Found Footage Friday: VALENTINE~! GARVIN~! CENA~! JOE~! BOTSWANA~! DOUG~!

Greg Valentine vs. Ronnie Garvin WWF 1/14/89

MD: Another new Richard Land find (go seek him out on twitter if you want to see this). Apparently this show did exist but with terrible VQ to the point where it hasn't been looked at. From entrances to leaving this goes ~15 and it's probably even better than you'd expect coming in, which is saying a lot. They're able to balance the best strike exchanges in the history of the company with just enough variety, stooging, stalling, and other little tricks to tie it all together.

The exchanges are amazing, but varied as well. Valentine might go high and low with punches or throw chops. Garvin will fire back out of the corner, in the center, will pick him up to knock him down again. And they do such a great job not just registering each blow by throwing their head back (whether in the corner or not) or Valentine spacing out, but by setting up the anticipation of it all with Valentine dancing back or stalling in the ropes or both of them throwing hands. It's the ultimate combination of anticipation, execution, and reaction that makes this amazing, strike exchange after strike exchange, with Garvin throwing in enough other things (a jackknife pin, slamming Valentine's head into the corner) and Valentine doing his big stooging sells to make it more than just a slugfest but a complete living, breathing tapestry of violence.

ER: We all keep writing in various ways "Greg Valentine's case as an All Time Great only rises with every new match we find" because it just keeps happening. Since we started Found Footage Fridays 5-15 years ago Valentine has been one of our frequent topics, appearing in the feature 10+ times, and each one of those times only raised his stock as a worker. He's incredible. 15 years ago, I had no idea what a huge Greg Valentine fan I would become. It really started with the DVDVR 80s WWF Project, the first set in the project that would make for the best years of my wrestling fandom. Valentine/Garvin was the kind of WWF match I had never seen before and didn't realize was ever happening there. Years later Valentine would be the reason I'd start my favorite wrestling project ever - Complete Berzerker - after seeing his brilliant match against Berzerker. Every piece of footage I've seen since - new, old, seen, unseen - just confirmed how great Valentine was. 

Now here's another new piece of the Valentine lore and it takes me back to 2006 (that can't be right) and the first time I saw the Valentine/Garvin '89 MSG match. It finished very high on my DVDVR 80s ballot, and I got to talk to Valentine at a convention about their matches. He said that nobody liked working Garvin because he worked stiff, and so they paired Valentine with him a lot because Valentine didn't mind working stiff with Garvin. That's the simplest explanation, those were Valentine's words, and then I proceeded to talk to him about BattlArts without ever buying an 8x10. I didn't know the rules, sorry. 

Now we get another take on them beating the hell out of each other and crowds slowly catching on to just how hard these men are hitting each other. Dick Graham catches on pretty quick just how hard the men are hitting each other. My favorite realization from Graham is when Valentine kicked Garvin in the face like Tenryu right in front of the ringside camera, and Graham just shouted out "SHOOT!" You have no idea, Dick. You watch this, and realize this whole thing cannot happen with Valentine. I love Garvin, but Valentine could have worked this match with anybody. Valentine is the one falling all over the place for him and leaning in to his toughest shots. Valentine is the one permitting every piece of nasty action to proceed. When Garvin starts teeing off on Hammer in the ropes, throwing hard overhand chops, mixing up punches to the forehead and body, finishing him with a shot to the forehead in the corner that sent Valentine skidding down each turnbuckle to the mat, I can see why not many others were willing to work Garvin. But Valentine makes it all into more than just stiff shots. Valentine showcases the willingness to throw hands and the over-willingness to stooge (the man must have timberrrrrrr fell to the mat a dozen times for payoff blows), but most importantly Valentine knew how to put over every single thing Garvin did. 

My favorite part of the match might have been Garvin's crucifix pin, because I don't know if I've ever seen a more ligament stretching crucifix. Garvin tied up Hammer's arms and slowly started pulling him back, and if you'd never seen a crucifix pin before you'd think Hammer was getting his arms slowly broken behind him. Valentine made his taking the move look more like a shoot pin than I'd ever seen, like his necktie was caught in a shredder and the more time he spent struggling the closer he was brought to his death. This match could have been All Hands and still been one of the best WWF matches of the decade, but Valentine knew how to take things higher. 

Doug Gilbert vs. Botswana Beast (Kimala II) Barbed Wire MECW 1999

MD: This was supposed to be One Man Gang vs. Doug and you can't just make a substitution late on a match like this and just expect it to work, but they made a pretty good effort overall. Gilbert went into the wire real early which was sort of the only logical way to do this (he took it right to Beast but couldn't actually whip him) unless you were going to take out a knee and keep it on the mat or something. So there wasn't exactly build and payoff. Instead, they actually went to the floor which I'm not sure I've ever actually seen in a barbed wire match. More than that, you had to rationalize Beast even being able to get out under the bottom rope without killing himself. That did allow Gilbert to get some reasonable offense with the chair and then, back in the ring toss Beast in at least once. He came back and had a fun marathon whipping of Gilbert into the wire again and again before dropping the splash. When he went for a second one PG-13 came out to break things up and smash Beast with the hubcap. Reno Riggins hilariously made the save with a chair, which he immediately put down before hitting anyone with it, thus allowing for himself to get swept under so Beast could make the save. Doug Gilbert's Bobcat Goldthwait faces made this work despite the substitution.

ER: Ever since I was the high voter on the Botswana Beast vs. Terry Gordy match from the World Class set, I feel a strong connection to Beast that might not actually be present in his ring work. I've always been fascinated by Beast/Kimala II/Uganda in a similar but different way than I'm fascinated by Gallagher II. Kimala II might have been the worst All Japan worker of the 90s, yet there he was wrestling 800 matches in the greatest workrate fed of the decade, dressed up as the shorter, fatter version of a guy whom everyone in attendance knew. I love that Kimala II existed, I sincerely love that Gordy match, and if he's the worst All Japan worker of the 90s then I love that he got to exist there during that whole magic era. This was from '99, when he was working ECW shows in the states between All Japan tours and is a fun spectacle without being much of a match. My favorite bits were all centered on Beast's low center of gravity, showing how impossible it would be for Doug to shove him into the ropes against his will. I loved that Irish whip spot where Doug pulled with all his might only for Beast's feet to slide a bit forward on the mat, before Beast whipped Doug into the barbed wire with the strength of Andre. 

John Cena vs. Samoa Joe WWE 8/26/17

MD: This was absolutely delightful. It checks so many boxes just from the start. A match we never thought we'd get. Unproduced house show footage, clear as day, from 2010s WWE. A hot crowd. Two larger than life wrestlers who knew exactly what they were doing working a house show style. It feels like a million years ago and I'd say it overdelivered my expectations. You listen to the crowd build and build and build as they take them up and down (but each high getting a little bit higher) and that's just what I want out of pro wrestling more often than not. 

I can't even tell you the last time I saw a Cena match. It was probably for FFF. We watched one in 2022. That was probably it. I think that was a house show too. I can't get over how simplistic, minimalist, straightforward this was. Joe won an early exchange and celebrated, the shine was basically just a build to Cena winning a shoulderblock and it feeling like a huge deal. Joe took over with one (and only one) punch in the corner. Cena went down like a ton of bricks.

He never really looked back. Cena would get hope spots because he was Cena and basically anything he did was a hope spot. He'd dash into the ring before Joe expected. He'd block a punch. He'd heft him up into a fireman's carry out of nowhere, but Joe dropped him each time. The fans got louder each time though. Until it was just Cena standing up in the corner that did it. Amazing stuff. Joe ran right through him then, but then, when it was repeated, Cena moved and that's when he got in his signature comeback stuff. Talk about rewarding the crowd for caring. They went into a ref bump and a phantom win before the actual one, adding in a bit of doubt to the proceedings. I'm not entirely sure that was necessary given the match they were wrestling, but it was no real harm overall. Just an amazing reminder how special these guys are.