Found Footage Friday: CANNON~! BROOKSIDE~! BALL~! IAN~! GRIZZLY~! ST. CLAIR~!

Cannonball Grizzly vs. Tony St. Clair IWW 2/15/98

MD: Look, Segunda Caida isn't out to be revisionist. We don't wake up in the morning with the idea we have to reclaim John Nord just to be difficult to everyone. We watch matches, we see patterns, we comment on them, conventional wisdom be damned. That said, sometimes, if we see something that we think defies the general narrative, we chase it. This is me chasing Paul Neu to Germany based on a few things we've seen. As a 25 year old, he was notoriously bad, gifted a gimmick that the fans really wanted to get behind with a push to match, but without the skills (either on the mic or in the ring) to make it work. This is him seven or eight years later and this absolutely worked.

These two were fairly frequent opponents over the years, going all the way back to 89 (and I'm not watching 89 Neu; I have limits). St. Clair was 50 here but he was still grizzled and hard hitting. This went about ten minutes before Brookside interfered and things broke down, but it was a solid ten minutes, especially the brawling on the outside. Well they stayed outside too as the ropes weren't tight enough and Grizzly had a problem whenever he tried to go into them or especially up onto them. You'd expect St. Clair to have pretty good forearms and uppercuts, but Grizzly's stuff looked credible too, from just throwing his body at St. Clair to tossing headbutts or shots to the gut. Looking at these three matches as a set, you can't say he wasn't comfortable with these brawls, even if he, at one time, had been the least comfortable wrestler imaginable. This likely set up a Schumman/St. Clair vs Grizzly/Brookside tag and that was probably pretty good too.

ER: It's pretty perfect that Germany's 90s Big Daddy was named Neu. It's a shame he never got another real chance in the states and really did get better with - get this - experience. If PN News was Neu! '86, then 1998 Cannonball Grizzly was Neu!, and then obviously PN Neuz was Neu! '75. Also, David Flair was the least comfortable wrestler ever. PN News always had more body charisma than first year and beyond David Flair. But even Flair seemed to be figuring things out after seven or eight years of doing it. 

Cannonball Grizzly vs. Ian Rotten (Barbed Wire Baseball Bat Match) IWW 5/9/98

MD: This was pretty much what you'd expect, and I mean that in a good way. Ian came out and insulted the crowd, taking his good time to get there. He stalled. He ultimately put over Grizzly, needing to go to underhanded or desperate shots for each advantage that he got, starting with the kick on the handshake, going low a few times, using the bat first, sneaking in a chairshot with one of the chairs I love in this promotion because they fall apart in the best, most dangerous ways. 

And Cannonball sold for a bit and started firing back again and again. He was a pretty solid standing tall babyface in the midst of a hardcore match here, grabbing anything not hammered down. There was one point where he jabbed part of one of those broken chairs into Ian's head and the announcer shouted out "That's the hardcore! That's core! That's core!" as only a German announcer in 1998 could. Shortly before that, during one of his comebacks, he launched himself through the ropes with a giant sized tope just because he could and because he knew he had someone big enough to more or less (more less than more but no one died) base for him. The finish was pretty gnarly as he got out of the way of a charge with the bat causing Ian to smash it into his own chest, and then, with some effort, he pancaked him onto it. Post match they made up and Ian was as carny as could be and everyone left happy. I'd say this was another good showing for Grizzly though. Though both of them were no holds barred, Ian could assert himself more and Grizzly had to work from underneath and then get revenge both for himself and for the crowd and he did a pretty rousing job of it through the blood and the carnage and the violence for the sake of violence.

ER: Did everyone else know that Ian Rotten worked Germany? Everyone else knew that Ian Rotten worked Ox Harley a couple times in one week, smack in the middle of Kentucky, and in between those matches he was main eventing a German indy? The video tape time stamp does not lie. Ian Rotten swings his barbed wire bat like Leatherface's chainsaw in some Hannover college gymnasium, and obviously he is wearing his Ribera Steakhouse satin jacket. He does a long respectful promo that builds to him talking about how ugly everyone in the town was. Ian Rotten has the shittiest body in the building and does biceps poses and Hogan ear cupping like a Will Sasso character. He stalls on the floor and waddles around in this really funny little duck walk whenever he gets on the mic to plead for them to go easy on him. 

It's all really satisfying, because Grizzly isn't a dumb babyface. He finally starts doing something to stop Ian's bullshit and you get a cool big fat babyface kicking and punching and headbutting Ian around ringside. Grizzly bleeds good blood when Ian hits him with the barbed wire bat and rubs it across his forehead, and his suicide dive is a really incredible bump for him. He ploughs through Ian and bounces hard on the floor. Ian platers him with a disgusting chairshot to the face and Grizz does a perfect little cartoon dance into a face flop, then gets up and whips Ian through a bunch of wood slat 1982 Boston Garden ass chairs, using the splintered fragments to Pogo Ian's head. Ian transition back to control by squeezing Grizzly's ball sac like a sponge, some of the most realistic looking rugby violent scrotal offense I've seen. I have no doubt in my mind that Ian has done that to someone in a shitty bar. After getting his balls twisted, Grizzly makes sure to just fall on Ian a few times. Honestly it's really great. This was a fast paced rugged fight with two sloppy bodies and sloppy bar blood over the eyes. Why was nobody brave enough to rate Cannonball Grizzly in 1998? 

Cannonball Grizzly vs. Robbie Brookside (Street Fight) IWW 1/17/99

MD: Between the commentary (youtube translate as usual) and his post match speech, plus, of course, the non-finish, I get the idea he might have been a last second replacement for someone. It makes sense, because they seemed to be learning the opportunities of the venue as they were going. Maybe my favorite thing in the whole match is Grizzly getting Brookside on the outside after reversing a series of neck-based submissions/chokes and lifting him up and slamming him back first into the ridge of a barstool. It's one of those things that no one plans in advance. You couldn't look at the stool and think "Hey, if I do a lifting bearhug and charge in, it'll look brutal." At least, I don't think you can. It's a moment of being so in the moment that you just heft a guy up and try to figure out how to make it seem like you're doing harm to him, the antithesis of any big tv streetfight now with a ton of set pieces and spots. Doing harm in the situation of the moment is kind of a lost art when it once was the entirety of pro wrestling.

Anyway, Grizzly looked good here overall. He used his size well in all the ways you'd want him to, as a weapon, as a cutoff tool, as an out of control opening creator for Brookside. He wasn't afraid to bump, but most of his bumps were not off of things Brookside did (and when they were, it was on the second or third dropkick not the first), but instead him careening out of control on a missed corner splash or elbow drop on the floor or somersault cannonball senton off the second rope. He slammed Brookside back into the corner to break a hold or absolutely flattened him with a rising pounce or Vader Attack when it was time to cut him off. Even his punches looked pretty good, and certainly him smashing Brookside into pieces of furniture on the outside. Brookside was a game opponent, charging in right from the get go, switching from one hold to the next desperately later, sweeping Grizzly's feet out on a billiards table to create a spectacular bump, running when it was time to run, but it was Grizzly who stood out here, just a guy very confident in his own size and power, the absolutely opposite of all of our memories of him. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Finale

MD: It's a little more than three years since we started this particular project. I'm writing this close to three years from when the shutdowns began actually. It's hard to disentangle the two in my mind. Phil, of course, wrote a book. Eric is writing one. At times, I thought (and still think) that there might be a book about this trip through French Catch and how it provided me a weekly focus and an outlet and structure during the pandemic. It connected me to something bigger and older and stranger than myself, something that had been lost, something that consistently surprised and amazed while also being a thoroughly consistent comfort. My day job is too much of a day job, however, and most of the rest of my life is taken up by parenting. By the time I'll have time to actually write a book, it'll all be too distant from me to resonate in the same way. Let's close things out here instead.

Phil calls Cesca vs Catanzaro one of his greatest finds, he being someone who made his name from finding and curating and disseminating such things. I'm sure even then, he never imagined that some day we'd get hundreds of matches, most of which not seen for decades, surrounding and following that match. There have been great troves that have emerged this century. There was the NWA On Demand Houston footage which gave us top level arena matches for years where we barely had any. There was Buddy Rose's Portland collection, his own vanity spotlighting to us years later how a master (or at least a savant) could anchor a territory week after week. Roy's given us (second-hand) so much 90s lucha that we didn't have before. Armstrong Alley is the home to dusted off territorial oddities. New TV and Handhelds have come out of Japan and we're still going through those. And there's even what we'll be working on next (more on that later). We're coming up on five years straight, three matches a week, never missing a week, of New/Found Footage Friday.

This was something else entirely. It was an entire tradition of wrestling, an entire culture of it. It was a whole history of it, a lost city of gold. In one swoop we greatly expanded the amount of 50s wrestling we had on tape and absolutely eclipsed the 60s footage that was out there in the wild, and that's on a global level. That, in itself, would be impressive, but the actual content of what we received, the skill and intensity and humor and flair, the lost moves and moves that we had no idea existed decades before they were in vogue, the heroism and villainy and hard hitting sportsmanship, was nothing we could have expected. Certainly Catanzaro vs Cesca had an outlier in all of wrestling history, let alone in the wrestling of one single country? But what we found early on, especially after switched from cherry picking to following a more chronological approach, was the exact opposite. This was the entire history of wrestling of a single country, yes, but the sheer week to week quality, and, surprisingly, the week to week variety, was simply remarkable.

There was so much to every match; these were the long matches that European denizens like Regal would speak of. They were structurally alien, with wrestlers working holds for three or four or five minutes at a time, building and building to an escape only to have it cut off, with it taking a number of these false escapes before freedom was obtained; and after freedom, it'd be almost right into the next hold. While things might be elaborate, nothing felt collaborative. Even in stylist vs stylist matches, ones wrestled with every bit of honor and regard, things would boil over into brutal forearms, only to sink back down into the next set of holds. In tags, very often the holds were the point, the heat incidental, the comebacks frequent and rousing. The point was generally to entertain and captivate, not to draw future houses or pay off old grievances. Things settled down a bit more as the decades went on, and you'd get more of a coherent (or at least recognizable and familiar) story within a match, but it never fully escaped its roots. Languages were always my academic weak point; you can't bullshit language like you can an essay or an argument or pro wrestling analysis. I survived as well as I did with YouTube's subtitle functions and automatic translation. But to watch these matches, I had to learn an entirely different pro wrestling language, not unlike when I was first trying to make sense of lucha. Once you become fluent, however, you can swim through any match from the collection.

I thought about writing a paragraph listing specific wrestlers, but there are just too many. I could write three paragraphs on Jean Corne or Jacky Corn, on Gilbert LeDuc or Guy Mercier. I could write an essay on Bollet and Delaporte, on Bernaert or Duranton, on Petit Prince and Vasilious Mantopolous and Michel Saulnier. We have three matches with Liano Pellacani and two with Tony Oliver and a handful of Modesto Aledo (sans gimmick). We have matches with wrestlers like Al Hayes or Eric Taylor or Klondike Bill that UK fans couldn't have possibly hoped for. We have a glimpse of Kiyomigawa and Juil Gon Don. We received new matches from wrestlers we knew were great like Lasartesse and Van Buyten. And the characters! There were characters like Quasimodo and Batman and yes, Mombo Le Primitif. There are wrestlers that I watched a lot of in 2020 like Ami Sola and Jo Labat that feel almost like distant memories to me because of all of the sheer hours that I watched since. But everyone, from the Teddy Boys to Les Blousons Noirs to Isha Israel to Isha Khan to Dr. Adolf Kaiser and Cheri Bibi all brought something worthwhile to the table. Even the most out there gimmicks like King Kong Taverne still had to know how to do the up and over escape out of a top wristlock which was the cornerstone of opening French Catch chain wrestling (and how can you watch a mundane top wristlock escape in 2023 after seeing that in almost every match for decades!)

So as there'll be no book, and as there are more wrestlers then we could ever realistically cover one by one, the work we've laid down will have to stand on its own. I hope it lasts as a resource for people as they try to tackle the matches on their own. I tried to be more informative and useful than sharply critical, tried to point out what was novel or interesting about the matches, what was new and innovative from week to week and month to month and year to year, tried to point out patterns and trends, tried to craft an overall narrative as best I could. A new bit of video production was as interesting to me as the first time I saw a gutwrench suplex. I'll update the master list and in the weeks and months to come, I'll make a third list for everyone, one that is purely chronological, which will link to the reviews (and so long as the channel doesn't get nuked, the matches). From there, over time, we may fill in some gaps of matches that were online but not in the collection. In the meantime, keep going back through. Keep making gifs. Keep spreading the word. Whenever people post Luna Catch 2000 as if it's the be all and end all of French Catch, remind them that it was an exhibition and an outlier! (You don't have to but, come on, internet....)

I know from the views here and on YouTube that there are people who have come along on this journey with us from the very beginning. There have been a few of you who have commented over time, and that's meant a lot. Like I said, much of this was during the height of the pandemic and I always appreciated every bit of interaction that we had through this project. Thanks to those who helped with a few names and translation and for those, like Phil Lions, who have done amazing research. Thanks to those who made sure that the footage got back to some of the wrestlers and their families. I heard from at least a dozen families throughout this project, people who could see their grandfathers wrestle for the first time ever, or see their fathers or uncles wrestle for the first time in decades. Every message like that was incredibly rewarding. It's great to see current wrestlers liking or retweeting spots that people post on Twitter. There's so much to delve into here, so much lost lore and technique, that I hope some of it comes back to life in the years to come. Thank you to everyone that's even just checked in and read the reviews and of course for Phil, Eric, and Sebastian for joining in when they could. It's been a lot of work but I've never felt alone in it, even covering those years where, due to the constraints of life and new projects, I had to tackle the reviews on my own.

Which leads us to what's next. While we've been covering (and posting) this footage, there's another weekly footage drop on YouTube that's been happening in the last few months. It's not France. It's not from the 50s and 60s. It's an entirely different style and feel, but it's a territory all its own, with some familiar faces and some faces to learn about. You can probably guess if you've been paying attention to the Found Footage Friday posts from the last year or two, but I'll be back next week with a new partner and a new mission and hopefully everyone finds that fun as well.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/20 - 3/26

AEW Dynamite 3/22

Darby Allin/Sting/Orange Cassidy vs Kip Sabian/Butcher/Blade 

MD: There was a Dustin/Lee squash on Elevation on Monday but there's not much to say about it except for how fun Lee's nonchalant overhead throws were and Dustin having some fun with shifting his body around during the pinfall. He's about to be a granddad and if you follow him on social media, pretty nervous about it, so I'm glad they're keeping him busy.

Onto this then as there was a lot to like. I'm not sure I've mentioned this here, but to me, Cassidy and Moxley are two sides of the same coin. They're the ultimate grindstones that provide someone opportunity to really show their character. In wrestling, like any other form of fiction, character comes down to what you would do in any particular situation. What makes Wrestler A different from Wrestler B when faced with the same stimuli? With Moxley, he presses and presses and presses and you see what sort of wrestler exists under that sort of pressure. For Cassidy, it's endless frustration and aggravation. Moxley's "One Bad Day" involves car crashes and landmines going off around you and teeth piercing your flesh. Cassidy's "One Bad Day" is being stuck in line at a supermarket behind an old lady using coupons and a checkbook and dealing with that one asshole who's constantly changing lines even though you're in the middle of a traffic jam. Both of them will push you to a limit, but just what that looks like will be very different. 

Here, you could see him do it to Sabian early. I'm fortunate, I think, that I wasn't watching AEW a few years ago during the pandemic shows. The only Kip I know is after he took the mask off. As such, I think he brings a lot to the table, as he's very self aware. He tries to be a heel version of Cassidy in some ways, but as a heel, the act isn't nearly as genuine. It's hypocritical, a mask he puts on because he lacks the sort of easy confidence Cassidy lives and breathes on the inside. That's the character at least, and Kip plays it perfectly. He contrived a supervillain plan to throw Cassidy off his game to try to win the All Atlantic Title but even when it worked, it wasn't enough in the end because Kip will never be enough. There's value in that for a mid-card heel in a company that needs mid-card heels that can keep some heat in defeat. Anyway, that was a long way to go to say that I liked how the opening exchanged was summed up, with Sabian thinking he had the upper hand by escaping to the floor only to rush back in when Cassidy went to the pockets. 

And of course, Sabian got to then experience the thrill and the joy of not just one, or two, but three big moments with Sting. Speaking of confidence and awareness, Sting had big interactions with both Butcher, who beautifully missed his own splash, but Sabian, and he knew given the scope and the nature of the match, he didn't need a big dive here. What he needed instead was comedy and character, doing the Cassidy role to stymie Sabian, throwing the Cassidy kicks while Sabian was doing his down-up-arms fan interaction, and then finally just milking the Scorpion Death Drop forever. There were a few moments where things seemed just a bit off (I would have liked someone to break up the pin on Cassidy after Butcher and Blade Dragged the Lake on him, for instance) and this was a lesser match in the AEW Sting collection, but it was still a ton of fun and I'm happy for every heel team or trio that gets to interact with him, not just for the photo opportunity and adulation they likely feel, but because Sting puts so much effort and thought how to make the most of each and every match.

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WWF 305 Live: Boss Man! Akeem! Earthquake! Hillbilly Jim!

Earthquake vs. Hillbilly Jim WWF SNME 4/28/90 - FUN

ER: This was the last "major" Hillbilly Jim TV appearance, and it's a pretty cool sendoff. It's not talked about as a sendoff, other than Jesse frequently referring to Jim as an idiot (a thing he did a lot during Jim matches). This is a 2 minute match so there's not going to be a lot of development, but it wasn't worked as a straight squash. It's better that way because it meant we got to see Hillbilly back up Quake a few times. WWE has been so overproduced for the last 15 years that it's wild they were just throwing big Hogan-feuding heels out there with only a big blue singlet and matching boots and letting him just stomp out to the ring with a sloppy fucking beard. They assemble stars so differently now, and whenever I watch Tenta I just wonder where all the big fat Canadian 42 year old 27 year olds have gone? 

Hillbilly Jim is really really big but never treated as if he was the same size as Big John Studd for some reason. Seeing how big he looks opposite Quake is so cool, and he had nice body shots and a great fired up babyface cartwheel. Hillbilly Jim: He had a really good cartwheel. Earthquake didn't quite have his WWF formula and pacing down here but you know he's cool because of how hard he still committed to hitting those ropes. His big leaping elbowdrop is even more impressive than the Earthquake Splash, but Earthquake jumping before the splash is iconic and really adds to the effect. Four jumping stomps is right. Three would be too few. 

Big Boss Man vs. Akeem WWF SNME 4/28/90 - VERY GOOD

ER: We didn't get any kind of full satisfying blowoff to the Twin Towers, only smoke blowing off the Chelsea Piers. We got about 5 total minutes of Boss Man/Akeem between this match and the WrestleMania match earlier in the month, and maybe that's fine. We were never going to get any kind of Boss Man/Akeem match to rival the 1987 UWF Big Bubba/One Man Gang match, but surely there's some middle ground we could have landed on. Nevertheless, this is a fun 3 minutes and a great Akeem show. Either he's bumping around for Boss Man - including a major spill when he's backdropped over the top and then flipped into the ring the hard way - or he's throwing some awe-inspiring overhand rights. The best part of the match is Akeem throwing single punches at Boss Man's head, sending Boss Man reeling into the ropes each time. 

Boss Man is huge guy who can work rope rebounds as smoothly as Bobby Eaton. Now when you hear somebody has great rope work, it typically means they're good at finding new ways to spring off them. Not enough guys use them to slump into, to catch their fall, to send them back into the scrum like someone hitting the edge of a mosh pit. Akeem keeps rocking Boss Man, and Boss Man gets sent leaning wayyy back into the ropes, thrown back into another of Akeem's fists whether he was ready or not. 

Maybe the best part of this was Akeem's completely rhythmless jive dancing to the unquestionable greatest WWF entrance theme of all time. Or, maybe it was Akeem's standing splash that doesn't get a single fucking inch of air. Worry not, Akeem is such a mountain that he can squish a guy just fine even if he only goes up on his tiptoes for a splash. Dibiase interrupts before we can get a finish (bookending the way he ambushed Boss Man before the WM6 match), but not before Akeem can take the lowest hang time Boss Man Slam you have ever seen. It looked like a Rock Bottom that Boss Man had delivered it from his knees.  

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

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Found Footage Friday: GOLDUST~! KASH~! MORTON~! KASH~! MICHAELS~! KASH~!

Goldust vs. Kid Kash Crossfire Wrestling 8/4/12

MD: This was the first round of a tournament to crown the company's first heavyweight champion. Cagematch says they went 25 but I think it was more like a fake fifteen. It was solid though. They're right about the same age, but were in great shape. Kash was still more than happy to stall but he had plenty of heat for it. The Fairgrounds was packed for a show with Brian Christopher, Shane Williams, Harry Smith, the Hotshots, David Young, Mad Man Pondo, Jillian Hall, etc, and Goldust was probably the biggest star. It's a good venue with the right crowd and right wrestlers. So, Kash was happy to stall, but went when it matters. The first real exchange was Dustin running over him multiple times, and he certainly threw himself back for the punches to help them look great (not that they needed a lot of help). He snuck in low blows and worked the leg, including a long figure-four, and would go to the eyes for his cutoffs. Dustin eventually fired back but couldn't capitalize on the bulldog (we'll say due to the fact he landed on his ankle but the camera angle didn't help us there) and they worked it towards that draw, with Dustin getting something of a moral victory since he had the advantage at the end even if he couldn't score the win and move on in the tournament. They'd worked in TNA back in 05 but they were different wrestlers here, in a different place, at a different time, and this was a perfectly enjoyable first round draw for an upstart promotion, the kind you might have seen in Southwest in the 80s or Global in the 90s. 

Ricky Morton vs. Kid Kash Crossfire Wrestling 9/1/12

MD: Yeah, I'm a fan of 2012 Kash's act. The Goldust match was a good mix of action and bullshit, but this leaned hard into the latter. It was billed as teacher vs student though it's not like the age gap between these two was that massive, just ten years. Kerry, who had to be around 10, came out with Ricky and hyped the crowd up. The kid got it. It was funny too: Kash was, again, all about the stall here, though he utilized it differently (more on that in a second). At one point he started berating some kids at ringside, pretty brutal stuff but it got him a ton of heat. Even though Kerry was right there, he didn't go after him instead. He picked some bystanders, probably because he knew Kerry would get right up in his face and the crowd would cheer for Kerry instead of boo at Kash. In the Goldust match, he stalled to counter Dustin's early advantage and because he didn't have an answer for him, annoying the fans with his cowardice and refusal to engage. Here, he had the advantage, but kept heading out after a successful shoulderblock, making it seem like he wasn't showing Morton respect, building and building the anticipation for him to get his comeuppance. The best wrestling is all anticipation and payoff and the crowd went up for Morton finally taking him over. He again resorted to low blows and after Morton went back, even went for a chair. They built right to the next card as Jerry Lynn came out to stop him, causing the distraction that let Morton roll him up. I could watch heatseeking stalling all day and obviously over-50 but still spry Morton was the perfect foil for it.

Chris Michaels vs. Kid Kash SAW 9/15/13

MD: Roles are reversed a year later. Michaels is the heel, and TV Champ of SAW, and he's got "Uncle" Reno Riggins with him with a newsboy cap. I kind of love the idea of Riggins as the medium sized fish in the small pond over the span of decades and he's effective in this role on the outside. Michaels does a bit of stalling, some eye poking, uses Riggins to ambush Kash. He doesn't seem to have it in him to generate the sort of heat Kash was the year before, though. Kash played a lot of this as a stoic sort of babyface, pushing forward at every point. He lost his cool and went low a couple of times which let Michaels do the same later on. This felt like a TV match leading to a bigger one at the next show where Kash would get five minuets with Riggins if he won so it was all a little understated, even if it got decent time. Good range between the two years by in-his-forties Kash but I definitely got more of a kick out of the heel act.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Von Kramer! Jones! The Alpha and Omega of Cesca vs Catanzaro!

Karl Von Kramer vs Ted Jones 8/1/87 

MD: As there's no sign of a suspected Prince Zevy/Flesh Gordon tag, this is our last match. It's a bit of an odd one, presented in the middle of what seems to be a Wide World of Sports type show called Sports Loisors. I have no context. Jones is billed as a Belgian champion, Von Kramer the German one. Both come out with young women presumably from their nationality. Von Kramer has an old manager dressed in a suit too and at one point the Belgian women assault him. Jones gets him once too. I have more reason to believe this is the Von Kramer from 25 years prior than I have reason not to believe it. You can extrapolate the age onto the wrestler we saw in black and white and he has the same sort of robe and overall look. I can't say for certain though. He's definitely not the Karl Kramer working in the UK at the time, that's for sure.

And you know what? It's a nice little throwback to end things on. They do work the holds. They try. Von Kramer goes over quite a few times on labored bumps. Jones works from underneath. They have a couple of holds where they hang on through the armdrags and what not. There are bursts of rope running. It's certainly senior tour stuff and we're not talking Mercier vs Montreal here or anything, but the good stuff is good and the bad stuff is forgivable here at the very end of our journey. Von Kramer might have been able to manage something in a tag with Richard and up against Hassouni and Bordes a few years earlier. The finish has Jones getting some revenge on Von Kramer in the corner and the ref pulling him back, which lets Von Kramer sneak in a low blow and score the win. Comeuppance comes while the credits are rolling. Not a terrible way to spend twenty minutes between watching cycling and equestrian on a weekend afternoon. A pleasant and forgettable farewell from France.

Gilbert Cesca vs Billy Catanzaro 5/1/57

MD: Which brings us back to the very beginning, the match that opened our eyes and our first and now last gift to you. We had bypassed it when we were going through 1957 as we knew it well, but now, here at the very end, I thought to take another look. It's good that I did too, because this is an upgrade on video quality to the version that's been out there. In the story of the footage, Catanzaro, spectacular as he was, only appeared a handful of times. In the later appearances, he represented the stooging heel that we saw so much of. Here, you just get glimpses of it, when, unable to escape a hold, he resorts to desperate shots; a seed of irritability that would grow in the years to come. He calms soon after and the process repeats, all the way to the handshake post-match. Cesca, on the other hand, feels like a stylist's stylist, part of that direct line from 1957 to 1987, through the team with Ben Chemoul, which gave way to Ben Chemoul and Bordes, which led to Bordes and Gordon. It's striking how much this represents some of the best stylist vs stylist work, the incessant holds and counter holds and forward pressing and struggle. It's also striking how much it leaves out, as it was just one aspect of one aspect of French Catch, even if it contained many overlapping specifics. Having watched this years ago, we couldn't have any sense of the breadth and depth and variety of it all. It's still an amazing spectacle though and so much more of their personalities and idiosyncrasies bleeds through with the higher video quality.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 3/13 - 3/19

ROH 3/16

Athena vs. Hyan

MD: There's a Kingston vs JVSK here, but the match was short, sweet, and exactly what it ought to have been to keep the build going for Kingston vs Claudio, so I don't have enough to say about it and no one needs me to write three paragraphs on Wooster and Jeeves and how VSK should be reading Wodehouse to figure out how to work more comedy of manners madcap antics into his matches. The big logical choice for the week is Jarrett vs Cassidy, but it's sort of self-evident and writes itself (Jarrett's mind games! Cassidy's punches! Crowd brawling through the commercial break! Do a blindfold tuexedo match next, Tony!). Therefore....

Let's talk more about Athena. She starts this with a bowing, over the top handshake, drawing a smile from Hyan, and then proceeds to hit the magic forearm and drop her. That forearm as an entry point is such an important part of Athena's matches. It sets the tone immediately and you go looking for it, but also there's the awareness that her opponent's looking for it too. While this wasn't a squash, it really shows why squashes are potentially important to a broader pro wrestling ecosystem (or dare I say "universe"). There are so many things that happen now in matches that are so distanced from their initial purpose. We had decades of dropdowns happening with no one ever getting tripped by them. I'm sure, as a kid, I had no idea what the purpose of a dropdown even was. It just felt like something done to get out of the way of a running opponent. There are a bunch of spots that are just apart of the lexicon of pro wrestling without unpacking the reason behind them (look at the old Waltman classic that starts in rocker dropper position and ends up with a flip). Point being, sometimes you actually need to hit the move instead of just having it countered in every match. Sometimes you want a mid-match move to look impactful enough that it ends a match. And in this case, you need Athena to hit that initial forearm half the time because then it actually means something when someone does duck it or reverse it or she has to work to sneak it in. You need to establish a baseline so that you can subvert expectations. In 2023, maybe that's a cooperative scenario where the crowd is just going to play along whereas in 1983, you were actually conditioning them, but maybe things have also been a certain way for so many years that laying these tracks might actually really, truly matter. Still, it's a hell of a forearm, right?

Hyan certain felt so as she spent the rest of the match selling it, disengaging after (shaky at best) kicks or pinfall attempts to rub at her chin. Athena, through coincidence or intent, stayed on it with a wrenching grapevine cravat and the crossface that she ultimately won with, so maybe it was all by design. Hyan had a couple of bursts of offense, but nothing seemed to be hitting hard. Moreover, Athena's worked in an incredible cutoff over the last few weeks, a Big Boss Man style choke drop off the ropes, just a perfect addition to her violent attitude, something that feels like a transgression and abuse that she can hit so suddenly in the midst of her opponent's offensive flurry. ROH has been a great show so far, two hours without any constraints (commercial breaks, quarter hour ratings to plan for, demos to aim at), a studio wrestling show, building to a PPV, but also very much great wrestling for the sake of great wrestling, and hey, if that means we get a couple more Athena matches a month, without limits and without restraint, I'm all for it. 

AEW House Rules 3/18

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs. Butcher/Blade

MD: Look, I thought about not covering this because we're not supposed to see it and all, but we spend half of our time watching things we're not supposed to see between handheld footage and the entire 30 year output of pro wrestling in France. He may not like it, may not prefer it, but if anyone's going to understand it, it's a former tape trader. So there was a houseshow and someone went and fancammed it for us and you can probably find it on your own. And we thank that kind soul for his efforts. 

AEW is all about unique and interesting match ups. It's about things that a crowd knows they're going to see and no one else will get to see. You skip out on a house show and you never know what you're going to miss. That's the idea. Here, it's Cassidy and Darby teaming. They've been in some multi man matches before but had never teamed. Honestly, part of me just wants them to run with the idea you'll be seeing unique interactions and run house shows with the Deadly Draw/Lethal Lottery gimmick. This served more of a purpose though. Britt got to try out being a babyface in a low pressure environment. Anna got another match under her belt. Pillman, Jr. got to sit under Jarrett's learning tree. Hook was able to work from underneath against Ethan Page without worrying about keeping him perfectly protected. They dusted Pat Buck off for a unique crowd moment. 

And yeah, Cassidy and Darby got to team. It definitely hit the marks you'd want. Blade's an ideal Cassidy opponent since he's going to seethe at the antics. That's your shine, building to Darby doing running coffin splashes in the corner while Cassidy pinwheeled and got closer and closer. Darby just accepted it and leaned into it. Why not? And just as ideal was Butcher and Darby working together, where Butch was able to catch him off a spring back leap and takeover with massive power moves while Darby writhed and sold. The craziest bit here was when he just maneuvered him all over the place with a Texas Cloverleaf; unreal visuals. They made Darby work and work for the hot tag and then Cassidy brought it back down to tepid and they had a pretty active finishing stretch leading to a mousetrap finish. Post match, Butcher and Blade took some more licks and Darby celebrated with a kid which again, is one of those great moments people in that crowd would remember later and that kid will remember forever. There was a moment during the face-in-peril where Cassidy drew the ref away and was maybe just a little too animated for who he was (it let Blade use a chair), but otherwise, this was a pretty ideal house show tag.

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Found Footage Friday: VALENTINE VS. MURACO~! ARMSTRONGS VS. STUD STABLE TEXAS DEATH MATCH~! COWBOY LANG IN SUN CITY~!

Greg Valentine vs. Don Muraco WWF 7/24/88

MD: This was in the Toronto Network dump from last year, and it's a bit of a miracle match. There wasn't a lot else new on the show so we're just getting to it now though. This was a grudge match between face Muraco and Valentine after Valentine took out Billy Graham's leg. It was Muraco's last WWF feud. He was jacked to the gills here (which was probably necessary considering how drenched he was before he even did anything). Valentine had the brace already. The crowd had Bulldogs/Warrior vs. Demolition/Fuji and Savage vs. Dibiase to come, but so far had sat through Terry Taylor vs. Scott Casey, Powers of Pain vs. Bolsheviks (a uniquely terrible pairing) and Haku vs. SD Jones, and they were absolutely up for a match with some heat and guys they considered to be stars. They were buzzing the whole way through.

Muraco gave them something to buzz about, too, believe it or not. He charged forth before the bell and spent the first many minutes of the match absolutely dismantling Valentine's arm. The best parts here were when he smashed it into the announcer's table (giving us a great look at the little TVs Monsoon and Mooney were using to follow along with the action) and when, after doing a stepover dislocation, Valentine decided to take a flop bump for absolutely no reason, one of three or four in the match. Muraco messed up on a corner charge and Valentine hit a series of desperation elbow drops and went straight to the leg. While he made sure to use his good arm primarily, you'd still like to see some lingering grimacing as he was transitioning. It wasn't a dealbreaker though. Valentine eventually flipped the brace and went for the figure four but Muraco blocked it three different ways. He was doing a better job favoring the leg in his hope spots: falling on a slam, having to really pull the tights to only half get a pile driver. This all lead to a big hulking up (the Jerry Blackwell stoic style) which the crowd absolutely went up for, but they timed a ref bump in the set up for the tombstone and one brace shot later, it was all over. Some of Muraco's stuff looked a bit airy but he brought a huge intensity in the beginning and the end and Valentine covered the rest. Great last gasp for a guy who hadn't had much of a deep breath for years. 

ER: This was a late July summer show and you know NYC was hot as hell because this was one of the wettest shows you've seen. Every boy on this show was as wet as you've ever seen them, and Muraco and Valentine were downright soaked with meaty summer sweat. Click on any minute of this file and you will see some gassed dudes burning through electrolytes. You haven't seen wetness like this before. This is just two big wet boys hammering on each others' limbs right after the crowd had watched SD Jones take a back bump after getting kicked in the back of the head. This is totally different, as Don Muraco breaks out some of the coolest arm work of his career while Valentine does a bunch of fun stunned selling, like he was going into shock from having his arm demolished. Muraco bounced the arm off the turnbuckle, rammed his arm and shoulder into the ringpost, and hit a great shoulder breaker. Those were somewhat expected, but I was not expecting his cool legdrop onto the arm or even his stuff over to butt bump the arm. Now, sadly, he worked over Valentine's left arm, which meant that Valentine could still fire back with his right arm, and he really dished some shots. The arm work didn't come into play in the finish in any way, but it was a cool way for him to control until Valentine was working over his leg with the shin guard. It was a great way to take Muraco down the stretch as he was good at fighting Valentine off and also burly enough to walk through some wicked Valentine chops and other offense to build to a big comeback. Muraco's piledrivers were disgusting, adding insult to injury by giving Valentine a wedgie on one, then clutching him for an awesome Gotch lift tombstone that was one of the gnarliest finishers of the era. Can't hold up to a shin guard to the head though. 

Pepe Gonzalez/Little Mr. T vs. Cowboy Lang/Bad Jim Brown South Africa 1980s?

MD: A whole bunch of South Africa stuff got dumped around a year ago and we played it safe and just watched the Matt Borne match, but hey, they give these guys twenty minutes in a 2/3 falls match and someone has to watch it, right? Cowboy Lang was one year off from working in five different decades. We've seen him in a bunch of territories over the years.  It meant that he knew every trick in the book by this point and considering they had a bunch of time to kill, they used a bunch of them. Gonzalez worked at least one or two WWF shows. I'm not digging in to see if he worked as Pepe Gomez as well, but if he did, he worked even more than that. He could kind of go too. Some good rope running spots with him, especially with Brown basing. He took a beating well too. Little T was there for the big payoffs to the comedy spots, but they were good. His introduction to the match was in a great full nelson bit where Lang kept breaking free just as Pepe was going to position him in the corner for a shot from T and then finally gloating and turning to get it put on again. But T gets him instead and this builds to a bunch of heel communication bits with punches. What made this work better than a lot of similar matches I've seen was the amount of time it had. That meant that they could get some real heat on Pepe, sneaking shots in, controlling the ring, working a missed tag by the ref, all the good stuff. It made the comedy comeuppance resonate just a bit more when it came. It's amazing what a few extra minutes, well used, can do for a match.

ER: I don't have much to add other than to bring up the possibility that Cowboy Lang might have actually made it to that 5th decade of wrestling. His last listed matches online were from 1999, but I know I saw him live more than once on APW shows, and I was not in attendance for any of the shows listed on cagematch. I was definitely in attendance for matches against Bobby Dean and Lil Nasty Boy, which would have happened in either 1999 or 2000. I remember Lang being a real hit with the crowd as he was the only cowboy wrestler on the card, on shows that happened in or adjacent to farming areas. A little person in his mid 50s working line dancing spots in an opening match is going to get a big reaction in a town with multiple cowboy bars. I say the guy made it to 5 different decades. 

The Bullet/Brad Armstrong/Scott Armstrong vs. Robert Fuller/Jimmy Golden/Elix Skipper Wrestle Birmingham 8/12/05     Part 2

MD: We don't often get to highlight the stuff our old friend over at Armstrong Alley posts, due to the show vs match set up of FFF, but this was a good one to pull out and take a look at. The sound comes in a minute or so into the clip, so don't worry about that. This was a Texas Death match but didn't have Texas Tornado rules. That meant the ten count gimmick was integrated into more of standard tag format. During the shine, you had Elix Skipper taking a lot of stuff, eating early pins, and then stooging/selling big as he got back to his feet. Some of the pins weren't entirely believable but when there's no actual consequence in getting pinned, maybe there was just no reason for him to kick out and jump up at one? Once you got past Brad's early Russian Leg Sweep it worked a little better. They drew in Fuller with some taunting too, very Br'er Fox trickster folk hero stuff (more on that later) and Fuller is the most offendable guy in wrestling history so it worked. 

When they took over on Brad, they worked in the ten counts as bits of hope that would then be cut off. Brad can work from underneath as well as anyone and the heels kept it moving and compelling. The finish was the sort of BS one might expect, with the Bullet getting the sleeper on fuller, interference causing a distraction, Golden KOing Bob with the knucks and then the ref calling the first man to his feet the winner. Again, they went back to the rustic trickster aesthetic: as the ref was admonishing Golden for trying to help Fuller back to his feet, Brad and Scott pulled Bob up. Classic Americana, out cheating the cheater. Everyone looked pretty spry in this except for Bullet Bob who was more than a half step slow, but even he was still pretty credible just for who he was and the mask to make him look a bit younger. The gimmick made things interesting, though even with the history and animosity it was weird to see a Texas Death Match that wasn't an outright hate-filled brawl.

ER: There are a few important takeaways from this. The first is that Robert Fuller and Jimmy Golden - in their mid 50s - still looked good enough to be tagging regularly on much bigger shows than this. Fuller hardly worked over the previous decade, and Golden hadn't been a featured TV performer since 1997, but they had better energy, better timing, and better bullshit facial expressions than most of the tag teams WWE was trotting out in 2005. You watch the Stud Stable here and tell me you'd rather see a Road Warriors team with Animal/Heidenreich, or the Heart Throbs, or Charlie Haas/Rico. The Stud Stable may have been in their mid 50s but goddamn was tag wrestling looking bad on the main stage in 2005. 

Second takeaway is that Brad Armstrong looked incredibly good for a guy who had worked about as many matches as Robert Fuller ever since WCW's closure. Not only was Armstrong the most jacked I've ever seen him, but he was worked fast and hard and taking big bumps any time he was in the ring. I'm not really a high vote Brad guy. I think he's one of the 5 best Armstrongs* but I don't think I could put him higher than 5. But if he worked most of his career the way he worked this match, he just might have been my favorite Armstrong. Look at how hard he gets run into the turnbuckles! Look at how great his spit sells are whenever he gets punched! Why is 2005 Brad Armstrong so good and so gassed?? 

Third takeaway is that Elix Skipper, youngest man in the match, looked like total shit and had all of the worst offense. What was his spin kick ever supposed to be? Bullet was an old man still in incredible physical shape, but couldn't really move even half speed any longer, but it really wasn't that noticeable when Elix Skipper's offense was also thrown at half speed and wouldn't have even looked good at full speed. Fourth takeaway is that it was insane how much effort Wrestle Birmingham put into wraparound comedy sketches in their programming. I'm not sure if any of them were actually funny but damn did those guys go out there with actual planned material when they really did not need to do any of that. 

*Expanding on putting Scott over Brad, a request: Depending on the night, I think it would be possible for any Armstrong to be 1st and any Armstrong to be 5th. On this night Brad was first, Bullet was last, Brian was second**. Scott vs. Brad is admittedly a tough comparison, as we have so much more Brad footage available. Brad worked longer matches in WCW and got all of the New Japan tours, Scott mostly worked Smoky Mountain and pulled job duty in WCW. So the Brad vs. Scott WCW comparison is mostly made on Brad working offense vs. Scott taking offense, and I prefer how Scott takes offense more than I prefer Brad doing offense. Brad has strong execution but I don't think he really uses it in imaginative ways. Scott is great at taking bumps as a heel or babyface, knowing which bumps to use depending on his role within the match (e.g., you won't see him take backdrop bumps as a babyface but the man will get some height as a heel). I also think Scott's personality blossoms as a heel, whereas Brad supposedly had this great personality that never managed to show up meaningfully on film. Perhaps the biggest reason I prefer Scott over Brad at this point in my life, is that I've simply seen more Brad and know what to expect. Scott still has the capability to surprise me, and that's more exciting to me now than Brad working an armdrag sequence. This match though? Brad looked like the all time greatest Armstrong. You find me Brad performances like this and I'll start reviewing the best of the jacked to the gills Brad footage. 

**check out the Road Dogg vs. Raven match that took place after the Stud Stable/Armstrongs match, which made me want to seek out a bunch of 2005 Raven. Raven looked like shit any time he wasn't wrestling, but between the bells this man could still work! I have limited memory of 2005 Raven in TNA but I guess now I need more 2005 Raven. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Marquis! Shadow! Motta! Angelito! Lailee! Acesnsy! Gordon! Frederico!

Marquis Richard/Black Shadow vs. Marcello Motta/Angelito 8/25/85

MD: We're leaning on INA's youtube site for this one. It's next on the list as it is, and I might have skipped it (especially because we covered it for NFF back in 2019; look at how little we knew!) but this is the second to last week so... well, let's lean on them outright. Anyway, this stands on a strong foundation. Most of these 80s tags do. There were all the elements. Angelito was the heir to Le Petit Prince and he was flashy as could be, with things I've rarely ever seen like a body press into an armdrag or using the ropes to slingshot up and over on a hammerlock escape. He was a special talent and should be thought of as much. There are the other hits. Black Shadow still likes to get tossed out of the ring. Richard had the valet and he got heat (more on that later). The heel-leaning ref was annoying but in a way that got the job done. Motta was fiery and had the crowd behind him. They ran holds and sequences for the first two thirds, with a little bit of heat, broken up, in the middle. Then they leaned hard into it, due to the valet turning the tide, with endless stomps and clubbering, everything looking credible, Angelito selling huge. And finally, there was the comeback, probably one of the best actual comebacks we've seen in quite a while, with Richard tossing Angelito into the ropes, likely so the valet could sneak in another shot, only for Angelito to turn it into a massive, high octane dropkick, knocking the valet off the apron. The finish was sloppy but the fans didn't care. Hell, there was even a Martian type mascot on the outside, a dog named Alberic. I know this isn't the tight work of the 60s, but there was still a lot to enjoy in this faded reflection of grander times. And look at the difference between our 2019 review and this one. We had no idea what wonders were ahead of us!

Gaby Lailee vs. Acensy Del Oro 3/8/87

MD: Ok, so, welcome to 1987. We're just about done here. Here's what you need to know. The program opening has the wrestlers come out with synth music in the background and someone playing a trumpet. It's the whole promotion including Flesh in his 1987 singlet with one strap look and some guy with a K themed mask/outfit with a cape that we'll probably never learn about. Gaby has a Native American gimmick with a headdress she was gifted after she came back from the states. She came out with a huge guy with an Ivan Drago/Terminator type thing who was "the champion of Yugoslavia" and being trained by Flesh Gordon. Acensy is "a former champion of Spain" like every other Spanish wrestler we've ever seen in France. This was the worst of combinations to start: openly collaborative and sloppy all at once; Acensy was pretty clearly basing and helping Gaby do thing cartwheels and they badly blew a sunset flip. Once things got a little more heated and they went away from the wrestling, things settled dow a bit, but outside of one heated moment where Gaby chased her out into the crowd, it wasn't particualrly memorable. Definitely a far cry from what we saw with Lola Garcia at the end of the 70s.

Eliot Frederico vs. Flesh Gordon 3/8/87

MD: This entire episode feels like an attempt to force a revival in 87 to me. They talk on commentary about L'Ange Blanc and Le Borreau and Duranton and Firmin. They say that Flesh Gordon is the hope to lead them into the future. He's bill as a star all around the world. And, it's a last gasp, right? I don't think this match was bad. It was a fine sprint but it had none of the real art or flair. I think it would have matched well to a Prime Time Wrestling match from 87, but it also doesn't seem quite as distinct from that. Gordon didn't do any of his tribute spots. No headstand, no up and over, not even his flying flipping armdrag finish. You know what he did? Three matches before I'm done with this whole project? The first ever clothesline I've seen in French Catch. If that's not symbolic that the end has come, I don't know what is. Frederico remains a solid heel who hits hard and Gordon even hit hard at times too but this wasn't even a reflection, or if it was, it was maybe a reflection of something else that was happening across the Atlantic.

 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 3/6 - 3/12

ROH 3/9

Athena vs. Willow Nightingale

MD: There was a very quick Kingston vs "Ben Dejo" match and while Serp is my honorary seventh finger, that's not going to get a write up. Instead, we'll go with the match right after it. Athena is someone who I felt was never allowed to reach her potential in the WWE system. They weren't sure who or what she was supposed to be and she was never positioned in a way to really come into her own. For one thing, they never used her as a heel. I saw her early last year against Thunder Rosa on the indies and it was eye-opening. Ever since, I'd hoped that she'd get to lean into that in AEW and thanks to one errant match against Jody Threat in Canada and the subsequent reaction, she got that chance. She's been my favorite thing on AEW TV (or at least YouTube) over the last many months. Moreover, this, to me, is the money feud for ROH. Darkness vs light. Optimism vs jaded wrath. Athena's working broad, a hard-hitting, cruel relentless Disney Villain. She's like something out of Wizard of Oz, or, hey, if Willow's the Babe with the Power, then Athena's a Henson-ian malignant force out of something like Labyrinth. Once she picked up the belt, she went from leading off with the forearm and smashing people into the stairs or the barricades to dancing about like a goblin as well (even as she smashes her fallen opponent's face into the belt post-match).

Long story short, she's living and breathing her character, fully present in every moment of the match. There's no off button. There are no strings to give anything away. She's swimming in the sea of action and reaction and it's a beautiful thing to see. It's that level of commitment and connection that only 2% of wrestlers ever reach, the Terry Funks and Negro Casases and Genichiro Tenyrus. And Willow's the absolute perfect opponent for her here, too big to bully, with hopes too bright to dash. Willow dominated early only to get drawn in to the drape of the arm over the top rope. From there, Athena picked away at her arm like a vulture, culminating in the spot in the stairs and Willow subsequently powering her way through it. Athena responded by slapping her repeatedly and Willow hulked up, driven by adrenaline and dropping the selling in as appropriate a moment as I've seen in a while. The moment she took a breath, that she paused, that she recentered herself and set Athena up for the Doctor Bomb, her shoulder gave out again. It was all completely believable and poetic and in the moment. She survived the targeting that followed and Athena's secondary finisher and even hit her own, but couldn't get the pin just right. Then Athena rolled out and snuck in a big power move at the top of the ramp, like a jackal with her back against the wall. One O-Face over and that was it. While I would have rather kept them apart for another few months and built and built to this, the match itself provides them a foundation to call back to later. I hope Khan sees just what he has here, because it could easily be the feud of the year and the feud to make this first full year of ROH if they manage it well enough. Like I said, Athena's working on an entirely different level than everyone around her and Willow is a once-in-a-lifetime foil for her, the other side of the twisted mirror. All they have to do is run with it.

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Hardy

9. Darby Allin vs. Jeff Hardy AEW Dynamite 5/11

ER: I love these guys. This was so good. The best kind of sicko wrestling, where two guys in face paint try to see who can break their skeleton faster. Time leaves Hardy as the safer bet to do so, but Darby has a fearlessness that makes me buy fully into his character, so this match is even money. Darby has done a couple hundred crazy good tope suicidas but his dive into Hardy was one of the fastest full contact dives I've ever seen. That was one of the fastest full contact topes of any kind I've seen from anyone. It's a No DQ match, and his cannonball of a tope annihilated Hardy so fully that it made sense for Darby to set up an elaborate folding chair death trap, and the match continued on as a great story of both guys choosing smart moments to set up complicated spots, so nothing ever felt like it had to be paused. Ring steps, chairs, and a damn tall ladder all added to the presentation and the build to their involvement felt natural. 

When the ring steps came in, it's Darby going teeth first into them because he took too long setting up the chairs. Hardy flew off the ring steps with a clothesline that he wanted to connect with good, and Darby flew into that clothesline neck first and really got hooked by it. My cousin Mikey broke both his arms when he was a kid, leaping off their doghouse in an attempt to fly. Because he jumped without noticing the clothesline in front of him, his flight went a bit longer than expected. That boy got flipped. 

This match wasn't just painful crashes though, it was little moments that built to those crashes. I liked when they were fighting over that big tall ladder in a tug of war, and how when they both yanked it out of the other's hands they just kind of ran at each other with no plan. They had an exchange that ended in a Darby Code Red, but it's easy to picture a lot of matches going right to a cleaner Code Red instead of two guys running toward each other on instinct with no sequence to run straight into.  

Hardy's seated jawbreaker couldn't have felt good on those steps-loosened teeth, and his corner dropkick was right into the side of Darby's neck. It's all a perfect mix of an old legend tightening up all the signature offense that he's looked so bored doing for the last 5 years. Hardy was capable of putting in occasional surprising effort during his last few years in WWF (see his 1/4/21 Raw match vs. Randy Orton), but maaaaan has he had some real dogs the last decade. I don't accuse guys of going through the motions that often, but brother brother brother. I just love seeing the man motivated and doing this thing that's wrecking him, all while wearing the worst face paint a first time Burning Man attendee ever wore. 

Hardy draws a ton of sympathy from me, doing his body breaking stunts. I'm a guy who cried during Jackass Forever, seeing these broken down men and their mangled dicks, and the feeling with Hardy isn't dissimilar. Jimmy Snuka was still on indy shows doing the Superfly Splash when he was 10 years older than Hardy and he wasn't pulling a single part of it. He was splashing people's guts out and telling them to puff up their chests for it. He was in no way taking any part of that in return. Hardy takes receipts gladly, but I guess that's probably not the only reason he's more sympathetic than Jimmy Snuka.  

That ladder was too high. Way too damn high. That could have been a man's death. Hardy hung in there and did his best to catch that Darby's death drop but he probably did his body a lot worse for it, as Darby came crashing through Hardy's arm and shoulder and sandwiched it hard into the chairs. I have no idea how either man walked away from that with nothing broken, but I'm assuming they just know something that I don't. I can only assume - I have to assume - they know something I don't, or that they have Wolverine's bones, because Darby's missed Coffin Drop on the apron and Hardy's missed swanton on the ring steps looked like two men flaunting their Adamantium skeletons. Jeff took all of Darby's in-ring Coffin Drop, too, and it's good to see that the guy who is no longer going to land on his tailbone to ease off the swanton, is also going to let you land as hard as you want on his torso. I usually hate that roll up pin after a guy takes a big finish, but fuck, Hardy took every finisher in this match. He's a guy I fully buy being able to take a finisher and then pull a high cradle. He takes it all. He just made it even better by pulling a cradle so high it actually looked like Darby couldn't kick out. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: BABA~! LADD~! LAWLER~! NJPW BATTLE ROYAL~!

Giant Baba vs. Ernie Ladd AJPW 8/7/80

MD: This is slightly more Found than New. It was probably part of the big 1980 season set drop from 2019, but it was hard to figure out exactly what was new and what wasn't from that. Now that someone posted it to YouTube though, it's nice and easily accessible for everyone. This is more or less a spring between two brilliant, giant, lanky wrestlers. I think this was building to a bigger match later in the month at Korakuen. It hits all the marks you'd want for an eight minute match between these two. There aren't a ton of bumps, but when they come, they're giant and awkward. Given the size involved, Ladd makes taking a mare look like a car crash and obviously him eating a back body drop is all that and more. Likewise, the holds. Baba locking in a side headlock is like King Kong doing it to Godzilla. Ladd mostly stays in this with shots to the throat but Baba's quick to fire back and they brawl on the floor a couple of times, once with Ladd ending up tied up in chairs. The finish was pretty amazing as Ladd can take things from Baba that others can't, in this case, an actual Thesz press where Baba somehow landed on him like he was Earthquake. Of course, Ladd got his heat back after to set up the next match. Fun battle of the titans here.

Battle Royal NJPW 11/19/81

MD: This followed the opening ceremony to the tour and cagematch has it with a few extra guys that aren't actually there for the battle royal. Normally not a big deal but when those guys are Andre, Murdoch, and Hansen, it's a bit of let down. It means that the most interesting guys in the ring end up being Killer Khan and Pat Patterson, often paired up with one another. That's not too bad in and of itself, at least until Pat gets eliminated. It more or less settles down to some of the Japanese (maybe Sakaguchi, Choshu, Kimura, Yatsu, Fujinami?) on one side and a Samoan, Khan, and Tiger Toguchi (Kim Duk) on the other. Not bad but still not Andre, Hansen, and Murdoch. Even then, it was weird lopsided as the Japanese side (who had the numbers advantage to begin with) worked together and the other side didn't (Patterson did more for the other side from the outside than they did for one another). And then when Sakaguchi was put into positions to make saves, he had to force himself to be a few seconds slow and it was all very labored. Anyway, this wasn't nearly as fun as the Battle Royal we covered a few months ago from the middle of the decade.

Jerry Lawler vs. Big Bully Douglas USA Championship Wrestling 4/13/02

MD: Lots of new stuff from Bryan Turner's channel. I was going to write up a Tracy Smothers vs. Kory Williams brawl, but the merrily accepted "string him up" chants by the 1997 Cooksville audience made it a bit much to cover, so it's back to the paragon of virtue that is Jerry Lawler instead. And this was a pretty perfect bullshit 2002 babyface Lawler match. Douglas was a bald bruiser sort, a lifer in these Nashville indies. With Ernest T at ringside, he could play a proper foil for Lawler, having just enough credible power offense and able to stooge and feed enough to make it all work with Lawler doing the heavy lifting with his selling, strikes, and overall timing.

The opening of this was wonderful gaga, as Ernest kept slipping Douglas an object (horseshoe, knucks, chain) and Lawler dodged the corner shot, stole the weapon, distracted the ref by blaming Ernest, nailing Douglas, and then after the fact showing the ref the object that Ernest had slipped in. It got funnier each time he pulled it off and as Ernest and Dougls were getting more apoplectic. Eventually, he missed the fistdrop, though, and ate that power offense (suplex, side slam, etc) with a bit of help from Ernest on the outside and with Douglas pulling him up a couple of times at 2. The comeback was preceeded by Stacy slapping Ernest. The strap went down, the punches rained down, a stunner that we all want to forget about occurred, and Lawler lifted Douglas up after one pile driver to tease a second when Rapada ran in for the DQ. That opening sequence was pure distilled Memphis and the rest went down smooth.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Angelito! Bordes! Gordon! Marquis! Texas! Frederico! Maniaks!

Angelito/Flesh Gordon/Walter Bordes vs Marquis Richard/Jessy Texas/Eliot Frederico 8/11/85

MD: Some high level takeaways on this one. First, I've been doing this for three years and I'm nearing the end, just a few more weeks to go, so to hear the crowd chant Mamadou Meme again for Walter Bordes struck an emotional chord. Second, it's such a shame that we didn't get more trios matches. There are only two or three in the footage and it's such a natural, logical extension for French Catch. The style and action and constant motion plays into it so well. This was three of the last stalwart hero stylists of the last decade (or at least two thirds of a decade) of Catch: Bordes, Gordon, Angelito, up against some game heels. Texas came out on a horse. Frederico was dubbed "Le Rocky". Richard had his valet. They all did admirably here basing for the first third, bullying for the middle third, stooging for the last third.

As such, I thought the structure worked. Exchanges and pairings to begin. Bordes had entered middle age but could still go. Gordon was starting to show cracks, maybe, but still worked broadly and his spots, when they hit, had star power. Angelito was a marvel; they were calling him the new petit prince, basically, and it's not like it wasn't fair. 

The match broke open on the outside with some pretty visceral brawling, ending back in the ring with Bordes trapped in the heel corner. He took a huge beating (including some valet-assisted hidden object nonsense), and they really should have pinned him after a great tandem move where Texas and Richard held him up by his limbs so Frederico could hit a driving headbutt off the top on his elevated form. Still, eventually he did come back with a big set piece of turning the table on the heels that Ben Chemoul would have proud of. They worked a mini heat on Angelito after the hot tag but he fought back too and Gordon scored the first pin with his twisting armdrag slam. The third fall was almost entirely celebratory with Frederico getting his mustache pulled and the heels tied up. There was a blip of Bordes having the rope pulled down on him and eating a nasty bump but it was all so he could come back with the big reverse body press off the top for the win. A nice look at what had been, what was, and what might have been all at once.

Flesh Gordon/Walter Bordes vs Les Maniaks 8/18/85 

MD: One last look at our friend Walter Bordes, as we now just have a few matches ahead of us. This was a great performance out of him too, smooth as anything in his exchanges in the first half. There was a point where Maniak #2, who was more of the showman, went for a catapult into the corner and Bordes just flew towards the ropes and casually ducked between them and right back in. It was a slick little piece of business which if done poorly might have exposed one of the more dubious moves in a wrestler's arsenal, but overall looked great. Then, for the back half, after a Maniak caught him out of nowhere with a Tombstone, he sold and sold and sold, starting at comatose and coming back just a little more and more until he was able to utilize a leg clap to break up a second tombstone attempt and make the tag.

Gordon was fine. You really get the sense that he had taken all the moves of his predecessors (even using Jon Guil Don's crazy  360 armdrag as his finisher) and had a definite connection to the crowd, but wasn't quite as smooth and slick with any of it. Here he did a headstand to escape an armbar but sort of just fell over with it instead of doing the spin out, that sort of thing. Still, you can't say he wasn't a solid babyface even if he was just a reflection of the stylists of old, especially when he was in there teaming with Bordes who was still the real deal, even with his middle aged hairline. So the first half of this was just ok, with one Maniak trying more than he could manage and the other solid with some nice cravats but not much more than that. Once the heat started and the fans really got into it all the way through the big comeback and comeuppance for the heels, you could see the glimpse of years' past once again.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 2/27 - 3/5

AEW Rampage 3/3

Keith Lee/Dustin Rhodes vs. Swerve Strickland/Parker Boudreaux

MD: For reasons that would probably surprise no one, there were a few years towards the end of the 00s where I wasn't watching much wrestling. One of the things that got me back into it was 2009 WWECW. Not unlike Rampage, it was a brisk and enjoyable hour-long show. It featured Christian as babyface ace champion, Regal as the lead heel, and somewhere in the background, a two month feud between Goldust and the debuting Sheamus. Sheamus had anchored local promotions and worked FCW before this and was a lot farther along than Boudreaux, and was working guys like Noble, Regal, and even Steamboat on untelevised events at the time, but it helped to transition him to working TV and helped to get him over as a threat to the crowd. Basically, the AEW house shows can't come soon enough. Boudreaux has size. He's only 24. But his instincts and positioning just need so much work. If they only have a few months of Dustin left, he ought to be paired in a few last dream matches during that time. On the margins, though, there's no one who could better see if there's anything worth developing in Boudreaux.

Here they gave him time with both Lee and Dustin. During the heat, Swerve came in to cut Dustin off for the most part, while Boudreaux primarily did damage, the bits less concerned with timing. On the comeback, Lee got his hands on Swerve a few times, taking most of his shots and powering through with justified rage but it was only a tease for a blowoff to come. Boudreaux got hefted up to take the fall. It's probably fine not to protect him more at this point. He's a physical prospect but it's still too early to know if there's anything there and they can always build him back up when ready. Right now he needs ring time.

 

AEW Revolution 3/5

MJF vs. Bryan Danielson

MD:  When you watch a match like this, you're looking for the overall narrative, for the transitions, for the selling in the moment and deep in the stretch, for the false finishes and the real ones, for their ability to keep things interesting and fill time but also to make things meaningful and resonant so it's not obvious that they're filling time. You look to see if minute 13 somehow inevitably leads to minute 48. You're looking for Chekhov's collections of guns, the ones that fire off successfully, the ones that never go off, and the ones that strike without warning in build. In most cases, something fails and something falls because it's a long time to fill and humans are fallible. I thought this hit most of its marks pretty well, far better than most of the matches you'd compare it to.

A lot of what made it work was how self-aware and metatextual it was. Coming in, the match was presented as Danielson wanting to push MJF well past his limits and MJF being vulnerable and unable to hang. That's a little different than the athlete vs athlete nature of most ironman matches, where the gimmick is set up to present both as the very top of human endurance and achievement. That allowed for a bunch of narratives beats you wouldn't normally get, beats and counterbeats really. For instance, MJF opened up the shoulder work after stalling a few times, and even calling out how negatively stalling had been looked at by the sheets over the years (best not to let me get into that). He escaped the ring a few times and when it looked like he might again, he lured Danielson to yank the arm over the top. At times, the character of MJF was using the underlying metatext as a tool. At other times, he lost himself to it and wanted to prove himself. The first fall is a great example of the latter, where Danielson coaxed him into going along for the Malenko/Guerrero pin attempts and blew him up so he'd be open for the knee. 

What made this work was that, with one exception, it never seemed self-aware from human beings putting together a match. It was more than all of the players/characters (including Bryce) were aware of the history of these matches and the history of one another. That's what led to MJF hitting the low blow to get two falls while losing one, and more importantly, getting back into the match after Danielson's initial comeback. It's what led him to taking big chances (missing the moonsault which took his leg out for the rest of the match but hitting the elbow drop through the table). It led to Bryce spotting the ring and taking it off or for Danielson to dodge first before hitting the knee to score his third fall. 

The things that didn't work for me are primarily nitpicks. They went back to the water so many times. Taz covered well for it on the idea that maybe MJF couldn't hang with Danielson's cardio and he was making a mistake but it never cost him and never played into the match save for the one stalling heel moment early on with the fan. I would have liked that to have been a false finish where he tries to blow it at Danielson only to miss and then that set up the oxygen shot, just because they built it up so much, whether they meant to or not. I thought the selling was appropriate for most of the match (Danielson was maybe up too soon after the Storm Cradle Driver but sure, that could have been desperation). I don't think the visual of MJF crawling across the ring with blood in his mouth and making a fish face quite worked though. The overtime period with the tap out immediately thereafter didn't quite work either. That was the one part of that match that openly broke the facade and felt like a homage as opposed to characters being aware of the past. Finally, I would have rather MJF won it with the Regal Stretch but they refuse to even call it (and Tony gets it wrong anyway) so I get why they didn't do it.

I don't want this to be a four paragraph review which has one with nitpicks though, so let me reiterate in paragraph five that this hit far, far more than it missed and in a situation with a high level of difficulty. There was a ton of thought and care put into this and the execution landed. It really did feel like a script where they went over it again and again and again looking for holes. There's an old notion in wrestling that even more than their money, fans are giving the wrestlers and the promotion their precious, valuable time. Here it was sixty minutes worth spending.

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

Exploding Tables: Freddie Valentine vs. Cincinnati Red ACW 11/17/00

MD: Here there was a table set up in two of the corners, with exploding barbed wire on top of them and the ref had brass knucks in his pocket. That meant they had even more range of motion off the ropes and things were even more kinetic due to that. Red had some sweeping, clumsy offense that fit his mangy look. The tables got used first, as counters to top rope moves and were the main momentum shifts, with fairly impressive bumps that let both guys kick out at two. Valentine snuck in another low blow and knocked the ref out for the knucks. Then things got 2000 indy silly for the finish but it was vaguely reminiscent of those old Mid-South coal miner's glove matches where the babyface got the glove first and did the first bit of damage but interference meant that they lost anyway, just, you know, with a guy in a gimp mask and a ref shirt involved as well. 

Electrified Fence: Freddie Valentine vs. Shane 54 ACW 11/17/00

MD: This match is ridiculous but I find myself fairly sympathetic to it. The fence isn't electrified. There are cutouts on either side where there is a wire. This wire can be used in a few different ways. You can try to jam your opponent's head into it. You can toss your opponent into it with a whip. You can take a torch and set the torch on fire with it. Otherwise, they just run the ropes as the canned noise (and we really, really haven't made enough out of the canned post-production noise) goes wild with the sounds of electricity. I spent the whole match wanting to see over the top spasming selling and it just never happens. Even when Valentine got set on fire by the torch it was more for the moment than any selling that followed. My biggest takeaways from this are that Valentine has a couple of really quite good bits of (also canned) chain wrestling; that he hits the French Catch style armdrag into a slam early, whether he intended to or not; and that I really liked the transition to comeback where Valentine picked up a trash can lid that Shane had been hitting him with and used it as a shield to block a punch. There were probably worse ways to spend a Friday night in 2000 than watching Valentine get set on fire and beat up a ref, I guess?

Texas Rattlesnake Match: Freddie Valentine vs. Crayz ACW 1/26/01

MD: This one was pretty glorious, let me tell you. Crayz was the champion. The title was on the line. The title was in a small crab cage, as were two deadly rattlesnakes. The key to the cage was lodged into the ceiling, which wasn't all that high up. To win the title, you had to get the key and steal the belt without dying a horrible death. They made a big deal about the snake handler coming out and give a little speech. Believe it or not, I was feeling the pomp and build to this one. The crowd popped for the snakes certainly. 

The match played out like a normal sort of TLC match, starting with the chairs, escalating to tables, and ending with the ladder. There was one transition where they teased Crayz pushing Valentine towards the (closed) snake cage, but Valentine did yet another one of his weirdly solid transitions out of it with a headlock takeover out of the corner. He also hit a diamond dust, learning well from his previous interaction with Mando. One thing I liked about this was that the ceiling was so low that it was viable to stand on a table and get the key. Valentine tried that only to get his leg swept out for as simple but effective bump through the table. The bump that Crayz took at the end (after getting the key but being unable to keep it) was nuttier since it was off a not-so-tall latter and INTO, not through, a table on the outside. Why? Because it was a white plastic card table, the rarest of pro wrestling tables. Valentine milked the snake heist. It seemed like he was going to use the hook to do it, which prompted boos, but Valentine is a guy who will bleed and fry and burn for his audience, so he dove right in to the crowd's delight (except for the 45% of them that wanted to see someone get poisoned for their fifteen bucks, of course).

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Dar vs. Dragunov

25. Noam Dar vs. Ilja Dragunov NXT UK 9/17/20

ER: This was the first new episode of NXT UK after the pandemic hiatus, and they gave us a cool main event match that had never happened anywhere else before. This comeback episode gave us a little bit of insight into how members of the UK roster spent their time during the pandemic: Amir Jordan somehow fixed his entire hairline (I've seen those NXT UK contracts and I have no idea where this guy got the money to do so), Aoife Valkyrie suddenly works stiff, and Noam Dar just came up with more ways to hit hard while continuing to put his head directly into the path of every dangerous strike. This was a great reintroduction of all the cool things Noam Dar is capable of, and a great look at just how much spittle Ilja can blow out of his mouth. 

Dar is outsized by Dragunov but hits so hard and with such precision that his offense actually makes Ilja's selling and overacting look like a perfectly normal reaction. Dar kicks at Ilja's hamstring, stomps his foot, kicks him as hard as possible in the shin, kicks him as hard as possible in the chest, stomps the hell out of his wrists and ankles, snapmares the backs of his knees into the ropes, and rubs his wrist tape across Ilja's stupid contacts. Dar is such a profoundly annoying little man and those annoyances only glow hotter when he is backing up all of his snotty behavior with real damage. Noam Dar feels like a spoiled coach's son who actually deserves all the playing time he gets, possibly the only coach's son since Cal Ripken to actually deserve his playing time. 

Dar learned the downward strike elbow over the pandemic and integrates it all through the match: as a standing strike, as a grounded strike, as a strike while working a hold, and as a way to advance a hold. He's relentless, which is the best kind of Ilja opponent, as Ilja will never quit and never stop making stupid faces. The more people stand outside of Ilja's house yelling at him to stop making stupid faces, the stupider the faces will get, and the stupider the faces get the more we get to see Dar get socked. Dar staggers into position so well for all of Ilja's elbows and leaping kicks and clotheslines, just putting his head in harms way for all of them. The man leans his head into every attack and it is insane. 

Dar is so good at getting into position for offense, that it's so much more gratifying when he shuts down bullshit. He gets plastered with Dragunov's rope spin lariat, but the next time Ilja tries it he takes a running boot right underneath the sternum, and a follow-up running kick that sends him flying 6 feet off the apron. The run to the finish blew up with a great strike exchange, each with one hand tied up in a knucklelock, sick elbows and kicks thrown from zero distance. Neither man was leaning away or holding back and it came off hard. This needed a finish better than Alexander Wolfe coming out and just kind of getting in the way, but that was the only thing holding this back. 

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

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