70s Joshi on Wednesday: Komine! Hanawa!

36. 1979.07.XX - 02 Hiroko Komine vs. Seiko Hanawa

K: We’d consider this a ‘rookie match’ in later years but the average experience level is so low in the company at this point that this isn’t quite worked like that. The spirit of the thing is done correctly, it constantly feels heated and that they’re both trying hard to win the match and getting mad at each other. That bit of pettiness at the end where Hanawa gets one last spiteful smack in is the kind of thing I’m talking about and what AJW excelled in stylistically. The mechanics and structure of the match were uninspired. The standard shine, heat, comeback stuff but there wasn’t really anything of interest in how it progressed or memorable moments, they just went out and did their match while getting the vibe of the thing right.

*3/4

MD: These two nominally competing for a spot on the Japan national team for the upcoming series vs the US women. Komine was in black and was more the rookie and Hanawa was in yellow. It was spirited but the transitions weren’t great, except for the first one which was Komine breaking out of a bodyscissors by grabbing Hanawa by the ears and lifting her up. She then ran her face across the top rope and rubbed her boot into it and it was all pretty good for a bit. The comeback was just Hanawa getting behind her and using a waistlock to drop her for an awkward rolling bodyscissors. From there it was back and forth and they worked hard but I’m not sure it entirely flowed. Hanawa finally came out on top, winning with a figure four. Ok when they were going but I wouldn’t say it all came together.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: The Beast Mortos Debuts in AEW

 

6. The Beast Mortos vs. Rey Fenix AEW Collision 4/27/24

ER: I love a debut that feels like a real debut. The Beast Mortos is new, Debuting. Black Taurus is not new at all. Black Taurus has been almost everywhere, all over the place, constantly, for at least 5 years now. You have had multiple chances to see Black Taurus wrestle live in a city near you within the last 5 years. He's done all of the Super Indies, he's been one of the few hundred people on MLW's roster, one of the few dozen to wrestle on a show where Ric Flair died, he even wrestled multiple matches on AXS TV for a mudshow fed that airs after old episodes of That Metal Show with Eddie Trunk. He's been everywhere, doing his great thing, and now he's on real TV against a guy he's been doing that great thing against for over a decade. AEW putting guys on TV specifically to try to capture the magic of someone seeing Rey Mysterio vs. Psicosis for the first time is message board pro wrestling and it's hard not to appreciate someone paying money to try to recapture it on TV. Rey and Psicosis got to do their great thing in front of increasingly larger crowds before unleashing it on WCW, and the Beast Mortos has been doing the same. Now, wrestling is a lot different now than it was when Rey and Psicosis did Their Thing on PPV (nearly 30 years ago!). Now everybody frequently gets the chance to do Their Thing and it feels rarer and rarer that someone can show up doing something Unexpected. If you've been paying attention, there should be nothing Unexpected about The Beast Mortos. He's the best of the dozen or so animal's head wearing luchadors that have come to prominence in the last decade, and this was him doing his thing in front of the most eyeballs of his career, and he completely crushes it.  

His AEW debut is so good, that it essentially overshadows the fact that Rey Fenix hadn't wrestled in over 6 months. This is Fenix's big return and while he did Rey Fenix things, people were now also getting to see a ton of Beast Mortos things. I loved Mortos's NOAH-like sicko dedication to going after Fenix's knees after Fenix has been out a half year because of his knees. Jun Akiyama hated Kenta Kobashi's knees so fucking much and I support Mortos's hatred of Fenix's knees even if Fenix didn't seem to mind too much.  It is a fool's errand to go into depth describing what they are each capable of. I can tell you that The Beast has an incredible tornillo, with an improbably tight spiral and amazing impact, but it's something you need to see to believe. I can tell you about a bulldog that spikes Fenix vertically, but that's something you will want to see. I have no way to describe Fenix leaping onto The Beast's shoulders and kicking him in the back of the head - while standing on his shoulders - and I can tell you how cool it looked when Mortos headbutted him out of the sky but I wouldn't be able to do it justice. To see how fast and far Mortos takes a Jerry bump and how well he can catch a complicated dive, why would you just want to take my word for it. The match was filled with things almost beyond description, unless you are someone who has been seeing The Beast and Fenix reinvent how things are done for nearly a decade now. But thousands have not, and this match was for the thousands. Even for the dedicated, it played as fresh. A debut of a known quantity that felt like a new debuting force. Mortos lost this battle, but I am sure that after this he will be doing nothing but winning in AEW. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/21 - 10/27

AEW Collision 10/26/24

FTR vs. Rush/Dralistico

MD: Look, I got exactly what I wanted out of this match. The initial pairings were Dax and Dralistico and RUSH and Cash. While Dax has a good punch and all the personality you'd want and a Foley-esque sense of knowing how to create big, meaningful moments that stand out, there's just something to Cash. My go-to description of Ashura Hara is that he wrestles like a guy with a gambling problem in the best way. Cash wrestles like a guy who's just one bad day away from snapping. In any other walk of life, that wouldn't be a plus. In pro wrestling, it's a godsend. Of course, RUSH had his bad day close to fifteen years ago, a series of them, one after the next, when the Arena Mexico crowd refused to get behind him as an up and coming young tecnico and he decided that the world just had to burn down. He never looked back. All I wanted from this one was the two of them, either with an early exchange or one in the finishing stretch, getting to slug it out with each other. I knew RUSH would awaken something in Cash, the sort of thing which could make him a top singles act if he could channel it constantly without going so method that he was in constant backstage altercations. And so he did. All it took was one little slap and Cash was all over him. RUSH turned Cash into CASH. RUSH is less about big spots and more about cracking people in the jaw. No one else in wrestling is going to do a complex bypass only to slap someone. Only RUSH. What a guy.

Prior to that, we did get Dax and Dralistico to start. Dralistico's an interesting case. People more focused on lucha tend to have disdain for him, but I think he's kind of self-aware. How do you stand next to RUSH as your brother and see how Dragon Lee carries himself on the other channel and not, after all these years, have some sort of self-awareness? There's another reality where Sin Cara became a big star up north and Dralistico got to coast on being Mistico II forever (whether the crowd was behind him or not). Here though? Here I think he kind of gets it. He knows he can walk all over Dax (literally) and then after getting smacked slink off to the corner and tag in his brother to hide behind. I kind of wonder if he doesn't get quite enough credit for his act. Maybe he doesn't stick to it consistently enough, but there's something to "failed idol who decided to go into the family shitheel business," right? If you squint, the lack of smoothness at times can almost be a boon if he's leaning into it somehow. It's the little things. After RUSH redirected Dax into the corner to set up the heat, Dralistico added insult to injury by giving him a halfhearted shove into the post again. It's a little bit understated in a world of larger than life characters, but I kind of dig it. Eric's already the world's biggest Bestia del Ring fan so maybe I should watch myself here. 

I got what I wanted right from the get go, so the rest was sort of gravy. They focused on Dax's shoulder. RUSH knocked Cash off the apron to delay the hot tag. Dax had to really work for it. Cash came in hot. Dralistico hit that wild crucifix driver. They went home strong with the Mortos miscommunication. Maybe you didn't want LFI losing so early into their revitalized run, but this is the RUSH/Dralistico pairing where the money pairing is the RUSH/Mortos one. They more or less got their heat back after the fact. It'd probably be good for them to get a couple of single wins coming out of this even if you don't necessarily want FTR or Outrunners to lose on the way to whatever they're doing. Run Truth vs Mortos, Dax vs Dralistico, Cash vs RUSH (Yes, please, run CASH vs RUSH) next week. Have them split wins 2-1 with LFI on top. Then figure out how to glue together a six-man or eight-man. They can get a few more weeks out of this on Collision. That's the joy of Collision. This was great fun. Now we just need that CASH vs RUSH super libre match. 

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Found Footage Friday: BOCK~! HEENAN~! SD MARK II~! CMLL 4 vs 3~! DUSTY~! DUSTIN~! CODY~!

Nick Bockwinkel/Bobby Heenan vs. Greg Gagne/Super Destroyer Mark II AWA 10/3/80

MD: A recent find from a Wrestling Playlists disc buy. You know the deal. Follow along with the work. This was a blast. Perfect pro wrestling. Destroyer is Slaughter of course. Heenan and Bockwinkel make a big stink out of it to start. This was supposed to be a Loser-Wears-the-Weasel Suit match and they refuse to wrestle if that's the stip. Therefore, they will be heavily fined or suspended but the local promoter says that the match will still take place for the fans. 

Heenan is great here as you would imagine, but he spends a lot of this on the apron or getting cheapshots in with one big moment of comeuppance in the middle and another at the end. It's really all on Bockwinkel who stooges all over the place. Because he doesn't have a competent partner, he's even further behind the eightball and he absolutely wrestles that way, getting knocked around the ring, keeling over after shots, getting abused by both wrestlers. They have a few moments of heat where they're able to get over either by Gagne missing a dropkick or Bockwinkel getting Destroyer in the eyes and following up with a King of the Mountain but it's never for long. Gagne has a great hot tag in as he hits his dropkicks with the second into a nice upkick right onto a charging Bock. 

Finish is Heenan loading up his broken arm and nailing Destroyer from behind so Bockwinkel can pin him. Post-match he demands the weasel suit to put on Gagne because they won but the babyfaces get the better of them and slip it on him. Nice bit here as Destroyer goes to Bockwinkel who is all tangled in the corner and  forcibly shakes his hand before they leave. Post match, Bockwinkel gets the weasel suit off of Heenan and starts beating it up. Just a great bit of emotional vulnerability to send the fans home happy by someone who is usually so buttoned up. 

ER: What a perfect vibe. I think I need to go through a real AWA phase. The vibes don't get much better than this. Heenan and Bockwinkel are a perfect team, Greg Gagne is a guy who is way underrated and undervalued as a babyface, Slaughter is legitimately one of the hardest working big men of all time. The Peg never felt hotter. Everyone did everything I loved seeing them do in this match. Heel Bockwinkel is some incredible stuff. Heel Bockwinkel feels like Billy Robinson crossed with Ric Flair. Heenan is like Buddy Roberts crossed with Tully Blanchard. Everyone throws strikes here that are perfect for who they are. Heenan's 3/4 arm slot attacks with his cast looked like Gagne should have been left bruised. Heenan looked like he should have been scared of Slaughter and fought him accordingly. Bockwinkel looked like he really wanted to snap Greg's neck over the top rope. 

Heenan's Race bump was one of the most incredible versions of that spot. Heenan had this amazing knack for "holding on". Race would tumble dangerously to the floor on his. When I think of any great over the top bump it's always accompanied by "to the floor". But Heenan had this way of hanging onto bumps that made them feel even more dangerous than if he had let go and flown to the floor. It feels like he's body is being torn in multiple directions. I wonder how many weasel suits there were. He's the only wrestler in history to get pulled into a fur suit to rabid reaction for well over a decade. It's impossible to not love Bobby when he's losing his mind in his Where the Wild Things Are fur suit. The zipper always gets stuck, but this time we get to experience the joy of Nick Bockwinkel being flustered while he's trying to get Bobby out of the suit. We have that now. 

Gigante Silva/Atlantis/Tinieblas Jr. vs. Fuerza Guerrera/Gran Markus Jr./Pierroth Jr./Violencia CMLL 09/05/00

MD: Another that Charles salvaged from old discs. I'm not sure I've ever heard of CMLL doing a 4-on-3 match like this but here we go. Pierroth and Silva were the captains and Pierroth had a ton of heat with the crowd,  especially the Arena Coliseo tecnico cheering section which was loud and rowdy and chanting for Mexico the whole way through. The rudos swarmed Atlantis to start staying on him and then Tinieblas pinballing them from one to the other. Once Tinieblas went out they did something I'm not sure I've ever seen before; they pulled Atlantis back in so that Silva couldn't come in. They were even cutting off the ring.

This all led to a huge tug of war spot, but with Atlantis' arms being what they were tugging on. All of the rudos and Atlantis went tumbling across the ring, heralding Silva's real entrance to the match. The rudos tried to swarm him but he managed to whip all of them across the ring in a 4 person Irish Whip. Then he hit a corner clothesline and let me tell you, if you told me that he had killed someone in the ring and not Khali, I would totally believe you with how brutal his shots looked. I don't know if the rudos just asked him to go full on or if he didn't know how not to but every strike was grisly.

The comedy kept coming as Atlantis and Tinieblas lured them into a bunch of rudo miscommunication (a lot of which was Markus, who had lost his mask by this point, crushing his own partners), before they built to endless Atlantis and Tinieblas big splashes on all four rudos, before Silva got to finish it off. This was about ten minutes of ringtime in one fall and definitely didn't wear out its welcome. Fun stuff.

Dusty Rhodes/Goldust/Cody Rhodes vs. Dudebusters (Trent Baretta/Curt Hawkins/Caylen Croft) FCW 7/9/10

MD: If the Vault isn't going to give us old Greensboro and Omni, something special like this, something one of a kind, is up there on what I'd want. This was Dusty's last match, teaming with his sons (one a face, one normally a heel), up against the hottest heel act FCW had to offer at the time in the Dudebusters. Baretta and Croft had their act and it was bolstered with Hawkins returning. At the time, I thought they'd all join Ryder (who had spent 2009 coming into his own on ECW) on the main roster to be his muscle and they could have gotten a good midcard (maybe IC title level) act out of all of it. It was not meant to be. 

I love the presentation here. It's one camera with a bunch of interface noise (like a 16 bit line and contrast or whatever and a little golfing guy icon). The Dudebusters come out with white Dusty Sucks Eggs t-shirts. Dusty and family come out to his WWF theme song, cowbell and all. Dustin is Goldust. Cody is Dashing (but no mustache or faceguard yet).

Cody is set to start but Dusty tags in and I absolutely love how the Dudebusters sell for the idea of him, scattering and leaping up to the top rope just because he entered the ring. Obviously the crowd is going to go nuts at the idea of Dusty driving them nuts. They're selling not a punch or a kick but an idea and an ideal and a larger than life presence. That's beautiful pro wrestling and we see so little of it in 2024. Cody felt a little looser than usual in this setting and Dustin was having a blast, including playing off a Dudebusters deal where the kept kissing his cheek by moving so they ended up kissing each other. This was the first time that Cody and Dustin teamed that we know of and they had some fun tandem stuff (like a catapult bounce back onto the knees/second rope move combo). In general, Dustin was moving great in there and looked like a million bucks.

Eventually the Dudebusters used a distraction to take over on Cody and we got the first of a double heat. They controlled the ring well. The hot tag to Dustin wasn't so hot but that's because the real one was going to be to Dusty later. They took back on him with another bit of distraction (they were good at that). It all built to the true hot tag to Dusty, the place exploding, and Dusty hitting a couple of things before picking up the win. As celebratory and reverent as it should have been but a better match than it needed to be because they let the Dudebusters take so much of it.

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El Deporte de las Mil Emociones: Caged Hangmen

Week 38: Caged Hangmen

EB: It is mid-November and we have two really hot feuds happening in CSP. The Texas Hangmen have been tangling with La Pareja Increible and so far we have not had any clear winners in their encounters. Colon and TNT are focused on paying back the Hangmen for the abuses they have committed, especially for severely injuring Invader #1. After the last match between the two teams ended and the Hangmen (with el Profe) attacked the tecnicos, TNT and Colon demanded a cage match with the Texas Hangmen and it looks like the challenge has been accepted. 

The other hot feud involves the Super Medicos and Sasha against Eric Embry, Rick Valentine and Monster Ripper. The history between Sasha and Eric Embry has come into play in this rivalry, with Embry stooping to the level of physically attacking Sasha. For this rivalry we have had two new developments, both happening on November 10. The Super Medicos defeated Embry & Valentine for the Caribbean tag titles, getting a victory over the hated rudo team. But on that same day, Sasha lost the Women’s World title back to Monster Ripper, when Eric Embry interfered and hit Sasha on the leg with a bat. The issue between these two groups is far from over as well.

We also have seen a group of new arrivals to CSP in the month of November, with an influx of names from the USWA. The most notable one is Billy Joe Travis, who made a quick impact by winning the World Junior title (although by using a loaded punch to do so). Since his arrival in CSP, Travis has shown a huge disdain for Puerto Ricans and has also had some rematches with Castillo. So far, Travis has used his loaded punch to keep the title, but Castillo is still hot on his trail.

Another notable arrival form the USWA is Jeff Jarrett, who we saw among the members of El Ejercito de la Justicia who came out to help Carlos Colon and TNT when they were being attacked by the Texas Hangmen. Jarrett would make some appearances throughout November and December but does not really get heavily involved in any feuds in these appearances. We do have one match from around this time period featuring Jeff Jarrett in CSP, so let’s go to Bayamon for a match where Jarrett takes on the returning veteran Ivan Koloff. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8cwlQstlOQ

This match happened sometime in the November to early December period. The commentary is from a video release about a year or so later, so the commentary does not really add much context for what was going on at the time the match took place. The veteran Ivan Koloff (with his chain) is making a return to CSP, and is facing Jeff Jarrett. El Profe is again accompanying Koloff at ringside. This is youth vs experience and the first moments of the match showcase the two wrestlers trading holds and working over each other’s arms. The first half of the match is mainly focused on arm work, with Jarrett getting the better of Koloff for the most part. About halfway through the match, Koloff works in a  headscissors on Jarrett that they counter back and forth between a Jarrett headlock and the Koloff headscissors (and we get a nice moment of Ivan trying to pump feeling back into his arm after the damage it had taken during the first part of the match). Koloff eventually rakes Jarrett’s eyes and throws him to the outside, where the momentum shifts towards Koloff. From there, Koloff works over Jarrett and makes some pin attempts, but cannot put Jarrett away. Jarrett gets a sunset flip attempt that Koloff tries to stop by grabbing the ropes, but the ref kicks Ivan’s hands away and the attempt gets a two count. Before going back to attacking Jarrett, Koloff takes a moment to get in El Vikingo’s face about kicking his hands a few moments earlier. Koloff and Jarrett trade blows and Koloff decides to go to the top rope after knocking down Jarrett. However, he takes too long, allowing Jarrett to catch Koloff and throw him down to the mat. Jarrett looks to be in control and, even with Profe tripping him up, is able to get a few pin attempts on Koloff (including a nice crossbody from the top turnbuckle). As the ref backs Jarrett away from the corner, El Profe hands the chain to Koloff. When Jarrett approaches, Ivan decks Jarrett with the chain while Profe distracts the ref, and Ivan makes the cover. The ref starts counting, but then notices the chain lying on the mat. El Vikingo stops his count, picks up the chain and admonishes Koloff. He then raises Jarrett’s hand as the winner, having disqualified Koloff for using the chain. Koloff tries to attack Jarrett post match but is sent out by a dropkick. Jarrett celebrates his win as the video ends. 

MD: As matches go, this was definitely a match. It had a hot few minutes that I really liked and everything before that was 100% sound. Jeff had been wrestling for a while by this point but it’s always good to get time in the ring with a vet like Koloff. Ivan had Profe with him and was a known entity but I wouldn’t say he had a lot of heat and I wouldn’t say the fans really got behind Jeff even though he was a perfectly fine babyface. Maybe part of that is that they wrestled things pretty straightforward for the first ten minutes or so. Lots of in and out of holds. Headlocks, armdrags, that sort of thing. Certainly, Ivan stooged a bit, escaping and ending up right back in, but he didn’t really cheat. Eventually he did hit a belly to back out of a headlock and tossed Jeff out of the ring (after an eyerake to cut him off) to set up a short king of the mountain. Jeff finally fired back but Profe kept getting involved. I thought he might have had him on a flying body press after tossing him off the top (Big bump for old Ivan) but Profe snuck his charge the chain and distracted the ref. Ivan clocked Jeff but didn’t get the chain all the way out of the ring. One thing I really enjoy about Puerto Rico is that for such a down and dirty territory, the heels have their efforts to cheat overturned or caught more often than you’d think.

EB: Another notable new arrival we saw debut is El Bronco #1. Hailing from the Dominican Republic, this tecnico seems to be gaining the fans’ support via his upbeat ring entrances and his performances so far. We go to  a match from what is likely November 10, as Bronco defends his Dominican National title against Grizzly Boone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbK4FxVCBhA

The match video starts with Bronco and a dancing woman already at ringside. She is known as Amarilis, la princesa del ring (the princess of the ring). Grizzly Boone immediately attacks Bronco as the latter is getting into the ring and Eliud Goznalez does the ring introductions as Boone continues his initial attack. Hugo says that Boone wasted no time, he really wants to win that Dominican National title. Grizzly continues his attack with clubbing blows and chokes in the corner, with Hugo mentioning the presence of the gorgeous woman that came out with Bronco (although he won’t say more so as to not get him and Eliud into trouble). Boone continues with several choking attacks, as the announcers mention that it is a good strategy on his part since it does not give Bronco an opening to get back into the match. Boone starts mocking Bronco as he continues in control of the match, making mocking gestures of Bronco’s dance (Eliud calls it some sort of mountain merengue). Hugo lets us know that Amarilis is a professional wrestler in her own right who sometimes accompanies Bronco in his appearances. The turning point of the match comes when Boone misses a charge into the corner, which gives Bronco the opening to come back with a series of ear claps on Boone. Grizzly is staggered and Bronco takes advantage to hit his falling DDT  to score the win. A successful title defense for the Dominican champion. Bronco celebrates with Amarilis outside of the ring, as the music starts up and they do a bit of dancing on their way back to the dugout. 

MD: Very different vibe from the TV squash match. This was Boone just squashing Bronco, especially in the ropes. Quite effectively at that. Once Bronco got out of the way on a huge corner charge, he did his little hop taunt and took over with these pretty great jumping double overhead chops. Very theatrical. Very much for the last row. Then he hit a kick and charged in with his falling DDT. Ended celebratory at least. But I was expecting him to be a bit more of a powerhouse maybe?

EB: As mentioned before, we are now in mid-November, specifically November 17. We have a Superestrellas episode from this date that should help us better understand how everything has been progressing.  This is the west coast version so references will be to the house shows that are happening on Sunday (although the card is likely similar to what is scheduled for November 17 in Bayamon).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCWQpN4V5s4

The video starts with Hugo Savinovich holding up the latest copy of the local wrestling magazine, hyping up how fans can purchase it. We then go the the first match of the program (likely from November 3), as Tom Burton  (billed as Dirty White Boy) is taking on Invader #4. Burton immediately jumps Invader #4 at the bell (as Eliud Gonzalez announces Mario Savoldi as the referee) and hits a series of blows and cheap shots to send Invader #4 to the mat. Our commentary team for this match is Hugo and Eliud. Burton continues with the advantage as the announcers talk about how Invader #4 is looking to get the win against a difficult opponent, someone who has been making waves in the USWA and (according to Hugo) someone who is quite the cheater. Burton  makes an unsuccessful pin attempt after a legdrop and continues his attacks by mixing in blows with some cheap shots behind the ref’s back. Invader #4 has not been able to get any offense in so far as Burton is living up to the Dirty White Boy name. Burton continues in control of the match and makes a couple of unsuccessful pin attempts, but the momentum changes when Burton misses a diving headbutt from the middle turnbuckle. Invader #4 makes a comeback with several chops on Burton, leading to a couple of pin attempts from Invader #4 after a backdrop and a small package. A backslide gets two, but Invader #4 ends up running into Burton’s knee after whipping him into the corner. Burton goes for a slam but Invader #4 counters with another small package for the pinfall. The crowd cheers as Invader #4 rolls out of the ring and gets his hand raised as the victor.

We then go to some promos from El Profe and Invader #4. They are scheduled to face each other the next day in San German. Profe mentions that Invader #4 believes Profe was one of the men responsible for what happened to Invader #1 and he is right about that. Profe is proud of being part of the attack on Invader #1 and dares Invader #4 to get revenge. Profe has faced Invader #4 before and is not afraid of him. This time it will be a fight and while Invader #4 will be looking to get revenge for what happened to his brother, Profe is going to enjoy doing the same thing to Invader #4 and promises that they will take out the members of ‘El Ejercito de la Inmundicia’ one by one. We then go to Hugo with Invader #4 and Maelo is pretty fired up about getting his chance at El Profe. He was the one who prevented the tecnicos from being able to get to the ring to help Maelo’s brother, but tomorrow Profe will pay the consequences. Carlos Colon and TNT will make sure to make the Texas Hangmen pay, but he and El Profe will be face to face and he will make sure to make Profe pay (‘as sure as my name is Invader #4’). 

MD: We’re going 0 to Tom Burton here. For the most part he looked ok. There was one corner whip towards the end where Invader IV lost him, but that actually played into the match as he was able to get his knee up on the charge. This had a decent amount of Burton leaning on him and it was fine (one good lariat) before a fairly hot roll-up laden finishing stretch after a missed diving headbutt. Invader even snuck it out with a roll up counter to a bodyslam, which maybe felt like the right move in the end, especially since he was going after Profe to get revenge for what happened to his brother. They set that up with a couple of promos and it’s good undercard booking that makes a ton of sense and I bet it got decent heat. Obviously Profe is still carrying quite the load.

EB: Up next is Monster Ripper’s Castle of Pain, where apparently this week’s guest is Sasha (who has not arrived yet). Ripper has her newly won Women’s World title around her shoulder (she won it back the previous week) and remarks that Sasha has not arrived yet. Ripper mentions that she invited Sasha on because she wanted to confront her face to face about Ripper having become the champion again. One detail that I will mention, Ripper’s Spanish is definitely more Mexican influenced, so she uses some words that are more common to Mexican Spanish rather than Puerto Rican Spanish (and yes ,there are notable differences in the Spanish spoken across the different Latin American countries). Ripper looks around and asks if Sasha is not here yet, to which a voice from far off camera responds ‘No’. Ripper goes on to talk about what an embarrassment this is, it’s clear that Sasha is afraid of her, in fact, everyone is afraid of her. Sasha may have the Super Medicos with her, but on her own Sasha can’t defeat Ripper. Again Ripper asks if Sahsa is here and gets another no, which causes her to sigh and again say that it's an embarrassment and a shame. Ripper promises to bust up Sasha’s face next time they are face to face, Sasha is the embarrassment of Puerto Rico and Ripper will remain the champion and true queen. Ripper cackles as the segment ends. 

MD: Ripper has invited Sasha who does not show up. This lets her cut a promo on her instead. I’m not convinced she actually invited her. It’s a shame though as it could have been a real Hulk Hogan visits the Dungeon of Doom moment with all the smoke flying around.

EB: We get our first look at recent arrival and new World Junior champion Billy Joe Travis. His opponent is Herbert Gonzalez. Travis wants a handshake to start, and Herbert and the announcers are dubious on the sincerity of Travis in making such a gesture. Travis makes a show of wanting the handshake (including getting on his knee)  and then feigns to throw a punch, but Herbert squares up and Travis thinks better of it. Hugo mentions that this Billy Joe Travis has been something, calling the Puerto Rican fans Mexicans, calling Hugo by the wrong name, he changes Huracan Castillo’s name, and it is clear that Travis does not like latinos at all. Travis is stalling about and gets on the turnbuckle to jaw at the fans, who have started yelling at him from the stands. Travis complains to the ref about the crowd chants and Herbert claps along to encourage the chants. Hugo complains that the ref needs to be stricter with Travis about actually wrestling in there instead of stalling about. Travis jumps out of the ring and stares at the crowd, covering his ears at his displeasure with their chanting. Hugo says that any of the wrestlers facing Travis should take advantage when Billy Joe is out doing this stalling and just attack him, since Travis would do the same thing to them (it is clear Hugo is not a fan of Travis, he might be getting Eric Embry flashes here). Travis is back in the ring and again wants the crowd to shut up, and Hugo again mentions that Herbert should be jumping on Travis instead of encouraging the crowd along. Finally, Herbert punches Travis on the back and sends him into the ropes, getting a backdrop. Travis immediately rolls out of the ring and makes a show of holding his back. Billy Joe is annoyed with the crowd and makes like he’s going to hit the cameraman for getting too close to him. Hugo again talks about how all of this stalling and posturing by Travis works in his favor, as it confuses both the ref and his opponent and allows Travis to set up openings for him to attack when the opponent’s guard is down. Travis complains his tights were pulled and Herbert pokes Travis on the butt. Travis finally gets some offense going as Hugo mentions how dangerous Travis is and runs down his accomplishments (including being a current champion in the USWA). Travis gets more aggressive, including hitting a slam on the floor. Eliud brings up tha one advantage Travis has is that he is so quick with his punches that one can’t really see if he is getting away with closed fists. Back in the ring Travis has gotten serious, takes control of the match and even takes some time to antagonize the crowd about how Herbert is faring. Travis gets the win with a reverse splash from the turnbuckle.

We then get promos from Travis and Huracan Castillo about their upcoming match. The two have been embroiled in a series of matches over the World Junior title and it appears the key point of contention has been that Travis has been using a loaded punch to win his matches against Castillo (which is how Travis also became champ in the first place). Travis says that this will be Castillo’s last title shot and also makes sure to call Puerto Ricans Mexicans, says that Hugo’s name is Hector and that Castillo’s name is Herman. Huracan Castillo gets his chance to respond and he is not amused with Travis, calling him a cardboard champion for the way he won the title and has won their rematches with the loaded punch. Castillo says that he has always been fine with getting beaten clean, but not with how Travis has been getting these victories. Hugo talks about all the fan support and protests about how Castillo was wronged and Castillo promosies that tomorrow it will be different. Castillo warns Travis that he better watch out that it’s not Castillo that surprises Travis this time around. 

MD: Really great we get at least this look at Travis. I don’t know if Embry’s coaching him or what. I do remember him being a pretty entertaining heel in USWA Texas around here. The Gonzalez match was a blast. He was way over the top trying to get a handshake to start and then stooged big. He looked like a guy who could anchor the territory honestly. Then he called Castillo “Herman” in the promo and Hugo and Castillo talked about all the support Castillo had in his quest to regain the title.

EB: We have a new wrestler by the name of The Nightmare (not sure who this is), who is taking on Tito Carrion. Eliud mentions that Nightmare had held a World Junior title in the US (seems kinda beefy to me to be a junior heavyweight). Carrion gets an initial advantage off a backdrop but Nightmare quickly takes over by working Carrion’s leg. Hugo mentions the coincidence of both men wearing very similar ring gear as Nightmare continues focusing his attacks on Carrion’s leg. Tito is able to make a brief comeback (including a nice back elbow) but Nightmare soon regains control and eventually wins the match via a superplex. Not sure if this masked wrestler is anyone of note underneath the mask, but it’s a clear win for The Nightmare.   

MD: I guess Embry is bringing in people through USWA? Not sure if this is Ken Wayne (doesn’t seem to be Davis, that’s for sure) or just the mask being ported over. Transitions were weird here as he just stopped Tito short a couple of times. Finishing stretch was good with a backbreaker and suplex before a superplex. Didn’t really give us a sense of who he was or what he wanted though. 

EB: Hugo introduces a clip of what happened the previous week between the Super Medicos and Embry & Valentine. The Super Medicos had won the Caribbean tag titles on November 10 and this footage is from their match on November 11 in San German. It looks like the Super Medicos have a pinfall on Valentine when Monster Ripper gives a boot to Eric Embry, who uses it to attack the Medicos. The referee disqualifies Embry and Valentine but the rudos take advantage to attack the Medicos. Embry and Valentine hold both Medicos in order to give Ripper a chance to attack the Medicos with the boot. As the attack is happening, Sasha runs out (although noticeably limping) with a baseball bat. Sasha attacks Ripper with the bat, but Embry and Valentine come over to help Ripper. Embry grabs the bat and makes a show of hitting the held down Sasha, but the Medicos are able to stop Embry before he gets to swing. Medico #1 chases the rudos away with the bat and it seems that there will be a mixed trios match between the two groups. 

Monster Ripper, Eric Embry and Rick Valentine cut a promo about the trios match tomorrow in San German. Ripper mentions that having the Medicos will not help Sasha since she has Embry and Valentine with her, and between the three of them they will finish off Sasha and the Super Medicos. Valentine says that it is three of the best in the world against a father, a son and their family pet dog. Embry says that everything has gotten out of hand, but tomorrow he will get his hands on Sasha. Embry promises to pay back Sasha for what he has done, and reminds Sasha that he was the one who brought her from nothing. Tomorrow, all of them will pay. The Medicos and Sasha cut a promo in response, it's a quick one but they promise they will get their revenge for what has gone down. Sasha mentions that the Medicos will help her get revenge on ‘Erica’, who cost her the Women’s World title by hitting her leg with a bat during her title defense against Monster Roppr.

We get a full card rundown for the card tomorrow in San German (which again is likely similar to the card for November 17 in Bayamon). Scheduled matches include: Carlos Colon and TNT vs Texas Hangmen in a cage; a mixed trios as the Super Medicos and Sasha take on Monster Ripper, Eric Embry and Rick Valentine; a rematch for the World Junior title as Billy Joe Travis defends against Huracan Castillo Jr; Miguelito Perez vs Kim Duk; Invader # 4 vs El Profe; Nick Ayala vs The Nightmare; and other great stars.

MD: This was all to set up the mixed tag. It’s booking by numbers but two of those numbers are Sasha’s valiant saving of the Medicos and Embry’s menacing of Sasha. Here the match ended on a roll up and interference with a weapon. Then Ripper came in to make it 3 on 2. Sasha made the save but Embry almost got her. Embry goes way over the top in these promos but that’s to be expected, I guess. 

EB: Our next match features Nick Ayala (who we saw work TV matches earlier in 1990) taking on a newcomer in El Chino (who looks a bit like Chicky Starr if he was put in a dryer).  Hugo shines up El Chino on commentary, saying that he is getting his first shot in CSP and wants to show off his ability. Ayala starts off hot, including countering a hiptoss with a monkey flip that sends Chino out of the ring. Hugo again talks about how this wrestler El Chino, although it is his first appearance, he seems to have experience and wants to show it off. Chino gets back in and actually gets some hits on Ayala, as Hugo states that he would like to know more about where this wrestler El Chino is from, he’s shown to have a bit of rudeness to him. El Chino controls for a bit but Ayala counters with some punches, and Chino stumbles and falls back into the ropes. Ayala gets a nice looking dropkick on Chino, hits a slam but then seems unsure of going off the top. Instead he does a legdrop of the middle turnbuckle for two. As Ayala continues in control, Hugo mentions that we’ll have to see if Chino has run out of gas or if he has been knocked loopy from Ayala’s blows. To be honest, with the way Hugo has been talking about Chino I’m starting to think this may be a rib on somebody. Chino whiffs on a reverse crossbody (falling with the grace of a cement sack) and Ayala eventually hits a top rope splash for the win. .   

MD: Ayala was at the bottom of the upcoming card against the Nightmare so he gets a match to shine him up first. Chino looked and worked a little like a poor man’s Chicky Starr actually. Ayala had some nice stuff but seemed maybe a half step lost at times? There was a moment where he wasn’t sure how he wanted to get up onto the turnbuckles for instance. He did do this nice hip toss reversal into a monkey flip that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before and won it in the end with a top rope splash.

EB: We go to last week, as La Pareja Increible takes on the Texas Hangmen. Hugo apologizes for the video quality but the action needs to be shown.TNT gets hit with the bell but eventually tags Carlos in. Carlos also gets decked with the bell. TNT gets back in and the match breaks down and ends in a double countout. This sets up a cage match. El Profe and the Hangmen cut a promo from behind a chain link fence that will be used for the cage. Profe mentions that tomorrow in San German, in a cage just like this one, the Texas Hangmen will take on Carlos Colon and TNT. The Hangmen have a head of lettuce with them and grind it against the cage to show what they will do to Colon and TNT. There is no escape in the cage from the Hangmen. Zero hour is here, the moment of truth is here.

We then go to Hugo, who is with Carlos and TNT.  Hugo remarks that danger looms and that the Hangmen have promised to destroy Colon and TNT’s faces. We get comments from both wrestlers.

Carlos: Well Hugo, that does not worry us in the least. What I do have to tell you is that, last week they hit us with the rope and they hit us with the bell, but it was not enough to finish us off. Because we then grabbed them, battled them all around the court, but those dogs hid in the locker room. But this week, tomorrow, that is not going to happen tomorrow because we'll be in a cage. And we want to dare them to bring the bullrope, the bell, the belts, the cowbell, the rope, whatever they want. Because TNT, tomorrow night we got to bathe these dogs in blood. Because we have promised the fans that we will get these guys out of Puerto Rico, and we will do that tomorrow in San German.

TNT:  Carlos, and as the message that they left with Hugo says that they're going to destroy our faces against the steel, that's not that easy to do Texas Hangmen. You're going to have to fight nice and pretty with Carlos Colon and myself. Because we have promised the people of Puerto Rico and especially Invader #1 that we will avenge ourselves against these dogs, and if possible we're going to take their masks and we're going to run them out of Puerto Rico. And Texas Hangmen, you have never been in a cage, so when these two Puerto Ricans step into that cage we are going to fight. So Texas Hangmen, bring the best you have, because tomorrow night in San German we are going to give you a good fight.

Hugo: Wow! The Pareja Increible is ready for tomorrow night! Do not miss it, in a cage!

MD: Glad we had the full match here and not just this clip. Just some heated promos. The Hangmen yelled. Profe translated. Colon and TNT were on the same page. Bring on the cage.

EB: We then get a match from late 87 o early 88, with Carlos Colon and TNT  taking on the Ninja Express of Kendo Nagasaki and Mr. Pogo. I won’t recap the match in detail, but it’s a good showcase of how over Colon and TNT were at the time, how hot the TV studio crown in Cataño could get, and also how La Pareja Increible could function when teaming together. It’s also a match against a Profe managed team, so there is also that dynamic on display.  Seconding Colon and TNT is Huracan Castillo Sr, who at the time served as TNT’s manager and mentor. The tecnicos get the win after Profe hits the wrong man. 

MD: Good showcase match for our heroes. First this was a Profe team and he got involved in the finish. Second, they took most of it. There was a brief bit of leaning down on Colon but for the most part they ran through Pogo and Nagasaki (And Nagasaki wasn’t one to get run over usually). I’m not sure about the context here and context matters in PR footage; we know that by now. This was effective to remind people of just what the Texas Hangmen had coming for them though.

EB; To end the episode we have an interview with the still recovering Invader #1. Hugo is at Invader’s home and they are somewhere in the backyard for this interview. Hugo mentions that a lot of fans have been asking about Invader’s condition and here we are to get an update from Invader himself. First, Invader wants to say hello and thank the fans for all of the letters and well wishes he has received. Invader says he is recovering well, the doctor sees him coming along fine, about 95% better. He's just waiting to receive the all clear with regards to being able to get back in the gym and start training. Hugo mentions that it’s tough for an athlete to be sidelined and not be able to train like they usually do. Hugo asks Invader if he knows if he will come back to wrestling, and Invader says it’s still too soon to tell. He wants to first see if he gets the go ahead to start training and then see if he can regain the conditioning he had before the injury. Hugo says that he finds that Invader seems more optimistic as of late, that he looks better, and that last time they talked Hugo felt that Invader was very down. Invader says that what happened to him was a sad situation, an athlete of his condition being bedridden, taken in a stretcher to the ER, he almost died according to the doctor that attended him in the ER. He’s got a family to support and that it’s a rough situation being out. He spent 11 days in the hospital and now it has been four weeks that he has been basically cooped up in his house. Hugo promises that they will keep the fans updated on Invader’s condition. We then get Hugo closing the show by hyping up tomorrow’s house show in San German

MD: They’re leaning hard on the idea that Invader almost died. He’s almost ready to get back training but he doesn’t know if he’ll be coming back as of yet. Heavy sympathy stuff obviously.

EB: To close out this installment, we are going to have our final look at two of the active feuds. First is the rivalry for the World Junior title between Billy Joe Travis and Huracan Castillo. This feud lasted about a month, with Billy Joe winning the title from Castillo on November 3, keeping the title via the use of some loaded punch aided wins, and then Castillo regaining the title about a week after this November 17 program (the title history say November 20 but that is a Tuesday so it is likely off). To settle the feud, Travis and Castillo faced off in scaffold match, one that likely took place at the end of November or early December, since Castillo is the champion going into this match.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhb9f4dTapg

This match is from a Japanese release of CSP matches, so the commentary is in Japanese. Travis makes a show of climbing the scaffold, while Castillo looks on from the ground with a focused stare. Eliud Gonzalez does the ring intros as Travis continues slowly climbing and pointing at the ref to keep Castillo back, Travis wants to make his climb up without Castillo attacking him. Travis really milks the climb, taking  over two minutes and at certain points going back down a bit to annoy the crowd and Castillo.  The ref and Castillo get tired of Billy Joe’s stalling and the ref lets Castillo start climbing the scaffold, in essence chasing Travis up there. Travis gets up first and takes advantage by repeatedly kicking Castillo in the face before he can fully climb up. Castillo is stunned but holds on, and Travis starts doing a celebratory dance for the crowd on the scaffold. Travis then grabs Castillo b by the hair, pulling him up onto the platform and the match begins. The scaffold used for this match is a bit wider than ones I’ve previously seen in CSP, allowing for a bit more room to move. Travis maintains the early advantage by ramming Castillo into the scaffold and throwing those quick punches of his. He also makes sure to taunt the crowd by showboating and dancing a bit, which does get the crowd on his case.

Travis telegraphs a punch and Castillo gets a backdrop, causing Travis to start begging off and the crowd to cheer for Castillo to get him. From there we get a couple of attempts by Castillo to send Travis over, with Billy Joe holding on for dear life. On the third attempt, Travis is able to ram Castillo’s face into the scaffold and it’s now Travis who attempts to push his opponent off, giving us our first instance of somebody hanging off the edge with their legs dangling. Castillo is able to get his legs on the scaffold rigging and uses that to push himself back up onto the platform. Travis begs off again but is able to tackle Castillo down. Billy Joe then takes out the knuckles he has been using to win his matches against Castillo and goes over to deck Huracan. Travis hits several punches with the knuckles and then slams Castillo on the platform. Travis goes for another fist drop but loses the knuckles when making contact. Castillo picks them up instead and goes after Travis, paying him back for the times Travis used the weapon before. Two punches send Travis rolling to the side of the platform and now it’s Travis hanging from the edge. Castillo starts stomping away on Billy Joe’s hands, and finally Travis loses his grip and falls to the ring. Huracan Castillo has won the match and the feud.  . 

MD: This was a scaffold match and maybe not the best setting to see this iteration of Travis but it was still pretty fun. The best parts were the beginning and the end. Early on he refused to go all the way up and did an Elvis shake once he did then ambushed Castillo as he tried to follow him. Eventually he got back body dropped which was one of the only actual spots in the match. It was a pretty wide scaffold, so little danger of falling incidentally, just getting pushed off. They hugged the side for a while. Finish was Travis pulling out knucks but missing a fist drop and Castillo getting it. Travis took a pretty nasty bump down onto his legs to end it.

EB: We also have the cage match from November 17 between Carlos Colon & TNT vs the Texas Hangmen. As with the previous match we covered between the two teams, we have the raw video with no commentary. So let's go to Bayamon and this encounter in the cage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li_uhP7ffA4

Colon and TNT are already in the ring as the Hangmen hesitate for a moment in getting into the cage. As soon as Psycho and Killer make their way in, they are attacked by Colon and TNT. There's nowhere to hide as Colon and TNT start using the cage to ram both Hangmen around. Colon starts tearing and biting one of the Hangmen in the head as the tecnicos continue their attack. The structure for this match is similar to the previous encounter, with Colon and TNT taking the fight to the Hangmen early on and controlling the first part of the match . Around the three minute mark the referee finally sends Colon and one of the Hangmen to their corners, leaving tNT and possibly Psycho in the ring.  Colon and TNT work over Psycho while tagging in and out, Colon focusing on the legs and TNT using the cage as a weapon. The match turns in the Hangmen’s favor when Colon puts on a figure four leglock on Psycho, drawing in Killer to break it up and the Hangmen take advantage to stun Colon and take over. The Hangmen work over Carlos for a few minutes, maintaining control with double teams and cutting off Colon’s attempt at fighting back. They bust Carlos open as they continue their attack. The Hangmen start ramming Colon’s head repeatedly against the cage wall and (as promised) start grating Colon’s forehead along the steel cage. The Hangmen make the first pinfall attempt of the match but TNT breaks it up. The Hangmen continue in control, keeping Carlos from being able to tag out.

At about the 12 minute mark, Colon and one of the Hangmen collide heads and both men go down. The Hangmen make the tag but a splash is missed, allowing Carlos the chance to tag in TNT. The crowd ‘hwah’s’ along as TNT attacks both Hangmen. TNT is able to keep them at bay for a while but the two on one advantage comes into play and TNT is thrown into the cage wall. The camera shows Profe raising his arms in celebration, as the Hangmen start working over TNT. Carlos recovers and gets in the ring, with all four men fighting and the tecnicos getting the upper hand. We get a double pin scenario where the ref counts to three and awards the match to Colon and TNT (to be fair, I think TNT was the legal man for the tecnicos). Both teams continue fighting and El Profe takes out a weapon he had hidden and hands it to one of the Hangmen through the cage, The Hangmen start attacking Colon and TNT with the weapon, leaving both men bloodied and down on the mat. The Super Medicos, Bronco and Jeff Jarrett run in to chase the Hangmen off and check on Carlos and TNT. The Hangmen hold up the weapon they were using and celebrate what they did, and you can see that the Hangmen are also busted open. Before leaving ringside, one of the Hangmen goes near the ring and spits through the fence at the tecnicos. Meanwhile, the ringside doctor is checking over Colon and TNT, who are still bleeding and down on the mat. 

MD: Very similar to the last tag match but that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. That meant that TNT and Colon controlled after the initial bit of brawling (and cage shots), using superior teamwork as one of the Hangmen bounced around for them. They’d hit big doubleteams and then go back to the legs to soften him up for the figure four. Once Colon went for it, however, the other Hangman struck and they took over on him. He was great at working from underneath and they were great at drawing the ref and infuriating TNT so that they could double team. While it was a cage match it was more or less under conventional rules past that opening. Whenever TNT tried to get involved they took it out on Colon all the more, including ping ponging him against the cage. Finally he was able to outfinesse one Hangman and make the tag and just like last time, TNT came in hot. Just like last time, however, the numbers game got him and he got beat on until Colon could recover enough to even the odds. They kept things churning here with a double pin. Colon hit a sunset flip while a Hangman reversed a TNT whip and got a belly to belly for simultaneous three counts. Post match, Profe slipped them a pipe and they ended up leaving Colon and TNT bloody until the babyface locker rushed in. I’m not sure it protected the cage match as a gimmick but it certainly kept things hot for whatever would come next.

EB: Based on the outcome of this cage match, I’m pretty certain that we had another match between these two teams, but results are scarce for the last weeks of 1990. This is the last we will see footage wise of Carlos Colon being involved in the feud with the Texas Hangmen. As the month of December unfolds there will be a new challenger awaiting him with regards to the Universal title. As for TNT, he’s still fighting the Texas Hangmen but he will need a partner to take them on. And it just so happens someone has been cleared to return to the ring…

Next time on El Deporte de las Mil Emociones, we get the return of Invader #1 as he gets his chance for revenge against the Texas Hangmen. Also, Giant Warrior returns from his foreign tour and a couple of ‘feds’ make their way to Puerto Rico as we finish our look at 1990.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Day! Tsumaki! Masami! Mimi! Jaguar! Victoria!

35. 1979.07.XX - 01 Cheryl Day, Masumi Tsumaki & Tenjin Masami vs. Mimi Hagiwara, Rimi Yokota & Victoria Fujimi

K: This one looks a bit different as it’s outdoors, you can see the odd tree peaking up in between the stands. Anyway I’m in very familiar territory from the jump as we get a bit of outside brawling and then Tenjin Masami taking great delight in noisily beating up Mimi Hagiwara. I keep my knowledge of future events on these pieces to a minimum, but seeing how this is the earliest footage we have of Masami, it’s too fitting to leave unmentioned how she was torturing poor Mimi from the start. Sometimes two wrestlers are just made for one another.

We get a really long period of control from the heel team. The execution of everything in the micro was quite good, but the whole thing went on a bit too long without the faces getting any hint of a comeback at all so by the last couple of minutes I was waiting for it to end. A flawed structure can undermine something even if the wrestlers are really doing anything bad in the moment.

Referee Miyuki Yanagi tries to stop the heels cheating but is thwarted when Masumi Tsumaki gets sick of her and just throws her out the way. This actually got a bit of laugh from the crowd, which doesn’t usually happen. They then double down on this bit by doing it a few more times, getting increasingly overtly comedic and more laughs. It’s not clear to me if the wrestlers planned to do that from the start or they just saw the crowd seemed to enjoy that so gave them some more, but it was pretty interesting to me.

Once Yokota gets the comeback spot in and tags out the match becomes a lot more enjoyable. Everyone gets to show their stuff now but the heels aren’t just totally dominated. Mimi’s cute armbar takedown thing (I’ve always been bad with move names…) is certainly aesthetically pleasing here. Tenjin Masami doesn’t look out of place at all, in fact she may be the strongest performer of the heel side in this. She has been wrestling almost a year at this point though, even if it’s the first time we’re seeing her wrestle. She does a really great but simple bodyslam on Yokota towards the end of the match where she’s holds her up in the air just for a couple of seconds after her shout gets your attention, and it just builds a bit of suspense for her hitting the move and makes it feel bigger than if she just did it immediately.

The finish was Rimi Yokota just hitting a frantic flurry of flying offense and then a big butterfly suplex to get the win. I don’t remember her ever hitting a sequence of moves with such urgency before this. What really made it hit home is when she did a flying crossbody onto Masumi Tsumaki from behind rather than wait for her to turn around to take it normally, which made it look a lot more violence and certainly got a reaction from the commentator.

Slow start, turns into a good match and a strong showing from Yokota and Masami at this stage in their careers.

**3/4

MD: Spirited match here with our first look at Tenjin (Devil) Masami. Assuming that she and Tsumaki were the up and coming bad guy bench for AJW, they were in good shape. Again, we get a mismash of heroes with the Young Pair, the Golden Pair, and the ever-adaptable Mimi coming together. Everyone was civil until the bell but then chaos ensued. It seemed like Mimi and co. would turn things around but they got swept under early and spent most of the rest of the match working from underneath with a few big comebacks interspersed.

Day came off as credible with big mares and face rakes. Tsumaki had some very nice neck twists and imposed as you’d want her to (including taking out the ref at least once), but all eyes ended up on Masami. She was pretty formidable already, with a few different choke variations, one of the knee and a nasty hanging tree choke. During one of the comeback bursts, she went rope running with Yokota (including Rimi sneaking around for a slick pin). The comebacks, when they came, were energetic. Lots of big moves (Fujimi’s bodyscissors rana and goardbusters, Mimi’s neckbreakers and gutwrench suplexes, Yokota with big flapjacks). The cutoffs came quick though and the overall story more or less flowed. The finish had Fujimi hitt some butt butts out of nowhere setting things up for Yokota to get the pin on Tsumaki after a dangling butterfly suplex. It’s well worth noting how far the babyface side had come in the last year or two.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/14 - 10/20

MD: So we're down a few fingers right now. While I won't necessarily cover all of their matches, since I'm driving this thing, I am at least temporarily elevating Christian, Rush, and Athena from "friends" to fingers to bridge us to Eddie coming back at least.

AEW Dynamite 10/16/24

Christian Cage vs. Jay White

MD: Overall I liked this, though it had one big issue that touches upon something people are well aware of but that I'll still cover in a bit. Before that, let's hit the elephant in the room, the botched interference from Kip (which then led to Hangman having to sit on the floor forever). I didn't mind it. I actually kind of liked it. Sometimes you need an exception that proves the rule. There's a moment in the first SNME match between Demolition and the Brainbusters where Arn holds Smash's leg down so Tully can hit a double axe-handle to his chest in a prone position and that one move justifies every transition that comes from the "flying nothing" of a double axe-handle that's being done just to get a foot up. Likewise, Flair winning the NWA title vs Race with a flying body press justifies every subsequent time he gets tossed off the top, which is basically every time he tries it as a heel.

Same thing here. If there's seven hours of AEW/ROH TV a week you'll probably see a couple of successful interference finishes every week and a reversed/backfiring one every few weeks. They're almost all perfectly timed and perfectly executed. When you think about it, both Kip and Hangman were out there to cause trouble. It sort of make sense that Kip would just be irritating and get involved whenever he could, not just at the single point where it would have the biggest impact and open things up for the finish. Likewise, Hangman was waiting for a moment of opportunity and Kip gave him that. That it didn't work out for either of them the first time made everything feel weirdly more organic (Christian's understandable yelling maybe notwithstanding, but I only caught that when it was pointed out to me). Basically, stuff should not work out perfectly more often because it makes it more believable when it does.

So what was the problem then? Jay White is not over as a babyface. Some of that is just Jay White, right? He's a sleazy, slimy sort of guy, in his look, in his character, in his wrestling. People CAN get behind that, but you have to really work at it. The BBG have been tweeners or just entities, up against whoever gets in their way and maybe that works too, but not if you need him to be over as a face because you've got a roster imbalance and he's got the star power to help fill it. People were pretty frustrated by the lack of an actual face turn for Statlander. On some level, at least White got a moment, but the moment was coming back with his theme and making a save for his best friend, who is also an erratic tweener at best. That's not really a face turn. Then the subsequent promo was kind of all over the place. Christian is absolutely over as a heel. People get enjoyment out of specific things he does because they're legitimately funny and so over the top, but they don't hesitate to boo him. They don't fall to This Is Awesome chants (which are not always a good thing to be lauded! I'm not going to go into detail on this today but it's something to stop and think about). But for this to work, I think they needed to be more behind White. For him to get to the next level as babyface, if that's what he's going to be for a while, he has to do something that's not just in his own self-interest that happens to be against a heel. He needs to do something worth cheering.

So there needed to be just a bit of extra wind behind the sails of this one. Part of that is the nature of the two combatants. Christian controlled during the break, but overall, these are counter punchers. Christian is one of the best ever at coming up with interesting and believable ways to work people's stuff into matches and then to have counters that don't feel choreographed and contrived but like the exact thing that might happened. White's in-ring gimmick is that he's a defensive wrestler, an opportunist, someone who creates traps and then springs them, and while that takes an extra level of thought and work, it makes him stand out as unique. That meant that this match in specific was always going to be a bit back and forth; again, fine, if the fans were more into it. That said, I'd love to see these two as rivals over the next few years. I'm not sure there's much AEW could put together in-ring right now that would be more compelling mechanically and structurally (at least moment-to-moment) than a best of 5 or 7 between these two. I liked what I saw. I want to see more. I didn't have an issue with the interference. I just wish that White had a bit more of a babyface push driving him forward to make it all resonate a bit more.

Ring of Honor 10/17/24

Athena vs. Lady Frost

MD: I know exactly who Athena is. She lives and breathes it with every thing she does, every look on her face, her entire body language. I've noted before that I never really had a great sense of who Ember Moon was. The entrance didn't seem to sync perfectly with the ringwork and she never had enough in the way of stories and profiles to really hammer home the connection. Zero problem with her now. Lady Frost is another story. She's from Imperial Iceland. She has the fur and the blue themed gear. Her moves have icy names. She primarily has a gymnastic background in ring. She's tough, confident both in ring and out. You get little moments like her blowing her hair out of her face early on or her fighting through the pain of the crossface to make one last attempt to escape on the finish. She has an interesting real life story, coming from a wrestling family but starting relatively late in life. But I don't get how it all connects. She'd either be better off committing and doubling down or drawing back and dumping a lot of the gimmick for something more real. I'm sure having an Elsa on the roster could be marketable, but that's not what she is. She's talented and driven as a wrestler, but the gimmick is just window dressing and extraneous to that.

None of that is to say this wasn't good. It was. Athena was totally on, like always, as this existed in the backdrop of a number of things, both Abadon hunting her and the ongoing stockholm syndrome relationship between her and Lexy (and how it's all impacting Billie). They worked the security blanket chain into it as the first big transition to heel offense as Lexy used it to clothesline (literally) Frost. They had Athena constantly look to the crowd and to her credit, she made it seem like she was doing it to gloat and heelishly get cheers, not to constantly be searching for Abadon's presence. I'm not saying it's rocket science, but within the confines of pro wrestling, it's kind of next level to be balancing so many balls at once. All the while, she was working her normal intensity and merciless drive up against Frost's athleticism and gymnastic counters and offense. None of Frost's comebacks were rote; they were all interesting and based on her own personal strengths. Part of the appeal of Athena's matches are that she's able to adapt her act to not just every opponent, but to every moment, always reacting to what's going on around her and channeling the Funk-ian deranged mania. That worked here from the second she stepped out of the curtain to the second she retreated back through it as Abadon's music played.

AEW Collision 10/19/24

LFI (RUSH/The Beast Mortos) vs. Outrunners

MD: I also covered the BCC six man here. The Jake pre-match voiceover deal is a good idea and should be used as much as possible, as I get the sense he might not always be on the road. Plus, while I like the pairing, when he stands next to them, they (especially Mortos) look pretty small. No one's fault. Just how it is. 

This was one of those cases where neither team should probably be losing but where one team really did need to win. That's ok. They went out of their way to protect the Outrunners here. Mortos showed quite a bit of versatility early with the comedy charges with Truth. He's not just a lucha base which is important given that he has a lot of broad marketability moving forward. Overall this was fun. There were bits of Morton/Gibson styled rope running to get over early and then more Roadies strength stuff. Slugging it out with Rush is always fun to watch because Rush has a follow through which swings for the fences. Dralistico was all over the place here as a nuisance to the point where maybe some of the heat ended up on the ref it was so over the top. In some ways, that felt a bit like a Savage/Dibiase/Shawn match with Sherri on the outside or another over the top 80s heel manager, so I didn't hate it, but it was a bit jarring. 

I'm hesitant to even write this because I do like the Outrunners and I'm glad they're getting this opportunity, but I see the crowd getting behind a lot of what they're doing in the moment, a lot of the old tricks, and I worry a little people will see it all as pure, limiting parody and not even try to figure out how to extrapolate what they're doing into a more modern setting now when that is needed the most. I'd ask instead that people see this as a proof of concept. If it can work here, with these silly guys, and still get people behind them, then figure out how to distill that and tap into it with serious, main event storylines as well. Because it can work and it will work, and look at this as a way of proving it, not as a way of seeing it just as something silly that only works in a throwback pastiche like this.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Tornado of Love for Darby and Sting

 

5. Sting/Darby Allin vs. Big Bill/Ricky Starks AEW Dynamite 2/7/24

ER: I must be the easiest to surprise person who routinely spends double digit hours per week watching and writing about pro wrestling. Maybe it's my bad memory or the glacial pace I take projects through, but I am frequently surprised by how good the guys I like watching are. Darby Allin has the ability of surprising me more than any of my other modern favorites, a real innovator of shocking and death defying indestructibility. He shouldn't be possible, but he's real and he's incredible. Big Bill catching Darby's tope and in one fluid long motion and turning it into a high swinging Boss Man Slam on the floor just might be the most expertly executed momentous Large Man Rey Mysterioing Darby spots we've ever been gifted. It's a seamless, dangerous, eye popping moment. A Darby Classic, which is a thing I have said a comical amount of times. But Darby is special because he is also good at every other little thing, not just the biggest most incredible wrestling spots of the year. I don't know if anyone in wrestling runs into a boot as well as Darby. I don't know if anyone ever has. He makes it look like a guy getting knocked out by a boot he never saw coming. He does things like that every match. He's incredible, we've all known he's incredible. He is always Must See. He is probably my favorite wrestler and I am routinely surprised by how good my favorite wrestler is...

but I am still in absolute disbelief that Sting is this damn good. I can't be alone here. Sting is fucking 65 years old. What is remarkable, is that I'm pretty sure that 65 years old Sting is my favorite Sting ever. Sting, a legend with several eras and years and runs and matches to be the personal favorite wrestler of millions, has captured my heart so surprisingly in his team with Darby. Sting was a guy I didn't even know existed until I was 10 or 11 years old. We didn't have cable TV and I barely even knew WCW existed. My friend Justin had a Sting wrestling buddy, and he told me it was Sting, but this man was less real to me than Gordon Sumner. To me it just looked like an off brand Ultimate Warrior doll. I did not grow up with Sting as my hero, and by the time I was watching WCW he was just about to become inactive for an entire year. It was an uphill battle getting into Sting as an adult. I've never even gotten too into Sting retroactively. I don't think he would come anywhere close to making a Top 100 Guys list. 

But Sting at 65 is a real game changer for me. All it took to get behind Sting, I guess, was the now built in vulnerability of being an old human, combined with a willingness - or a sicko urge - to take a clothesline on the floor the way he did here from Big Bill. Sting has been in his Gypsy Joe era on and off for over a decade and even with his crazy-at-the-time-crazier-in-retrospect run in TNA I still wouldn't have expected his AEW run. It's not the balcony dives, either, even though holy shit the balcony dives right?! Can you imagine even cleaning the gutters on your house when you're 65? My parents used to invite me up to use the pool and BBQ just to spring a surprise gutters check on me before I left. They were probably right to do so, because I wouldn't want to think of my dad climbing around on the roof at 65. So Sting is doing leaps off of his nice but modest Colonial, and folks that is crazy. But more than the great risks from a man whose career looked mostly finished 20 years ago, it's that he just wrestles harder than I can ever remember. I believe in this babyface hero more than I have at any point in my life. I love this babyface with a tastefully redone hairline, who throws his entire body into his punches and back elbows in a way he never did when he was 40. I think his form has gotten better on almost all of his offense. He's like if John Cena came back and did all of his old offense but with harder landings, harder impact, agonizing misses, and real stakes. Sting throws himself into every hit and miss in a way I've never seen from him, and I am finally a Stinger in my 40s. 

The finish is a spectacular moment. Of course it is. Darby takes himself and Bill out of the match by Human Backpacking onto him on the apron, navigating his torso like an attacking ape, riding him off the apron through a table, forcing Bill to bump by gouging his thumbs into the big man's eyes like a lonely toymaker. Taz was right to make fun of Big Bill's mint green boots all match, by the way. Sting had a great run with Ricky Starks, who is a wrestler I don't love but one I view as a little better than the other Austin Theories that have been clogging up cards with what people refer to as their Potential. He will at minimum take a nice bump to the floor and I was impressed by his comparative Face Acting restraint in handling an I'm Sorry I Love You moment. The timing on Sting hitting that exposed buckle was a work of Bret Hart or Jerry Lawler level of brilliant timing. Sting's shoulder-only kickout after Starks' spear true perfection. His Scorpion Death drop has never looked heavier or as conquering. I don't know if there's been a more exciting tag team run this decade than Darby Allin and a guy whose biggest year in pro wrestling was the year before Darby Allin existed. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: BREMEN 1984

12/84 Bremen Part 1

MD: Again this is gated behind Richard Land's patreon but it's worth covering at length and there's a good chance more will keep dropping so best just get through it in two goes.

Billy Samson vs. Stephan Paersey/Petitpas

MD: Most of the footage here is quite complete but this is cut and we don't get a finish. instead, it's about nine minutes overall, but it's nine minutes of pretty good wrestling. Paersey is Stephan Peptitpas, mainy known for his work in Canada. These two match up pretty well, mainly contesting over control over the arm. Tight holds, very little given. Petitpas had a neat little dropkick to the held arm that looked good. Samson had a nice cross armbreaker takeover and this great little bit where he couldn't get Petitpas over with a cravat so he patted him on the back and teased a handshake and then went right back to it and got him over. Hard to say where this would have ended because the finish is cut off. They were pretty good at what they did though.

. .
Hans Roocks vs. Rene Lasartesse

MD: Speaking of good at what they did... I love watching Lasartesse. No one moves like him. The sheer confidence it must have taken to moved so woodenly but still be able to exude the amount of malice, just boggles the mind. He's like Yul Brynner in Westworld or something. Just always pressing forward, imposing, taking the air out of the room. Roocks is an absolute tank, big and thick and hard hitting. This almost felt like Wahoo vs Lasartesse in its own way. Early on they just laid into each other, Lasartesse with the height/reach advantage and Roocks throwing big meaty shots. The middle had Lasartesse control with holds meant to take the air away from him. He hit one bombs away kneedrop and had this sort of thumb on the throat headstand flip he did which I've never seen elsewhere. Roocks eventually fired back by swinging for the fences with European uppercuts and they hammered at each other until Lasartesse missed a second knee drop off the top and Roocks just scooped him over with a big pendalum power body slam for the win. Just mean stuff all around.

Dave Morgan vs. Caswell Martin

MD: Very, very good. Lots to see and take in. I tend to like Martin wherever I find him. This was absolutely a showcase for his great escapes. Headstands, sneaking through the legs, cartwheels and flips. Just interesting, imaginative stuff with Morgan setting everything up well. Martin controlled for a lot of this, hitting the armdrag slam (which got countered on the finish as he tried for it again), a neat front single leg dropkick, but mostly controlling through a top wristlock. Eventually, Morgan was able to get the up and over headscissors takeover, but he earned it, as he earned a rolling escape from an arm puller into a headlock. Good stuff. He leans towards comedy sometimes and they had a couple of funny moments here including a false start on rope running and him getting deposited on the top rope by Martin. Quite a few gif-able moments here but it all worked within the confines of the match.

Hans Steinblock vs. Giant Haystacks

MD: Steinblock is not well regarded but a lot of that is due to one famous Warrior match and being a promoter with a tendency to put himself over for years. Maybe when he was younger there was something there? I'm sad to report there was not. More than anything else, he moved and hit like Brutus Beefcake. Against almost anyone else in this footage, that might have still worked. Here, not so much. He had some hair and beard pulling and a big, crowd-pleasing knocking of Haystacks over the top rope. Haystacks was pretty good at knowing what to give and when but this wasn't the guy to give against. When Steinblock finally charged in one too many times and got caught, it felt like a mercy all around.

Otto Wanz vs. Giant Haystacks

MD: Primarily this made me appreciate the Studd match more. They hit hard at times. Haystacks got pretty good heat at times with cheapshots. They teased some of the stuff that actually got hit in the Steinblock match (like Haystacks going over the top). But this never came together for me at all. Too much of just wandering around and throwing their weight around ploddingly. I didn't feel any real sense of weight or gravitas. Things didn't build and payoff. They just kind of happened. It was just two giant behemoths encountering each other in the wild and crashing up against one another. Not a bad spectacle maybe but without the story and drama underpinning it. Even the finish seemed weird ad Otto got Haystacks down and went for a splash or went to go for one only for Haystacks to roll. So Otto just casually slapped on an arm bar and the ref called for it. It wasn't a Clash of the Titans because for that you need to have an actual Clash.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Lucy! Tomi! Ripper! Kumano! Ikeshita!

34. 1979.06.XX - Jackie Sato, Lucy Kayama & Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano, Monster Ripper & Yumi Ikeshita

K: They made pretty clear at the beginning that this is a prelude match to the double main event on 7/31, but even if they’re naturally not going to go all out here I still think they delivered a pretty good match here. The first fall wasn’t much, both teams brawls around the place without much of a structure to it and then it was pretty out of nowhere when Mami Kumano got the win with a torture rack, I think the announcer wasn’t even sure why the bell was ringing for a moment.

The second fall was a big improvement though. Comfortable being 1-0 up, Black Army now start playing a bit more conservatively grinding their opponents down. This is the environment where Yumi Ikeshita really shines as she has the biggest arsenal of offense of them and she can work holds for prolonged periods as well. The Jackie vs. Monster square off was also really good, the messiness of the 1st fall meant they’d waited until the 2nd for the crowd to really see this pairing, and in contrast to the rest of the match which was pretty frantic, if felt like they were milking every movement and building tension with their clash. Jackie would try to go for Monster’s back or find a way to take her down, but she never gets far as Black Pair would run in and cause her problems whenever she got herself on top for very long. There’s a particularly good moment when Jackie ends up on the floor with Ikeshita standing on her arm, Kumano is scrunching her face up and at the same time Monster Ripper is headbutting her in the belly! Well that’s a bit of a weird combination but I think sometimes just being weird is a good way of getting people’s attention.

Jackie tagging out isn’t a hot tag here. She’s able to get to the ropes and get a partner in but that doesn’t lead to some big momentum shift, they have to work harder to earn that. It finally comes when Tomi Aoyama gets Irish Whipped into the ropes by the corner where Monster Ripper is standing, but she leaps impressively high in the air to hit a big dropkick to the face that sends Monster flying off the apron into the crowd. It reminded me of that moment in 6/9/95 where Kawada gets Irish Whipped but just kicks Misawa off the apron in the process, except Tomi isn’t an asshole haha. Anyway that exciting spot worked really well to set up the comeback, not just because it was exciting, but it believably took Monster Ripper out of the match for a good while allowing the babyfaces to just beat Black Pair without the Monster turning their plans upside down. Ikeshita does try to stop Tomi from pinning Kumano to get the win but it doesn’t work as Jackie is freed up to pull her away.

The third fall is when that cool spot comes back to haunt them. The babyfaces do maintain their momentum at the start for a bit, but Monster Ripper is going for revenge and the harsh reality is they still haven’t come up with a way to stop her. Jackie Sato does lose her shit a bit here and jumps in trying to strangle heels with a towel, but she’s not able to beat them at their own dirty way. Before long, Monster hits her unstoppable top rope seated sentient move and big splash (with a vertical suplex in between) and we know this means game over.

Full of flaws typical of the era, it’s all a bit primitive and sometimes the action meanders, but this is still a well laid out match and leaves me wanting to see that 7/31 show.

***1/4

MD: This was a set up for the 7/31 show with Ripper vs Jackie and Black Pair defending against the Queen Angels. The heels had a declaration of their unified maliciousness read before the match. Tomi and Lucy both got their names shouted fondly by the crowd when announced but obviously Jackie got a much bigger roar. Three falls with the first very short. Chaos to begin, then come back, and things breaking down outside, ending with a Kumano torture rack quickly. Second fall had Ripper and the Pair press their advantage, including more tearing at Jackie’s face. The comeback was great though, with Tomi turning a whip into a massive dropkick onto Ripper to knock her off the apron. With her gone, the Angels were able to hit a couple of quick double teams, including this great reverse gutwrench finisher. There was some more teasing of Ripper and Jackie in here, including in the third fall, but it was generally academic, with the bad guys back at full strength and able to double team and cheat and press down. Finish had them crush Lucy (literally) with a vertical splash off the top by Ripper followed by the suplex/big splash combo. This was all good and did a good job heating up the 7/31 show, with a great comeback for the end of the second fall.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/7 - 10/13 Part 3

AEW WrestleDream 10/12/24

Darby Allin vs Brody King

Consequence is everything. That's why selling matters. Selling isn't checking a box and doing something because you're supposed to. Selling is the means to show consequence of action. Without it, pro wrestling is meaningless. It's pure sensation without substance. Imagine watching a movie where no one registers any of the events, reading a book where none of the characters seem to care about anything that happens. Wrestling is a physical medium. The events that take place are primarily physical. The impact of them must be registered and cared about, must be shown to be consistent over time and between matches. Otherwise, what's the point of any of this? Without that, what's makes wrestling stand out from any other sort of physically impressive athletic exhibition. All of the storytelling in wrestling is found here. Things have to have consequences.

Darby Allin is the human embodiment of consequence. He is transcendent. Nothing he does in the ring is for the sake of it. Nothing he does in the ring is simply to impress. If he is creating action, then that action is with the simulated intention of hurting his opponent. Given his size, the best weapon he has to do so is his own body. There are wrestlers who will do a series of three dives one after the other, and it's obvious that they are meant to thrill, to pop the crowd, to show off. When Darby does a series of multiple dives, a few elements are at play. First, he HAS to do this. He has no other way to hurt his opponent. He has no choice. The impact has to look like it's doing real damage and not just pushing his opponent backwards. He has to be a primed cannonball, not just a wrestler hitting a spot. Second, things could go horribly wrong with any dive. This isn't some inputted video game move where once the first dive hits, the second two will automatically follow. This is not a looped gif. At any point, something can, and so often will, go horribly wrong for Darby. Yet he presses on because he has absolutely no choice. There is a heavy sort of pressure that weighs down upon the viewer as they watch Darby wrestle. Nothing is light and fluffy. Even the things that involve some level of set up do not feel prearranged. Each moment is a hinge point, Schrodinger's spot, where everything could go right for him (at great cost nonetheless) or everything can go so, so wrong.

And Brody King is in many ways the perfect partner for this. Brody, like few others in wrestling today, lives and breathes that Hansen-ian mentality, always driving forward with the violence of the moment. It feels at any point that he surveys the scene like some unholy, bestial terminator and calculates in a heartbeat what would be the most impactful, the most hurtful, the most violent act. Then he does it. If Darby embodies consequence, Brody is more than happy to cause it. He's the beautiful and horrible butterfly flapping its wings. He's the grubby, wart-covered thumb that causes the first domino to fall. Together, they're a two man demolition crew, demolishing the ring, each other, and the feeling of safety and security that we call normalcy.

Therefore, the drama in any Darby match isn't about how many counters he can skillfully pull off. It's about survival. What is going to break first, his body (for his spirit will never break) or his opponent's? How much devastation can he take vs how much can he cause, knowing full well that every bit that he causes also hurts himself. Does his opponent have enough to push Darby over the limit, to leave him in such shambles that he can't get a shoulder up, that he can't twist and contort his body to escape just one more time, that he can no longer pick himself up and throw himself like a blunt object into the face of his enemy? When your body is your only weapon, everything matters. When there's a chance that you are going to crash and burn at any and every moment, everything matters. Darby is the human embodiment of consequence and a king of anticipation. The fans believe in him, believe in his resilience, believe that even though he registers every bit of pain, there's always a chance he can fight back, that he can persevere. They believe in him all the more because he registers everything that happens and it matters so, so much more when he does overcome and even when he doesn't.

And what mattered here? What mattered here was that this was a war, and not a war of posturing and preening. This was a war with casualties, bruised skin, battered bones, blood between the teeth. When the smoke cleared Darby was victorious, but there was no shame in Brody's loss; there was glory in he even making it back into the ring to beat the count after the coffin drop onto the stairs. There was a handshake that actually mattered. There was even a tiny taste of hope for what Darby and Brody might be able to do together given the darkness falling upon AEW. Sometimes you have to fight darkness with darkness. And none of this exists, none of it matters, none of it catches in your throat and pumps your heart without consequence. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/7 - 10/13 Part 2

AEW WrestleDream 10/12/24

Bryan Danielson vs Jon Moxley

MD: Wrestling is about hope. It's about creating the need for it, building up anticipation for it, cutting it off after every tiny taste of it, and then paying it off at the absolute right moment and in the absolute right way. Hope is everything. What hope has meant to the wrestling fan, both within the confines of a match and in general, has changed over the decades. If we go back forty years, it was about the heel being punished at the hands of the babyface. If we go back twenty years, it might be more about the company pushing a favorite wrestler to the top. And now? A lot of times, it's about being lucky enough to see something great, a match that picks up as many stars as are in the sky.

Ironically, the milestones of Bryan Danielson's career have run the opposite path for me. A little over twenty years ago, I sat at an ROH show hoping I'd see an all timer as he wrestled an ironman match against Doug Williams. Ten years ago, I hoped beyond hope that WWE would let him break the glass ceiling and win at Wrestlemania despite all the odds and all the plans. And yesterday, as I watched him wrestle Jon Moxley, even though I knew deep down that the end was upon us, I hoped that he would get his hands on his enemy first. What was beyond my wildest hope, however, was what the two of them would create for us before it was all said and done. They left us with one last amazing gift, one that has provided me just a bit more hope for the future.

I do not expect to see Danielson in a ring again any time soon, not even with the high heat angle that sent him off. I do expect to see him in the ring, even somewhat regularly, at some point years down the line. I know a thing or two about having a daughter, and eventually she won't be quite as eager to have him around the house all the time. When that time comes, I hope (so much of that, see?) that he returns, not as the Bryan Danielson we've always known, but as an older, wiser one ready and willing to lean upon all of the old tricks of wrestling and to cash in the fans' desire to see him again, to wrestle a completely different style, one that cares less for athleticism and more for the illusion of the same. I truly think that someday he will have a real chance of restoring something that right now feels like it might be forever lost.

That was too big an ask for one night and far too much to hope for on his last night as an active wrestler. What he and Mox managed instead was to show that something else, something related, was not forever eradicated from this earth as well. You see, I wasn't the only one who wanted him to get his hands on Jon Moxley. 8000+ in that arena wanted it too. There were so many things at play. There was Moxley's turn and the violence around it, the build to the match itself: the promos, the recrimination, the fight over the heart of Yuta, the unforgivable offense of Moxley doing this to Danielson right now when he was so close to leaving on his own terms. In some ways there were years of build to this. In other, more tangible ways, there were just weeks. They were powerful weeks, however and Bryan was here in his home region, in an arena that meant something to him, fighting against a brother that betrayed him, fighting over the ending of his story and the very soul of pro wrestling.

And this crowd, a crowd that had already been sated by a three-way that was deemed as "a different level of incredible" by you know who, a crowd that had every reason to be exhausted... this crowd, maybe for the first time in years in the United States, was made to want blood. To expect Bryan Danielson, who has gone on record recently as feeling like he no longer understands wrestling and wrestling fans, to have all the answers on this night would be impossible. But he and Mox did all that they had to; they provided a proof of concept that can be built upon, they showed that wrestling on a big stage can still touch people in the way that it once did, that it can overcome post-modern cynicism and grip a crowd by its collective heart and squeeze all of the emotion out of it.

There was no posing, no preening. People talk about wrestling being cinematic, but I can't imagine anything more cinematic than Moxley rushing right at Danielson as he started to enter the ring and the two of them fighting for every advantage, big or small, as the Final Countdown played over them. You could watch a thousand pro wrestling music videos, and they might all be artful and perfectly timed in their own way but none could possibly move you more than watching the violence unfold to this ultimate soundtrack. It took my stomach and lurched it up towards my throat in a way that I've only felt recently watching Mad Dog Connelly battle Demus, that I thought would have been impossible in an arena setting. And they managed it with a song playing in the background. That’s how deeply they threw themselves into the struggle at play, how completely they gave in to the animosity they were portraying. When two wrestlers are able to manage that, everything around them becomes additive, becomes a positive part of the equation.

Moxley is unquestionably cool, but he did certain things to make sure the fans would never even inch his way. Some of that was having Shafir at ringside and drawing the ref so that she could attack. He didn't need to do that. He had control. She hit hard; he could probably hit harder. While he was going to win the match clean, he made sure to fight it dirty. The pile driver on the table that shifted things from shine to heat was preceded by an eyerake. Later on, he'd rip the tape off and bite where it had been. That's not the most damaging thing he could have done, but it was one of the most symbolic. He took his time, let it all sink in. He jawed with someone in the front row (someone who thankfully had the wherewithal to remind Moxley that Danielson was his brother). He shoved Nigel's headset off for daring to say that Mox didn't care what any ref had to say. Interestingly, he DID care what Bryce had to say. The whole point of this was to win the title, and while he'd choke Bryan with a wire for the four count, he had til five and he used it.

Mox is a different sort of cat. Bryan and Eddie were on message boards, were trading tapes. Mox was digging through the dumpster behind Blockbuster to see if they tossed out an overwatched King of the Deathmatch commercial tape. He wasn't playing Oregon Trail in fifth grade. He probably still types with two fingers. He's not like us in the same way they are, and he can lean into that to be the other that can get under everyone's skin. Meanwhile, Bryan is of us, one of us, the paragon that we all look to, in some ways the very best of us, and as he took his advantages, he made sure to appeal to the crowd, to first conduct and then channel its energy and power.

And to their credit, these fans did not waver. Oh, there was a moment or two where I started to worry. They counted along with a ten count as both men were down. When things devolved into strike exchanges (but one where everything registered and everything was felt and sold) they were eager to yay and boo with each strike. But those were small imperfections and excusable ones. Knowing what to do with this level of engaged emotion is new for a 2020s crowd; there was bound to be (re)growing pains. They came through where it mattered, led by the wrestlers to the promised ground of chanting expletives at Moxley, buzzing for Danielson's comebacks, booing Mox's dirty fighting, as opposed to chanting "This is Awesome" even and especially when what they were seeing was in fact awesome.

Then, at the end, after the expulsion of Shafir, after the comebacks and kickouts, when Danielson finally could go no further and Bryce called for the bell; and then, as the belt was stored away safely by Claudio and the plastic bag arrived, and as Yuta, his own hope drained from him by Bryan's loss, made the only choice he felt he had left to him, the crowd fell to a stunned hush. This was their reward for allowing themselves to be led (as if they had any choice in the matter), to feel one last overwhelming wave of emotion, to be moved by the art in front of their eyes in a way that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, to feel more alive in shock and despair than any performance has ever made them feel.

So they gave me something more than I could hope for and they dared me to hope even further still. I hope that this is just the beginning, that even though Bryan Danielson is gone, that Jon Moxley understands what he's brought forth, the small ember that he has reignited, and can carry the flag forward and restore honest, earnest feeling (not "the Feeling" of 2021 AEW but something even more primal that speaks to the human heart), can bring the most valuable facets of mythology back to a post-modern word. The pieces are on the table. Darkness reigns. It's up to the babyfaces to foster hope in the hearts of the AEW faithful, to achieve meaningful wins even if the ultimate goal is deferred and deferred and deferred until the time is right. Let Orange Cassidy conglomerate. Let Darby Allin be the crow that feasts upon their nightmares. Raise Daniel Garcia to be the centerpiece of a new Super Generation Army of young lions. Lean hard into the stakes. Make it matter. Show that the wrestlers care. If they care, the fans will care. Darkness has fallen over AEW, but within it and through match that heralded its arrival, I've found more hope for pro wrestling than I've had in years.

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