's insults grew less eloquent as his anger level rose. 

Jaka got a little too cute on an outside in suplex, choosing to do a ropes balance course with Homicide that is a bit too complicated, but it throws Homicide all the way across the ring, with Kingston tagging in as Homicide rolled to the floor. There was a little undercurrent of Kingston and Homicide disrespecting Jaka, and it was made a bit more obvious by Jaka looking a step behind skill-wise from the others. I was a big Jaka fan (weird to think he's only had like 10 matches since this one) and liked his commitment to using Islander strikes in Catch Point matches. Those strikes throw off the rhythm of this match a bit, with the best moments happening when King and Homicide throw bombs and chops. Jaka's strikes looked a little lighter, so when the OGs would hit him back it read as great old man disrespect. Homicide and Kingston even both SPIT at Jaka! Watching this three years later and that feels even more insulting, now that it's not just the biggest sign of disrespect but also potentially deadly. Kingston's flurries were the best, like dropping Dickinson with a mean Saito suplex and a stiff arm standing lariat. The ending got a bit bombastic and I think every single one of them got their own 1999 Kings Road fighting spirit moment. Pulling from 1999 All Japan is kind of like pulling live material from 1995 Grateful Dead shows, an era with less worthwhile stuff to steal from than the other 25+ years. Kingston takes one of the most scarily accurate backdrop drivers to that 1999 AJ style, and it's mostly glossed over to make way for both members of Doom Patrol to walk through backfists. It was a bit much, but it was in a match that also gave us Dickinson and Jaka teeing the absolute fuck off on Kingston in the corner while Kingston somehow screamed his way through it to chop them both in the neck, and it's the kind of high that many attempt but rarely make look this good. 

2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Batman! Inca! LeDuc, Gonzalez! Mercier! Lemarre! Marsalo!

3 on 3 series: Batman vs. Inca Viracocha, Gilbert LeDuc vs. Jo Gonzales, Jean Corne vs ??? 12/20/69

La Batman vs. Inca Viracocha

MD: This was a three on three event where they drew names (or threw names) and then went one-on-one. The announcer claimed this was a brand new thing they were trying. This was the first pairing and it was very good. Batman isn't the very best stylist we've seen but he had some size and charisma and could really hit a lot of stuff effortlessly. He had some signature spots no one else did, like his up and over to get out of a headlock. Viracocha, as we're quickly learning, may not have Peruano's flair but he was a quality cheapshot artist and stooge who could hit an extra gear on rope running and feed into all of Batman's offense. Lots of little counters and jockeying for positioning. This went a little shorter than normal given the format and ended with very rare interference from Gonzales to explain how Viracocha could take the first fall for his team.

Gilbert LeDuc vs. Jo Gonzales

MD: Gonzales (who I think was Jo) was dressed like Viracocha with the pancho and similar pants. I feel like we haven't seen LeDuc for a while, but he still knew how to work from underneath exceptionally well and had the trademark headspins. They worked some long holds where Gonzales held on well, and Gonzales certainly stooged like a champ, including teasing a hand behind his back like Mantopolous only to get kicked in the face by LeDuc who was too old for that crap. LeDuc was a real crowd pleaser, especially when he put on a leglock, whacked the knee to bring Gonzales to a seated position and then chopped him as he sat up. Repeating that a couple of times got the crowd chanting. He had all of the older French spots (like the repeated body scissors drop) and the leg whacks on the rolling leg nelson and they were all used to high effect. He took the second fall, but unfortunately we ran out of time before we could get the third: Corne vs whoever he was lined up against (which was some guy with a top hat that I never caught the name of).

Jacky Corn/Guy Mercier vs. Ted Lamarre/Jo Marsalo ?/?/70

MD: Excellent, excellent wrestling here. This was nominally stylist vs stylist with guys who were very experienced. We haven't seen too many stylist vs stylist tags. It's usually singles, and that gave this an interesting dynamic where it got heated, especially towards the end, but would lead more to holds than hard shots throughout the match. Lamarre and Marsalo were more the aggressors maybe, quicker to go mean if not dirty, with Mercier and Corn doing more of the firing back. Lots of great sequences. I thought Mercier had plenty of fun stuff, lots of leverage throws and takeovers. Lamarre kept up with his opponents and worked some of the best chinlocks I've ever seen, amazingly tight, amazingly competitive. In general, they spent a lot of the match rolling all over the place jockeying for position. Marsalo was more of a bruiser, bigger and stockier with a slam to Corn over the top rope or bearhug attempts, but the tag nature of this meant that it kept moving. Instead of Corn's usual big comeback, he built to a hot tag after the second fall and a very quick third fall which was Mercier cleaning house. Top notch match of its style and now I wish we had more stylist vs stylist tags.

PAS: Yeah this was nifty stuff, this didn't have the lighting fast exchanges of the lighter weight wrestlers, but lots of cool technical wrestling including lots of cool spots working out of Lamarre's chinlocks, and an extended short arm scissors section which is one of my favorite things in wrestling. We got some solid clubbing when it broke down a bit as well. The pacing of this was a bit weird with the long first and second falls, and the 90 second third fall, but the actual work was top notch

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 12/13-12/19

AEW Dynamite 12/15

Bryan Danielson vs. Adam Page 

MD: This is one of the rare ones where I kind of want to crib off of Eric or Phil's notes, but I tend to get in first on some of these, and with this one, the only record we have of Phil was "I liked the Kingston match more." Thanks, Phil. Anyway, I caught this twice, or at least one and a half times. 8 pm is tough for me live as I have kids to put to bed, but I caught a good amount before the TNT app froze on me and wouldn't come back. Then I followed back the next day with the international feed. That was a preferable experience since you didn't lose any of the match or crowd noise to picture-in-picture but seeing a chunk the other way makes me want to raise a point right at the start. There are a few interesting elements at play with this one: Danielson's approach to it relative to his long 00s matches; Danielson's heel role and how he worked the crowd; how well or not well Page was able to hang in probably the most challenging match of his career (probably as I don't think I've ever actually seen him before except for in clips); but maybe the most interesting to me is how they managed the commercial breaks.

I guess more accurately, the interesting factor is that they had to deal with them in the first place. I haven't gone back and watched the long WWE TV matches of the last twenty years, but here it obviously shaped the match. On paper, you'd think that would have an impact when it came to suspension of disbelief. Why is Danielson working this hold for so long? Why is Page bleeding out on the floor so long while Danielson works the crowd in the ring? Because it's a commercial break. We know it, the wrestlers know it, the production team knows it, the crowd knows it. A necessary evil, right? (Except for that one break right after Page missed the second moonsault to the floor where Danielson pulled back the mat and hit the DDT; except for in 2021, that's not that big a spot, I guess, and the call sheet could just have been "Danielson does damage to Page on the floor.") Yet, here was the striking bit. When the sound left for commercials during that first break that started with Danielson working an abdominal stretch, the crowd was up and excited. When the sound came back at the end of it with Page reversing a surfboard, the crowd was up and excited. Listening to the TNT feed, I wasn't expecting it, and it hit like a sudden wave. They'd changed gears, slowed things down for the commercial break, and they still had the crowd. Likewise for the break where Page was bleeding out: yes, towards the very, very end the crowd started to turn on the doctors at least and a small bullshit chant started, but for two or three minutes before that, Danielson had their full attention, doing jumping jacks in the ring, giving them the finger, completely indifferent to Page's plight and drowning happily in boos while literally nothing was happening but some doctor pouring water into Page's mouth as commercials sludged past for the US audience. If the crowd didn't care, if it really didn't impact viewing on the international feed, if it maybe even helped the overall pace of the match by letting things breathe when modern inclinations are to go, go, and then go some more, then it was a potential problem solved.

So much of that was down to Danielson being fully invested in every moment of the match. He was completely on from bell to bell, bringing logic, purpose, attitude, and meaning to everything he did. When I was on Phil's pod the other week talking about Bock vs Hennig, one key factor to me was that you could draw a line from any spot in the match to any other spot and explain easily, logically, and with satisfaction how they got from point A to point B or back. I wouldn't be quite so quick to stake that claim here, but after a bit of hesitation, I probably would agree to it anyway. Moreover, nothing felt like time-killing other than the obvious commercial time killing, and like I said, even that was over and effective and interesting as a thought experiment, even if you don't always want thought experiments in your big title matches. Danielson moved from body part to body part, but he did so based on the current opening and the current opportunity. It almost always built on what came before in the match and it led to what came next. It opened possibilities minutes down the line and was informed by eventualities from minutes previous. It was less on Page to have a gameplan and more on him to just hit his big offense when the chance arose, but he never seemed out of place or lost or like he wasn't carrying his weight in the match.

I came in thinking there were no good booking choices, that they had just gone with this too quickly if they wanted to maximize Danielson and protect Page's reign and all the time spent to build it up, and in the end, they made him look strong to outsiders without hurting Danielson too much, but that was only because they punted the ultimate decision down the field a few weeks or a month. They'll still have to cross that road later, but this draw is going to make things at least a little bit easier for them when that time comes.

PAS: This was a match I liked a lot, without absolutely loving it. It is difficult to keep me engaged in a match this long at all, and I was definitely engaged. I really thought Danielson kept the match together with his heel work, the taunting, the ripping at the wound, the mix of cocky and vicious which he has really mastered. Page was pretty good too, especially for a guy I am not invested in. This wasn't Danielson against a broomstick, he brought plenty, from the huge bump to the floor, the bleeding, the big clothesline. He also kept cardio pace, it is clear that the wrestlers today have the wind to work a 60 minute match at a faster pace then most wrestlers from the 70s and 80s, but they had the sense to do plenty of selling as well. I did think the match got a bit your turn my turn at the end, I think it would have been more satisfying narratively if you had just one guy trying to survive at the buzzer rather then both guys having a chance too, and I also didn't love the long break on the outside with the doctor, feels like there is a count for a reason and if it took that long for Page to get back into the ring, then he should have been counted out. I had a Ringer piece I was pitching on the booking dilemma AEW found itself in, and the draw kind of skunked the piece, but I am interested to see where they go from here, Danielson seems to have way more juice in him for a title run then Page, but I get why Page is important to the promotion and their fans.

AEW Rampage 12/17 (Taped 12/15)

Eddie Kingston/Santana/Ortiz/Pentagon Jr./Fenix vs. 2.0 (Jeff Parker/Matt Lee)/The Acclaimed (Max Caster/Anthony Bowens)/Daniel Garcia - GREAT

PAS: I think it is really smart of AEW to run these six, eight and ten man tags. It's a great way to get a bunch of people involved without burning singles matches. High energy stuff which was really highlighted by the Kingston vs. Garcia feud, loved the high energy finish and the roll up upset. Also was really impressed with Bowens, who was hitting hard, and Santana and Ortiz who carried the workload. Enjoyed how this kept breaking down and coming together and it had fun action throughout. This is what you want to deliver for a TV main event. 

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