Found Footage Friday: MULLIGAN~! WILKENS~! STRONGBO[SIC]~! JACOBS~! BOERSEUN~! SCHUTTE~!

Jan Wilkens vs. Blackjack Mulligan South Africa 1982

MD: Another mystery tape by Richard Land (on his Patreon). All around expert Ohtani's Jacket was able to help us identify some names. I'm going to focus on the Mulligan matches. Apparently Mulligan came to South Africa in October 1981 and beat Wilkens for their title. Wilkens was the big star, their Wanz (who had lost to Wanz incidentally in the first CWA title match). This was good. I get the sense it would have been great three or four years earlier.

I get the sense these might have been ten minute rounds. There's a bell after around ten minutes but then things just continue on pretty quickly thereafter. It's two falls to win. Mulligan works it pretty technical, using his size (Wilkens was not small, but Mulligan was Mulligan) to bully him. Wilkens then could show off escape after escape. He had a great slip out of a side headlock into a roll up that I've only seen once or twice elsewhere. When Mulligan got him to the ropes, he'd hit a great strike or two and it built to Wilkens firing back. Once they started in with pins, things moved quickly, with Wilkens getting a backbreaker out of nowhere and then Mulligan powering back with a clashing Neckbreaker Drop. Mulligan hit a knee off the top but when he went for another, Wilkens tossed him off for the win. The crowd was hot for this and it was wrestled well but I think they left more in the tank for the title match to come. 

ER: I am wholly unfamiliar with the South African wrestling scene of the early 80s. I don't know Jan Wilkens, but I sure liked this. This was a cool, tough, 2/3 falls match with great build. It really felt like they aimed to worked each fall harder than the last, so by the 3rd fall they're throwing bombs and falling hard. All falls had strong build, starting with matwork that I've never seen Mulligan do quite the same. Wilkens is a guy with size - not as much size as Mulligan, but a heavyweight only a couple inches shorter - so I got into Mulligan forcing him down with stiff armbar takedowns, leaning into Wilkens body and forcing him down with weight. It's leverage by brute force and it's a good way to establish Mulligan as a brute who isn't afraid of working technical. Then, by the time he was working as a brute, the crowd hated him. 

Mulligan is a bit like Stan Hansen, without the body control. Hansen is this huge man who has incredible control over his body - evident in his selling and the way he pushes back against offense - whereas Mulligan is a big guy who doesn't quite seem to understand how his body is falling. He breaks out his big flying back elbow twice, and after he lands hard on his back each time he appears to collect himself and make sure he was damaged in the fall. I like the dimension that adds, making the big elbow feel like something he knows is a risk, knowing that it's taking something out of him just by doing it. I thought for sure a missed elbow was going to lead to the finish due to the way he was selling the delivery. Instead, he breaks out a top rope kneedrop, an insane move for a man of any size, but especially crazy for a guy as large as Mulligan. When Mulligan got pressed off the top for the finish, I bought it keeping him down because I saw how hard his landings were on his own flying elbows. I agree with Matt that they likely left some stuff for bigger future matches, but this build had me hooked. 

Big John Strongbo/Little John Strongbo vs. Mike Schutte/Boerseun South Africa 1982

ER: Goddamn do I love that there was also a Little John Strongbo. The Strongbos, wearing singlets that look like bastardized American flags and I believe referred to as Die Amerikanas on commentary, look like total freaks. If they are working a fake asshole American gimmick, it's hilarious that this is how South Africans viewed Americans in the early 80s. They're both big (yes, Big John is the bigger, rounder one) and have identical white blond hair done up in short curly bobs. They look like the largest albinos I've ever seen. Even Little John is larger than Edgar and Johnny Winter combined. Big John has a white blond beard that hides in plain sight and only reveals itself during a horrifying close up. Mike Schutte looks like Gorilla Monsoon got shrunk down to 2/3 size, and Boerseun - which translates to peasant, or farmer's boy - looks nothing like a peasant or a farmer's boy. He looks like Ray Traylor-as-War Machine in that one '87 War Games, wearing a black mask, black tights, and a tight black crewneck sweatshirt that says BOERSEUN on the chest in glitter. 

This firmly establishes the 1982 South African 2/3 falls style, where in the first fall all four guys barely look like wrestlers and by the third fall they're all beating the shit out of each other. Mike Schutte was a famous South African boxer who had retired a couple years prior, and the climax of the match saw him finally throw blows with the Strongbos, going high and low and knowing to finish with a big fist off the side of the head. The Strongbos worked more viciously as the match went on, playing slight cowards in the early falls before breaking out stiff punches and kicks in the third. When they tied up Boerseun in the ropes Andre style and got Schutte in the tree of woe, I think that was the first time all match that Little John started laying in shots. The fans were making a ton of noise as the DQ was drawn, and honestly I cannot believe the Strongbos did not bleed with that hair. I assumed the only reason they had their hair done up that freakish color of white blond was because they were going to bleed buckets. 

Jan Wilkens vs. Blackjack Milligan (Title) South Africa 10/1982

MD: This was the big title match. Mulligan said in his promo that it was the first nationally aired wrestling match in South Africa. No idea if that's true but he worked it like it was. It was everything I wanted from their first match and more. After a bit of feeling out (and Mulligan complaining about a hairpull and then going for the tights), Blackjack just started unloading on Wilkens. He dominated both inside and out of the ring, really putting a beating on him. Just big credible shots over and over as Wilkens sold. He brought him in from the apron with a powerslam that almost turned into a Northern Lights Driver and then put him down with an elbow drop.

Second fall was Wilkens coming back huge with some great forearms as the crowd went nuts. Mulligan sold and begged off and got outpunched. Wilkens slammed him from the outside in as well to score the fall. Then they wrestled a third round more evenly with some nice technical bits like Mulligan hanging on to a chicken wing only for Wilkens to go up and over with a headscissors and Mulligan repeatedly ending up in a body scissors. It all built to great slugfest, really good stuff, with Mulligan bleeding as he tried to fire back from the apron before they both crashed into one another and Wilkens draped an arm over for the finish. Mulligan absolutely earning his fee here and wrestling to the level of gravitas the event seemed to carry. Excellent title match that was completely off our radar before now.

Jan Wilkens/Tarzan Jacobs vs. Blackjack Mulligan/Big John Strongbo

MD: Apparently it's just Strongbo, yes. He was a big lad, shall we say and perfect for this match, which was an absolute blast. Maybe it didn't need to be 2/3 falls and go quite so long but the fans were buzzing the whole time as it was one entertaining bit after the next. Pretty early on they bulldog ram Strongbo into his own corner and Mulligan takes a huge bump from the apron off of the collision and that sets the tone for the entire match. So much stooging here. Wilkens had this amazing way of throwing himself into everything he did (especially pinfalls or pin breakups). Jacobs was a stand up fighter with a goofy superkick and unafraid to throw endless headbutts. The heels got most of their offense with ring rope choking in the corner or swarming in the ropes and at times it felt heel-in-peril with Mulligan and Strongbo pinballing all over the place but for a place in time that we're going to drop in and never come back to, I didn't mind it one bit. It devolved into chaos but that seemed somehow fitting.