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.