Found Footage Friday: SAVAGE~! THUNDERBOLT~! FABS~! VOLS~! CHAIN WAR FROM BRAZIL~!

Randy Savage vs. Thunderbolt Patterson ICW 1983

MD: Bryan Turner's posting great stuff from the late 90s and early 00s, but he had an episode of ICW TV here that we seem to not have had and from 83 that episode had footage of a Randy Savage vs Thunderbolt Patterson match that Patterson commentated over. This isn't complete by any means. We get about five minutes of action, but it's still gold. A couple of minutes of that is Randy choking Patterson over the ropes and just staying on him. Patterson starts to come back and Savage is just great feeding into his shots and creating the motion for him. From there, it's typical thought out Randy stuff with Patterson jamming him on a suplex and then a pile driver and getting near falls. Patterson's description of how to stop a pile driver ("spread my legs and shake my stuff") is awesome. Savage heels it up by trying to get himself intentionally DQed by tossing the ref around but the ref is on to him and tries to keep it going until Randy just tosses him out of the ring. From there Patterson gets the DQ win and a phantom pin after an atomic drop and has to clock the ref too with him commentating that he shouldn't have done it but he hasn't had many opportunities in life and it was just a great piece of territory TV overall that we hadn't had before and a great look at what made both 83 Savage, on the way up, and 83 Patterson, on the way down, special.

Mr. Argentina vs. Aquiles Brazil 1980s?

MD: This is found, not new, but we've never covered it before. Depending on who you talk to, it's a pretty legendary match in Brazil, but it previously was online with worse VQ and in three parts. It's been put up a couple of times in one complete whole this year and everyone should watch it. It's a chain match in the country's traditional round system, which is kind of wild when you think about it. They take off the chain at the end of each round and then put it back on afterwards. We lose part of the last round and everything ends as a chaotic brawl after a draw, as well it should, and maybe that clip/finish keeps it from being an all time bit of footage, but it's unique and wild and very distinct. Argentina, despite any country-to-country animosity you might expect is the clear babyface, though the fans seem to at least respect Aquiles' guts as he absorbs blows in the back half.

Round one was Aquiles trying to use the chain as a weapon and Argentina out wrestling him. Round two started with Aquiles catching him with a choke with the chain and then nailing him with a haymaker with it wrapped around his head, changing the trajectory of the match. Everything's bloody from there as Argentina gets beaten around the ring throughout round two and after a brief respite, Round 3, where Aquiles uses the chain to tear apart his leg. Round 4 is the comeback and it's wild as Argentina refuses to get chained and just rushes in with big babyface offense. The chain's not part of the match after this, even with the round system, as things are just too heated. He drives Aquiles' face into the post opening him up huge and it's just a gloriously bloody mess through the final rounds. Violent, heated, bloody wrestling is universal and we're always glad to see another country's offering. This one stands well aside its counterparts from around the world.

PAS: Way of the Blade 2 contender for sure. I love the look of this match, wrestling is best when it feels like there is a film of grease over the whole thing. Hard violent shots, tons of blood and Argentina looking like an all time great babyface. His Round 4 comeback is top tier stuff, great looking headscissors, big right hands, just drives the crowd wild. When he opens up Aquiles on the post it is just toe to toe violent stuff from there out, reminded me of a great Perro Aguayo lucha match. Highest reccomendation!!

TN Vols (Reno Riggins/Steven Dunn) vs. Fabulous Ones MCW 1999

MD: This was the build up to the Lawler/Dundee vs Fabs tags we reviewed a few weeks back. My guess is that it's late April, early May of 99 as Cagematch has Lawler/Dundee working the Fabs in Memphis in April of 99 and the announcing mentions a big show on May 4. It starts off very much face vs face and it ends that way in the post-match, but the Fabs go de facto heel hard and without remorse to give the thing some structure down throughout. It's a bit of a shame as it was shaping up to hold up well against some of the better face team vs face team matches I can think of, like Martel/Santana vs High Flyers, with some solid opening exchanges and holds and overall oneupmanship. Around the first commercial they take over on Dunn and after that it becomes a lot of drawing the ref's attention, missed tags, cutting off the ring (especially after hope spots), and the occasional snuck in cheapshot. It's all effective stuff though I don't think the fans really wanted to boo the Fabs given how they were overall presented. You got the sense their heart wasn't in it even if they were entirely professional and merciless about it. Dunn made for a strong face-in-peril, believably going for the tag and believably getting cut off at the last second. The comeback was a bit stilted, probably due to time constraints, as after he jumped across the ring with a great hot tag, he was almost immediately back in there to lock in a sleeper when all the heels in the back came out to ambush him. The Fabs made the save with a chair and that was that. Strong TV southern tag but I kind of wonder what it might have looked like if they had been bold enough to try to wrestle it face vs face the whole way through. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: 9/19 - 9/25 Part 2

AEW Rampage Grand Slam 9/23

Darby Allin/Sting vs. Buddy Matthews/Brody King

MD: Unless they're in there against a team that's the top of the top, like FTR who can carry the heat in a more conventional structure no matter the opponent, Sting's tags always have a bunch of bells and whistles. That's in part because Darby Allin is bell and a whistle and his matches probably should have big set pieces anyway. It's in part to cover Sting's physical limitations. It's always amazing how well the matches go regardless and that nothing ever goes wrong. Here, things went wrong, but as with most wrestling, when things go wrong, they tend to create an even bigger dramatic effect. For the most part, these matches are tied together by Sting's presence, his star power, Darby's ability to bump and throw himself into situations, and the big stunts that everything builds to. This was no exception. There was the early ambush, the visual image of Julia going full Sherri (as she did often in this match) hanging on Sting's back, things ending up in the ring with Sting standing off and then fighting off both Matthews and King. There tends to be less of an overall narrative in matches like these. You're building from moment to moment and capitalizing on the opportunities the last moment presented. Darby hitting King with a code red and then himself out on a dive on Matthews allowed for Sting to match up with Matthews and set up his own dive. King recovering early enough meant that Sting could go flying through the tables (which included the first mishap that made everything more grisly and helped justify how out of it Sting would be for the rest of the match). That allowed for the handcuffing and Darby to fight back up the ramp during the commercial break and the 2-on-1 at the top with all of the individual story beats, ultimately leading to them revisiting the dangling choke that started this feud and both men crashing into tables and ultimately out of the match.

It's a tricky balance, having everything weighty enough, having it all make sense, having it all justified, having it remain consistent with everything that's happened in Sting's other matches and across the rest of the card. The weight of things here had to balance with the Starks/Hobbs street fight for instance. But I think they more or less nailed it, aided in part by some of the mishaps like the tables not cooperating or Julia's huge bump going wrong at the end to help get across the weight of the finish. Obviously, everything here built to the big surprise of Muta and it worked because the crowd went up for it and because Matthews portrayed shock and fear exactly when he should have. Plus he took an absolutely amazing dragon screw. That helped too. But that highlights a broader point. There wasn't a moment in this match where any of the wrestlers (including Julia, though maybe not Muta) wasn't entirely engaged and putting everything they had into it. When you've got a stunt show held together by star power and spots, that engagement is absolutely everything.

Sammy Guevara vs. Eddie Kingston

MD: I've been watching a lot of 1986 New Japan lately. Actually, let me rephrase that. I just finished watching every single NJPW match we have on tape for 1986. The throughline of that year is the NJPW vs UWF feud and there are two matches in particular: Fujinami vs Maeda and the match where Koshinaka wins the title from Takada that you can sum up like this: the NJPW guy had to wrestle an absolutely perfect match to hang in the UWF guy. In both cases, Fujinami and Koshinaka rise to the occasion and you end up with two just great matches. As this started towards the finishing stretch, I kind of had that same feeling. After all that had happened, given pent up rage in Kingston that had been simmering and simmering, given that Sammy robbed Eddie of his revenge against Jericho, given how Ruby Soho was hurt, and most especially given the way Sammy repeated his line to start the match, he would have had to wrestle an absolutely perfect match to hang with Eddie, to have any sort of chance of actually beating him. That would have meant leaning on every advantage, his speed, his agility, Tay at ringside, Eddie's own rage used against him, everything. If he had managed that, he would have had a shot, not to pin Eddie, not to make him submit, but maybe to knock him out. 

Sammy did not wrestle that match. He got beat around the ring. He capitalized on a mistake. He drew some heat during the commercial break doing snow angels in the ring and yes, leaning on Tay. He survived a strike exchange even. But the tide was too much. It was not his perfect match. It's not within his character to do so. What he did manage to do, however, was to tap into that rage, that pent up aggression, a symbolic throbbing heart of AEW that is connected to everyone sitting at home and every missed opportunity past and present. He unleashed a monster too big for him to stop, but also too big for itself to stop. Eddie had been stretching Jericho in his own head for months. With Sammy in his grasp, he couldn't let go. So Eddie lost a victory and Sammy won a Pyrrhic one, celebrating down the ramp while Eddie's angst and frustration, the towering monster inside of him, only grew stronger and more intense. It got me thinking though, got me wondering. Maybe someday we'll see them run it back. Maybe someday we'll see what Sammy's perfect match against Eddie might be. Koshinaka spent all of 86 getting better, made stronger against the hard steel of Takada. Maybe Eddie is exactly what Sammy needs?

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corne! Falempin! Richard! Menard! Bordes! Rocca! Sanniez! Bernaert!

Jean Corne/Michel Falempin vs Jacky Richard/Jean Menard 8/22/77

MD: I wouldn't call this one balanced, but the actual wrestling was just excellent. They went around twenty minutes of a first fall in and out of holds, with rope running, quick exchanges, some fiery slugging, certain things that were somewhat innovative for the times, like crabs and a backslide takedown and even a doctor bomb sort of takedown. Menard was able to do quicker and more elaborate exchange but Richard had a way of falling like a tree and stooging more and really could keep up on the rope running. Delaporte (announced as the "former licensed villain of wrestling"), as ref, was a non factor for the first fall, just the guy with the best seat in the house. The second fall had the heels cheat to take over, with Delaporte getting frustrated and admonishing one while the other made cheapshots. The last fall had a fairly quick hot tag and both guys tied up with another spot of Delaporte getting stepped on and encouraging the stylists to keep it going. Quick and celebratory. It's not how I'd want this match to have been balanced, but it's the style, and as a match in the style, it was excellent. Just great wrestling all around.  

Walter Bordes/Claude Rocca vs Albert Sanniez/Pierre Bernaert 8/29/77

MD: This was a tale of two matches, or at least of two falls. The first fall felt very complete, had some really nice exchanges, fresh ones too because it wasn't just Bordes but also Sanniez and Rocca, who we've not been able to see much of. Bernaert was a surprise. It'd been a while since we'd seen him and he was certainly up there in age, but he wrestled early on like someone with something left to prove. By this point, Delaporte was old hat as ref. The matches and spots were not based around him. He was able to bluster about when the heels were cheating and worked into the comedy at the end (more on that in a second) but he felt almost like an expectation instead of an attraction. Still, it was nice to see Bernaert in there with him as they knew how to play off of one another. After a lot of wrestling, the heat based on double teaming, and a rousing comeback, the second fall was entirely shtick. Sanniez bumped all over the ring for it, Bernaert begged off like a champ, and Delaporte fed people into the next spots when applicable, but it wasn't quite as imaginative as you might have hoped with the pieces at play. Still, overall this was a good one, a comfortable one. By now we're well aware of the ebbs and the flows and pacing of late 70s tags and matches like this feel right in a way that they might not if you weren't awash in them.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: 9/19 - 9/25 Part 1

MD: Hopefully the second half of Grand Slam on Weds. Just night one today.

AEW Dynamite Grand Slam 9/21

Bryan Danielson vs. Jon Moxley

MD: I burned through this one a second time today. Initially, I thought I might talk about Danielson working the arm and how he potentially made just enough inroads there to keep control but not enough maintain it down the stretch and how going back to that at the very end allowed for Moxley to counter him on the ramp and ultimately win. Maybe there would have been something in there about how Moxley targeted the leg, trying for the same thing, but ultimately won by keeping his eye on his ultimate goal, on the end and not just the means. On the second watch, though, I wasn't feeling that narrative as much. It was there but that's not what I want to talk about after all.

This, more than any other match I've ever seen, was presented as a match between two training partners. Sometimes that might show up in an overwrought, spot-laden sort of way, guys trying to dropkick each other at the same time, signature moves deftly countered with winks a'plenty. It might get hammered down your through. Despite Regal talking about it on commentary, that wasn't this. Instead, there was a visceral, real, subtle yet obvious sense of familiarity. Regal put it best. For every hold that each wrestler used, they trained for the counter. Moxley tried the LeBell Lock on Danielson and Danielson turned on his side to avoid it. Danielson went with the Cattle Mutilation and Moxley whipped his hips around to get out. Moxley had a sense on when he could goad in Danielson to avoid a dropkick in the corner. Danielson knew just how much of Moxley's stuff to absorb before firing back. 

We know these guys spend hours upon hours training. Or, if we don't know it, we're led to believe it through podcasts and interviews and stories about getting to the arena early and setting up shop. There's no reason not to believe it. You watch this match and you saw it from bell to bell. Moxley didn't eat up Danielson with his strikes. Danielson didn't eat up Moxley on the mat (I'd argue that Jericho as Lionheart did that more so, in fact). At key points, Danielson had Moxley's number but when it counted down the stretch, Moxley had Danielson's. The moment where Moxley went for Danielson's Achilles tendon and the way that Excalibur reacted, as if something profane and forbidden, against every code, had just occurred, a way that Tony Schiavone wouldn't necessarily have known to react, that you or I wouldn't, felt like the ultimate way to escape from that balanced paradigm. It's what it would take to push past the familiarity of their training, something accepted by Regal, accepted by both wrestlers. The finish felt symbolic to signify the post-Punk world, the reversal used to defeat Piper and Austin reversed and smothered, the dying gasp of Neo-Bret-ism. Instead, the hammer-and-anvil ethos of the Blackpool Combat Club and of Moxley's Neo-Hansen-ism reign supreme.

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Found Footage Friday: WWF IN MLG~! HULK~! HAKU~! HENNIG~! RUDE~! BRUNZELL~! BOSS MAN~! SHARPE~!

MD: This last week there were a bunch of new MLG House Shows that showed up on Peacock, with never released matches on them. We plan on going through them now and again over the next several weeks/months.

ER: Would it have been too much to ask for Ted Dibiase/Koko B. Ware? Don't get me wrong, I couldn't be happier that we got Iron Mike Sharpe/Tommy Angel, but that one match is very conspicuous by its absence. 

WWF House Show Maple Leaf Gardens 9/18/88

Mr. Perfect vs. Jim Brunzell

MD: Hennig still had some remnants of Cool Curt here. No real holds. No real offense outside of punching, kicking, stomping, clotheslines, but there was a nice methodological way he went about things and he was definitely working the crowd. He also played king of the mountain a bit which is the most AWA thing ever. Brunzell is always competent but even Gorilla was ragging on him for not getting fiery enough soon enough. Hennig survived the dropkick by ending up in the ropes. Solid opener though Hennig wasn't quite established yet and no one bought Brunzell as a singles.

ER: Maybe I'm easy, but I thought this kicked ass. I love Cool Curt, and I thought this was a...well, Perfect...blend of late AWA Cool Curt and big bumping heel Mr. Perfect. It had a nice methodical build where Curt would just walk slowly, cockily around the ring, like someone with a back injury who couldn't bend down, or like someone holding something up their butt. This was barely 20 matches into Curt's Mr. Perfect run, and I love seeing early versions of famous characters, seeing what they were working on and what direction they were testing out, see what offense they were using that you know they wouldn't be using a couple years later. The build on this was strong, starting slow (slow enough to actually get a few Boring chants, in 1988 Toronto!) and leading to a great section of Hennig keeping Brunzell on the floor while he corncobbed around the ring, kicking Jim off the apron, punching him in the jaw, a long build with a great payoff of Brunzell fighting his way back into the ring and tossing Hennig to the floor (one of only "Hennig" bumps of the match). By the end of the match both guys were throwing legit potato shots to the face. I mean both guys were flat out slugging each other down the home stretch, and the Maple Leaf Gardens cameras give it this awesome "in the ring" feel where you could really see how hard these punches were landing. I don't think of Brunzell as a guy who punches people in the face, but he and Hennig had loaded fists that were cracking jaws in ways I wasn't expecting. Just look at how hard Brunzell was hitting Hennig with mounted punches, and how Hennig paid him back. No way you would expect that. 

Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Tommy Angel

ER: Canada's Greatest Athlete gets to pose and flex for his adoring countrymen, and I like this Sharpe/Angel pairing because it's a cool look at a mainstay WWF undercarder vs. someone who I think of as a perennial WCW job guy. Tommy Angel looks like the Cars' touring keyboard player and it takes Sharpe at least 3 or 4 minutes to finally lock up with him, and the more Sharpe goes for rope breaks and teases knuckle locks while WHOA WHOA WHOAing, the louder the fans get. It's house show beauty. This is all of the Sharpe greatest hits, and they all work. Everyone knows he's going to cheat when he backs up and begs off into a corner, the way he sells strikes verbally while mostly ignoring them physically, and they react when he runs headlong into arm drags. Sharpe is a big guy and a heavy bumper, and it's impressive that while he stalls a ton he can also be good at taking a big heavy bump and feeding quickly into another one. I think my very favorite piece of commitment from Sharpe is when he gets tied up in the top and middle rope like Andre, and after he manages to fend off Angel with a boot to the stomach he still demands the ref help get him untied. 

The commitment to do a silly spot like get tied up in the ropes and wailed on only works if it looks like you cannot actually get yourself untied from the ropes, and Sharpe understands that the bit doesn't really work if you just walk away after kicking your opponent off. No, this goofball who can't take a step without making noise understands that he is STUCK in those ropes, and him kicking Angel away only gives the referee time to help him finally do his job. Commitment to the bit is 90% of Sharpe's gag, so I always love seeing moments where he could have skipped a step but didn't. He's good at making Angel's nearfalls look like actual nearfalls, too: when Angel got a late match sunset flip there was a 50-50 shot that was going to be enough to walk away with a win, and Sharpe reacted like he knew those odds. For a guy who was mostly bullshit, Sharpe clearly understand what made that bullshit work, and how to pay that bullshit off. 

Brutus Beefcake vs. Ron Bass

MD: It's a new match and I thought maybe, just maybe, there might be some heat to it since it was after the X'ed out angle. Plus, Bass is more than solid all the way from 77 to 85 in at least a few territories. My professional review of this is that Beefcake maybe had one minute worth of viable stuff and then I literally fell asleep while watching it. We tend to find value in most wrestlers somewhere or another and Beefcake was over as a viable star with a connection to the crowd, but this was bad, at least the parts I can remember.

ER: Beefcake did look mostly bad on offense, and I'm pretty sure every single punch he threw landed somewhere past Bass's head. Whatever match there was, was made by Bass occasionally cutting Brutus off. Bass had a nice big kneelift and I liked how he popped Brutus in the eye with the handle of ol Betsy. Gorilla was already setting up the lawn trimmers vs. spurs hair vs. hair match that was still 4 months away, so that was kind of cool. It feels like we should have had more interesting Ron Bass matches from his WWF run.  

Powers of Pain vs. Bolsheviks

MD: It's always weirdly fascinating to see the Powers of Pain as a babyface act. The best part of it is always Barbarian doing sort of a primal scream with his arms out as part of a comeback or demolishing guys. They tried to make a real match out of this, which was a mistake. Barbarian let Warlord work most of it, not tagging even when you'd expect him to. Bolsheviks' only credible offense was shots off the second rope from behind as the ref was distraction. Part of me thinks that Barbarian could have had a singles babyface run but this wasn't quite meshing and it makes sense they do the double turn so soon after.

ER: Haters piled onto Gorilla Monsoon's commentary, but I think Monsoon spending 5+ minutes talking about the haircut choices of all the wrestlers in this match was perhaps the only thing that made this worth watching. It all started with Monsoon considering adopting Warlord's haircut as his own, since he "doesn't have much on top to work with any longer" and humoring Mooney's requests to also get a tattoo. "And Nikolai over there can't seem to decide whether he wants hair or wants to be completely bald," just really going through the benefits of a pronounced horseshoe vs. keeping two days of growth up there. It's bizarre to work this match in such a bland "these teams are equal" style, and more bizarre to have Warlord in there for the bulk of the match. The fans only really came alive during PoP's entrance and the match finishing Warlord powerslam/Barbarian diving headbutt (and Barbarian really flew 2/3 of the way across the ring on that headbutt), but the best parts of this were probably Zhukov's excellently timed axe handle into Volkoff's head, and Volkoff's fun bump over the top onto the ring announcer's table at the finish. Beyond that, enjoy marveling at how bad Warlord's kicks and stomps look. 


Jake Roberts vs. Rick Rude

MD: Sometimes it comes down to what they're trying to accomplish. Here, they wanted their cake and to eat it too and it wasn't nearly as good as if they just stuck to the path of least resistance. Rude was excellent here, every reaction just great. More than solid at leaning on Jake. He ducked the short arm clothesline early and took over for most of the match. The underlying story was that he'd pull down his normal tights for the Cheryl Roberts ones when Jake wasn't able to see, so you figure they're building to Jake finally seeing and then going nuts for a comeback right? Well that doesn't happen. They work it towards a more conventional comeback, then a ridiculous ref bump (he somehow got squashed *under* the DDT). A Rude Awakening got Rude a phantom pin while the ref was out, and then a quick roll up Roberts finish. It's only after the match when Rude doesn't care anymore that Jake sees the tights and rushes back in with Damien (the ref gets the snake in the chaos instead). By that point, Jake had already won, so while it's great for Rude to get menaced by the snake and all for the insult, everything would have been so much tighter and more visceral if they kept it within the confines of the match. Hell, have Jake lose it from seeing the tights, come back, get DQed for not letting up on Rude, and THEN bring the snake out to get over on both Rude and the ref. While the match was going on, there was a real sense of anticipation and build over a guy's tights of all things, so it's too bad that it didn't come to fruition. 

ER: Matt is spot on about this match and the one thing I want to add is more emphasis on just HOW stupid that DDT ref bump was. The referee just DOVE underneath the DDT before Jake executed it, and there is just zero reason for any person to do what the referee did in that scenario. I have never seen this done, and after seeing it here there's good reason for that. Jake grabs for the DDT, referee literally dives onto his stomach in between Rude and Roberts, Rude takes the DDT onto the ref. The physics of it don't even begin to make sense, the referee's motivation doesn't make sense, it just looked like a man who was actively trying to get another man to land on him. This referee was clearly a pervert who would see a woman readying herself to sit down on a chair, and then slip underneath real quick just so she would briefly sit on his lap. Derelict behavior. 

Big Bossman vs. Jim Powers

MD: This was for International Challenge so we might have had it before but it's found, if not new. It was very good too, with Bossman really asserting himself, and Powers trying to get shots in but getting cut off. Bossman had a ton of presence, jawing with his opponent and the crowd, shrugging off Powers' stuff, giving him just enough to keep up hope. Finally, Powers was able to knock Bossman back, stagger him, finally dropkick him into the ropes. When he went to finally knock him down, Bossman caught him in the slam and dropped him. This was balanced just right for what it was trying to do. Another point: yes, Monsoon spent a lot of the match giving Powers grief for trying too much power stuff against a massive opponent, but what he accomplished by doing so was making Bossman look big and forboding and unstoppable or at least very difficult to stop. He didn't make Powers look great, but Powers wasn't supposed to look great; Bossman was. He tore apart Powers' strategy but not the reality of what we were watching. It was because of that reality that he was tearing it apart. Just something to think about as we deal with grumpy announcers who manage to bury just about everything but themselves these days. Monsoon, believe it or not, was better than that here.

ER: Boss Man was so good. He really didn't have to give Powers a single thing here, and while he didn't give him anything big, he still treated literally every strike as something that he actually felt, something that at minimum moved him. Boss Man is so much larger than Powers, but I love how much offense he set up by being the one in motion. Powers wasn't sticking and moving so much as just moving, avoiding various Boss Man advances and sneaking in a punch. Boss Man would charge in and get punched in the face, and was so good at selling that a Jim Powers punch to the face would hurt even a gigantic man. Boss Man's timing and speed were so impressive, that when you combine that with high end physical selling it really makes a super worker. Not many were better at just putting the palm of his hand against their teeth and showing pain. Powers never had a chance in this match, but Boss Man made him look like someone who could at least leave a mark, and he did it while also making the middle rope nearly touch the apron when he threw all his weight over it and Powers. That finish run Boss Man Slam timing is the stuff of legend. 

Hulk Hogan vs. Haku

MD: Hogan was between his series of matches with Dibiase and with Bossman here. Haku had recently enough been made King. This was "War Bonnet" Hogan and Heenan was at ringside. It was a one off but it's a fairly unique house show match up. It's been a while since I saw the 88 Hogan act. It has a lot going for it: the reverberation at the start of Real American to get the crowd buzzing, the ridiculousness of the helmet but it also working as a prop to keep things different, and maybe some overall freedom since Hogan didn't need to be in title matches.

Hogan gave Haku a ton here. He wiped out both Heenan and Haku with the helmet pre-match (with a great Heenan bump and him being disheveled for the next fifteen minutes), but then got swept under by a bunch of Haku shots. Having not seen 88 Hogan for a bit, he was excellent working from underneath early, constantly crawling and scrambling back as he recoiled from the shots, retreating so as to try to create some space. Then, when he came back later, it was with a lot of hair pulls and cheapshots. It's all what you'd expect someone like Buddy Rose to do in that situation, but Hogan was a face. For all the talk of whether he was a bully or not, his physical actions here were very "heel coded" but they were also incredibly over with the crowd. He had three or four little hulk ups/comebacks in this but was cut off due to either Haku getting a shot in or Heenan interfering. They went into deep chinlock/sleeper land but they worked in and out of it at least a little bit. The finish, which had Hogan getting the helmet from Heenan and hitting the legdrop with it on his head felt pretty iconic for the time. I'd say overall this felt relatively fresh due to the unique opponent and showed at least a little reinvention for Hogan.

ER: Hogan vs. Haku from the SNME a month after this match was actually the first Hulk Hogan match I ever saw, and also the first episode of SNME I ever saw. I have basically no original memories of that match, but it's cool seeing an earlier, much better version of that match here. Hogan working from underneath is a much more interesting Hogan. Heenan is great at spacing out the distractions to keep Haku's control rolling, from his opening side flip bump after getting nailed by the helmet, to getting knocked off the apron with a punch, to coming in right at the finish and getting punched into the ring trying to get the helmet to Haku. Heenan may have been the best ever at using the ropes to facilitate his bumping. Haku's strikes looked a lot better than Hogan's, and I loved all of his trust kicks and big swinging arm attacks. Hogan had some nice stuff too, and I really missed his elbowdrop when he mostly dropped that from his offense by '89. Dropping two nice elbows and starting a third, only to wave it off and just scrape his boot across Haku's bridge is a great spot (whether it's heel-coded or not). His running elbows and clotheslines look light as hell but Haku gave them a lot of heft with his bumps. I think the best part of Hogan working underneath was it forced him to use speed, and it was cool seeing him move around real quickly here. His little blocks and reversals were really good, like early on when he blocked a 1-2 combo and threw punches of his own, or when he went with a Mongolian chop (!) after blocking a Haku strike later. This is a fully fleshed out, much better version of their SNME match the next month, and it's kind of amazing how different that Hogan was from this Hogan. 

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Loosely Formed Thoughts on Two 1998 Quebecers Matches

The Quebecers vs. Miguel Perez/Jose Estrada WWF Shotgun 2/7/98

Boricuas get their full 4 mic entrance rap, which rules because they did the entire entrance rap later on the same damn show when Savio/Jesus had a match

This match positions the Boricuas as the babyfaces in Indiana, which just shows the sheer hateability of Jacques Rougeau

I love how Jacques did a face up dropdown so that when Pierre bashed Perez from the apron, Jacques could go straight to the kip up brag

Jacques yells "What do you think of Puerto Rico now!?" after beating down Miguel, and I'm not positive you could fill the Market Square Arena with Puerto Ricans if you got every single Puerto Rican in Indiana to show up. 

Pierre gets backdropped to the floor onto Estrada and Estrada stays down a long time holding his leg. I'm fairly certain that Estrada's gimmick in WWF was "Guy Who Gets Hurt Catching Dives"

The Quebecers' tandem hotshot is undefeated under terms of "looks cool"

Estrada throws two very nice punches in the corner and that is most of his offense in this match

Quebecers vs. Legion of Doom WWF Raw 2/16/98

There is one fantastic sequence where Hawk hits a leaping fistdrop on Jacques, and Jacques does a kip up and dropkicks him. After the dropkick, Jacques goes to his back to show off for the crowd with another kip up. After showing off with one kip up, he goes down for another and kips up directly into a Hawk clothesline

Animal has amusingly been working as an undersized babyface in early 98. He plays Ricky and he's good at it, though he doesn't do an inside cradle nearfall in this match like he has done in other matches from this era

Animal, babyface underdog, works a fast dropdown/leapfrog exchange with Pierre and after showing off all that agility he brings things back home with a big powerslam. Animal showing off his agility and then complementing it with power is a very cool Animal

Pierre really makes sure to collide on his shoulderblocks and lariats in this, and his cannonball off the apron looks like it makes full heavy boy contact

New Age Outlaws get Hawk inside of a dumpster verrrry easily. Too easily. They just kind of pick him up and plop him in, like he fell victim to a big juicy steaming Thanksgiving turkey that was underneath a propped up cardboard box

When Animal chases off the Outlaws, he swings a chair at the dumpster and comes a literal split second away from braining Hawk with that chairshot, as he bursts out of the dumpster right after an Animal HR swing

Quebecers remain a very weird team to have on the roster in early '98. They were brought in with no warning, no build, no purpose, and given the least flattering attire of their careers. And yet they still own. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Van Buyten! Schneider! Corne! Richard! Strogoff!

MD: More sound issues. We know they do resolve at some point but not yet. Just use one earbud. Thanks for the help on identifying Michel Di Santo and Vanberg.

Franz van Buyten vs Karl Schneider 8/7/77

MD: We get the last five or six minutes of this, a swimming pool match, and it's reaffirming what we already knew: Franz van Buyten was an exceptional babyface. He was constantly driving forward, constantly fighting from underneath, constantly punishing his opponent, standing up to the ref at every point. It was all Schneider could do to try to snatch a headlock or get some shots in and he could never hold Van Buyten for long. This built to a schoolboy trip off the ropes and a catapult into the drink. When the ref complained, van Buyten picked him up in a fireman's carry and hefted him out too, drawing a DQ. Van Buyten was an absolute folk hero.

Jean Corne vs Jacky Richard 8/7/77

MD: Speaking of folk heroes, Delaporte, as iconic as Dusty Rhodes or Hijo Del Santo in his own, villainous way, was the ref here. I learned something about myself watching this one. I'd probably have paid to see Delaporte ref a match in the 70s. He was that entertaining as a draw. Usually a special ref is there to further a story or provide a kayfabe level of enforcement if things boil over or just provide a sheen of celebrity, but Delaporte was as entertaining a wrestler as ever existed and this utilized him fairly perfectly. For the most part this was a standard match, Richard basing for Corne and bullying him with underhanded shots and moments of comeuppance, but when they really introduced Delaporte as a key figure, it was brilliant. That could be Richard retreating to him on his knees and Delaporte patting his head or far more complex things. The spot of the match had Richard tied up in the ropes and Corne charging him. After the first charge, Delaporte got in the way and Richard, in frustrating kicked forward, hitting our beloved ref from behind. Delaporte was incensed and got out of the way, coaching Corne on to hit him over and over with running shots to the crowd's delight. Legitimately funny stuff. The finish was almsot over the top in showing who the star was, with Richard dominating and finally knocking Corne into the water repeatedly, only for Delaporte to have enough of him not listening (and going so far as to hit him) and knocking Richard out too. If Corne had then come in and gotten a quick pin, it would have been better than the DQ on Richard that we ended up getting. Still, this was all great fun and another great Delaporte performance.

Michel Di Santo vs Vanberg 8/8/77

MD: Not a ton to say here. We have audio so I'm sure we'll figure out who these guys are (and we did, thanks! It's Lino Di Santo's son), but it's just the last few minutes. Delaporte is the ref and brings the star power. The heel leans hard early until he cheats a bit too much and Delaporte grabs his mustache. From there the stylist starts to work back with uppercuts again against the clubbering shots of his opponent, really getting an advantage towards the end as the time runs out. Delaporte still proclaims him the winner and everyone's happy but the bad guy.

Franz van Buyten vs Ivan Strogoff 8/8/77

MD: The finish of this was tremendous. We have a Van Buyten vs Strogoff match from Hanover from a few years later but it's got pretty rough VQ and felt a little slight, maybe? This was a very complete match, with two huge comebacks by Van Buyten, the last after the ref had already thrown it out because Strogoff assaulted him. I just can't say enough great things about Van Buyten as a babyface. He's legitimately one of the best ever and this match is a great example of that. He's so into every moment, makes everything matter so much, draws the fans in. You see every bit of agony when he's being assaulted, every iota of strain as he's trying to find the strength to come back, an absolutely electric level of fury as he's getting revenge. His bound across the ring to leap onto the top rope so he can throw fists down into the face of his opponent is just one of the best, most gripping babyface spots ever.

This match had Strogoff controlling early with dirty tactics and strength but Van Buyten out wrestling him and even, at times, showing crowd-rousing strength of his own, making it look more like unstoppable will power than strength itself. Strogoff primarily used open hand chops to the throat and outright chokes but he painted an imposing figure. They ran through an extended short arm scissors sequence which was full of gritty, ugly struggle, none of the precision and beauty of Petit Prince working the sequence with a solid base, but just as effective nonetheless. Ultimately, Strogoff took over by choking him repeatedly in the ropes, putting his head under the second rope and pulling up as he choked him, making for an amazing visual image. That made Van Buyten's comeback as he worked him forward and out of the ring a little more and a little more before sending him (and the referee) tumbling all the more potent. Just an all time fight for a comeback out of a hold followed by him laying it in and beating him (and at times the ref) around the ring.

That finish had everything break down wild, with Strogoff abusing the ref, including just sizing him up and clocking him for all the world to see, and then Van Buyten firing back on him due to the distraction. Strogoff would go back to the ref, pulling his shirt apart. After the match was called, Van Buyten tied Strogoff into the ropes and catapulted the ref head first into him. The ref would stumble up and toss another headbutt in for good measure even as Delaporte tried desperately to get control. Just a great crazy mob scene as Strogoff wouldn't stop and Van Buyten kept firing back on him. There were some points that were somewhat plodding here, but overall, Van Buyten's presence made this great.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: 9/12 - 9/18

AEW Dynamite 9/14/22

Bryan Danielson vs. Chris Jericho

MD: Here was stand in 2022, and it's Chris Jericho's career year. Jericho's maybe the definition of a guy whose strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin. He's a bastion of self-awareness, of reinvention, of latching on to commercial, marketable ideas. But that self-awareness always gave him a certain level of self-assuredness, which meant that he'd double down on a misstep or would get defensive if something he was so sure if didn't play exactly how he wanted with the fans. You can go back to his match with RVD twenty years ago or him thinking leaping into an RKO was a far more innovative finish than it was less than ten years ago. In ring, his eyes were bigger than his stomach. That didn't always mean breaking his leg on a shooting star press, but it often meant things not looking quite like they ought to and causing the entire, elaborately staged illusion to fall apart. 

And yet, he's 51 and having his career year. Some of that has to be his opponents and opportunities. But he's not just working smart but working hard as well and holding up his end. No one's carrying him in 2022. He's meeting them halfway, wrestling varied matches even with varied characters. I was higher than most on the All Out match where he, again, worked as the Lionheart. There, on a kayfabe level, he wasn't enough to outwrestle Danielson and had to resort to cheating. Here, as a composite of all that had come before, he still wasn't enough to outwrestle Danielson. Here it took throwing bombs (a German, an early Lionsault, the top rope 'rana) to stay in it. 

That's the brilliance in 2022 Jericho. He's willing to show ass, to wrestle with vulnerabilities, to get outclassed where it matters, but always feels like a dangerous threat. Basically, after decades of doing this, he's finally skirting up against what made Buddy Rose so good, and it's well that he is, as he's relied upon quite a bit to carry the 'territory' in 2022 as people get injured or suspended around him. They worked a fairly complete match of Jericho barely keeping his head above water as Danielson continued to force him down before the leg injury on the outside. That took things into the final third where he pressed his advantage aggressively and effectively as Danielson tried to fight back with one leg. In the end, though, they leaned into the overarching story: Danielson's simply the better wrestler, and this did what it needed to allow him to get his win back and press forward onto the title match to come.

AEW Rampage 9/16/22

Darby Allin vs. Matt Hardy

MD: Matt Hardy is not having his career year. One could argue that was his year as ECW Ace? I probably would. I'm still almost always glad to see him. He's almost as good as anyone on the roster at laying out a match and channeling a crowd. He can still absolutely work smart. After all of the bumps of his career, at 47 going on 48, it's the working hard that's a problem. Personally, I'd take the former over the latter any day. When you have Darby Allin to help create the motion for you, working smart is all you need. This started on the mat before spilling to the outside where they ran a series of clever bits: Matt blocking the tope, the big, debilitating shot into the stairs, Darby's back getting destroyed as he missed the senton onto the apron, the power bomb position charge into the post to cement the back damage. 

After that, the match was carried by Matt's laser-focus and Darby's selling, where it might take him one or two tries not to hit a move but to even get himself in a position to set it up. Matt pressed his size and strength advantage as if it was the most natural thing in the world, which for most of his career, it would not have been. Darby, as always, threw himself at his opponent, but the damage had already been done. It was Matt, unable to put him away even after a splash mountain bomb, hitting a combination of desperation and a crisis-of-expectation and missing the moonsault that Darby was able to sneak back and score a win. Yes, there was reportedly an edit or two here to make Matt's stuff look smoother, but that's why you tape wrestling. If they edited out Matt stumbling on the way up for the moonsault, that could have even come at the detriment of the match. He was ill-advised to go up and lost the match because of it. A slip might have just added to that notion. Regardless, we can only judge what we see, and a match like this shows what Matt is still capable of. Like I said, I'm still almost always glad to see him.

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Dark Match Legends: Vic Grimes vs. Erin O'Grady

Vic Gimes vs. Erin O'Grady WWF 1/20

ER: This is one of those legendary "both men were signed" tryout matches, two acclaimed APW students getting a dark match on a local Raw taping and tearing things down. Grimes and O'Grady had some great APW matches and this was a super condensed version of the best parts of those matches, two guys fully understanding all of the fireworks they could bring to grab attention from strangers. O'Grady had some mind blowing athleticism that was never present in this specific way once he became Crash a year later. He is so damn nimble here, and the way he moves in the first two minutes of this match are just as impressive as the first time I saw guys like Low Ki or Amazing Red. He gets from point A to point B in surprisingly quick ways and has really impressive body control. There's this wild bump where he gets lifted high up in the Savage/Steamboat choke, thrown down hard on the back of his neck, but somehow just absorbs this concussion worthy drop and floats back up to his feet with a kip up. O'Grady gets to the apron and up to the top rope for a missile dropkick so damn fast that the crowd is buzzing just watching him leap to the top rope.  

Of course, so much of O'Grady's offense wouldn't be possible without the sincerely top drawer base work of Vic Grimes. Grimes caught hurricanranas better than anyone, and O'Grady was athletic enough to effortlessly pull off ranas leaping off the top rope and a fly dragonrana that flipped him into the ring from the apron. These two were real dance partners, a west coast Reckless Youth/Mike Quackenbush. Grimes manages to steal the show away from O'Grady's athleticism and make it all about his crazy high slam offense and even crazier bumps. Grimes takes such an insanely huge bump on a missed avalanche, like Sgt. Slaughter's bump with 50 extra pounds, that the crowd takes to him like Jerry Blackwell in Minneapolis. Grimes' fall is so fast and dangerous looking, and as he staggers away he gets wiped out by a full run O'Grady springboard crossbody, Taka Michinoku as leprechaun. Grimes is more than bumps, and has strong big and small attacks. He can really level a guy with a well-aimed back elbow, but then do something extravagant like his sitout torture rack slam, something that looks skeleton shifting.

Grimes manages to outdo his earlier bump with one that should be every bit as legendary as Chris Hamrick's bump against 1-2-3 Kid. Vic sets up and elbow smashes O'Grady into a folding chair (after smashing that chair against his own head at ringside, a dark match gesture done only to entertain the dozens directly at ringside. When Grimes gets into the ring and runs into a head of steam off the opposite side ropes, you don't think there's any way you're about to see what you're about to see. No way. Grimes is too big and shaped like a way larger Mick Foley. Grimes was a really nice man, a guy nice enough to drive up and be my interview guest on my college radio show. He was really open about his dumbest bumps and honest about saying things that he shouldn't have said. He proposed to Vince McMahon the he be brought in as Mick Foley's brother, a team of hardcore psychos pushing each other to bigger stunts. It's a great idea on paper, but imagine just being the lunatic who pushes to the owner of the company that you should be immediately affiliated with one of the biggest stars in the company. I love it. 

Grimes runs off the ropes and flings his surprisingly limber body to the floor, flattering the now empty folding chair and making a dark match crowd that was still arriving the likely biggest bump any of them had ever seen. They are completely in Grimes' back pocket. Later in the match Grimes climbs to the top rope with impressive balance BACKING UP the ropes to the top, crashing and burning off a missed somersault elbowdrop. Grimes is great at bumping his opponent back to control, and O'Grady gets to show off in ways that even Juvy hadn't invented yet. Grimes shows off that base ability taking a  springboard tornado DDT, crazy flipping dragonrana from the apron, but catches the next one and tossing O'Grady into the air for a cutter. Grimes was a big fat Rupert Pupkin out there, showing up unknown and crushing every joke, catching every rana and sticking the landing on increasingly bigger and more dangerous spots. I'm lucky I got to go to a lot of APW shows in my formative teenage wrestling fan years, and this match deserves it's legendary tryout status. They brought something different to a crowd who didn't know to even expect it. 

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Found Footage Friday: IWRG RETRO~! CEREBRO~! COCOS~! VILLANOS~! CANEK~! SCORPIO~! OFICIALES~!

IWRG Retro 9/8/22

MD: IWRG is posting old stuff. Some of it is new. Some of it is rare. We are very happy about this development.

Fantasy/Zonic vs. Rey Cuervo/Caballero Azteca 4/11/99

MD: This is the "rare" one as opposed to the "new" ones, as it was apparently on tape lists. It's a pretty fun way to spend eight minutes. About half of that is Cuervo and Azteca beating down the tecnicos and it's solid comfort food. The comeback comes on a miscommunication dropkick and goes pretty quickly into a finishing stretch of sorts as this is just one fall. Most of the heat ends up on a rudo ref who misses a tag early and misses Fantasy's shoulder being up late. It's all light stuff with a real opening match feel, but colorful, with the biggest issue being that we lose out on the native audio to the new commentary, which is a problem throughout the show but less of an issue with the matches with more substance to them.

Dr. Cerebro/Paramedico/Cirujano vs. Los Cocos 12/23/01

MD: We've got Rojo, Blanco, and Verde for those keeping score, and they come out with "Super Capo" as their valet, which feels like a big deal. Rudos ambush early and make quick work out of the clowns to end the primera. Cerebro is great here directing traffic and flipping off the rope to crush someone or kick them in the face. He bites Rojo's hand after the submission for the heck of it. In the segunda, he goes from hanging out in the corner and watching the violence to hitting a spring up turning headbutt foul to a hung up Rojo. Apparently that impressed the production team so much that they decided to show it in slow motion instead of the moment of comeback. Both Blanco and Verde looked good here, with the best spot maybe Verde on the apron ready to jump and Cerebro diving at him only for his legs to pop up so Cerebro ends up sliding across the apron and off screen errantly. Tercera had some comedy miscommunication, submissions that were broken up one after the other and a pretty nice tope suicida train, with Paramedico all but sailing into the crowd. That cleared the ring for Rojo vs Cerebro and a pretty definitive and crowd-pleasing stunner finish on Cerebro. Big takeaway here was how good he looked overall.

Canek/Villano III/Villano IV vs. Scorpio/Guardia/Vigilante 8/22/96

MD: I don't think I've seen much Scorpio, Sr. before but he looked like an old, decrepit rudo with spaghetti like hair that was made to be taken by Canek in an apuestas match.  This was super libre and all about the numbers game, with as much mask pulling as I can remember seeing in one match. The rudos attacked the Villanos before Canek could come out to even the odds but the tecnicos fired back after a couple of minutes of beatdown to take the primera. There was already a lot of mask pulling here, all around, with Guardia and Vigilante spending a good chunk of the match just trying to keep their masks on. Between falls, Scorpio successfully got Canek's mask and that led to a 3 on 2 advantage as he had to run to the back. The beatdowns were solid here and utilized the super libre rules. Scorpio stood out and kept things interesting, in the primera by choking Canek with his own cape and in the segunda, by forcing Villano III into the corner, seated, groin first, and just jamming his feet into his back. Eventually, Canek rushed to the rescue with a new mask, but super libre or no, the refs seemed to call it after too many rudo fouls to try to stem the turned tide. I have to assume that this led to a bunch of mask challenges that went nowhere. Some satisfying lucha for lucha's sake in this initial drop.

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My God Did I Love Bret Hart vs. Fatu

Bret Hart vs. Fatu WWF Raw 3/1/93

ER: This might sound hyperbolic, but this was one of the most well-executed matches of 1993. It felt like a 1993 All Japan match worked with 1993 WWF offense within a 1993 WWF match layout, and I loved it. It was Fatu's first ever WWF singles match and Bret hadn't had a televised title defense in over three months. Keeping those things in mind, they went out there and made sure every time they made contact, it looked realistic. Their shoulderblocks and slams all hit, every bump looked like they had to wait a couple seconds for their nerves to stop tingling, and Bret kept taking increasingly damaging bumps into the turnbuckles. Hart was an excellent babyface champion here, at times at a real disadvantage, and his harder and harder bumps made the struggle feel more real. Bret whips back on headbutts and goes neck first into thrust kicks, gets thrown to the floor and jumped by Samu. An odd, never explained cut on his nose gets opened up and gives us the sick ass visual of a bloody nose babyface taking on three savages. He also took a fantastic piledriver and a hard slam on the floor, which was arguably an easier landing than in the dead center of an unmoving ring. 

Samu and Afa both played important roles and the payoff sequence for their comeuppance was so worth it. Their involvement kept increasing, with Samu and Fatu pulling off some double switches, even though their face, hair, and body differences left the referee's "they all look alike" racism as the only plausible explanation for the double switch's success. Bret hit an awesome superplex, and the finishing stretch car crash was aided with camera angles that actually felt expertly planned in advance. You usually don't see heel interference comeuppance pulled off this well, but that goes back to thinking this match had a lot of expert examples of timing and execution. Samu and Fatu collide after Samu breaks up a pin, Bret hits a running dropkick to knock Afa off the apron and Afa takes a fucking BACK BUMP off the apron in the foreground, while Samu gets his fucking neck hanged between the top and middle ropes, struggling and twitching in the background. Afa took the bump in the foreground, Samu dangled in the background, and Bret/Fatu were framed in the middle. It was a real professional shot from a company who no longer has any idea how to film wrestling, and an incredibly well orchestrated moving parts finish. Being a Bret truther only gets easier and easier to defend every year removed from his career. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Bordes! Leduc! Ramirez! Boucard! Mercier! Asquini! MacGregor! O'Connor!

Walter Bordes/Gilbert Leduc vs Paco Ramirez/Daniel Boucard 7/25/77

MD: We get a solid 20 minutes of action here, so while this is incomplete, there's a lot to see, and a lot of enjoy, and a lot to learn. For one, it's Leduc, the wrestler of the 60s, teaming with Bordes, who may well be the wrestler of the 70s. Ramirez, working sort of ebullient yet cowardly matador gimmick, was a great heatseeking heel and Boucard, more of a mugging, clubbering one. Leduc still had it, able to slug it out and do all of his signature spins and Bordes had such amazing energy, both when he was charging headlong into his own offense and eating Ramirez' charging headbutts to the guts. Sometimes, he went so fast that it went haywire, like when he tried to flip up into a 'rana off, but they always recovered; here it was with a nasty power bomb. The structure of this makes it a bit of a shame we dont' have all of it, as Boucard and Ramirez, after shaking hands politely, staged and ambush and actually pinned Leduc in the first minute. We only get the brunt of the second fall before the video cuts off, unfortunately, but it was very complete in the action we do have, exchanges and bits of heat and comebacks and the occasional slugfest. This will be our last look at Leduc so I saw it as something of a passing of the torch to a more than game Bordes.

Guy Mercier/Bruno Asquini vs Alan MacGregor/Marc O'Connor 8/1/77

MD: Michel Saulnier was an exceptional wrestler and trained Andre and Petit Prince if I'm not mistaken but he was an outright heel ref here, as heelish as we've seen, and while it absolutely got everyone in the crowd angry, especially as this was a crowd filled with more kids than usual, it ended up being a bit much in this one. Let me put it this way. It was okay this one time, because it certainly worked for what they were trying to do, but as someone watching 45 years later, hopefully they don't go back to the well again. On a social level it was interesting to see the announcer laughing and dismissing Saulnier's antics as good fun and patronizing the kids in the audience for taking it all too seriously. That gives you some sense of how all of this was taken in France on a macro level maybe?

It was all so over the top and comedic (with the comebacks being about Mercier and Asquini attacking Saulnier as much as attacking the Scots) that you really have to take it as its own thing and it makes it hard to compare to more conventional matches. That's almost a shame because this had more straight up heat than most French matches we see. The heels dominated almost the whole thing, mainly through control of Asquini's arm, cutting off the ring, some very credible offense, and of course, Saulnier missing tags and holding Mercier back. MacGregor had size and hit hard and O'Connor was a real mean mugging goon type. Asquini, older but spry, did very well as face-in-peril including setting up and paying off his hot tags rolling across the ring and Mercier, unsurprisingly, was able to knock everyone about when it was his time to come in. There wasn't really any meaningful selling of the arm but it still made sense as a was to control things. The celebratory last fall was shorter than usual though you got glimpses in the second and so much of it was about Saulnier getting his comeuppance. It was certainly fun, no question about that.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: 9/5 - 9/11

AEW Dynamite 9/7

Bryan Danielson vs Adam Page

MD: I am not a big fan of Adam Page. Let's just lay that out there. I think his execution is fine. I think his selling is quite good. I have absolutely no problem with the longform storytelling he tries to do and the anxious millennial cowboy character and the way he works that into his actual matches. That's not all my issue with him. You can't fault his intensity. Nothing but positive things to say about all of that. I'm such a structure/layout guy though, and the lack of escalation in his matches because he starts at a 9 and more or less gets to a ten as things progress, is just such a killer. He comes out the gate with the fall away slam/springboard clothesline/dive, brings things up to the death valley driver, and then starts teasing the Buckshot and Deadeye. Left to his own devices, his entire match would be one long finishing stretch. It's Daffy Duck blowing himself up on stage: a good trick if you do it once but devastating over time and just blows a massive hole in any attempt of making individual moves and sequences resonate as important up and down the card. I'm not going to throw my hat into the CM Punk issue when it comes to interpersonal or professional things, but in ring, Punk spent the last twelve months trying to reclaim the struggle and impact of things like superplexes so that they could matter and that matches had another level to escalate to and Page shows no sign of understanding any of that nuance, even for all the good things he does.

When you have so many positive qualities, however, a really great wrestler can shape them into a really great match. I think that was true with the Punk match and it was true here with Danielson. Relatively early on Danielson started to dismantle the arm. Adam Page may not have a first or second gear on offense, but when you pepper his bombs through a match as hope spots that get immediately cut off due to the damaged arm and when he's not allowed to chain them together in the first five minutes of a match, everything ends up working out so much better. Danielson basically controlled all the way to the start of the second commercial break and it meant that when they moved into an actual finishing stretch, there was space to inhabit. 

AEW Rampage 9/9

Darby Allin vs Sammy Guevara

MD: Punk's gone for a week and all of the work he did trying to make superplexes matter again over the last year is completely destroyed. I guess it came early enough in the match before too much cumulative damage was done that it wasn't as bad as it could have been? It was still pretty bad. Before that they were almost working a title match version of Sammy vs Darby, which made sense given the stakes and was a cute way to start this one. It escalated how you'd expect with the big spots and counters and Sammy walking tightropes. The Tay/Sammy act is still fairly fresh between AEW's roster being so big that we haven't had a ton of Sammy singles matches in the last few months and the fact they were away for the wedding. They're constantly thinking of new ideas and trying new things like the wedding ring bit here. Interference of people on top of Tay is going to get old quick though, but I get that they were in a bit of a pinch due to the injuries and the suspensions. Darby really does need a big win one of these days. Regardless, I'm looking forward to the contrast inherent in Sammy vs Moxley.

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Rayo vs. Demon

13. Rayo del Jalisco Jr. vs. Blue Demon Jr. AAA TripleMania 4/30

ER: This show already had one great old man match at this point, so it felt like asking a bit much for two even older men to have one just 20 minutes later. And yet. 

This match was universally dumped on in every post-show comment I saw, but people have been bad mouthing Rayo de Jalisco matches on the internet for as long as I've been on the internet. Why would that change when the man is 62? I thought Rayo looked like an old guy out there having a great time, and while I can't say what everyone else is seeing, I saw a guy who can still take a match a long way with nostalgic charisma and a big loud overhand chop. They started with preening, posing, and flexing, which I thought was great old man lucha theater. After that theater, Rayo's big overhand chops and hard corner punches were an awesome escalator. His chops looked great and the punches were thrown like a man who knew he was getting punched in the face with a chain later. Rayo put a lot of good space between all of them, mugging to the crowd before each shot, impressively timing each one to bigger reactions. 

Rayo brings big hands and Demon brings weapons, ranging from a thin cookie sheet to his fucking hammer. Weapons are whatever, but a chain wrapped around a fist is pro wrestling perfection. Demon hits at least two great punches across Rayo's jaw with a chain-wrapped fist, and it's all right in front of a woman who must be somebody, sitting by herself looking like a soap star or the Tijuana Cartel version of Helen Mirren in Long Good Friday. Demon has a nice putaway right hand, and I liked how their punch exchanges aren't set to any kind of rhythm, just punching each other around the ringside. I thought both men sold the other's punches really well, and there was this awesome sequence where Demon fell backward into the middle rope after a big Rayo slap, offered up a weak-legged one on his rebound, only to get walloped with a Rayo return volley. The middle rope bump is something reserved exclusively for cool wrestlers like Bobby Eaton and Big Boss Man, so guess what this makes Demon, haters? 

Rayo dug his heels into Demon in little ways, like how he always pressed his full palm or forearm into Demon's face whenever pinning him, and how they kept punching and kicking each other in their old sagging balls so much that the ref finally just throw up his hands at it all. Referees in disbelief at the sight of two old guys kicking each other in the balls. Also, Rayo looks like he has some bad Mike Graham level ink down his right side, mostly covered by his singlet, and that only makes him even cooler, like he's a cool dumb dirtbag/local slap fighting competition champion

God, the fucking Cien Caras walk out, with his perfect style, like a dangerous uncle at a Quinceanera. He's 72 and still has an impeccable mustache, strong head of hair, and uses a cane with no uncertainty. Still looks exactly like Cien Caras. Mascara Ano Dos Mil meanwhile looks like he's on the same train tracks as Bill Dundee and they're going to meet at a plastic surgeon somewhere in the middle. Mascara Ano Dos Mil looks like Al Pacino playing John Gotti. Caras has the same kind of charisma here as mid 90s Rusher Kimura and man I loved it when he was putting the boots to Rayo. The old man who looks like the toughest version of the Bla-Blazo puppet is beating old rival's asses while getting his sons and nephews to do the same, and it made me yearn for more authentic family feuds in American wrestling. None of this was clean, but these old guys with terrible reputations as workers, representing a very different era of lucha stardom, still know how to take big lumps and milk deserved reactions. This match got downvoted to oblivion just like Caras and Rayo matches have been hated for 30 years, slow brawlers who don't have innovative smooth offense. But old men throwing stiff punches to a loud stadium crowd remains one of my favorite things in wrestling, and I fail to predict the circumstances where that will ever change. Don't believe the hate. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: CANDIDO~! SCORPIO~! SPIKE~! GUIDO~! TAKANO~! NAKANO~!

Shunji Takano vs. Shinichi Nakano AJPW 9/15/89

MD: Another AJPW Classics drop with a singles match between two guys that I associate more as partners in this era. If you were to look at the entire All Japan roster in 89, the guy who you'd most likely project as a star in 92 wouldn't be Misawa or Kobashi or even Taue, but Takano. He was further along, had size and more presence, hit harder, pressed up better against guys like Hansen. This one bore that out. A good chunk of the first half was down on the mat like you might expect, but it kept building to fiery moments. That might be Takano wrenching Nakano in half with a gnarly elevated half crab and following it with a head-shattering lariat or it might be Nakano coming back with a series of headbutts only to have Takano dive across the ring with a bullcharging headbutt of his own and things boiling over to a visceral slapfest. Nakano would take some big swipes towards the end with a German and Northern Lights Suplex but ran into Takano's feet one too many times (and that's not counting the times that Takano's feet ran into him). It was just over ten minutes but they really put it all out there. This is just how friends hung out in 89 AJPW, by beating the crap out of one another. Hell of a time and hell of a place.

Little Guido vs. Spike Dudley ISPW 7/15/99

MD: Spike had some pretty great forearms. I'm not sure I had registered that previously. It feels like one of those things I knew, forgot, and will forget again. Anyway, this was very much of its time, stemming from Guido heading out to help Corino and Spike making the save for Nova and the two of them just rolling into their match. Guido leaned hard into that with wild, flailing bumps for every one of Spike's shots. Both guys took wild bumps for the setting really, Guido diving to the concrete, Spike crashing out in the corner. The meat of the match was Spike having a ton of great hope spots and Guido gutting him off again and again, even as Guido consistently worked the crowd. Nothing here seemed rote. It was fast moving and all fairly interesting for the time. Eventually it built to a final comeback and Corino and Nova coming back out to build things to a screwy but satisfying finish. This is a good eleven minutes of your time.

Chris Candido vs. 2 Cold Scorpio ISPW 7/15/99

You can't say they didn't have time. Take out the entrances and promos and this went about twenty. You don't want to take out Candido's closing promo as it might be the best thing about the whole experience. This was just these guys calling it out there, doing their thing, being about as much as themselves as could possibly be. That meant Scorpio was making up move after move and hitting things from weird, interesting angles, and Candido was stalling, stooging, feeding, leaning on Scorpio, and overall mean mugging. At times, things didn't feel clean or polished, felt rough or crunchy, but it felt perfect for a 1999 Wildwood main event. They never missed a beat, they never lost their place, even if they went back into a chinlock to figure out what was next more than once. Finish was wonky since it was setting up a 3 way with Ace Darling for the following week. We have that one too and if nothing else, this made me want to see it.

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Taka Michinoku and Jesus Castillo Had An 8 Minute Match on WWF TV

Taka Michinoku vs. Jesus Castillo WWF Shotgun 1/31/98

ER: Not only do we get Sunny doing the ring announcing in a skirt so short that she tugs down the hem while making funny faces to the camera, but we get the FULL Boricua four part rap entrance. Every Boricua has a microphone, and they rap all the way into the ring. Miguel Perez is wearing a big white Fubu jacket, Jose Estrada looks like Puerto Rican Angus Bethune, and for whatever reason Jesus goes into this with blood in his eyes and hate in his heart. And if you thought that full boy band entrance was as good as it could get, for whatever reason we get gifted with a near 8 minute Taka/Jesus match. All of the Boricuas get tossed early when Savio snags Taka's foot, so this match is almost fully one on one for all that time. What a great choice. Jesus is so good, maybe the most underrated asskicker on the entire 1998 roster. He was like Buddy Lee Parker with lucha bumping ability, a great guy to take faster and faster armdrags and bigger bumps, go over smoothly for Taka's beautiful hurricanrana takeovers, and lean chest first into knife edge chops loud enough to surprise the crowd. It's always a treat when cruiserweights wake people up by hitting someone really hard.  

Jesus was in control for a lot of this, taking over by ducking his shoulder down into Taka's stomach to stop a charge. Once I made the Buddy Lee Parker connection it's all I can see. He hits a slow lift chickenwing suplex and a stiff southern lariat, and we get to come back from commercial break with Jesus paying Taka back for those earlier chops. Jesus throws two of the absolute loudest chops you'll see all year. They were good at paying things off all through this, giving the match more purpose. Castillo has a hard bodyslam thrown like Finlay or...Buddy Lee Parker, but when he tries it too much Taka gets a convincingly close inside cradle. All of Jesus's offense look good, but he has a couple of inventive bumps too: He misses a running torpedo shoulderblock in the corner and bounces off horizontally, like a big husky Jun Izumida bump. They made every exchange look so good, and the sudden hurricanrana roll up finish worked really well. Taka needed to hold Castillo down quick and his rana has such nice physics that Taka snapping it off and quickly hooking the legs forward made it look impossible to kick out from in less than 3 beats. This was a gem. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: 8/29 - 9/4 Part 2

All Out 9/4

Sting/Darby Allin/Miro vs. House of Black (Malakai Black/Brody King/Buddy Matthews)

MD: While this broke down at the end, it also felt very different from the last couple of far more chaotic Sting PPV matches. I loved the roles in the first half, with Miro taking the shine, Darby eating the heat, and Sting in there for the comeback. That was a different layout to the opening pairings in the FTR trios for instance. There was a sense throughout of real unity for the House of Black, something that, when combined with their size and presence, means even after their loss in the trios tournament and here, they'll be viable challengers for the trios belts or the tag titles without much effort. Miro sort of dropped out as the match went on as much more of the focus was on Sting or Darby but I liked his interactions in general, first refusing to tag in Darby and then telling Darby (who was trapped in a neutral corner) that he had to listen to him and make it over to make the tag. The bit at the end with Sting refusing to break the Scorpion even as he was getting battered and then with the mist (learned it from Muta) were both iconic. This probably could have played just as well on TV as PPV but it was still a lot of fun.

Bryan Danielson vs. Chris Jericho

MD: Full disclosure. Due to things like parental responsibility, I didn't get a chance to catch most of the PPV until Monday morning and then I jumped around a lot. This was probably the third match on the show I saw. That meant I wasn't experiencing it like the live crowd or a lot of you. I know there were criticisms of this maybe being placed wrong on the card or that it went too long, and while I agree with the latter to a degree and in a specific way I'll get into in a moment, I can't really speak for the former. Therefore, overall, this was a hit to me, not a miss. This might well be Jericho's career year and I thought the overarching story of the match was excellent, really. He had dusted off the Lionheart persona and style and had great success against Jon Moxley with it, as it played against very specific weaknesses of Mox. Now, with pride on the line, he came in expecting to repeat his success against Danielson, only to find he was brushing up against Danielson's strengths. You could see it early through his facial expressions. He came out posing and grinning through an immediate successful exchange or two, got immediately knocked on his ass, threw a chair, and came back finding the grin again. He had a couple of tricked out moves that had worked wonders against Moxley but when they failed him against Danielson, he had no recourse other than to go right back to them and fail again. That, as much as anything else was the story. He may have been able to escape a lot of what Danielson was putting him in, barely, but Danielson was easily escaping his holds and shifting back to being the aggressor. 

Whatever the Lionheart was, it was less of one thing than the whole of Bryan Danielson. Lionheart was a mask that Jericho put back on, an artificial guise, but as much as it freshened him up and gave him novel angles to attack from, he found himself too married to it and it limited him and forced him into stubborn mistakes (like the plancha to the outside which cost him). Danielson on the other hand, was the sum of everything he'd ever been, something that culminates with the seated zen position he's been using to absorb damage and throw his opponents off as of late. Where Jericho hid in his own past (and as the match went on, hid poorly, constantly adjusting pants that no longer fit correctly), Danielson wrestles like a man fully actualized. The story was so clear and clean that I wouldn't have cut any of the matwork from the beginning or middle of the match. It wasn't gratuitous. It was the point. That said, I do think the finishing stretch (everything from the first, countered Lionsault) probably went too long. There was escalation desperation in Jericho but they could have cut a few minutes and still gotten that across. In the end, they got to where they needed to be, delusion and cowardice and rationalization and a low blow to prop up a false, flimsy pride, as Daniel Garcia watched on shaking his head. Jericho, like all the greatest heels, came in expecting to win on his own merit and only succeeded to lie to himself once again.

Jon Moxley vs. CM Punk

MD: Going to stick straight to the match here. A couple of days ago, Phil wrote an explainer on the Ringer on where the backstage stuff stood and by the time this gets posted, Dynamite will have aired and things that are moving quickly will reach some other destination. I won't make this a retrospective or wax poetic on the last year. I did think this was very good though. It inverted the match from Cleveland, where Punk came in looking for a title match and Moxley rushed forward, unrelenting from the bell. There, that forced Punk off his balance and caused him to blow up his own leg. Here, he was ready both for Moxley's Hansenian onslaught, which he met head on and for his own kick, which hit picture perfect. That meant instead of early Death Riders, we got the early GTS. Things went to the outside after that, Moxley's domain, and maybe Punk hurt his arm on the dive or maybe he was selling that he did, but Mox was able to take over and open him up. The crowd, despite being in Chicago, couldn't deny Moxley at times and despite his attitude, despite (or because of?) his barbarism and dominance, they gravitated back towards him. For a while, he'd get heat by taking it so over the top. After Punk was opened up and after he made sure that the opening became a gusher, he licked the blood. Shortly thereafter, he jammed his own head against Punk's so that it'd be all over his face. When Punk started to come back from the woundwork, he went straight to the leg to cut him off. With Moxley, the malice is personal, but you shouldn't take it personally. It's universal. He carries disdain for each and every person he faces. He's a storm and it's up to his opponent to endure it and to cobble out a meaningful match from it. If you cut him (scrape him even), he will bleed. If you punch him, his head will rock. If you stretch him, he will know pain. But it's up to you to channel and redirect the forward motion, the potential energy of him, into something coherent. 

As Mox continued to dismantle and batter his opponent, Punk was able to endure however he could, was able to tough it out, was able to survive, even if sometimes that meant going for an eye. Moxley returned favor by biting the wound, by stubbornly, and unfairly (because fairness has nothing to do with pro wrestling) cutting him off by going after the leg. But eventually, Punk lasted long enough to get under Moxley, literally, and to drop him down into a GTS. In another world, that's the image that would stick with us of this night, the remnants of the match's second GTS and all the damage that had been inflicted on Punk since the first, a hobbled Moxley draped over a bloodied and exhausted Punk, and Punk's eyes opening as he saw what he needed to do. A talking point in our circle about Survivor Series 97 was that the main event between Bret and Shawn was actually shaping up to be their best match together. I might not go so far with this one, but it had a lot of merits on its own, and I can't help but wonder if in years to come, all of those will simply be a similar afterthought to everything that transpired after.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Hassouni! Tejero! Remy! Angelito! Sanniez! Bordes! Zarak!

MD: Unfortunately, this has more audio issues, but you can watch it without problem with headphones, only using your left earbud and not the right. It's a good week of matches though, so tough it out.

Kader Hassouni/Petit Prince vs. Anton Tejero/Bob Remy 1/7/77

MD: This one is for some cup and well worth watching. Tejero's one of the best bases and bumpers in the footage so having him paired up against Petit Prince is pretty special. Hassouni was slick as could be and Remy was a meat and potatoes slugger bad guy so all of the pieces were right here.

Structurally, this is probably the most perfect tag in the set. Yes, there are some Blousons Noirs (and others) matches with more (or longer) heat, but this was balanced just right for the style and had, finally and I don't say this lightly, the hot tag we've been waiting on for so long. It gets around 35 minutes with the first 15-20 the wrestling we'd expect from these guys, lots of holds and escapes and the stylists looking great at the expense of the heels. The heat really kicks in with Hassouni getting knocked to the floor, with the crowd moving to help him but he ultimately unable to make it back in. From there, even after a tag to Prince, they really dig in, distracting the ref, laying in mean shots, and ultimately getting the ringpost guards off to the point where Prince gives us that rare, rare French Catch blood.

This segment isn't long, but between the blood, Prince's selling, and the fact that they cut off the tag a couple of times, including one where the ref misses it, it really ramps things up so that when Prince monkey flips both heels and bounds back for the tag, the place comes unglued. Hassouni makes quick work of them on the comeback to take the second fall and the third, as you'd expect, is all celebratory stooging double teams to the crowd's delight. This is the style but it's got incredible talents with great personalities and is tightened up to make things mean even more than usual. If you've been following these tags at all, you should put on some headphones, listen with one ear, and watch this one.

Angelito vs. Albert Sanniez (JIP) 2/19/77

MD: We get the last ten minutes of this and it's just wild action. Stylist vs stylist. Juniors. They just really go at it. Counters to counters, big shots, huge spots. Some fun parallel stuff (be it both guys going for a drop down at the same time or later on when Sanniez hits a press slam into a gut buster and Angelito follows with a fireman's carry into one). Sanniez is smoother but Angelito is pretty imaginative. The thing is, Sanniez has to take all of this stuff and make it look good! The absolute craziest thing is a sunset flip bomb off the apron by Angelito to Sanniez. In 1977. Just nuts. Sanniez hits a bomb later in the ring, which I don't think we've seen too much in a while. They're working towards the draw, but they're working exceptionally hard. Sanniez looks like an all-timer here and in a vacuum this is probably some of the most action-packed ten minutes of footage in the whole set. 

Walter Bordes vs. Zarak 3/12/77

MD: Sorry guys, switch to the right earbud on this one until around the 15:30 mark and then go left. Anyway, Bordes had an absolutely undeniable connection with the crowd. It may have been inherited but you watch a match like this, you see him get fiery and just take one swipe at an opponent, not even landing, and you hear the crowd start singing Mamadou and it's beyond doubt. They go even more nuts with the singing when he tosses out Zarak later. He knew it, knew how to play into it, and here, he had an opponent who understood it just as well, for Zarak was our old friend Batman, David Smith-Larsen.

Larsen, here wrestled completely differently but with the same sort of theatricality he brought to Batman. Here he was a strutting, masked strong man with big power moves and mean clubbering blows. He overpowered Bordes' early attempts but ultimately got outwrestled, the first fifteen minutes or so being very entertaining along these lines. Eventually though, Bordes missed a top rope headbutt (or splash) and Zarak really took over with huge power moves, a press slam into a gut buster, a fireman's carry into a slam, Quasimodo's tombstone position press up move. Ultimately, he catapulted Bordes out and forced him to take some really nasty bumps to the outside. But Bordes was a hero true and he came back and tried for pin after pin after pin as the clock ticked down. This was probably the best push to a draw that we've seen, really gripping stuff with Bordes trying everything and Zarak slipping out again and again. It's not the best match we've seen but it truly felt iconic and really gives you a sense of the skill, flash, and attitude of mid 70s French Catch.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: 8/29 - 9/4 Part 1

AEW Dynamite 8/31

Bryan Danielson vs. Jake Hager

MD: There were a couple of things I really liked about this one. First, after Danielson's early advantage, it was all Hager, and despite there being some things we'd rightfully call "big spots," like a slam throuh a table and hard shots into the guardrail, there was nothing elaborate or complicated about any of it. It wasn't three counters in a row. It was just a big monster leaning on his smaller opponent and giving him no space to breathe. It was Hager, competent, confident, picking up Danielson and putting him back down again and again with some bells but no whistles. That would contrast both the upcoming main event which was all bells and whistles but also the finishing stretch.

As for that stretch, after Danielson's comeback, I liked the clear rules and boundaries put down. Danielson and Hager were each other's match on the mat. Hager had a power advantage. Danielson maybe had a bit of an advantage when it came to finesse. These things cancelled each other out. They portrayed a sense that the two could grapple for an hour and neither would be able to score a true advantage except for on a fluke. So they tried escalating holds and counters, fairly seamlessly shifting from one to the next until Danielson, realizing that it would be an endless battle of attrition, shifted gears, gained space, and hit the knee to pick up the win. It didn't wear out its welcome and it had its moments of drama, just enough to establish the reality of the situation and provide Danielson with the realization needed to put grappling ego aside and overcome. Overall, I might have liked the Kingston/Hager match from earlier in the year better, but this one had a lot going for it.

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: LA Park vs. Villano IV

4. LA Park vs. Villano IV AAA TripleMania XXX 4/30

ER: I've been buried up to my elbows watching and reviewing every single 1997 WCW match this past year for a book that is far and away the biggest project of my life. WCW had a big roster and a ton of TV time to fill, and I can probably count on one hand the other wrestlers in 1997 WCW I've loved more than Park and Villano IV. Looking at both men's matches and standout performances from that year, and there are only a handful of guys on that roster I could argue had comparable or better years in-ring. That was somehow 25 years ago. Now Park is 56, Villano is 57, and while neither are spry or anywhere near as graceful as their past WCW selves, they are still captivating in entirely different ways. I thought both men had some of the best offense in WCW. Villano had strong armdrags that could shift direction and impossibly smooth headscissors and hurricanranas. La Parka did more dives than anyone there and took bigger bumps than any luchador who wasn't Super Calo. The smoothness is gone, but the rough edges are what makes this match what it is. 

I think a lot of the actual, traditional "wrestling" in this match looked bad. Sometimes really bad. The moments where they're slowly walking past each other, the barely attempted missed clotheslines, inside cradles as slow as a 70 year old Mil Mascaras inside cradle. This was not a match made by move execution, it was a match made by dirty punches and headbutts and blood. Villano's headbutts and his punches to Park's face and body looked far more painful than his chair shots, and that was before the man bit into Park's head and sprayed blood mist into the night sky. Am I stupid for being shocked by something like that? We went through Covid! Now two old men who shouldn't need the money are spraying blood in a Monterey baseball stadium and I guess that's what makes all of this so great. I loved how Villano was saved from Park's chops and used that chance to punch Park in the face, and how it built to him trying it again and punching the ref even harder. Park is such a great comeback wrestler, you could feel the buzz as Park started firing back, then getting louder as Park traveled back to 1998 to bring back some chair shots from a time where we could pretend we didn't know better. 

The floor and crowd brawling was great. A girl gets kicked right in the face when Villano gets clotheslined into the crowd. She takes it completely in stride and only looks more hot and powerful for it, just getting up and moving over a bit as Park drips blood all over the front row while throwing headbutts two feet away, swinging a chair as hard as he can at the side of V4's face. Park hits a powerslam through some propped up flooring, and as his mask hangs off his face you can see that LA Park is the bloodiest, most violent Alfred Molina you've ever seen. I mentioned Park being the biggest bumper in WCW, well the old man can still take some doozies. He still takes the hardest landing banana peel bumps, here getting his leg knocked out from under him by a Villano chair shot; when he goes to the top rope he gets knocked off in real nasty fashion, dropping fast to his crotch and falling off onto the top rope. He takes several different DDT bumps and he always looks like he's bouncing off the back of his head, body landing just as hard after. The king takes big falls, but he's still dangerous on the ground, so maybe it was inevitable that they'd drag themselves into malicious low blows and a kneeling punch-out that was one of the best uses of that spot, Park's heavier blows landing more and more until he was able to just shove Villano over. I love the way big stage old man fights always seem to get to a point where both men are dragging each other over the finish line, collapsing into match's end in exhaustion. The consequences always seem bigger in this kind of spectacle. Two stars commanding a 13,000+ crowd, age showing while also being defied.

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: LAWLER~! DUNDEE~! TAYLOR~! RAPADA~! GORO TSURUMI RIP~! LLPW vs AJW~!

Goro Tsurumi/Animal Hamaguchi vs. Great Kojika & Motoshi Okuma IWE 11/3/77

MD: Goro Tsurumi died last week and the IWE tribute channel released a match that we hadn't had before, for the All Asia Tag Team Titles. I'll admit that I've seen all of these guys older but not necessarily a ton of their 70s work. There was a lot to like here, though. It was a long 2/3 falls match and that's with us coming in at the ten minute mark. My guess is that we primarily missed a lot of matwork because for a title match, this didn't have much. Kojika and Okuma were in green and Hamaguchi and Tsurumi in red and both felt like real teams. Kojika and Okuma were heels, de facto or otherwise. They tried to cut off the ring and were quicker to go to eye rakes, for instance. Hamaguchi had big energy and a very pronounced way of wrestling, with Tsurumi maybe scrappier. There was a sense that they had the general idea of what they were trying to do but the execution didn't always work. You got the idea though.

The first two falls were fairly back and forth, with the champions cheating and taking an advantage and the challengers coming back and then punishing them for their transgressions. The first fall ended in a Hamaguchi airplane spin and then the second started with a great near-fall off of one from Tsurumi. The end of the second fall was Tsurumi getting stuffed on a roll up due to cheating and eating a diving headbutt from Okuma. The third fall wasn't long but it was pretty great, as they opened up Tsurumi with a posting on the outside and really targeted the wound with chops and punches and especially headbutts as he desperately tried to fight from underneath. Good blood, good fire, great woundwork. Good hot tag and comeback. The finish was a little wonky as Kojika broke up a pin with a knee off the top and immediately scored a pin of his own when there was no way he was the legal man, but no one seemed to blink at it. The great stuff here was really great and the rest was good in concept even if not always in execution. It's a good tribute match for Tsurumi for some of the dominant offense and that bit of fighting back bloodied.

Suzuka Minami/Bat Yoshinaga vs Rumi Kazama/Yukari Osawa LLPW 5/11/93

Sebastian covered this over at his blog and it's really worth a look. He said that this made the LLPW vs AJW feud the joshi equivalent of NJPW vs War and it's not far off. Hokuto was ringside here and this is all leading up to her facing Kazama (LLPW president) later on. As best as I understand it Yoshinaga was generally banished to weird Inoki-ism style matches against athletes on the AJW cards but as LLPW wrestlers were presented as shooters, she was brought into the limelight to face them. She certainly made the most of the opportunity and everything she does here is worth watching. Here, she's got swagger, a bullying presence, a toughness, a meanness, a chip on her shoulder. It could be anything from the way she drives in a double axe handle to set up a pile driver to the way she absorbs kicks  and stares down her opponents. Osawa, who is dressed like the world's most violent Christmas elf here, is not afraid to throw brutal, brutal kicks. At one point, Yoshinaga has Kazama in a half crab and Osawa comes in. Yoshinaga stares her down to the point where she starts kicking and absorbs and absorbs until the ref has enough and pulls her back to the corner. Later on, a real point of transition has her absorb until she gets fed up and lays in on Osawa (letting Kazama recover enough that she gets a roll up and can make a tag a bit later). Their advantage leads to Osawa putting a half crab onto Minami; Yoshinaga comes in and with one kick practically sends Osawa across the ring in a lovely moment of contrast. Kazama, shortly thereafter, put on a bit too lackadaisical a cover on Yoshinaga, so she just lifts her arm up, hand outstretched, and gets out of the pin by locking in a devastating iron claw. It's the sort of thing you wish Miro would steal. Ultimately, this does go quick and there are spots a plenty but never once do you lose the sense that they're trying to cause one another severe bodily harm so it's sort of hard to complain.

Jerry Lawler/Mike Rapada vs. Bill Dundee/Terry Taylor NWA Main Event 6/2/2001

MD: It's Lawler vs Dundee so we have to cover it, but there wasn't a lot of Lawler vs Dundee here. Some weird things with this one as the audio cuts out early in the match but the announcers (including Bart Sawyer) talk over the footage. You get the whole thing but have no idea how the crowd is reacting audibly. It also has one of the weirdest, most counter-intuitively set up turns I've ever seen but more on that in a bit.

I like Taylor and Dundee as partners in 2000 because Taylor plays into Dundee's natural corniness and, at the same time, makes Dundee look more credible and like a killer. Just Dundee's punches and stomps (and one brutal double stomp) during the long heat on Rapada are great. Taylor's offense looks ok but he always had that patina of hokey; it works when he's taking Lawler's punches on the comeback but less so when he's in control. You do want to see him get punched, granted. Lawler works the apron for a lot of this but we get another example early on on how he throws his head back into the turnbuckle when taking shots in the corner, which is one of those all time great things he does. Dundee and Taylor have funny tandem bits where they'll set something up and the payoff won't be all that impressive. Again, it's a lot more impressive when Dundee's just laying it in.

The finish is bonkers with Rapada taking and taking and having a couple of hope spots and finally getting the tag but then choosing to pile drive Lawler out of nowhere when the ref is distracted after the fist drop. If they had built up tension where Rapada thought Lawler wasn't doing enough to make the tag or there was some miscommunication where Lawler accidentally hit Rapada or if it was a ruse all along and Taylor and Dundee were only pretending to hurt Rapada or if Lawler was the one playing face-in-peril it might have worked, but as it was, it just seemed bizarre that he got beat on so much by Taylor and Dundee (and so meanly by Dundee especially) only to care more about nailing Lawler for no reason when they were about to win. Match overall still probably registers as fun though just because there's a real novelty to Dundee and Taylor working together and because Lawler's really good when he is in there.

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