Found Footage Friday: LAWLER~! WILDCAT~! BUCHANAN~! MORTON vs. EATON~!

Jerry Lawler vs. Bull Buchanan NWA Worldwide 1999

MD: I get that he had Lawler in here, but my initial thought was that Buchanan looked very good hitting his stuff. I went back through the archives to see if we've said much about him and I think I've found Eric twice over the years saying he looked better than he remembered, so maybe there's something to that. Granted, it helps when, during the comeback, a guy has Lawler wildly slamming his own head back into the turnbuckle to sell punches. Likewise early on when he really went up for Bull's slams and then stooged by being unable to slam Bull himself. Regardless, Bull came off looking like a big deal here and like someone who could really be molded as a dynamic monster. Even when Lawler was in charge, it was mostly by having Stacey choke him on the bottom rope or by using an object. Bull actually hitting stuff was a bit more dubious but the money was just in how fluidly he hit a whip into the corner or moved around the ring. Overall just a very giving performance by Lawler, though I'd say that the fans were more anti-Lawler than they were pro-Bull and they never quite got behind him despite it all. If I saw this in 99, I'd think Bull would be WWF champion in 2003 maybe. I guess he was tag team champion for a cup of coffee. His AJPW run doesn't hold up, right?

ER: I'm forever curious about checking out and re-establishing opinions on guys like Bull Buchanan. Following my nose has lead to some pretty great wrestler re-evaluations for me personally. I wouldn't have known just how great the Berzerker was had I not followed it. Bull Buchanan isn't a guy I've thought about re-evaluating, which makes him a perfect kind of guy to look back into. It's just fun to check back on certain things the older you get. You never know which music or director or wrestler your current self is into if you never dip your toe back in. Let's find those great Truth Commission matches someday! This Bull Buchanan was much different than the Recon that has last appeared in WWE 18 months prior. The main difference? Buchanan is so jacked in this match that I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to recognize him if I hadn't known who we were watching. You can tell he'd been putting in a lot of time in OVW, as he now had the biggest biceps and the stupidest haircut of his life. 

Honestly Buchanan looked more like a rookie a couple months in, than a guy who had been all over WWF TV and PPV for a few months the prior year. He looked like the kind of lummox that Lawler had been pulling great matches out of for over two decades. This was basically Lawler vs. Snitsky, and Lawler is really good at working that. I love when Lawler is a heel in Tennessee. Lawler as the controlling cheating heel is a much more interesting match than babyface Lawler selling the entire match for Bull Buchanan holds. This was a great Lawler performance, peaking with him putting on a master class of punches before immediately reminding every viewer that not only does he have the best punches in wrestling history, but he also sells punches better than anyone else. Buchanan's three corner punches are his highlight of the match, with Lawler whipping his body among ropes, turnbuckle, and fist. Lawler sells a punch to the body by running on his tippy toes and falling to his seat. Lawler added a lot of color to a minimalist Buchanan performance, taking high bumps on hiptosses and screaming in the corner when he was about to be socked. Kat choking Bull over the bottom rope was almost surely some kind of sex play between the three of them. Lawler wins with a perfect right hand, with what looked like a wadded up receipt as the weapon. Perfect. Somebody sell me on Bull Buchanan in NOAH. 

Ricky Morton vs. Bobby Eaton ASW 2002

MD: The bane of my pro wrestling footage existence are those silent 8mm footage clips. Those, and when we get 3 minutes of a match from Florida. There's something to watching two absolute masters without sound, however. We have a moral obligation to watch this, sound or no. It's fun here to just watch Morton and Eaton and imagine how the crowd would react. You end up focusing more on how Morton puts on a headlock or Eaton's body language as he's about to try to pull something tricky while pressed back into the corner. This one really doesn't have any high spots, but it doesn't need them. They were fairly deep into their 40s at this point, with plenty of bumps punched on the card, but they also knew what to do when and how. Eaton was slow to enter and threw a cheapshot punch when they finally made contact. When Morton came at him, he went to the apron to avoid contact. He tried it again, this time in the corner, but Morton blocked, fired back, and hit a stunner that Eaton sold like a mare. Always keeping up with the times was Ricky Morton. That opening exchange was probably the highlight of the match, as it's probably more fun to watch Morton's shine without sound than him fighting from underneath without it, but you could still see the mastery at every point in the remaining six minutes or so. Turner, when he uploaded it, said that this crowd had no idea how lucky they were. Without the audio, we probably don't know if that's true or not, but it's good to see how these two would put together a match in front of a crowd this size in a venue like this in 2002.

ER: I love watching wrestling with the sound off, and I'm surprised more don't take advantage of it. If you really want to focus on a guy, I always notice things I don't know if I would have otherwise with sound. It's a skill that I had to learn sometime around 2003-04 WWE, and it's a skill that I continued to use almost exclusively when watching guys I like in WWE. Remember when everyone was complaining about how awful Heel Michael Cole, and how much he was dominating broadcasts? Well guess which guy still managed to watch his favorite WWE workers without experiencing Michael Cole? Everyone has this power, and too many are afraid to wield it. A match like this forces our hand, but honestly, what could we have missed out on from this little venue in a short match? I thought Eaton looked so good here. I loved what a pill he was being about starting the match, and how he popped Ricky and even used a couple of sick thumbs to the throat. Eaton throwing one punch in one corner, and then casually walking to the opposite corner to lean through the ropes was some classic small town asshole heel business. Eaton's bump into the middle rope is one of my favorite punch sells (not sure I've seen anyone do it better than Eaton other than maybe Big Boss Man), and it looks even cooler in a dingy little building. We might need a tiebreaker on this one, as I'm pretty sure Ricky was indeed going for a flying mare, not a Stunner. I don't think Ricky really got the grip and he definitely didn't get the jump, but seeing how Morton landed I'm confident Eaton made the right bump. This didn't really feel like a full match, but Morton did take a decent bump to the floor, and I loved when he flustered Bobby with a flurry of punches. You already know if you're the kind of person who gets excited by a broken audio incomplete Eaton/Morton match, you don't need us. But you're probably here because you are the kind of person excited by this kind of match. 

Jerry Lawler vs. Chris Harris USA Wrestling 2005

MD: Fun for the whole family in this one, as Eugene was in Harris' corner, mimicking everything happening in the ring and having someone for both wrestlers to play against. Let me put it this way: the finish has Lawler getting pinballed from one to the next and the crowd couldn't be happier. The early going here is so minimalist, with Lawler losing an exchange and then milking it for two minutes, but I kind of live for that stuff. It's so effective and so artful so I'm not going to complain. He takes over with an object that may or may not exist and Eugene makes for an excellent cheerleader; there was a dodgy moment where the crowd was chanting for Eugene to do something instead of Harris but what Eugene did was start clapping and hitting the mat so that everyone would create a more neutral rallying reaction which Harris could play into. It was a smart moment by Dinsmore. The potential ceiling on this was relatively low if you compare it to all time Lawler performances but it was a huge amount of fun. 

ER: Lawler is so good at this. You couldn't call this a no bump or even low bump appearance, but this was 15 minutes of Lawler making the most out of the least, another match where Lawler's selling is at the forefront. Early on he takes a big swing and miss at Harris in the corner, and Harris hits him with an awesome left hand that Lawler sells immaculately. All of his selling here is great, all of his stalling is great, and the man even takes a big ass backdrop bump, and gets run into the turnbuckles a lot. He finally demands the ref do something about Eugene, and when Eugene is being dealt with he reaches into his tights to actualize a weapon that hadn't been there a second before. With a loaded fist he finally gets in his first offense of the match, peppering Harris with left jabs and right hand payoffs, dancing a little Lawler shuffle in between punches. I loved his backdrop bump, but his missed middle rope fistdrop bump is so damn good. Sometimes he sticks it knees to mat, but here he hit with knees and fist and immediately rolled forward, like Low Ki rolling through a missed double stomp, only here Lawler comes up holding his hand. Chris Harris throws punches a lot better than I remember (and he's also against the best punch seller here so that has to help), and there were a couple good nearfalls where Lawler got his foot on the ropes at the last minute. That was all paid off by Eugene shoving his foot off when he tries it again. It's nothing but punches, a couple of big bumps from a guy in his mid 50s, and bullshit. That's Segunda Caida, baby.