AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 6/23 - 6/29

ROH Global Wars Mexico 6/26/25 (taped 6/18/25)

Lee Moriarty vs Blue Panther

MD: Wrestling is not about making the impossible possible. It's about making the incredible plausible, and on paper everything about this match was incredible. Blue Panther is 64 years old. He's 64 years old with a lifetime of bumps (rolling or otherwise) onto hard mats and hitting and taking dives. He's all that and he's still all this and along with Lee Moriarty, he created such a match. I'm sorry, but that is incredible. 

How then did it happen? Wrestling is the art of using illusion to create emotion, with reality utilized sparingly to underpin it all. For the first third of this match, reality was technique. The illusion? That was Moriarty creating motion as Panther controlled the center and (at first) Moriarty's arm along with it. The arm was barred so tightly, so precisely, hands in the right places, balance perfectly held, Panther presenting himself immaculately, that Moriarty had the perfect base to push off against as he expressed the painful consequence of the hold and tried again and again to escape. 

When he finally did, they opened things up, while still grounding it all in the technique you would expect from a Pure Champion and a true maestro. Moriarty edged a leg in between Panther's own to lock in a cravat. Now it was Panther's turn to sell, his arm flailing with each cinch of the hold. Not for long though as he was able to go behind into a full nelson. Moriarty lifted his own leg up, interlacing his fingers underneath it to give him leverage to break the hold. Then it was a leg pried in between Panther's once more to lock in an abdominal stretch. The game of chess continued as Panther pried off fingers, shot two elbows into Moriarty's leg, and tripped him. Moriarty flowed straight into his next gambit, pressing off against Panther's waist to propel him back up and then up and over Panther's shoulder with a spectacular takeover. 

Technique is well and good, but it's the means and not an end unto itself. With that countermove, Moriarty began to stretch not just his skill but his bluster and swagger as well. Here it was over the top clapping for itself. After a slick pinfall attempt a minute later, it was a gloat to Panther that he almost got him. And then, feigning sportsmanship, he offered a handshake and threw in a bonus kick for good measure. As he took over the Infantry, seconding him, gloated as well, and once he got Panther out, he cemented his control with two explosive topes.

Illusion was underpinned by technique. The different flavor of reality that would come, Moriarty's dives and subsequent superplex, helped serve his heeling, his arrogance, his borderline villainy, as Panther took a stiff upper lip and forced himself to survive. The dives are never the point. The superplex is not the point. They're tools carefully used to help support the underlying emotion. In this case, it was Panther's legendary prowess against the upstart invader. Panther survived through the Border City Stretch, ducked a shot coming in and fired back, and then, with one mighty burst of energy, hyped up the crowed (making the most of the moment) and hit a dive off the ramp. 

Even then, Moriarty had youth on his side, all else equal, and he mounted one last offensive. All else was not equal, however, for Panther had the home arena advantage and, even more important, the advantage of inner discipline, of age and wisdom, turning a seeming weakness into a strength. Moriarty got cocky one last time and Panther dropped him into an armbar for a quick tap. After would come the pageantry and chaos of an assault, a rescue, a celebration, but none of those thing were as impressive to me as the beautiful mix of illusion (down to the mask which hides Panther's age) and reality, both technique and impact that allowed this unlikely match to capture imagination as it did. That's pro wrestling though. It crosses eras and borders, a universal falsehood that reveals inner truths.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Danielson vs. Sabre

 

2. Bryan Danielson vs. Zack Sabre Jr. NJPW 2/11/24

ER: I watched this match some time last year and fell in love with it, planned on writing it up to add to my glacially growing MOTY lists, but other wrestling felt like it was more worthy of my writing time, more worthy of coverage. This match was in no way under the radar as an acclaimed match. Who hadn't heard about or seen this match? Who needed to be convinced to seek out one of the most praised matches from Danielson's brilliant farewell tour? So, I devoted my energy to other things and now, after seeing Bryan at DEAN~! 2 beautifully bear witness to the power of independent wrestling, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit this match. 

Yes, I understand this match is not an Independent Pro Wrestling Match. Clearly. New Japan is the biggest wrestling promotion on that side of the world and this took place in a large arena in Osaka. But Bryan Danielson defined indy wrestling, and Sabre was a wrestler who I fully got into after seeing him up close and live on indy wrestling shows. The close up magic was always my favorite part of indy wrestling. There's nowhere to hide when you're in a quiet gymnasium and some guy with thick glasses is sitting 8 feet away while you're working strikes. It was good that I got to see John Cena live when I was 20, to hear a gassed up green bodybuilder literally shout out spots across an echoing indoor soccer arena, just as it was good that I got to see Necro Butcher fall fully on top of my girlfriend's sister at the one wrestling show she ever attended. 

I fell in love with Danielson's wrestling after getting to see him at least a dozen times live and up close, from gyms to garages to county fairs. Any lingering doubts I had about Sabre vanished when I got to see him give and take seemingly impossible punishment from 10' away, my love fully realized when I was standing in the perfect location to witness him leave a boot imprint bruise on Dan Makabe's neck. It wasn't that long ago when people were saying Sabre was a skinny guy who wrestled an "unbelievable" matwork style, and it wasn't so many years before that when Danielson was spoken of as an incredible wrestler who would never be taken seriously on a big league level. Times certainly have changed. 

I am constantly at odds with modern wrestling. Wrestling has never been more easily accessible, and yet I have never felt on such a completely different page from modern interests and styles than I do now. So many guys wrestle like so many other guys that it feels like every guy has wrestled every other guy a couple dozen times, homogenous styles making it seem like every possible match has been regularly happening for years and been done to death. Considering that, I was surprised that there weren't already a dozen different Danielson/Sabre matches, but merely four, split down the middle by a 15 year gap. It feels, on paper, so predictable that they would make great opponents that I just assumed they had been out there being great opponents for each other during every year Danielson wasn't a) in WWE or b) critically injured. But no, there wrestled four times, and this will (surely?) be the last time. It is their definitive match, and it is so good that noted wrestling historian Dave Meltzer gave it an unprecedented 5 1/2 stars (!), an honor he has only bestowed upon his favorite several dozen matches over the last two years. 

This match was fantastic at being the match I expected it to be, and even better at being a match that could break out into something different at any time. It skated a line between "close your eyes and picture the match you think Sabre/Danielson would have" and "maybe these two are going to go 30 minutes of constantly struggling over every single hold with no breaks of any kind". I don't need a match to subvert my expectations for me to enjoy it. Often I want a match to do the exact things I am expecting it to do. And, while I thought the match was at its most thrilling when it was subverting my expectations and teasing the unknown, I also appreciated the ways that it played directly into expectations. While the structure played into my expectations, the brutality somehow exceeded them. This never felt like two guys working a Dream Match Farewell, it always felt like a brutal match that kept tipping further and further into unprofessional territory, in a way that only felt more engaging the longer it went, with the possibility of either man's body actually breaking feeling like a real thing that could happen. So the match built incredibly as a well laid out wrestling match, while ramping up the intensity appropriately in time with the build. 

The beginning was playful and didn't feel the need to rush. When I say "playful" I mean playful in a way that would rip the ligaments of most humans, but it was playful for them. These two are not normal men, and they are testing each other and it is playful and painful. One of the best things about Fujiwara was how happy he could look in matches. When he smiled about what a dickhead he was being a dick or after taking a kick to the teeth, he looked like he was doing the exact thing he most wanted to be doing in this world and loving it. Danielson's farewell run was at its best whenever he could not hide how much fun he was having, and that pure joy was evident in nearly his entire AEW run. Sabre was smiling and laughing too, but his laugh was more pensive; the dance partner who wasn't sure how far this smiling battered old guy was going to take things. They were testing each other, in different ways, while also entertaining each other with something they each love doing: wrestling. 

I didn't see a single second of inactivity on the mat. There was constant advancement without ever seeming like they were in charted waters. In a wrestling world where every reversal feels like it skipped the move entirely and went straight to the mapped out reversal, this looked like RINGS. It was the kind of matwork where you couldn't grab a headlock without having a palm jammed into your jaw, no way to scramble for a leg without getting your own leg bent weird. Snapmare reversals looked so good they would have been bought as a first fall finish to men in suits watching front row in the 50s. Ankles were targeted, some moves delivered with a sigh of relief, less desperation maneuver more clever quick thinking escape. Sabre adjusts his submissions on the fly to keep Danielson from getting from the ropes, and it felt like a Johnny Saint spot...if Saint had ever worked as a heel sadist. I lived through the era where indy wrestlers began seeing their first Johnny Saint match, and you couldn't go to a show without someone throwing their name into the hat of "who could do the worst Lady in the Lake". I always felt the Johnny Saint Rip Off descriptor was unfair to Sabre, and I think he's been exceeding that tag for a decade now. The history is there, but the ceiling of viciousness was never this high for Johnny. 

The stiff work was even stiffer than I expected, and the worked violence was so tight that it made me question what was legit and what wasn't. Was Danielson really mule kicking Sabre straight in the kneecap, or did it just Look Good? Was Danielson really trying to no sell like Kikuchi until Sabre starting kicking him in the face, making Kikuchi homage impossible? Sabre has one of the greatest worked headbutts, and I also get the sense he has a great shoot headbutt. Does the 5 minute Fujiwara/Kikuchi match from fucking Ice Ribbon exist on tape? ICE RIBBON are the ones who ran Fujiwara/Kikuchi? How could that be? 

Anyway, Danielson's downward strike elbows are maybe the only thing I wished Danielson would have dropped from his arsenal. It was tough to make them Look Good, and they inspired as many horrid copycats as The Lady in the Lake. But Danielson had the best version of this spot that dozens have now done much worse. Here, his 12 to 6 elbows were the best they've ever looked...or had the close up magicians fooled me again? It sure looked like Danielson was crossing a line with them while breaking a triangle, and I loved how he was acting like a guy who knew he was clearly crossing a line. Their off-timed body shots to block strikes felt like they each could have been intentionally trying to throw the other's timing off within a worked sequence or in a playful shoot way. They worked as beautifully together as anyone with a brain thought they would.

My faults with the match are minimal but I think important: The top rope back suplex felt like it was from a different match. It's a 32 minute match and most of it had been two guys struggling against the other's force, and now suddenly it was two guys kind of holding still so Sabre can make sure he's balanced and Danielson can find his footing. Everything else felt like two men trying to neutralize the other, and the suplex felt like two friends working together to boost each other over a pretty high fence. The finish itself was kind of a letdown. I kept liking parts of it - Sabre pulling back on Danielson's leg after the Zack Driver, then throwing his other leg over to clamp it down made me think that was it. That leg looked like a nail in a coffin - but I didn't love the rush for pinfalls, and the submission reversals suddenly felt more like Dean Malenko style Early Anticipation mapped out matwork. When you get half a match of Real Shit and finish with that, it's a harsh intrusion of 2024 Wrestling right when you're about to climax. Unfortunate placement by them, unfortunate wording by me. 

Those complaints aren't what I'm going to think about when I recall this match. This match was far more than that. It stands as one of the highest points of 2024 Wrestling, and no matter what I think about modern wrestling, I mean that as positively as possible. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: THE MALENKO-GUERRERO CLASSIC~! LORD NORMAN~! COLLINS~!

MD: We've been doing this for years now, pulling together whatever we can find from the connections we have and just on the internet in general. In parallel for a lot of those has been https://x.com/krisplettuce who has a patreon where he pulls all sorts of things together. Where we focus on matches specifically, he focuses more on whole TV shows and spans of shows. He's recently organized thirteen episodes of Malenko GWA from 88, hosted by Bob Roop and while none of the matches go too long, we're highlighting a few of them. 

Lord Norman vs. Steve Collins GWA 6/25/88

MD:  Collins was the Party Animal with the Party Girls (two valets) with him, and the fans chanting "party" basically the whole way through. He was the promotion's light heavyweight champion. Dropkicks, headlock takeovers including using the turnbuckles. That sort of thing. It's kind of amazing watching Smiley here knowing that he'd be on a few UWF 2.0 shows the back half of the year standing up to guys like Yamazaki and even Maeda completely believable and dominant. Here he was the newly crowned TV champ and had a chip on his shoulder. He was a few years into the business and you wouldn't know it was the same guy in UWF past the physique. Oh yeah, he also came out with a pipe, because of course he did.

I'm not sure he was always entirely on the same page as Collins but there were some little positioning things that were pretty interesting. Other things, like them setting up him missing a stomp onto Collins only to get his hands stomped himself didn't seem entirely plausible in the set up. When he took over, he had pretty credible offense, a few suplexes and a really nasty hotshot where he seemed to lose control of him. His entourage (including Dr. Red Roberts) menaced the girls and Collins went out. Norman went to post him but got posted in return and just missed the count back in. Post match they did a challenge where Collins would put a Party Girl up against the TV title. 

Lord Norman vs. Steve Collins GWA 7/23/88

MD: By the time the challenge happened, Norman (and Death Row) was managed by Reverend Johnson and he lost the match due to distraction and had to give up a party girl. He'd also given up the light heavyweight title since he wanted to move up weight classes so as to better face Norman and others (which was put interestingly as they noted he might lose some of his speed/agility in doing so).   

Right before this one, Johnson broke into the TV show with a pirate feed to announced the formation of the Black Wrestling Alliance which does, as a gimmick, feel at least five years before its time. Collins is down to one Party girl as Dominique had chosen to be with Smiley and crew. This was probably a stronger overall match than the last one and Smiley showed a lot more both while taking stuff and working from underneath and through his offense. There was a bit where he got clowned trying to get out of a headscissors I liked quite a bit. 

Collins was favoring a knee though he didn't really target it. He did his nice off center double underhook suplex though and stayed on him pretty aggressively. They ran a spot where he distracted the ref while Death Row crushed Collins and that made me think it was probably a good thing Maeda didn't see this match or else he would have never made it to UWF. Finish had Death Row rush the ring once Collins put on the sleeper and the Party Girl slipping Collins a chair so he could "break bad" as the commentary put it and hit everyone with it. You do get the sense that Smiley, even a few years in, might be progressing week to week but maybe it's just a data point issue.  

Joe Malenko vs. Hector Guerrero GWA 8/20/88

MD: Hey, this was really good. We only get about ten minutes of it before Rusty Brooks comes in while Joe has the flying octopus hold on and everything devolves from there, setting up a Joe knee injury for whatever would come next. This was for the Jr. Heavyweight Title that Collins had given up and what a trade up to either Joe or Hector. 

The early feeling out process was great, a lot of tricked out technique but always with an attempt of one-upping your opponent and getting an advantage. Hector started clean but leaned heel very quickly and that helped underpin everything here. He went from shaking hands to start to going over the top to point out his feet were on the ropes as Malenko had him in a hold to really selling big and whiny to faking a handshake for an eyepoke and he never looked back from there. The fans were more interested at chanting Porky at Brooks (who was seconding Hector) but I'd say they got into it as it went on. I want to know how Eric thinks this compares to the WCW matches between Dean and Eddy almost ten years later. 

ER: I thought this was just fine, and honestly pretty comparable to the (mostly awful) Dean/Eddie WCW matches. This match was nothing like those, but had similar pluses and minuses. The worst thing about the never-ending Dean/Eddie feud was that it was almost always a lot of very fast work with no real goal. Everything was fast, most of it was crisp, some of it was insanely impactful, none of it led to anything at all and none of it was treated as "something that happened". They moved on from offense so quickly that they could have gaslit anyone into thinking that nothing at all had even happened. I've seen multiple brainbusters that were sold for less time than most people sell a hiptoss, endless limb work than nobody sells, sequences blown through for speed rather than any lasting impact, finishes fully disconnected from anything that happened in the match proper, etc. It was wrestling made for a 2 minute highlight video to be posted 25 years later by an Twitter engagement account saying "Nobody talks about how Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko were two of the best to ever do it". 

Dean modeled himself nearly entirely after his older brother. He moved almost exactly the same as Joe, but did not retain half of the weight Joe put behind his move execution. Dean was good at move execution, but he had no clue how to let a move sink in or mean anything at all. He saw what his brother was doing, but didn't seem to understand what he was doing or why he was doing it. Dean's only takeaway seemed to be "do it faster, get through exchanges faster, move on to new exchanges immediately". Seeing Joe's inset promo, we know Dean did retain his brother's terrified eyes, emotionless promos straight into the camera, but couldn't even do those as well. I don't think this is Joe or Hector at their best, though there were moments. Momentum blocking is one of my favorite things in wrestling, from refusing to be pushed off a headlock or dead weighting a move, and them each blocking a hiptoss by gluing their boots to the mat looked real good, in a way that Dean never understood. The important thing Dean never understood is that both men actually looked like they were trying to throw a hiptoss when the other blocked it. Dean always thought too far ahead to the inevitable reversal, so "the move that never got completed" always looked like a move designed to be reversed. Joe selling his knee after Rusty Brooks' interference was really great. His fall to the mat and his second fall after struggling back to his feet to cross chop Brooks in the throat looked like someone who actually blew out their knee and there has been no point during Dean's career where his leg selling looked this good. Now that I think about it maybe Rusty Brooks - somehow only 30 years old!!! - might have been the best thing about this. 

For what might be the best version of Malenko vs. Guerrero, please see Hector Guerrero's WCW matches against Dean on the 4/4/97 Nitro and the 6/8/97 Worldwide. They are each about 3 minutes long so none of your time will feel wasted. 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Grable! Kai! Kumano! Lucy! Rimi! Victoria!

68. 1979.10.17 - 03 Joyce Grable, Leilani Kai & Mami Kumano vs. Lucy Kayama, Rimi Yokota & Victoria Fujimi (2/3 Falls, first part of match corrupted)

K: There's a chunk of this match missing as the tape got screwed up and when the picture comes back we're in the middle of a heated 1st fall. Shame because this looks like the best match we've seen in a while. The heels have Lucy Kayama isolated in their corner and take turns to take her apart before getting the win. We don't really see any of the other babyfaces really do anything before they drop the fall but Lucy looked good taking the beating. 

The 2nd fall starts with Lucy back in the ring again squaring off with Mami Kumano, and before long she's stuck in that corner again. It's probably just a result of much of the 1st fall being missing but it's kinda funny that more than half of the run time of this 2/3 falls trios match we have consists of 1 person being tripled teamed and their partners being powerless to  do anything about it. Victoria Fujimi does run in a couple of times when Mami Kumano started to fight a bit dirty but she's only able to disrupt a pinfall or two before the ref throws her out. And that's for the best as it's Lucy who manages to get the comeback together by herself, including a sick release Tiger Driver. It's a shame the hot tag itself wasn't really built to, in fact it happens off screen as within seconds of that Tiger Driver Fujimi is now in the ring apparently legal. Still the comeback was satisfying and Lucy even got the pin with her special splash. This has been quite exciting and lively (the crowd are pretty good too).

The heels are feeling rattled as now Mami Kumano has brought out THE TOWEL. She tries to jump the babyfaces with it but it BACKFIRES BIG TIME with Rimi Yokota stealing it off her and using it on the heels herself, making them look very foolish. Another cool moment was Kayama doing a kind of Rainmaker Elbow move where she pulls her opponent into her but it's an elbow to the face rather than a lariat. Lost Move Alert. She's really having a good performance today. The one drawback is the finish was a bit out of nowhere. That's not necessarily a bad thing in match as fast-paced as this but it felt like it could have done with a few more minutes.

***

MD: We come in JIP (due to a corrupted tape) midway through the first fall. The heel ref has his head bandaged, which is pretty funny. I sort of miss the introductions since we’re so used to getting them. How cool did Kumano’s jacket look (she has boots with her name on them). Did Kai do her little spin dance? (She has boots with LK on them). Lucy is in all white. Important stuff here. 

First fall has Lucy getting a tag but then cut off by Mami and a rope to choke her with. Her shots both coming in and then firing back on Kai look pretty damn good though. Kai and Grable are able to double team her (missile dropkick from Grable as Kai holds her and then a double slam) to end the fall. Second had a spirited comeback after a missed top rope splash (this was weird as Kumano was in the ring and distracted checking on her partner who missed it and that’s how Lucy fought back. Wasn’t as clean as it could have been if she wasn’t legal). Some big offense from the babyfaces including a Lucy Tiger driver and Victoria gourdbusters.

Final fall was chaotic. Kumano came in with a towel but Yokota got it and started choking. Obviously the heel ref got involved and again later when he prevented a legal tag from taking place. There were some big bombs and Kumano had this neat body scissors pin that she did. The heels took it with Grable’s over the shoulder backbreaker in the end. I assume this was a way to save face with Sato about to win the $30,000 in the main event.

ER: The main story of this, for me, was how ferocious Mami Kumano was. I love the heel team, Grable and Kai as the two larger Americans flanking Mami, and I thought the Americans were good here, especially Grable. But Grable and Kai worked as more overpowering heels, and I was drawn to Mami's wild animal heeling. She goes after Lucy Kayama in the footage of this we have (who knows what the dynamics were in the opening we didn't see) and it's all aggressive asshole stuff, treating Lucy with real disdain. She had this release swinging neckbreaker that she used to fling Lucy toward their corner, and I'm not sure I've seen that before. The 2nd fall started with Mami keeping the bandaged ref in between she and Lucy until the right moment, then grabbing hair and quick punching her in the back of the head as she's throwing her to the ground. There were six people here and Mami was the only one grabbing hair for real. Everyone else was working strikes, not blowing each other up on body shots, not playing dirty, but Mami is in there pulling hair as hard as possible, which only made her hair based throws and set ups look better. She was working on a whole different level from the others, even breaking out a slick scissored takedown of Victoria that looked more innovative than anything else in the match. She was also great at getting her ass kicked when Lucy finally tagged out, flying up for Victoria's big release front suplexes and going up for Yokota's backdrop and pancake. Everyone here brought something, but I kept waiting to see what antics Mami Kumano was going to get up to next. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mercier! Kamikaze!

Guy Mercier vs. Kamikaze (Mitsui Dozan - Modesto Aledo) 10/4/71

MD: This is a historical match but ultimately a disappointment. At the start of the match Kamikaze unmasks. They claim this is because there are as many as 11 fake Kamikazes running around France wrestling and I believe it from some of the other things we've heard. We had seen Aledo in this get up one later time and it's striking. He was shaved bald and either had parts of his face taped back or makeup on to look unique to say the least. Mercier is a higher weight class and they note that both at the start and after the match when Mercier is interviewed and notes that this must be the real Kamikaze after all and he'd know after wrestling him. 

Either because of the weight difference or just to get over the gimmick (I think the latter), Aledo completely loses himself in the character. For such an agile, technically sound wrestler to do so is a skill of itself and worth noting and respecting but were we to get one more Aledo match, I would not want it to have been this one, historical or no. There really are no long holds, though there are a few clever takeovers. There are a lot of karate chops, a lot of cheap shots, some hair pulling, a lot of mugging. There is a taupie (I always miss the "i" I've been informed) escape by Mercier and even a very short giant swing. Mercier even does this really great press slam gutbuster, and at one point he does fire back with some big shots. Most of this, however is Kamikaze skulking around and chewing the scenery. Eventually, he hits too many throat shots and tosses the ref away and that's the match. A couple of good individual exchanges and you have to respect how intensely they wanted to establish the bankable character and push back against the fakes, but knowing what Aledo is capable of, ultimately disappointing.  

SR: There's a bit of irony in how Modesto Aledo is this legendary grappler, but most of what we have of him is him doing the Kamikaze act. It's grade A pro wrestling bullshit, but I can enjoy some bullshit pro wrestling. There's a lot of cool things about Kamikaze. The way he moves, the creepy demeanour and appearance, the throat chops and nasty chokes. That thing he does where he gets flung over the top rope and somehow holds on and slides back in through the middle rope is amazing. And Guy Mercier is a real wrestlers wrestler type who I think probably can't have a bad match. It makes for some fun unique wrestling to watch, although you do end up wishing they had archived Guy Mercier vs Modesto Aledo proper at some point. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 6/16 - 6/22

AEW Dynamite 6/18/25

MJF vs. Mistico

MD: MJF presented himself at his most noxious, donning once again his USA (Gringo Loco) styled gear from his International (American) title run from last year. He was flanked by the Hurt Syndicate, out there with their belts. He jawed with the crowd. He sat on the top turnbuckle staring towards the top of the ramp, Lashley, Benjamin, MVP in front of him. 

And then the music hit. There was always a shrouded religiosity to Mistico, maybe not even so shrouded as he had debuted as a worked disciple of Fray Tormenta, but this felt like a religious experience, like a true celebration, as over ten thousand faithful sang along to Me Muero. And it should well be celebrated. While the moment made for amazing TV, while it went viral perhaps, it's not something you'd see on the other channel. 

For decades, that would have been because of Vince McMahon and his incessant need to control and repackage, to build on success elsewhere by tearing down and rebuilding in his own image. This instinct was bad enough in the 80s and 90s, where humiliation and self-loathing self-consciousness towards the industry that was making him rich ruled. It was even worse in the 00s and beyond when he had won the wars (and failed at every other outside endeavor). 

Now, it's less about spite and spittle-laden snarling ego and far more about simple business. TKO/WWE doesn't want to promote any wrestling that they don't fully control. Maybe they'll bring in someone like Hendry but it will be attached to their own development brand, a way of showing everything else to be lesser than WWE, or if it makes it into the spotlight, it will be to show the world its true and proper place as a vassal. It's in TKO's interest to present all wrestling traditions, both in the States and worldwide, as secondary and subservient to WWE, to rename and reconfigure so that it can own as much as possible and profit off of all of it as much as possible. It's all just business now. 

This was not. This was reverent and respectful. This was Tony Khan going into someone else's home and giving them a gift, one that did not tout the glory of AEW but instead paid homage to their own wants and dreams and desires. 

Maybe it was bad business, but it was beautiful pro wrestling. 

And it left MJF sitting there, covering his ears, staring out a crowd smiling and singing and reveling. It left him fuming like a petulant child because the world did not revolve around him. And it set the tone perfectly for the match to come. 

This was a man not just at war with a wrestler, but with a crowd, with a people, with the Other, with the advice of his mentor, with the raging torment of self-consciousness and self-loathing within his own heart. If Mistico's entrance, the music, the symbolic tearing off of the Sin Cara mask, the brandishing of the flag, and the appeals towards the crowd, was a celebration of pro wrestling, of lucha libre, of culture, then MJF, taking it all in and overreacting like as in immature scrooge, served as no less than a stand-in for Vince himself, and here, upon this holy ground, he put himself forth so that pro wrestling could symbolically defeat him.  

In many ways, Mistico is the perfect opponent for MJF, because Mistico is a star. He's not a star just because he was presented as one, not in 2025. He's not a star because he can do amazing physical feats that no one else can match, not in 2025 when his handspring back elbow has him landing on his feet. Maybe all of those things led him to being a star over the years, but he grew into that role and learned from the experience and now he gets it as well as anyone alive. He knows when to appeal to the crowd, knows when to fire up, knows when to shrink down, knows when to fan the flames and lower them. That is no small thing. There are only so many true stars left in the world of pro wrestling, here in this age where the tenets of workrate and of the junior heavyweight style have won their own wars. 

MJF knows what to do with a star babyface. He knows what to do with a hot crowd that's inclined to hate his guts. To his credit, he knew what to do with MVP on the outside as well. The answer? Commit. Commit fully. In this case, that meant a performance where he tried to make it seem like he was above it all, like it was all beneath him, but the harder he leaned into that, the more he let the crowd know how much it was getting to him. It was in the look on his face, in the way he moved, in the shortcuts he took, in the way he couldn't press an advantage directly but instead had to grind and taunt, had to tear the mask, had to try to humiliate Mistico (and thus the crowd) instead of just beating him. 

When put in an environment like this, he knows how to strike the balance so well. It meant Mistico surprised him early with a Code Red, treated more like a stinging shot to give him comeuppance for his antics to show him that he couldn't simply have his way with Mistico. Later when Misticio tried it when it'd matter more, he had an answer. It meant that he made full use of the Hurt Syndicate, both as a transition where he hid behind them only to burst through and then later to help punctuate his cutoffs of Mistico's hope spots, tossing him out and distracting the ref as he did damage.

And Mistico's hope spots were just as good as you'd want, because he knew when and how to bring the fire and then when to, for instance, have have Shelton put it out with by dropping him on the guardrail. Maybe the best bit of hope was towards the end of the match as MJF was retreating, letting frustration overtake him. Max made it to the top of the ramp but then caught a charging Mistico and drove him down with the most forbidden of all moves, the Martinete, a tombstone onto the unforgiving ramp (not like the ring was all that more forgiving, but that's beside the point). By then, MJF would have been content with a countout, but Mistico, bolstered by the crowd, sat up heroically before forcing himself to stumble back towards the ring, finding a way to have his cake (the heroic moment) and eat it too (the selling to further engage the crowd) like the star he is. 

What makes MJF stand out relative to some of the more ironic heels of the 2010s (some of which lingered into the 2020s) is vulnerability. The character tries to make it seem like he's better than everyone and everything around him, but through his actions and expressiveness, he shows how much he cares. He's constantly selling every slight perceived or otherwise, and the more he tries to deny it, the more blatant it becomes. It shapes his actions, so that even when he wins, he loses on some level. But he still wins, and everyone else has to deal with him and his inner writhing and the fact that they can't escape him. And thus he gets heat and thus the cycle continues. In some ways, he's perfectly made for our times. And he was perfectly made here to survive La Mistica due to Hurt Syndicate distraction and then, after Mistico survived a foul (that other all powerful weapon of lucha libre) behind the ref's back, lose his cool, throwing a second foul right in the ref's face.

He lost by DQ. He lost because he got upset. He lost because he no longer had faith that he'd be able to win. He lost all the more so with his post-match antics taking Mistico's mask, but he can claim victory for the image of him standing there wearing the mask. And that's a heel for you. He loses when he loses. He loses when he wins. But he claims otherwise either way. Vulnerability is everything and more often than not, Max is brave enough to embrace it. Against a star, in front of a crowd like this, with the sanctity of pro wrestling itself on the line, it is, as I noted, beautiful, beautiful stuff.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Hechicero vs. Komander

 

13. Hechicero vs. Komander AEW Rampage 11/30/24

ER: With DEAN~! 2 in the rear view, I wanted to write about a guy who was almost a part of DEAN~! 2, but plans wildly changed. Hechicero was someone we tried to get from CMLL...and instead somehow wound up with Blue Panther, Virus, Valiente, and a host of others who all worked insanely hard to give us the greatest lucha Cibernetico of the last 20 years. I am not sure what would have changed had CMLL sent Hechicero, Mascara Dorada, and Barbara Cavernario instead of Averno, Virus, Euphoria, and Neon, but I'm sure it would have been great in an entirely different way. So we didn't get Hechicero, but Hechicero gets to show up in AEW every couple months and get a fun 10 minute match against a great opponent who he's never faced before. It's one of those gifts from Tony Khan, a match that exists simply because he wanted to see what it looked like. Hechicero vs. Danielson was an outstanding example of that, but I'm just as excited that we got to see Hechicero vs. Orange Cassidy. Collision is on in the background as I type this, and Hechicero is main eventing against Dorada, two DEAN~! Guys who never were.  

When the Hechicero/Komander match aired I wasn't sure if it was the last we'd see of Hechicero in AEW. It played as a fitting swan song if that's what it became, not just as a Hechicero AEW swan song, but also  to a Rampage era that I already greatly miss. Rampage was a show I really loved, with the hour format and shorter match layouts allowing a different feel from Dynamite and Collision. Hechicero/Komander was a great example of what made Rampage great, to me: A 13 minute classic main event, the perfect length for TV and perfect length for Rampage, the spiritual successor of guys getting to show out on Velocity or Superstars or WWECW. It got right back to the basics of the great Danielson match by letting Hechicero go full freak and break out all the tricked out work he wanted, with an opponent that would qualify this as a Dream Match. Is this the secret to Hechicero? Just let him go out there and control and break out Hechicero Things? Seems easy enough. 

His blue gear is gorgeous, with lighter offset blue boots to juxtapose the deep royal velvet of his tights. It's the perfect ensemble for him to go Hechicero Unleashed! When he starts rolling around with Komander's ankle for a tricked out stretch muffler only for Komander to do a full sit up until he was scaling the side of Hechicero's body, trying for a headscissors but landing in a Hechicero pin from guard, later getting pancaked after several revolutions on another headscissors attempt, I knew we were there. Hechicero moves like his own man in that ring. The way he leans out of a superkick, letting it scrape by his chin, before hitting a leaping Kawada style gamengiri to Komander's mouth was just one great example (of many) of his Big Spot attention to the small details. The gamengiri feels even better when we all know how close that superkick came to fully connecting. 

Hechicero and Komander are highlight reels who connect the highlights with snug submissions and effective highspot teases. Komander and Hechicero make it all matter. Komander has a missile dropkick (bouncing off multiple sides of the ropes) that hits like something that would bump not just Hechicero but anyone in AEW. Hechicero's powerslam is on the level of Dustin; Every clothesline is a headhunter. One of my favorite spots in wrestling was Bill Dundee's clothesline sleeperhold. It always looked like a lethal snare, a crazy way to follow through a lariat. Hechicero has to be the first person I've seen do the Dundee clothesline while also leaping over the ropes to the apron. Of all the ways I was expecting Hechicero to counter, I was not expecting him to wind up so suddenly on the apron pulling Komander's head over with him. 

Hechicero hangs in for the high catch on a crazy Komander moonsault to the floor, and catches a Komander moonsault into the ring in a trapped scissored armbar, rolling around with it into another one of his leveraged cradles, almost getting pinned underneath in the melee. Defense to offense to pin to escape, and they both recognize the value in not showing any kind of light on a small package cradle nearfall. The finish run is Hechicero at his most punishing. The Mad Scientist Bomb is a finisher worthy backbreaker but he uses it to set up the best running knee in wrestling. Hechicero runs up the buckles so fast, size and speed and impact, slashing and driving with that left knee, spinning around Komander with a decapitating guillotine. Of course this is a Dream Match. Foolish to suggest otherwise. It's Hechicero showing out in the main event of a sadly defunct Good Wrestling Program, and Komander never has to be asked twice to show out. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: BACKLUND IN KUWAIT~! BUSHWHACKERS~! CONDOR~! ESTRADA~! PSICOSIS~! VOLADOR~! WINNERS~!

AAA TV 5/21/95

MD: A new Roy Lucier drop. I think the top two matches were already out there so we'll dive into the undercard. 

Karloff Lagarde Jr./Mr. Condor/Perro Silva vs. Brilliance/Diamante/Zafiro

MD: I loved the primera beatdown here. The rudos just hopped out as Mr. Condor wrapped a cape around a tecnico's neck even as he was coming in with the valets and the commentators were just casually announcing who would be in the match. Business as usual. Some gnarly stuff on the beatdown with Condor's arching power bombs, a giant lifting face plant, and Perro Silva looking like a beast between the way he threw himself into things and this brutal reverse hotshot where he dropped the back of the neck onto the top rope with a spinebuster like twist instead of the throat. Argh. 

This was going just two falls with a fed up fiery tecnico foul finish so they actually teased a comeback early in the segunda which was pretty spirited, tossing rudos into the crowd and what not, before it got cut off to set up yet another comeback a minute or two later. Sort of a false short segunda (almost makes you wonder if there was a cut, but I don't think there was). Down the stretch Mr. Condor bled all over the place even on the undercard and the tecnicos got a lot of revenge but they lost their cool and the rudos took this one by DQ. Everyone leaned hard into their roles here and the match was fun because of it.

Antifaz del Norte/Panterita del Ring/Volador/Winners vs. Arandu/Jerry Estrada/Misterioso/Psicosis

MD: Some of our Monterrey pals here in the form of Panterita and Arandu (who came out to the Flash Gordon theme by Queen!). Very nice to see them in this mix with some of the AAA mainstays. That's an awesome rudo side right there. And honestly, this was great. The primera was at least somewhat subdued. Misterioso was leaning hard into his gringos loco look and attitude and was dodging Volador. Arandu bumped all over the place. Estrada teased his big bump over the top but didn't give it to people. Psicosis was an absolute jerk paired with Antifaz. I love watching him just exist and antagonize people, even on top of his basing and offense and bumping. He's one of the best bullheaded jerks in wrestling history. Anyway, the tecnicos took it after some exchanges and general chaos with Volador getting a shot in on Misterioso on the outside too.

Things went absolutely nuts in the segunda though. They started destroying both Antifaz and especially his mask. Somehow Estrada got a fork and started to stab away, lick the thing, paint his face with blood, just have a merry time. Then the comeback had all the crazy bumps you might imagine. Psicosis took the corner knee over the top bump as wild as I've ever seen it. Estrada just got yeeted into the third row like a rocket on a reverse whip. I'm not sure I've ever seen that concrete ground look harder and more solid. Finish was the rudos getting back in and getting Antifaz' mask off so thoroughly and clearly in the camera that someone could have picked him out of a police lineup. Just wild stuff in the back half.

Mr. Bob Backlund/Leif Cassidy vs. The Bushwhackers WWF Kuwait Cup 5/11/96 

MD: Recent Richard Land upload. I had thought we'd be getting the Yokozuna tag vs. Backlund, but nope, we've got the Bushwhackers instead. I don't know exactly how much Mr. Bob Backlund heel footage we have but whatever we have, especially after he got shunted down the card, it is 100% not enough. He's as absurd and over the top here as humanly possible and it's wonderful. First off, he comes out to the Rockers theme with Leif and he wants absolutely nothing to do with him. Cassidy tried to bow down to him and go for a handshake and point to the Bushwhackers and everything under the sun and Backlund just shook his head and shouted NOOOO. 

Then, there'd just be random booing no matter what Cassidy and a Bushwhacker was doing in the ring and the camera would cut over and Backlund would be out there on the stage gesticulating to the crowd and going wild and getting huge heat. When he came down he went right after some kid in a Bret shirt and he never really let up. It takes minutes for the match to begin because every time you think it might, he has another fit to huge crowd reaction. When they get going, they do some heel miscommunication spots almost immediately and then have Backlund get shown up by a Bushwhacker, including sneaking out and pointing to his head only to have him right behind and then hiding in the corner just to get bitten on the butt.

They eventually take over on Luke's arm and it's all pretty good with some hope spots and cutoffs until he finally makes the tag and they do one last bit of miscommunication before Butch gets the roll up. Just unbelievably entertaining. Lightning in a bottle. If you could follow one wrestler around to every house show, 96 Backlund feels like a great one to pick. 

ER: When you get access to a 1996 Kuwait show where Bob Backlund is the third oldest (second youngest?) guy in the match, I feel we are then obligated to write about that match. There is so little footage of Mr. Bob Backlund from this era and now we officially have our most substantial look at him. I loved Backlund's look and attitude during 95/96, when he was mostly a house show worker and cantankerous TV presence, but we don't have a lot of footage of him actually wrestling. We have so much footage of his 92/93 babyface return, which I think is mostly awful (unless I find one credible source telling me that it was an elaborate troll and he was fucking up every single non-Doink wrestler's timing intentionally, then I might like it), but not nearly enough of heel Mr. Bob Backlund. Now we have real footage of Backlund charging at a Kuwaiti 11 year old and getting in his face, just because he was wearing a Bret Hart shirt. Backlund singled that kid out and went straight for him (and the kid loved it). 

Throughout my wrestling fandom, not that long ago in the grand scheme, I had no room for bullshit in my wrestling. I wanted action, and I wanted wrestlers to get to the action. I'm not sure when it changed, or what inspired my initial dislike of it. I viewed it as "guys not wanting to work" and maybe it was due to Scott Keith and others demonizing of stall tactic wrestlers like Larry Zbyszko, spurned on by older local indy wrestlers who were taking a Friday night off in the ring. When we did the initial WWF 80s set, I had the Rockers/Rougeaus Full Bullshit match (from France or Italy) ranked very, very low. Not many years after that, the Rougeaus match in Puerto Rico where they take forever to lock up while getting pelted with diapers and other garbage became one of my favorite matches to show friends who were and were not wrestling fans. I don't know when the change happened, when I went from wanting action to embracing bullshit. The change happened quick, I know that, and is surely directly related to indy wrestling styles becoming about All Action, no doubt caused by similar people to me who grew up being told that bullshit and stalling in wrestling was bad. 

Now, most wrestlers are petrified to let anything breathe. Well, either they are petrified or they honestly have no idea what it even means to let a match, or sequence, breathe. They surely never watched wrestlers who knew how to do this, and they surely won't be seeking any who did so. Bullshit became extremely rare (and has only gotten rarer) and now that action is the literal only thing on the menu, I find that I cannot wait to shove my nose in a steaming plate of Bullshit whenever I have the opportunity. And Mr. Bob Backlund was allllll Bullshit. This entire match is 90% bullshit, and I chose to prioritize it over the two awesome lucha matches unearthed above. I don't think anyone takes a bump until well past the 10 minute mark, although Backlund does get knocked off the apron by Cassidy, and he hits the ground running and gets in the faces of more fans. So look, I'm not saying all of this was good. The Bushwhackers are old and they aren't going to bump or throw punches that look good - although Butch Miller throws a fucked up clothesline to Cassidy's neck on his hot tag - and a lot of the bullshit won't seem unique to anyone who had the privilege of seeing guys like Honky Tonk Man work indy shows in the late 90s, but the unique setting and the bizarre pairing and the rarity of Fully Unhinged Mr. Bob Backlund made this well worth your time. Backlund does none of his strength routine, none of his amateur wrestling, and I don't even think he took a bump. Yet he was On during every second he was on screen, a true weirdo being his weirdest self in the weirdest possible live wrestling environment. 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Moolah! Nancy!

67. 1979.10.17 - 02 Fabulous Moolah vs. Nancy Kumi (NWA Women's Title)

K: This is a big match for Nancy Kumi. Even if the NWA Women’s Title wasn’t as established in Japan as the Men’s equivalent, I have to assume the prestige of the organisation would make it being defended here feel like a big deal. Nancy did have a couple of tag title reigns before this (with Jackie Sato, and later with Victoria Fujimi as Golden Pair) so it’s not like she isn’t an established star. But from watching the footage, she frankly has rarely came across as one, albeit we’re missing any from those aforementioned reigns so it may be a sampling anomaly.

Moolah succeeds in coming across as all Queen evil here. I don’t think her wrestling is very entertaining or effective really, it feels like she generates more heat just from her personality than anything she physically does, so the result is something that feels like it might get good but never does. Plus we’ve already seen so much of these American heel tactics (including the crooked ref) that they feel burned out already. If Moolah came out as some Final Boss of the Americans who brought the heeling to higher levels maybe it’d work, but it’s just more of the same choking, hiding the weapon and dodgy refereeing. I did like her trapping Nancy’s head in between the ropes at least.

But the only good reason to watch this is Nancy’s comeback, the best we’ve seen her look to date. There’s a big roar of the crowd as she starts losing her shit on the outside, first turning Moolah’s weapon against her and then beating up the referee when he tries to stop it. She really kicks his ass and leaves him on the floor reeling. Her fury turns her invincible as she lays into Moolah in the ring, but she’s apparently too insane with anger to realise that she can’t win with her pin attempt as she just took out the ref. The DQ was obviously going to happen, so that puts an end to that. Pretty fun way to rage quit.

**

MD: Pretty fascinating match all things considered. I don’t know the last time I saw a Moolah match, no matter how many Martin/Kai matches I’ve seen. This was for the NWA belt (the one with her face on it) and she’s striking and ghoulish. Watching this and knowing more about the times, I wonder how much of this phase of Moolah’s career was inspired by Bette Davis and Jayne Mansfield in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? It’s a horror movie and she was horrific. I had always thought she had been hanging on to youth with the dyed hair and painted on eyebrows and wasn’t really fooling anyone but herself and those who had to be her sycophants, but it comes off as far more self aware than I expected here (even if I knew it did a few years later). The faces she makes, the things she says, she comes off as absolutely, gleefully monstrous. 

Kumi misses a dropkick early and Moolah chokes and knees and grinds. She’s entirely professional here, which means when Kumi takes over, she feeds big for all of the monkey flips and what not. When she takes back over it’s by grabbing a can and a towel from her minions and using them as weapons. I don’t think anything in the first two thirds of this are entirely unexpected.

What is unexpected is Kumi’s big comeback at the end. This had our nemesis the heel ref we’ve been dealing with for the last month or two of footage, and Kumi ultimately has enough, first getting the can and then a chair and she comes off like a completely unhinged star full of righteous fury, just smashing Moolah to pieces with it before she turns it on the ref. She starts slamming his head into the post and it’s very satisfying (even if you knew the finish, after a visual fall, was going to be very unsatisfying). I don’t think this payoff is necessarily worth all of the frustrating heel ref antics BUT in the moment it was pretty great and if Kumi came out of this a bigger star (I have no idea if she did but maybe Kad can speak to that), maybe it was worth it after all.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Prince! Richard!

Petit Prince vs Jacky Richard 11/6/66

MD: Both wrestlers were young here, Prince at 23 and Richard at 22. As much as I like the really slick Saulnier matches, my favorite Prince stuff is always him matched up against a bully and Richard is quite the bully here. There's just much more of a sense of build and payoff in those matches and contrast really does make the world go round. 

Here this meant that Richard really ground down Prince. He had five minutes early on where he just tore apart the leg. Prince would try to reverse it, and sometimes would even come up with a reversal attempt (the most memorable had each going for a crab at the same time) but Richard's superior side would combine with the damage already done to keep him down. The crowd was increasingly incensed as Richard used the ropes and really just because Prince was being contained. And the legwork was mostly to punish and contain because when he did come back, he hit one of his amazing flurries of move after move, incredibly dynamic stuff. 

Richard stayed on him however. and really started beating him with stomps and kicks. He'd toss Prince out and when Prince tried to get back in, would knock him not just off the apron but into the third row (where he was caught by a woman who gave Richard the what for). When he tried to get back up again he ended up in the third row again. They moved into another comeback shortly thereafter and you half got the sense it was to avoid a riot. Richard ended up tied up tight in the ropes as Prince hit him with shot after shot after shot. The finish played into all those extracurriculars on the floor as Richard went to knock him off again only for Prince to catch him. The act was still developing but this was still primal, spectacular stuff.

SR:  I think this is the youngest we have seen Jacky Richard, which is kind of nice. Now we know he wasn't always crusty and old. This felt almost like a very mat-based match for the Prince. I mean, the first 5 minutes only had a cool backflip from him, otherwise they were working a modified headlock and step over toe hold. The Prince did get on a few tears with his beautiful athletic offense, but it wasn't all out like we had seen in other matches. The match was more about Richard garnering heat by being a bastard. He really tore up the Prince's leg. It didn't stop the Prince from hitting his stuff but it looked nasty. At one point he kept throwing the Prince into the crowd over and over with folks looking really upset and throwing trash in the ring, so it was a good night of work for Jacky Richard. He also had a great looking lift into a gutbuster. The Prince's comeback was more about beating the shit out of Richard and less about hitting his spots, which was pretty cool to see. A fairly typical French TV match for the time, upgraded with the Prince's cool agility, and Jacky Richard looking like a particularily nasty bastard. Would've blown a few minds if it were the first French match we had seen, still a pretty decent addition to the collection.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 6/9 - 6/15

AEW Dynamite/Collision 6/11/25

Kyle Fletcher vs. Anthony Bowens

MD: We'll get to match itself down below as it was very good but elephant in the room time first. Despite having developed a slew of great heels, AEW has a young babyface problem. We'll leave HOOK aside other than noting that he's not necessarily in a different/more developed spot than he was a couple of years ago. Maybe he's in the midst of a shift after walking away from ringside a few weeks ago. Maybe it doesn't even matter if he's just an attraction. 

And we'll just talk about Daniel Garcia briefly since I wrote about it before. He won the TNT title and then instead of defending it on a weekly basis against any heel that they could throw at him, he was immediately tossed into matches with Briscoe (twice given the C2), Shibata, etc. on the way to a feud with Adam Cole. This is when he was developing his old school babyface routine and trying to connect to the crowd. You can't outbabyface Mark Briscoe easily. Completely short-circuited the connection. 

Ok, Bowens time. I could just write a snarky tweet about how he's 95 DDP and how Billy Gunn is either Maxx Muscle or the Diamond Doll, but I don't want snark. I want the guy to succeed. He has everything in the world on his side except for height and for a babyface who can work from underneath, that doesn't really matter. From the outside in, the other thing he's lacking is confidence. Because why else would he hide behind so, so many gimmicks. He's got the Jane's Addiction song, the nickname Pride of Professional Wrestling, the American Gladiators half chest gear, the Mollywop finisher name, the scissoring, the five tools bit, and the "Five Tools, one rule, Prove. Me. Wrong" catchphrase. And yes, the worst of all, Billy Gunn to steal his big moments (and whether he means to or not, he actually does) and to make him look even smaller. He's working hard, putting himself out there, doing a ton of media and highlighting on social media that he's doing it. But the screaming catch phrase laden promos aren't it. 

Maybe they would be if he was a guy who was unlikable and had to push past it, but that's not Bowens! Listen to him in an interview. Watch some of the stuff he does on his own. He's incredibly human and relatable. It's the same issue as Adam Cole, where Cole's likability doesn't transfer at all into his character. With Cole, it's because he plays things as too cool and refuses to show vulnerability, refuses to be himself. With Bowens, I do think it might be a confidence thing. If he just talked to the fans instead of shouting catch phrases at them, if he just told them how he was feeling, I think they'd go along for the ride. They want to like him. He calls out to be liked. He's sympathetic and gets how to work as a babyface well. He just needs to be himself and not sixteen gimmicks.

And to me, that's not on him. How Garcia was presented is not on Garcia. It's on the booking. It's top down. It's not enough to make good matches every week. It's not enough to put guys in positions where they can have four star TV matches. That's not good enough. AEW is where the best wrestle but the wrestling isn't enough. There has to be a strategic plan, three months, six months, nine months. It's not enough for a match to have a story behind it and a destination to a different match later on. It needs to make people feel something. Young babyfaces are investments. You have to pay into them. You have to pay them off over time. You have to build the ladder so that they can climb it. The pillars weren't built in a day. Neither was Magnum TA or Mistico. It takes extra work. It means living less in the moment and more over time creatively. Maybe it's less fun for a booker/matchmaker. It's taking your medicine. But it's necessary if any of this is going to work. I'm a firm, firm believer that things can and do matter. I believe that in the ring, wrestlers can build a match and create meaning and not just sensation. I believe that over time with booking too. Where is a Willow going to be in nine months? Where is Bandido going to be in nine months? Where will Hobbs be in nine months? Maybe you can't do it for everyone and maybe everyone can't make it through the glass ceiling, but in year six, great wrestling matches aren't going to do it alone. There are diminishing returns without strategy and purpose to underpin them.

Wrestlers can come up with their own ideas. They can be sent out there to succeed or to fail, to get over with the crowd or to lose them, but at the end of the day, it has to be a top down approach with a plan behind it. Bottom up can create a spark but top down needs to fan the flames and give kindling to the fire. Danielson is already gone. Guys like Joe and Cope can only last so much longer. There are only so many new people to bring in given the state of the indies. The heels need babyfaces that, even if they aren't bullet proof, are still resilient. 

That said, I actually thought this was a really good wrestling match. Fletcher is amazing. He has incredible instincts. But most of all, he sells everything that happens emotionally. He started this off by being a jerk to both Bowens and Gunn but the second Bowens turned it back on him he lost his cool and rushed in so that Bowens could outwrestle him and make him stooge. Then he came right back with meanness and frustration over the indignity that he faced. He is developing that Buddy Rose quality of looking like an absolute fool when he's backpedaling but then able to flip a switch and be completely brutal on offense.

And that's even when he teases things as well. There was a moment where he played on the apron power bomb from a few weeks ago, teasing it on Bowens right in front of Cole. That cruel mental distraction, that streak of viciousness towards both Bowens and Cole meant that Bowens was able to fire back. Fletcher's eyes went off the ball for a moment because he tried to do as much physical and emotional harm as possible. Incredibly rich piece of character work there serving multiple purposes at once and even playing on the real world backlash from the previous spot. Fletcher does multiple things like that almost every match, taking his time, being as present as anyone in wrestling, having it all lead to comeuppance. 

And of course Bowens, wanting to prove himself and come back after his last loss against Okada, knowing that Fletcher was someone opposed to him in so many ways,  wanting to put himself in TNT title contention with Cole at ringside, kept pushing, kept driving for his finisher. I wouldn't say that the finish protected him enough honestly. Archer got his hands on Gunn and that distracted Bowens so that he ate a clean pin loss after a move. That's a case where at least Fletcher could have gotten his feet up on the ropes maybe (that sort of finish helps both him and Bowens). But if it leads to Bowens losing Gunn, the most harmful of all of his gimmicks (because he steals those big pops/moments and towers over him), maybe that's a step in the right direction. And steps are needed because AEW can't afford to give up on such key parts of its future. 

ROH TV 6/12/25

Bandido vs. Mansoor (Proving Ground) 

MD: I was talking with a friend the other day and we were noting the move away from wrestling as a morality play, from being more about good vs evil. At some point along the way, wrestling went from being about more universal human issues and just became about itself. That's almost entirely WWE's fault and a side effect of WWE losing competition in the early 2000s. As a monopoly it was able to turn inwards. Punk's Pipe Bomb and Bryan Danielson vs the Authority were more about wrestling nerds getting more of a say against the established norms than anything more human and universal like Dusty vs Flair, Hogan vs Dibiase, or Austin vs McMahon. The snake has come to eat its own tail. AEW plays with notions of friendship a bit more but so much of it is still about wrestling as wrestling as opposed to wrestling as a lens through which (even simple) social issues and tensions can be explored and played out. (As an aside, that's why some of Hangman's journey is so powerful, because so many people in the 2020s can relate to the anxiousness ingrained in the character).

Despite this match being a bandit-themed luchador against a male model, I thought it tapped into the notion of good vs evil pretty well. Maybe it's a stretch to call Mansoor evil, but he certainly represented vanity and arrogance, quick to preen and pose at every opportunity. Moreover, he was seconded by Mason Madden, Johnny TV, AND Taya, and they interfered again and again and again throughout. Even though they may have come off as clever and talented, they made sure to portray themselves as scheming and underhanded. At no point did they try to get the crowd on their side. They knew their roles and played them exactly as they should, allowing for Bandido to shine heroically against all odds. 

In this case, driven by the interference and on top of it, that meant overcoming Mansoor's targeting of his back. Bandido had to power through a double arm stretch, had to overcome his own pain when he couldn't suplex Mansoor, had to survive a late match backstabber. The villains, fueled not by Bandido's inner strength but by their own weakness of character, cheated too much and too brazenly and overstretched, being caught by Ref Aubrey and sent to the back (Mansoor acted as if their removal physically hurt him which was a great bit of emotional selling). Left in a fair fight, even if he was damaged, Bandido pushed on and persevered, good triumphing over bad. Not every match has to work along those lines but it's primal stuff and it's sure nice to see it play out now and again. 

 

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Found Footage Friday: MICHAELS~! GOLDUST~! CACTUS~! SABU~! REY~! PSICOSIS~! GALLAGHERS~!

Doc Gallagher/Mike Gallagher vs. Scotty Andrews/Donn Lewin 1950s Buffalo

MD: Wrestling Films has posted a lot of things lately but a lot we already had. This one does seem new to us though. It's a relatively rare look at Donn Lewin (Mark's brother, who we have a 1951 match we're very high on) though they do say he was a twelve year vet here. The Gallaghers are, of course, very good at what they do, and what they do is cheat, goozle, and clubber. Stooge too. Andrews and Lewin control early and Mike really scrambles to try to make it to the corner while in a top wristlock and it's fun stuff. They trade off keeping that wristlock on until the Gallagher's start switching off with illegal chokes themselves. Honestly, for an old tag, it all breaks down sort of quickly, building to Doc holding the rope down so that Scotty crashes and burns to the floor. It all came off quite well and the crowd, even in the studio, was hot for it. Lewin had good fire in the ring while this was going on but he wasn't the legal man so him pinning a Gallagher didn't matter. They got Scotty back in there and made short work of him. Very fun sub-ten minute match here.

Cactus Jack/Psicosis/Sabu vs. Rey Misterio Jr./Super Calo/Winners IWAS 10/21/95

MD: This was an Arezzi show with AAA and ECW talent and was a gem. Of course, with the Vault, we just get the primera, but we'll take it. I do wish sometimes they'd go a little further on some of this. Why just give us Goldust/Michaels if they have the whole card (maybe they don't?). Why give us just Gonzales and Hogan interacting after the finish if they have the whole Money Inc. vs. Megamaniacs lumberjack tag (that they must), etc. But we take what we can get, and this is a very cool thing to have.

It's the primera, so you get some posturing, some ambushing, and a couple of exchanges. Psicosis is great here, tossing a chair in at first, mocking Rey with a little dance from the apron, and then taking all of Rey's stuff like an absolute king, including getting pressed head first into the post in an impossible sort of way that he made seem not just possible but feasible. They teased Jack vs. Rey for a moment there but we ended up with Jack vs. Calo instead, still a fun and weird scenario. That was mostly Jack's forearms in the corner but they were great, so I'm not going to complain. Sabu got to take some of Winners stuff and land on him repeatedly. Winners tends to look super charismatic in this era (it's after the point where he lost his mask). It builds to chaos and Rey hitting the tightest 'rana on Psicosis to pick up the fall. Every indication here is that the rest of the match (even if it ended in a no contest) would have been just as fun, plus they probably would have mixed up the pairings a bit. Ah well. We didn't think we'd ever get even this much so we're glad to have it.

ER: I fully second everything Matt said about the unnecessary tease aspect of the WWE Vault. Here's one scorching hot half of one match from a Chicago AAA show. Let me see the Koji Kitao/Masaaki Mochizuki match. Let me see what 2 Cold Scorpio does on a show with cool luchadors. There's a Superstars taping Dark Match Jarrett/Bulldog ladder match released on the same drop as the incredible Michaels/Goldust match we praise below, but from that same Superstars taping there was a Sid/Kama vs. Michaels/Undertaker dark tag and that's the kind of shit that I would also really want to see. If they have one, they have the other, so just put the shows up man. We don't get shows, we get teases of footage that isn't being released. 

That said, we now have extended sequences of Cactus Jack repeatedly elbowing Super Calo in the face like an early version of Necro Butcher in Chikara. It's amazing how much faster Cactus was in '95 compared to '97. That bump card filled up fast and the Jack/Calo pairing would have been so different just a couple years later. This feels like the best year for it to have happened. Cactus elbows him in the face but good, and he also takes two big bumps to the floor for him, including getting clotheslined over the top and later fully catching his missile of a dive. Winners looked so good, a guy who went on to an iconic gimmick but in '95 made a fascinating "what if" among the guys who could have crossed over to the US mainstream, instead of just being thrown out to die on a couple of WWF shows. His plancha soars far off camera and he had such potent tecnico energy any time he got in the ring. Did he really debut the Abismo Negro gimmick at the Royal Rumble? Anyway, Rey/Psicosis was so amazing in '95. I said Cactus lost a lot of speed just two years later but seeing Rey/Psicosis in '95 after watching all of their '97 work and you see so many things that slowed down and got changed. Rey still had his original knees here and was so much faster, while Psicosis had a smoothness that had vanished by summer of '97. "Clunkiness" sounds like I'm insulting his work, but compare some of his bumps here to the same ones two years later, and those later bumps seem like someone doing clunky versions of Psicosis bumps. His ringpost bump is incredible, getting alley-ooped into the ringpost but doing it in a way that looked so alien, just amazing. His fold on Rey's huracanrana bends physics, like he was a human Popple whose head could easily be folded into his own ass. 

 

Ladder Match: Shawn Michaels vs. Goldust WWF 8/24/96

MD: This is not new, per se, but it's an amazing footage upgrade to a match that I've seen at least a few times. It's one of those matches that we give people new to the community on the way in (like Dump vs. Omori or the Savage vs. Garvin cage match). What we had before, however, was a pretty blurry handheld, and this is crisp and beautiful single camera ringside footage. Early on when Goldust brings the ladder towards the ring, you can hear it scraping against the ground perfectly. It's quite the footage upgrade.

And it's a match worth seeing again. When we handed it to people, we'd say it was one of the best ladder matches ever. So much of that is because they delay the use of the ladder. It shows up early as Dustin goes for it and then once in the heat as he puts it over the guardrail and ring to create a hard surface to drop Shawn on, but other than that, it really doesn't come into play until the back half when they start to try to win thing. 

What you get before that is a rough but generally conventional match between Shawn and Dustin where all of Dustin's stuff, which generally looks great to begin with, looks all the better because of Shawn taking it. Just the drop down punch alone maybe never looked better. A bit of extra zing and extra electricity. It means instead of having a match full of contrived spots around the ladder with a lengthy set up and dashing one's suspension of disbelief, they just get to do their thing, and their thing was as good as almost anyone in the world in 96 and we have so little footage of them doing it together.  

The setting is great, an outdoor show at the Canadian National Exhibition Stadium (the site of The Big Event) with a giant Ferris Wheel lit up in the background. The card was stacked with gimmick matches (casket, strap, street fight, etc.) so it's pretty remarkable that they showed the discipline that they did. You get some big bumps (Shawn over the top, a splash off the ladder), but it's all smartly put together. Early on they tease a Curtain Call and then Superkick. Dustin pulls off the turnbuckle pad to do some more damage. Late in the match, Dustin takes a bump off the ladder into it face first but recovers to try to catch Shawn in the Curtain Call while he's climbing. This time when Shawn goes up and over he actually hits the Superkick and is able to win. It just hits a bunch of marks between thought and execution with just enough discipline to hold it all together, to put it above any number of more spectacular ladder matches. Now we get to see it so much more clearly.

ER: This is some incredible footage. I'm not saying this as any kind of brag, but I stopped watching new WWE matches well over three years ago and I haven't looked back. It wasn't a decision I made where I consciously said, "After today, NO MORE!" Because it wasn't a conscious decision, it was the culmination of something that had been building up for several years. There will always be enough people on the roster who I enjoy watching, but what began majorly turning me away was the entire presentation of the product, of the wrestling. I don't think there has ever been a wrestling fed in history who makes their in-ring product look shittier than modern WWE. What an ugly product, directed by people who seemingly hate wrestling, with garish LED lights and quick camera cuts and identical match structures designed to be ROLLING into commercial breaks. Everything is bright as hell, phony as hell, manufactured as hell, and as inauthentic as possible. This match could have feasibly happened in WWE some time in the last 5 years, but you take this exact match and present it the way WWE now presents pro wrestling, and the whole thing would have been half as effective. 

The ring work in this is undeniable. We hardly have any Dustin/Michaels matches (how many of the other Goldust/Michaels World Title house show matches do we even have? Any?) so that makes this extra special. Dustin Rhodes told me that Shawn Michaels is one of his four favorite wrestlers of ALL TIME. One of the four on his Mount Rushmore (with the others being his father, Terry Funk, and Barry Windham). I can't imagine higher praise for a peer, and you can see that respect - mutual respect - in the brilliant and extremely energetic way this match was worked. 

But you can really see that energy because of the way this match was filmed. One camera, at ringside, now in HD detail so crisp that it feels like you're roving ringside while two greats in their prime worked close up magic in an amazing outdoor carnival setting. 20,000 polite but excited Canadians outdoor with a lit up Ferris Wheel in the background like a nighttime Super Nintendo background. The work in the ring was so clear, the camera so embedded into the action, that you feel the very hard bumps both men take and see just how hard they're hitting each other and, eventually, a ladder. The sound is so good that you're put directly in the middle of this carnival. The sound of Dustin's back hitting the ladder is or Michaels hitting a table engulfs you. You run this exact same match today, only with WWE's modern direction and lighting, and it would play as half effectively. 

All of Dustin's strikes - his great worked punches, his great stiff punches, his hard slaps - would be jumped away from, all of Michaels' big bumps - taking an almost Falcon Arrow on a ringside table, springing away from a Dustin uppercut, recoiling off the ropes after being tipped off the ladder more than once - would have been hit with the ugliest fast zooms and held for reactions. Even the small bits of comedy play better from this live ringside angle. I cannot tell you how hard I laughed at the very beginning of the match at the face Michaels makes, when Goldust - jumpsuit hugging those buns tighter than you could ever imagine - approaches him in a flirtatious manner and Michaels uncomfortably looks off to the side, like he doesn't want to make eye contact for fear of being lured in. 

I wish we had a dozen more Michaels/Dustin matches. We have a Raw match and this excellent ladder match, where you can see their off the charts chemistry. 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Ikeshita!

66. 1979.10.17 - 01 Tomi Aoyama vs. Yumi Ikeshita

MD: Commentary gave me a bit on this one. First, They say Tomi has the Hawaiian Pacific title and I have no idea when or how that happened (or even what that is). Second, they say this is for 3rd/4th place in the league and count Ikeshita on the US side actually. The finals between Vicki Williams and Jackie would come later. It does give you some sense of hierarchy, both in Tomi being second behind Jackie (we more or less knew that) and Yumi being above Mami though it might have been a wash really. Third, Yumi has a cool new jacket with tassels on one arm which kind of matches Mami’s cutoff jacket in its own way. Important stuff here. 

K: This is a big match on paper, but unfortunately it’s 16 minutes (if I heard the timekeeper right) cut down to 5 for TV, so I can’t meaningfully assess it. It didn’t feel like they were putting in any special effort even in the short amount we saw, that it was ending in a double countout anyway usually puts a cap on these matches. Yumi Ikeshita goes through her hide the weapon routine but in a kinda going through the motions way. I wasn’t even sure what weapon she was hiding she was doing it a little too well. Then things spill out to the outside, with Ikeshita actually being the one to go for a big dive to the outside but pays the price when she misses, then Tomi gets a more impressive looking one over the ropes (with hands) before they’re counted out. Looked like it might have been part of an exciting last few minutes, but what else can you say when you know you didn’t see most of it.

No rating.  

MD: Clipping is definitely unfortunate here. You’d almost buy that this was one coherent piece but you didn’t get any of Tomi comeback attempts and obviously less of Ikeshita grinding down on her. Tomi came in hot but got headbutted to oblivion and beat around the ring. The second act was all Ikeshita hiding an object in four different pieces of her gear. Then the last act was everything going crazy on the outside with Kumano interfering. This had Ikeshita miss a nasty kneedrop from the apron to the very hard floor and Tomi hitting her angel dive to (I think) the interfering Kumano before both of them got counted out as Ikeshita wouldn’t let Tomi get back in. Ikeshita had a nasty bruise on her leg on the finish. Bet this was pretty good overall but we’ll never know. It is a great snapshot look at just how versatile Ikeshita was as a heel though. 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mantopolous! Israel! Catanzaro! Lemagourou!

Vassilios Mantopolous/Ischa Israel vs Billy Catanzaro/Gilbert Lemagourou 6/19/66

MD:  This was part of "Télé Dimanche", which was a popular variety show, and it took place in the show's studio. There's a white backdrop behind them and the crowd is all facing them from one side. There's a musical artist (Johnny Hallyday) sitting in on commentary at times and, interestingly enough, Catanzaro's wife and two kids were there as well. They ask her questions now and again but she doesn't seem particularly bothered or interested in any of this, even when he's getting routed. She's used to it. She does note he's also a delivery driver and does weight training every Thursday. His kids don't seem to think he'll win. Considering how often we've seen the stylist win these matches (most of the time really) that doesn't surprise me.

It's a fun setting and there's maybe a slight but only slight exhibition-y feel to it. In general you get the real deal and in 1966 I'm not sure if there were two wrestlers as good in the world as Mantopolous and Catanzaro. It's a welcome blast just seeing Mantopolous scrunch down as he entered the ring before pouncing forth and Catanzaro met him in kind. They did so many acts, so many bits, all sorts of little moments of trickery where Mantopolous would draw him in. It's not just that some of the bits are things I'd never seen before, but it's that they perform it so well. Mantopolous ties up Lemagourou towards the end and while Catanzaro breaks it up, it was the most believable I've ever seen the spot done. Likewise some of the Lady in the Lake bits. 

Lemagourou played his part well, a bit more of an oaf or a stooge. The straight man to Catanzaro's inflamed and put upon character actor. He'll walk right into Mantopololus' traps (or Israel's European Uppercuts) while Catanzaro charges into them, though he was also more apt to take big bumps over the top (including right into the judges which everyone loved). And Israel did well too, hitting hard when it was his turn and getting swept under by illegal doubleteams by the heels, though he was overshadowed by Mantopolous, but then most people would be.

There was real familiarity between Mantopolous and Catanzaro which let them do the bit at the end of the first fall where Catanzaro hit a tombstone position press-up facebuster only for Mantanpolous to reverse the second attempt for a tombstone or when Catanzaro hit his spinout backbreakers twice on Israel only for Israel to tag out and Mantopolous to hit Robinson and Conjuro backbreakers. There was once or twice where things seemed to get off the rails just a bit, but in general, this was meant to entertain and it absolutely did.

SR: Well, it's another 25 minutes of pretty amazing popcorn wrestling from maybe the most reliable crew in all of wrestling when it comes to this stuff. Seeing all these guys again so suddenly after we only got a few glimpses at them a few years ago is kind of a crazy occurrance. But here they are, doing their thing. They probably had this match like 500 times, that's how seamless and never lost they go about their wrestling. This had a cool setup being in a TV studio with a white background, tall referee in a smoking, you just can't have this stuff anymore. This had the typical formula, lots shine from your technicos, some rough moves from the heels, an absolute crap ton of sometimes comedic stooging and bumping to entertain the audience. You get the sense that this was probably a deliberate kind of TV psychology, give the audience something joyful to have a romp with. 

And these guys have endless shit they can do to fill the 25 minutes time. Mantopoulos with his endless bag of George Kidd style tricks, and Catanzaro and Lemagourou with their stooging, bumping and muggig. Catanzaro actually did some brief work reminiscent of his classic with Gilbert Cesca and it was cool to see that he could still do the crazy bridging. You can tell he lived this shit, both the classy gymnastic wrestling and the part when it was time to grab someone by the hair and stomp on their face. Mantopoulos is always made to look nigh invulnerable in these matches and its doesn't annoy me because he is so convincing, amazing how he still appears to treat the match a 100% serious with his body language, he never turns into a grinning clown like some of the british technicians will. I dug Israel as the more straight forward counterpart of Vasilios, he had this really great wrist takedown at one point and threw a sneaky punch that looked great. As far as the wrestling goes there wasn't a ton that we haven't seen in other French tags, but there was one piledriver sequence that was really crazy, and the stuff that lead into the finish was downright insane. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 6/2 - 6/8

AEW Collision 6/4/25

Bandido/Outrunners vs Kyle Fletcher/Konosuke Takeshita/Hechicero

MD: We had a RUSH trios and an Athena proving ground match but I figured I'd spend some time with Kyle Fletcher and Hechicero instead. This was a bit of a time filler as there's no program I'm aware of right now save for a slight feud with Bandido and the Don Callis Family (maybe Archer goes after the ROH belt? They've suggested that previously) but it got to showcase Fletcher and Takeshita, had Bandido looking like a star, and gave us Hechicero hanging out with the DCF and honestly, that's all stuff I can go for. Wrestling for the sake of wrestling is not a sin. It's a joy. It's a mitzvah. It's a blessing. That some bad faith actors online have shaken the foundations of it at times is the opposite of all that. Screw them. This was a blast. 

For one thing, Bandido and Hechicero is a unique pairing. They've only had one singles and that was years ago. Their last interaction was something like five years ago. They match up extremely well. Hechicero can base for Bandido's stuff. Bandido can flow through all the llave and strange style that Hechicero can throw at him. This started with feeling out matwork between the two of them like a proper lucha trios and I loved it. From there everything picked up with the heels all stooging their way out until they caught Bandido and crushed him. Callis was great on commentary putting over Hechicero and showing derision for Bandido (which of course creates the opposite effect because everyone hates Callis).

The heat was lovely, as they beat the crap out of Truth Magnum. People may love big bomb Takeshita in crazy matches that go way over the top but hanging out with Fletcher brings something out in him that I love. Southern heel Takeshita is my favorite by far. He's got swagger, can play around with ref positioning, can let things settle in after the fact. And of course, Kyle Fletcher is the hero of the day, right? Posing, preening, heatseeking by pulling Truth's hand towards the corner when no one was there and following it up with a body slam to control the moment, and then when it came time after the hot tag, he happily looked the fool in a way that made him seem not happy at all, but instead as aggrieved as could be. 

I love the hierarchy at play too. Bandido was able to hold his own and Truth got some big moments, but when it came to slamming Takeshita, for instance, that took an extra bit of effort. Likewise, they weren't allowed to do the double elbow drop even though it would have been a crowd pleaser. I really do believe this stuff matters. Everything has to be earned and has to be consummate to the levels at play. If they were in there against Rocky and Trent it would have made more sense. Against Kyle and Takeshita, it has to be earned more than they could manage on this night. That means anything that anyone else actually manages to get on them later means all the more because it was held back here. I really, truly believe this stuff matters over time. It only matters if they make it matter and if the commentary picks up on it and everyone goes along with it but it's worth trying. It's worth doing things with care, and despite all the bluster and despite the occasional maximalist tendencies, Fletcher and Takeshita are doing things with care. It's going to pay off so long as the company cares too and allows it to. Even the increasingly elaborate ways to set up the Don Callis punch are more and more of a highlight every week (this time it was like a Rube Goldberg machine). My hope? A few months down the line when Eddie Kingston is fighting Kyle Fletcher for something meaningful, Willow gets to be handcuffed to Callis. Just imagine it.

So yeah, this was a blast and wrestling is the best thing going and I hope Hechicero gets to hang out with the DCF more.

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2025 Ongoing MOTY List: Maclin vs. Young Dog Collar

 

Steve Maclin vs. Eric Young TNA Impact 5/8/25

ER: After seeing DEAN~! Megastar Mad Dog Connelly work his modern day Cactus Jack magic live for the real sickos-slash-the Glendale, AZ outdoor mall Saturday night date crowds, I went seeking Dog Collar nirvana. Mad Dog has taken the dog collar art form to new levels, finding new ways to surprise despite cornering the market on the stipulation. TNA dared to run a dog collar match on TV (is TNA even on TV? Are they on Mark Cuban's cable internet?) the same month Mad Dog Connelly continues reinventing the genre, and I respect the endeavor. I especially respect that Maclin nor Young have ever worked a dog collar match before, anywhere. I think it's only fair to view this match with that in mind. It's two guys deciding to work the collar for the first time in their lives while simultaneously being about the same age as me. Stupidity, some would say. Great Pro Wrestling, the more cultured would say. 

Maclin, with Wesley Blake, was an NXT house show act that I loved watching. Wesley Blake was actually the name of a wrestler I used to enjoy watching! That's right, according to things I wrote in a blurry pre-pandemic world, I was a fan of Wesley Blake. I was writing glowing things about Jaxson Ryker (his politics, not his wrestling) and the Forgotten Sons and Steve Cutler/Maclin made an act I enjoyed even better. He was not as important to the group as Ryker or Blake - men whose 2018 work I would defend based on words I wrote in 2018 and have never revisited until now - but being a good Buddy Roberts to a weird MAGA coded NXT Freebirds stable that feels like it existed another lifetime ago is an odd cool role to have occupied. 

This very good dog collar match was entirely made by the buckets of blood bled by Steve Maclin. Maclin gets real good color early, that red paint The Harder They Come blood brushed across his face and arms and chest, covering a shocking amount of his body and a more shocking amount of the ringside mat surface in a short amount of time, dripping all over the place and pooling up in the lowland territories. You expect blood to dry up during a match like this, but Maclin keeps managing to look bloodier, redder, wetter, and the blood keeps looking fresher as it mats into his hair and runs down over every part of his body. It's dried and dispersed by the end of the match, but we get an excellent run of his blood painting his body and every surface he comes into contact with. Those surfaces include DEAN~! alums Sinner and Saint, who rub Maclin's blood all over themselves as Young's seconds, no shortage of Maclin's blood to disperse to anyone who wants color. Nobody else bleeds in this match, but everyone wears Maclin's blood. 

Eric Young, looking like Pitbull Anthony Durante's father, was good about wrapping the chain around Maclin's mouth and face and pulling it tight. He does a dragon sleeper with the chain tight around Maclin's throat, and he uses his corner rope flip as effectively as he's ever deployed it: flipping to the apron and dropping to the floor to pull the chain taut, yanking Maclin fast face first into the top rope. They both take hard bumps on the floor, Maclin spreading his blood as far and wide as possible, and the thuds add to the chain violence. Maclin's Thesz Press is great not because of the impact, but because he uses it like a man fully covered in blood flinging his body onto Young and banking on Young not wanting to catch him in his current messy state.

I was not as interested in the parts of the match where they wrestled a normal singles match, as if the chain was tied to their necks in theory and not actuality. Travis Williams is the idiot doing a handspring cutter during dog collar match interference, and I wish Maclin would have messed him up for even thinking of doing that. Maclin does hit a great Tree of Woe spear on Sinner and Saint that I'm not sure justified the set up time or lack of focus on beating someone with a chain, but was a good way to dispose of Young's seconds. Young is great at taking bumps on the chain, making the neck compression impact of the match finishing DDT look even more disgusting on a pile of chain. If this trend continues and it is revealed that Mad Dog Connelly set off a domino effect of more and more guys dipping their toe into the Collar, organically building up more and more challengers to the One True King, then wrestling will only get better. 

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Found Footage Friday: HANOVER 1980~! WRIGHT~! KAMALA~! WISKOWSKI~! MARTIN~!

Hanover Germany 10/4/80 (Richard Land Patreon)

Caswell Martin vs. Karl Dauberger 

MD: Martin's really a joy to watch. I look forward to new matches of his almost as much (but not quite as much) as Fujiwara and that's saying something. Yes, he does some of the same bits a lot (the cartwheel out for instance). But he has that same sort of imagination and creativity where you wonder how he's going to treat an exchange. And he's interesting in different settings whether it's WoS or here or UWF. 

This was face vs face or whatever they call it in Germany. They were just teaming the previous night after all. And it was a pleasant sportsmanlike affair until the last round where things got a little heated. A lot of great escapes by Martin really. He had a way of handstanding up just a little higher to rana out of a double leg and even did a spinning headstand toupe escape out of a grounded side headlock that I'm not sure I've ever seen done quite that way. They'd be good sports about things. He'd use a butt butt escape out of a go behind and Dauberger had a good laugh from losing his wind from it. Lots of nearfalls and reversals here and they had the crowd the whole way. Down the stretch it got a little chippy with Martin doing a facewash with his foot and they picked up the pace with rope running and a couple of bombs (very nice double underhook slam by Dauberger for instance) before Martin got him on a banana peel takeover from a waistlock. Good stuff.

Ed Wiskoski vs. Jim Harris 

MD: Here we have Ed Wiskowski, as a cowboy, against Jim Harris, before he became Kamala. It's a massive stooge-fest from Wiskowski, the sort where he'll take face first bumps just from being in a headlock and it was hugely entertaining stuff that had the crowd. Harris just had to be a center of gravity and keep the pressure on, but he did it so well that you think he could have had a pretty great career even without the gimmick. Wiskowski is usually the biggest guy in a match and he was a little taller than Harris still, but here he worked like the smaller man. Flying all over the place, arms flailing, trying and failing to slam him.

When he did take over it was by going after the eyes and drawing a public warning and that lasted just until he got carded and the distraction let Harris come back with big clubbing blows. Finish had Harris go off the second rope but miss a splash so that Wiskoski could come off the top with Bombs Away and then actually slam Harris for the win. Good stuff though. Extremely entertaining and it makes me hope we get more Harris from this tournament against guys like Wright, Colt, or Destroyer.

ER: We call this era Kamala 0: The Departure Point, in which Sugar Bear Harris is sporting a tri-hawk two years before Clubber Lang existed, and he even comes out throwing jab fakes. But Harris is extremely raw here and it gives us a chance to see - yet another - incredible Ed Wiskoski carry job. I love Ed Wiskoski. He's like if Nick Nolte got into pro wrestling and was just as good at wrestling as Nolte is at acting. He's got the same military straight posture and size, and the same amazing hair as same-era Nolte. However, Wiskoski wrestles much, much differently than Nick Nolte does in this hypothetical situation where Nolte got into wrestling instead of doing Who'll Stop the Rain. I don't think Nolte, with his size and looks, would be one of our most gifted stooge bumpers in the same way Wiskoski is. Ed Wiskoski might be the tallest wrestling stooge we were ever gifted and I am in love with the way the man moves. Jim Harris at this point - and at many points - had a very limited tool bag and Wiskoski works this entire match staggering and falling all around the ring for simple arm strikes. 

Wiskoski does not ever go crybaby John Tatum but he has bumps that Tatum would go on to steal. That includes the way he stacks his bumps so that one headbutt makes Wiskoski take a bump that then sends him face first into the turnbuckles which then turns into a third bump recoiling from the buckles which could also turn into a fourth bump if he gets pinballed by another strike. Wiskoski spends the first two plus rounds stuttering and staggering around for Harris, comes back in the third with a couple of nicely timed eye pokes, and then spends another couple rounds building to some classic chained Wiskoski bumps until Harris misses a middle buckle splash. I could watch this man fall all day. I will say however, and I think this is important: Wiskoski is not a "realistic" bumper, but I don't think his bumps could ever be seen as "comedy bumps". This is difficult to do. It is hard to be a theatrical bumper without including several comedic pratfalls, but he somehow pulls off silly unrealistic bumps without ever feeling like he is doing them for a laugh. They are always in direct response to the offense he is selling, and never feels like he is doing them to show off his own athleticism. They might look silly in a vacuum, but they always look appropriate within a match, and that's a line he walks so impressively that it only makes me love him more with every new match we get. 

Kim Duk vs. Manuel López 

MD: We spend a lot of time with 90-91 Kim Duk given his extended run in Puerto Rico so at first it was nice to see him here. Lopez is not someone I'm familiar with so I was curious how this would go. Not particularly well. The first thing you notice is just how huge Duk is, which is not something that stands out as much if he's wrestling TNT or Scott Hall (or people like Jumbo or Hogan) but he just towered over Lopez. It created a sort of disconnect in the match because while they did wrestle it like Duk had a size advantage, he was primarily technical so you barely expected Lopez to get anything on him. And he didn't get much. In the second round, they picked up the pace a little and Lopez came flying back off a charge into the corner only to get caught and carefully tombstoned as an act of mercy. They can't all be winners.

Bob (UFO) Della Serra vs. Takashi (Sumo) Ishikawa

MD: UFO remains as over as ever. Ishikawa came out to Turning Japanese. He's an interesting character as he disappears from AJPW so as not to be part of Jumbo vs Revolution or Tsuruta-gun vs Super Generation Army, though he pops back up in SWS. He ends up being more of a role player instead. But he could go and hit as hard as anyone else from the decade. I'm not sure if this is clipped or if it's just short but during the middle the camera cuts to some of the wrestlers standing by the entrance watching or talking to each other. They seem to match up well from the bit we do see with trading of slams and armdrags and Ishikawa having a nice step over to break the grip before launching karate type strikes.. Ishikawa leaned into the sumo bit with crouched charges and got caught on one in the corner and rolled up.

Klaus Kauroff/Le Grand Vladimir vs. Salvatore Bellomo/Steve Wright

MD: Another incredibly entertaining tag. I didn't like the Duk match much but the overall level of quality here is just amazing honestly. This had what you'd expect early with the fans singing along to Bellomo and especially Wright making absolute fools out of the heels. Lots of great stuff. Rope running spots. Ref goofing bits. Wright a dervish of cruel and hilarious technique and bounding about. But then things did settle down to heat, and they actually went double heat on it, including some southern elements like drawing the ref. Both hot tags and comebacks were a ton of fun, with Wright pinballing people and Bellomo coming in hot. They finished with a draw, but with Wright and Bellomo both doing the Franz Van Buyten dash across in the ring to leap up and punch. Very fun stuff.

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