Found Footage Friday: TOSHIAKI~! TARZAN~! KAWADA~! GOTO~! FUNK~! GILBERT~!

Toshiaki Kawada vs. Tarzan Goto AJPW 1/14/84

MD: This was Kawada's first win ever, after losing over two hundred matches. It's also one of the earliest All Japan handhelds that have ever popped up. It's a really good Goto performance on top of that, which is important as we want to celebrate the guy, even if this is an on-brand but off-key way to do so. He gave Kawada a little escape shine early, with Kawada bridging back and forth out of a headscissors and turning a fireman's carry into a victory roll before eating a back elbow off the ropes. After that, Goto really zones in on the arm, hanging on throughout escape attempts and then locking in a number of varied holds. He goes the extra mile too, flipping over to put on more torque, crashing down onto the arm with different elbow drops or body drops, running across the ring with an arm driver. I don't think a single person in the audience thought that Kawada was going to somehow pull out a win, banana peel or otherwise, right down to the finish where Goto lawn darts him across the ring only to go for it again and eat a backslide. Kawada hit his stuff cleanly and had fire when it mattered but this was very much Goto's show.

ER: I love our pro wrestling footage finders so much. Even more than them, I love the men who - nearly 40 years ago! - snuck cameras into house shows to document history they couldn't have known would be happening. As Matt pointed out, this was literally Kawada's first victory, coming after over 200 matches 15 months into his career. A hero showed up to a small show in Hokkaido on my 3rd birthday, with a camera that likely took a team of seven men to operate, likely had to be snuck into the building disguised as a large mechanical man, and without realizing the fascinating historical footnote that the opening match of the show would become. I mean, sure, this show ALSO had Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Steve Olsonoski so who's to say this show wouldn't have otherwise been historic. This match is fun, but definitely a house show opener from 1984. 

This was mostly a Tarzan mauling, but the finish they used didn't feel like a banana peel for Kawada. It's fun seeing Kawada get his arm worked over in a match. I mean, there is literally nothing about THIS Kawada that reads as the Kawada we all love. Since the 1984 handheld doesn't afford us a very good look at Kawada's face, for all I know this may as well have been some other guy with the same name, like that other Yuki Ishikawa who briefly tricks me into being excited about a modern Japanese wrestling match every couple of months. Tarzan works over Kawada's arm in fun ways, landing on it with his full weight repeatedly. I'm a big fan of the running Fujiwara takedown, Goto using his size to run and jump to the mat with that arm, and Kawada can't do anything but dive onto his stomach. The best spot of the match, and a move that someone today should definitely steal, is when Goto lifts Kawada up for an atomic drop, and then just throws him forward into a hard flat back landing. I've seen Akira Taue use that and variations of it, but it should make a comeback. It's a great move and played really well into the finish, with Kawada flipping out the back and getting a backslide. Had I just taken that empty pool bump and thought I was about to take another, I'd try to backflip my way out of it too. 

Toshiaki Kawada vs. Tarzan Goto AJPW 11/28/84

MD: Very similar match later in the year. Goto gave Kawada a little more early and he had a more dynamic comeback, including hitting one big leap off the top and the jumping, spinning back kick, but otherwise, it was mainly just night to see a lot of the armwork from the January match in better VQ. Goto threw a few more headbutts here too, and Kawada was more flippy, including an inexplicable flip/self-back bump over a dropdown during a rope-running sequence. He hit a nice senton off the ropes too but missed a second leap back off the top and got squashed by a top rope Goto splash. Again, Goto's known for wild FMW brawls but this was straightforward and sound. He worked with Kawada over 50 times, maybe as many as 70-something between 82 and 85 and watching these two back to back, you can only come to the conclusion that it helped in Kawada's early development.

ER: I was actually surprised how similar their touring match was 10 months along from the match above. It's also hilarious to me that Kawada basically spent 1984 getting his arm demolished every couple nights by Tarzan Goto. Goto doesn't pull his weight on anything. Every one of his falling headbutts looked like him throwing the flat of his forehead as hard as he could onto Kawada, and every time he jumped on or splashed Kawada's arm it looked like a guy landing as hard as he could onto an arm. Kawada really looked like he was aping same-era Misawa here, with very similar movements and some things I've never seen Kawada do, but HAVE seen Misawa do. When he did a front flip to dodge a Goto dropdown, that sealed it. Kawada had added a couple bits of offense in the intervening 10 months, even if the additions didn't actually look that good. After hitting his (Misawa-like) crossbody, he hit a real high leaping elbowdrop (that looked more like a big back bump and not something that would hurt Goto) and a high senton that sure looked like it would land heavy but just kind of lightly bounced right off Tarzan's big torso. If Kawada bounced off of Goto's torso with a light landing, then Goto landed his big splash off the top the exact opposite. As with a lot of his other offense, Goto looked like he was trying to splash Kawada as hard as humanly possible. The All Japan training system during this era is undeniable, but I would have been the guy watching Kawada for his first few years and just Not Seeing It. 

Terry Funk vs. Doug Gilbert SCW 5/14/05

MD: I'd like you to imagine what a Funk vs. Gilbert match would look like in 2005. Done? Hey, you imagined this match! Good job. It's exactly what you'd expect, which is a good thing. Funk wanted the mic to start and that let Gilbert ambush him. Blood came early. The beating happened all around the ringside area. There was a tire tool and a box cutter and the ringside table. Gilbert's punches were good. He hit a piledriver on a chair back in the ring and then got the mic and started proclaiming him king of Nashville. Funk came back. There were revenge bits with the table. Funk got tossed into chairs and chucked them up at Gilbert from the ground in a pretty amazing visual. It all ended up back in the ring with Funk DDTing Gilbert, his crony, the ref, his valet, onto chairs. And it ended with a fireball and a second ref counting the ring. All in about ten minutes. Nothing particularly surprised me though the flying chairs were something and the fireball was quite impressive, but I didn't want to be surprised. I wanted to watch Terry Funk and Doug Gilbert walk, brawl, and bleed for ten minutes and I got my wish.

ER: Yep, this is the exact match you would want to see if you paid money to see Terry Funk vs. Doug Gilbert in 2005. If you were paying for this match, you'd go home thinking you got a better match than you were expecting. Funk worked matches for another 10 years after this, but we're talking about 25 matches over the next 10 years. You can tell Funk's knees are so beyond shot that they look like a road sign on a desolate Canadian highway. But the best parts of this play to both men's strengths, and for Gilbert that meant punches. This was one of the best Dougie punching matches I have seen, as I'm not sure I've seen a match where he's thrown better ones. He stands right on Funk's neck and throws nothing but great right hands, shaking his fist out after the best ones (any wrestler who does that is automatically Top 20 in the world), even gives us a nice fistdrop, sliding in on his knees as Funk is rolling out of the ring. Funk gets busted open from punches and Dougie opens him up further with a fucking BOX CUTTER. Funk clearly has a hard time getting to his feet whenever he is on his back, so most of his bumps are the Terry "fall into the ropes and tilt amusingly onto the apron and then down onto my feet on the floor" variety, but he WILL get cut open with a fucking box cutter. 

When Funk finally takes over, we see the other side of Doug Gilbert, which is that of a man who takes weapons shots like The Miz. Funk was not throwing concussion level chair shots, but Gilbert's arms were positioned so far in front of his face that I can only assume he has a severe folding chair allergy the way he was avoiding them. Gilbert's "I'll Dish It, But Can't/Won't Take It" attitude is a great aspect to his heel persona, and even when Funk is bashing Gilbert's head on a table, I'm not sure Dougie's head came even two feet away from that table. I thought Gilbert was just smacking his hands repeatedly on the table, because his head was so far away from the surface that it didn't even register what move was supposed to be happening. More power to Doug Gilbert for protecting his frontal lobe, but goddamn man you just opened up a 60 year old man, at least make some of his shit look good. The match ending bullshit was excellent, with Funk laying out everyone in sight with really great DDTs before not shielding his face IN THE LEAST from a Gilbert fireball. Terry Funk has to be one of the most selfless wrestlers in history. Can you imagine wrestling a guy who leans away from almost every serious shot you threw, all match, and then still just letting that dude relief you of your eyebrows? Only Terry.