AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/19 - 6/25 Part 2

AEW Forbidden Door 6/25/23

Bryan Danielson vs. Kazuchika Okada

MD: If you've been following the site for any length of time, you know that this isn't a dream match for us. But hey, it's been nice to have Final Countdown stuck in my head for half a week, right? That said, we certainly value Danielson. He's one of five, right? I've personally got nothing against Okada. Heck, if I was actually watching his "grumpy" phase, I might not mind him one bit, and in a world of wrestling that has a tendency to get smaller and smaller as time goes on, the ability to project one's self as a star is no small thing.

Still, this match was a bit snakebit, wasn't it? The crowd was still in shambles from the 40-minute epic that preceded it. Danielson got an injury with ten minutes to go. Some of the choices he made in dealing with that injury had a chilling effect upon the crowd. That said, I probably personally ended up liking what we did get here more than what we would have gotten if all went well. Moreover, I think the Danielson performance that was distilled through adversity was much unique and far more interesting than the channeled perfection we might have gotten otherwise. We're never going to judge "greatest wrestler ever" just from who can go hardest (hit hardest maybe, but not go hardest). You learn so much about a wrestler not when things go right in a perfectly planned match against an ideal opponent, but when things go askew and the wrestler has to adapt, or in moments where things are inherently less than perfect. That's when real wrestling genius shines through and in my mind, at least, that's what we got here.

Here's what made this match fascinating: upon first watch, there was every impression of Danielson selling the damage to the neck by favoring his arm, and committing so thoroughly to the act that he leaned instead on the Knee, that he channeled the Yes chants for the first time in AEW to fire up but only used one arm for them, that he powered through a submission using every limb but the one that was damaged. In this scenario, he was so vulnerable, so off center, that he feigned a seizure-ridden neck injury in order to draw Okada in (which didn't work by the way; Okada went right in for the kill after a few seconds of deliberation). That in and of itself would make the match mirrors within mirrors.

Except for it turned out to be mirrors within mirrors within mirrors, for Danielson's arm really was hurt. Whatever match they did or did not plan became something else in response. I read into it that Okada targeted the neck because Danielson's aggression got him up on points early, but would that have happened otherwise? Would there have been the Yes Chants? Would he have gone to the knee twice? Would he have worked the seizure spot? Would the struggle and uniqueness of the submissions at the end felt so offputting and gnarly and desperate? Probably not. Instead, it was a master whose body was failing him, who was in a match that should never have been possible, one that was denied to him the year prior, pasting together what was meant to be a dream match in front of a dream crowd using old tricks and new and making people feel. The crowd felt things that they wanted to feel, things that they dreaded feeling. Every movement carried with it layers. The calling out for the Yes chant wasn't just a Yes chant. It was one of the first ones in AEW (if not the absolute first; he's consciously not done them). It was half of one with a damaged arm. It was one by a desperate wounded Danielson. It was a ploy by the real man behind the American Dragon mask to engage the crowd despite the match going off the rails. So I don't know about this being a dream match but as a dream performance by a dream performer, it contained multitudes. It's the sort of dream that will linger, the sort that will stay with us in the months and years to come. 

CM Punk vs. Satoshi Kojima

MD: I liked MJF vs Tanahashi a lot, much more than the Swerve match from Collision, but that was MJF doing his best 1990 Flair vs JYD match. Tanahashi was limited but charismatic and MJF used that to the fullest. This was not dissimilar in some ways, as Punk leaned hard into the crowd reaction and wrestled big, but Kojima came off like an old vet leaping from the bench with fire still in his heart wanting one more swing for glory. Both wrestlers realized that they had a special crowd and a special opportunity and even though it likely came as a surprise to Kojima, he made the most of it. If Tanahashi is a star that has been treated like a star even as he became more limited, Kojima met this moment with a great reawakening, and Punk was right there to join him. The dueling pec popping might be what I remember from this show as much as anything else, really, but what I probably enjoyed the most in this match in specific was the way Punk chose to work it. He was as disrespectful as possible as a character, playing to his own ego by making callouts to Gabe and shouting along in Japanese to the ten count and doing the Hogan legdrop but at the same time being as respectful as possible as a human being working with the guy by throwing his whole body back for every Kojima strike and being incredibly wary of his lariat almost to the level of Buddy Rose stooging for Stan Stasiak's iron claw.

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Espectáculos Promociones Panama: The Best Panama Match Yet? Parka! Sandokan! Celestial! Emperador! Idolo! Cirujano! Blood! Chaos!

Sandokan/Celestial/Emperador vs. Principe Island/Cirujano de la Muerte/Idolo

MD: Sometimes I'm cautious on these, because I'm just one voice, but in talking this one over with Graham, my initial thought was that this could have easily landed in the top 20 of the best of the 80s DVDVR Lucha set (you know, if anyone had voted on that). And that's probably too conservative. It's really, really good. If you guys have been on the fence on watching these, well, obviously we think it's all been a worthwhile exercise, but this is especially one to watch. This is a classic, no doubt about it.

Structurally, it's as straightforward as can be until the end. Exchanges, tecnico advantage, rudo beatdown, big comeback, finish. But it hits on all of the marks. Sandokan is such an ace and such a star. It's unquestionable here and he really overachieves even compared to what we've seen him in so far and my personal expectations for him. He's not just a slugger with a couple of big spots (though he IS a slugger with a couple of big spots), but he's on for the entire match. He kicks out multiple variations on armdrags and handsprings and one-against-two bits that I wasn't expecting at all. Everything looks smooth. Most things feel competitive. Even when he's obviously getting some assistance from the rudos, it still looks like he's switching his positioning about and working for it. During the primera exchanges everyone looked good except for maybe Idolo. His stuff was just a bit looser and he barely even eseemed to try in his first one with Emperador. He's supposed to be even a bigger star than Sandokan but we just haven't seen it in the footage yet. Meanwhile, Principe (being LA Park, of course) was flying all over the place and Cirujano was basing big for Celestial and others. Everything built to a raucious stretch of tecnico advantage including a huge wheelbarrow suplex by Sandokan.

The beatdown followed in the segunda, with Idolo getting an advantage in the ropes. They paired off with each rudo using different styles of offense. Idolo had big pro wrestling flourishes, slamming a head into the turnbuckle or leaping feet first onto shoulders in the corner. Cirujano just clubbere down and leaned on people. And Principe was a whirlwind of violence, much of which we miss as he was demolishing Sandokan on the ground. They closed this out with some stretches and a missile dropkick by Principe.

In between falls, Principe clobbered Sandokan with a chair and started to inhale his blood to spit it up into the air, which is about the most glorious and horrific rudo stylings imaginable. To say that Park understood this stuff from a relatively young age would be an understatement. He dove fully into getting as much visceral and visual heat as he possibly could. The match had started with trash strewn everywhere and it made for the perfect setting for this mauling.

Which, of course, led to a spirited comeback, Sandokan firing back and really working for it on the floor, with the crowd ebbing and flowing around him in excitement. We couldn't see everything but we could feel it all, and what we saw (with it seeming like Sandokan was clocking Principe with a shoe) was all great. Just when it seemed like the rudos were going to get their bloody comeuppance, Cirujano and Idolo snatched away Emperador and Celestial's masks and they had to scurry to the back, leaving an momentarily ascendant Sandokan to fight alone, to get the start of a visual submission on Principe, but to ultimately get swept under, absolutely clobbered by what looked to be a plastic drink holder. While I wish we could have more easily followed the action on the floor, if only because Park had a tendency to do outrageous things and take wild bumps, this had absolutely everything I would want from a match like this. The Principe Island vs Sandokan feud is such a lost classic.

GB: I honestly think Matt is underplaying just how great this match is. When he shot the idea to me that this could potentially make the top 20 of the DVDVR 80s Lucha set I said he was underrating things. This is easily the best match we’ve had so far and definitely something to go out of your way to see. An absolute whirlwind of a performance between Sandokan and Parka, who is a fresh 22 years old here. Over on the GWE Discord, this match actually prompted a little discussion that La Parka might actually need to be investigated further as a top 20 GWE case because he has all of these little pockets of matches throughout his career where he really looks like an all-timer. From this, in mid 1988, to the Villano IV match last year, we have 34 years of Parka being an absolute beast of an asskicker (though, albeit, he’s more the acrobatic chickenshit getting his ass steamrolled in Panama but you get the gist!).

Those firmly in his camp will protest that he’s more than just the “dancing skeleton” most mainstream fans know him as. I agree. However, there’s an element to that which makes Parka’s case ever the more compelling. He’s one of the very few wrestlers that can blend comedic wrestling and psychopathic brawling without the one smudging the other. In fact, he might just be the all-time greatest at it. Case in point, he sees his ass on a big tumble to the floor about 9 minutes in here. Fans swarm around him, he’s disoriented and lost so he plays into the moment. He hobbles to the wrong corner, where Sandokan is lying in wait like a shark smelling blood. He gestures his arms into the air with a groaned “dammit!” before a fan has to escort him back to the right side. This all goes on in the background of the match while Idolo and Celestial are trading moves in the ring. One of the biggest legends in Panamanian history, and a 22-year old Parka is stealing the audience’s gaze away from him. Unreal. It was this “IT factor” that helped Parka change a nothing 2-week stay in Panama to a 2-month major programme.

Looking at the history, the Parka in Panama matches are seemingly all across the board so it makes things a little difficult to recap and piece together (I’ll get to a potential stopgap later). It’s also promoted by Junior Mina’s Arena Panamá Mexico so there isn’t much out there.  However, what is crystal clear is that this is Parka’s debut match in Panama and we’re blessed to have gotten it as it kicked off one of the best feuds we’ve never heard of.

From interviews and matching up cards, Parka lost his mask to Sandokan a week before Father’s Day in 1988 at the Neco. That squares up with the 11th June date listed on the (very much incomplete) Sandokan Luchawiki profile. The next week, however, forces me to realise I had the Galvez/Solar feud down to the wrong year. Solar was in Panama in 1986 but feuding with Castro. The Galvez feud kicked off on the 17th of June 1988, the Friday after Parka lost his mask. Interestingly, Solar returned to Panama on the 17th in a tag at Neco opposite the team of Sergio Galvez and Blue Panther. The relation to the Park? Well, the Park/Sandokan feud would intertwine with the Galvez/Solar feud at this point with the tecnicos (Solar/Sandokan) having to stave off the violence of hell’s rudos (Galvez/Parka), a violence that Solar lamented would be him “encountering death”.

Despite losing it, Parka would still don his mask to interviews as a protest to the decision. He also carried with him a tape of the ending to the mask match in which he claims a conspiracy took place. It was all jingoistic bias on the part of the referee, who he says made a calculated, perhaps premeditated, “mistake” to allow Sandokan to win. Much protesting and epithets to Sandokan’s race later, Parka would remove his mask as he was doing so graciously as a “gentleman” that respected the traditions of lucha libre (and not because he agreed with the loss). Sandokan, Parka espoused, had tapped to his hold. All of Panama could see it, and their ruptured hostility was proof enough. The whole of Arena Panama could see it, except the one man that needed to most - Carlos Linares, the referee.

I’m unsure how much time had passed before the title matches against Super Parka and Sandokan but Parka now was scalped. I haven’t seen flyers nor articles to corroborate, but it appears that Super Parka took La Parka’s hair at some point in Panama. Weirdly, La Parka was billed as the older brother of Super Parka (his legitimate uncle). It’s one of the weirder tropes of Panama where names/gimmicks are sacred above logic, and once one gimmick has been debuted everything must follow suit. Much like Gemelos Infernales (Hell’s Twins) being a trio.

To my strained eyes, it appears that Parka’s hair is a smidge more grown out in the title match against Sandokan than it is against Super Parka. Again, this I’ll get to later. By this point, Super Parka is a tecnico, and can be seen as Sandokan’s second in some of the encounters. For Parka, he would be seconded by El Idolo and Nacho Vega in the mask match (the latter known to us already as Mascara Negra) and Exterminador as well as Emperador in others. The latter would be the one to demask Super Parka in Panama a few weeks earlier. Another quirk of Panama would tie in with the Parkas - that being how forgiving fans were of wrestlers. In the Emperador feud, Super Parka was the clear heat-seaker. So much so he was once physically attacked by fans on his way to the ring during the build to the Emperador mask match. This led to the lucha commission forcing action and having the national guard accompany wrestlers to the ring at each show. Yet, here, against Parka, Super Parka was the tecnico. The crowd favourite. A Mexican proudly waving the flag of Panama, claiming them as gracious hosts. In reality, a “turn” only took a handshake after the loss of their mask or hair. An acceptance that they weren’t the better wrestler that day and a thanking of the fans for coming out in support of the fight. A mask/hair loss was Panama’s reset button. That’s all Super Parka needed as his get out of jail (hospital) free card to curry favour with the locals. Note La Parka’s antagonisms and vitriol when he loses his mask against Sandokan. It directly flew in the face of what was expected of him. He was an out of control brat and he played that up perfectly. Ricardo Pitti would label La Parka as “volatile” and “excessively energetic”. The absolute perfect foil to the fiery babyface Sandokan.

As for the title in question, Parka is the current title holder of the UWA Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship and Panama’s Middleweight Championship (the title he brings to the ring). The UWA title was never officially recognised by the UWA but it was seen as a title of significant value in Guatemala (given legitimacy by local legend Astro de Oro being the first challenger and then first to capture the title in 1987). Parka beat Astro de Oro for the title on July 24th 1988. A month after Sandokan took La Parka’s mask. As mentioned, Parka was fully expected to be a Guatemala staple at this point, having finished off his short visit to Panama. However, he got over so quickly as a heel that he found himself oscillating between fighting Sandokan in Panama and Astro de Oro in Guatemala - the two biggest legends of South America at the time.

It’s here that I can potentially offer a little bit of a quickfix to the gaps in our Parka in Panama programme. Select Mexican wrestlers would travel around South America honing their craft and finding themselves in quite familiar programmes wherever they went (notably so with Parka). Thus, I’m going to outline the feud with Astro de Oro in Guatemala. What lines up lines up, what differs differs but it’s all hopefully, at worst, a look into very young Parka’s start and, at best, a glimpse into the bigger picture of the feud in Panama.

The feud began with Parka coming into Guatemala as the cocky upstart, bludgeoning an unexpecting Astro de Oro and Arriero de San Juan into pieces in his debut on the 10th of July 1988. He was accompanied by Verdugo, who had a massive chip on his shoulder after his then teammate, Arriero, turned tecnico on him. Despite the heat between Arriero and Verdugo, it was Parka that took things a step beyond by cutting up Astro and leaving him a bloody mess on the mat. Parka’s win, and performance, had him splashed across national newspapers. As quickly as he got over in Panama, Parka was a massive exclamation point in Guatemala now. He had, thus, quickly earned himself a title shot against Astro de Oro (which would play out after a bloody mano a mano “wager” shortly after the tag debut). This wager was a relatively stakeless match (in other words no titles or masks on the line) but was about betting their pride, a “put up or shut up” if you will. Astro de Oro had never been defeated in this match and, yet, Parka beat him. This, in theory, plays sister to the Sandokan/Parka singles Matt has already covered with the only caveat being the roles are reversed (Sandokan absolutely destroys Parka and not the other way around).

As the record books show, Astro de Oro lost their title match. Again making Parka the first luchador to do so. Much the same in Panama with Sandokan, the pride of Guatemala had been made a fool by the punk, La Parka. Parka, greedy for more, offered an all-in with Astro. If Astro ever wanted to see the title again, he would have to bet his mask (and permanent retirement) against it. Astro, who already had his tail between his legs seeing no other choice, agreed. While Parka dropped his mask to Sandokan before the title match, I believe the stipulation for the Sandokan/Parka title match was of a similar nature.

In opposite to Panama (though to the sentiments of the DQs), the referee in the mask match here was firmly in Parka’s back pocket. Parka blindsided Astro in the corridors of the arena on his way to the ring, incessantly beating him with a chain until he burst open with blood. As Astro attempted to make his comeback by grabbing the chain from Parka, referee César Rivas confiscated the weapon. While Rivas was distracted, Parka faked a foul which had disqualified Astro, leaving him a fall behind. The fight would continue, as both men bathed in blood by this point. Parka tried multiple times to escape but he, and his mask, would fall to a merciless, rope-aided piledriver by Astro - much like he would to a merciless rope-aided electric chair from Sandokan. Adolfo Tapia Ibarra, the Island prince, the assassin, the skeleton of death, had lost his mask but he had found himself. And so the whirlwind of violence we’ve come to love was unleashed.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/19 - 6/25 Part 1

AEW Collision 6/24

CM Punk/FTR/Ricky Starks vs Jay White/Juice Robinson/Gunns

MD: This is a pretty fascinating match and I, much like the crowd, am just going to focus on one thing primarily, Punk. The crowd was chanting for him and at him when he wasn't in there. I'm a big proponent that you wrestle to serve the match and that wrestlers that don't do that, who wrestle for themselves, guys like Michaels and Brody, are to be punished with a critcal eye for it. I'm also a believe that you lead the crowd instead of follow it.

That said, there are exceptions. Not every match is built equal, not every moment. Moreover, there are matches down the line. Stan Hansen's a guy who doesn't always have the most interesting match possible with every opponent, but he'll churn through three matches that aren't so interesting in order to keep himself protected to a certain level for the match where the payoff is necessary. While you couldn't look away from it, this match became structurally confusing and structurally confused because the face/heel balance switched to a good degree every time Punk tagged in or out. The finish required the crowd being up for Ricky Starks plowing through the nominal heels with spears before White finally got the best of him, but it also needed the crowd to go up for White catching Punk off the top... right before he caught Starks with the same move to set up the finish. Thankfully, it was a crowd that was going to be hot for everything, but just thinking that through from a narrative level is kind of maddening.

Here's where it absolutely worked, however. Jay White seemed important. Last week, it was all about the build to Punk vs Joe. This week, it was all about the build to Punk vs White. It automatically put him on the same level that Joe was presented at last week. They did a good job of keeping them apart, or only teasing it before paying it off during the long heat during the commercial (which, I guess wasn't heat, but heel-in-peril? Except for it was heat because half the crowd was for Punk... you get why this is tricky, huh?).

As for leading the crowd, Punk rode the wave. He started the match, all the way at the top of the ramp, thinking he'd have to go full heel, even as his partners would lead face and just be like a sports team who have the one controversial player that they have to support and put up with, but it was obvious that half the crowd was with him. He gave them something to celebrate and the detractors something to hate during the first commercial break with the Hogan Legdrop (placing it very carefully during the break). By the end of the match though, he'd cracked the code. At the end of the second commercial break, as he was making a comeback to a White bearhug, he put his arm out to fight when the fans were chanting CM Punk and then dropped it when they chanted Let's Go Switchblade. It was the logical evolution of 97 Bret and more overt than Cena's reactions to the Let's Go Cena/Cena Sucks chants. It also felt like something he was workshopping in the moment. There are probably other things that deserve mention here, like how well Juice and Austin Gunn mesh together as annoying loudmouths or Cash's dive, or how you can't unsee the fact that Dax absolutely refuses to interact with the legal man on the other side when everything breaks down, but this was rightfully all about Punk and partially about White and I'm just going to leave it at that. As for serving something bigger than the match, though? Yes, the moment, but even more than that would be if the finals of the Owen tournament are Punk vs Starks. We may look back at this one differently if that's the case.

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RIP IRON SHEIK~! The BEST 80s WWF Tag You've NEVER Seen~!

Iron Sheik/Nikolai Volkoff vs. Sgt. Slaughter/Junkyard Dog WWF 10/13/84

MD: If you haven't seen this one, I'm going to implore that you do. It's an all time Slaughter performance and an absolutely fearless performance from Sheik. The last big WWE show I ever went to was the 2015 Royal Rumble in Philadelphia and that Philly crowd has absolutely nothing on this one. Sheik had to endure not just the less than melodic stylings of Volkoff but had to stand there as stoicly as possible as every manner of object came flying at him from the stands. And that was just during the pre-match. He started the actual match by spitting at Slaughter, before getting bounced around the ring for the next few minutes. He recoiled a little at the trash flying at him, yeah, but Sheik wrestled so big and over the top that he sold the rapid fire loogies like they were bullets.

And then, when they took over? Slaughter bled huge. He didn't have to, the fans were already over the top. Any normal person at that point would read the room and bring things down with a chinlock maybe, take it up and down, build to some hope spots, cut them off, let the hot tag happen. This was JYD's first ever match in Philly, maybe cool it down and make it out of the building alive, right? Not Iron Sheik. He started right in on the wound with those jagged shots meant for the very last row to see, and then started gnawing on Slaughter's forehead. Along the way they kept things moving, kept the pressure on, and he even hit his picture-perfect gutwrench suplex. 

When the comeback - the deeply earned, hugely dramatic comeback - finally happened and Slaughter made a hot tag that blew the roof off of the place, they found a way to start in on Dog as well! The fans were denied, the heat was intensified, it was great. The story shifted to Slaughter slowly peeling himself up off the floor, to the apron, and finally into the ring to toss everyone about, Dick Woehrle included, drawing the double DQ. Slaughter stands tall even though Sheik escaped the Cobra Clutch, and set the stage for them to do it all over again the following month. What an absolute spectacle, as larger than life as pro wrestling can possibly be.

ER: I had not seen this tag match, so Matt implored me to do so, and I am also going to implore you to do the same. This is a fantastic long form WWF tag match with a big long celebratory babyface run building to an impeccably sold heat segment that builds to a double DQ finish that is fiery in a way that made it feel like a classic Mid-South tag. This match had a ton of heat the whole way through. The Spectrum was on fire for all of Sheik and Volkoff's bullshit, and they sustained it curtain to curtain. On it's own, it doesn't seem like an impressive feat that Sgt. Slaughter and Iron Sheik were able to draw heat in Philadelphia, but it seems like a downright incredible feat when you put yourself into the shows of a typical Spectrum attendee. When these people were getting Puerto Rico loud for two foreigners singing a national anthem that they didn't recognize, it feels impossible that they would have any kind of energy to even go to the bathroom. At this point in their Saturday evening they had already endured 10 minutes Rene Goulet and David Sammartino matches, Steve Lombardi vs. Ron Shaw, and still had Tony Garea and Sal Bellomo matches to come. Sitting through all of those guys consecutively would be tantamount to having methyl propyl ether pumped into the arena, and yet these fans get UP for this entire match and it's beautiful. 

Iron Sheik is one of our great Weird Body wrestlers. 1984 Sheik was gassed up and shaped like no other human being, with that big round belly that was somehow distended while also having no fat; his arms looked small from one angle and then he would turn 5 degrees and have absolute guns. His head was perfectly shaped, and we can only presume extreme jingoism as the reason that he never got the same kind of universally eponymous signature mustache that Rollie Fingers enjoyed. Sheik moves like a man who has always had trouble moving. Sometimes when he bumps, none of his limbs move. It's so weird. He is at times the world's most muscular turtle and I love how his curled boots look up in the air as Sarge and Dog beat his ass around the ring for 10 minutes. WWF tags from this era had a habit of veering straight into Heel in Peril stretches that often played awkwardly, but Slaughter and JYD are so charismatic and Sheik and Volkoff so cartoonish that it never veers into Heel in Peril territory despite Slaughter and Dog never being in a single second of trouble. The pace was constantly rolling and the action always moving forward, which is an important factor in never settling into any side's Peril. 

Everything turns suddenly with Slaughter's huge running stomach first bump into the top rope, the first time anything had gone wrong in any way for him; his big bellyflop into the turnbuckle, whipped from one buckle to the other is even better, and Sarge uses the distraction of the big impact stomach into buckle to blade himself from his head "going into the ringpost". Sheik had been an inelastic stooge for the entire match, and when Slaughter is bleeding he gets suddenly vicious and goes after Slaughter's growing cut, throwing him up into the post again, kneeling and punching into the cuts with each great punch making the noise in the building swell. Slaughter takes a backdrop bump as high as the highest Rick Rude backdrop, with Sheik shoving through with his entire body to get him that extra height. Their timing is impeccable, and we get one of wrestling's great hot tag near misses when Slaughter fights back to hit a big vertical suplex on Sheik, but misses the tag to JYD by a literal inch, with every person hitting the exact right mark at the exact right time so that the spot looks sincere. Nobody needed to alligator arm the tag, all limbs were tagging, Sheik made the perfect cut-off. 

Dick Graham, with the best call of the match: "Oh man, this is gory! This is a mess!"

When Slaughter did make his eventual hot tag Sheik returned that really high backdrop bump when he gets thrown to the sky by Junkyard Dog, and our great twist of Dog not just running through the foreigners and instead getting worked over while Sheik keeps punching Slaughter off the apron. Slaughter had an incredibly sold big dramatic apron acting performance during all of this, falling all over the ropes and dragging himself up to his feet each time. There was an excellent camera shot of Dog seeing how bad off Slaughter was on the apron, face showing that he knew that tagging out was not an option to be considered and he was fighting this one alone. When Slaughter finally dragged himself up off the floor and laid waste to everyone, it was the climax that the Spectrum 100% wanted. Sheik got launched over the top to the floor, just an awesome bump for an asshole to take, run across the ring and thrown exultantly over the top like they were the final two in the Royal Rumble. Dick Woehrle, age 54, may have taken the biggest bumps of the match, getting shoved off and thrown across the ring three different times, selling them with the pain and goddamnit facial expressions of a 54 year old man who had no idea he was going to be thrown violently across the ring midway through a Spectrum show. 

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Found Footage Friday: TIGER MASK~! DYNAMITE~! HOSHINO~! GAETANO~! DANIELSON~! SWIFT~! SAMOANS~! SANTANA~! PUTSKI~!

MD: Brief programming note here at Segunda Caida. Expect some disruptions over the next few weeks as we have some vacations and big life events coming up. As noted a few weeks ago we've done NFF/FFF every single week straight for five years. I can see that lapsing in the near future and we may miss a week here or there. Likewise with Panama. We have an awesome match for everyone next, something so good that it might be one of the top lucha trios of the 80s period. We'll get there soon. Plus there's another project coming later in the summer that I think people will enjoy, very on brand. So stick with us. Thanks for reading.

Tito Santana/Ivan Putski vs. Wild Samoans WWF 4/12/80

MD: If this actually had a finish, it'd be a pretty solid find. There are certain formulas in wrestling that always, always work. One of the best is a tag match where a guy gets taken out mid match and then comes charging back, taped up and bloody. That happened with Putski here and, like always, it was awesome, right until it wasn't when the ref called for an instant DQ. Then it was just sort of ok. The match up to that was fun though. Putski and Tito were the champs. I don't think Tito was quite there yet. He had fire but his stuff didn't fully back it up. He was well on his way though. Putski is probably a guy we have to dig deeper on given what we've seen lately. Under a certain definition of pro wrestling, he was lacking, but if you ask me, it's that definition that's lacking, not him. 

This is an aside, but I was talking to someone the other day who didn't think Buddy Rose's matwork was up to par with Fujinami's. He was comparing the two of them because they both end the 70s and start the 80s against a wide and varied range of opponents. Point being, there's matwork which is all about tight holds and complex reversals and then there's matwork that's about being active in a hold, making engaging facial expressions, using your body language to rouse the crowd, and creating an emotional effect. Probably the absolute best would be when both things happen at once, but if you got too far in either direction, you can create some unique magic despite it all, and that's exactly what Putski was able to do here just with a seated arm puller. 

This had a fun structure too, with the Samoans ambushing early and both teams playing the numbers game back and forth until they finally got some heat on Tito and Putski got a hot tag and the Hammer. It got broken up and he got opened up but it was a pretty complete match before they went into the high two-on-one struggle setting up Putski's return. It was a big moment when Tito helped Putski to the back and then rushed back into the ring to fight off both Samoans himself and a bigger one when Putski stormed back. It's just a shame they couldn't give this thing a real finish in front of a crowd in Landover, Maryland. What's the harm?

Tiger Mask/Kantaro Hoshino vs. Dynamite Kid/Bobby Gaetano NJPW 4/1/83

MD: This was on the road to the last Dynamite vs. Tiger Mask match. Gaetano is not someone we've written a lot about but he's a lot of fun to watch. Very unique in how he moves, how he comes at offense, how he balances technique and style. You know what you'll get with Tiger Mask and Dynamite, but it was the other pairings I found most interesting. There was a level of abrupt violence with Hoshino and Dynamite and that mix of over the top movement and grounded hanging on to a limb when Tiger Mask and Gaetano were in there. The match did feel somewhat like it was building to a clash between Dynamite and Tiger Mask, with both having a chance mid-match to dominate their rival's partner. It opened up to heat when Dynamite came in to save Gaetano in the midst of that and then built to an eventual recovery comeback from Hoshino two tags later. Maybe my favorite bit in all of this was when Tiger Mask got a tag mid-heat and Gaetano wanted out quickly and Dynamite wanted nothing to do with it. Those little moments of character go a long way in a match that leans towards being all action.

Bryan Danielson vs. Dave Swift (Cage Match) ECCW 9/29/01

MD: As cage matches go, this was a match that happened to be in a cage. Past a couple of nods to the escape possibility (pinfalls counted too) over the last couple of minutes, it didn't come into play at all. It came into play less than it did in Luger vs. Windham from the 91 Bash, and that's saying something. That sort of follows Danielson's attitude here, so it's ok. The match itself was okay. Swift had a ton of 01 indy power offense and it all looked ok and Danielson took it well. Danielson's kicks weren't quite what they would be and his top rope elbow drop was dubious but the forearm/elbow he won with looked like a million bucks. The best stuff, however, was Danielson's histrionics, whether it was an eyepoke or hanging on to the ropes as Swift was trying to drag him off or doing the Rick Rude swivel before dropping back onto the leg, he was certainly flexing his heel mannerisms. The promo before the match when he tried to discuss why they shouldn't be having a cage match set the tone. It's unfortunate watching this back twenty two years later that the tone was a back and forth sprint instead of the two of them grinding their heads into a cage, but for a match that just happened to occur within a cage, this was still pretty good.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/12 - 6/18

AEW Dynamite 6/14

Sting/Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy/Keith Lee vs Mogul Embassy (Swerve Strickland/Brian Cage/Toa Liona/Bishop Kaun)

MD: You watch enough wrestling on TV and you start to think about formatting as it pertains to the structure of the match. Maybe it's because the fact they went thirty to start the show but this had a commercial break during the entrances and then another one in the middle of the match. In order to deal with that, they started hot and then took things down. Most Sting matches tend to be brawls around the arena but this turned into a standard tag getting heat on Darby. Before that though, there was a barrage of Coffin Splashes and Stinger Splashes on Swerve, followed by a Code Red and a tease of the Coffin Drop. You can get away with hitting stuff like that right at the start of a match, especially right at the start of a tag, where a wrestler is fresh and then can recover on the apron, but it's probably something to be done carefully and something done with the specific programming needs of this match in mind. 

Cage made the most of things in his 80s Sting cosplay, coming off as bombastic and larger than life. Kaun hit a spot or two but was a bit of a non-factor while Toa was there to knock people off the apron and play crowd control. I like 2023 Keith Lee as a guy who leverages his size as much as possible while still hitting one or two breathtaking spots. I like that more than when the balance leaned further towards athleticism. Everyone in AEW is athletic. Only a few people are his size. It didn't help here that the athletic spot didn't quite work though. Cassidy didn't do much in this one but break things up and set things up (like the finish for Sting); speaking of setting things up, he also shared the Stundog with Darby, who used it to create the opportunity for the hot tag. They've been teaming lately so it's a shame the announcers didn't pick up on that. It's hard to blame them though, because once things broke down, they really broke down. They probably want to move on but there's still meat on the bone here for a street fight if they needed to fill time right after Forbidden Door.

AEW Collision 6/17

CM Punk/FTR vs Jay White/Juice Robinson/Samoa Joe

MD: Very nice to have the 5th Finger back in action for the first time in ten months, and paired up against Joe for the first time in over 6000 days (at least according to Kevin Kelly). Wrestling is all about anticipation and there was plenty of anticipation here, anticipation even from the beginning of the night to the end, anticipation from the Sports Interview Punk piece from the day before, anticipation from Khan and his media partners making one announcement after the next, week after week (the existence of Collision, that Chicago would be the first venue, that Punk was back, that this was the main event), and anticipation in the match itself: the first lock up between Dax and White, first time Punk would get tagged in, the first encounter with Joe, the hot tag to Cash, the hot tag to Punk, and finally, that final encounter between Joe and Punk, the last one only increasing anticipation for a singles match to come. And of course, there was the anticipation for Punk hitting the GTS after failing to multiple times within the match.

This match, as much as any I'd seen in AEW in a while, certainly had time to breathe. There was quite a bit of back and forth to begin with, double heat, the discipline not to have things fully break down until it was time for Punk's big entrance in the back third of the match, and then an exciting finishing stretch with all the drama you'd want as Punk gasped for air in the Coquina Clutch while Dax and Cash desperately tried to get to him or at least each other in order to do something, anything to turn the tide. Punk didn't seem to have much ring rust at all, though he was buoyed by a familiar opponent in Joe and two very game ones in Juice and especially White. This was the best I've seen Dax look in months. He'd seemed off somehow during the Jarrett feud, maybe still healing up from a slew of injuries but he was sharp and absolutely on point here. Cash is always that. Joe is as comfortable in his own skin after years of portraying a very consistent character as anyone in wrestling and Juice, the absolute definition of trying too hard, somehow manages to transcend that artificiality to succeed more often than not for his efforts. Sometimes you go so far in one direction that you come back around the other way. 

This was a show full of hubris, from Punk's initial interview all the way to not having some sort of big angle at the end, with Dax trying to stand toe to toe with Joe representing it as much as anything else in the match, but to have faith in a great wrestling match to be enough to carry the load? Well, that's the kind of hubris I suppose I can get behind.

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Found Footage Friday: CATCH HAMBURG 93~! ECKSTEIN~! SCHMIDT~! GUAJARO~! BUCHHOLZ~! BRASIL~!

Catch Hamburg 05/08/93

Christian Eckstein vs. Klaus Schmidt

MD: This was a rookie match, worked fairly simply and straightforward. That said, it's always interesting to see what this looks like vs NJPW or AJPW or even the one or two we seemed to have with France. This had a lot of side headlocks but plenty of takeovers, especially from Eckstein. I was a little surprised by how much they kept it moving in that regard, sometimes with spots, both rote and moderately clever, but just with one headlock takeover or armdrag after the next. Schmidt worked pretty tight on his holds. I'm not sure just how long he'd been wrestling (for Eckstein it was probably around 9 months and he was trained by Tony St. Clair if you trust cagematch) but he looked pretty confident in there. This was rounds system and they wrestled it with purpose but also gentlemanly with it eventually escalating to a series of reversals and a backslide from Schmidt for the win.

Indio Guajaro vs. Marcus Buchholz

MD: We've covered a couple of Van Buyten vs Guajaro matches from back in the 80s so he's not entirely new to me. Here he was older, and reminded me a lot of a heel Snuka actually. He was confident, brutal, and didn't do a whole lot, just holding the center of the ring and more often than not, an armbar, and letting Buchholz try to work his way out, cutting him off with a hairpull or a quick whip of the arm again and again. Buchholz was ok working from underneath, constantly selling, constantly trying, having a lot of different ways to try to get out, especially because Guajaro wasn't having it with some things that you'd expect to maybe even work. This wasn't the sort of build we had from decades prior France where they'd build and build to an escape attempt, have that fail, and then start to build to the next. It was more one and done before switching to something that might work, but that fit the time and place well enough. Just when Buchholz finally started to mount a dropkick-laden comeback Guajaro shoved the ref and drew the red card, so it was a lot of build and very little payoff.

Battle Royal (Christian Eckstein/Karsten Kretschmer/Indio Guajaro/Rolo Brasil/Klaus Schmidt/Marus Buchholz)

MD: Sometimes what's interesting in lost footage like this is to just see the regional differences to familiar things. When I think of Battle Royals, I don't think of Hamburg, after all. This was Royal Rumble format and is somewhat clipped but you get the overall sense of it. Because they start with just a couple of wrestlers, they're able to work spots early on until you end up with three or four people in there. It ends with a temporary alliance between Brasil (who we do have some other footage of but I don't think I've ever seen) and Guajaro against Buchholz. until an errant shot ends that. Brasil vs Guajaro would have probably been a fun heel vs heel match but we just get a little glimpse here. This was more educational for what was going on in Hamburg at the time than anything else, but since this popped up, maybe more will as well.

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Espectáculos Promociones Panama: Blue Panther in Panama! Kato Kung Lee! Tahur! Celestial! Baron! Gemelo Infernal I!

Blue Panther/Gemelo Infernal I/Tahur vs Kato Kung Lee/Baron/Celestial 1/17/87

MD: This felt like lucha comfort food to me. Maybe it was because both Kato Kung Lee and Blue Panther were there, but this followed pretty familiar lines. There are definitely unique quirks to Panamanian Lucha, bits of Puerto Rico or unique elements to the stadiums, some spots or moves you don't expect, some peculiarities that we can't explain just yet, but there's more overlap with what was happening in Mexico than not and this match is a testament to that.

Speaking of familiarity, we're getting increasingly familiar with the usual suspects here. I have a great sense of Tahur as a base and as hard-handed clubberer and as a guy who isn't afraid to make a heroic dive to nowhere. This is Gemelo Infernal I who is more of a character than his smoother, workrate-y brethren GI II (and I don't have a sense at all about III yet). He has weirder moves and weirder movements and here made a great stooge for Kato Kung Lee's kung fu strikes. With Tahur and Panther getting him up extremely high for his headscissors takeovers, Baron looked like a top notch junior here. He got to show a different side than in the Bunny Black feud but it made me want to see more of him in both settings. And Celestial mainly stood out late in the match, paired with Panther with heated mask ripping.

Panther, to his credit, fit right in. I was a little disappointed at first as he was initially paired with Kato Kung Lee, which isn't what I wanted to see him do in Panama but he rotated through to the others as the match went on. And Lee? This was the best I've seen him in Panama. The fans went nuts for his shtick like always but he just had extra zing and agility as he bounded around the ropes. You could transfer the exact same act into modern AEW and if he could pull it off like he did on this night, it would get over huge.

Structurally, this was also familiar, early pairings cycled through, escalation to rope running, stooging, and the tecnicos going over in the primera, a rudo beatdown in the segunda, comebacks and cutoffs, and it all coming to head in the tercera, where Tahur just had enough of KKL's kicks and fouled his way out of the match which likely led to something else we unfortunately don't have.

GB: This match is a bit of a lucky get for us. Truth be told, I came across this post by accident many months ago when my passion for Panama was still in its infancy. However, the original video had lost tracking and the end was cut off. A little dismayed, and with some digging, I managed to piece together the missing part and give us this gem.

There’s not much to be said here as the only memories of this fight I can find are two screen grabs from a video of Panther and Kato arriving at the Tocúmen International Airport for their match. For all intents and purposes, this was treated as a big deal. Ricardo Pitti was there, alongside fans, to welcome Panther to Panama and extend a warm “welcome home” to KKL who had just lost his mask to el Hijo del Santo two months prior (though this was never aired nor played up during his visit). Matt highlights the ending between Kato and Tahur and there is something there. Whether this match led to it (or led from it), el Tahur did take Kato’s mask at some point in the 80s. In Mexico it would be sacrilege but, if he had lost his mask beforehand as Luchawiki claims (something I doubt), it wouldn’t be the first time Kato begged the fans of Panama to “pardon” him from losing his mask.

Kato Kung Lee, el camina cuerdas (the rope-walker), has a bit of a mysterious background. We are all well aware of his escapades in Mexico, as one part of the trios Los Fantásticos, but not much more seems to be known of him, especially in his heydays in Panama. Perhaps the most internationally known Panamanian-born wrestler isn’t even listed on the Hall of Fame board, let alone given any further detailing.

From the bits and bobs I can cobble together, Lee debuted alongside the other greats Panama had to offer in 1965 as the tecnico El Valiente where he would go on to lose his mask (twice - with the first loss being “pardoned”) to his maestro Chamaco Castro and rebrand himself as Johnny el Valiente and, a little later, as the remasked Rayo de Oro. I think there’s room for people to argue that KKL has had a bit of an “ode” (nudge-nudge-wink-wink) to other fighters along his career. One might argue his mask is all too similar to something blurring the lines of el Baron and Kendo (who’d go on to take the KKL name much later, ironically) but the name “Rayo de Oro” is a little too on the nose. So much so newspapers in the 1970s would also tend to confuse him with the legendary Guatemalan Rayo Chapin:

Even if his name wasn’t quite to the level of Chapin, KKL was always determined to be a star and take his name around the world. Despite Panama’s flourishing local scene, and it being a great training ground for the stars of tomorrow to hone their craft (whether from South America, Mexico or even Canada (Mad Dog Vachon!), the hospitality never quite seemed to be reciprocated. You had the odd wrestler such as El Enterrador and Joe Panther travelling through Africa and Europe but nothing “historic” in the same way Panama’s role was for laying the foundations for the UWA in Mexico (which I’d now argue would never exist without Panama).

One of the most important promoters during Panama’s golden age, Sammy de la Guardia, lamented that it was never due to skill that Panamanians stayed within the confines of Panama. Rather, it was too expensive and too risky. There was no government funding, as Mexico had, those wrestlers who travelled did so on their own money (or the sponsorship of their promoter). With little offer for reimbursement or being able to see a local return on investment in building up a name, promoters seemed more interested in keeping their stars home.

Thus KKL would risk everything when he set out to stake his claim in foreign land before the end of the 1960s taking with him Los Hermanos Muerte 1 y 2 to Guatemala and Mexico. The latter duo would go on to great success in Guatemala and KKL would see success in both Mexico and Japan - a name many recognise to this day. Again, the most famous of all Panamanian born wrestlers.

Still, and much the same for most of these stars from Panama, KKL had a quiet send off, far from the luxuries those stars in Mexico would enjoy. He’d pass away the owner of a BBQ joint. The referee for this match, the most famous in Panama, Carlos Linares, would pass away as a flip flop manufacturer. The stalwart of Panama’s rudos, Sergio Galvez, to this day works in a little bakery opposite his local theatre. The passion was there and as much as wrestlers and promoters pass Panamanian wrestling off as their “pasatiempo y nada mas” (pass time and nothing more), there’s a little sadness that a country so poignant for lucha libre as a whole, didn’t get to enjoy the boom it more than helped usher in.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/5 - 6/11

AEW Dynamite 6/7 

Orange Cassidy vs Swerve Strickland

MD: Swerve is one of those wrestlers that I respect more than I like. He's always thinking, always looking, always trying to capitalize on the moment, always trying to get better along the lines that he thinks will get him over and will produce the best result. That doesn't always produce the best result with me, but he's over, he's dynamic, and I see no reason why they shouldn't push him to the moon. He's never rote, never trite, never boring. He's also a lot better as a heel because his offense comes at weird angles, takes an extra aggravating breath, and basically shouldn't work. As a babyface, it kind of drives me nuts. As a heel, you have to begrudgingly give him credit because he executes it and lays it out just well enough to make it almost, almost work. And that gap between working and not gets him heat, at least with me, and probably, subconsciously, with the crowd as well.

In some ways that makes him a mirror image of Cassidy, who takes such a classic babyface trickster formula, the Brer Rabbit/Bugs Bunny approach, overlays it with the slacker character, and underpins it all with more attention to detail and consequence than any wrestler has in years. At the end of the day, wrestling isn't about action. It's about reaction. It's in the word: selling. They're selling the reality of what they're doing through expressing pain, both immediate and lingering. And not despite the character, but because of the unblinking devotion to it and refusing to show any air in anything he does, the crowd buys every bit of what Cassidy is doing. Moreover, they bought everything Swerve brought to the table here, even if it was often infuriating on multiple levels. And most of all, they bought the threat of the title change. This felt like the moment, the straw that was going to break the camel's back, an ascendant force that was going to be too much for even wrestling's most unlikely enduring champion, now at the very end of his rope. 

All of that build, all of the weight behind this, the unique two-sides-of-the-same-coin nature of Cassidy and Swerve meant that they were able to get away with more than usual. They countered one another's mind games. They rode the house style of a full bit of heat and comeback before a big transition leading into the commercial break. They made everything take an extra attempt, an extra counter, and then paid it off with another piece of offense they wouldn't be able to otherwise hit. Then, later on they hit what they were initially going for when it mattered so much more. They called back the battle royal finish. They played with all the tropes: Nana up in the apron, it backfiring, neither of those leading to the actual finish, and so on. I had been a little hesitant to see them in an actual match. I thought it could have been the worst of both worlds, but they're so good and so smart and so aware of themselves and one another that it led to the best of both instead.

AEW House Rules 6/3

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs Matt Menard/Daniel Garcia

MD: We got this a little late but at least we got it. I, for one, am loving these house shows. The wrestlers are obviously trying things out. The dynamics are different. They have room to breathe. They can really work the crowd. The matches don't have to be built around commercials (though I often see that as a structural feature and not a bug on AEW TV). They really milked this one for all it was worth. Pre-match, Garcia comes out to jaw on the mic allowing Menard to low blow Darby. They then hammer Cassidy's midsection with the skateboard before the bell. He gets dragged out by officials making it two-on-one. Darby survives at first (and is smart enough to go for quick wins both here and in his hope spots) but when he goes for the early code red on Menard, Garcia, having gotten a blind tag, is in to boot him in the face. The heat that follows is solid, with the numbers game cutting off Darby's comeback attempts and Menard and Garcia showing their personalities and letting it breathe.

Obviously, every builds to Cassidy running out, bandaged up. It comes right after another big comeback spot from Darby and you think that the drama might have had Cassidy run out first and then Darby have to come back but it works for the moment as the match had clearly and cleanly established that no matter what Darby did, he wouldn't be able to pin one JAS member without the other breaking it up. Cassidy coming in like this after the hot tag felt like watching Super Astro or someone doing their beloved shtick in the feel good tercera of an 80s lucha trios. Once Darby was sufficiently recovered, they cycled into a fun, bomb filled finishing stretch. Just a nice piece of business overall that they couldn't get away with on TV quite the same way.

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Found Footage Friday: FANCAM TAKADA~! STEVE WRIGHT~! TOMMY RICH~! STORM~! BABY CHILD KILLER~!

Steve Wright vs. Nobuhiko Takada NJPW 10/11/83

MD: I'm glad to see a new Takada handheld. I'm actively excited to see a new Steve Wright match. This was the first eight minutes of a really good French Catch match but I was missing the next twenty-five. It had all of the chain wrestling you'd want along those lines, including up and overs and complex twists into mares and headstands out of holds, just a bit more measured and a bit slower. It never escalated to the point of fisticuffs though. Takada had to fight for every tiny advantage he got and Wright just breezed through whatever he could throw his way with skill and aplomb. It made for a compelling exhibition, though you knew deep down that every minuscule victory Takada achieved, no matter how hard he fought for it, would be snatched away a few seconds later. While things didn't boil over, we got a few seconds of rope running at the end, and even a Takada armdrag. Unfortunately, it wasn't the start of anything but instead the end of everything, as Wright deftly floated through right into a pin. I wish we had gotten twenty Wright matches in the French collection

Nobuhiko Takada vs. Dynamite Chris NJPW 11/16/1987

MD: This is probably a me thing, but I had a hard time taking this one seriously, especially coming off the Wright match. Chris was very, very intense. Very intense. It wafted off him as he charged in to attack and threw his arms around in strikes, and tossed a headbutt. Takada would lock him in a hold. Chris would get out. More intensity would follow. There wasn't really any rhyme or reason to it, certainly no build. There was never a sense that it was doing any particular sort of damage or might lead him to a victory. He wasn't making a statement or a point. It felt like a simulation where Benoit's slider was set to high. I'd rather not extrapolate that. I don't really blame Takada for this one. What are you even going to do with this kid, right? I mean, I know what Steve Wright would have done...

Tommy Rich vs. James Storm USA Championship Wrestling 6/2/01

MD: There are a lot of similarities between 00s Tracy Smothers and Tommy Rich: both were best off when they started a match by getting heat on the mic. Both could lean on someone meanly and credibly after using a dirty tactic to take over. Both could throw their head back wildly as they were taking a babyface comeback. Rich maybe had a bit more weight behind his stuff because he had a bit more weight in general, but other than that, Smothers had quite a bit more fuel left in the tank. He was a few years younger and his hard living must not have been quite as hard as Tommy Rich's hard living. There was also a spark and a twinkle to him that Tommy couldn't quite match in his mid-40s. That doesn't mean that Tommy isn't entertaining here; he is, starting on the mic and running down the crowd, letting himself get outwrestled and eat early crow, sneaking in just a beautiful low blow headbutt with a bit of ref distraction to take over, beating Storm all over the ring, and then feeding with dramatic mannerisms in the place of motion. It's all good stuff. It's just not a whole lot of any of it. Still, you add it all up and you get a fun ten minutes from a guy who absolutely knew what he was doing and a young guy who was willing to be led. It's just that it would have been better if it was Tracy instead.

ER: I'm not so certain this would have been better had it been Smothers instead of Rich, even though the format is exactly the same. I thought this was a really impressive Tommy Rich performance, especially considering he wasn't working that often in his mid-40s. If I went to the Nashville Fairgrounds in 2001 and saw Tommy Rich was on the card, I don't think I ever would have guessed he would work a match as actively as he worked this one. I would have expected him getting on the mic to tell people to shut up, and beyond that I might not have expected a whole lot. And what he gave was a WHOLE lot more than that. Even if he hadn't, the mic work had a moment so great that it would have made this worth watching had Wildfire not gone in and worked like he was 10 years younger, and that was a woman in the front row with a toddler standing up and screaming and pointing at Rich with one arm, while holding this rigid and confused SMALL toddler under her other arm like she was holding a violin case. This tiny boy's body was straight and the woman was just holding him like a teen would tuck their skateboard under their arm, all because Tommy Rich was being an obnoxious fat guy in a leather vest. So, already a full rec. 

But the match was an awesome Tommy performance. I expected him to control the match and build to a Storm comeback, but I didn't expect him to take some big bumps to start the match, then control ACTIVELY for as long as he did. After going over big for some armdrags and a hiptoss, look at how excellently Tommy sold his arm after headbutting Storm in the balls. He has that left arm dead at his side, flexing that bicep (which has an extra great layer of cool heel bullshit since he's a guy who clearly does not lift), rolling his shoulder like a pitcher after an offday bullpen session. Tommy takes over for most of the rest of the match, and he doesn't do an ounce of resting. He's incredibly active, dropping knees into Storm, throwing suplexes (he does a cool deadlift back suplex and follows it up with a rolling kneedrop), and keeps fighting back against Storm's very green urge to bump every move earlier than he should have (buddy, just go with the flow on those DDTs and neckbreakers, just wait for your cue), really getting to show off a 45 year old fat man's offense toolbag. And in between it all he had this great fat body flex, purposely squishing up his torso and flexing with no effort, so that no single muscle accidentally showed through the flab. When Storm finally makes his comeback, Rich takes a big bump off some punches, then gets backed into the ropes for an Irish whip and simply yanks Storm over the top instead, drawing the DQ and not caring a lick. 

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Espectáculos Promociones Panama: Mary Varela! Gata! Baby! Hiena!

Mary Varela/La Gata vs La Baby de California/La Hiena de Jalisco 7/30/89

GB: We’ve crossed over into a few new territories with this one. First of which is finally getting a glimpse of Panama lucha’s mecca, el Neco de la Guardia. Secondly, we’re wetting our toes again with a different promotion, as this is no longer Don Medina’s EPP but, rather, Empresa Arena Panama-Mexico (the same promotion that ran the Sandokan/Gigante Tataki handicap Matt wrote up all those months back). Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we seem to have encountered our first real piece of juicy drama out of Panama. Of course there’s the hilarity of el Africano’s debut and the stories of the riots and destruction of government property after Sandokan lost his mask to Anibal but those were anecdotes - words and nothing more. Here, though, it appears as if we have real footage of a wrestler exercising their “that doesn’t work for me, brother” clause.

disclosure: the interviews and the match are the only part of the feud we have on tape (among a few article clippings) so there’s going to be a lot of “connecting the dots” on my part. Apologies if something misses, but I’m really taking a stab in the dark here.

Over the course of around three months, from the end of April to the end of July, La Baby de California and Mary Varela were engaged in a programme with the eventual outcome of the apuesta match we are covering here. Throughout the feud, the American-Mexican La Baby would run Mary and, in turn, Panama down as “mugre” (filth) and you get the sense that Baby really did believe those words. You can also get the gist of it all with the opening salutations. Baby is all dolled up and carries herself as a slice of “better-than-you” hot shit. Mary, on the other hand, is a lot more plain, sporting a minnie Mouse shirt that’s sure to put her #1 on my 2 year old’s greatest wrestler ever list. Instead of Baby’s judgmental eyes, she appears warm, friendly and akin to an old friend you’ve bumped into waiting for the metro. You can see she’s proud by her stance, she knows she’s hot shit but she won’t tell you that and she won’t make you feel less than that.

As the promos move forward, Baby gets a little scathing in her remarks. Despite Mary’s career victories over other Mexican talent such as Lola González, Irma Aguilar, La Monster and Martha Villalobos, Baby calls her worthless. There’s venom in the way she spits things with almost a manner of truth to her words. Again, as if she is buying what she’s selling. In the second promo of the video, a week before their apuesta, Baby says she doesn’t want to keep Mary’s hair. Of course, she promises to humiliate Mary by beating her in front of her fans but she refuses to take her hair as a trophy. She doesn’t want something “filthy like [Mary]”. Mary is slightly more composed but there’s a moment where things seemingly breakdown on set and Ricardo Pitti almost rolls his eyes in a way to indicate he’s not amused by these two.

But that’s our build. We have three months of everything centering on Mary and Baby. Leading in, the Relevos Increíbles two weeks earlier even pits the pairings as Baby/Gata vs Mary/Hiena. Gata/Hiena feel like afterthoughts along the way and their lack of appearances in the promos is indicative of this, too.

Then, the match happens and it all goes out the window. Panama has this tradition of putting off the big attractions in a match until later. They don’t tease and puppeteer things as you’d expect, with the feuding heel egging the face into the ring before tagging themselves out. Rather, it’s something that is progressed to after the opposite pairings have had their workover/shine (e.g. Hiena/Mary and Baby/Gata leading to Hiena/Gata and, the draw, Mary/Baby). Here, after some decent bloodletting to fill out the pattern, we come to Mary/Baby. However, Baby is nowhere to be seen. She’s jackjacking someone in the crowd on the opposite side of the stadium floor. It appears Hiena calls for her but by then Mary’s made her mind up. She beelines for the approaching Baby but, as they’re about to lock up, sidesteps her and attacks Hiena instead.

By this point, I think we can understand why. By the end of the match, we can almost sympathise with why. La Baby, for all the positives she does bring to the match (her size and smack talk) has no interest in wrestling a match that’s not on her terms. Poor Gata has her work cut out for her in terms of having to reset spots because Baby has different intentions in mind. Speaking of work, Mary really went into overdrive from this point and starts wrestling Hiena as the centerpiece with all of the other bad bullshit going on as fluff the audience should ignore. Hiena’s game for the most part and it gives us some really great visuals between the gore and mask-ripping - you’d expect so with her maestros being Villano I and Shadito Cruz. In fact, there’s a moment where she collapses and, in complete panic, scoots backwards on her knees away from Mary as they brawl around the ring. It’s something I can’t recall seeing before but it’s such a logical way to get to the next point without things becoming too cooperative. A lot of much more acclaimed wrestlers could learn to steal that spot instead of the walk-and-brawl nonsense we see from them.

As the match wears on, Mary has the audience eating out of the palm of her hands. So much, actually, that the audience, for the briefest of seconds, completely forgets Baby/Gata is existing on the periphery as they erupt in triumph after Mary beats Hiena. A hushed silence envelopes the room before Gata forcefully puts Baby down and the crowd erupts once more. Not for Gata but for Mary and for the triumph of Panama’s “mugre”.

We’re always quick to note how passionate Panamanian fans are for their sport, even if the attendance figures don’t quite bode well. Here, though, Neco de la Guardia was packed to the brim with diehard fans. Despite a loaded card with Sandokan/Invaider 1 (not that one) and being fresh off Ciclon/Baron taking the masks of the visiting Ray Tony/Viernes Negro, the crowd was here for one purpose - Mary.

MD: This was a historical drawing match all from all appearances and it should be examined and known as that. It was worked in one fall and went against expectations, in as, from what we can tell (and as Graham expounded upon), the build seemed to be primarily between Baby and Varela but the pairings were primarily Baby with Gata and Varela with Hiena. That was true at the beginning, when Hiena rushed the ring at Varela, in the middle when Baby and Gata started the mask ripping, and at the end when Varela submitted Hiena and Gata submitted Baby.

Baby was quite the heatseeker. She had the size of a Wendi Richter (and maybe elements of the sportiness as well, with her football jersey with #44 on it) and, how do I put this... the unearned valor of a Sexy Star, full of swagger but sure as heck not smooth in there. At one point she had to bump through the ropes after a missed shot and I can't quite get the physics of what happened to make sense. But hey, the fans really, really wanted to see her lose. It does make me wonder if Varela worked Hiena (who seemed far more capable) by choice. You think they'd switch back for the finish but by the end of it, between the size-related bullying and the mask ripping, the fans wanted to see Gata give Baby her comeuppance even if Varela was the one they were chanting for. Varela, by the way, clearly knew what she was doing. I've mentioned it plenty, but what I look for in these matches as much as anything else is that golden moment of heroic comeback, that one reversal or punch or dodge where everything changes, and Varela knew how to milk it and maximize it, and if you can do that, the sky's the limit. This had blood, chaos, mask ripping, and big comebacks. It may have lacked smoothness and overall cohesion but you look the other way on those in mask matches when the pop at the pop at the end bleeds through the screen even thirty five years later.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/29 - 6/4

AEW Dynamite 5/31

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs. Gates of Agony

MD: This had a few masters to serve. It followed right after the massive heatseeking segment with Callis and Takeshita so you had to bring the crowd back to reality with something that balanced heat with big spots and a fun finish. They were rebuilding Darby after he took the pin in the 4-way at the PPV. They were hyping up the big house show draw of the Darby/Cassidy team. They were continuing the story of Cassidy going through a lot of pain and here doubling down on it with Swerve's heaters (they're all heaters for swerve really). 

I liked the Dustin vs. Kaun match but I think this worked better. Here, Kaun didn't have to look up at his opponent which let him tap into just a bit more intensity and come off like a beast. I liked the bit where, once they took advantage off of Toa's pounce, Kaun rushed punctuated the transition to heat by pulling Cassidy in from the outside and taking him out. Toa, of course, always comes off like a beast. Except for in out of character interviews, where he comes off like the best guy. Someday, he'll be a huge babyface. Here, he was a monster. I liked how Darby and Cassidy didn't try all of their signature spots early. That's the house style, to try the familiar things, have them blocked, have them pay off later in the match. They did hit them early in the match but due to the unique qualities of the Gates, they got shut down trying even basic stuff early. It gave things a different feel and really put over the Kaun and Toa. It was a nice balance where Cassidy and Darby did some things that they could only do with larger opponents and Kaun and Toa did some things that could best be done with smaller ones. Nothing was forced or contrived based on spots that anyone felt like they had to get in. I know some people might complain but I'd certainly be happy to see this specific match up with a couple thousand other people in a C-town. 

Speaking of House Rules, as of the writing of this, there were only three matches fancammed and uploaded from the weekend shows. They're all worth watching. Ruby and Britt had a hilarious bit where Ruby tried to explain to Bryce that the spraypaint was for her hair. Lethal had to go far, far out of his way to get the fans to turn on him. And Caster found the best kid to do Bowens' part after having an exaggerated house show work the leg match with heel trainer Pat Buck. They're definitely working these differently than on TV and they're worth going out of your way to find. Hopefully whenever a streaming deal hits, we get to see all of these.

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Found Footage Friday: SUDDEN IMPACT~! VS~! DISTURBING BEHAVIOR~! IN A CAGE~! WITH DOUG GILBERT~!

Sudden Impact vs. Disturbing Behavior NWA Main Event 6/23/01

MD: The gameplan was to watch the one set up match and then the cage match, but then I realized this was actually a better set up match since it led to the Doug Gilbert save, so now we're just giving the week up to this stuff. I liked this a lot though, probably even more than the cage match. It was a non-title street fight (Disturbing Behavior were the champs). The heels took almost all of this, with Renesto just tossing his opponent into a wall to begin. He'd play crowd control whenever Lane started to fire back on Daniels, which was often actually; there was a real Jamie Noble style pitbull attitude he had here.

The match opened up when Renesto chucked a chair off the top rope to the floor and took out one of Sudden Impact. From there, they were both consistent and creative (but in a basic and straightforward way) with the violence. Gatlin took a great skidding bump, head first, into a chair lodged in the corner. They also absolutely took his head off with a knee drop off the second rope with his head stuck in the chair. Lane would channel that fire and eventually come back just long enough for them to get a fluke crucifix win. Post match continued the beatdown with Gilbert making the save to set up the cage match. My big takeaway is that I want to seek out more Renesto. Daniels was solid (and had a great elbow drop in this one, for instance), but Renesto came off like a scuzzy star, one of those guys that probably just needed a break to become a cult favorite on the undercard of a national promotion.

Doug Gilbert/Sudden Impact vs. Ricky Murdoch/Disturbing Behavior (cage) NWA Nashville 6/23/01

MD: Thirty minutes of footage, half of which was Doug Gilbert, bloodied and battered, holding court in the center of the cage and goading heels to run into his fist and back body drop. Not a bad thing certainly. The match itself felt like a throwback. There were almost no set spots in here, maybe one or two big crotchings from off the top of the cage onto the top rope. Almost everything was violence and guys getting tossed into the cage. There wasn't even the normal sort of ebb and flow you'd expect out of it where one side holds advantage and the other comes back all at once. At times it felt like multiple singles brawls going on at once, with the advantage mixed. On some level that might have made it seem more real or natural or organic, but I don't think it made it more narratively compelling. I will say that some of was because of Ricky Murdoch's superior size. Compared to everyone else in there, he had a certain WALTER size and shape to him, at least relatively. He was still more than happy to go flying into the cage and bleed. He was mostly paired with Sudden Impact, with Renesto and Daniels more than happy to have their punches blocked and returned again and again by Gilbert. It got a little repetitive after a while but it was something I didn't mind seeing over and over. About midway through they started trying to climb over which is almost never the way you want a cage match to turn, but it led to a great post-match mauling where the heels had Gilbert alone in the cage and were just destroying him. That led to Doug's big homecoming promo and him getting revenge on his terms. This was solid chaos even if you won't necessarily remember much of it later other than what Doug did and maybe Murdoch hefting himself into the cage repeatedly.

Disturbing Behavior (Jeff "The Crippler" Daniels/Tim Renesto) vs. Sudden Impact (Chris Gatlin/Steve Lane) NWA Main Event 2011

MD: Bryan Turner posts a lot. He's a boon to the community. You should go out of your way to support him. He posts tapes as he comes across them though, so sometimes things are out of order or you don't get the build. Moreover, it's hard to get a sense of what to check out and what not to. If a name isn't entirely familiar sometimes it's tough to know when to dive in given limited time. Full disclosure here: I wanted to watch the cage match with Doug Gilbert but I wasn't sure exactly who I was dealing with in Disturbing Behavior and Sudden Impact, so I figured I'd check out this ten minute TV match.

Usually with these, you get a commercial break, maybe it comes in JIP, and they almost never give away clean finishes on TV (and well they shouldn't!). They didn't here as this ended shortly after the hot tag with interference. Everything about these indies at this time was to build to the live card and the TV was just a vehicle to get there. It means that it's often worth watching but not often worth writing about. Disturbing Behavior was Jeff "The Crippler" Daniels and the Modern Day Assassin Tim Renesto, Tom's son. He wrestled as Tim Tall Tree throughout most of the 80s, including a NJPW tour in 1981 (the third guy in an Inoki/Choshu/Fujinami vs. Billy Crusher/Hogan tag). Daniels was enhancement for Memphis and Smoky Mountain in the 90s.

The two of them, together stand out pretty well as a journeyman tag team in 2001 Nashville however. They take most of the footage we have here and are scuzzy and credible, just like you'd want, laying in shots, cutting off the ring, beating up the young guy. Daniels had more size and the sort of stomp-punches/kicks that feel like comfort food, but Renesto stood out more with a wiry explosiveness, looking like a strung out 70s prog rock bassist ready to skid across the ring with a legdrop or toss his bony frame into a guy in the corner with full abandon. I don't have a ton to say about Gatlin and Lane here, though I think Gatlin was the FIP in there and he did a good enough job crawling for the ropes and garnering sympathy throughout. Maybe we'll have more takeaways from the cage match.

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