Found Footage Friday: PWFG We Love Murdoch FOREVER 7/27/96

Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi "We Love Murdoch FOREVER" 7/27/96 

MD: Pretty sure this is the last PWFG show ever and it's a Dick Murdoch tribute. I was expecting a blurry handheld but this has commentary and is on a polished home video. They start with a ten bell salute with Fujiwara holding a picture of Murdoch and they show photos of Fujiwara and Murdoch battling over the years throughout, including a great shot of Murdoch about to hit Calf Branding. 

PAS: Incredible that we got a previously unseen PWFG show, honestly one of my favorite promotions ever and there is still gold in them hills.

Arkangel de la Muerte/Blitzkrieg/Hellblazer vs. Suicide Kid/Super Phoenix/Ultraman Jr.

MD: Cagematch only has two Blitzkrieg matches in Japan and this is one. Who knows how reliable that is. It only has 8 matches of his before 99. I don't think I've seen any 1996 Blitzkrieg. Commentary said that this was a lucha libre match with the hot young stars of Mexico. 

Obviously there was a lot going on here. Arkangel and Ultraman were mostly paired, which seemed to make sense. Hellblazer looked like indie lucha Abyss ten years early and he was basing well for everyone, plus had one killer forearm. I wondered if it was actually Blitzkrieg as he had a pared down look and was with the rudos, but yes, yup, can confirm. Definitely Blitzkrieg. You see it in his first handspring into the corner and then you definitely see it when he comes off the top to the floor twisting too many times and far too fast to be just about anyone else. Anyway, that cleared the ring for the finish. Fans weren't into this quite as much as you'd expect but they probably didn't come to this specific show for this specific match either.  

ER: What an unexpected match to find on a PWFG card. The PWFG crowd - for the most part - did not seem to want it on the card. It's not a very good match, but fascinating from a historical standpoint. This is among the earliest Blitzkrieg matches we have (is it the earliest? Feels like it), and it's cool seeing the act in its infancy, tried out on the wrong Japanese crowd (at a time when his style would have fit in perfectly in every other Japanese indy). What's funny, is while the crowd doesn't seem to want this match, Blitzkrieg is the guy who gets the most reaction from them. He is 120 pounds soaking wet, has no presence to speak of, and spends the match pulling up his karate pants that kept slipping down. He also moves like someone who looked insanely far ahead of US juniors wrestling, so even though everything he did made zero impact due to his size, it's still cool seeing him somersault senton himself onto Super Phoenix's face or do some kind of twisting back splash to the floor that gets the crowd temporarily alive. 

I unexpectedly thought Hellblazer looked like the most polished wrestler in the match. Unexpected, because Arkangel is a guy I always go out of my way to see, but here I thought he was mostly stuck doing rote basing for Ultraman and looked more like he was rushing to get out of there. Hellblazer had strikes that would have played in 1996 Japan indies, swung missed clotheslines at Suicide Kid's face and hoped he ducked, caught a slick Suicide Kid slingshot rana on the floor, just seemed like a guy who understood Japanese undercard juniors trios better than the rest of the guys in the match (again, feels absurd to say that about someone who is in a match with Arkangel).  

PAS: If we had gotten this match in 1996 we would have been losing our collective shit, this has a very CMLL Japan feel to it, especially with Archangel and Ultraman Jr. who where staples of that promotion, lots of cool armdrags, and Blitzkrieg was out of his mind in a way you rarely saw back then. He does like two things in the match, but they are both mental.  It isn't necessarily what 50 year old Phil wants out of a PWFG show, but 20 year old Phil would have opened  Schneider Comp 6 with this for sure.

Onryo vs. Pequeno Gefero

MD: On paper, Onryo vs Pequeno anything seems unfair. I have no idea who this guy is and the internet isn't much help. Commentary said he was from Brazil and a mysterious fighter. If this was 8 years earlier, I would have said he could have been Owen. If it was 6 years earlier I would have said it could have been Benoit. He was blonde with a real Calgary feel to him under the mask.

Almost a rough around the edges ECW/pre-Super indie bombfest feel to this. They did a lot of stuff. Lots of bombs. Some of it hit well. Some of it was that "Oooooh" of barely getting a guy over for a power bomb. Onyro started hot with a big dive and I thought he'd not look back but Gefero got a dragon screw and a STF. Onryo had to snatch the ropes with his teeth. After that, Onryo came back with a twisting shoulder tackle off the second rope where the timing was off  and they didn't look back together.

When Onryo finally won the thing with a low blow and small package instead of something more dominant you bought it because nothing conventional was going to stop either of these two on this night. This is the sort of match that probably would have made a comp tape in 1996 but might not in 2026, if that makes sense. 

ER: I am a big fan of Onryo undercard singles matches. Dude is a weirdo who hits hard and can crash harder, and he's weirdly good at getting neat matches out of unknowns or greenhorns. I have no idea who Pequeno Gefero might be - only that his existence implies the existence of a regular size or gigantic Gefero - but damn if he didn't stand firmly in the way of Onryo's low cutting springboard cannonball, taking it right to the chest and face with no soft landing, and keep finding ways to impress. When the match started, I was convinced he was a beginner tasked with catching something far beyond Beginner Level, and by the end he seemed like kind of a badass who was testing Onryo's patience. Who knows where the truth may lie in all that. There are moments where Onryo seems frustrated, where Gefero seems to not know how to follow up...but many more sequences where the match grows to something More.

Moments like Onryo breaking La Tapatia by biting the middle rope, or when Gefero runs too close to the turnbuckles for Onryo to fully rotate on his corkscrew moonsault, so instead it hits Gefero like a torpedo headbutt. After, Onryo drills him with a fast and rough Saito suplex to teach him a lesson, then teaches him the same lesson to make sure he doesn't forget. You'd think that's where the match was headed, towards Onryo imposing his will on the way to the finish...but that's when Gefero goes on a big run, hitting stiff clotheslines, a superplex, even hitting his own torpedo shoulderblock off the buckles to the floor! Where I was expecting Onryo, the assumed vet, to take things home by beating Gefero's ass, the reverse kind of happens? Instead of beating ass to the finish, Onryo looks like he is the one looking for a way out. He punches Gefero in the balls and Gefero reacts to it the way a man not expecting to be punched in the balls would react. When Onryo takes him over with a small package to finish, it is not clean. Gefero gets spiked on his head by Onryo pulling him into the clutch, shoulders forced down with the weight of the hold. Something happened. Maybe nothing nefarious. Maybe just intriguing pro wrestling. 

Masashi Aoyagi/Takashi Okamura vs. Hirofumi Miura/Masayoshi Motegi

MD: This was chaotic, having that mix of karate guys fighting, out of the ring brawling, and weapons and just enough blood that you'd expect from some Japanese indies in the 90s. Miura took a hell of a beating from Okamura and Aoyagi for a chunk of this. He'd try to just eat the kicks and the kicks would eat him. 

They controlled on Aoyagi for a bit later but it was by tossing him out and using weapons. That led to a big comeback from Okamura where he ducked nunchucks followed by him messing around with them in the ring as Aoyagi crushed people on the outside. Miura ended up bloody. There were some pretty believable nearfalls on Okamura. Aoyagi got revenge on everyone on the floor multiple times. It ended a double countout. Everything on this show has hit the marks so far even if the marks for each match were very different.

PAS: Put some dudes in gi's in 90s indy puro, I am seated. Mirua and Aoyagi are guys who worked a ton as both a tag team and opponents and just slide right into their shtick, which is a great shtick full of straight punches spin kicks and recklessness. We get some cool chair shots where the seat flies off, some nunchucks and blood. I am not sure this match was much higher then the floor for these four guys, but the floor is super high 

Shinichi Nakano vs. Kamikaze

MD: Of guys who were regularly featured in late 80s/turn of the 90s AJPW, Nakano is the least inspired of his generation. He's the Steve O of the era, and watching some of his mid-90s indie work, he had very little to offer the scene except for maybe a meat and potatoes throwback feel which served as contrast to the other styles flying around. Maybe there was something comforting about that? 

This was straightforward as could be, down to a shine/heat/comeback structure you don't even usually get in Japan. He worked the leg early, really bullying Kamikaze. Kamikaze came back as if the leg had never been worked on at all and hit a number of mid level moves like DDTs or things treated mid-level like a Superplex, building to a top rope 'rana near fall. He tried another 'rana but got power bombed and Nakano came back. They traded things a bit. Nakano got a nearfall with his powerslam and won it with a Nothern Lights. It was fine but fine looked paltry in comparison. 

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Tatsuo Nakano

MD: Very weird (to me, at least) to have both Nakanos on the show. We've seen 96 Shinichi vs Fujiwara and while that was fine, I'm very glad to see the more DVDVR coded Nakano against him here. They have Mr. Takahashi from NJPW refereeing this. 

Nakano has come so far from where he was in 1989. He was able to utilize his size advantage to control with holds, not just to try for big bombs and an early win. If he had followed that track, he'd wear down Fujiwara and conserve his own energy instead of the other way around.

But Fujiwara wasn't going to let him do that. There's a point in almost every Fujiwara match where he gets his opponent to "break." It's one of the most fascinating and interesting things in the history of pro wrestling. Here he peppered in headbutts, launched elbows from the ground, and even rode Nakano's back in a way that did little damage but was borderline humiliating.

And Nakano did break, slapping Fujiwara down, hitting a suplex. He went back to holds, a choke from behind, but the die had been cast. The tension then becomes whether or not Fujiwara gambled properly. Did he unleash something he couldn't counter or control or was everything part of a complicated chess game with Fujiwara sitting five moves ahead. 

In this case, as with most cases, Fujiwara was the master. He escaped the choke a few times and eventually Nakano swiped at him once again. Fujiwara dodged it and locked in the armbar and that was it. Ten moves to one, but the one was all that mattered.

PAS: Very cool structure. It felt like Fujiwara remembered the hothead Nakano of 7 years before, who could be counted on to blow his top and make a mistake, while Nakano seemed determined to be patient, use his size and keep his cool. Fujiwara can bring it out of you though, and while Nakano was able to keep it together for a while, eventually he fell into the trap. The thing about Fujiwara is he is always moments away, he can take a beating, get worked over, seem out of it, but make one mistake, lose focus once, and you are done, and eventually Nakano made that mistake.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 10/12 - 10/18 Part 2

AEW WrestleDream 10/17/26

Jon Moxley vs Mark Davis

MD: I'm writing this about a week after the PPV. I just saw the match. The way AEW PPVs usually work for me is that I get to watch the first hour or so before I have to take care of some parental duties and I usually just catch the rest over the next few days. Which I did for WrestleDream, including the Tailgate Brawl which I thought was a great, varied show.

But I held off on Mox vs Davis. I knew it was going to be heavy. I had to be ready for it. Then they went and ran a big angle on Dynamite and I knew that I should see this before that and long story short, I caught it today.

Part of the hesitance was that I knew it'd be heavy and I had to feel up for it, sure, but part of it was that I knew I'd be compelled to write about it and I don't know how to deal with Mox.

When I wrote about Cassidy vs Mox on the PAC tribute show, I did it as sort of an alternate reality Mox, a difference in perception and perspective. That was fine for a one time thing. It would not do this match justice.

The problem is one of sensitivity and appropriateness and is ingrained with the nature of pro wrestling and what makes it unique and special.

I imagine if you're reading this, you've read other things I've written about Mox. I love writing about the character of Jon Moxley. He entered into a pact with Bryan Danielson to shape the future, and then, for any number of reasons (call it a mid-life crisis; call it seeing what Roman was doing over on the other channel and feeling like he was falling behind; call it dissatisfaction with how things had turned out; call it envy over Bryan being champion and Moxley not), he crossed a line and didn't look back. 

I saw him as a hypocrite, a villain, a tyrant, holding the AEW Men's World Title hostage for the better part of a year and putting the company under siege. 

And that meant he became really, truly interesting once he lost the title and then had to deal with the weight of what he created. He had a bandit legion who needed victories and plunder, mouths to feed lest they turn upon him. He ran from Darby's revenge, was on his back foot against Kyle, yet through dogged desperation and a few dice rolls going his way, he won the Continental Classic. 

Food on the table. It let him spout empty platitudes (or full platitudes that he himself said in the light but then refused to follow in the dark), let him play the gallant knight and warrior once again. All the way through mentoring Ospreay, losing at All Out, and so on.

He was an emperor with no clothes, Fagin with his Artful Dodger, a demagogue pulling the wool over the eyes of his army and the fans, but never over himself, never truly.

He never had that peace. He always knew deep down it was a lie. And in part, that's because he never truly paid the price, never was betrayed. In a world where corruption rules and consequence is fleeting, this fictional character never got his comeuppance, not really. 

I've written a lot about it. You know how I feel. Right? Great. 

So here's where we stand. The divide between the people portraying pro wrestlers and the pro wrestlers themselves is much thinner than in other forms of media. If an actor dies tragically, their character is written off in the show, often in a way that makes the most sense for the plot. 

The character of Jon Moxley is clearly carrying the weight of tragedy. The way things played out in his backstage segment. The way this match played out. The death of PAC (of Ben) weighs on him. If this had happened on a television drama, you could put the onus on the character of Jon Moxley, make it so  Mox's actions led to the death of the character of PAC (not Ben), that it was his comeuppance, that it was the spiritual cost for everything he did. That would make this match make sense, would tie together the story, would give everything a cathartic path forward. It would be good fiction and I do think it's what many TV dramas might do. 

But the divide is so thin in pro wrestling that you can't do that. You can't suggest that. Ben was PAC and PAC was Ben and Jonathan Good is Jon Moxley and Jon Moxley is Jonathan Good. They are but they aren't but they are. I can't suggest that. I won't. I won't engage with it that way. It's terrible. I'm not going to write about that story, no matter how powerful it might be, and no matter how well it fits the heartfelt performance that Moxley gave. It's clearly what drove the performance.

So I don't entirely know how to deal with this otherwise. 

But I am going to try.

Jon Moxley hit rock bottom. It was cumulative. It was based, in large part, on his actions over the last year and a half. He had been running past consequences, past life and death itself, had been wrestling not through it, but past it. So long as he never looked down, he never fell, not really. He'd convinced the world, but never himself. And that was fine, because he thought he could run forever. He couldn't. The weight, both perceived, and so, so very real, had finally dragged his head down. He looked down. He fell.

And when you hit rock bottom, sometimes you find a monster at the bottom of the pit waiting for you. That monster was Mark Davis. 

Mox is a canny beast himself, especially with his back against the wall. This wasn't the first time in the last year he was in a tough situation. He came out there ready to survive. He was used to bullying his opponents. He couldn't bully Mark Davis. That's fine. He could out wrestle him. 

But he couldn't. Davis was too strong. He was able to snatch a limb and turn Mox's grip back around. Just like that. 

That was fine too. Mox would just go meaner and dirtier. 

But he couldn't. Davis was too strong. He was willing to go just as mean. Just as dirty. Moxley got a few shots in, but Davis struck back, and one of his shots was worth five of Mox's. Davis has a way of channeling that strength to hit you from odd angles. A clothesline while you're laying down, a half crab over a guardrail, the cross section of bestial power and opportunistic creativity. 

So Moxley bled. He was used to making his opponents bleed. Here he bled. The visuals were striking. Moxley retreated to the floor multiple times, and he laid there, blood dripping off his head onto the mat. When dragged back into the ring, white ring ropes found themselves adorned in crimson. Davis' chest was much the same. 

Moxley had bled before though. Maybe he'd never been in this exact situation, had never made it all the way to the bottom, but he had been low before. He was resilient, determined, dogged. He came back as he had come back so many times before. 

And Davis put him down. Hard. Pile driver on the apron hard.

Mox sat in his own blood, back against the guardrail as the referee tried to convince him to get back into the fight. He was done. He was spent. It was over. 

Until it wasn't.

The Continental Title means no one at ringside, no interference, but then, as the last grains of sands were slipping down in the hourglass that was Jon Moxley, hope hit him like sunlight rising in the east.

Marina Shafir. Daniel Garcia. Not at ringside but behind the rail, inspiring him as he had inspired them.

For so much of the last two years, Jon Moxley did not practice what he preached. That's what made him a villain. 

But those things that he preached were often good things, had value. That's why he was so dangerous. They were complicated like any other big ideas, but growth through adversity, through combat, through struggle. Those can be very valid things.

He helped reward Marina Shafir's hard work and determination with opportunity. He picked up Daniel Garcia after his opportunity had faded to dust. He offered them what they needed. Perhaps the act was self-serving in intention. But the act was still the act.

That's the thing about wrestling through it. About fighting through it. About doing the deed, day after day after day after day. It adds up. Intention doesn't matter nearly as much as outcome. 

That had worked against him when the Death Riders were formed and he claimed grand things and then committed horrific ones. But as Continental Champion, it worked for him. He was still the Jon Moxley who had ended Bryan Danielson's career, but now he was doing valiant things week in and week out. 

If you do the right thing for long enough, then you too start to become right in doing it. Consistency of action matters most of all.

He had hit bottom. It wasn't due to a betrayal (though that would come later). But he had hit bottom, and now, baptized in a pool of his own blood, Jon Moxley was reborn. 

The Mox that reentered the ring wasn't a bullshit artist, wasn't an emperor with no clothes. He was the Ace, the Wild Thing. He had lived among the beasts, dragged himself, his people, the company, through the mud, committed acts that could never be taken back, but one step after the next, he was fighting through it, wrestling through it, clawing and grasping his way back towards the light, buoyed by those who he had both led and misled, who were better than him, and that reminded him of the better him that he had once been.

He redirected Davis and made him bleed. He moved with precision and focus. He ducked under a clothesline so perfectly and hit the Death Rider. He went for the Brutalizer, but had the grace and focus (a burgeoning inner peace) to shift positions and put on a choke. And then he didn't let go. He squeezed like his life depended on it, like the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and he let out all of the fury and grief and emotion within him.

And he won. He had made it through, not through all of it, because we're never through all of it and he will carry that weight forever, but he made it through the match, through this first step of dealing with his own grief, and I think, through the first huge step of coming back to the man he once was. Inspired by those he inspired, he lived up to his own myth and he won the day.

It was a bloody, heavy, heartwrenching match, full of physicality and emotion. It was probably one of the best matches AEW has ever put on because it was one of the realest and deepest matches possible. It was about things that are real and true and human, things that pro wrestling can tackle, but that it usually does not. And they executed it perfectly in their own way.

Rarely do matches have a thesis statement. This one did. The only way out is through. To me, the character of Jon Moxley had so much more to get through than beating Mark Davis, and even so much more than the events of the last month. He had to get through the last two years, through even more than that, through a lifetime maybe. And I have every reason to believe he's going to spending the rest of his life finding his way through. But I also have every reason to believe that he's going to make it. That's what Aces do. And no one in the world could honestly watch this match and deny him that title.

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