Found Footage Friday: DUSTIN~! INOUE~! STEEL~! BATES~! CASAS~! MARKUS~! ESPANTO~! RAMBO~! PANTERITA~! ARANDU~! SHEIK~! SULTAN~!

MD: So long as Roy keeps posting new lucha, we're going to take a look at it so nothing slips through the cracks. That is the service we provide. It's just going to take a while. Don't worry. We've been at this for five+ years. We'll get to, let's say, the Jumbo vs Billy Robinson hour-long match that just showed up unclipped for the first time ever. Eventually. Thankfully I don't have to cover the Lawler vs. Dundee 2011 match that Bryan Turner just uploaded since Phil and Tom were actually there. Still, we'll slip in some other things when we can. 

Negro Casas/Gran Markus Jr/Angel Blanco Jr vs. Tigre Canadiense/Jalisco/America CMLL 1992

MD: Really fun rudo side here. They started with the beatdown so that was a good thing. Just constant motion and violence. They'd put someone in the ropes and nail him and switch to the next guy doing it, so ona nd so forth. Casas was a ball of energy. We're talking DDTs on the ground and bursting across the ring and then pointing and laughing to the crowd. Every Negro Casas match you see him do something interesting or unique; a different pose or interaction with the ref or sell. Here at the end of the primera, instead of the standard lift and drop (like a spinebuster slam) that is typical in lucha to set up a submission he spun around once or twice with it, just to add some flair to it. I've never seen him do it before and I'll probably never see him do it again but that's Casas for you. He also had a great with America at the end of the segunda where he drew him in after his exchange with Angel Blanco, just completely disrupting the structure and then took an awesome bump over the top rope after they rolled around the ring. Then on the finish in the tercera, he turned a Saito Suplex into a German for the hell of it (again, something I've neve seen him do before). That's our Negro Casas.

Markus and Angel Blanco were pretty natural partners, a mini Ola Blanca and all of these guys worked well together. Markus always had big meaty shots and he based well for Jalisco in their one exchange. The Angel Blanco vs Jalisco exchange wasn't as strong. Tigre Canadiense did silly walks across the ring and had a punchable face. He was a fine foil for Casas but then who wasn't? America hit an awesome dive over Jalisco to set up the finish in the tercera, but I don't have a ton to say about any of the tecnicos really. Fun match that didn't wear out its welcome though.

Tigre Canadiense/Monarka/Colosso vs. Rambo/Espanto Jr./Corsario Negro CMLL 1992

MD: This one had me a little more worried. All you really need to know about it though is that it was the Rambo show. He was all over this and in a pretty good way. I don't think it had much more to offer though. In the primera, he was naturally paired with Colosso and his camo pants. This was a great one-time act as Rambo kept going for nerve holds and Colosso just flexed his way out of them. Then Colosso put one of his own and Rambo sold it in a panic, before shifting to a bearhug; somehow this ended with the more-or-less rudo ref in a bearhug, hilarity ensuing. I wouldn't want this act ever week but it was a good one time thing.

The transition to rudo beatdown in the segunda was great, with Rambo getting accidentally hefted over the top by his own partner. They start to tease the break up but finally swarm and hug. He had pretty solid chops and a running powerslam and then stooged all over during the comeback. Our Canadian tiger friend continued to dance funny, throw dropkicks, and be punchable. His pre-match interview was one minute away from him saying "totally tubular." Otherwise, these guys were fine. I wanted to see more out of Corsario Negro; he was tubby and I kept expecting him to do something cool because of it but nope, nothing. This was a one man Rambo show.

Panterita del Ring/Ciclon Ramirez/Aguila Solitaria vs. Arandu/Gran Sheik/Sultan Gargola CMLL 1992

MD: Panterita is obviously Safari/Epheso, and a helpful youtube commenter is saying that Ramirez was also Pegaso and Tiburon, the Sultan was Pancho Zapata, Jr, the Sheik was Ari el Gato Romero. So hopefully that helps someone. I wasn't too sure what to expect here and the primera didn't help. Everyone was fairly competent during the initial exchanges, even if Sheik (who did a lot of the work) didn't have a look to match his partners. Arandu looked especially good (surprisingly good?) in there against both Panterita and Ramirez.

It really opened up with the rudo beatdown though. The central story here was Arandu vs Panterita and they did a great job portraying hatred and violence. Arandu smashed Panterita into the seats again and again and Panterita came back not once but twice with fiery punches and revenge shots. Arandu wasn't afraid in the least to bump over the top all the way out of the ring. They were heating up an apueastas match that I think we get later on and from the opening cageyness of Arandu all the way to Panterita's flip dive to the floor to set up the finish, they made me want to see it. Ramirez had a belt and felt like a bigger deal overall but Panterita really gave off the vibe of a local hero in this one.

Ace Steel/Dustin Rhodes vs. Masao Inoue/Jason Bates WLW 9/25/04

MD: For some reason they gave us the hype promos for the show as inserts. This at least tells me that Steel and Bates used to be partners and that Dustin was stepping in for Trevor, which let Ace Steel do a Dusty impression. After some feeling out between Bates and Steel, Dustin tags in. There's a bit early on with him paired with Bates where he takes a punch in the corner. I have literally no idea how good or bad the punch was because Dustin's selling was so great. He leaned into it and then dropped immediately in the corner. Then he comes back and hits a beautiful shot of his own and it was twenty seconds of absolutely ideal pro wrestling. Slightly more dubious was Steel deciding to do the flip, flop, and fly, with some iffy punches while Dustin watching on the apron, but he was a good enough sport to come in for tandem figure-fours with Ace. Say what you will about the guy but always did come off as slightly deranged.

The crowd was full of not just the one guy who kept shouting for Ace to "go crazy" but a bunch of kids too, and they ate up the southern tag structure of Dustin rushing in to try to help his partner and Bates/Inoue taking advantage of it. It wasn't a big crowd but it was a buzzing one. Inoue wrestled this like he was Masa Saito or something, with big slams and eye rakes and double clotheslines (well, the eye rake I'd expect out of him). He ate a pretty comedic heel miscommunication version of the Shattered Dreams on the finish, but both he and Dustin were supporting players for whatever was going on with Bates and Steel. While I think they got pretty good mileage out of Dustin, and while it was surreal to see Inoue there at all, I'm not sure they got all that much out of his presence in the match.

ER: I am just in love with NOAH sending Masao Inoue as their representative for Harley Race's 5th anniversary show. This was a crowd made up of 80% children and one man who with all sincerity yelled "Get Crazy, Ace!" at least a dozen times, in a way where he wasn't seeking attention for himself, he just really wanted to see Ace Steel get crazy. This is an enthusiastic crowd at a family wrestling show on a Saturday night, who like heels to tell them to shut up in the kind of way where you can tell he really isn't the kind of guy who would tell a bunch of children to SU. There is no need to send Misawa or Kobashi. This is a show where you send the 27th man on your hierarchy out to and give him a two week American vacation. Masao Inoue is exactly the same person as Jun Akiyama would have been to Eldon, MO, and nobody in attendance was upset that they didn't get Takayama, the way 12 year old me was upset when I went to a Giants fan day in 1993 hoping to meet Barry Bonds and Will Clark and Rod Beck but instead wound up with indifferent pictures of me with Steve Scarsone and JR Phillips. 

The ring announcer has never heard a single word of Japanese in his life. He has never heard or said the name Masao Inoue before and proceeds to announce him as "Muhsoaaa Hagaoooooooowaaaa", somewhere between Adele Vazeem and covering your mouth with your hand so the parking attendant at your job somehow won't notice that you wiped your mouth every time you mumbled his guessed name. Inoue comes out in full Minoru Suzuki head towel and makes his wrist tape eye rubs and eye rakes the focal point of his Missouri offense.

I really need to go through my spindles of NOAH dvds to see if I have Jason Bates/Akitoshi Saito or Ace Steel/Haruka Eigen. 

Inoue does fun theatrical hopping body slams, with a little leg kicked out at the end, like a Leprechaun doing a slam in a musical. He also big times a lot of Dustin's strikes, not moving his head at all on 80% of Dustin's punches. I'm no lip reader, and I'm certainly no mind reader, but Dustin Rhodes privately questions on the apron whether or not Kishin Kawabata would have been this casually unprofessional. This match pioneers the idiotic "needlessly long inset promo over the actual action" and peaks the genre by playing Dustin's promo over his entire hot tag, 8 minutes after everyone else's inset promo had ended. He delivers his promo in a harsh whisper as if he recorded it in a public restroom and didn't want anyone else to know he was cutting a wrestling promo in the last stall. Jason Bates eating a Dustin drop toehold face first into Inoue's balls and getting high cradled by Dustin is an EXCELLENT finish to an event that sent dozens of kids home happy, laughing at the name Bull Schmitt one more time before their mothers tell them "I said no MORE."