Found Footage Friday: MAEDA~! MURDOCH~! BLEARS~! ROMERO~! KOX~! DANCIN' DICK~!

Dancing Dick Nelson vs. Herb Gerwig (Killer Karl Kox) Buffalo Late 1950s

MD: Another upload from the family of Killer Karl Kox. This was before he had the gimmick. He was the straight man here to the Dancing Polar Bear from Lansing Michigan, Dick Nelson. Nelson had a bit of Rikki Starr in him, but maybe by way of an elk's lodge. He had musical notes on his jacket and just didn't stop, a constant blur of motion as he boogied to a song only in his own head. He was still a scrapper however. They clashed before the bell and Gerwig went right over, the victim of a monkey flip. He took a powder and Nelson kept on dancing.

Gerwig played the straight man here, feeding as much as anything else. Nelson was a scrapper. We saw a couple of colorful bumps and some stooging from Gerwig but he wasn't fully formed yet. He was there to be Nelson's dance partner, which meant eating his share of monkey flips until he managed to take over with some 60+ year old hide the object. Until he ate yet another monkey flip and it was all over.

ER: How gigantic was this ring to make Karl Kox - erm, Herb Gerwig - look like a normal size, or even small, man? A normal size man who somehow doesn't throw a punch, and is only there to be upset by Dancin Dick, a man wearing a homemade sweater with musical notes on it. Dancin Dick also has this weird compulsion to constantly smooth his hair forward and touch his face. He's like a one man 3 Stooges, just constantly slapping his hair forward and, as commentary says, "being realll herky jerky in there". Gerwig is really good at feeding for him, playing into all the shtick. He takes a pre-bell monkey flip right on his butt, there's a great spot where he catches one of Dick's kicks and does a slick single leg takedown only to get upset when Dick crawls through his legs. There's a complicated spot where Nelson holds Gerwig's legs spread and starts mule kicking every time Gerwig tries to sit up, and Gerwig could not have fed for it better. This was not really a "full" match as Nelson got the pin by kind of just lying down on Gerwig (and Gerwig's hidden weapon raking across Nelson's eyes never went anywhere once it stopped) and you wouldn't really have been able to tell what kind of wrestler Karl Kox was going to become, but I'm loving these early career looks at the legend. 

Lord James Blears vs. Enrique Romero (NAWA Long Beach, CA, 03/10/1961)

MD: This was mostly a friendly contest even if Blears had a number of "sharp tricks." You get the sense that he had been reviled at some point but was just a wrestler with affectations now, including the monocle he took off before the match. Romero (Who I assume is a young Ricky Romero) had the athleticism advantage but Blears would sneak a kick around and into his back or tap on said back in order to trick him into breaking the hold, that sort of thing. Blears also had this great way putting on various leglocks or deathlocks but then building to a teeter totter fall. 

It got a little chippy after Blears hit one two many of those sneak around kicks including a huge clubber to the back by Romero but for the most part it was them working in and out of holds. That included a great rolling arm scissors by Blears and both men trading arm pullers. Blears had a great cut off where he kicked the back of Romero's head and then a nice bridging flip over to escape Romero's later on. This built to a nasty drop toehold into a leg stretch by Blears but Romero escaped and hit a shoulder tackle only for the bell to ring as the time limit expired. Fun stuff though it did seem like Blears was leading for the most part.

Akira Maeda vs. Dick Murdoch NJPW 5/17/86

MD:  If you're keeping track, we already had a June 1986 Maeda vs. Murdoch match that was part of the IWGP League and set up a Murdoch vs. Inoki final with a count out (can't have Inoki vs. Maeda in a tournament final because one of them would have had to lose after all). This was a month earlier with lower stakes, and it felt a little like a UWF match instead. 

Maeda spent a lot of it targeting the arm while Murdoch just tried to contain him and stretch him however he could. They worked a headlock right back into a hammerlock quite a bit which was the sort of stooging that Murdoch could still make work within this setting. Murdoch sold it throughout in large and small ways. Whenever Maeda tried to escalate to kicks, Murdoch shut him down, first by fighting out of the corner and pressing his head back over the top rope to elbow him in the nose and then later, after a great spin wheel kick to the face, by just biting his nose. It had highs and lows, escalating to suplexes and charges into the corner, and then ultimately, to the two of them spilling out so it could get thrown out. Pretty amazing performance to show Murdoch's versatility (which we know from the first two thirds of the Kox match, but...). He could do all the things we know him for but he could do this as well.

ER: I thought this was really excellent and provides some really impressive context for Murdoch. The next night he has one of the best matches of his career against Inoki, a grueling 30 minute match that might have been Inoki's best match of the decade. It is Dick Murdoch working essentially shootstyle, a look at Murdoch in UWF that we cruelly never got to see, and you will be shocked at how proficient he is. Well, maybe not shocked, because anyone reading this is already going to know that Murdoch is great at wrestling, but it's kind of amazing to see how well he works against a real shooter, how he responds to all kinds of kicks, how he handles takedowns, and how he doesn't shy away from any of it. It is not overt Shootstyle Murdoch, but he doesn't wrestle this like a typical Dick match. For an almost 20 minute match he does not use many punches, saving them for moments where they really stand out. When Maeda backs him into the corner with kicks - hard kicks, Murdoch absorbing them with his arm and body - that's when he comes out of the corner landing a couple. 

This was never a punch out in any way, but when Murdoch threw any of his few punches it was always in a way that made you go "oh yeah this could go that way at any time". I love how he sells Maeda's big dropkick, running face first into it and dropping to his knees, holding his face. That's a style. Murdoch wrestles with style that is unmistakably his own. This handheld could have been barely visible and I would have instantly recognized the way his butt and legs look during a north-south headlock. Nobody can work Murdoch's style. Our styles are too homogeneous now. The wrestlers who all wrestle the same all look to those who wrestle like them to further themselves wrestling like themselves. But then Murdoch punches Maeda and briefly holds him still so he can hit his own - impressive and ugly - heavy dropkick to knock Maeda to the floor. I don't know how exactly Murdoch was deemed the winner - they were both outside the ring when the bell sounded - but that's not important. This is an essential match in the story of Dick.