Found Footage Friday: YOKOZUNA 2000~! DOOGAN~! FANTASTICS~! BROWN SUGAR~! DOC~! GILBERT~! DIBIASE~! HERCULES~!
MD: I have no idea how we didn't have this already but we didn't have this already. Gilbert and Morton. This has to be fall of 81. It's an expiration of time match where the team that gets the most falls wins, which is a great gimmick for TV, though it may not work today in a world where they stay with matches until they're over, I guess.
What surprised me a bit is how they didn't go wild with the gimmick actually. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Both sides worked so hard to prevent pinfalls, maybe even more so than usual. We only get the first two falls of this but that's over 20 minutes of very good stuff. Lane fed and stooged like a champ. Then Koko would come in and do something awesome that made him look like one of the best wrestlers in the world. He had one up and over into a dropkick followed by a confident swagger that was picture perfect. Later on he'd hit an Alabama Jam that was not perfect but that was still pretty wild nonetheless. These are puzzle pieces (and you could put Gibson or Eaton or Rich or a lot of the other usual suspects int here and it'd all just work) and they fit together nicely. Morton's stuff was more majestic and sweeping than Gilbert's but he wasn't at all out of place with armdrags and what have you.
After a lot of escalation and saves, Morton lost the first fall by stumbling on rope running which let Lane get the better of him. After Gilbert worked face in peril in the second fall and they got a hot tag, Moton put his head down (it felt like a callback) but he caught the foot and forced them to toss him over the top for the DQ. That's where the segment ends though. Without a finish, it becomes wrestling for wrestling's sake, but the wrestling is very good so I'm not going to complain.
ER: When I saw we were writing about this match, I immediately recognized this exact pairing from the DVDVR 80s Memphis set. Is this the same match? Loss and Bix apparently don't think so, and I last watched that match a few times when we were actually doing that set (so basically 20 years ago?). It feels odd there would be a different match with very similar stips, that aired on television (since we had all the television I believe), but if this match has been out of circulation for that long then it's well worth talking about here, if only to discuss the full thick swept back non-canon head of hair on Ricky. Ricky looks like a Nashville session bassist while Eddie Gilbert looks like a 14 year old who hit his growth spurt before his classmates.
Everything in the match was class, with a slow start that kept ramping up pace, every basic exchange looking rock solid. It's that sturdy base that hooks me in and rewards the viewer once they build to bigger spots, like Koko's top rope fistdrop he drills square from 3/4 across the ring (his Alabama Jam is an illusion that looks great...until you realize we saw it from the camera angle that reveals it actually missed Eddie Gilbert completely). The SMILE on Koko's face after crushing that fistdrop brought a smile just as wide to my face. Stan Lane had a fine handle on cutting off Gilbert, loved his hooking kicks that nobody else was throwing in 1981. Even in Japan you were just barely seeing juniors throwing sweeping high kicks so seeing Sweet Stan kick Gilbert across the face on a Saturday morning must have been a trip. When it turns into a punch out between Koko and Gilbert, they are better punches than you will see anywhere in wrestling. In Memphis, maybe they were top 10 on the roster, it's tough when there are 30 great punchers. But damn these were great. Koko rears back and punches Gilbert straight in the teeth, Gilbert throws a beaut dropping down to a knee, there are at least six that made me skip back and watch again.
The studio crowd, as always, made this special, as it's the perfect mix of kids, women, black people, and old people. You get women's screams for Eddie and Ricky, but also tiny kid screams at everything that happens, an energy that is incomparable. Was it the punches that got us all to fall in love with Memphis, or was it the punches scored to a chorus of the best kinds of wrestling fans who also wanted to see those punches? Yes.
MD: New house show Mid-South popping up is a gift. We will take it. Nice tease at the start here as Duggan and Dibiase do a little rope running, but Ted stops as Jim's about to slug him and takes a powder instead. Then he tags Doc right in. Just a tease. Duggan was electric here, throwing punches hitting a cross body, hyping the crowd, waving his fists, high fiving the Fantastics. He had a shoulder block war with Hercules ending in an atomic drop that took out all the heels at once, which led to crazy brawling and more atomic drops. Then the Fantastics came in and clowned Herc and Doc for a while. Fans loved every second of it.
Doc took over with a hairpull on Fulton and then a pretty nice punch for his experience level. Fans hated that. Good face-in-peril with Fulton working up from lots of holds only to get taken out by the numbers game. Finish was a little weird as Duggan finally has enough and charges in and in the chaos that follows Rogers gets cheapshotted by Doc and pinned by Herc. They never actually got to the hot tag though. I see this as cosmic justice for the babyfaces swarming like they did. Past that (and even with it) this was a lot of fun.
ER: I assume this was filmed professionally by a ringside camera, for purposes of having footage to show a highlight of on television. We get the full complete match, filmed in a way that feels like we're among the people. This is the ideal way to experience wrestling. Being surrounded by a hot crowd with no commentary keeping us from what the people want to see and feel. A lively environment where you can see 20 minutes of essentially punching and hope spots a couple well-timed flash pins, and the only noise you hear is the thrilling screams of the witnesses. I'm happy we got an opening shot down the entrance aisle, setting the scene by showing a woman there with her three (four, five?) children who all appear to be under the age of five. One of them was a baby and one of them looked exactly like me when I was three, in the exact same year I was three. My mother took me to see Sesame Street Live when I was a couple years older, but they kept the existence of live pro wrestling in our area a secret from me. This Louisiana boy was watching Ted Dibiase fistdrops without being able to even describe what it was he was seeing.
This is the easiest kind of wrestling to feast on for 20 minutes. The action is constant and the energy is omnipresent. Jim Duggan is a force, a babyface god who looks like the most standing tall fighting hero. the Fantastics are undersized men in with linebackers and play their roles to the letter, everything they manage to hit is fought for, properly sold, and delivered craftily. The people understand the simple stories being told, the learned behaviors. When Bobby Fulton gets tossed high with a back body drop, it's the cleanest story in the world to witness Dibiase drop his head for another, only for Bobby to pull off a lightning fast dramatic 2 count on an inside cradle. They all understand the value of not hitting everything perfectly clean, because a bit of messiness makes wrestling better. Bobby Fulton shouldn't be hitting clean crossbody blocks on Dr. Death, he should throw his weight at him and fall onto him in a heap. Every step of the match is an exercise in that pure wrestling logic. There isn't anything you could even call a true highspot - even thought we all know a leather gloved hand fistdrop is the highest highspot I could personally witness - but the energy everyone commanded made this feel like there was a constant whirl of action. Matt called this a gift, just another Found Footage Friday find that I couldn't picture being a let down in any way. Just another electric performance from babyface god Jim Duggan.
MD: So when two things drop out of mid-air everyone goes looking. Sometimes, this is what we find. Maybe it was out there. It was definitely new to me. Lynn in May 2000 was actually very achievable for me to go and see in college and I am not 100% sure why I didn't. I think maybe this promotion was just not on my radar. It's not like the result is on cagematch either, so it wasn't on anyone's radar.
Brian Lee is more or less in his Undertaker Cosplay here. He's billed as Brian Lee but does the uppercut and moves a bit like Taker. Yokozuna is in black casual gear, as huge as he'd ever be. It's not like we have a ton of 2000 Yoko. He was sort of in Stone Cold mode, jawing angrily on the mic as a tough babyface, the whole sumo thing thrown away.
What's fascinating here is what he still does and what he doesn't. A lot of it is just him controlling the center with Lee creating motion. That means huge shots and headbutts and recoiling this way and that depending on who's throwing, sure. But he also throws everything into a clothesline or even takes one. He hits the Samoan Drop which never looked bigger. If this was 1980 instead of 2000, he, in this exact form, would actually have been a huge attraction. He could come into territories as a special enforcer/tag team partner, could do enough to be entirely credible/dangerous, and had presence.
A couple of guys run in here (one is Candido-ish in appearance) and as per the indies of the time, this becomes and impromptu tag match that ends quickly. Including Heroes of Wrestling, there are only ten Yoko matches on cagematch between 98 and 2000 but I'm curious how many matches from those three years actually made tape.
ER: I can confidently say that I have never seen a Yokozuna match from 2000. I wrote about a December 1999 match he had with Tatanka, but I have never seen a second of Year 2000 Yoko. I recognize that it is entirely stupid that this was the first match I jumped on this week, skipping past a freaking glory yers Mid-South handheld and a Memphis tag that is presumably a different match than the one we watched nearly 20 years ago on the 80s Memphis set. It's such a predictable move by me, and I don't regret it, but hot damn do I love the way Yokozuna 2000 works. This was a man who, if 99% of the promotions in the world were not worried about him having a heart attack and dying in their ring, would have still had actual value. He wouldn't need to be in a main event, his size and presence are enough to slot him in anywhere, and his smarts as a worker allowed him to still build a cool match with a Fake Undertaker while heavier than we've ever seen.
Also, it's ludicrous that Brian Lee was working Fake Undertaker matches in his post-Chainz indy return. That said, this is mostly a puncher's match, and Lee's Undertaker uppercuts look quite good balanced out by Yokozuna's heavy overhands. The fattest wrestler you've ever seen who can throw bombs and still build to a big back bump is such a cool wrestler, and that's what this match was. Lee stalled, Yoko battered him, Lee finally stood and fought, eventually knocking Yoko down with a big clothesline. Yoko leapt into the bump like Bret delivering a vertical suplex, and I was actually surprised how well he moved. He wasn't hitting the ropes - he shouldn't have - but for a man as wide as he was it was so cool seeing how he still got up, and his Samoan drop was hit with the same speed and impact he has in '93. His legdrop looked as good as ever, and I would have hated to be on the receiving end of that double clothesline he hit on whoever ran in to break up the pin. I was excited for Yoko 2000 but I don't think I was actually expecting him to look this good while looking this bad. Post-NOAH All Japan would have been desperate enough to bring him in, right? He was basically Jerry Blackwell x2.
Labels: Brian Lee, Dr. Death, Eddie Gilbert, Fantastics, Hercules, Jim Duggan, Mid-South, New Footage Friday, Ricky Morton, Stan Lane, Sweet Brown Sugar, Ted Dibiase, Yokozuna
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posted by Matt D @ 11:30 PM
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