Tuesdays with Daddy: Week 4: w/Kwick Kick Lee (Maeda) vs. Walsh/Brannigan (5/11/82)

Week 4

Big Daddy/Kwick Kick Lee (Maeda) vs. Tony "Banger" Walsh/Crusher Brannigan 5/11/82

MD: Okay, I'm starting to see some patterns and starting to find my way through this four matches in. First up, Kwik Kick Lee was positioned as Sammy Lee (Sayama)'s brother and is, of course, Maeda, who has size to stand out here (and some good offense; he hit a great jumping knee). Brannigan is big and a sub for Skull Murphy. Walsh looks like a mustached character actor stooge. This is tied to the F.A Cup and the crowd is loud. 

Here's the deal. And people will hate this, but it's true. Big Daddy is Goldberg. Short matches. Super engaged. High energy in his own way. That's the thing. He leans into everything. People don't just bounce off of him, he leans forward. He really tosses himself into every whip, not a ton, maybe but enough. He puts oomph into everything even when he doesn't have to. And there's a ton of energy to the ping ponging off of him where he moves someone in and out of the corner, in and off the ropes. They're creating a lot of the motion, but he's acting as a catalyst to it, doing more than people remember or would imagine, I think. It's tangible. That's what registers with the crowd. He's quite often engaged, quite often showing he cares. He's excited when Lee scores a pinfall on his own (off a suplex), after coming back on his own, slapping him on his back and giving him a high five. 

And He's frustrated when Brannigan pulls back the corner pad. Here, there was a sense of danger. Lee lost a fall to Brannigan's spinebuster stampede into the corner followed by a running spinebuster slam, so when the turnbuckle pad came off, there was a real chance Maeda was going to lose. He had enough reach to get a tag on a second charge though and Daddy tossed Branigan in, hit a back body drop, and scored the win. Post match he hit his crushing waterwheel backdrop onto Walsh, and it's really a spectacular move. The other person does a lot of the work, but it's something ritualistic that people would want to see over and over. I want to see it over and over.

So yes, it's not apples to apples, but there's a real Goldberg appeal here. It's a different sort of intensity and anger and focus. It's a different sort of attraction with a different body shape. And I think there's more savvy to how Daddy connected to the crowd, more foresight, whereas with Goldberg it was primarily instinct, but some of this is scratching a similar primal itch with the crowd.

We will keep watching!

ER: Maybe our weakest actual match but a cool way to continue fleshing out our story. Daddy teaming with the babyface Japanese rookie, catching him up on customs mid-match, even tousling his hair like his partner is some hard kicking little rascal. Maeda is, that, and he also looks like the hands down handsomest man in the UK. This might be our most odd pairing of wrestling legends I've ever seen. Find me a weirder team of Style Legends whose represented styles and eras couldn't be further apart. The shootstyle god of controversy and the man as synonymous with British wrestling as Kleenex is to tissue. Find me the team of Hijo del Santo and Tiger Jeet Singh! 

I am wholly unfamiliar with Crusher Brannigan and Tony Walsh and their awful, awful gear. Tony "Banger" Walsh is in there looking like a non-wrestler, like David Manning was forced to team with a von Erich and is wearing a singlet over a polo shirt, on his Hamburglar shit. He throws strikes like a non-wrestler too, but I don't necessarily mean that as a pejorative. I kind of liked his forearms that were thrown off to the side like a glancing European uppercut; his elbowdrop is the same form as Regal's, it's just missing 80 lb of weight behind it. He looks like someone I'd like to see Daddy flatten in a real fight. 

Brannigan is one of those messy brawlers who looks like he belongs on the early 80s Germany footage Matt and I have been exposing to a dozen people. Same messy big guy body, just a looser uglier version of their heavyweight style. Crusher had some of the weakest headlock punches I've seen, and he wins the 2nd fall by kind of hitting Lee with a spinebuster, that's more him picking up a bearhug and falling on Lee, then holding him down. It's beautiful, because his messy spinebuster flop sets up an excellent 3rd fall. Brannigan undoes the turnbuckle pads before running Lee into them with that bearhug, missing a tag to Daddy. When Brannigan squishes Lee and turns around directly into his own messy body getting squished, that shitty singlet where the straps are joined by the horizontal jobber strap, you know why he's there. He's there to be bodied by a Daddy avalanche, then another, a messy body hitting the loosest ropes in town. He's there to be knocked backwards over the top by a closing speed Daddy belly bump. He's there to make sloppy contact. 

Daddy doesn't do a Jackhammer, but that waterwheel body splash feels like the 1982 British equivalent. I watched his waterwheel on Walsh a half dozen times, just watching the physics of it. The fall and impact is so satisfying, a roller coaster hitting the highest peak and beginning the descent. Big Daddy puts this guy through the mat. 

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Without The Shedding of Blood There is No Forgiveness For Yoshiaki Fujiwara

Sometimes you just want to watch some Fujiwara

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Nobutaka Araya/Shigeo Okumura vs Genichiro Tenryu/Kendo Nagasaki/Masaaki Mochizuki NEW NOW 4/4/99-GREAT

A real murderers row of Japanese indy sleaze kings in a show closing six man tag. One of the great things about both Fujiwara and Tenryu is that they are equally as comfortable in a huge big show main event, as they are in this kind of grime on the lens six-man tag. The highlight was obviously Tenryu and Fujiwara matching up, as they try to beat the brick off of each other including Fujiwara opening Tenryu up with headbutts and knuckle punches and Tenryu trying to shatter windpipes, some solid stuff from the other guys too, including young Mochizuki adding some highspots and flash. Match didn't really build to a big finish, and ended with a Nagasaki and Okumura show down, which wasn't exactly the creschedo I wanted. Still this was only the second time Fujiwara and Tenryu matched up, and they are two of the ten greatest wrestlers of all time, so a real treat to see.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Tatsuhito Takaiwa vs. Shinya Hashimoto/Kazuhiko Ogawasara Zero-One 8/4/02- EPIC

Just a entire tool bin of crowbars, reckless asskickers pushing the limits of violence with every shot. Ogawasara is a karate master who never adjusted his style to pro wrestling, while the other three are working a regular super stiff wrestling match, he was just axe kicking people and punching them in the ribs. Takiawa is such a fucker in this match, throwing these brutal reckless clotheslines, and Hashimoto gets more and more irritated with him, and just start to try to bisect his body with kicks to the ribs. He hit him like he was trying to break a bottle on a bow of a ship. Fujiwara and Hashimoto is an all time great match up with Fujiwara trying to find different ways to chip chunks off the oak tree in front of him, and Ogawasara vs. Fujiwara felt like an Inoki Different style fight in the middle of a tag match. Finish was a bit anti-climactic, with Hashimoto just point at Ogawasara to cut off Fujiwara, so he can break Takiawa into little pieces with a brainbuster, but this so delivered on it's promise of violence I have to give it the EPIC rating

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE HASHIMOTO

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