Found Footage Friday: SAVAGE~! LAWLER~! MABEL~! PCO~! TAKER~! MANKIND~! JARRETT~! RAZOR~!

Jerry Lawler vs. Randy Savage Memphis 3/23/85 (Jonesboro)

MD: I'm not going to wax poetic on the WWE Vault finding this. You know. We live in amazing times.

The match itself was very interesting. Savage had turned a couple of times during his primary Memphis run and he was a familiar face and he was over. He had Newman with him. He was clearly the heel. The fans were still split. So they did everything they could to present Lawler as worth cheering and Savage as worth booing. To start, they had Lawler break clean at every point and get the best of Savage on rope running exchanges. 

After Lawler got a knee up in the corner, and raised his hands to show he meant for it to be a legal attack, Savage went out, got on the mic. Then Lawler did the same complaining about Tux, then Tux got to talk, and Savage again, and they went around with it, really laying out the case that you show cheer Lawler and boo Savage, even if it didn't look like that at face value. And then, when they got back into the ring, Lawler nailed Savage on the break, but by now, it was fully established how much he deserved it and how Lawler had tried to play nice first. On the next break, Lawler stepped on Newman's hand on the apron instead. The fans want to see the babyface hit hard and clown the heel and they built to it coming off as a pure babyface move and nothing petty or spiteful. 

Then of course, they inverted it by having Savage freak out about Newman getting stomped, run around with a chair, and get a cheapshot in on the next break. Unlike Lawler, though, Savage celebrated as if he'd accomplished something monumental. Suddenly, the crowd wasn't split anymore. They were booing Savage. Pretty masterful stuff. 

Because they had to tear things down and then build it all back up, Savage didn't really take over until around twenty minutes in and he did with a clever bit of misdirection with Tux and his cane. From there, things were pretty wild with Lawler coming back a couple of times and the fight spilling out to the audience. Incredibly crowd pleasing stuff with rapid fire slamming of heads into turnbuckles and grounded punches. Lawler turned Tux interference back on Savage one last time and hit the fist drop for a definitive win. Post match, he ALMOST got his hands on Tux but had to fight off three other heels instead (and he did to the crowd's delight). Really brilliant stuff overall in how they ensured that the crowd was exactly where they wanted them.

WWF House Show Footage

Mabel vs. Pierre MSG 11/26/94

MD: Really enjoyed this one. Pierre looked as good as anyone in the company at this point. He flew all over the place for Mabel early, timing all of his stooging perfectly and just bumping big given his size. One bit of punishment after the next. The transition was great. Mabel tried to suplex him back into the ring (and this didn't seem like a huge effort considering what he'd already done to him) and Pierre dropped straight down to the floor from the apron, causing Mabel to get hotshotted onto the top rope.

Then all of Pierre's offense was equally good, maybe too good, because the crowd was starting to go for him despite him working them a bit. Thankfully, they still went for Mabel on the comeback (reversing things on the floor to post Pierre) and Mabel hit two or three big things on the way out. Just a strong, larger than life, undercard house show match.

Undertaker vs. Mankind Meadowlands 7/5/96

MD: I haven't seen any of the Taker vs Mankind  stuff in a while and I wasn't quite prepared for where they were at this point in the feud. I don't remember Taker's shots ever looking quite this good for one thing. I don't know if that was Mankind leaning into them or Taker just laying them in because he was used to working him. 

This kept moving quite steadily, with Taker controlling for the first half but never in a straight line. Mankind would take over for a few shots and get cut off. He'd lose focus and start chasing Bearer. He'd go for a chair only for Taker to get it instead. He'd knock him over the rail only for him to come flying back with a clothesline. 

When he did really start to lean on Taker, he couldn't put him away. Taker punched out of the Mandible Claw in a great bit. He'd kick out of everything else and eventually Mankind lost focus again and started to hit himself and slam his head against the turnbuckle. Even then, even as he shot a choke up to stop the second Claw, Taker had to really fight for the comeback and it ended up as a pretty complete experience for everyone watching. A good entry into their series. 

Jeff Jarrett vs. Razor Ramon Montreal 10/21/94

MD: Most of the Hall I've seen lately has either been 90-91 Puerto Rico or 88 NJPW so it's weird to see him as Razor. This went a few directions I wasn't quite expecting and I think, as much as anything else, it was them trying things. They had wrestled a few times earlier in the year but this was fairly early in their 'marriage' that would last a while.

It's funny because I buy it out of 2025 Jarrett, but I'm not sure I was feeling the strut here. Much more gripping and organic was the way that he paintbrushed Ramon's head after taking him down a few times. All of that paid off so well with him running right into Ramon's open handed slam and bumping huge. Beautiful stooging and feeding. He'd subsequently get knocked out, come back strong, and run right into the fall away slam and Ramon paintbrushing him a bit in return.

Once he took over, he controlled primarily through some nice cutoffs (an enziguiri, dropkicks, corner whips, a nice punch, etc). They really did a great job of building the hope spots, getting bigger and more elaborate each time until Ramon finally punched his way through it all only to get redirected over the top. Ramon controlled out there but Jarrett reversed a whip for a cheap (but effective countout). 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Kumano!

71. 1979.11.XX1 - 02 Mami Kumano vs. Tomi Aoyama

K: They do something pretty effective right at the start here which sets the tone that tempers are gonna flare for this one. Before the bell starts, they both square up looking like they want to bite each others head off, and then Mami quickly snatches at Tomi’s hair, and the crowd does an audible ‘wooah’. Spices things up nicely.

This then plays out as a match which has turned into a fight but it never really turns into an all out brawl either. Tomi’s superior technique is established early on when she counters a snapmare by kicking out upwards, knocking Mami off her feet (steal this…) and follows up with her single-legged dropkick. I think the reason no one does that anymore is it looks like an injury risk to the person doing it, so I’m less keen on demanding someone steal it. Still looks cool and unique though. Mami throws things out to the outside a couple of times and a bunch of chairs get knocked over, but it feels like she still wants to get the win rather than just beat Tomi up. The match having some stakes in that it’s setting up a match with Jackie Sato later down the line might enlighten us a bit as to why. Doesn’t stop her smashing an apple over Tomi’s head though.

I gasped when she pulled out the scissors from her top and stabbed Tomi in the head with it. Hardly the most violent scissor stabbing in AJW history, but I’ve been trained to shudder whenever I see scissors in a Joshi match. This has been a really good performance from Mami. I was going to say this that we’ve mainly only see her in tags, but I went and checked and this is actually only the 2nd Mami Kumano singles match we’ve covered (and the previous one was vs. Yumi Ikeshita, so this is the first time we’ve seen her in singles vs. a babyface). Being in singles requires her to fill up more time without using her signature spots and she’s doing that better than most here (certainly preferable to most of those Americans). She topped off the hie the weapon section by having Tomi snatch it out of her hand and use it against her, or at least try to, as the moment that started happening she reacted like a massive coward and fled the ring to Tomi’s totally justified attempt at vengeance and I enjoyed this a lot.

Tomi’s Giant Swing to end things was very impressive. Good stuff all around, but nothing remarkable and it felt like it ended before the peak.

***

MD: Oh hey, AJW is doing their own “World Challenger Determination Tournament” here. Winner gets to face Jackie. And this was really good. Just a great look at Mami and felt years before its time (not surprising with these two). They go all action right at the start but Mami gets Tomi on the apron (figured the choke was coming but..) and then smashes head into the post. On the floor she beats her with an apple (!) completely shattering it over her head, and then it’s back in the ring and time to play hide the object. The commentators call it “metallic madness” since they’re not sure what it is at first, but it is, in fact, a small pair of scissors.

There’s no color here but it’s really a brutal attack. Mami hides it pretty well in her gear and then just comes at Tomi’s skull again and again and again. At one point, Tomi tries to get it but Mami just bites her and keeps going. From there she does some flip bombs. Everything she does is devastating. Tomi’s comeback is great as she bites back and gets the scissors but things devolve pretty heavily from there. They kept trying to pin each other but the other would refuse to put shoulders down for even 1. 

It went back outside and Tomi got an abdominal stretch on, which pushed Mami over the edge. Once they made it back into the ring, she started using a chair, including on the ref. He didn’t DQ her though, and Tomi instead was able to turn things around and hit as long and fast a giant swing as we’ve seen in this 70s footage to put her away. I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Fryziuk! Batistou!

Yanneck Fryziuk vs Batistou 10/12/75

MD: We encounter once again Jean Frisuk (who we now think the best spelling of is as seen above), a Franco-Polish heavyweight who we have spattered about in the footage. This is our first look at Batistou, though he may be out there in one other match not in the collection. He is also a heavyweight, apparently a former rugby player, here noted as the son of a blacksmith and an ironworker artisan himself. He has a small band, including an accordion player out there supporting him and does come off as a sort of folk hero type. 

He's also a heavyweight and this is a pretty measured one. The advantage of a heavyweight contest is that all the shots hit harder and have more heft behind them, that all of the technique has a bit more weight to it. And you do get some of the latter as Fryziuk uses a series of clever go behinds on Batistou. Batistou counters more with raw power and headlock takeovers and the like. Fryziuk had the skill and could out wrestle Batistou but Batistou had the heart and almost childlike temper. They tease animosity as it goes, a shove out of the corner, pushing the ref away at a key moment, that sort of thing, but everyone in that crowd is waiting for things to boil over and it takes its good time to get there. When it does, it's pretty good though, especially once the band starts playing which they note is like "spinach" for him. He has one flurry towards the end that is almost worth twenty minutes of very deliberate pro wrestling to get to. Almost. 

I think, in the end, if I was in that crowd, I would have rather seen a hard hitting middleweight contest, however. The big guys are good novelty but by 75, these two at least, couldn't quite keep up. 

SR: They had a band for this that kept playing this jolly music, making it easily the most whimsical match we've seen so far. The music was fun a bit unfittin at times like when they tried to tease an intense moment and then this jolly music starts blaring. This was mostly clean wrestling throughout. They tease tempers flaring a few times but mostly calmed it back down. Only at the end did they flare tempers. These are two chunky gentleman, and it's fun to watch them do some slick and fast movements. Nothing mindblowing in terms of technique but it was all well worked and kept a good pace. Fryziuk had this leg stretch that turned Batistou upside down that was pretty great. Fun match though it felt a bit like a preliminary contest.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 7/14 - 7/20 + Bonus All In

MD: On the run this week so I'll have to double back for Shibata vs Rush later.

AEW Dynamite 7/16/25

Kyle Fletcher vs Mascara Dorada

MD: Pretty much everything I want out of a TV match here, given hierarchy, styles, moment in time, purpose. This is the sort of match you drop hours before the show to get everyone talking. It was a rebound for Fletcher after All In. It was a spotlight for Dorada (because while we know how great he is, it's good to give less familiar fans contrast between him and Komander or the CMLL guys). It kicked off the show after Hangman's promo and set the tone for the night. 

They set the tone for the match immediately, with Fletcher rushing in with a big boot and stomping away to a wonderful round of boos. The lack of a feeling out period to start was important because the next few minutes would be all Dorada, all shine, all Fletcher basing. It was a showcase with him hitting some spectacular stuff and Fletcher stooging and stumbling around the ring as he took it. When he tried to get one up on Dorada, he'd end up stumbling through the ropes instead. Selfless stuff. 

Fletcher was going to take the middle, was going to take the win, and had that initial flurry in the corner, so it gave him space to let Dorada soar here (and during his equally spectacular comeback. You had Tony and Taz on the call noting they may have never seen the unique springboard Dorada did early or the twisting 'rana he did off the top during his comeback.

What really made it sing was the heat though. The shine ended as Fletcher, bigger, stronger, resilient, caught him off a dive and hit a twisting slam. He then slowed things down to his own pace, slamming, grinding, denying. The fans had gotten a taste of just what Dorada could do. Frankly, they know what Fletcher can do as well, not just in basing. But he was going to sit there and stare out at them, would draw their chant, would play to it when it came. He built up the pressure by controlling the pace, and that, far more than rapid fire action, is what wrestling can do like nothing else.

It meant when Dorada came back, the fans were wild for it. And it meant that when they went into the stretch hitting the counters that the crowd had wanted all match, each and every one resonated and mattered. They made them matter too, pausing after each one, letting the action sink in. They twisted and contorted and played with expectations but after the fact, they reacted and showed how it mattered. When Fletcher finally put Dorada down, he came off as skilled and underhanded, as if he accomplished something meaningful himself, but also tremendously lucky. Dorada looked better in defeat. Fletcher looked vulnerable in victory. But he won nonetheless and he'll take that momentum into whatever he does next. Just good, quality TV wrestling. 

Jon Moxley, Hangman Page, and the Miracle in Arlington

It's hard to even document the number of things the match had going against it. A stadium show in 2025. A crowd that had sat through 7 hours of wrestling including some of the most amazing spots one could imagine. A match full of blood and guts and interference. Two huge anticipated returns. Catharsis and redemption. 

I've watched these crowds for four years now. I witnessed Ospreay vs Danielson where a crowd all but overdosed on its own elation, ignoring each and every plot point in the name of mindless chanting. 

This was the culmination of nine months of story, of a belt and a company and main event scene held hostage, of over two years of story, of a hero who lost his way, of two tales that came together to become greater than the sum of the whole.

And the fans were invested. They wanted this. They needed this. Maybe this wasn't where the story had first seemed headed but it was where they wanted it to end.

It's a testament to the wrestlers and the creative force behind them that the fans were invested in the destination, that they cared about the outcome.

That's not what made this a miracle though.

The miracle is that despite all the factors the match had against it, the fans were there for every moment of the journey.

In a situation like this, that's incredibly rare. This was a crowd that you'd expect to chant for themselves, to chant for the match, to chant for the moment, chant for the company. This is a crowd that you'd expect to shout "This is Awesome" or "AEW" before the match, at the first sign of blood, as Danielson hit the knee, as Darby rappelled down from the ceiling, at glass and nails and barbed wire. 

I don't remember hearing the chant once. 

This is a crowd that should have been staring to the back the whole way, like an Attitude Era crowd, like a crowd in a modern story driven WWE match where all that matters is the destination. 

They knew interference was coming. They knew that the mid-match Death Rider onto a chair probably wasn't going to end it. They knew that they were going to eat well, be rife with sensation. 

Yet they were there for every second. Right at the start of the match, Hangman had Mox down in the corner and stomped away and they were there cheering. Later on, Mox gained an advantage and stood on the second rope to survey his kingdom and they were there booing. 

When everything is awesome, nothing can be truly awesome. Here, because nothing was awesome, everything somehow became so. 

The crowd cared about every punch and stomp, every weapon, every interloper.

Some of that was the patience of sticking with the story. Some of that was the infamy of how Moxley started it all in murder and betrayal. Some of it was Hangman being the heart and soul of AEW.

So much was the layout of the match itself, the way things breathed and mattered, Hangman's performance, struggling to his feet and swinging for the fences, Moxley reveling in his own violent urges, roiling with fury each and every time he was foiled.

It was how all of the interference was set up to be taken out by the calvary of babyfaces. Perfect symmetry. It was how they arrived without music or fanfare (save for one video from the top of the world). It was how everything came back to Mox and Page at the end. 

And yeah, it was on this crowd that let pro wrestling, real, true pro wrestling, into its heart on this night, that let themselves be part of a miracle.

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Found Footage Friday: OMNI 8/14/83~! PIPER~! BUZZ~! ZBYSZKO~! GARVIN~! SHEIK~! TOMMY~! IRWIN~! ROAD WARRIORS~!

GCW Omni 8/14/83

Arn Anderson vs. Joe Lightfoot

MD: Interesting to place this one. This was Arn's second to last match in the territory. Borne had flaked out before this leaving Arn on his own and aimless. He drifted over to the babyface side and was mainly used for putting over the Road Warriors in various ways before heading to Alabama as Super Olympia. So this was more or less a babyface match. Arn was the aggressor maybe and ate a whole bunch of chops leading up to the finish but this was really just on the mat for the most part. Anyway, Lightfoot was a solid hand, a guy I know mostly for being Youngblood's little buddy to set up a program in Portland. This was five minutes in and out, and certainly didn't wear out its welcome before the double pin finish and Arn getting his shoulder up. Post match he shook Lightfoot's hand and past one Tony Zane match a couple of weeks later, that was it for Arn in Georgia.

ER: This got really entertaining when they transitioned out of the ground work and Arn was staggering into Lightfoot's chops, and that was the last 10 seconds of the match. Arn was 23!!

Fake Mr. Wrestling I (Jesse Barr) vs. Rick Rood

MD: Yes, this was Barr. I'm not sure if he was trying to work like Woods or not. I do know that he'd feud with Mr. Wrestling II after this and Wrestling II would take his mask in October. This went ten minutes as a draw which may have been surprising but Wrestling was supposed to be a bit of a fraud and he got his heat back after the match by attacking Rood. He had pretty solid armwork throughout with some big comebacks and revenge armwork by Rood. Rood had good fire and it was funny to see him do things like a headstand to get out of a headscissors which was very not Rood. Ten minute draws are far more palatable than 20 minute ones and this made me wonder what a babyface Rood might have looked like later in the decade.

ER: This was among the earliest Rick Rude matches I've seen, and it's very early. This is like 30 matches into a 1,500 match career early. It's impressive how far along he was this early while also wrestling like a completely different guy. This early on he still had elements of who he would be a thousand matches from now, in how he moved and how he sold while feeding. He already had an honest use of physics in his basics like dropdowns and shoulderblocks. He was already delivering his offense in a way where you could tell he knew what the goal of his match was. He also of course did a few funny things I have never associated with Rude, like a headstand escape out of Mr. Wrestling's great headscissors. I didn't actually know it was Jesse Barr until after I watched this. I was real confused when he beat Rude's ass after the loss after working an entire 10 minute draw without ever trying to beat Rude's ass. The crowd was really pissed off and I thought there was this great 50 year old Tim Woods heel run. 

Brett Sawyer vs. The Iron Sheik

MD: Brett was really good. Obviously there was a ceiling to him as a drawing card (Flair match from Portland and teaming with his brother vs. the Road Warriors aside) but he was just a great mid-card presence, very down home and folksy in a way that would never make it to TV today, not without being more stylized like a Mark Briscoe. But he just came off as a guy down the street with a lot of fire in his heart. 

The first third of this (after getting under Sheik's skin with the patriotic chants) was all headlocks and rope running and Sheik really was pretty lithe stooging his way into these and keeping up off the ropes. Brett eventually got caught and then Sheik jammed his face into his boot (with his boot on the top rope, which was a nice bit that he may not have been flexible enough to pull off in later years). That started the blood and with it came the woundwork and it was pretty glorious. A bloody Brett would wave his fists and try to power up and fight from underneath and the crowd ate it up. Sheik cut him off and did more damage right until the banana peel finish where Brett fell on Sheik on a suplex attempt and the place became unglued. Post match Ellering and Sheik pounded on Brett until Rich and Buzz (certainly not aligned) ran out for the save. Pretty electric stuff. This was third match on the card and it inspired so much emotion. Beautiful pro wrestling.

ER: There were at least five other matches on this show I was more excited to see. I don't know if I even registered this match when my eyes skipped past the bottom of the card to where the Valentine, Tommy Rich, Buzz Sawyer, and Road Warriors matches. I'm so glad I didn't just skip to those other matches as this match is a condensed gem. The fans really like Sawyer, hate the Sheik, and you get to see a vicious quick Sheik that would be a completely different wrestler in less than two years. Sheik is one of our great weird body wrestlers, and it's not a coincidence that so many of our great weird body guys were high level amateur wrestlers. Gary Albright's small arms and hunched shoulders and powerful belly, Tamon Honda's full long upper torso with his short sturdy legs glued to the canvas, and Iron Sheik's shredded distended belly with small arms and close shoulders, all weird amateur grappler bodies and all great. Sheik moved so weird and here he moves really well...while still moving the weird way Sheik moves. He has the same stiff old man posture as he did when he was ruining indy cards in the late 90s, but he has this cool unexpected quickness. When Sheik did a hindu squat splits dropdown into a leapfrog to set up a fast Sawyer sunset flip, I yelled aloud. 

Putting your boot up on the top turnbuckle and slamming someone's face into your boot is a real Lost Great Spot. Think of the last time you saw it. I saw Barry Horowitz do it 20 years ago and maybe it was something FTR pulled when they were The Revival. Tag partners should also yell at their partner on the apron to give them a boot more often. The boot eyelet raking made a comeback at some point, somebody needs to bring back the boot smash. Sawyer gets busted open from biting and Sheik pushes it well past biting when he throws a gorgeous belly to belly that started with him picking up a bearhug. His missed cannonball that gave Sawyer some fight was so unexpected. It's so weird watching Iron Sheik do a huge front flip. I love how it didn't lead to Sawyer's actual comeback, it just gave him a little time to fight to his knees and get the crowd believing. The finish coming right after as its own surprise was a great way to triple that reaction just as it was dimming. 

The post match was great with Buzz Sawyer and Tommy Rich coming out to save Buzz's bro from one of seven or eight Paul Ellering fueled beatings. Tommy looked so loyal, standing over Sawyer wanting to fight anyone who got near, but Buzz had this unreal aura. It's so unmistakably bad ass, a guy you don't want to cross who keeps this dangerous cool composure. "I know people don't like me but I'm not a total asshole" big brother energy. The way he carries himself with his hands in his sweatpants pockets, that torso in a tight 50/50 blend blue t-shirt, the fucking bandana essential to the look, sending calm threats to Ellering as he walked up to him. An unemployed adult older brother who stays at home all day coming out to the front yard to tell his teen brother's bully how he's going to cut him. 

Larry Zbyszko vs. Ron Garvin

MD: The TV title was on the line for the first ten minutes here. I'll be honest that there are single matches i want more or less out of the Omni footage, but if we're talking a run, then I want as much as Larry's run as possible. We have bits and pieces but it's right down my alley on paper. I think it ages better than a lot of heel Dibiase footage for instance.  

Anyway, this was the panacea to Larry's usual tactics as he only had ten minutes to try to take Garvin's title. Yes, he got punched out of the ring early, but he couldn't linger. He had to be more aggressive than usual. Tons of great punches in this one, especially in the corners. There was one comeback by Garvin where he knocked Larry down and then held on to the arm after he fell and the crowd realized it, realized that he was going to pull Larry back up to hit him again, and were elated about it. Larry was able to fire back out of the corner using the ref as a distraction and took about half the match pretty soundly. He had an advantage at the end as Garvin missed a knee drop and it seemed like he might have a chance of taking the title with a pile driver but Garvin turned it into a pin and got the win. This was a nice subversion of the Rood match which did go to a ten minute draw. It seemed like it would here too or that Garvin was going to lose and then he snuck out the win at the last moment. 

ER: I love this era of Zbyszko. Yeah Garvin looks like a jacked up super tough brat pack era Judd Nelson and hits with his trademark up close short range power, but Zbyszko man. Zbyszko sells the impact of Garvin's strikes better than maybe anyone. I love the tough guy sturdy gravity Valentine sells them with but Zbyszko is so moveable, a wiggly guy who bounces off ropes and uses body movement the same way Tully did, recoiling fast but being punched and physically reacting to those punches exactly the way 9,000 people wanted to see. He knows exactly how I want to see Larry Zbyszko reacting to being hit. He also punches exactly how I want to see a man punch. All the punches were great for the whole match, but Zbyszko's tight, straight reared back rights looked perfect. The finish of this was incredibly done and I didn't see it coming. We had our 10 minute draw already and every single piece of wrestling language made this look like a frustrated Zbyszko unable to win within 10 minutes. I actually but when Larry pulled off a sweet and smooth inside cradle to block a bodyslam in its infancy, but the actual finish was a great surprise. Zbyszko looking like he was going to cave in Garvin's teen idol 'do, with all the execution of Zbyszko lifting up the way you do just before you sit down, Garvin shifting his weight at the peak of lift off to tip the weight. Great finish, great match. 

Road Warriors vs. Mr. Wrestling/Mr. Wrestling II

MD: I really enjoy 83 Roadies. They were raw but they hadn't quite settled into what they'd become a year or two later. They wrestled much more vulnerably, more stooging, more backpedaling, while still being monsters both aesthetically and when they were doing damage. We've been hearing it for the last few matches but it's so great to have the crowd make that primal guttural noise whenever a babyface threw a shot. It was chaos to begin and chaos to end with Mr Wrestling having to fight from underneath in the middle. Wrestling II came in hot and it was rousing stuff but Zbyszko nailed him from the apron out of nowhere after a couple of kneelifts. All of this felt larger than life especially to this crowd.

ER: Man I LOVE the way the Road Warriors sell for two 50 year old man throwing big arm swinging punches. The Road Warriors sell so well for the Wrestlings that I want to see 1983 Roadies against 1989 Baba/Rusher. I couldn't get enough for Wrestling's big swinging punches that are thrown like nobody else threw punches and the way Hawk perfectly knew to throw his head back for them, just enough. We know the Road Warriors were not yet the monsters they would become just a year or so later, but it's still wild seeing Hawk taking multiple back body drops. This had another spectacular finish, with action so good I had to keep rewinding to watch what each individual was doing. Wrestling II was fending off Animal in the top corner, Hawk was roughing up Wrestling in the foreground. Wrestling gets thrown over the top down onto a table and almost into a front row before charging back into the ring by stepping up onto that table and getting back into the fight. Animal keeps charging into Wrestling II in the corner and keeps catching knees, until he charges in and catches two boots shoved squarely into his chest and gets bumped back hard. Zbyszko sneaks in and bashes II in the back of the head and staggers him into the greatest This is the End powerslam from Animal. This was not the structure I expected going in but now I want more Hawk and Animal selling for great old man strikes.  

Greg Valentine vs. Pez Whatley

MD: Pretty remarkable Pez performance here. He came in hot, even while Greg still had the title in hand and had Valentine rocking and falling over the place with headbutts early. Greg took over with a nasty kneeling piledriver and started on the arm. Pez came back with one arm with some great silly in his hope spots, using the head when he could, really solid stuff. They dropped the arm selling for the most part as it went on but you almost didn't mind because Pez was so good at working from underneath on a chinlock, just constant motion fighting up and engaging the crowd. Transition was another pile driver attempt which was a little like the Garvin/Zbyszko match but they had Valentine go into the corner again. Things got out of hand and it ended up as a DQ with him using the belt repeatedly, but Pez drove him off so the crowd got at least some satisfaction out of it. Very good match overall though, even if the arm selling went nowhere. 

ER: Every heel in this territory knew exactly how to sell the strikes of every top babyface and it's all so beautiful. Valentine makes Pez Whatley a god and Pez wiggles his way up to it, and once again, this rules. Valentine is on the Found Footage Friday Mt. Rushmore as we've now been uncovering unseen classics of his for nearly a decade, every one of them broadening his case as one of our greatest workers. Here's another for the pile. I'm so used to seeing Valentine take strikes from fellow tough guys and hitting them back. I've seen that Valentine more than I've seen the Valentine who sells for smaller ethnic babyface, and this one is great. With Valentine's selling, his head whips and stunned cobweb shaking, Whatley's headbutts looked peerless, the culmination of decades of black wrestler headbutts. His perseverance and big time style and charisma through his comebacks were getting reactions louder than any part of the Dog Collar main event, and it was such infectious babyface energy that played incredibly off the tough guy champ. Whatley's reversal out of the piledriver was such a cool spot, upending Valentine into and off the turnbuckles. It's one of those spots where, no matter how much wrestling I've watched, there's always something like that waiting to show me something new. 

Bullwhip on a Pole: Tommy Rich vs. Bill Irwin

MD: I've always been pretty high on Irwin. Great body language. Big lanky guy who was willing to throw himself into everything he did, and there was so much to throw himself into here. Every time either guy went for the pole, the other was on top of him instantly. Really gripping stuff. People don't understand today just how compelling these pole matches could be when the wrestlers put forth so much care towards whatever was on top of the pole. 

Here they had to really incapacitate the other. Irwin kept escalating things, hitting a gut wrench suplex, tossing Rich out of the ring, knocking the head against the post. Rich on the other hand got out of the way for Irwin's corner charge and he bumped huge over the top knee first, etc. Just more and more until finally Irwin started working the leg, a necessity since Rich wouldn't stay down. Even that didn't quite do it but it allowed for a hotshot and Irwin to finally get up the pole. One thing I wish we had were more pole matches from the 70s when there probably WASN'T an inversion of the finish. By the 80s, whoever first got the weapon tended not to be the one who got to use it and to see that once could be satisfying but to see it in every pole match gets a little frustrating. Sometimes you just want that nice clean feeling of something happening how it's supposed to. Still, Rich grabbing it mid swing and firing off on Irwin was a greater level of enjoyment for the crowd and this was really good stuff overall.

Dog Collar Match: Roddy Piper vs Buzz Sawyer 

MD: Pull this back up. Just watch a minute of it, any minute. Watch Roddy. Watch him move. Nothing specific that he does, though if you catch a bump or some selling or a punch, that's all the better. But just the in-between. Did you see it? Go look out a window or down the street. Find a neighbor, a spouse. Hell, look in the mirror. Watch yourself move. Whatever you see, it's not as alive and vibrant and vivid as this forty year old footage of Roddy Piper.

The anticipation early here, both of them six feet apart, the chain between them, a rabid game of chess to decide which would rush first to strike. At the start it was Buzz but when it was Piper's time, he became a man possessed, cutting the distance with wide eyes and a wild snarl. Buzz scored first blood but Piper's comebacks on the floor were things of myth and legend.

Matches like these, from this era, often end shortly after that first huge comeback, after the turn of the tide, after revenge is grasped. This one, however, went around one more time, as Buzz was able to sneak in a low blow. Things spilled back out to the floor but Piper fired back once more, moving the guardrail and basically punching Buzz back into the ring. Gripping, satisfying, refreshing stuff. In some ways a prototype for what would come later in both of their careers and something that almost impossibly lived up to the picture we had in our heads.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jumbo! Nancy! Rios! Masami!

70. 1979.11.XX1 - 01 Ayumi Hori & Nancy Kumi vs. Raquel Rios & Tenjin Masami

K: The Americans are out and now we get a look at the mysterious Raquel Rios, who I'm assuming is a Mexican wrestler or at least that's where she seems to have worked most often, but it's hard to find info online so I'm not sure of that. 

Nancy Kumi gets quite the roar from the crowd during the introductions. I've never got why she seemed perpetually over (at least before matches start) when she rarely looks like a star after the bell rings. Anyway she sells being hurt on the outside early on and leaves Ayumi Hori to sell in the ring for the heels. Masami is incredibly expressive and loud, but lacks much offense at this point. It's interesting though that despite her being such a junior worker, she actually gets to look more dominant beating up Hori that Rios did, who when she tags in gets the tables turned on her. Devil also manages to get a comeback on Nancy after she returns to the ring by just physically overpowering her. The strangest move of the match was definitely Devil jumping up sidewards onto Hori's shoulders to do a headscissors. I didn't know what on Earth was going on at first, it was a bit too cute but fun I guess, She attempts it a 2nd time but it gets countered and allows for Nancy to get a hot tag where she does some exciting offense for about 10 seconds before it all fizzles out.

I'd normally describe this as a Tenjin Masami showcase. She certainly was the wrestler who did most of the memorable stuff in this match and showed some improvement since we last saw her. Certainly everything until the brief finishing stretch where Nancy got some nice strikes in and we saw a cool top rope crossbody from big Ayumi Hori. I'm not sure if it was deliberately laid out to get Masami over or if it was more the more pushed wrestler not bothering to do much until it was her time to get the win, but that's how it came across.
**

MD: While this did have Rios from Mexico, it’s nice to be back to normal in this footage with the Americans headed home. This was a good check in on Hori and Masami. Masami especially. She was absolutely coming along. Not everything hit clean, but everything hit with enthusiasm and verve. She had a way of hitting from every angle, and with consequence. For instance, she was able to plow right through Kumi with her charging Vader Attack style body block, but when she tried it with Hori both went down, due to Hori’s size. The commentary called those “dump truck collisions.” At one point when Rios was pinned, she walked right in and stomp the ref instead which popped basically everyone but the ref who was furious at her. I also liked her (late) Honky Tonk Man styled neckbreakers where she didn’t go over with them.

Hori had a bit more oomph behind what she was doing. Sometimes it worked out well like when she and Masami did a bit based around flying headscissors, where Masami got her over the first time but got shrugged off big the second time. Sometimes less so, like when she couldn’t get a slam off the ropes to work the first time around. Rios fit in well enough, participating in the violence and throwing headbutts. 

This was pretty chaotic throughout but had an extra bit of it early when it seemed like Kumi might have been hurt. She came back and came in hot though, flying around and hitting stuff with confidence. The finish had her hit multiple Northern Lights styled face first drops onto Masami before taking her over all the way with it. Biggest thing to see her was how Masami was just rising up the ranks of the Black Army and becoming more of a force.
 

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Mantopolous! Lemagouroux! Weicz! Delaporte!

Vassilios Mantopolous vs Gilbert Lemagouroux 1/24/65

MD: As we're just on our last run (that we know of at least) of matches here, I love to look at the presentation and some of the cultural bits, even if they are still alien to me. This was another studio show. Here we have an announcement up from that conditionally, as it had not been confirmed, François Bonlieu, French alpine skier and gold medalist in the 1964 Winter Games, was going professional and would compete at the Professional Championships in the US. 

Bollet (introduced as a grand poet) was there and just nodded a long as they discussed the matches for the night. Starting with the lightweights (which were heavier than in boxing since the heavyweights were heavier). Lemagouroux was the champion of Brittany and Mantopolous the champion of Greece. When the fans got up for Mantopolous mid-match the commentary noted that this was France appreciating its Greek roots and applauding the legacy that Homer bestowed upon them. Funny stuff.

SR: Really good match. Part of me is just happy to see some wrestling after that travesty with the bull, but this was genuinely very good. I expected poor Gilbert, who didn't stand out in a big way in the tags we've seen him in, to be completely run over by Mantopolous, but he stood his ground and actually dominated quite a bit. Gilbert is really solid, goes along really well with Mantopolous stuff, really liked the ways in which he'd just yank Mantopolous down by a wrist or armlock. This was in front of a big curtain, like a theater, and it made me wonder if it was another studio match kinda deal. We don't see the audience, but we hear lots of applause, and the match was worked so simple that anyone can understand it. Textbook stuff kinda. There was a segment where Gilbert kept his opponent in a headlock, always resorting to hair pulls to maintain control, not something we've seen a ton of but it was really well done. And Mantopolous is always impeccable, really explosive and spectacular when it's time to make an escape. His flying headiscissors were just weep-inducingly beautiful. In the end Gilbert didn't stand a big chance but they topped it of with a perfect sequence. It's weird this kinda stuff doesn't stand out in a huge way in the grand scheme of French Catch but in another universe it's  like the best studio TV match ever. I'd part hard pressed to think of anything better to teach a new audience about the magic of Catch.

MD: I agree with Sebastian here. This is just perfect Intro-to-Catch, at least the lightweight style. As accessible as some of those shorter Prince vs Noced/Richard touring type matches. Like those, you could pull out any number of gifs such a Mantopolous getting out of a hamerlock by going not just up and over but through the legs to turn it into a roll up, or even the way he'd go up for a dropkick but do a headscissors takeover instead, or the multiple kip ups when he was armbarred before he escaped out of it, or the way he'd step up on Gilbert's leg to vault up and over him, and I can go on and on. But what made it all work was that he had to struggle for each of those escapes, that Gilbert sold them with frustration and meanness, coming back with enraged kicks and stomps, and that each and every one was built to in its own way. That's part of why this is perfect to show, because you see all the exclamation points, but also the meaningful, direct sentences that led to them. Just beautiful, beautiful wrestling all around.

Eddy Weicz vs Roger Delaporte

MD: Pre-show they had talked up Weicz as world champion and acknowledged as such by both Americans and Europeans. Carpentier is amazing. My appreciation has only grown and grown. He is a star. He always presented himself on TV better than his peers and this show gave him even more opportunity to do so. Maybe it doesn't always make for the best matches, but I always come out impressed by his savvy. He's always punctuating things, always getting an extra shot in, always standing up to the ref and his opponents. he has that underlying element of being a bully that fans love. Post match, when Bollet is checking on Delaporte, he dropkicks him for no reason and then hits a spin kick on the ref and the fans love it because of course they do. He's always reaching, always engaged, always putting an extra flourish on things. 

And maybe there's even an extra level of construction to the spots. If this was Delaporte vs Leduc they'd build to the toupie headscissors takeover by making Leduc really work for it. Here they do that (to a lesser degree) but then do a spot where Carpentier pumps it repeatedly and then one where Delaporte holds on to the ropes so he doesn't go over until he finally gets his comeuppance. I really do get the sense he was decades ahead of his peers in some ways and that's why his act transferred so well.

And of course, Delaporte is one of the great villains of the 20th century because he sells everything. He sells the indignity of life at every point. There's a moment towards the end where he tries for (another) cheapshot, Carpentier moves due to the crowd warning him, and then, just because he couldn't get his cheapshot, Delaporte has a fit. And it's awesome. It's selling the emotional blow of it all. That obviously resonated with both me and Sebastian as you'll read below. They'd do these bits where Carpentier would get the better of him repeatedly and he'd just lose his cool and start choking him. It was a moral victory for Carpentier even if it was Delaporte leaning down on him. And then when they got slugging, he was just so good at it. He's sort of unassuming at first and doesn't do the flashy things (even though he can) but what he does do he was as good at anyone doing, and as I said, this was just a perfect setting for these two.

SR: Well, maybe this is the perfect studio wrestling. Great mix of wrestling and bullshit. Wiecz is in a ridiculous striped shirt. Delaporte goes after him at the bell, and now the crowd seems indeed to know what's going on so maybe they aren't that unfamiliar with wrestling. Wiecz literally flips off Delaporte, cartwheels around him a bunch, does a weird hip shake, and Delaporte scurries for the hills, only to immediately try a dirty takedown through the ropes. Awesome stuff. They just keep going like this, always doing a little something to keep things engaging along with the wrestling, which is mostly Delaportes basic holds vs Wiecz more athletic stuff. A bitch slap here, a little kick in the taint there, some pretty hard looking knuckle punches etc. I love the crowd engagement. When Delaporte even tries to grab the ropes for the slightest advantage, they are immediately in on his case, alerting the referee. Later, Delaporte tries to sneak up on Carpentier from behind, but the crowd alerts him in time, allowing Carpentier to evade the assault. Of course, Delaporte cusses them out for that. Is it really such a surprise the fans were super engaged, when they could so vividly observe their engagement have an immediate effect on what happens in a match? That's what sets wrestling apart from movies and theater. You can shout at the movie all you want, the murder is still gonna happen. Not in wrestling though, you can participate. That kinda stuff is pretty much absent from modern TV matches where every move is carefully choreographed and there's little room for interactions like that. Maybe having every match go 20 minutes to allow for stuff like this really is the way to go. The finish here is cartoonishly violent as Wiecz puts the Inoki-style falling indian deathlock on Delaporte but instead of falling next to him he drops his bodyweight onto him, squashing poor Delaporte to a smear as is his rightfully comeuppance. After the match Bollet also comes in in a suit and gets a savate kick too for his troubles. Way too fun.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 7/7 - 7/13

AEW All In 7/12/25

Dustin Rhodes vs Sammy Guevara vs Kyle Fletcher vs Daniel Garcia

MD: Look, at the end of the day, we don't know what we don't know. I'd love to get into the booking here. I'd love to try to make sense of this situation and I will to a degree, but there's a lot we don't know, some of which may become more apparent over the next few weeks as they decide what to do next with the TNT title. Here's what we do know.

Adam Cole is beloved...

Not a hard one here. He comes off like the nicest guy in the world. His peers drop the masks (sometimes literal) and speak incredibly highly of him. I have my opinions of how that has and hasn't connected into his ringwork and if you're reading this, you probably know what they are, but even those have never come from a point of wanting anything other than for the guy to succeed. He's been through some really tough injuries and made a couple of valiant comebacks and I hope he gets to come back and prove me wrong about my criticisms. Nothing would make me happier. 

When the news was first announced, I noted that I wanted them to just do a forfeit; yes, even on a stadium show, because that would have gotten so, so much heat for Fletcher and because enough babyfaces were probably winning at the top of the card (I had thought Omega might be going over Okada at that point but half figured Mercedes was going to beat Toni so it was a wash). I get the sense TK really doesn't ever want to underdeliver on something he promoted but sometimes there's more longterm value in trying to get the heat on the heel and not the booker (and Callis is better than that at most) and it would have set up a Fletcher reign perfectly. You still could have done the Cole theme (which is what the fans wanted the most here) and the speech. Which leads to this:

It was Fletcher's moment...

It's no big surprise that I'm incredibly high on Fletcher. You always saw little sparks during commercial breaks but at some point he went from being Ospreay's young boy clone to the most surprising heel in wrestling. For me, it was right at the start of the C2 and the Benjamin match where he rode the wave of the crowd and helped get Shelton over as a mega-face on that night. You can go back to the Komander match that slightly preceded it though. 

Regardless, he's showing amazing instincts in getting underneath the crowd's skin, in taking his time, in living in the moment, and in adapting on the fly. If wrestling is a form of interactive theater, and if we've gotten into a world with far too many pre-planned spots, sequences, and counters, he's the panacea to that illness, the future of pro wrestling, because he is so able to (whether he knows it or not) pull from the heatseeking tradition of the past.

If the TNT title is a de facto TV title, with open challenges and defended on TV, he's perfect to run out the time limit and survive by the skin of his teeth week after week. No one thought Cole was winning. This was one of the only singles matches on the whole show that wasn't a main event and it was because it was Fletcher's time, his mid-card title coronation. 

But when you make a substitution, you put a babyface over.

Is that a Paul Boesch rule? I think it might be. Regardless, it's generally a pretty good one. It's an even better one in a world where you didn't want to burn a town. From what I hear, the biggest problem with All In for those there was the length of the show (lengthened to assault SNME in retribution or not) and maybe that's something to tackle somehow next year.

As it was, if you were going to do the speech, then yes, it did make some sense to put Dustin over. I do think the fans were down during the match, bummed out by the severity of Cole's words. The concussion rumors came out later but it sounded even more dire than that in the moment. It's a little hard to tell given how the stadium was mic'd though. Given the build of Garcia's ten count punches, for instance, I refuse to believe the fans weren't counting along even if we couldn't hear it on PPV. 

And we love Dustin. Of course I'm glad Dustin went over. I have no idea how banged up he might be. Excalibur mentioned his shoulder and knees (a couple of times). He wrestled three times in two days and the Infantry match was pretty good. They do really deserve the ROH belts sometime soon for how far they've come but I get not doing it in Texas. I will say that the pre-show match was a little rough in general and leave it at that.

But yes, I'm glad Dustin went over and got his moment. I'm glad he's got a new contract. I'm glad that he can still go at such a high level, even if I do think he shies away a bit from his comparative advantage (strikes, selling) in a moment where heels exactly like Fletcher need babyfaces who know how to maximize their value. At one point before Bandido beat Jericho I had wanted him to win the ROH title here so he'd finally have that World Title, but in some ways, him finally getting the TNT title was a better journey. And that leads us to..

The Match Itself

They were still announcing Cole vs Fletcher until the night of the show (and my initial want for THAT was Fletcher to stall, Cole to finally get his hands on him, to go for the Sunrise too soon, and for Fletcher to pull his head up to crotch him and get a quick roll up and run to the back with the belt; sometimes you want to make people feel things). Plus Dustin, even the pro that he is, and Sammy had two other matches in a 24 hour period. 

With that in mind, this came together quite well really. Some of that was having Garcia and Fletcher as your anchors. Garcia brings so much to the table in a situation like this. He can fit into technical matches, spotfests, brawls, sprints. He can go full-on babyface or have an aggressive chip on his shoulder. He's been around AEW so long that he has history with almost everyone. In this case, it was with Sammy, who had given him the long leather pants at one point and was involved with the genesis of the dance. So they got to have a few moments in there working together before they came to blows.

And Fletcher was the straw that stirred the drink, the catalyst who everyone would work against, who would take opportunistic advantages, who would pull Garcia out of the ring when he had the Dragontamer on, who got to eat big crow by having all three of his opponents hit him with the Unnatural Kick in the most crowd pleasing spot of the match.

It was a spot that got him out of the way for a while as well. They did a pretty good job of that, including with a Sammy dive or two. The only spot that came off as entirely contrived to me was the dual figure-fours. Again, the last thing I want to see in a four-way match is a "waterfall" spot of people doing things they wouldn't normally do (it's ok if they do things that they WOULD do). Which is unfortunate because it's in almost every one. Garcia is a guy will use multiple submissions, and Fletcher got to make a scene over it, so ultimately it was plausible and it led to a great payoff after it got reversed. Fletcher seemed to want to reach for Garcia's hand and they almost had a moment before coming to their senses and pummeling each other. So here the cost, not too high in the first place, was worth the moment I suppose. I think Garcia's superplexes spot is a big mistake on multiple levels and that he'd accomplish more standing out with something like a heart punch that could be made to be over with the crowd despite not being nearly as flashy/damaging, but that's not something to litigate now.

I'm not going to say Sammy isn't a useful guy in these things in bringing action, movement, and sensation. I think in some ways he's gotten lapped by, let's say, Kevin Knight who was taking all sorts of gnarly bumps in the tag match that followed this. He hits clean and does what he's supposed to when he's supposed to do it, but I never quite find the soul in what he's hitting. You bought the animosity between him and Dustin towards the end after the miscommunication superkick, but just because you buy something doesn't mean it's entirely compelling (plausibility is a starting point, not the end point). 

All in all, though, it was an accomplishment that this was as solid as it was. Maybe it felt more like it belonged on Collision than in a stadium but it was more or less a cold match that came after a chilling speech. They got the crowd back a match or two later and this was there to stop the bleeding, make sure no one felt let down by something they were expecting, and to give Dustin the big homestate celebratory moment. 

Given the circumstances (and again, I bet I only know half of them, but what I do know is still daunting), it's a credit to the wrestlers involved that it came together as well as it did. I know that sometimes plans change and they never quite course correct. I still think that Fletcher could be an amazing TV champ, and I think that he could have a generational rivalry (think Cena vs Orton) against Garcia, but time will tell where everything falls now. On this night, given the situation they were facing, one that no one would have wanted them to face, I think they did the very best they could.

ROH Supercard of Honor 7/11/25

Athena vs Thunder Rosa

MD: Here's another one where it's best to just focus on the text. There was an intellectual challenge here. I remember watching Athena beat Mercedes Martinez for the title in Texas a couple of years ago. She had just started the heel run and she was gaining a ton of traction and momentum with Martinez presented as the babyface as the situation but the match itself was a bit of a muddle because the local fans really wanted to root for Athena.

So even though Rosa was a clear babyface coming into this one, they knew they'd have a problem and I think they set up the match accordingly. In this case, it was by having dueling bodypart work. Athena (who has plenty of varied and interesting offense) went after the back early, and Rosa sold for much of the match helping to create openings for Athena. Athena eventually ended up with a bum arm and that served as an equalizer. The sum of these two allowed for momentum shifts that weren't necessarily based on heel/face dynamics so the crowd was allowed to chant for both of them.

Then, late match, things took a pivot with Athena trying to escape up the ramp and Billie getting involved (though she got tossed into the stairs and she, herself, was able to sell her abdomen, even into the post match interview). So in order to land the plane they had Athena hit the big bomb through a table on the ramp onto Rosa and lean full heel. After that point, they got out of it pretty quickly, with Athena doing a great job listing to one side as she (still impressively) hefted Rosa up for the top rope bomb. 

I think if they had tried a more conventional heel vs face match for 10+ minutes, the crowd would have been much more of a problem. By leaning on the bodypart selling and introducing the notion of alignment only at the end, they still allowed for a satisfying finishing stretch but without the match collapsing in on itself before that and with Athena not losing any momentum heading into All In itself. 

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Found Footage Friday: BASH 85~!

Great American Bash JCP 7/6/85

Buddy Landel vs. Ron Bass

MD: A twenty minute draw, only a bit cut (we lose some of Buddy's control). I always was partial to this feud so it's nice to get a bit more of it. It filled out the midcard well, just having Bass trying to get revenge on JJ basically for picking a city slicker instead of a country guy. 

This was going long and it had a lot of Buddy getting early stalling and comeuppance. Buddy's body language is almost generational, the way that he scoots through the ropes after taking a shot or gets fired into the corner. He tries to outwrestle Bass and fails, tries to outsneak him and fails, tries to outfight him and definitely fails. When he does take over, it's about grinding Bass down and letting JJ get shots in when he can. The comeback on the floor is fiery and the crowd loves it but it's a prelude to the bell ringing for the draw. Post match, Bass gets his hands on JJ and Buddy tries to intervene only for the two to end up crashing into one another. Satisfying stuff even despite the draw.

Ole Anderson/Arn Anderson vs. Buzz Sawyer/Dick Slater

MD: This was a blast. I love the Sawyer/Slater team, even as babyfaces. Huge energy. They came in hot firing away at the Andersons, with Buzz and his fuzzy boots swinging a title belt around over his head. It was stooging fiery chaos for the first half, with Slater's windmill punches and Buzz running about biting arms and interjecting at every point. He had one charge into the corner where he shot back at high speed with a forearm that was just nuts. 

Eventually the chaos was too much and the ref got distracted so that the Andersons could take over on Slater. Super hot crowd for this as Buzz stomped back and forth on the apron. Some great hope spots and last second cutoffs where an Anderson would lock up the legs. The hot tag was sufficiently hot but things ended pretty abruptly with an elbow drop cheapshot behind the ref's back. Could have used another rotation on the finish but this lived up to my expectations.

Manny Fernandez/Buzz Tyler/Sam Houston vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Superstar Billy Graham/Konga the Barbarian

MD: I haven't talked about what we had and didn't have here but we came in during the heat on the old footage of this one. That's all beatdown on Houston who survives and survives until he's able to get close enough to draw his own guys in and win in the ensuing chaos with a roll up.

All of that is in here and it's pretty good pro wrestling, but we get the front here as well. That was Graham and Konga stooging (as once Abby got in, it would be time for the heels to take over). And it was very good. This is some of the best I've seen 80s Graham look. He was flying around way more than usual and leaning hard into the goofing. Konga did his share as well honestly. And all of that was fine because it set the stage for Houston getting destroyed. The fans absolutely loved the finish. It really seemed at this point that they could make Houston into a big deal in the years to come.

Paul Jones vs. Jimmy Valiant (Dog Collar)

MD: Previously we just had the opening feint and the finish here. The feint was great, as Jones hemmed and hawed and refused to put the dog collar on before trying to slip it on Abby instead. That didn't work but it drew attention so Abby could stab Valiant in the forehead. Previously we had commentary over that but here we got to clearly hear a scream from the crowd and that's the sort of thing that makes all of this better. 

Jones controlled, smacking a bloody valiant with the chain wrapped around his hand. He made sure to bask in it and taunt the crowd. Said crowd went up huge for Valiant's comeback as he manipulated Jones with the length of the chain. He got the sleeper on. Abby tried to interfere. Valiant was too smart for it and he got the win before Abby unloaded on him. Pretty enjoyable piece of business overall.

Russians vs. Road Warriors

MD: This couldn't have been more heel-in-peril. Not only was it Krusher and Ivan, Nikita wasn't even there because he was prepping for the main event. Even though the Roadies were the AWA champions, only the JCP titles were on the line (which given the finish made no sense anyway).

And the Warriors took the brunt of this. Maybe Ivan would get an eye rake or Krusher would get a few body shots in, but then they'd miss an elbow drop and would get swept right back under again. Animal press slammed Krusher into the top rope, then pressed Ivan off the top. Hawk got in on the action. In no case did they really get them up but the struggle made it work nonetheless. It was a bit of diminishing returns though.

They had a sort of convoluted bit to let the Russians take over and they kept control with frantic, almost desperate quick tags. Even then, when the hot tag came, it was while the Roadies were taking shots. They just didn't matter. Things devolved quickly after that as both sides used chairs. It get having the Russians finally look vulnerable but a straight up Clash of the Titans might have been more palatable. 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Williams!

69. 1979.10.17 - 04 Jackie Sato vs. Vicki Williams
 
K: This is the final match of the Japan vs. USA series. I hadn’t noticed before but they seem to have got a pretty good crowd for this show, you can see there are fans in the upper sections and this is before they started being careful to only show one side of the venue on camera for poorly attended TV tapings. It starts with Jackie Sato coming to ring with mic in hand shouting about the crooked referee. It reminded me of Chigusa Nagayo's mid-match promos about 5 years after this when some injustice had occurred, but no as effective. Jackie doesn't have the deep booming voice for it. The American ref is kicked out despite his protestations that he is "the greatest referee in American and Japan" and is replaced by AJW ref Jimmy Kayama.

We get a decent enough match which is helped by the crowd being relatively heated, although they don’t make much use of that or take the crowd to higher peaks at any point. That’s my biggest takeaway from this series as of today, they’re too content to just go out there and have their match that they do almost every week. Even with this one being different in that the heel ref is gone, it doesn’t really payoff in any way except the heel has to tone down the cheating. Even just Vicki going for a big bit of cheating when she thinks the referee had been distracted for something only for him to not fall for it and cut her off I think would have helped this along and given the crowd a reward for putting up with so much bullshit leading up to this.

Jackie spends a bit too much time on the receiving end, but her comeback is good. She’s a lot better on offense and I don’t think presenting your Ace as constantly fighting for her survival against anyone who isn’t Monster Ripper is effective in the long run. We’re finally done with this series now and will be on to more entertaining and memorable things soon enough.

** 

MD: We’ve finally made it to the end of the US vs Japan series. The US team (which included the Black Pair) had already won the overall team competition. This was for the individual crown. Ronnie Wright came out to ref as always, still bandaged but ready to go. Sato complained and this time, she had the law on her side. They had called the NWA office in New York and Wright was not just taken out of the match but suspended. 

And in a fair fight, Williams got crushed. This was pure ace stuff from Sato. She missed a dropkick once and Williams hammered her a bit. Williams got some shots in from underneath another time, but basically, this was a lot of Sato. In retrospect, Williams took more of this than I remembered, but I think that’s because Jackie’s comebacks were so strong. When it was time, she absolutely had her way with Williams. She’d outwrestle her, stepping over and flipping her over, stretching her this way and that, outfight her, coming back from some shots with a cross choke in the ropes, and then at the end, out suplexed her, just driving her down with two belly to backs before a splash off the top to pin her. It was a real sense of inevitability, as if they were done with this farce and were going to wash their hands of it.

That’s not to say the ceremony at the end wasn’t fun, because it was. All of the American team (including Ikeshita and Kumano) got medals and both Moolah and Sato got trophies. And thankfully, we can move into the home stretch of the decade and not look back to this series.

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Tuesday is French Catch Day: Bollet! Bernaert! Di Santo! Zarpa!

Andre Bollet/Pierre Bernaert vs Lino Di Santo/Armand Zarpa Intervilles 8/27/64

MD: Disclaimer up front. This isn't exactly a match per se, but it does involve some of the names we've seen the most and it gives us a different cultural look at things and maybe a bit more about how Catch fit into the national consciousness by the mid 60s. If you didn't see the clips on Twitter that Phil Lions posted a couple of weeks back, go watch the video first and then come back and read this. This is sixty years old and a historical relic and like everything else, we will treat it as such.

Intervilles was a competition show where they pitted two different towns against each other. It had a cow/bull theme. They had four of the best wrestling on a mat in a field of sorts against each other in a tag with each representing one of the two towns. I always get the impression Bollet was a bit of a break out star but his movie appearances don't really kick off until 65. The Bollet/Delaporte album was 63 though. Regardless, he's not treated as more of a star here than the other three. In the early introductions, Di Santo has a very deep voice. Good to know.

We just get a few minutes of action before everything breaks down but it is interesting. They didn't have a lot of room to work with and whenever Zarpa and Di Santo got too close to the heels, they'd liberally throw shots without tagging and get yelled at by the ref. Even just a few minutes of this is worth watching to see what they do without ropes, when they just have a few feet this way or that to move in, what holds and throws they choose to do. I wouldn't want it to be someone's introduction to French Catch but it makes you wonder if they trained or practiced with a mat like this, etc. 

And of course, a few minutes in, it all comes to naught as they release the bull. The wrestlers retreat to the walls. The bull gets distracted by the rodeo clown (or what not). The wrestlers go back and wrestle a bit more. The bull comes back. The wrestlers retreat. It's treated as great comedy by the production even as the host basically calls the whole thing off.

Then he asks the wrestlers to help wrangle the bull and if you know anything about these four, you know that Andre Bollet is going to bump at least once for the bull, and after playing matador with some cloth or another, he does just that. Meanwhile, Bernaert (who had a close call himself) pulls the bull's tail. Anyway, they can't get the bull down despite their best effort and everything just disintegrates from there. So not a lot of actual wrestling to talk about but as we have more matches to come, it was worth sharing and spending a few minutes on. We do have another episode of Intervilles later (a swimming pool match), but YouTube isn't letting me share that so I did clip some of it on Twitter. 

SR: Well, they decide to put a mat in bullfighting arena and hold a wrestling match there. I didn't know France had bullfighting. They actually wrestle normally for about 2 minutes with things looking good as usual and then they let an actual bull in the arena and it all goes haywire because everyone's running for safety. They keep trying to restart the match and the bull keeps interrupting. At one point Bernaert gets tackled by the bull and the referee also narrowly dodges a charging bull while they wrestlers have to abandon the hold they were working. Eventually the seconds (people more experienced with bullfighting I assume) get into wrestling the bull with a few guys getting run over. Eventually they all try teaming up on the bull, with Bernaert pulling his tail and kicking, probably trying to pin him to the mat but they don't succeed. Well this was certainly the most animal cruelty I've probably seen in a wrestling match outside of Japan.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 6/30 - 7/7

AEW Collision 7/5/25

FTR vs The Outrunners

MD: I had gotten most of the way through the review down below (MD1) and decided that I wanted to see what it would look like if I hit it from a different direction (MD2) so here are two very different reviews of the match. I liked it that much.

MD2: The Outrunners had everything going their way. Oh, FTR had tried both mind games and dirty tricks on them. Of course they did. Dax had done it from the start, pushing for a clean break on the first exchange only to throw a cheapshot on the second. When things boiled over, he ran around the ring forcing Truth to give chase. When they slid back in, Cash completed the ambush by leaping halfway across the ring like a madman. Truth fired back quickly and made the tag but they then dragged Turbo down, cutting off the ring and laying a beating on him.

They wrestled a mini match here, a satisfying few minutes with shine, heat, and, as Turbo reversed a Cash suplex and kicked off a charging Dax to make the tag, comeback. Truth came in hot and FTR pinballed for him, all building to a bulldog/clothesline combo and the set up for the mega powers handshake elbow drop, that itself generally a precursor to Total Recall. 

But there was Cash again, flying in out of nowhere, an absolute maniac using his body as a wrecking ball, slamming one Outrunner into the other and down to the floor. Once there, things took a bleak turn as an entirely different match unfolded. After pummeling Truth a bit, they lodged Turbo's leg between the stairs and the ring, crushing it with the force of their bodies. Turbo incapacitated, they turned their attention entirely to Truth, opening him up and honing in on the face, head, and neck. 

With a gleeful sort of efficient cruelty, Cash would leave his vantage point on the apron multiple times, running around to jam Turbo's knee onto the stairs senselessly, or, in moments where Truth was able to get a shot in and maybe, just maybe, earn an iota of hope, pulling Turbo off the apron with purpose. For long, grueling minutes, there was no true hope to be found, not even in the face of bravery, toughness, and heart. 

Moreover, there was lingering doubt and concern. Let's say Truth, through skill and pluck and luck, might find a way to make it to his corner, might find Turbo actually there, what condition could Turbo actually be in? What fight could he actually put up? Regardless, the hope spots escalated, with as much focus on Turbo's struggle back to the apron as Truth's within the ring. Cash came around again one last time but Turbo was ready for him, only for Dax to knock both off the apron and Truth to capitalize with a roll up, a hope spot of his own that wasn't even about the tag but instead a desperate swipe at victory. 

Escalation built up the pressure leading to a volcanic eruption as Dax missed a diving headbutt and Truth pulled himself to Turbo for the tag. But now Turbo had to face off against a nearly fresh Cash Wheeler with one leg and little hope, with only his guts to push him towards glory. He attempted a slam, powerhouse that he is, only to come up wanting. Cash charged in, had he had twice before, now for the kill, but Turbo, in a last burst of defiance, put everything he had into a countering clothesline. Bolstered by the heroic effort, he hefted Cash up for the slam and reunited with Truth. The two grasped hands in a heartfelt gesture of survival and triumph and pulled each other up so that they could finally drive the elbow down. No matter what would come next, that was a victory that could never be taken from them.

But what came next was in their favor! Dax and Cash tried to get an advantage on the apron but Turbo fought them both off and the Outrunners were able to come together one last time to hit a Shatter Machine of their own. This time, however, it was Dax who flew in and sacrificed his body to break up the pin. This last burst of hope turned once more into tragedy as Truth went sailing off the apron after a suplex attempt. As Stokely cravenly grasped Truth's leg on the outside, Cash managed one last reversal on Turbo and FTR hit a heartbreaking Shatter Machine. The Outrunners were defiant to the last but FTR was too much, too cruel, too merciless, too precise, and too underhanded. 

If this was a morality play, good vs evil, evil would only grow in power on this day. Yet the light of the Outrunners would give FTR reason to fear their own shadow, reason to fear an inevitable comeuppance that crept ever closer. If it was not around the next corner then maybe it would be around the one after that, even if it wouldn't come in the here and now at the hands of their former friends.

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MD1: A remarkable match. I'm going to get right to it. I want to talk about the structure. After some start-of-the-match stooging from FTR (Dax especially) and a really nice momentum shift tease which had Truth chase Dax around the ring and Cash take him out as organically as possible (so much of it coming down to Cash's wildman execution), they played out a very early short/quasi FIP, the sort of phantom FIP you sometimes get in a shine. It culminated with Truth and Turbo going for the megapowers handshake elbow drop. That was broken up. That's important because in denying the fans that moment, it allows the Outrunners to pick up a spiritual win late in the match when they finally earn it (I'd say that they get another in the late match when they hit their own Shatter Machine on FTR but honestly, in this match, the fact that they even came back at all was the sort of accomplishment that is so often just taken for granted in modern tags; let's get into THAT now). 

The crux of the match was Truth Magnum getting bloodied up and working FIP with FTR pulling out every Southern Tag trick in the book to build anticipation and draw heat. But what put it over the top is that they had taken out Turbo Floyd's leg with the stairs as part of the transition to heel offense. As Dax was doing some woundwork in the ring, Cash was hitting shinbreakers onto those steps off to the side, out in the background. 

Look, there have been tags where the guy on the apron gets taken out both at the start and later on. There are tags with double FIP where a limb is worked over and the initial FIP has to recover enough to allow for the hot tag. There are Japanese tags from the late 80s-early 90s which are built on someone holding out long enough for his partner to recover. I love Tenryu/Hansen vs Rusher/Baba from 89 which is built around Tenryu ambushing Baba with a dive as he's coming down and Rusher getting worked over until Baba is ready to come back. But I can't remember the last tag I've seen with a structure quite like this. I was actually thrown by it completely because I thought they were going to work over Turbo's leg after going out of their way to crush it with the stairs. But that was just in support to the face-in-peril and to set up a level of doubt after the hot tag.

And it was exciting! Not just the match, or the fight to come back, but even the way they put this together excited me. Not only was Truth a bloody mess but Turbo was on one leg. Basically, both wrestlers were in peril simultaneously even though it was a standard tag that followed standard rules and drew within the lines. They would go back and take Turbo's leg out more to cut off hope spots so Truth couldn't make the tag. There were all sorts of possibilities at play here, all sorts of different ways they could have gone with it. For instance, what if Truth didn't get bloodied up until later in the match? What if he was able to make a tag earlier but then Turbo had to fight for another five or six minutes getting his leg worked over? Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday down the line they can come back and do a twist on this and it will feel fresh. 

Just as this felt entirely fresh. Compared to most current tag matches which are back heavy (unbalanced in my mind) with loads of spots after everything breaks down post-hot tag, they got in and out of things pretty quickly after Turbo burst in. Every moment felt like a struggle and a triumph though. Turbo came in hot but his broken body betrayed him. Unable to slam Cash, he had to push through it all to hit the huge clothesline (for a huge pop), and then the slam. That led to the truly wonderful moment of the Outrunners not just clasping hands but helping each other up to their feet to hit the elbow. They followed that by spitting in FTR's eyes and hitting their own Shatter Machine before the unfortunate fall off the apron by Truth and Stokely getting involved to ensure the finish. 

Just a total masterclass of how to create drama and build heat before paying it off in a way that was very specific to the match. They didn't throw out everything that came before in the name of high spots and sensation. Instead they built the fire bolder and brighter. While some people might see this as incredibly conventional, I thought it was pretty daring in how it pushed the form (within the lines! within the rules! within the norms!). This is the FTR that was so dynamic and exciting as the Revival in NXT and this is the FTR that can still revolutionize tag team wrestling by taking everything that has always worked and push it in new and bold directions. All they need are the right opponents and the right platform. They certainly had both here.

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Tony Halme's All Alone, Feeling the Tears Falling Down from His Eyes

 

Different Style Fight: Tony Halme vs. Vader NJPW 10/13/91 - EPIC

ER: What a gift. With this week's discovery of Vader joyfully practicing moonsaults on his trampoline, it felt right to celebrate this different style gift. Tony Halme's Different Style Fights with Hashimoto and Aoyagi are what made me dive deeper down this Borga rabbit hole of mine and come out the other side a changed man. Now we have 7 of his 9 total Different Style Fights (I'm not holding my breath for his fight against Larry the Villain, whoever the hell that is) and finally have his first against Vader. We had his second and third matches with Vader (the second match was also a Different Style Fight, the third and final bout merely a "regular" match) and I say with no hyperbole that this one is the Certified Classic of the three. Their 10/18/91 Fight is nowhere near as good as this match, and after finally seeing their first encounter I fully understand why that match didn't live up to its on-paper potential. 

This one was their first fight, and THIS was their war. THIS was their fight. THIS was the match where they left everything in the ring. It would have been impossible to recapture aura and spectacle like this just a few days later. How could they? This is also, by far, the longest Different Style Fight Halme ever had (a couple of them went into the 4th round, this one goes all the way to the 6th) and the longest match of his lengthy New Japan run. It's incredible. The way they hit each other makes it look like they won't make it out of the 3rd, and the way Halme's stomach is heaving makes it look like they won't make it out of the 2nd. 

Of note: Chris Benoit in Halme's corner, which is pretty fascinating. By all accounts Tony Halme was a sweet young man with no questionable belief systems until some time in mid 1991, so now that we finally have video of this encounter we can pinpoint the exact moment Halme was mentored into being a real piece of shit. 

R1: A bit of a feeling out, each getting a knockdown in the corner but neither with any clue how quaint those knockdowns would seem 15 minutes later. Halme landed several uppercuts into Vader's left side, high up, and it built to both thudding each other with multiple shots to the stomach. Halme started throwing straight rights over Vader's left eye that Vader has to stop with a Fujiwara takedown, riding out the round holding him down. 

R2: Vader threw punches just as hard as Halme, except Vader was wearing the gloves he always wore and Halme was wearing larger boxing gloves. Needless to say, that means Vader was hitting harder. He upended Halme with a clothesline and locked in a grounded crossface chickenwing, which looked even more nasty because Halme just isn't that flexible. When he let go of it Vader punched the face down Halme in the back of the head. It looked so petty that right after Vader seemed to allow Halme to give him some receipts, sticking his head out with no defense so Halme could take some swings, a level of trust and insanity that only adds to Vader's legend. Vader isn't completely generous though, as after allowing the receipts he headbutts Halme hard between his nose and eyeball, so...

R3: Third round started with Halme bullying Vader into the corner but being staggered back out of it by punches. Halme is great at being staggered. His best selling of the match was any time Vader hit him into a forced backward retreat. Halme looks more blown up with every bump. Every time he takes a back bump it looks like he won't be able to stand back up, and that's before Vader lifts him up for a back suplex. I don't know how much help Halme was giving him on that one, but he seemed more scared about potentially tipping back onto his head, which made the entire lift look dangerous. Stomach heaving, Halme eventually gets up throwing arms, buying himself some time by dropping Vader to a knee, then goes for broke. He catches Vader with a full arm swinging right-left that sends Vader rolling out to the floor, and when Vader gets back into the ring he's sporting a big cut over his right eye. Suddenly Vader looks to be breathing just as hard as Halme... 

R4: Vader's cut is spraying blood down his chest and arm, way more than I expected. Vader is bleeding fast and Halme's punches aren't even aimed at the cut. It's like Halme is knocking the blood out of the other side of his head. When Vader emerges from the corner, he lands a shot I thought would put Halme down but Halme weathers it and starts throwing some focused left body/right head combos that eventually crumble Vader into a bent knee 180. The right side of Vader's face is fully masked in crimson while the left side doesn't have a single drop of blood on it. The visual is incredible. Somebody needs to capture this Vader on canvas. Vader refuses to let the ref check his cut, both men look gassed, and Vader manages to trap Halme in the corner to bounce some shots off the top of his head. Halme can't damage Vader when he's tied up in the corner, can't extend his long arms, and when a roundhouse right drops Halme to his seat, he is literally saved by the bell. Several seconds after the round ends Halme is still frozen on one knee, holding the top rope, unable to stand or pull himself to his feet without great difficulty. He needs the aide of a child murderer just to get to his feet. The shell of a man who turned the famously kind Finn evil has to  slap Halme on the ass and assist him back to his corner.

R5: Round 5 is Vader desecrating the largest human corpse. A 10-7 round, nothing but survival for Halme, but at what cost. He can barely move his arms and Vader has a second wind. The bell rings and a second later Halme's bell gets rung when Vader splats him with an avalanche. Halme was not expecting Vader to make it across the ring so quickly. It's a sign of what's to come, as Halme isn't on his feet for more than a second at a time the entire round. Vader hits a front slam and Halme hits the mat and rolls over so slowly, in a way that looks like he just got jumped out of a gang and they finally stopped putting the boots to him. I figured a disgusting - truly disgusting - Vader lariat would be the end of things, but Vader now looks like a guy who does not want this to end. He fires up the crowd and hits a running standing splash that lands full weight on Halme's ribs and I don't know how Halme ever got back up. Vader is now filled with energy and the crowd keeps egging him on, so he plays out the rest of the round holding Halme in a dragon sleeper and the fans love it.

R6: An absolutely shocking turn of events. I and everyone in Chiba knew that this round would be the end...we just didn't think it would be the end of Vader. Halme can't move from his corner so Vader starts the match the same way he started the 5th, with another avalanche. It feels like the perfect strategy against a man who can't defend himself, but when Vader does it again...Halme manages to move, and while stepping aside he throws a right hand into Vader's stomach like Vader was Arn attempting an axe handle. Halme has one chance, and that's to start swinging for his life, and when Vader sees him swinging for broke he starts swinging for broke. Vader keeps getting knocked down and Halme looks like he'll fall over any second, leaning on the ropes every chance he gets, mouth wide open, hanging himself by the armpits over the top rope so deep that 2 Cold Scorpio has to run over to shove the Finn's mouthguard back in. Vader foolishly keeps standing back up and keeps thinking he can weather Halme's big arm swings, and he keeps thinking this, and keeps getting dropped, and keeps taking longer to get back up...until he can't. I did not see this Halme win coming, the crowd didn't see this Halme win coming, and Vader was incredible at being someone who also did not see it coming.  

We now have all three Halme/Vader matches. One of them is a good idea, one of them is a great match, but this one is an outright classic. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE TONY HALME

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Found Footage Friday: PRE-KAMALA~! WRIGHT~! ONITA~! WISKOWSKI~! MOROWSKI~! UFO~!

9-13-80 Hanover, Germany

Big Jim Harris vs. Bob DellaSerra (UFO)

MD: Now and again someone will wax poetic about how wrestling today is better than it ever was and we have so many four+ star matches on TV every week and whatever else and what people seem to miss in that is what we've lost. A match like this is what we lost and no amount of choreographed counters and athletic spots and constant fast pace will ever get it back. The social contract between the crowd and wrestlers changed. It's not about people thinking it's real or kayfabe. It's about the way the crowd reacted.

I'm not saying it can never come back but it's going to be hard especially with the incentives all broken.
For instance, if you watch FTR vs Nigel/Garcia from Double Or Nothing, the fans don't pop for each of Nigel's comeback shots out of the corner. They may react overall, but they're not living and breathing with each move done on either side. They may react to momentum shifts, but generally they're only going to react to big spots and more often than not, the way they react is that they're just glad to be there, just glad to see a spot. They don't have a horse in the race anymore, except for that the race is as exciting as possible. 

It's amazing how over Della Serra is here. Just constant UFO chants. A real connection with the crowd that he then makes the most of. This was on the card but not on the tape label so it's a bit of a bonus match and I'm glad we have another look at Harris. I watch the way he moves here, his swagger, his confidence, and I think he could have had a run with Dusty as this character in the mid 80s. You say that there was Bad News Brown or Leroy Brown or a few others that fill that gap but I just think between his size and how he moved and how he carried himself, he could have done it without Kamala. I'm just not sure he would have been an always in demand top guy for those years like he was. 

This went the full draw, over twenty minutes, and it was pretty good the whole way through. They had Harris lean on UFO building to big, hot moments of comeback. Everything was pretty simple and straightforward but they kept it moving and everything Harris did was credible and when he missed a charge or a splash and UFO was able to fire up, he sold big enough to make it all seem believable and meaningful. And when UFO finally slammed him, the fans went nuts, even if it didn't lead to a finish. I'm kind of amazed that they filled the time as well as they did but it was just a case of the right guys doing the right stuff in front of the right crowd.

ER: I love what Matt had to say about losing wrestling like this. This is wrestling at its barest essentials presented to the exact people who wanted those essentials. Big Jim Harris was two years away from Kamala and maybe 50 matches into his whole career and working a crowd like this must have been a breakthrough for him. Yeah, just put me up against a beloved babyface and I will be a tall black guy who throws downward strikes all match and it will get nuclear reactions. It's just that easy. Was it that easy? It couldn't have been that easy. This wasn't about the fans having lowered expectations, it was about the fans believing in UFO and rooting him on against this large tri-hawked presence. The men in the ring also knew how to best make use of the rounds system. They were good at saving something big for the bell in every round, like a serial where something was just about to happen but you'll have to tune in after this musical interlude. 

The first round ends with Harris breaking a front face lock agreeably at the bell but then whipping down hard with a strike not unlike his Kamala/Baba chops a decade later, except this one looked like Finlay smacking someone in the back of the head. Kamala learned to lighten up on the chops but Big Jim Harris was still throwing those long arms full strength. He lands one big downward strike after breaking so genially, then walks away with his hands up like he did everything that was asked. He understood the assignment. Harris cannot run the ropes yet but when he tries he looks like any guy his size would look attempting to run the ropes. He barrels into UFO like a large man completely out of control and UFO falls back rigidly, as if the contact of the shoulderblock/full body block knocked him out before he hit the mat. 

We get a round that ends with UFO actually hoisting Harris up onto his back and Harris using physics to fall back into a crucifix just as the bells sounds. This was the best round ending and while nothing in this match was clean or any kind of revolutionary offense, when have you ever seen Kamala rolling up ANYBODY with a crucifix? This is something I have never even pictured, or thought possible. What man could even attempt to get Kamala up on their back like that? Who would want to? What situation would Big Him Harris ever find himself in where he was lifted up on another man's back. No fireman would be able to carry him out of a burning building, only UFO. UFO hitting an ugly bodyslam on Harris felt like such a big moment, even if it only got a one count, because every single shot that landed on the big man was treated by everyone in that room as the greatest thing that could be happening. This was 20 minutes of build to one messy bodyslam, which will sound like the absolute worst shit to people who I have no interest in watching wrestling with, but they weren't there. It wasn't for them, and it didn't have to be. It's a testament to a babyface a specific crowd wants to live for...and also probably the threat of a large black man. 

Sal Bellomo vs. Moose Morowski

MD: Long match but a pretty good one. Bellomo had a special connection with the crowd too but I'm not sure if it had as much to underpin it as UFO. I get why it made a lot of sense to try to push him as an Italian American star in the WWF in the early 80s but I also get why maybe it didn't work. Plenty of energy and pluck. But at this point some of his timing was just a little suspect now and again. Morowski is infinitely credible. Able to just smash someone into the corner or toss them from the ring or hit a cheapshot from his knees as at a moment's notice. When he leaned on someone, he really leaned on him but then he could backpedal and take as good as he could give.

He took more of this than Bellomo and a number of times when Bellomo came back it was either due to a round break (catching Morowski as he charged in) or due to the ref intervening. At one point he goes so far as to swipe with someone in the crowd (maybe another wrestler/official but it's hard to tell from the footage). It's pretty constantly entertaining because the fans go up for all of Bellomo's comebacks and the cutoffs are mean and believable even if I'm not sure I need quite so many rounds of it. Finish has Bellomo knock Morowski off the top to the floor with a big bump but then get posted as he goes after him and made short work of once he makes it back to the ring.

Steve Wright vs. Klaus Karoff

MD: Every new Wright match is a blast. You look forward to every exchange because you have no idea what he'll do next. The downside generally is that he does tend to eat up his opponents. With Karoff, however, that wasn't going to happen. This was more like a three act play than you usually get in these German matches. 

Wright clowned him early including some ridiculously elaborate sequences where he bounded and cartwheeled and twisted and turned and then turtled up. Karoff leaned hard on him in the middle with lots of big shots and cutoffs whenever Wright tried to fire back. And then Wright fought his way back into the ring headfirst and really pressed Karoff until he tried that head first lunge one too many times and ended up clotheslining himself on the rope. Karoff followed with this great over the shoulder backbreaker where he pressed Wright's neck up onto the top rope from underneath. Only problem is that it was very illegal and he got DQed for it. Overall, though, it was a fun, complete match.

Takashi (Sumo) Ishikawa/Atsushi Onita vs. Kim Duk/Ed Wiskowski

MD: Pretty surreal match and a great early look at Onita. It's not our earliest match of his but it's pretty close. Wiskowki and Duk are a tall, tall team. Duk really towers over Onita and trolls him early with a test of strength tease. By 82 you can definitely see signs of Onita in Onita but I was wondering if they would show up here and they did, not just in a perfectly milked hot tag but also in the way he'd get knocked to the apron and hang off by his feet. Just hamming it up in a way that had visual impact.

Ishikawa knew how to get over with this crowd too. A lot of sumo charges that were almost more football tackles, one of which missed and had him sailing out of the ring. The Japanese team would get beaten down (Onita especially) and make big comebacks and Duk and Wiskowski would bump and stooge until they could take over again. Wiskowki willingly got carded by jumping off the top so that he could win the first  fall. That's always a clever bit. In the second, they were firing back on Duk until Onita got caught in a tombstone. Pretty good match overall and as noted, a great look at young Onita in an interesting setting.

 

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