Found Footage Friday: MISAWA~! KAWADA~! THE LAND OF GIANTS~! CHRISTIAN~! JOE~! DYING DAYS IWE~!

Rusher Kimura vs. Carl Fergie IWE 6/6/81

MD: It's always fun to see a journeyman overachieve in another country. You can think of Jim Dillon in the Maritimes (not that we have that footage) or the Rock 'n' Roll RPMs in Puerto Rico (that we do have and it's fun). Here, it's Carl Fergie - fresh off a midcard run putting guys over in Mid-South and on his way to do the same in Crockett - in a main event with Rusher Kimura. I was going to say that he was well prepared for this one by wrestling Lawler, but he doesn't wrestle Lawler until 1982, so it was somehow the other way around.

You need somewhat similar skill sets against both, mainly being able to snap your head back at the sight of a great worked punch and take a back body drop. With Rusher, however, you also had to deal with nasty chops in the corner and headbutts.  That gave the match a more visceral feel; when Fergie snuck in a kick out of the corner and tried to assert himself, he was probably forcing a break for the sake of his forehead and poor chest. Rusher was in a hybrid phase here: not the wrestler he'd been in the 70s, not the comedy statesman he'd be a few years later. It meant he'd try for things like a stretch out of a Russian Leg Sweep or the bearhug into a butterfly submission he won with, but no longer had the flexibility he once did. This set up other matches on the tour as much as anything else, with Gypsy Joe interfering to mercifully (as he was trying out that first submission) cause the first fall. I thought Fergie looked like he belonged, for the most part. Some of that was the state of IWE, but enough of it was Fergie himself.

ER: King Carl Fergie the Wicked, wearing a Nazi helmet for his dying days IWE main event. King Carl Fergie, conqueror of Goro Tsurumi and Atsushi Onita, partner of Gypsy Joe. Rusher Kimura's takedowns look so impossible to stop. Rusher had lost some speed but this man moved and manipulated the larger Fergie like a real shooter. When he pins Fergie's arm and grapevines the leg, you can see him using all of his weight to effortlessly drop Fergie to the mat. It's the way Fergie keeps trying to push Rusher off him from his back, but Rusher won't let go of that boot for anything. The shoulderblocks hit hard and Fergie gets tossed immaculately by a backdrop, then gets punched directly in the face, taking a tremendous floundering back bump with windmilling arms that almost catches the back of his neck on the ropes. Fergie took that punch like he was a heavy getting knocked out by Rick Simon. This is really fucking good. Fergie walks right up to Rusher Kimura because he's the man, and he punches Rusher in the face and shakes his fist out angrily after punching him, and every man in Korakuen knows that Fergie is the man. His elbow strikes to Kimura's collarbones only reinforces that feeling.  

I loved every headlock in this match. 

Carl Fergie takes an even higher backdrop than he did earlier and Rusher locks him into a killer butterfly mid-squat bearhug like he was a Negro Navarro T-1000 sent back to send Carl Fergie back to Memphis. Who was the human (?) who, over 40 years ago, knew how important it would be to document the time crimes that were happening in the final three months of the 4th most popular wrestling promotion in Japan. 

Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada vs. The Land of Giants AJPW 11/20/90

MD: Eric already covered the hugely entertaining 11/21/90 Land of the Giants vs Dory/Terry match (amazing Terry performance) so I'm poking at the guts of this thing instead. And on paper, it's kind of interesting. Misawa and Kawada had spent most of the last many months against Jumbo, Taue, Inoue, Fuchi, Doc, Gordy, Hansen and even occasionally stablemate Kobashi and Ace. Those are all guys you can do a lot against. Here, they were up against the sort of challenge rare to AJPW, two absolute lugs with size, no mobility, terrible clubbering strikes, little presence. That's the sort of thing you expect out of post-WWF talent 80s NJPW maybe, where they'd just trot out Mad Maxx and Super Maxx managed by Wakamatsu to face Fujinami and Kimura, but it's a lot less of an AJPW thing.

And, yeah, it goes ok. The real testament to Misawa, Kawada, and the crowd, was that there was a legitimately hot tag to Misawa towards the end and the crowd went up for it; I don't think it was entirely warranted, but they went with it anyway. After that, there was a great American tag moment of Misawa and Kawada whipping the giants into each other too. Otherwise, the big appeal here would be the Super Generation Army throwing really high kicks at really tall guys. Nitron took them pretty well too. That's about the nicest thing I'm going to say about Land of the Giants here, unfortunately. The blows didn't look great, crummy knees in the ropes, weak sweeping clubbering forearms, a couple of slams that didn't have much mustard behind them. There was stuff that worked in theory but not execution, like Nitron catching Kawada with a cheapshot clothesline from his spot on the apron to cut off a flurry. Their finish at this point was an assisted legdrop (from an atomic drop position) and Masters pumping his arm before going up with it was sort of entertaining. The finish worked too, with Kawada getting Nitron out of the ring so Misawa could throw some magic forearms and duck a clothesline to hit a pretty beautiful bridging German on a giant of a man. But like I said, that they got the crowd back was the most impressive thing here.

ER: Yeah, this wasn't great. It merely existed, and was worked surprisingly straight forward for being a couple of Faux Warriors vs. the two hottest young studs in the company. Misawa and Kawada didn't go after them any differently than they would have gone after Dynamite Kid and Johnny Smith, so that was kind of disappointing. I either wanted to see two giants with bad offense hold down two elites, or two elites absolutely lace into two bad giants, and we got something much less risky and much less interesting. What *is* important to note, is that the team of SKYWALKER NITRON and Butch Masters is not "Land of the Giants", which I suppose makes more sense than their actual name. No, their name is THE Land of Giants. Their team name makes sure to place the focus on the Land rather than the Giants who inhabit this Land, much like hit the hit Sid & Marty Krofft series The Land of Lost. 

In This Land of Giants, the Giants do not hit very hard. Of all the future X-Men, I imagine Misawa or Kawada could have worked a more compelling match with Kelsey Grammer or Alan Cumming. SKYWALKER NITRON throws two of the piddliest clotheslines, even though Kawada mostly saved one of them by just running neck first into it. Running into an actual clothesline in the backyard would have provided far more resistance that NITRON's long noodle of an arm. I do like how Misawa came in and kicked at him, actually liked his kicks more than Kawada's here. Lighter on form, harder on impact. Butch Masters is really good at stepping over the top rope, which is not a thing that every tall wrestler can say. SKYWALKER NITRON can't say it. But Butch steps over it straight, an optical illusion that makes it look like he's just stepping up onto a curb while he's actually clearing three ropes. NITRON meanwhile looks like he's trying to get into a ski boat from the water. Each man who hails from The Land of Giants did their own bearhug, and Misawa broke up SKYWALKER's by walking in and just elbowing him straight in the kidneys. Kawada hits a cool pescado into NITRON, and I do like the finisher of the team who hails from The Land of Giants, a man-assisted legdrop. What other Giants come from this Land? Were they sending their biggest and best Giants to the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium? Was this merely a work placement program, or a study abroad kind of situation? What is the Giant Exchange Program in The Land? Are these two as good as Tall Rick or Thomas Big Boots? 

Christian vs. Samoa Joe NEW 4/21/07

MD: I love Christian's WWECW work. He was an amazing week to week TV wrestler, someone who could work his own spots and his opponent's spots into a match in clever, believable, varied, and interesting ways to deal with the grind of televised match after match after match. A sort of neo-Bret Hart for a different era with different demands. I've never really had any indication that he worked it out much before that though. Some of that is on me in that I didn't chase down his TNA run. Unfortunately, I do think some of it might be on him too.

It's a little off-putting how much of this match is rote heel champion vs. local dominant attraction house show fare, actually. It's not that the stalling isn't fun and the antics with the ref aren't good and the cheating isn't effective. It just doesn't stand out as special like you'd expect a Christian vs. Samoa Joe match to be. In fact, even though he hits some of his big offensive moves, it's the least "Joe" match I've ever seen. He's so submerged in the formula that he comes off as just another guy lacking his usual aura. Because it's such an aberration, I'm leaning towards Christian not quite being there yet and my gut says that this would have been a lot better a couple of years later or even right now. Again, there was nothing bad or wrong about it and the stuff that was good was very good; it just was less than the sum of its parts should have been. That's all.