Tuesday is French Catch Day: Angelito! Gordon! KBL! Frederico! Cohen! Doukhan! Shadow!

Angelito/Flesh Gordon vs Kato Bruce Lee/Eliot Frederico 7/28/85

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pZGPE7J7QQ&ab_channel=MattD

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL2SebLfXGQ&ab_channel=MattD

MD: This was a very good match with a very bad finish. It's a shame because even if this had a typical last fall/finish, it would have been one of the best matches we have from France in the 80s. Frederico is a guy that I wish had come along twenty years earlier. They gave him a big entrance here with a motorcycle and the full leatherman gimmick (with Kato playing along). He's one of the absolute best punchers we've seen in the footage but also a pretty great base in taking Angelito and Gordon's stuff, and some of Angelito's stuff was pretty complex and out there. Kato Bruce Lee is more of a goof. He did more fake karate here, but he was mainly a punch/kick kind of guy who could hold his own on exchanges and stooge well. Part of what made this work was that it had a slightly different structure, with the early even exchanges/stylist showcase giving way to heat after Frederico opened up with the fists and Angelito missed a senton bomb. They took the first fall which is usually a good sign for these matches. Then, they survived a pretty robust comeback to take over with a lot of cheating and misdirection to force a second bit of heat before a second comeback and the end to the second fall. If the last fall had been celebratory and full of heel miscommunication and flashy ref comeuppance spots, everything would have been fine. They only did a bit of that before the ref got fed up with Angelito and Gordon's clowning of the heels and DQed them after Angelito went down to count a pin of Gordon's. The heels took the trophies and no one left satisfied. Otherwise, it was a good one with plenty of slick individual moments though. 

Georges Cohen/Gass Doukhan vs Black Shadow/Kato Bruce Lee 8/10/85

MD: Another skilled tag from some aging heroes and villains. Well, and Kato Bruce Lee, who is most likely younger and coming into his own, a real over the top shitheel. You get kind of an undercard mid 80s WWF guy feel from him, like an Iron Mike Sharpe, but he's really throwing his all into it, bellowing and putting on a fit when things don't go his way but more than happy get bumped over the top too. Black Shadow, up in years now, was more likely to get knocked out between the top two ropes, or, occasionally, dive to nowhere during a rope running sequence.

If absolutely pressed, I'd probably tell you that the French tags would have been more enjoyable total packages if they became one-fall matches in the 60s like the singles matches did. We'd probably lose some nice long mat sequences, but there's a very good first fall in here and then some additional stuff which isn't bad on its own, that's quite good on its own really, but that might have been better served packed into that first fall. The exchanges were good. The cheating was fine (thought he heel-leaning ref was a bit much in this one, especially as he never got his comeuppance). We've been watching Cohen for twenty years and he's a great face-in-peril, especially here when they were beating him around the crowd, right in front of a bunch of kids. Doukhan was more of a Ben Chemoul sort, unique in appearance, stylized in movement, now greying in the hair but still able to go. They were true pros. Again, the first fall had the usual ten minutes of exchanges and ten minutes of heat and a proper quick comeback. But they went back to the cheating for the second fall, had another quick comeback in the third. It was spirited with the heels run around the ring, but it all could have been a tighter one-fall package. It's far too late in the game to be complaining about structure. I've learned to live with it and learned to love it. It's been three decades and hundreds of tags like this. They never conformed into what I wanted but I learned to find the joy in it regardless.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 2/20 - 2/26

AEW Dark 2/21

Slim J vs Matt Sydal

MD: A rare week where all we had was a great Danielson brawl and a Dustin promo, so let's check in on how Segunda Caida stalwart Slim J is doing at the Universal Tapings. The answer? He's doing pretty damn well. One of the fun things about this run is that we get to see him up against a bunch of guys that are brand new opponents for him. Sydal, despite wrestling for almost as long, had a completely different path to this episode of Dark. 

They made for solid dance partners in this one. Given their physical adroitness, their dexterity, balance, and flexibility (elements that all but define Sydal and that serve as aggravating and undeniable points of dissonance relative to his appearance and persona when it comes to a heel Slim J), they were able to not only take each other's most complex and tricked out stuff, but to push the needle just a little bit further. They matched up perfectly in the early feeling out segment, with Slim J providing Sydal two or three flowing counters before Sydal could finally gain an advantage. They went around that circle a few times, Slim J showing his frustration and aggravation by stalling out on the floor or rushing into yet another failed attempt. Ultimately, though, he had the numbers game on his side, that and a brazen shamelessness that let him all but embrace Bryce Remsburg so to enable interference. Just as Slim J had been able to help Sydal put a little extra torque into something as straightforward as a side slam, Sydal was able to base steady for the sailing reverse ddt off the top, but from the middle of the ropes instead. They'd go back and forth from there, Sydal getting comebacks and Slim J leaning on interference to take back over, ultimately leading to a finishing stretch where Sydal got turned inside out by the most complex wheelbarrow half-nelson twisting driver imaginable, but one that the two of them somehow made look absolutely believable, maybe more believable than Sydal's subsequent kickout. The Trustbusters lived by the interference and they died by it in the end. 

AEW's a weird place. Slim J is one of the better babyfaces we've ever seen, and crazier things have happened then him potentially blowing up in that role on Dynamite or Rampage in the years to come. But if all we get are these YouTube studio matches against other great journeymen he never encountered before, we're happy to have that too.

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Found Footage Friday: FINLAY RETIREMENT TOUR~! GRIZZLY!~! BROOKSIDE~! FINLAY, JR~! LAWLER~! SID~!

Fit Finlay vs. Cannonball Grizzly 10/6/12

MD: This was Finlay's last singles match. I hadn't realized that Grizzly was still active this late into the 21st century. He more or less cracked the code by the mid 90s and while you weren't going to get a ton of movement out of these two at this point necessarily, this was buoyed by the advantages of the rounds system, Grizzly's presence and size, and Finlay's selling and ability to strike from underneath.

Watching a rounds match now and again feels like good medicine for your pro wrestling viewing brain. I don't know if it's a sign of getting older myself but I gravitate more towards entry points than finishing stretches and with a rounds match, you get a number of different entry points, which when used smartly and organically, can create different narrative beats. Likewise with the bell at the end of each round. This started with Finlay locking in a few holds and transitioning between one and the next with his usual moments of violence. Grizzly had the size and the strength however, so he took over pretty quickly. The first two rounds had the bell ring with Finlay finally punching out of a hold.

For a meaningful momentum shift to occur, one of two things were necessary: either Finlay would have to turn things around earlier in the round or Grizzly would have to control deeper into the round. The latter occurred as the third round had a long bearhug and when Finlay tried to get out, Grizzly stayed on the back. That meant he could control starting in the fourth as well, but Finlay fought his way out and started to chip away at Grizzly. He pressed forward with that chipping in the fifth, charging right in and working on the arm, with the sixth having Grizzly desperate and charging right in only to have it turned around on him after he made a mistake. So there's a clear narrative through the rounds created by each round playing off of what happened before. It was building to Finlay pressing his advantage and overcoming (which included Grizzly missing a big flip off the turnbuckles) until his second, Brookside, pulled the ropes down and then started unloading on him. That said up the match to come. They still filled a lot of time with the actual match here and they managed it, broken up by the round breaks, primarily with simple holds and hard shots. It's more of what I might expected from 1982 than 2012, but it worked for the crowd due to the skills at play.

ER: I thought this was excellent. I imagine most people will be surprised to learn that PN News was involved in something this good over 13 years after his ECW run. It turns out that Finlay in his mid-50s vs. Cannonball Grizzly in his mid-40s is one of the best Finlay Retirement Tour matches we have. We don't have enough Finlay matches against big fat guys. One of Jerry Lawler's best match types is against big fat guys, and after seeing this it's easy to see Finlay having 4 star matches with Plowboy Frazier. You think of all the big fat men who we never got to see get roughed up by Finlay before flattening him, and it just breaks your heart. Finlay vs. Mabel, Finlay vs. Tenta, Finlay vs. Vader; these are the images that flash like stars behind my eyelids as I pass into slumber. Cannonball Grizzly makes his entrance to the 1992 sounds of Ugly Kid Joe, in 2012, and I easily picture a world where Ugly Kid Joe is a band who successfully tour Europe in the 2010s. I like this idea of Cannonball Grizzly being forever frozen in time in 1992, the peak of his US success. 

But yes, this was excellent. At the time of this writing, it is the greatest Paul Neu match any of us have ever seen. It's also perfect that a German worker's last name is Neu. It makes me want to seek out the work of John Guru Guru or Tom Ash Ra Tempel. This goes 7 rounds and builds slowly and steadily through all of them. It's built around struggling out of convincing and simple holds, and it's done fantastically. Grizzly has really convincing knuckle locks, and is able to hang in and hold onto then even while Finlay is elbowing him from his back foot. Finlay squeezed Grizzly's traps and grabbed at his nose in the 1st round, Grizzly used the first opportunity he got to return the favor why doing it right back in the 2nd. Finlay ends the 2nd by punching Grizzly in the face and then hitting three hard lariats, the first and third especially rough, sending sweat mist exploding off both. Finlay knows that the shot that puts a big man down needs to look like the strongest one. 

Finlay twists his way through a Grizzly bearhug in the 3rd, trying to break it with a leveraged judo throw and getting Grizzly off his feet but not over, turning in the bearhug to try and find any way out, ending when he gets whipped hard into the buckles. I wish we had gotten a 20 minute Finlay/Andre match that was just Finlay trying to find ways out of a bearhug until Andre just fell on him. Grizzly builds off that bearhug and turnbuckle whip in the 4th, immediately throwing elbows into Finlay's kidneys and locking on the bearhug with his hands clasped over them. Finlay finally getting the headlock takeover out of the bearhug felt like a huge escalation and I love how it took a lot out of him, finally lifting Grizzly off his feet enough to turn him over but walking around after like it wasn't quite worth it. 

Finlay pounces on Grizzly's limbs in the 5th while the German commentary still talks about Ugly Kid Joe. Finlay keeps adjusting his leg positioning while working an arm lock, keeping a wide base that looked impossible to get away from. The ropes were Cannonball's only possible escape. When he gets back in the ring he throws two full arms into the side of Finlay's head that make him look like Vader, but more so like Fat Joe wrestling like Vader. I think it's because Vader never had hot dog neck. There's a memorable fist fight to start the 6th and Finlay in his mid-50s still takes the hardest bumps into the turnbuckles since Bret. Grizzly missing an elbowdrop feels like as big of a nearfall as any actual offense you could do to him. Finlay starts the 7th by finding a fourth (at least) new way to painfully run into the turnbuckles, the top buckle hitting underneath the side of his ribcage, staggering him out into a real shutdown clothesline. Finlay's bump to the floor - through the ropes because of a traitorous Brookside low bridge - was a real surprise. Finlay is the absolute master at taking bumps that look like something he was not expecting to take. Brookside's attack on Finlay and the ring crew might be the most violent I've ever seen him. Brookside was kicking at Finlay's ear like he wanted to send him into retirement equilibrium-free.  

Fit Finlay/David Finlay Jr. vs. Dan Collins/Robbie Brookside 12/22/12

MD: Cagematch says this is both Fit's last match and David Jr's first one, and Cagematch would know in this case, I imagine. It wasn't exactly what I expected after the challenges following Brookside's betrayal, but it probably meant a heck of a lot more to Fit than a straight one-on-one street fight would have. David was what you'd expect here given his first match and his pedigree: slight in frame, flopping about with his selling, some promise when it came to shots in the corner and inspiring sympathy in this very specific situation. He had Collins and Brookside to move him about the ring when he was taking a beating and most of his offense was tandem stuff with his dad. Likewise, the structure went how you'd figure, a cycle of Finlay controlling, of David losing the offense and eating a beatdown, of that beatdown creating a handicap situation that Finlay had to overcome and of Finlay first overcoming, second smashing people into things (the apron, a table, any hard surface he could find), and then letting his son join in until he was overtaken again. It was effective and they filled a decent amount of time with it, never losing the crowd despite David's inexperience. With ten years of retrospect and considering that Finlay, Jr.'s had a pretty successful career so far, you can hardly imagine a better end to Finlay's career than hitting stereo finishers with his son in the middle of a German ring against some old rivals in front of an appreciative crowd. It was nice that he got to smash some heads in the process. 

Jerry Lawler vs. Sid Vicious NWA Main Event 11/7/08 

MD: Phil and Eric had reviewed a Lawler vs Sid match from 07 which sounds like an all time great Lawler performance and an all time terrible Sid performance. This pulls more towards the middle for both, as it was a pretty good Sid performance and your standard solid Lawler one. This was on the show that celebrated Lawler's 35th year in the business so you imagine Sid was a little more inspired because of that. He had Jimmy Hart at ringside. Lawler had Jim White, his first tag team partner with him though he was a non factor. They worked a bunch of Sid slams early and a Lawler attempt which let Hart mock him on the house mic (and set up the big moment towards the end). Having Hart here probably made it a little more successful than a similar gambit the year prior. After eating a few Lawler punches with a snap of the head but no overall selling, Sid cut him off with a slam out of a side headlock which was simple but effective. Lawler was going to make Sid's stuff look amazing, of course, but the visual that comes from Sid's size makes that pretty easy. It's not like he has great punches, but when he comes down with more of an arc with them instead of poking forward, it gave Lawler plenty to work with. They moved from hold (or choke) into shots, into a move (like a side slam or legdrop) pretty steadily here, with Hart slipping in shots when he could. Lawler, despite it being his night, still used a low blow to start his comeback. Sid not registering the punches early meant it mattered more when he did register them on the comeback and between that, the slam paying off, and Hart's interference backfiring, everything built exactly as it ought to have. Sid was fairly inspired on this night but I'm not certain this would have worked quite so well with anyone but Lawler.

ER: Sid felt really uninspired working in front of that 2007 NEW crowd, and while he doesn't "do a lot" here, it at minimum felt like he and Lawler were at least having the same match. In 2007 it felt like Lawler was having his own epic while Sid was fulfilling an obligation that he regretted. The only real difference between Sid here and Sid there, was his presence here always felt like it was building to the match's climax, easily controlling Lawler with his size in a way that was clear we were always building to a fired up Lawler finish. There is so little actual offense in this match, just a handful of bodyslams, some clubbing strikes, a big side slam, and a smothering hold, but they both knew how to milk the thriftiness of it all. Sid's bodyslams looked big and Lawler knows how to expertly sell a large man's bodyslam as well as he knows how to breathe air. 

Lawler tries punching Sid early and gets nowhere, but gets much farther when he punches and kicks Sid in the balls before punching face. The camera crew doesn't know how to film Lawler's fistdrop and they shoot his kneeling punches from his back, but the energy is there. The strap lowering into a dropkick was great, and the bodyslam payoff was real. I love heel Jimmy Hart getting involved. Hart mastered the old man big bump/non-bump, knowing exactly how to get up on an apron and get knocked off it without actually doing anything super dangerous. It's just another example of how everyone in this knew how to do the most without actually dying. How many of the Lawler/Sid USWA matches do we have? Any? It feels like mid 90s Lawler/Sid would have been the best version of their crossed paths.

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: A-Kid vs. Dragunov

31. A-Kid vs. Ilja Dragunov NXT UK 3/6 (Aired 4/30/20)

ER: This was a tale of two matches, and I liked the first part of the match more than the second part, but still thought the second part had some high peaks and real strengths, including a really hot finish. It's crazy that this was a match that was only shown due to a worldwide pandemic that temporarily halted NXT UK tapings. Imagine not finding room for this match on literally any episode NXT UK. This match is better than 90% of the NXT UK matches we've gotten, and it took a pandemic to get it. 

The matwork was all snug and went in cool directions, fighting out of headscissors and then finding cool ways to get back in those headscissors. Dragunov holds his tight and made a couple of Kid's escapes look even greater, Kid wriggling out and smoothly slipping into a leg grapevine, into a bow and arrow. My favorite part of the match was Kid rolling through a wristlock into a handstand and swinging his legs back around to lock Dragunov into another headscissors. It was the kind of mat trick that could have looked clunky and ridiculous, but the way Kid pulled it off it made it look plausible. Other favorite moments? Every Dragunov clothesline, all thrown with massive impact and follow through. 

Dragunov is a guy who can and does hit insanely hard, while also looking like a first class goof through every step of those ungodly hits. He has offense I don't like - there was a cartwheel crossbody here that not only looked bad, but felt entirely out of place in the match - but he always balances it out with some deadly stuff. I liked his standing elbow from the top to the floor, a nice German suplex, and that pair of hard lariats any wrestler would be lucky to call their finisher. The second lariat especially, right down the final stretch, with Ilja recoiling off the ropes and spinning into a perfectly timed smash, could have believably sent A-Kid to another territory for 6 months. I liked how Kid tried to get things back to the mat once Dragunov started throwing bombs, viewing it as his best path to the win and finding that it's tough to put the Dragunov genie back in the bottle. 

I didn't love some of the sections that turned into "I kick your face, you spin around and hit a jumping kick to my face, which bounces me back into a..." sequences, but I will always like Dragunov kicking guys in the chin, throwing the stiffest possible downward elbow smashes, and trying to take a man's head off with a lariat. Dragunov flew in so hot with Torpedo Moscow that he could have knocked himself out. I thought this was A-Kid's best match in NXT UK, and at the same time you had another Dragunov match where he shows that he's willing to kill himself to win. 

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Gordon! Hassouni! Marquis! Shadow! Primitiv! Jessy Texas? Cohen! Tejero! Lagache!

Flesh Gordon/Kader Hassouni vs Marquis Richard Fumolo de la Rossignolette/Black Shadow 7/14/85

MD: I'd call this one surprisingly good, pretty well put together. By this point, the good Marquis (now mentioned as Richard instead of Edouard) had figured out a better balance for the act. It was still getting a lot of heat on the valet (a Paul Butin-Fluchard; your guess is as good as mine), which involved him having to stand on the apron and go all the way to the center of the ring at every opportunity and contrived ref distraction, but he was better at knowing when to bump and feed and work rope running spots and when to slow things down and pose and preen. They were all moving pretty well in there actually, surprising for Richard since he'd been more of a lump recently and for Black Shadow because he took so many big bumps and dives to nowhere. I thought Gordon looked quite good; Hassouni probably hit things cleaner and moved faster but Gordon had more of a star's sense when to appeal to the crowd and really milk something. This followed the old structure with exchanegs and stylist dominance in the first fall, cheating leading to a straight up beating in the second, and all of the celebratory bits of comeback and humiliation in the third, including the valet getting what was coming to him. The ref leaned heel which was kind of necessary for the valet act to work but made it all a bit much but the fans were into it, the action was good save for a few flubs, and the production team certainly had a lot of fun putting quasi-blasphemous phrases up on the screen to highlight the Marquis' antics. We're deep into 1985 now and while Flash Gordon isn't Jacky Corn or Petit Prince or Gilbert LeDuc, and while he'd turn into whatever he would turn into in the years to come, you do get the sense from the footage we do have that he did do a fairly admirable job helping to anchor things in the 80-85 period.

Mambo Le Primitif vs Jessy Texas 7/21/85

MD: I have no idea who Jessy Texas is but he's around off and on through the end of he footage and after. Mambo has his drummers back. It's crazy that we have more Mambo matches than L'Ange Blanc matches, right? And over the span of a few years here. his was fairly spirited, I guess. Ol' Jessy (billed from America and with a fun shirt with his name on the back) had a lot of the tricks (dropkicks, the up and over top wristlock reversal, monkey flips, a very nice heaving back body drop type throw), and Mambo bumped all over the place, including his signature chest first miss off the ropes splaach bump. Eventually, he got biting and clubbering and despite a fiery comeback from a bloody Jessy, one big shot to the gut ended his hopes. Mambo finally more or less figued out how to do the Alabama Jam too, so good for him. This didn't have he spectacle of the handicap match or the strap match but it was probably the best darn Mambo Le Primitif match I've ever seen. Oh and since everyone needs to know this, pop star "Billy" was there for the last match and singer Francois Deguelt (who represented Monaco at Eurovision!) was sitting on commentary for this one. Important stuff.

Georges Cohen & Kader Hassouni vs Anton Tejero & Pierre Lagache 7/21/85

MD: I'm going to miss these sequences. Up and over into headscissorss. Amrdrags where they hang on and hang on. Rolling back wristlock takedowns. Cohen and Hassouni were stylists' stylists. Tejero and Lagache were expert bases, stooging and feeding and bumping out of the ring (the old Tejero special). They were all older now but the technique was the technique and they were masters. Maybe Hassouni didn't get as high up on his cartwheel. Maybe the rope running just lasted a few spots instead of a full minute, but they were able to get a lot of mileage out of teasing the wrenching of an arm or slipping a shot in to the gut or the ref preventing Cohen from getting in while Hassouni was getting double teamed. That meant when Tejero went sailing through the second and third rope to the floor on a missed charge or was tossed over the top afer Cohen's eventual hot tag, it just meant all the more. What can I tell you that I haven't already? In 1965 or 1985, these guys were good.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 2/14 - 2/20

AEW Rampage 2/17

Dustin Rhodes vs. Swerve Strickland

MD: I'd say "You have to give it to Dustin," but it's not like we do much around here other than giving it to Dustin, so we're going to be doing that anyway, right? He could mail it in, or at the very least, he could just play the hits, but he seems to take every opponent as opportunity to think of their stuff will interface with what he does and be open to adapt his stuff to what they do, all the while drawing a crowd in with a babyface performance that organically inspires clapping up and chants more than almost anyone on the roster. 

With Swerve, that means you're going to get a combo of mean shots and completely unnecessary rolls, certainly a bane of watching him as a babyface but just about over the line of "tolerable" when he's a heel. As a heel, he has certain luxuries that most on the roster don't lean into either. He can be a bit more chickenshit, a bit more disingenuous, can balance the athleticism with a real sliminess in the ring. MJF plays that sort of character before the bell rings, but he needs to be at least somewhat credible given his role. The Gunns haven't leaned into it for months, probably because they feel like they have too much to prove. Christian is just back from injury and doesn't have that level of athleticism anyway. So it's down to Swerve to really find the sweet spot between rolling into a "Complete Shot" and biting Dustin's arm to force create an opening. I liked the straight punch that preceded it on the flip, flop, and fly, and the dodge of the power slam, but I also liked the notion that all of the punches and dodges in the world weren't going to let Swerve take over and it was only through the biting that he could.

They made good use of the apron and the barricade going into the break, leaving Dustin bloodied and giving Swerve something else to bite and target. The crowd more or less stayed behind him throughout and while I thought things escalated a little bit too much and maybe just a little unbalanced, what with death valley drivers on the apron and superplexes into pile drivers, at least with the latter, Dustin went out of his way to justify the kick out with his slow, labored cover. And it all built to a very decisive finish, a rare DQ (the sort of thing which fits Swerve perfectly) and Keith Lee's return. It seems we're on borrowed time with Dustin matches now, so I'm going to value every one we get.

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WWE Elimination Chamber 2/18/23 Live Blog

Do they not do Kickoff Show matches anymore? We really need a full hour of video packages and talking heads with no wrestling? Either way, I'm excited for how excited people are for this show. WWE hasn't felt like any kind of Hot Product in several years now, but people are downright buzzing about this show. That's pretty cool man. I haven't been watching the TV but I watched Rumble, and my boy Martin caught me up on the angles. I'm in, I can't pretend I have better things to do on a winter Saturday. 

1. Women's Chamber: Natalya vs. Liv Morgan vs. Asuka vs. Raquel Rodriguez vs. Carmella vs. Nikki Cross

ER: This is the best haircut Natalya has ever had, but it coincides with her face turning into a face that is more like Dana's Brooke's 2nd to 3rd face and it would have looked better with Natalya's own face. They got Raquel into the match took quick and all it lead to was Too Many Three Way Spots. I wanted Raquel killing individuals down the stretch. I can't be the only one who can't stand Nikki Cross acting like an annoying 7 year old's impression of an annoying 7 year old, right? Raquel's ring post bump looks good, Liv's bump into the pod looks better, but Liv makes a dumber face after the bump. Feels dumb to go to a big Nikki Crossbody spot wiping out everyone so early, because it just leads to everyone lying on the mat exhausted at like 6 minutes in. Carmella gets nearfalls on everyone who took a single crossbody block 4 minutes ago. Raquel is a wrestler who is great at saving matches like this. Maybe it's not that she has a track record of doing so, but she has the ability to force a long gimmick match into being something good in a way that Liv Morgan or Natalya will never have. When Raquel starts breaking out the big shit - running Nikki through a pod, pulling girls off the cage, taking a huge bump on a top rope sunset flip - the match finally comes alive. 

Raquel ramps up the crowd for two minutes, all leading to Asuka's big entrance, the perfect mood setter. Asuka knows how hot to come in, and Liv's missile dropkick to finally stop her looked great. Liv keeps getting bigger and bigger reactions the phonier her character seems. I thought people in Montreal had no time for phonies? I thought the people of Montreal were the kind of people to announce to the room "Are there any Fake People here? Because if you are, I respect your stance, but get the fuck out of my party"? Liv, you're fake. The run to the finish felt real quick, I think too quick. I'm seeing the words I'm typing and I see myself asking for more time from a Brand PPV WWE Gimmick Match, but this really did feel too short. The eliminations piled up too quick and all felt underdone. At the same time, I thought they actually did the complicated multi-man stuff and big bumps really well, and Asuka/Bianca is a match I would want to see much more than Bianca/Liv. Good match, but could have used a couple of better one on one showdowns. 

2. Brock Lesnar vs. Bobby Lashley 

Bobby Lashley's King Kong entrance is incredible. Think how much better it would be without a giant stupid PS2 graphic Bobby Lashley making a dead eye posing face. I'm excited for this match. I did a Royal Rumble live blog last month and was actually pissed when Lesnar got eliminated from the match so early. In response, now Brock tries to eliminate Lashley's shoulder socket by bouncing him across the ring with a belly to belly. I wish Lashley threw even more behind his spear, but the full nelson stuff was cool and the F5 power out was cool, but isn't it kind of weird how the F5 isn't a killshot? Like Lesnar is turning the F5 into Suplex City but without replacing it with anything more dangerous? I assume the reason he never brought back the stretch muffler was because he wound up shredding everyone's knee ligaments? Because bring that back. Finish was bunk, match pacing got tanked once they started spamming finishers and then Lashley didn't do enough with the full nelson to make it seem dire. Lesnar needed to be way more purple to seem like a man in real desperate danger, like 5 hours of terrible sex purple. 

Boy that Seth Rollins Joker stuff is just about the dorkiest shit around huh? Cowards couldn't even pay for the pedophile hockey arena song? 

3. Rhea Ripley/Finn Balor vs. Edge/Beth Phoenix 

ER: I should like a couple that looks like absolute shit, but I just cannot get into the couple of Edge and Beth Phoenix. I think they actually finally figured out the Beth Pompadour. They took the bulk out of the sides and slicked them down, makes the angles much better and avoids the Frankenstein wall of hair up top. This version works well. Edge still looks like shit though. I do think everyone's gear looks fantastic. Rhea's whole crew looks great, and the deep maroon/black/gold pattern is a very tasteful choice for Edge and Beth. I hate the moments of Beth Phoenix matches where she has to do acting. I love that Dominik is drawing heat in a real way. Rhea leans into Phoenix's nice running clothesline and takes a hard bump into the steps. Finn leans into Edge's running clothesline the same way as Rhea did, for team solidarity. The timing of everything in this has been great, it's all paced out so well. Dominik's heat keeps growing. The Phoenix superplex looked great, but the build hung Rhea out to dry a bit. Of course the second I type out the words "The timing of everything in this has been great" and then Beth Phoenix comes diving into frame a second too late for a pinfall save and then lies there on her stomach like Willie Mays Hays coming up a foot short on his slide. Rhea's brass knux punch to the side of Edge's head looked perfect. Old Man Edge is much better than Peak Edge in a lot of ways, and it's wild his spear looks this good now. Dominik should have leaned more into Edge's tope, but this was good. Rhea had an excellent performance here. 

4. Men's Chamber: Austin Theory vs. Montez Ford vs. Bronson Reed vs. Johnny Gargano vs. Damien Priest vs. Seth Rollins

ER: Oh damn this is a pretty bad looking match right? I don't think the gimmick much matters, you see these six names and that is going to look like a bad match. I don't get Austin Theory in similar ways that I don't get Ricky Starks. Did Bronson Reed come back in the last two weeks or something? How did he go from not being one of 30 men in the Royal Rumble, to one of 6 men in Elimination Chamber? I was hoping I'd get a callback to the dogshit Gargano/Rollins sequences at the Rumble, so lucky they're the two starting this. It still looks bad a month later. Okay seriously what is the deal with Austin Theory. How does any of this stand? What is that jumping stomp that he does? Vince used to fucking love Dr. Jerry Graham? What the fuck happened? Edge doesn't wrestle as much like Edge anymore, so I'm really happy we have 6'4 guys like Damien Priest to bring some spiritual Edge Offense into 2023. His running slingshot senton looked like it hurt but I think that's because he messed up the landing. Goddamn this sucks. Bronson Reed came back with a cartoon Bluto sneer and it would have been way better if they just brought him back dressed as Bluto. He has the black beard and heard and his torso is comic book large, make him a fucking dock worker. 

To Reed's credit, he has been the most interesting part of this terrible match, as at least he was just smashing people in between his body and surfaces, not doing a series of tumbles and spins. He takes the poison rana really vertical and his selling afterward was an actual good use of WWE dramatic selling. Ford's sheer drop looked great, just belly flopping stomach first over Balor's shoulder from like 20' up. The best part of the match is now gone. The Rollins/Gargano stuff on top of the pod took way too long for what it was, but that huracanrana off the top of the pod was a great spot. Rollins is the worst possible Matthew Justice but he's at least better when he tries to be like Justice. Remember when I said the Women's Chamber match felt like it needed more time? This match feels eternal. Montez Ford does look pretty great. Look at his gear! You look at his gear in Street Profits and then see these tights? Great pair of tights. The repeated flip dives into the cage looked good...but having him get pinned by Theory just tanked this whole thing. What a bad look. Anyone explain Theory to me. I'll listen. They should have had Omos come out dressed like El Gigante to carry Ford out of the cage to the back.  

5. Roman Reigns vs. Sami Zayn 

ER: I used to feel like the biggest Generico critic, a guy I liked so much less than anyone else I knew. But sometime in 2020 I really did a full 180 on Zayn and well, his last few years speak for themselves. The wife and kids at ringside! I always like when they make someone's kid watch their dad take a beating while surrounded by weird strangers with parasocial relationships who think they know them. And this match was good! I don't think it hit the heights everyone wanted it to hit, but I do think it hit several heights. This was going to be a hard match to stick the landing on, and admittedly the long drama segments don't always work for me. Maybe (probably?) they would work better had I actually been watching all of the storyline play out in real time. It felt like the match peaked too soon and then had to be carried by the drama, and I think drama carried by a match would have been a more interesting way to play this. Every week they do the drama, this is when they can do the match. Roman's cut offs were strong, and Sami's cut offs were stronger, as it should be. Roman is much better at dramatic kick outs than Sami, but Sami was great at making it look like he was done. The ref shenanigans weren't necessary and came off weak, Sami and Roman did a good job of recovering the match every time there was a storyline pause. I thought the family would be involved a lot more (Sami's family, which basically wasn't shown after Zayn kissed his wife midway through the match) and I thought the finishing stretch de-escalated the match too much. Working a match with this much downtime scattered throughout isn't easy, and they never lost the crowd for a second, which means a lot. A Sami win would have made the moment better, but I don't think it would have made the match better. 

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FOUND FOOTAGE FRIDAY: FRED OLEN RAY'S ALL STAR CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING??

 

Freddie Valentine/Terry Funk vs. Mando Guerrero/Cincinnati Red ACW 3/24/00

MD: On paper, I wanted some iconic Terry vs Mando encounter. We don't really get that as the first half of this is Mando out of the picture (Attacked before the match? Late due to traffic? An unannounced substitute?) so it's instead an absolute two-on-one mauling on Cincinnati Red. The math on that isn't exactly right as Terry Funk, as present in the moment as any wrestler could possibly be in an ACW ring,  counts for about six men and Freddie Valentine, as nonchalant as can be, counts as around a quarter of a man. All of Terry's stuff looks credible and brutal. The camera cuts back to Freddie at one point and barely comes back to see Red sprawled on a table, his hair jutting out of his head, obviously wrecked. Terry somehow throttles the life out of him just moving him around the ring. Meanwhile, Freddie hits him with the tamest chairshots and a goofy neckbreaker variation as he sort of idles around the ring. We do get something of an iconic moment as Mando finally arrives, whacking Terry in the back with a trashcan over and over. Meanwhile, Valentine casually glances at the carnage and decides to just laconically pound on Red to the beat of the slow jazz running through his brain that no one else can hear. Things fall apart from there, but Terry's intensity never flags even as Valentine glides through the match. It's a bizarre scene but somehow just makes Funk seem all the more mythical (Funk as Ares and Valentine as a skeezy Dionysus?) for the contrast, even just as he's holding his arm in victory post match. 

ER: Terry Funk is 56 and putting on a performance worth the ticket price. Fred Olen Ray's Freddie Valentine looks like a leather-sporting Mike Graham, but with the good sense to not have flame tattoos. Cincinnati Red comes out to Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law". Low effort. When I'm getting Cincinnati Red on an LA indie show, I at least expect Afghan Whigs while eating out of a Skyline can. Represent your town. A fan gets a real reaction and threatening swagger from Funk when he yells out that "They call him Funk because he stinks!" Funk is really violent with Red. He really punches the shit out of him and throws his full arms into swings, and hits a DDT with actual power, like he was doing a shoot DDT. Freddie is an entertaining non-trained guy with a nice elbowdrop (because he just drops his entire body onto people). He also has one of those clotheslines that lands under the breasts. 

Mando makes his presence felt by really bashing Funk with a trash can and then an old hotel conference room chair. Mando runs the ropes so slow. He runs the ropes so slow that the force he gets behind his dropkick is jump scare shocking. This man looked like he was running using somebody else's legs, and then drill presses a chair into Valentine's head with a dropkick from a near standing position. There aren't many genres of wrestling I love more than men in their late 40s to late 50s working too stiff with each other. Valentine throws a fireball with a sound effect, Funk puts on an real spectacle throwing a couple dozen chairs around, just a perfect indy wrestling main event. 

Barbed Wire Match: Freddie Valentine vs. Mando Guerrero ACW 6/2/00

MD: I don't often watch barbed wire matches, but when I do, I'm not necessarily looking for the gore and the gristle but for the geographic limitations created by the barbed wire and how wrestlers deal with that. There are sort of intrinsic possibilities therein too, so long as they don't go right into the blood. Here, they started on the mat, wrestling this like it was a NWA title match or something. It made sense as the center of the ring and specifically the center of the mat was the only safe place. It was fairly even until Valentine tried whipping Mando into the ropes (and therefore the wire). Mando stopped himself but that opened him up to a big move from Valentine, one that probably wouldn't have been so possible so early in the match otherwise. That's the sort of stuff that's interesting to me.

Also interesting was Mando's two big comeback moves. I don't know where he picked it up, but he hit diamond dust twice, once off the turnbuckles and once in the middle of the ring to reverse a move. Baffling? Out of place? Pure Mando? All true. They did a pretty good job using all of the plunder organically within the match. Nothing seemed too contrived. There were spots where a chair was utilized similar to a Vandaminator but at least they tried to toss it back and forth at each other first. There was a ref bump but it was because he was pressed in the corner and he ate a nasty straight punch from Mando. That led to a visual fall for him, an object slipped in by the valet (kind of silly in an environment like this), and a cheapshot leading to Mando losing the match. As bizarre as the Diamond Dust was, there were some other strong visuals here. Manny bled buckets from his forehead and Valentine was bloody all over his body. When he scored the final pin, his arm was trapped in the barbed wire around a table so that was something you don't see every day. Mando got some shots in after the bell, but given the stip, Valentine got to stand tall in victory (just the sort of victory where you're trailing a barbed wire board stuck to you as you try to gloat on the mic). 

ER: I thought this was really good. Fred Olen Ray directed Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, and he throws better worked punches than you would expect him to throw, and they look even better aimed at Mando's bleeding head. Mando is wearing real genuine street fight gear, and looks incredible, like a visible background construction worker in They Live. He's got work boots and knee pads over jeans and the perfect sleeveless shirt with belly folding over belt buckle. The man looks like a man who's dangled legs off an I-Beam while eating a ham and cheese from his pail.  He gets immediately into the They Live spirit by punching Valentine in the kidneys a bunch while holding him down with a knee, but this whole fight is good. The blood is good, the barbed wire teases were good, and the actual fighting was good. Mando breaks out two different Diamond Dust variations, which was still a really new thing in 2000. His standing version was fairly ambitious for a non-wrestler and a man in his 50s, ending with a dangerous enough landing that the live mic commentator was unsure who got the worse of it. I would go to any local indy running a jeans and sleeveless t-shirt barbed wire match with a couple of old mustache guys and it wouldn't come close to being as good as this one. You don't go into a match with two old guys expecting to see someone suplexed through barbed wire and chairs, even IN a barbed wire match. Super Indies killed the low budget genre filmmaker vs. Mexican GLOW trainer main event. 

Exploding Barbed Wire Boards: Freddie Valentine vs. Crayz ACW 7/28/00

MD: When done well, these things are all about possibilities and limitations, anticipation and payoff, and the inherent danger of the gimmick. Two matches in and it's pretty clear Valentine understood all of this pretty well. Here, the boards (explosive, with barbed wire) were in the corners, so they could move around a bit more to start. They went into the corner pretty quickly, building the anticipation, but Valentine, at least from a kayfabe level, was able to capitalize on the wariness and hesitation more than Crayz who put all of his eggs in one flesh-tearing, explosive basket. That allowed for a low blow and a whip into the opposite corner. The first explosion was a dud but that worked for the match. It let Valentine both take over and use the barbed wire board remnants as a weapon moving forward, which was pretty clever. After beating him around the ring for a bit (including with another object from the valet), Crayz managed a desperate reversal into another corner. This time the explosion went off and he got a quick pin soon after. You buy it due to the explosion (and the previous dud) but the match would have probably been better served by that starting a big, bloody comeback and everything hinging on a third toss into a corner as part of a more expansive finishing stretch. The counterpoint there is that it creates an almost shoot-style type of expectation with the crowd moving forward that a match can end at any moment due to the danger of the gimmick. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Le Primitiv! Gordon! Falcons! Hassouni! DeBruyne! Piranhas!

Kader Hassouni & John DeBruyne vs Les Piranhas 5/11/85

MD: Totally solid tag here. The highs weren't quite as high as they could be but the floor was high enough that you didn't mind much. Hassouni was older, a bit slower, able to move with bursts and then take things back down or to have the heel make the motion for him but he was still quite the pro. DeBruyne was mainly in there to get a few youthful, agile flurries of his own and then to take a beating. The Piranhas had their act down, a lot of ref distraction and hairpulling and clubbering and they had a game target in DeBruyne, who'd charge right in only to get nailed. This had a couple of hot tags and big comebacks by Hassouni and they kept cutting to a very happy crowd that was very into it, with a large number of kids present. The wrestling wasn't quite as complex, the action not quite as heated or spirited, and I'm not sure this ever reached the triumph of good vs evil of classic tags of years prior. It was still probably a love way to spend an afternoon however. It's also important everyone knows that the trumpeter Jean-Claude Borelly was a special guest announcer. 

Flesh Gordon vs Mambo le Primitif (Strap Match) 5/11/85

MD: There had been a tease of a strap match with Bordes and a monster back five years earlier but here's the payoff we get, and it's late era Catch with Flesh Gordon and Mambo Le Primitif. No crown, no drummers for Mambo here. Instead he had a couple of village people looking handlers. This went over twenty and there was probably a great twelve minute match in there. Conceptually, some things really worked and some things didn't. For a good chunk of the match, Gordon used the strap as a way of keeping distance on Mambo and moving him around the ring. He'd whip the ground to keep Mambo back more than he'd whip Mambo himself. Gordon was slightly older, a little rougher around the edges in appearance, but whatever he might become later, he was still spry at this point: able to do the up and over and move and hit big dropkicks and bump around the ring and sell emotively. Mambo would catch him, beat him down, and Gordon would come back as Mambo was posing.

Midway through there was a glorious minute where Mambo took the metal strap connector and dug it into Gordon's eye and if the match had more of that it'd have been many degrees better. Instead, it was all more back and forth. Gordon certainly knew how to present himself as a star and Mambo was constant motion, constantly entertaining, even if there wasn't always substance behind it. Eventually he did take over, including a big dive off the apron to the floor, so that the end of the match was Gordon coming back big by catching him on the top and choking him with the strap to give him a visual win but a DQ loss. 

Mambo le Primif vs Golden Falcons 7/7/85

MD: We get 15 of this and then it cuts off and, I mean, look, Mambo is trained, right? He's agile. He's capable of basing for some complex spots from the Falcons. If I could track down Gerard Herve/Flesh Gordon, the only thing I'd probably ask him would be who Mambo was. He had some staying power when you think about it. He wasn't giant compared to other big masked men or at least the costume made it seem like he wasn't but they sold for him like he was late-era Andre at times. This was more or less what you'd expect. They'd use their numbers game to bump him around. He'd isolate one and take over. Strength spots, falls out of the ring, just grinding down. You can imagine how it would end considering he beat both Angelito and Gordon at the same time previously. I don't know. The world's probably richer and more insane for the existence of Mambo and him leaping throat first onto the top rope so they can run text across the screen saying SPLAACH!!!"

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 2/6 - 2/13

AEW Dynamite 2/8

Bryan Danielson vs. RUSH

MD:  A lot of ground to cover here. I started writing on SC in April 2014. That's a sweet spot period where Wrestlemania 30 had just happened and we were in between the Shocker and Negro Casas RUSH hair matches. So these are two wrestlers I associate with my own writing on this site to some degree. It's pretty safe to say that this is a match between the most exciting wrestler of 2013 and of 2014, both of whom remain exciting in 2023. I'm always happy to see Danielson up against a new opponent. I've written before about how current day Danielson, like a Hansen, pushes his opponent up to their physical limits. I'd argue that Moxley pushes his opponent up to their emotional limits, for what it's worth. That said, if I'm happy to see Danielson up against the Bandidos and Cages of the world, I'm actively excited to see RUSH up against new opponents. In both cases, it's a bit of a borrowed time sort of thing. Danielson's stated repeatedly that this is his last full-time contract. He's also older and has a unique history of injuries. RUSH on the other hand, has a pretty unique history of burning bridges in bloody fits of chaos. At the same time, if it wasn't for Danielson's style or RUSH's absolute intensity, neither would nearly be as transcendent. 

This had its shares of bells and whistles. There was the bounty, the damaged shoulder, the angle up front where Danielson was barricaded in his locker room, MJF on commentary (the last of which worked a little better than it should have if only because he had Taz to riff off of). All of that ultimately became background noise at worst and mild positive accentuation at best because the light of RUSH and Danielson throwing themselves fully into this war was going to drown out everything else. It gave RUSH an early advantage, catching Danielson as he rushed into the ring in order to beat the ten count, and that informed the structure for a lot of the match: RUSH would beat Danielson down like only he could. Danielson would fire back with strikes, riding the wave of the hot crowd and his own desire for competition and thirst to push himself. RUSH would cut him off with a big move. The first was a German following a go behind and push off against the ropes. The most iconic was the belly to belly off the apron where Danielson's blood splattered across the camera. And in between, RUSH, who is going to make his stuff look as intense and brutal as anyone in wrestling, just laid in shot after shot after shot, forearms, tosses into the barricade, insulting kicks. 

When Danielson was able to get the space to use speed or savvy - the tope in the corner, the super-slick roll into the LeBell Lock - he actually moved the needle, but when it came down to strikes, it was his technique up against RUSH's bullheadedness, literally so with the headbutts he threw. I'm the low voter on strike exchanges more often than not, especially modern ones, but here everything came together. There was the brutality of the match leading up to it. There was the stubbornness and desperation of both parties. The crowd was into each shot. There was weight behind everything. There was impact and result to it. They weren't going as fast or as hard as they could without consequence. Most of all, it wasn't about showing toughness and fighting spirit for the sake of it, it wasn't about running cold: It was channeling the passion of the crowd and the moment into the wrestlers and their actions. It was about running hot and that's so much easier to immerse yourself in. It's not a matter of suspending your disbelief so much as it's about suspending your analytical eye. It stopped being about another "strike exchange" and became something you didn't want to take your eyes off of or let your mind linger too long upon. 

Yet at the same time, the match itself never stopped being smart. Danielson survived the straightjacket pile driver due to a lackluster cover (and it also wasn't RUSH's double underhook piledriver which was his super finisher in Mexico). RUSH survived the first Busaiku Knee because Danielson was too hurt and because RUSH was still too fresh, but it made a great call by a panicked MJF. And then the finish was RUSH going again for the German off the ropes that opened the match up for him in the first place and Danielson landing on his feet. RUSH went back to the well only to find that Danielson's own well was nigh bottomless, a mixed metaphor, but one that that sets up the ironman match vs MJF perfectly. Maybe RUSH has figured it all out and AEW will be built around him for years. Maybe Danielson will never really lose the wrestling bug and we have hundreds of matches with him yet to watch. It's equally possible, if not more so however, that we're on borrowed time for both wrestlers and were just lucky that their paths crossed on this night, as part of this story, in front of this crowd.

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ECW Crossing the Line Again 2/1/97

I've spent the last year (and will continue to spend this coming year) watching all of the 1997 WCW for my book. I've been spending other time in 1997, listening to music and watching movies released in the year, as well as watching other pro wrestling from the same period. If it happened in the year I learned to drive, then I am spending some time every day consuming it. I thought this 1997 ECW show was really choice, with an absolute classic first time ever meeting between Terry Funk and Tommy Rich, a killer Dr. Death/Raven match, heel Ricky Morton, a terrible Eliminators match that goes 20, etc. 

1. Lance Storm vs. Balls Mahoney

ER: Balls Mahoney would have made a really great Bluto, and he throws two nice punches (an overhand right and a long uppercut right) and also wastes Storm with a short arm clothesline. His Foley-esque bump over the ropes (where his head almost got wrapped in them but instead he tumbled hard to the floor) looked really great, and he leans into every piece of soft offense that Lance Storm threw at him. Storm never hits hard, ever, but he makes up for it a bit by throwing his whole body into attacks. His spinning heel kick and tope and top rope clothesline at least ended with his whole body crashing into Balls. His leaping back elbow and flying shoulderblock actually hit really well, and it felt like he was making harder contact with those moves the longer it went on, like he was learning to throw harder to knock this guy down. Was Balls Mahoney actually this good in 1997? It feels like he might be. Am I going to go on a Balls Mahoney rewatch? I already am. I wish Storm had sold Mahoney's piledriver longer, but Storm's top rope spinning heel kick helicoptered right into Mahoney's head so whatever. I liked this. 

2. Ricky Morton vs. Big Stevie Cool

ER: Ricky is wearing his red tasseled confederate flag tights with glittered flares and folks he looks incredible. The red tights are the brightest, perfect color of red, the stars and stripes cross perfectly diagonally past his knees. It's so pro wrestling and so trash 

Morton hits a low knee and a snappy headlock punch, and throws a missed clothesline with the best form. I love when Ricky fights like an asshole. Morton punches more when he's an asshole and Morton always uses his punches in cool ways. Here he broke a wristlock with a straight right and then missed a fast follow-up fistdrop. Morton is so much of an asshole here that he soccer dives knee up into Stevie's nuts, and then drives his knee into them on a snug inverted atomic drop. Stevie looked good taking Ricky's offense, and the Stevie Kick is a good finish, but I wish this got a chance to keep going where it was going. Instead it was Ricky looking like a switchblade asshole for 5 minutes and then Stevie quickly going home with a Jackknife and kick. Great look at how good 1997 Ricky Morton was. Who has the Ricky Morton FMW footage? 

3. Dr. Death Steve Williams vs. Axl Rotten

ER: This is a 2 minute match, and when you hear that you probably assume it's going to be Dr. Death killing Rotten with a couple big slams and a neck breaking suplex or two. It got to that, but before that we got to see Dr. Death take a nice bump into the turnbuckles and sells Rotten's decent strikes, and then we get to see Doc punch Rotten right in the face and throw him with a backdrop driver. 

4. Dr. Death Steve Williams vs. Raven

ER: Man they go right at it and it is great. Doc continues throwing stiff jabs and then takes a sicko bump running full speed face first into the top turnbuckle on a missed charge. This man has a well paying All Japan gig and he's in Philadelphia taking unprotected chairshots and hitting a gusher. Dr. Death's sweat soaked shag is one of the great haircuts in wrestling history, and it swings over his face as he rolls off a table, just before Raven crashes through it off the top. Doc cashes in the receipt on those chairshots and Raven hits a far great gusher. Raven was an incredible bleeder and needs to be talked about more as such. He's one of our great bleeders. Dr. Death does get to throw Raven around, hitting a high powerslam and German suplex, and there's a great fight over a top rope suplex that ends in a sick snap Raven superplex. The bWo involvement is used well, as most of them are just crash pads for Doc to press slam Raven through. While Raven writhes around with Hollywood Nova, there's a perfectly done showdown between Dr. Death and Stevie. Dr. Death keeps taking Stevie Kicks and getting up for more, and you kept waiting for it to lead to Stevie getting snapped in two with a backdrop driver. When Doc caught a kick, you knew you were about to see a man die, so I dug that Stevie instead spun out of it and busted him in the chops with a great Stevie Kick. It was a really great sequence and both played up their characters perfectly, Stevie tuning up that band like a maniac and Doc knowing exactly what to sell and not sell. Williams was a really good bumper and good at taking offense, and Raven's DDT looked like it would finish a guy like Dr. Death after those three kicks. 

5. The Sandman vs. D-Von Dudley 

ER: There are too many great shots of Sandman's entrance here to count. His forehead his bleeding when he comes through the curtains, hair slicked back, dangerous eyes. You'd avoid this man in literally any public space you saw him in. And yet, carrying a beer with a cigarette hanging from his lip, he looks like undoubtedly one of the coolest dirtbags in history. D-Von Dudley had great punches in this match, because he just threw several potatoes at Sandman's pre-existing cut, giving every side of the ring a close up look at his knuckles hitting Sandman's crown. Sandman's offense has this artless Drunken Master flow to it. All of it looks like it would hurt, and a lot of it is among the ugliest version of that move you've ever seen. It's beautiful. The whole match jumps up a level when Sandman suplexes a table edge first into D-Von's leg and fucking ends him with the most drunk dead accurate Philadelphia Jam with a chair on D-Von's face. It's 5 minutes and goes out on a high pitch, segueing into a strong post-match. D-Von joins up with Bubba and they mess up Spike with what I assume is the first ever 3D, but New Jack comes out and wreaks havoc. Bubba smooshes him with a perfect blindside avalanche, Bubba takes a Flair Flop face first on an open chair, New Jack drops D-Von mouth first on an open chair and then makes the most charming little smile to the camera. Simple, hot segment that made a ton out of like 8 total minutes. 

6. The Eliminators vs. Rob Van Dam/Sabu 

I'm just going to assume that everybody had the exact same Eliminators experience that I did: we were all in our late teens when we traded for a 4 hour Eliminators comp, and then after watching about an hour of the Eliminators comp we all pretty much realized exactly what the Eliminators were and had no desire to watch any more. This match was 20 minutes long, and felt longer. The Eliminators can do cool things but they are cold in there, and the crowd reacts coldly to them. Nobody makes a real effort to connect with the crowd, but running through flipping moves used to be enough to get some clapping at the Arena. They just do not care, and it takes RVD's energy to finally snap people awake. This was icy cold and disjointed with that silent crowd, but Van Dam came in with the energy of a guy whose party tricks always connect with any room. There's a confidence they respond to when he comes in, a response he gets by getting obliterated by a double spinning heel kick or folded in half when Saturn suddenly knows how to throw a slicing clothesline. Sabu hurls his body at men more and more as we creep to 20, landing that triple jump plancha three rows deep, falling on the back of his head when Saturn sweeps his legs off the top rope, missile dropkicking Saturn off a damn ladder, and it all peaks with some horridly constructed mess with a ladder set up on a table and Sabu whipping his shins into everything/everyone in sight. 

My favorite part was when Kronus sold a big Sabu top rope splash/RVD top rope Jam, by just standing up to his feet at the same time they did and throwing a stomach kick. Kronus has the mental energy of someone wandering their way through a battle royal who doesn't actually know he's in a battle royal. It's like he had no clue that he had just taken any kind of offense, and it's kind of amazing? He'll take a wild backdrop bump to the floor and almost land on his head doing a corkscrew senton, but there's no chance this man every thought for one second about what a quality match layout would look like. I did love them doing Total Elimination to a ladder that was holding both RVD and Sabu, with them hanging in the air before dropping straight to the mat when the ladder is swept away. It's a perfect overly complicated dumb ECW spot. 

7. Terry Funk vs. Tommy Rich

ER:  Tommy Rich everyone. While Terry Funk is being clapped on the back, as Joey Styles was going on and on about Funk's singles run to the World title as if he was a kid with progeria who was graciously going to be allowed to score a soccer goal, here's Tommy Rich looking like such a fat asshole in the ring. The fans call him a fat fuck, he looks like a goon asshole, the perfect heat magnet. Rich starts the match by storming clumsily into the crowd to get RIGHT into some dude's face, letting Terry Funk sneak up on him and start the fight. Getting distracted by some guy in a hockey jersey and letting your opponent find and fight you is so much interesting than two guys meeting in the ring and then walking each other into the crowd, and Funk just started throwing left hands that made Rich bleed more with each shot. Rich is a full on menace in this, just a disgusting looking stuck pig of a man stumbling through the ugliest people you've ever seen. He hits such a perfect messy bladejob, sending streams of red everywhere down his face while the parts of his face that are untouched by blood have a sick purple hue. 

Rich wrecks his body in a few ways that would have looked cool from any man, but look incredible from a big fat slob. A sweaty guy spilling over his tights running knee first into a guardrail just looks better, and it lead to Funk taking apart his knee in ways that would cripple younger, fitter men. It's one thing for Funk to not work his left hands at this point, but there has to be a way to work hitting a guy's knee with a chair. If there is, Terry pretends to not know about it, and just bashes the shit out of Tommy's knee, then kicks his hamstring all around ringside. It's fucking great. The whole time - and the whole match really - Rich is reveling in the You Fat Fuck chants, spitting blood out through a cartoon grin. He shoves some dude off him in the crowd and almost accidentally hits his small girlfriend, presumably the only woman in the entire arena. Rich grins the entire time, except for those times when he would get suddenly unstoppably angry, the way a real asshole would behave. 

The man is thirsty for DDTs and hungry for hate. DDTs for Funk, DDTs for Jim Molyneux; he slowly hitches up the front of his tights while making full eye contact with some creeps. Tommy Rich looks like absolute shit while he spits blood up into the air and bashes at Funk's knee, still grinning and acting like an asshole. They're two of the only guys who have ever made kneeling and fighting ever look good. Nobody makes the sitting-in-chairs-throwing-punches look good, it's tough as hell to make kneeling and punching look good, but this is great. The spinning toehold finish would have worked in most settings, but it felt beneath the rest of the match because everything else was so legitimately violent. But this is one of the greatest ECW matches of all time, hands down.  

8. Shane Douglas/Chris Candido/Brian Lee vs. Tommy Dreamer/The Pitbulls

ER: This starts really great and then eventually goes on too long. Probably didn't need nearly 20 minutes from these guys, turns out. But when Candido starts things by baseball sliding THROUGH Brian Lee's legs just to kick Dreamer in the nuts, that is a fucking hilarious way to start things. The crowd brawl and bullshit in this was really good. The match settling into an actual match was fine, but the bullshit kept it high. Pitbull 2 took a lot of gnarly shots to the head while standing right next to the smelliest fans, then came roaring back into the ring throwing just as hard punches at Douglas. They bring a guardrail into the ring and do a bunch of great stuff with it. Candido gets thrown into it and springs off it straight a back elbow that bounces him over the top rope like a volleyball. Douglas gets tossed through the guardrail and then press slammed onto the busted railing. Holy shit. These guys taking some dumb bumps out here and it rules. 

As his contract states, Dreamer is dropped crotch first on a guardrail, just railing his balls the exact way he demands in every single match. Dreamer takes a lot of abuse in this. Douglas really drops him with vertical suplexes, with a big one through two chairs. Candido gets rocket launched onto Dreamer and does that thing where he bounces right up to his feet on the recoil. Pitbull 2 is bleeding real good and getting hanged with his own chain, and really this whole thing just gets derailed by the Rick Rude involvement. The one good thing - and it is an admittedly pretty big great thing - is that Rude comes out in a mask wearing a patchwork denim on denim pantsuit like something Richard Pryor would have owned. I'm stunned that he didn't also have a big floppy hat adorned with beer cap toppers. Rude looks walks out wearing a ensemble too garish for a Vince McMahon 1991 Prime Time Wrestling segment, and a man wearing this outfit in 1997 is far more shocking than any of the ways ECW tried to be shocking on any given show. I remember what people wore in 1997, and nobody was dressing like a pimp from a Fred Williamson movie. I don't know what Rude's involvement was supposed to be in ECW, but everyone in the ring hitting shitty Rude Awakenings seems like a lame way to peak this. 

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Found Footage Friday: FUJIWARA~! ROBERTS~! WRIGHT~! LAWLER~! VALIANT~! SAITO~! KHAN~!

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Pete Roberts NJPW 9/19/82 - GREAT

MD: We covered a 1983 handheld between these two previously and that was solid but unexciting. This was solid and absolutely exciting, top notch wrestling the whole way through. The first half of this was the two of them chaining hold after hold and counter after counter, hanging on whenever possible. That was exciting when we saw it in the French footage, but here it was Fujiwara, one of the best defensive wrestlers of all time having to escape again and again. He had a couple of absolutely breathtaking ones, bridging and flipping, or even doing his own version of the French Catch up and over escape which we almost never see outside of France. Roberts was more than game in hanging on and whenever it was time for Fujiwara to take him over it was with electric decisiveness. Halfway through, Fujiwara started in with a short arm scissors and Roberts' limp-wristed selling for the rest of the match really put it over, even when there was a lull or a switch in momentum and he didn't have to. It helped that first Fujiwara and then later on Roberts in revenge were escalating things to these nasty whips across the ring where they put a twist on the wrist at the last second to force a flip bump and the illusion of grisly damage to the arm. Things picked up towards the finish with an escape that sent Roberts soaring out of the ring, his jumping kick back in, and some rope running before he got an unsatisfactory win given that Fujiwara's arm was under the ropes. Great stuff here and clear and crisp enough for an 82 handheld that we could see every detail. 

PAS: This was awesome, just a pair of maestros grabbing and twisting at each others arms and wrists and finding cool ways to reverse and escape. Those whips on the arm were sick stuff but really the only aggressive part of the match, everything else was pure craft and really great to watch. The seemingly botched finish was the only thing that kept this from an EPIC rating, and it felt more like an awesome Primera Caida then a full match, but it was an awesome Primera Caida.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Steve Wright NJPW 10/7/83

MD: This didn't have the sharp angles of Fujiwara vs Roberts but it ended up more strike heavy and maybe more imaginative as well. Interestingly, Wright drove the action here which was the opposite of the Roberts match, staying on top for most of it and even doing some of the specific moves that Fujiwara had done in the 82 match above. For instance, it was Wright that utilized a headstand escape right into a sliding grounded side headlock or that locked in the short arm scissors. In the Roberts match, there was the promise of a potential Gotch Lift. Here, there was the actuality of it as Fujiwara hefted him up and they went half tumbling over the ropes. Overall, this was a good look at Wright, a legendary figure, against a game opponent than anything else. After that Gotch Lift spot, he clapped and appealed to the crowd to show appreciation for what they had just seen. He laid his shots in with high low combos of forearms followed by a headbutt to the guts. He went to the top twice, once for a jumping kick; the second time, Fujiwara, ever the defensive wrestler, decided to defend by putting the ref between himself and Wright until he got down. Fujiwara came back primarily with a few strikes of his own and a huge headbutt that Wright sold like a falling tree, but this was a relatively one-sided affair all the way to Wright's very nice snap gutwrench suplex out of the corner to end it.

Jerry Lawler/Jimmy Valiant vs. Killer Khan/Masa Saito AJPW 2/1/85

MD: Not pretty. Lawler took a beating right from the get go, and he was savvy enough to know that he had to fire up quick and not take and take. He did and started firing his punches at Khan, but despite the punches looking as good as ever, the magic just wasn't there in Japan. I don't know if that was the crowd being used to a different sort of strike from guys like Jumbo or just a lack of head-snapping selling, but nothing was registering. Then Valiant came in, gave his sweeping but very light looking clubbers, and stumbled immediately on his first attempt to whip Khan, drawing laughter (and not for the first time). The match never really recovered and later on, when Valiant missed an elbow drop, the reaction was even more uproarious laughter. In between Lawler fought from underneath, but the crowd just wasn't buying what he was selling. Unless I'm mistaken, this was Lawler's third match ever in Japan and he'd only get this tour (tagging with Valiant the whole way) and then a New Japan tour in 89. It's Jerry Lawler, so I'm convinced that if he had enough time and maybe wasn't tied to Valiant here, he would have solved the puzzle eventually, but he never really got the chance.

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: NXT 2.0 WarGames

26. Team Black & Gold (Pete Dunne/Johnny Gargano/Tommaso Ciampa/LA Knight) vs. Team 2.0 (Bron Breakker/Grayson Waller/Carmelo Hayes/Tony D'Angelo) NXT WarGames 12/5

ER: I was so surprised by how much I liked this match. Nearly every WWE/NXT WarGames to this point has been an interminable slog. What kind of world were we creating for our children when we gave them four different WarGames in four years featuring Adam Cole? The Bobby Fish WarGames Era. America changed a lot for the worse in 2016, but I don't think Adam Cole WarGames have been given their fair share of credit for how horrible the next four years would get. Perhaps this particular WarGames only looked better because the women's WarGames that happened earlier in the night was one of the worst matches of the year, truly terrible. This show started with that 30+ minute match, which was entirely made up of half speed exchanges, bad weapon shots, and moments that looked bungled at best. When a 30 minute match ends and your immediate thought is "Well...I guess Gigi Dolin looked the best out of everyone?" then you know you just witnessed something dreadful. At least we got plenty of Cora Jade working through her acting chops. 

This might be the first WarGames in WWE brand history that didn't feel like an exercise in "Guys lying around the edges of the ring selling, regardless of how long they've been in the match". This was the first WWE brand WarGames that actually felt shorter than its runtime. Those 45 minute WarGames felt damn near PPV length, but this never felt like it was intentionally pausing action to capture hack Moments. The women's match that started the show was almost entirely set-up Moments and brother, they were all bad. This main event just focused on action, not on mapping out the best camera angle to capture somebody's gulp face. My main criticism of this match was that there was maybe too MUCH action, in that a lot of sequences were worked as if this was just a normal 8 man tag, and not specifically a WarGames match, but I have much less problem with what they did here than the new trend of working normal wrestling sequences in Royal Rumbles. This had a lot of chained sequences that didn't necessarily fit the structure of a WarGames, but here at least most of the sequences looked GOOD; they do not under any circumstances look good in a Rumble. 

The women's WarGames badly played up every participants' weaknesses, but this match managed to play to strengths. Grayson Waller bounced and sprang and flew off every surface, taking full advantage of the increased square footage. He took the most/best bumps into the cage itself, and seemed to be on the receiving end of the majority of the weapon spots. He was probably my favorite here, but I thought everyone added something. Everything was timed out really well and we never got into any dead patches. There might have been an over-reliance on weapons, but they used a lot of them for max effect. Tony D'Angelo pressing a crowbar into Pete Dunne's jaw before giving him a crowbar-assisted swinging neckbreaker off the top was a great example of an awesome spot with real added danger; a swinging neckbreaker off the top already looks cool, but with a crowbar being held around a guy's throat? Brutal. D'Angelo taking out Dunne's mouth guard before dropping him was a great touch. Waller exploded Knight through a table with a huge elbowdrop, Ciampa dropped Bron with an Air Raid Crash onto a trash can, and they all did a nice job of escalating the match to build to these bigger and bigger spots. They filled in a lot of time with just fighting, instead of lying around or pausing for Moments, and the chained finish looked good. 

I kept expecting Johnny Gargano to bring a lot of his specific type of dumb face drama, but it never came. Instead he did a lot of things that just made sense, like just grabbing onto Hayes after taking a shot to the balls, holding on for dear life to give Ciampa enough time to level Hayes with a running knee. We got to see Bron stand tall at the end - the absolute correct ending - as he speared both Ciampa and Hayes through a table to put an end to the Fairytale Ending, then gave Ciampa a nightmare ending with a sick press slam powerslam. We're not going to get blood in a WarGames, but this was the only one in the last 5 years that actually focused on fighting instead of drama, a classically simple Next Gen vs. Old Blood storyline in lieu of bad acting, and that combined with strong build and execution made it stand out as the clear best WWE WarGames since the concept returned. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Van Buyten! Montreal! Ufo! Harris! Blair! McDonald! Borne! Gowart!

Linda Blair/Nicki McDonald vs Brigitte Borne/"Magnifique" Manetry Gowart 8/25/84

MD: I think there maybe, just maybe, could be an ok Borne vs Blair singles match. Borne was older here but we have her in the Garcia match from the 70s and she could hold her own. Blair had her own sort of style, a trash talking, hard hitting heel, even if those shots sometimes looked a little... askew. They stooged a bit, tried to get heat with distracted switches. But there were times where the match just broke down entirely in a manner that you wouldn't even imagine from any match in the 60s or 70s. When it came to McDonald and Gowart, sometimes things would go right. More often, they wouldn't. I honestly thing Blair could have had a career as the third, lesser Glamour Girl, as a Moolah-trainee styled wrestler, she had positives. Overall, though, this was pretty painful.

Franz van Buyten/Mr. Montreal vs. Bob Ufo/John Harris 9/1/84

SR: Well, this could‘ve been worse, but also could‘ve been better. John Harris is a big muscular guy with a kid face. He actually had some fun power spots in this. Van Buyten meshes well with both opponents and Mr. Montreal is decent, but there was some annoying clipping going on and the faces for some reason jobbed hard in this, losing 2-0.

MD: Definitely some structural issues here. I don't think Ufo earned the first fall necessarily. Montreal had been just a bit too dominant the moment before. Overall the clipping wasn't too bad. It's the devil we have to deal with for the variety show. The worst one is towards the end as you sort of lose just how badly they were portraying Montreal's leg as hurt because of it. He had to be carried off. After that, despite his usual fiery comeback (though no charging leap across the ring), the heels made short enough work of Van Buyten. I liked the actual action though, and watching this in context, that's not a small thing. Van Buyten was masterful, some of the best facial expressions ever as he sells and huge sweeping shots on his comeback. Plus, he could work holds with Ufo and the escalating strength spots with Harris, until he finally chipped him down. The crowd was eager to see Montreal (a strongman himself) get in there with Ufo and I don't think he disappointed. If anything we just got it a little too early into the match. Harris was surprisingly huge; he didn't look it due to the babyface, but when he was up there against Montreal, he towered over him. It's interesting we've been seeing heels win so much as of late when they almost never won in the entirety of the 70s.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/30 - 2/5

AEW Dynamite 2/1

Bryan Danielson vs. Timothy Thatcher

MD: This was exactly what you thought it'd be but it was still very nice to see it play out. If I had to point to something, it'd be 1) Danielson's early use of space, the way he kept trying to control the distance between himself and Thatcher 2) Thatcher's expressions in general: elation when he was prying off a body part and grinding on a hold or a sort of toothless but genuine shock when something didn't go his way, very much in the moment of all time, and 3) Danielson's selling overall. We saw it in the Cage match, but it was all the more present here: his movements were ginger; he was putting over the danger he was in at each point; you could feel the desperation and the middle ground between heart, technical prowess, and ability to channel the crowd as he was throwing fists into Thatcher's side on the top rope. 

Otherwise, like I said, it was two masters pressing down on each other, one going for blood and the other playing defense masterfully. I'm writing this on Sunday and I haven't talked to Phil about what match on Dynamite he'd be covering, but I think I'd be most interested to hear what he had to say about this one, because while it was the most predictable of the three (the two I'm covering and Mox/Page III), it also feels like the hardest to say anything meaningful about.

Darby Allin vs. Samoa Joe

MD: Bryce Remsburg referred all three of the Joe/Darby matches and he posted recently that Darby wanted the matches to feel as chaotic as the Necro/Joe match from 2005. This was pretty damn chaotic. With the no holds barred stip, they started with something additive, the thumbtack hairshirt, and ended it by tearing apart the ring pretty efficiently (though not efficiently enough for Darby's kayfabe hopes and dreams of winning the match) and one last ghastly bump to be the spine-compressing cherry on top of a match full of them. Despite props, plenty of replays, and the fact that the only breather to be had was when Joe was putting the squeeze on Darby during the PiP, everything felt brutally organic. The physics of Darby crashing knee first into the ringsteps and somehow going heels over head onto his feet on the other side of the rail should have been impossible, but Darby's a wizard of execution (albeit usually the person getting executed is himself) and somehow it worked. It's a testament to both wrestlers really: two table spots, a couple of gnarly chair spots, a bump over the handrail on the arena stairs, a yeet right over the ropes to the floor. Nothing looked clean or pretty, but it all looked believably painful. Joe's blood helped, not even in putting over the damage to Joe necessarily, but in making you feel like he was angry enough to show this level of malice and disregard. It was one of those Sabu-ian instances where something like Darby not being able to get the hairshirt back on correctly only made the carnage more immersive. 

(After the fact edit: Just read Phil's column and he did in fact go with Darby vs Joe and ended it with the Bryce factoid, which was my entry point into the write-up. Great minds and all that...)

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Bron vs. Gargano Ladder Match

22. Bron Breakker vs. Johnny Gargano NXT 11/30

ER: This was only our 6th Bron match and first Bron gimmick match, coming after them foolishly having him lose to Ciampa. I was already groaning picturing this absolute beast - who has the clenched jaw and crazed eyes of SLADE but with the DNA of a Steiner - doing derpy forearm exchanges with Johnny Wrestling, but they shut my stupid mouth by working this the exact way they should have. Most of Gargano's offense couldn't move Breakker an inch, so as the match went on Johnny had to lure Bron into some misses, and Bron is a big guy who can miss big. When Gargano would stack his offense while using the ladder, he could move Bron a bit, but only keep him down for so long. The slingshot spear alone wasn't going to move the guy, but the slingshot spear and a ladder getting shoved into his face at least stunned him enough so that Gargano could hit a dive, and the dive connected in a way that sent Bron ass over crown over the announce table. I loved when Gargano would pull slightly ahead and revert to Johnny Wrestling mode and how it never worked, like when Bron literally walked through a rebound lariat as if it was nothing more than a light chop, which, well, makes a lot of sense. The stuff that didn't look like it would affect Bron, didn't affect him, and before long he was tossing Gargano with some violent as hell belly to belly suplexes. 

Gargano changes strategy midway and it's when the match starts getting great, with him focusing on luring the beat into misses: sending him teeth first into the top step of the ladder with a drop toehold, and suckering him into missing a big elbowdrop on the ladder, Bron bouncing off the ladder and landing on his head. It was never enough to keep him down long, and so, Gargano started tightening things up. He hit a series of superkicks that were some of the best I've seen Gargano throw, and the one that sent Bron down was the best shot of the bunch. They got a great camera angle on it and Gargano's boot hooked perfectly up under Breakker's jaw. I also loved how they kept the climbing to a minimum. Gargano tried it early and mostly gave it up after getting knocked off a couple times. When they did climb up at the same time, Gargano hit Bron with the fucking edge of the briefcase up top. This was not a simple flat side thump, he swung that case corner first into Bron's face. A flat sided thump wouldn't have believably slowed the man, but a corner of a case swung at someone's face would stop anyone. It stays perfectly within the story of the match, too, as it knocks Bron down but doesn't really slow him down, as he drags Gargano back down and sticks him through the mat with a powerslam that would make papa proud. A great ladder match that didn't hew closely to the last few years of WWE ladder match structure, this was the best way to work a ladder match with these two specific guys. Too often you see two guys shoved into a House Formula that doesn't suit them, and this was a success because the two actually felt unbound. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: MORE BRAZOS IN PANAMA~! IWRG RETRO~! EXTRA EL BRAZO~! BRAZO CIBERNETICO~! DR CEREBRO~! MR NIEBLA~!

El Brazo/Brazo de Plata/Brazo de Oro vs Gemelos Infernales/El Taur Panama

MD: Very fun to see the usual Panamanian rudos as the heroes here. And they gave you no doubt on who to root for. The Brazos ran out with bats and beat their opponents around the ring for a short primera. They kept it going with the usual nice strikes (Oro with big sweeping shots) and Porky ripped at Taur's mask. A little bit of miscommunication led to a pretty spirited comeback, including Porky getting bloodied up and Taur smashing him him from across the arena with a running chair shot. They ripped the sports uniforms off of the Brazos too. The ref was counting quick for the locals too and things advanced on to Brazos comedy into the tercera. Gemelos did their headbutt thing with Oro stooging all over the place. As always one of them was more the worker and the other was more into the theatrics. We didn't get the more advanced exchanges that the one Gemelo was capable of as things stayed pretty light. Taur stood tall against Porky including a big bear hug that popped the crowd. There was more fun miscommunication and another quick splash. You definitely got a lot of the Brazos act here, but you always kind of wish they led with the fun stuff and escalated to the bloody brawling as opposed to the other way around.

PAS: Man 2023 has been the year of new Brazos matches popping up. This was pretty great with the Brazos cleaning house with baseball bats, and Super Porky bleeding a ton. Top rope Porky splash is one of the most violent moves in wrestling history and he breaks it out here. Structure was a bit wonky like Matt mentioned, but it was still a total blast. Panamanian lucha forever!

IWRG Retro 1/20/23

Paramedico/Colt vs Tigre Metalico/Zonik 2000 IWRG 7/12/2001

MD: Short match in two falls, mainly due to Zonik's arm getting hurt (real or otherwise). Tigre Metalico is, in fact Metalico, and he looked good paried with Paramedico at the start. The second Colt and Zonik came in, however, Colt started bullying him. He was solid in that role. The arm went down early and a lot of the rest of the match was a two-on-one against Tigre. There was a bit of hope on the outside in the segunda but Zonik couldn't do with it, selling the arm as he was, and he tapped bringing it back to two-on-one and a definitive win for the rudos.

El Brazo/Bombero Infernal/Dr. Cerebro vs Brazo Cibernetico/Halcon Dorado/Mr. Niebla IWRG 1/17/99

MD: More of an angle than a match. You'd barely know Niebla was in this, for instance. It was all centered around the inner struggle of El Brazo on whether or not he'd punish his brother or even allow his brother to get punished. As angles go, it was a good one, with Brazo really writhing, Halcon Dorado trying to appeal to him and Brazo Cibernetico bleeding all over the place as Cerebro and Bombero got increasingly frustrated at Brazo as he'd fight the other tecnicos but not his brother. To Bombero's credit, he really threw himself around the ring with his dropkicks. He just had a way of tossing his whole body into his offense which really came through in the small bit we had here. Anyway, Brazo decides that blood is thicker than water and saves his bleeding brother, laying down for his opponents. That's when things really pick up though, as Los Oficiales run down to put a beating on the Brazos and Platino running out to make the save (which set up a trios title match the following week).

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RIP Lanny Poffo: ICW Eye of the Tiger Cage Match

Lanny Poffo vs. Rip Rogers ICW 11/16/82 - Eye of the Tiger Steel Cage Hair vs. Hair Television Title Match

Part 1
Part 2

MD: This followed a Randy Savage vs Ratamyus cage match that was (based on Lanny's commentary) more of a bloodbath. Unfortunately, that's not online, if we have it at all. Thanks to Rip Rogers, we have this. It, on the other hand, was a title match main event, worked primarily as a big title match, even with the no DQ and hair vs hair stip; it served as a contrast. That's not to say that it didn't escalate and that they didn't lay it in, but they started wrestling mostly clean for the first half and the cage itself didn't come into play until the last third. It worked for the match, though, with the wrestling mostly even and skilled (including a great Lanny bridge out of a side headlock that would have fit well in 1970s France) until Lanny took a couple of big back bumps into the turnbuckles and Rip started to hone in. Great selling from Lanny here. He was working for the back row, picking up a ton of sympathy along the way and knowing just when to fire up from underneath. All of Rip's stuff looked mean and credible, and when they started moving on towards slugging it out, Rip's headbutts and Lanny's right hand were both equally memorable. Lanny took some big bumps into the cage, only saved by a foot on the ropes and Rip then ate all of Lanny's flipping offense, getting his own foot on the ropes for the parallel. They gave Rip a visual fall after a rep bump to protect him after a wild dropkick, but in all of the chaos and cut off interference, Lanny scored a roll up and the fans went wild. 

The match stands on its own as a really solid main event with some great selling of exhaustion and big strikes down the stretch. What makes it doubly special today, however, is that 1982 Lanny narrates the entire match. You get a kayfabe explanation of everything he was doing throughout, what he was thinking, what he was feeling, why he used one move or another, all with his wry sense of self. He was in character, but his voice chimes through even forty years later. This was Lanny holding a title, wrestling in the main event as a local hero, putting his hair on the line, fighting from underneath in a cage, and explaining the whole thing in his singular voice.

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