Found Footage Friday: SANTO VS CASAS~! DEATON~! KABUKI~! TINIEBLAS~! WAGNER~! ABBY~! TAUE~! SMOTHERS~!

Hijo del Santo/Tinieblas Jr. vs. Negro Casas/Dr. Wagner Jr. WWO

MD: This is almost certainly Found and not New and there are a couple of probably new videos on the channel but I wanted to watch Santo vs Casas so that's what we're watching. This was 2/3 falls and went closer to 15 as there was a pre-taped interview with Tinieblas after the primera. That's the only Alushe appearance in case you're wondering. The main pairings were Wagner and Tinieblas and Casas and Santo. You would have gotten a much higher floor if things were reversed but a lower ceiling. That meant we got just a bit of plodding Tinieblas matwork and then a lot of Santo vs Casas and some ginger Tinieblas rope running and then more Santo vs Casas. Those exchanges were workmanlike and smooth, nothing out of the norm but the norm is very good and I appreciated them all the more for the contrast. When things broke down for the finish, Tinieblas was trying his best (and he did with the comeback in the tercera too) and he hit an absolutely massive splash off the top (and later a big dive).

The beatdown in the segunda was launched by a Casas foul as the ref was distracted and was solid, with mask pulling building pressure up for Santo to do his thing on the comeback. I liked how in the double leg rollback on Tinieblas to get him to tap, Casas was also flexing the wrist down. There's almost nothing better in wrestling than a heated Santo comeback, and it led a fun finishing stretch where Tinieblas had Casas in a hold, Wagner was working Tinieblas' mask, and Santo was (most efficiently) working Wagner's, all at once. Actual finish was Casas bumping himself into the ropes and falling on his face, with Santo slipping on the caballo lighting-fast. Beautiful stuff. This probably isn't top half for Santo vs Casas matches but just fun for them is pretty great for anyone else.

Abdullah the Butcher/Joel Deaton vs. Great Kabuki/Akira Taue AJPW 10/20/89

MD: As much as we love Taue around here, he was a bit of a late starter relative to his peers. You don't really see what he might become until later into 1990 when he was teaming with Jumbo against the superheavyweight foreigners and even then, you see it more with the feud with Kawada in early 91. Back here in 89, as I've noted before, it would have been far easier to bet on Shunji Takano as the next giant Japanese star. Even Tenryu and Hansen weren't able to pull that fire out of him; quite the opposite. He came out looking more timid when facing them, not less.

Deaton, on the other hand, was a pretty ideal opponent for him and this was probably the best I've ever seen him look in 89. He had size and presence and energy but came off like a poor man's Hansen for the most part. There was still value to that lower down the card or in main event six-mans and he matched up perfectly here with Taue, giving him someone worthwhile that he could still lean on. Kabuki might have taken over on offense, but Taue stood tall, hanging on to a hold through a chinbreaker or cutting him off when he attempted to make it to Abdullah. Whenever Abdullah did get in, however, he shut things down quickly. Even when Taue tried to interfere to help Kabuki, Abby, while not breaking the hold, blocked Taue's shot and took him out with a throat chop. He was able to get a few shots in on him towards the end, but all it took was one missed dropkick for Abby to be able to drop the elbow and end it. I'd call this a good missing link on Taue's road to what he'd become though.

ER: One of the joys of handheld All Japan wrestling is getting to hear two guys having some kind of conversation about Joel Deaton. Perhaps one fan asking who the tall American guy was and the another fan saying "Deaton" several times. I thought Joel Deaton looked great in this match. Deaton's All Japan run was real fortuitous, coming at the end of a long run as a Crockett territory job guy as one half of the Thunderfoots, and then suddenly getting a 5 year mostly full time run as an All Japan mid card gaijin. And  Joel Deaton, for a guy we've barely written about here, seems like a guy we should be seeking out and writing about more. I thought Deaton was much less a Stan Hansen clone and much more someone who Dustin Rhodes would be within a few years. It might sound hyperbolic to say that Joel Deaton was 1993 Dustin Rhodes - I've barely watched and written about Deaton - but watch him in this match and tell me otherwise. 

He's a big guy, standing over Taue before Taue was more lumbering, and he works quick. He's great at setting up offense and has a lot of cool offense of his own. But his bumping and set ups are the highlight: How he runs at Kabuki with a low cutting missed back elbow and clothesline before running even faster throat first into a Kabuki thrust. Kabuki's throat thrusts are one of my favorite wrestling strikes ever and Deaton leans into every one of them and whips his full head of hair back in ways that HHH could never sell. He takes a backdrop as high as Dustin, and if you thought he ran into Kabuki's hand earlier you should see how recklessly fast he runs into a thrust kick in the finishing stretch. Deaton ran into Kabuki's foot so fast and so painfully that it made me want to go through every single handheld Deaton match we have. I'm a Deaton Guy now. 

I watch much less early Taue than I do later Taue but he seemed like a different cool version of Taue already here. I loved when Deaton tried to jawbreaker his way out of a Taue chinlock but Taue just held on. I'm not sure I've ever seen that before and Taue has the lumbering smothering to pull it off. The way he locks in his standing sleeper after and quickly leans back into and over Deaton looked great, forcing his physics onto Deaton. Deaton really looks like he gets under Taue's skin when he rocks him with a huge knife edge while Taue is waiting on the apron, and Taue gets in two hard overhand chops to Deaton's neck before the ref can drag him out of the ring. Deaton is really like a hybrid Taue/Dustin, which is an incredible compliment, but damn when Deaton grabbed a slick ankle pick to keep Taue in the corner while tagging out, and later in the match Taue grabbed one of his own to do the same, I was in love with these two really tall guys taking advantage of the other's long legs. 

I thought everybody looked great, really. This show was taped for TV (and famously had three title changes on it) and these guys worked snug and stiff like they were on a big TV show and not just a Nagoya gymnasium. Kabuki's strikes are like if Great Muta's strikes actually looked good, and him assaulting Abby while Abby was trying to step through the ropes was a highlight of a match filled with them. Also, Abdullah hits his full body shoulderblocks so hard that I can feel them through the handheld from the back row of this gym. He runs over Kabuki so hard it was like every participant - outside of Abby - was fighting to see who could take the most brain-jarring back bump. I don't know if I like any wrestling more than I like All Japan handhelds. I'm not convinced there is such a thing as a bad All Japan handheld match. When we find them we need to destroy them, like Dead tapers shutting down circulation of a show where Jerry nodded off. 

Tracy Smothers vs. Rowdy Red MWA 1996

MD: Best as I can tell, this was a Hair vs. Reputation match where Smothers put his reputation up against Red's hair with a fifteen minute time limit. He had a second who went back to the locker room after the entrance though we'd see him at the end. I can't tell you a single thing about Red contextually, but he played the fired up local babyface pretty well here. Early on Smothers oscillated between going for a quick roll up and stalling, all building to Red getting a near fall on him with a small package of his own.

The heat was a lot of fun with Smothers really bullying Red. He took over by using the ref as a wedge in the corner to sneak in some shots and everything he did looked great. The best of it was maybe this jumping hook kick he did after some of his really nice jabs. When Red got hope spots with punches of his own, it didn't matter how they looked because of how Smothers was selling them. As they got close to the time limit, Smothers couldn't put him away, even after Red missed a legdrop off the top. Eventually, after two mule kick low blows by Red, Smothers' pal came out only to get accidentally clocked by Smothers, leading to a crowd-pleasing roll up win at the last second. Smothers, of course, proclaimed he'd never be coming back on the mic after the match. This probably had something of a low ceiling but it crashed into it at full speed.