Found Footage Friday: DUSTIN~! GOLDUST~! CW~! BUNDY~! CORINO~! A BALDWIN BROTHER~! HOGAN~!

Hulk Hogan vs. King Kong Bundy WWF 1/20/86

MD: Lost Minneapolis house show footage from the Vault. We get glimpses of Harts vs Bees and the full Bundy vs Hogan match, including Heenan laying into a very familiar crowd. "You know, you people..." It's about thirty words and it's perfect. Hogan's out with the bandana in his mouth. That's the era we're in.

Interesting structure here as Bundy attacked Hogan first with the bandana and then with the belt with some pretty nasty shots before the bell. Hogan hulked up early, hit the axe bomber, and tossed Bundy out, nailing him with a chair. Bundy came back with an avalanche for the transition. I don't usually think of that of a transition move but it worked here. Then Hogan had to fight from underneath. He hulked up again, did more brawling on the floor (at some point Bundy started bleeding), hit the legdrop and actually pulled him up at two so Heenan could interfere and they could keep the feud going. 

Post match, Heenan held Hogan's leg so Bundy could hit the splashes and Steamboat made the save with the most over the top kung fu poses possible. He took his shoe off as a weapon. Heenan came back with HIS boot off, and Hogan got to make the save on the guy making the save for him before they both posed. We only have so much of the Hogan/Steamboat pairing but it is a lot of fun, especially post-match when Hogan cut a backstage promo about the energy of the universe and the ninja showing him the dark side while Steamboat made funny noises. 

ER: I'm glad they gave us a couple minutes of Hart Foundation/Killer Bees even if the most revelatory thing about it was how fucking cool beard Jim Brunzell looks in HD. Bearded Brunzell looks like a tanned stud who would beat James Brolin's ass and replace him on Hotel without anybody saying shit. He usually looks like an orthodontist. It also offers us some long crowd shots, beautiful crowd shots that offer us people we've never seen, a deep range of winter Minnesotans with great tight fitting 50/50 blend t-shirts no matter the body side, and a pornographic amount of snap front caps. 

The main was real good, a violent brawl in front of an off route arena crowd. One of the best things about any newly released WWE Vault match has been the sound quality. The sound is incredible on those Omni shows, and it makes house shows pop like the hottest 80s territory wrestling. The ways the sound highlights what's happening in the ring adds to every strike and every weapon crash. Bundy fucking murders Hogan with an early match belt shot, stripping it from his waist and swinging it as hard as he could at the back of Hogan's neck. It sounded like a Hogan getting brained with a slapjack. Beyond Bundy hitting a 1999 level weapon shot, he had a lot of really impressive worked offense. It's one thing for Bret to pull his weight and never hurt anyone on his elbowdrop, but Bundy has so much more weight to pull. He protects Hogan on everything - smart time to tighten up your work and secure the biggest monthly paydays of your life - but all of it looks really great. Precise worked kneedrops always amaze me, the distribution of weight that goes into the best of them. Bundy's is so tight that I'd love to see footage of him testing it out on and not breaking eggs. Is Yokozuna's legdrop our Fattest great worked "drop"? 

I was surprised when the legdrop came so early and exclaimed aloud when Hogan pulled him up at 2 and started punching him. But I appreciate that Hogan's two best punches were thrown at Heenan standing on the apron, short targeted staccato rights to Heenan's forehead before Bundy pulled him off and Heenan held Hogan's legs down for the splash. Even with Tito and Steamboat on the card I'm sure nobody else sold two punches better than Heenan sold Hogan's two. 

WAR GAMES! Team JBL (CW Anderson/Elix Skipper/Hernandez/Homicide/Steve Corino) (w/John Bradshaw Layfield) vs. Team Slaughter (Dustin Rhodes/Kirby Mack/Rick Steiner/Scott Steiner/TJ Mack) (w/Sgt. Slaughter) Sadler UWF 9/21/07

MD: Speaking of things we've somehow never covered. The KrisPLettuce Patreon got its hands on all these Sadler UWF shows. Certainly worth a look. This has Slaughter out to Born in the USA which is not something I remember him coming out to often. Hebner does the coin toss and jaws with the fans about Bret. The one liners between Slaughter and JBL are not great. Obviously JBL wins. Someone in the crowd shouts out "the heel always wins" long before the toss. Best not to overthink it. 

This is honestly a pretty good Indie War Games. You start with Dustin and CW Anderson for the five minute period, playing up Dusty and Arn in the classic, obviously. Dustin is in the midst of his Black Reign gimmick at his heaviest but he's going to be in there for 25+ and damn it if he doesn't make a showing of it. People point to this as a disqualifying period and this match certainly seems like a counterargument to that.  They worked a nice little mini-match here with CW feeding for Dustin's strikes (all looked great) and Dustin running into the spinebuster, having to fight his way back. 

Just when he had things under control, it was Corino's time to come in, and they worked a comedy spot or two before taking over. In general, I thought the balance was really good with this one. You had a lot of unique elements, like Hernandez who could just come in and throw people around or Rick Steiner who in his mid-40s could make a believable impact without seeming overly gimmicky (Scott was a bit more so). The Macks were quite adept at getting thrown around. And there was novelty in having Homicide in there teaming with Corino or facing off against Dustin. Skipper was the only guy who felt a little out of place to me. 

It was ultimately pretty chaotic and hard to follow at times, as you'd expect, but that had its own wealth of riches, like looking away from one side of the ring only to see Dustin slamming Corino's head between the rings like a plunger over and over. Finish was silly, with JBL and Slaughter getting involved, even if they did cover it with a simultaneous submission, and it never quite went as bloody as you might have wanted, but overall, it was a pretty well put together War Games with a lot of talent interacting in interesting and unique ways. 

Goldust vs. Dean (Shark Boy) Baldwin Tribute Championship Wrestling 3/2/13

MD: Somehow this escaped our gaze for years and years, but better late than never. Dean Baldwin is Shark Boy... with a Baldwin brother gimmick, including someone from "hollywood" hyping him up and three valets and a tracksuit. There is a fake Shark Boy as the ref. Dustin is Goldust in between runs. A scene has been set for you.

This was, unsurprisingly, a ton of fun. Match was straightforward. Baldwin would run spots with Goldust, running into a shoulder block or arm drags, then head out to complain and stall and whine. Goldust eventually went out after him. He got over with a banana peel and stayed over with cheapshots even though Dustin did pretty well with his comebacks. He was working this crowd hard, skidding his feet on a backslide or really kicking the leg to get the fans going for a chinlock, just working huge for the back row even though he was also working small from underneath given that Baldwin was tiny compared to him.  

He hit a bunch of his signature stuff on the comeback but it came to the ref losing the mask (beats me who it was) to hit the stunner setting up the final reckoning. Post match they did all the bs you'd want: the shattered dreams, a kid posing with dustin and the ref (re-masked), the valets leaving with Dustin, Baldwin throwing a tantrum, Dustin paying attention to every individual kid in the place. No idea how we'd never seen this one before.