Found Footage Friday: TAJIRI~! HHH~! BABA~! EIGEN~! FURNAS~! MVC~! SPIVEY~!

Dr. Death Steve Williams/Terry Gordy vs. Dan Spivey/Doug Furnas AJPW 10/19/90

MD: I like Kroffat as much as the next guy, move even, but Spivey being in there instead increased the hoss level considerably. This was heated from the start too. Doc had it out for Furnas for some reason. He gave him the middle finger before the match. Furnas returned the favor by swinging a kick at him as he was squaring up with Spivey. Doc wiped his sweat in Furnas' direction. Furnas gave him the finger. Doc told him to kiss his butt. You get the idea. It's a good way to start a match. 

It doesn't let up from there. Furnas uses the three point stance to knock Gordy down, but Doc's able to grind Furnas down well enough that he makes sure to rush over and smack Spivey around a bit too, before mouthing off and maybe even spitting at him drawing Spivey in and it's just an absolutely chaotic feel early on.

What follows is about five minutes of the best wrestling you'll ever see. Doc catching Furnas in mid air and bringing him to the top rope, the two of them trading slaps and Furnas leaping over him to hit a belly to belly. Doc and Spivey smacking each other all the way out of the ring. Spivey hitting a bossman slam on Doc and boos ringing through the air as Gordy breaks it up. The place absolutely exploding as Furnas press slams Gordy only to eat a lariat. It's a hell of a five minutes before everything settles down to holds.

They take it down before building it back up and the overall effect is a hell of a thing. Gordy and especially Doc get a ton of heat. Furnas is able to clap up Spivey. There are a bunch of great nearfalls down the stretch before an extremely definitive ending but one that took that bit of extra effort. These are the sort of lost matches we hope to find.

ER: I love All Gaijin matches in All Japan because it's interesting to see how they can organically draw heat and interest without any kind of Nativism at play. No side is necessarily more loved or hated, only more established. Dr. Death understands that and leans into the MVC's established rep and for seemingly no reason goes hard on Doug Furnas. I have zero reason to believe there is any kind of animosity between Dr. Death and Doug Furnas, but everyone in this match made me believe there was. Doug Furnas was fairly established at this point. Not at the level of beating teams like Doc and Gordy, but already a two time All Asia tag champ who had beaten big teams. Doc quickly turns him into an underdog babyface which leads to a more spirited wild eyed performance from Spivey and some incredible payoff when Furnas finally starts throwing them around. 

Everyone was so good in this match that I fully bought into Doc and Gordy as two guys who actually hated Furnas (they didn't), Furnas as a guy out of his depth (he wasn't) and Spivey as a guy fearlessly telling MVC to back the fuck off and stop taking liberties with Furnas (they weren't, but at times it didn't seem like Spivey realized that). Doc was doing some performative middle fingers and phony baloney heat drawing across the ring while Furnas looked like a guy making the universal face of "Hey man I didn't do anything to you do you have the right guy?" You could tell Doc had the right guy when he sat Furnas on the top rope and slapped Furnas so hard to break. Furnas looked like Allen Covert and sold the slap by making the face that Allen Covert makes when his girlfriend leaves him in one of the few Sandler movies where that happens. Doc is great at bullying Furnas to rile up Spivey, and Spivey is that great combination of large and reckless and Just Getting Real Good so that he always gets too amped up on his first punch of an exchange and throws some potatoes before dialing back a little. He always looks ready to pop off, and it's a killer distraction from Furnas finally popping off. 

Doug Furnas gorilla press slamming Terry freaking Gordy - and the scared face Gordy makes while being held up high in that press - is an incredible spot. It would have been an amazing press slam anyway, but once Furnas added a pump it became an all timer. The crowd lost their minds at that press slam and that hyped Doug up so much he did a backflip and then ran as fast as he could into Gordy's biggest clothesline of the match. Doug finally suplexing Death was so cool. I love the way Doc bumps when he's reeling, just as I love when he decides one turnbuckle isn't enough for a stampede. MVC made damn certain that they were the bad guys here and were so convincing that the fans bought them as bullies against two of the toughest dudes. Terry Gordy out here getting booed over and over for breaking up pins and picking on Mega Athlete Doug Furnas.   

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura/Akira Taue vs. Harkua Eigen/Motoshi Okuma/Masa Fuchi AJPW 10/27/90

MD: This is a recent Classics drop and a Baba 30th Anniversary match. Jumbo gives him a plaque before the match and everything. This gets a ton of time, 20+ it feels like and it's just packed full of character and comedy. It's hard to do justice to it all or even half of it but I'll point out a few things.

First, Eigen, amazing as always, really shines at the start. He faces off against young Taue to start but then darts to the corner and slaps Baba before running out. They reset, he does the same thing but this time teases Baba and slaps Rusher. Then when facing off against Rusher, he ducks and slaps him twice before leading him to the corner for a long heat segment. They kick away at him forever before we ultimately get some goofy stuff with Okuma and headbutts. There are a ton of headbutts in this match and while Rusher gets some in, a lot of them are eaten by Taue.

Taue's a lot of fun here. I've seen every bit of 1990 footage we have of him and he wasn't there yet, but here he's got this sense of wild abandon, limbs flying and flopping about, that would soon be gone from him. He looks like he's going to become an entirely different wrestler here between his selling of the headbutts and a sort of physical recklessness.

This refuses to end, a lot of the normal things you think might end it getting broken up. They run some of the best Eigen spit spot stuff ever, as both Taue and Baba get to do it, with Baba getting it on his hand and everyone almost cracking up (and Kobashi cracking up decades later on commentary). Then Rusher goes for it, but he's blocked, and Baba comes in from the other side with a chop and it's pretty hilarious let me tell you. The finish is a fun combo of Taue hitting an atomic drop sending Okuma into Baba's foot and then right back into Taue's belly to back. My only regret is that they didn't repeat the atomic drop/boot sequence a couple of times first. Great fun that no dirtsheet would have appreciated at the time but that we can absolutely appreciate now.

ER: This is one of those Wrestling Heaven situations for me. I love my King's Road, and I love my boys. Give me 20 minutes of VILLAIN SHOKAI up to their old bullshit and the nuanced twists that come with every new 20 minutes. It's crazy how many ways they found to do their same bullshit slightly different over the years. You recognize the behaviors but there are always things they do different, things I've never seen, or realistically perhaps things I've seen a million times but don't care because they all work so well together that I don't ever get tired of them. All of these old men matches (Masa Fuchi was 36 lol) were written off unfairly by morose tape traders, so now everything in them is ripe for discovery. Nobody was talking about how great Haruka Eigen was when I got into trading, none of these guys were getting any kind of acclaim. We're long past that now.

Now, before this even starts, you just know Eigen is going to get up to shenanigans before Villain Shokai starts bringing headbutts and hamstring kicks. Eigen starting the match with a slap and run routine on Baba and Rusher is so classic, celebrating in the aisles with young boys you barely recognize, knowing he was going to get paid back down the stretch. A lot of these start with long heat on Kimura, eating boots and headbutts and selling the headbutts so believably (that happens here), but that's not where the match stays. I thought they did a great job integrating everybody and keeping Baba's involvement short and exciting. Villain Shokai made quick tags and this settled into me being excited watching an Akira Taue who didn't wrestle a single thing like my favorite wrestler Akira Taue. 1990 Taue is so cool as can see hints of the Taue that would be there just a couple years later but you'd only notice them if you were familiar with them. For the most part, he's a totally different guy with totally different offense and movement. 

His most important characteristic that he apparently always had, was his realistic approach to bumping. Watch how he sells an Okuma headbutt to the mouth, watch the way he falls with limbs flopping around and not in a controlled wrestling school back bump. The realistic bumps and selling were the things that instantly drew me to Taue at the end of the 90s, and with all the '90 Taue we have as evidence we can see that it's just who he is, a thing that would be near impossible to teach someone. He also has completely different offense and I love "elbowdrop Taue who doesn't use his giant feet in any way" but maybe I only love it because I know we're not far away from "big feet to face and the best chokeslams ever" Taue. 

You get so much tough guy sneaky prankster Eigen that you forget they had already started honing the Spit Spot this early. It's still early, as the front row all knows what's happening when it's happening, but nobody is holding up newspapers. People are fleeing, which only draws attention to one woman who is not moving at all while every other woman around her scurries to safety. Baba getting involved in Eigen's Spit is a thing that does not happen in most of these, and his involvement here brings two incredible moments: Baba clutching Eigen under the chin and clubbing his chest, only for Eigen to spit all over Baba's hand, leading to Baba wiping off his hand all over Eigen's head; then when Rusher is winding up to club Eigen, Fuchi intercepts his arm. While the two are locked in struggle, Baba creeps in from the other side and just knife edges Eigen. Taue's back suplex drops like a damn anchor. These 20 minutes always feel like 5 to me, something I never say about Modern Epic Wrestling. 

HHH vs. Tajiri WWE 1/25/03

MD: This is the sort of Vault drop that we're looking for, Hunter reign of terror match or no. Previously we only had a few minutes of this. With the introductions and post-match this is 30+ minutes. The biggest takeaway, past maybe how good Tajiri is here and how it's a shame we don't have a bunch of other 20+ minute matches with him from this era, is that Hunter consciously worked it differently than almost any other match of the period. Maybe even almost any other match of his career.

There's the whole bit about Hogan doing two extra bits of chain wrestling in his Japanese appearances (when it's more the reckless energy and Axe Bomber people should be looking at). To me, this was more about Hunter getting to work the sort of classic NWA Title match style that he didn't think the current WWE audience would appreciate. The problem was that he just didn't have the reps with it (which isn't really his fault). It meant he did the sort of stuff you'd expect him to be good at (feeding into headlocks and other holds) well, but when he tried some fancier escapes, it didn't quite click. The headstand escape to the headscissors was cute and all but people haven't clipped him basically comedically putting himself back into the hold to set up the positioning for it.

What did work were the transitions, the hope spots, the cutoffs. Hunter took over by clipping Tajiri with a clothesline on the handspring and that looked great. They worked a lot of hope spots given the time the match had to breathe and it meant when Tajiri did comeback, it felt momentous. Lots of moving parts and hoohah on the finishing stretch but the fans certainly got their money out of all of it. I loved hearing Earl talking up close too. That's something you'd rarely get in the heavily produced WWE, even in the early 00s. This just felt very different and refreshing in a sea of 2002-2003 Hunter matches I have memories of but really don't want to revisit.  

ER: I remember being 21 and reading about this match in the Observer and DVDVR but now I'm twice as old as I was then and my wants and priorities have changed. How far away, the post college years where my friends and I split an Observer subscription for several years and my friend Jason would use his work photocopier to copy even double issues for all of us. If this match had been taped, I would have traded for a tape to see this match. The 2025 version of doing that is me making 30 minutes of time to watch a HHH match. I'm glad I did. It closed a loop and lived up to its release. I love that it's shot handheld, I love the format, and I loved the story.  I always love the story of a guy who isn't World Title level getting a lengthy main event title match. If it exists, I'd be equally excited to see Brooklyn Brawler getting a long Shawn Michaels title match on a house show after winning a battle royal. 

HHH works this much more like a heel Bret Hart match and shows that he's better at that than when he's working his touring champion Flair match. Thank god this isn't his touring Flair match only in Japan. He's more execution focused than when he's in his Flair Entertainer mode and while I don't think he's anywhere near Bret as an execution guy there were several moments that I thought he looked a lot tighter than expected. He's better at bump as Bret than he is bumping as Flair and it made the match come off harder hitting than theatrical. Tajiri's kicks were great ways for him to storm back into the match and I liked how he would use them as unpredictable combos thrown at different body targets. HHH is bad at standing still making an "I'm waiting to be hit face" but much better at taking strikes that are less expected. We didn't have to see him hold his head a certain way as he waits to hair whip react to a punch, instead we just got Tajiri throwing kicks up and down his body. 

HHH as a guy working over shoulder back breakers is one of the coolest versions of HHH. Do more of that. Less Irish whips and more backbreakers! When Tajiri finally slips out the back of one of the backbreakers it's this great spot that looks like it's going to fall apart entirely and end in an awkward tangle but it somehow bumbles expertly into a clean sunset flip pin away from ropes. I thought for sure both men were falling and going to wind up in an ugly heap of blown spot but instead it made it all look like HHH was struggling to stop Tajiri's momentum. Tajiri using the Tarantula while the referee was out seemed like the one time where it would have been acceptable to let HHH Act. Just let him scream and NXT sell for a full minute while completely stuck, no ref to save him. I was disappointed that Tajiri maintained the 5 second rule. We didn't get enough of Tajiri maniacally refusing to break Tarantula. 

Tajiri kicking out of the Pedigree was something we all read about in 2003, but it plays far crazier than it reads. This is a detail I remember reading about. It was shocking to hear that Tajiri had kicked out of a Pedigree, but the details at the time actually downplayed what really happened. When it was reported, the reporting made it sound like the Pedigree was hit and Hebner - blinded by mist - took an eternity to make the count. That makes sense and it still sounded surprising that Tajiri kicked out. In actuality, the whole thing happened in under 10 seconds. Tajiri kicked out of the Pedigree less than 10 seconds after it was hit, which nobody else was doing in 2003. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: BABY TAUE~! HARA~! BRET~! VIRGIL~! BABY MONEY INC~! BLONDY~!

Akira Taue vs. Ashura Hara AJPW 10/28/88

MD: This isn't long, but if I'm not mistaken, it might be the earliest Taue singles match on tape. And honestly? It wildly overachieves. I'm used to 89 and even into 90 Taue who is trying to figure out how to be Taue. This is not that guy. This is a big athletic guy trying to figure any of it out. And he's trying to do so against Hara who is stoic and brutal and ready to kill him. Taue hits a Thesz press right at the bell and the crowd ooohs. Great, effective start. The first two minutes of this are pretty sprint light, all building to Hara clocking him with the ring bell on the floor. Throughout this, Taue will throw chops and kicks and there really is the sense that he's learning in the moment, even from a purely kayfabe perspective. He's trying to figure out what angle to throw his strikes from, what technique to use, how to get enough mustard behind the kicks to actually impact Hara, despite his size and presumably strength advantage. It means that every four or five shots from him equals one of Hara's. It means that when he hits the hundred hand sumo slap in the corner and it doesn't register and he escalates to outright smacks across Hara's face, Hara is going to clean his clock with one massive retribution shot of his own. It means when he's able to score four or five kicks, Hara's able to cut him right off with just one off his own off the ropes, even if both of them will keel over after the fact. 

When it comes to the actual execution, Taue bumps big, most especially for the clotheslines at the end, but there is a sense of him telegraphing his stuff (especially the missed stuff) way more than it ought to. We get a great camera shot of Hara managing the same exact thing, a missed clothesline in the corner, with a lot more intensity and grace. I think, and this is just a guess, that Taue didn't know enough to get in his own way yet. He has some single matches with Taue over a year later, right as Taue was on his way out, and in those, he tries to fight from underneath and show fire and I almost see more of that here, naturally, against Hara. Watching the AJPW mainstays this early in their development is so interesting, because you can see all sorts of possibilities and realities that didn't happen. This Taue, one that was more than willing to run into Hara's open hand, and then throw his entire body right back at him, was a different sort of Taue than the one we'd eventually get.

ER: I can't get enough Taue, the man who took over as my favorite pillar sometime post-Misawa death and together we haven't looked back since. I just like how he moves and how he falls and how he sells on his feet. He's a permanently old man and this is the youngest I've seen the old man doing his thing, Akira Taue with the fluffed up city pop hair of All Japan Young Boys. Taue is an athlete who is clumsy in form and clumsy in fall in all of the best ways. He is in his first year - which means he has been thrown to the wolves for over a hundred matches already on the Kings Road schedule - and can barely budge the Hara the Tank. It's one of those fun reaction worthy young boy matches where a brick solid stoic badass in his 40s lets a young boy hit him as hard as he can while he barely budges until he shows him several times how to throw proper kicks to the ribs and butts to the head. Ashura Hara barely reacts to Taue's slaps and yet also feels the need to bash him with a ring bell a couple minutes in. Early! Taue sells slaps really well and Hara knocks him silly really well. He lets Taue kick him in the chest and back if it's hurting him he's wearing it all inside. He catches a kick when he decides to catch a kick - casually, like he was just throwing Taue's leg around with his buddy - and gets to his feet with an uppercut to Taue's left cheekbone. Taue absorbs all of Hara's clotheslines and kicks really well, and Hara literally just clotheslines and kicks him until pinning him. They all looked great and none of them looked clean. 

Fabuloso Blondy/Guerrero Negro vs. Stuka/Apolo Estrada CMLL 1989

MD: Three falls in fifteen minutes or so. Blondy was in his full glory, and Guerrero Negro, sans mask, seemed just happy to be there with him saluting along to the anthem. Tecnicos charged in immediately thereafter. I haven't seen a ton of Apolo Estrada but I like what I have seen. He's very charismatic and over the top in his own particular way. Blondy fouled him to lose the first fall but take over the momentum which is not something you see often actually. They focused in on his stomach and took the segunda after a solid beatdown. In the tercera, Estrada came back after shrugging Blondy into the post on a ram attempt on the floor. Nice pop for it. The fans were into these guys. He got some solid revenge on Blondy's stomach, too, which is again not something you see a lot of focus on. As they cycled through Blondy did a sleeper, which, again isn't usually part of the diction of lucha libra. Finish was fun with Stuka getting Guerrero Negro but Estrada missing a big leap off the top only for Blondy to get overconfident and rolled up. It was a good, over act and here was another look at it, brief, a little slight, but still enjoyable.

Bret Hart/Virgil vs. Ted Dibiase/IRS WWF 8/16/91

MD: This came out of nowhere. They started running this matchup in July, with Duggan sometimes teaming with Virgil. It's still very early in the Dibiase/IRS pairing. We don't have a ton of them with Sherri so it's fun to see it. Super hot crowd and you can hardly blame them as there was always something to look at here. Just having Sherri out there meant that there was a constant reaction to everything that was happening. That meant lots of attempts to interfere which didn't come to anything but drew the eye (and the fancam) to holding her head during a double noggin knocker, to taunting every single person in the arena when Dibiase and IRS finally took over. I almost can't comment on some of Rotunda's holds because the cameraman was more interested in seeing what Sherri was up to. There was a long, long shine here with a couple of false calls on the heels taking over but some very fun stuff, like Bret feigning an eyerake from the outside from IRS (that never happened) which let Virgil unload on Dibiase illegally and this great bit where Virgil did an arm wringer to IRS and then Rotunda's fist right into Dibiase's face. I'm sure I must have seen that spot at least a few times but it felt new to me. The heels had to work three times harder (and dirtier) than the babyfaces to get anything which, I suppose, made the fans care all the more when they finally took over. There was a ton of heat for it at least. Bret ended up taking maybe 80% of this match though Virgil seemed plenty competent when he was in there. Finish was probably what people usually got around this time, with Virgil, almost, almost getting to triumph over Dibiase only to have it stolen out from underneath him (by a loaded purse). Summerslam was just around the corner though.

ER: I have bad taste in wrestling, so this kind of thing is the kind of new match that excites me. I love seeing new WWF pairings from this era, matches that didn't exist in any other form. They ran this tag on a few house shows leading up to Summerslam '91, the peak of Virgil's career and Bret's first singles match title win. Other than these few house show tags, Bret and Virgil rarely associated. Both babyfaces, both careers on the upswing, both in wildly different places one year later. Virgil's World Title Challenge the next year would be by far Bret's shortest match of his first World Title run. This is our lone Bret/Virgil partnership on film and it's a really good tag match, and every person in the match is really great at their role in the match. Bret gets loud crowd sympathy out of getting out of a long chinlock, Dibiase reacts perfectly to a hot tag, IRS works faster and hits heavier than later Money Inc., and the timing of everything is pinpoint. 

But this is a Sensational Sherri. Whatever single Montreal man snuck their camcorder to horsily record Sherri's every single movement at the importance of anything else on the show, was correct to do so. Regardless of the intentions of a lone Quebecois cameraman probably named Edouard, this camera belonged on Sherri. This was one of the hardest working, entertaining, constant motion and broad breathless interaction that few managers in history could replicate. Sherri works an incredible and active manager role with the best looking legs of her life, running around the ring to stop and rub specific fans' faces in it, shouting specific encouragement to IRS or Dibiase in between interacting with fans, physically interact with all four men in the match multiple times ranging from big to small ways, all while adding to the match by getting the crowd more invested in the match by also being more invested in her. She is incredible to watch. It's like she's acting a big scene out for her own biopic; an incredible confident performance that is bigger than any TV performance. You put this performance of hers in any territory and she is a megastar. 

This is a gem of a tag. Every participant did a leaping punch off the middle or top buckle, and any match with jumping or falling punches is going to be a house show gem. But this is a Sensational Sherri match, a match I'm not sure I've seen anyone work better. That it plays like a documentary scene about a Great Manager due to our French New Wave handheld with swirling squeals of in the red crowd noise makes it a wrestling match that should be referenced going forward. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: SANTO VS CASAS~! DEATON~! KABUKI~! TINIEBLAS~! WAGNER~! ABBY~! TAUE~! SMOTHERS~!

Hijo del Santo/Tinieblas Jr. vs. Negro Casas/Dr. Wagner Jr. WWO

MD: This is almost certainly Found and not New and there are a couple of probably new videos on the channel but I wanted to watch Santo vs Casas so that's what we're watching. This was 2/3 falls and went closer to 15 as there was a pre-taped interview with Tinieblas after the primera. That's the only Alushe appearance in case you're wondering. The main pairings were Wagner and Tinieblas and Casas and Santo. You would have gotten a much higher floor if things were reversed but a lower ceiling. That meant we got just a bit of plodding Tinieblas matwork and then a lot of Santo vs Casas and some ginger Tinieblas rope running and then more Santo vs Casas. Those exchanges were workmanlike and smooth, nothing out of the norm but the norm is very good and I appreciated them all the more for the contrast. When things broke down for the finish, Tinieblas was trying his best (and he did with the comeback in the tercera too) and he hit an absolutely massive splash off the top (and later a big dive).

The beatdown in the segunda was launched by a Casas foul as the ref was distracted and was solid, with mask pulling building pressure up for Santo to do his thing on the comeback. I liked how in the double leg rollback on Tinieblas to get him to tap, Casas was also flexing the wrist down. There's almost nothing better in wrestling than a heated Santo comeback, and it led a fun finishing stretch where Tinieblas had Casas in a hold, Wagner was working Tinieblas' mask, and Santo was (most efficiently) working Wagner's, all at once. Actual finish was Casas bumping himself into the ropes and falling on his face, with Santo slipping on the caballo lighting-fast. Beautiful stuff. This probably isn't top half for Santo vs Casas matches but just fun for them is pretty great for anyone else.

Abdullah the Butcher/Joel Deaton vs. Great Kabuki/Akira Taue AJPW 10/20/89

MD: As much as we love Taue around here, he was a bit of a late starter relative to his peers. You don't really see what he might become until later into 1990 when he was teaming with Jumbo against the superheavyweight foreigners and even then, you see it more with the feud with Kawada in early 91. Back here in 89, as I've noted before, it would have been far easier to bet on Shunji Takano as the next giant Japanese star. Even Tenryu and Hansen weren't able to pull that fire out of him; quite the opposite. He came out looking more timid when facing them, not less.

Deaton, on the other hand, was a pretty ideal opponent for him and this was probably the best I've ever seen him look in 89. He had size and presence and energy but came off like a poor man's Hansen for the most part. There was still value to that lower down the card or in main event six-mans and he matched up perfectly here with Taue, giving him someone worthwhile that he could still lean on. Kabuki might have taken over on offense, but Taue stood tall, hanging on to a hold through a chinbreaker or cutting him off when he attempted to make it to Abdullah. Whenever Abdullah did get in, however, he shut things down quickly. Even when Taue tried to interfere to help Kabuki, Abby, while not breaking the hold, blocked Taue's shot and took him out with a throat chop. He was able to get a few shots in on him towards the end, but all it took was one missed dropkick for Abby to be able to drop the elbow and end it. I'd call this a good missing link on Taue's road to what he'd become though.

ER: One of the joys of handheld All Japan wrestling is getting to hear two guys having some kind of conversation about Joel Deaton. Perhaps one fan asking who the tall American guy was and the another fan saying "Deaton" several times. I thought Joel Deaton looked great in this match. Deaton's All Japan run was real fortuitous, coming at the end of a long run as a Crockett territory job guy as one half of the Thunderfoots, and then suddenly getting a 5 year mostly full time run as an All Japan mid card gaijin. And  Joel Deaton, for a guy we've barely written about here, seems like a guy we should be seeking out and writing about more. I thought Deaton was much less a Stan Hansen clone and much more someone who Dustin Rhodes would be within a few years. It might sound hyperbolic to say that Joel Deaton was 1993 Dustin Rhodes - I've barely watched and written about Deaton - but watch him in this match and tell me otherwise. 

He's a big guy, standing over Taue before Taue was more lumbering, and he works quick. He's great at setting up offense and has a lot of cool offense of his own. But his bumping and set ups are the highlight: How he runs at Kabuki with a low cutting missed back elbow and clothesline before running even faster throat first into a Kabuki thrust. Kabuki's throat thrusts are one of my favorite wrestling strikes ever and Deaton leans into every one of them and whips his full head of hair back in ways that HHH could never sell. He takes a backdrop as high as Dustin, and if you thought he ran into Kabuki's hand earlier you should see how recklessly fast he runs into a thrust kick in the finishing stretch. Deaton ran into Kabuki's foot so fast and so painfully that it made me want to go through every single handheld Deaton match we have. I'm a Deaton Guy now. 

I watch much less early Taue than I do later Taue but he seemed like a different cool version of Taue already here. I loved when Deaton tried to jawbreaker his way out of a Taue chinlock but Taue just held on. I'm not sure I've ever seen that before and Taue has the lumbering smothering to pull it off. The way he locks in his standing sleeper after and quickly leans back into and over Deaton looked great, forcing his physics onto Deaton. Deaton really looks like he gets under Taue's skin when he rocks him with a huge knife edge while Taue is waiting on the apron, and Taue gets in two hard overhand chops to Deaton's neck before the ref can drag him out of the ring. Deaton is really like a hybrid Taue/Dustin, which is an incredible compliment, but damn when Deaton grabbed a slick ankle pick to keep Taue in the corner while tagging out, and later in the match Taue grabbed one of his own to do the same, I was in love with these two really tall guys taking advantage of the other's long legs. 

I thought everybody looked great, really. This show was taped for TV (and famously had three title changes on it) and these guys worked snug and stiff like they were on a big TV show and not just a Nagoya gymnasium. Kabuki's strikes are like if Great Muta's strikes actually looked good, and him assaulting Abby while Abby was trying to step through the ropes was a highlight of a match filled with them. Also, Abdullah hits his full body shoulderblocks so hard that I can feel them through the handheld from the back row of this gym. He runs over Kabuki so hard it was like every participant - outside of Abby - was fighting to see who could take the most brain-jarring back bump. I don't know if I like any wrestling more than I like All Japan handhelds. I'm not convinced there is such a thing as a bad All Japan handheld match. When we find them we need to destroy them, like Dead tapers shutting down circulation of a show where Jerry nodded off. 

Tracy Smothers vs. Rowdy Red MWA 1996

MD: Best as I can tell, this was a Hair vs. Reputation match where Smothers put his reputation up against Red's hair with a fifteen minute time limit. He had a second who went back to the locker room after the entrance though we'd see him at the end. I can't tell you a single thing about Red contextually, but he played the fired up local babyface pretty well here. Early on Smothers oscillated between going for a quick roll up and stalling, all building to Red getting a near fall on him with a small package of his own.

The heat was a lot of fun with Smothers really bullying Red. He took over by using the ref as a wedge in the corner to sneak in some shots and everything he did looked great. The best of it was maybe this jumping hook kick he did after some of his really nice jabs. When Red got hope spots with punches of his own, it didn't matter how they looked because of how Smothers was selling them. As they got close to the time limit, Smothers couldn't put him away, even after Red missed a legdrop off the top. Eventually, after two mule kick low blows by Red, Smothers' pal came out only to get accidentally clocked by Smothers, leading to a crowd-pleasing roll up win at the last second. Smothers, of course, proclaimed he'd never be coming back on the mic after the match. This probably had something of a low ceiling but it crashed into it at full speed.

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: TSURUTA-GUN~! VS~! SUPER~! GENERATION~! ARMY~! BARR~! DANDY~! PANTHER~! CHARLES~! ESTRADA~! RAYO~! HERMANOS DINOMITA~!

Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue/Masa Fuchi vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada/Kenta Kobashi NJPW 3/3/91 

MD: Oops, this one's on me guys, sorry. There was a big dump of handhelds that came into the community back in 2018 and it was a lot to parse through. Over the years, we've covered a lot here, and I'd had reached out to all the usual tape trading subjects from years past to see what was really new (albeit with little interest from them who have all moved on) but sometimes something I thought had already been out there actually wasn't. And this wasn't. So, as best as I can tell, it's going to be a brand new Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi vs. Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi match that almost none of you (if not absolutely none of you) have ever seen. And it holds up with some of the best stuff of this period, quite frankly.

The whole thing is good but it probably peaks in the first couple of minutes. The match starts with Kobashi and Fuchi on the mat for a minute, including Kobashi's rolling cradle. Kawada comes in. They'd heated up Kawada and Taue pretty fierce in January and it was still going strong here, so Taue wants in (and Jumbo wants him in), Kawada immediately tags back to Kobashi like a true heatseeker and Taue sneaks in a cheap shot onto Kawada on the apron the first chance he gets. The crowd has come to like Taue by this point but there are no good guys here, just pure animosity, as shown by Kawada rolling back in, ignoring the fact that Kobashi and starting a massive early-match brawl with Taue that everyone has to break up. It's a hell of a way to start a match.

After that it settles down into the beats you'd expect: more Taue vs. Kawada, Misawa eating a beatdown and coming back with the forearm, Kobashi with the superman house afire hot tag until Jumbo shuts him down, both sides getting and advantage and comebacks as the cycle through the pairings, until they finally isolate Kobashi and crush him on an outside table (or in this case, on a chair that they put on a table). The heat on Kobashi is great after they start on the leg, with a Jumbo elevated half cab, a Fuchi STF, and a Taue Scorpion Deathlock, the fans chanting "Kobashi" the whole time. When he's finally able to get a hot tag of his own, there's this cool bit of stuttering alternating structure where they start on Taue only to cycle back to Kobashi (after a rocket launcher off the top to the floor) only for Fuchi to clip his leg out illegally back in the ring, only to do another comeback and cycle back to Taue. This all leads to the sort of high octane, extended finishing stretch you'd expect, including, maybe, the first time they do the combo Jumbo/Taue belly to back/top rope driving clothesline. Put simply, if this is something you like, and this feud is as universally liked as anything I can think of, there's a hell of a lot to like here.

ER: I was saving this one for my Saturday morning. Waking up, making some coffee, settling down to watch an unseen All Japan trios classic, and baby it was everything. This was an untaped Korakuen main event smack dab in the middle of a tour and these guys go so hard that any reasonable person would think this was an end of tour big show main. Everybody goes hard in this and the dynamics are incredible. 1991 Jumbo was my favorite Jumbo, Kawada and Taue fucking hate each other and are at each other's throats the whole match, Misawa was incredibly fast and aggressive and already knew how to carry himself as a superstar, every single person still had a vendetta against Kobashi's knees, it's all incredible. There isn't a single lull in the action at any point, it's all go go go with quick tags and constant oneupmanship. 

The way Tsuruta-Gun went after Kobashi's knees it's a damn miracle the man made it nearly a decade before the knee surgeries started piling up. They're all real dickheads about it, but the best is when Fuchi runs in with a dropkick right to the knee pit...or was it when Jumbo buckled it with a mule kick to the ACL...or was it when Jumbo was holding Kobashi damn vertically in a single leg crab? A real Dickhead's Choice. Taue threw some of the hardest clotheslines of his career, really shutting down some bullshit, and I flipped my lid when he leveled Misawa with a tope suicida after Misawa had leapt off the apron with an elbow into Jumbo's jaw. I don't think I've ever seen Kobashi get thrown with a Rocket Launcher to the floor, just one other thing that's nuts to see on an untaped house show. It's cool that Misawa was a better kicker than Kawada in 1991. Kawada had the same kick routine here that he would continue to hone and improve as the decade went on, but the variety and impact of Misawa's kicks made this look like his peak attack level, setting everything up with kicks and then sealing the deal with elbows. Jumbo's kitchen sink knees looked organ-rearranging, and he threw Misawa with a bodyslam that looked and sounded so painful that all 2,100 people in Korakuen made the exact same pinched face "oooooooooof" reaction. Six legends bringing real emotion and high energy and hate-filled stiffness for 30 minutes in my favorite wrestling style of all time? It's all I wanted. 

Love Machine/El Dandy/Panterita del Ring vs. Blue Panther/Emilio Charles Jr./Jerry Estrada CMLL  5/3/92?

MD: Some great stuff in here even though it was a twenty minute video that went more like fifteen instead of the thirty that went twenty-two and gave us the pairings that I really wanted. Obviously it was a perfect rudo side. My experience with Panther and Love Machine is more the mask match and what followed elsewhere, so it surprised me that Barr was more over with the crowd. The announcers noted that the dynamic had been different in Mexico City for the mask match and tried to explain it.

This had an ambush/comeback/beatdown/comeback sort of structure which was fitting a lot into the time and it never quite settled down. We got glimpses of great things though, Panther running from a fiery Love Machine, Dandy's awesome, awesome cracking punch and the not equal but still great and very different thudding punches of Charles and Estrada. When Barr finally got his hands on Panther, he was really able to tear into him (and tear off the mask). Estrada hit the usual ridiculous dive into the crowd. The ref was the same one we've been seeing who was very hard on the tecnicos and missed the cheating. Charles and Panterita really only got to pair up after the dives and that looked fine, with Charles faking a foul (he'd previously done one of his own). Post match, when Panterita was beside himself at the unfair loss, Estrada walked right over and yanked his mask off hilariously. I wish it had a little more to it but you can't fault any of the action here.

ER: I love that this was the standard for a throwaway weekly trios match in 1992. This adds a new layer to the Blue Panther/Love Machine feud and I don't think I've ever heard a weekly crowd respond so positively to Love Machine before this. Blue Panther as a cheapshot artist who can also wrench you on the mat was probably my favorite era of Panther (even those I do love old man tecnico Panther) but it was eye opening seeing how big the tecnico reactions were any time Love Machine started to wail on Panther, culminating in a tremendous tope suicida that flattens a few people in the front row. Dandy and Estrada worked magic any time they crossed paths, but somehow Panther and Love Machine outpunched them here. I wish we could have seen more Panterita Del Ring. The man worked differently as Safari and then evolved into Ephesto, but as Panterita he could really cut loose and we only got a little taste of that here, as he was the clear 6th banana of the match, and Estrada's perfect unmasking of him after the match only made that status more concrete. This was the perfect kind of unearthed lucha match to just devour like junk food. 

Rayo de Jalisco Jr/Mascara Sagrada/Black Magic vs. Los Hermanos Dinamita (Cien Caras, Mascara Ano 2000, Universo 2000) CMLL 5/17/92

MD: A weird moment in time as a chunk of these guys were main eventing the AAA debut show right around (maybe even two days before) this match. This immediately followed a tribute to Rene Guajuardo, who, among all of his other accolades had trained and promoted in this area, and had just passed away. The match itself made me wish for the tecnicos from the last match.

When they got to the beatdown in the segunda and the tercera comeback that followed, it was pretty good. You can count on the Dinamitas to beat people around the ring and Cien Caras to be a charismatic ass about it. That played into the comeback as well where Rayo could play the other half of that song well enough. The primera exchanges and the crowd-pleasing spots in the end to led up to the foul on Rayo and the DQ, though? Not so great. Again, you can count on the rudos here to get some good shots in (like Cien Caras' hopping knee to the gut) and there was one fairly decent Mascara Ano 2000 and Mascara Sagrada exchange. Black Magic looked best on the tecnico side, charging into things and asserting himself. This late in the game and after all of the animosity of the beatdown and coemback, I wasn't really feeling the multiple headlocks/la estrella/flip-flop submissions like I might have otherwise. Maybe it really was time for the change that was coming. Maybe it was just that some of these guys were focused on the next thing.

Read more!

All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2003: Taue vs. Nagata VS. Lesnar vs. Mysterio

Akira Taue vs. Yuji Nagata NOAH 6/6/03

ER: This is a match for the Taue fans. This is a Taue match. It's a match you can show any undesirable Taue-doubter as evidence of his deserved rep as a Pillar. I also understand that anyone who is reading this wouldn't bother wasting their fleeting life's time trying to convert a Taue-doubter at this point, but within this hypothetical, this match is a Taue Mind Changer. Taue is an aging, respected veteran who is put in the position of being the first real opposition to an invading serious threat. It's one of those great aggressive Taue performances, where a guy who made his career on his stoicism and unflappability shows real passion and lumbering intensity to shut this outsider asshole down. We Taue Heads love his lumbering intensity; his clumsy athleticism and absence of grace. The way he lurches and stumbles into offense and away from offense adds a realism that few possess. This match is a Taue clinic on selling offense and fatigue: the way his delivery changes and how he's able to show the affect his bursts of intensity have had on his gas tank, the way he stumbles and staggers and buckles his knees upon being struck or fighting to his feet. The best Taue selling makes him look like a giraffe who's been hit with a tranq dart, but also a giraffe who could still kick you in the face.  

Yuji Nagata was just coming off a dominant and active year-plus run as IWGP Heavyweight Champ, defending constantly and defeating everyone, before finally being stopped by Yoshihiro Takayama, who is sitting on commentary for this match. After losing his title, he took a week off, dusted himself off, then dragged his dick into Toyama and swung it into NOAH's business.  Nagata blew into town and bloodied up Masao Inoue, ran through all of Akiyama's exploders to beat him in less than 8 minutes, and now he's coming for Baba's doppelgänger. Taue is famously surly, but here his surliness comes out in his defense of Kings Road and he looks pissed at Nagata for making him do so. He is 42 years old and tiring, which I can relate to as someone who is 42 years old and tiring. He is going to unload his greatest hits at Nagata until he tires out, and Nagata is just going to have to weather it. He swings his hand at Nagata's head like a fired up 1980 Baba, throws the sole of his boot like he wears size 18s and they weigh 30 lb. each, slaps Nagata down in the corner, and throws every single nodowa otoshi like a man trying to spike a a football into the earth.  

 

Akira Taue was the reason I knew the words "nodowa otoshi" as a teenager, and he murders Nagata with a high backdrop chokeslam and then a real one armed classic, tries to give him one off the apron but settles for merely a boot to the face, and pulls back the ring mats to give him one on the floor of Budokan instead. 

The crowd is hugely into Taue and turns on Nagata hard when he starts kicking away at Taue's arm and snaps on a quick armbar after Taue had already reached the ropes. Taue gets his shoulder run into the ringpost, and Nagata keeps going back to that arm as a diversion the more tired Taue gets. I dug how he hit an Exploder that rolled Taue to his feet, and when Taue came up swinging Nagata just pumped his boot into Taue's bicep, and Taue decides to start going for broke with as many chokeslams as he can before the sand runs out. Taue flipping Nagata ass over crown off the top rope by his neck is an all time Taue match, in a match that had at least four other contenders for that. The fans were believing when they saw their man in red throw Nagata off that rope like a Street Fighter II killshot, visualizing it in slow motion with Nagata making groaning Arrgghhhh noises. 

If the first half of the match is about Taue the aggressor, the latter half him showing why he's one of my favorite salesman in wrestling history, and one of my favorite guys to watch take offense. Taue doesn't fall like normal men, and that makes me want to see him fall constantly. He's so good at progressively staggering to his feet in new ways, using his body's makeup and unique base to roll quickly to his feet, and is so talented at showing damage and fatigue that his legs keep reacting in new ways as he keeps having to get to his feet. There's a moment where you can tell the crowd knows that Taue is not going to be making another comeback, but they're also not sure that he's going to stop kicking out of anything Nagata throws him with. Taue has this feel of a guy who can't be pinned, and no amount of back suplexes or Exploders could keep him down. The Nagata Lock III was a thing that looked like it would dislocate both of Taue's shoulders, like the only thing that could have possibly stopped him that night. 

Lesnar vs. Mysterio Review

Verdict: 

This is probably the greatest singles match of Taue's last decade. Through the rest of the decade he remained great at having 1-2 major performances a year, but I'm not sure any of them hit this height. Is the Marufuji carry job as miraculous as I remember? Is the Rikio match as cool as I remember? What about that tag opposite Tenryu? This match is an argument for Taue still being a Top 10 guy in the world in 2003...

But he'd probably still have to be behind Brock and Rey on that same 2003 Top 10. Champ retains.  

Read more!

Dean Rasmussen, Our Greatest Wrestling Writer, is Gone

Dean Rasmussen, a man whose wrestling writing was so perfect that literally any wrestling writer presently worth reading liberally stole from him, has passed. Without DEAN's passionate, insightful, real, hilarious, and bracing writing, I doubt that I would be writing about pro wrestling today. I discovered the Death Valley Driver Video Review while in college, when they released either the 2nd or 3rd 500. The DVDVR was my exposure to a deeper wrestling fandom, and it took my fandom to heights that have left my family and loved ones reeling in shame ever since. I've made too many sweet, patient, beautiful women in my life sit through pro wrestling matches in languages none of us spoke, and DVDVR is largely responsible for that deviance. 

I loved watching wrestling with my friends at school, but I was looking for something different from pro wrestling than they were. When I discovered the writing of DEAN, Phil, and Tom, it opened my eyes to the ways I had been trying to view wrestling but had been unable to express. My school friends didn't talk about punches, didn't talk about cool fat guys, didn't talk about the joy of seeing someone try to unsuccessfully shove away from a side headlock. The DVDVR Playboys did, and the more I read them, the more I knew I was home. These strangers watched wrestling the way I watched wrestling, and knew wrestling beyond what I had ever seen. Their opinions didn't always stick to canon, but the way they backed up those opinions showed that these men - if bullshit artists - knew exactly what they wanted from wrestling and could explain why they wanted it. Over the next decade, I would become friends with them, host loud radio shows with them, continue to enjoy their work, and be endlessly proud that they enjoyed mine. 

I'm never going to be as funny as Tom, and I'm never going to have the gifts of metaphor and memory like Phil, and I - surely none of us - will not ever be DEAN. Dean Rasmussen is the person who made me think that I could be good at writing about pro wrestling. Before reading his work, it was something that I had never even considered. I loved to write. I had a column in my high school newspaper (it was literally called Eric's World, a name that was not chosen by me), but outside of creative writing courses I had no kind of forum to do any actual writing that anyone would ever see. In college, on the internet, I found the community that would change my wrestling fandom forever and guarantee that it was not going to be just an unfortunate yet passing phase in my life. The passion and accessibility in DEAN's writing was so strong that it made me not just think I could write about wrestling, it made me want to write about wrestling. There was an easiness and everyman charm that was always present in his work, and he made it all look like so much fun. Too much fun. I've written about pro wrestling ever since I discovered DVDVR, ever since DEAN made me realize it was a thing that could be done. I became real friends with these people, which lead to Phil eventually asking me to be a part of Segunda Caida, and I haven't left this bed since. 

I'm a busy man. I am not independently wealthy. I don't know anyone who is. Every person I know has to work to fund the things they actually enjoy doing, because most of the people I know are not working the dream jobs we'd be working if we did not need money. I have a responsible career and write about wrestling as much as I can in my free time. I write about pro wrestling literally every day of my life, and that's a future I never expected. I read Dean Rasmussen's work in a college computer lab, talking about Dick Murdoch punching somebody in the face, and realized that a Million Billion stars was possible. But I wouldn't be writing about pro wrestling every day of my life if I didn't love doing so. I chase what I love. I am unafraid to fall in love. Because of Dean Rasmussen, I fell in love with writing about wrestling. 

DEAN mastered a longform craft effortlessly, but one of my favorite reviews of his was a succinct statement, on Akira Taue vs. Tommy Dreamer. To paraphrase: "This was the best Tommy Dreamer match and the worst Taue match." Let's watch that match, and remember the greatest. 

 

Akira Taue vs. Tommy Dreamer AJPW 1/19/95

ER: This was the month Tommy Dreamer spent in All Japan, which I bet was one of the greatest months of his life. Show me what a 20 minute Dreamer/Johnny Smith vs. Fantastics match looks like; tell me a man went to Kasugai with a camcorder to capture Dreamer/Stan Hansen vs. Abby/Kimala II. I don't know what other Dreamer All Japan footage exists, but TV cameras did capture Taue/Dreamer, and it is a weird/bad/cool match. It's a bizarre singles match that feels like something you'd only see if you were the kind of loser who would make ECW characters into Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 CAWs, and, heh, who among us could be that much of a loser.

Tommy Dreamer wears the exact same trunks as Taue and just what the fuck is he doing. Tommy Dreamer over here just bringing his emerald and silver raincoat on his winter months tour of Japan. I hope he works nothing but Baba spots in this match. 

Instead, Tommy Dreamer throws two ugly dropkicks. Taue sells one of them generously, and the other one appropriately. Tommy Dreamer throws the worst strike of the match after. It's bad enough to be the worst strike of a lot of people's matches. 

Tommy Dreamer is a stupid man and he is stupid enough to think he could hold Akira Taue in an abdominal stretch. Because of this miscalculation, Taue quickly throws him over and across his body, tosses him neck first onto the top rope, and proceeds to show how a man applies an abdominal stretch. Taue presses Dreamer's ear into his own thigh and looks like he is shouting directly down into his ear, like an older brother who is too old to be picking on his kid brother.  

Any time Tommy Dreamer leaves his feet it feels like he is looking directly into the eyes of God and mocking Him for His creations. His top rope splash might be the evidence we need to prove the absence of God. 

Akira Taue has one of the coolest powerslams ever, taking Dreamer up high and controlling the landing in a way that made him look strong in a way Dreamer couldn't have expected. Taue's standing lariat after only shows how easily Taue can shove Dreamer to the mat with one arm, and his chokeslam is literally the best chokeslam a man can throw. 

Dreamer looked worse than expected. Taue looked better than expected, and I always expect Taue to look great. DEAN was correct. Taue was slumming it. Taue had better things he could have been doing, just like I had better things I could have been doing, instead of catching up on Death Valley Driver issues in a computer lab during class. We don't know how we got here, and we don't know when we'll leave. We got the passing ships of Akira Taue and Tommy Dreamer, and some guy in Virginia wrote one sentence about it, and 25+ years later some other guy wrote about that guy writing about those ships. That's how this works. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: ANDRE~! JUMBO~! KI~! NECRO~! CORNETTE~! A FLAIR~! LAWLER~! BABA~! TAUE~! CHRISTOPHER~!

Andre the Giant/Giant Baba vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue AJPW RWTL 11/20/90 - EPIC

MD: Instead of reviewing this, I just want to list all the cool moments. At this point it'd been almost a year since Taue and Baba wrestled each other and Taue grew a lot in 90. He'd throw headbutts at Baba only to eat the brain chop. He'd come back with the palm strikes against the ropes and hit Baba with his own Russian Leg Sweep, only to piss Baba off so he hit him with one of his own. It had been a year (the last RWTL) since Jumbo fought Baba and the crowd buzzed huge when Jumbo tagged in. Early on, Jumbo put on the breaks so Baba couldn't get him with the big boot and Baba gave him a sort of "Aw, shucks" expression.

Then there was Andre, who only faced Jumbo or Taue a handful of times in his career. Taue tried to hit him with an enziguiri but could only get to the middle of his back. Jumbo tried to knock him over with a shoulder block and recoiled with as much over the top selling as I've ever seen out of him (it was warranted). Then Jumbo and Taue combined with a double jumping knee to trap Andre in the ropes but failed utterly to double suplex him. After the aforementioned Baba/Taue exchange, Taue was actually able to slam Baba, though he could have milked it more. Unfortunately, then Andre came in and manhandled him (being Taue!) like he was a child. Andre returned the favor from Jumbo's selling, recoiling from Tsuruta's punches and even going down (though he did toss him on the kick out), and then Taue ran into Andre's fist in the most glorious way possible. They finally got that double suplex, but on Baba, but he was able to ultimately survive the onslaught and tag Andre. Then Taue tried to waistlock him as he was going to German Suplex him and paid for it just like you'd expect.

See, all cool stuff. There was a pretty good match in there too, but that's a lot of cool stuff for a fifteen minute video and a ten minute match.

ER: Man this was awesome. This is the biggest bumping Andre performance of the 90s, and I'm not sure how far back into the 80s you'd have to go to find a match where he bumped more, but it's pretty far. It's amazing. To think, they aired the Andre/Baba RWTL '90 match against The Land of Giants, but their match against the Funks, this match, and the drool worthy Abdullah/Kimala II match all happened on house shows. This show was not officially taped, but was a house show the size of a TV taping, and obviously our intrepid cameraman saw how important this was. I'm so glad he did. I've gotten used to seeing inactive Andre performances, and seeing just how much he can add to a match with as little movement as possible, relying on body language and his incomparable selling and acting. There is so much to gleam from minimalist Andre, that seeing him get in and out of the ring multiple times and taking 4-5 bumps is downright shocking. When he and Baba entered the ring and I saw how Andre was pulling himself up onto the apron and climbing the turnbuckle rungs like a ladder to get the rest of his body upright, I assumed this was going to be a lot of Andre punching people from the ring apron. I've seen plenty of matches where just getting into the ring past the ring ropes looked like Andre pushing a boulder up a mountain, and I'm always excited to see how he can integrate his body's pain into a match. Instead, he made this into so much more. 

There were still great apron Andre moments, like the way he kicked at Taue's foot when Taue was breaking a submission, but I was surprised at how much Andre did in the ring. He worked really well with both Jumbo and Taue, and that first showdown with Jumbo felt special. I loved how Andre sold for Jumbo, how their first exchange went so much differently from their later showdown. When Andre squares off with Jumbo for the first time, Jumbo comes barreling in with a shoulderblock that hits a wall and sends Jumbo recoiling back into the ropes, and when he tries it against Andre just grabs him by the neck and face and squeezes, then blasts him with a headbutt. When a weaker Andre squares off with Jumbo late in the match, it's all about Andre's selling. I loved how Andre staggered around for Jumbo's hard elbow smashes. Andre is a man with somehow impeccable balance, who is able to sell as if he's a man with no center of gravity, always in danger of toppling over. Jumbo hits him with a couple elbows and sends Andre staggering, and Andre has to lunge for the ropes just to dodge Jumbo's big knee. The dodge does not deter Jumbo, and seeing that Andre is still staggered, he knocks him to the mat with a definitive elbow smash. It's wild to see Andre getting knocked down by a strike, and I couldn't even guess the last time it happened before this. 

Taue/Andre was fun in a different way, as Taue is the young punk (I like how a young punk in All Japan is someone who has wrestled almost 500 matches) who boldly fires off shots against the biggest man in Nagoya. I thought the Taue enziguiri looked great, catching Andre in the base of his neck (Andre sold it perfectly, like he just got punctured by a larger than average mosquito), then throwing a couple of jumping knees into Andre's torso before sending Andre careening backwards into the ropes with Jumbo's help. Andre had a great look of panic while stuck in the ropes, and was freed relatively quickly so that Jumbo and Taue could try an ill-advised tandem suplex. I loved how Andre dropped to his butt to block the suplex, as it made the suplex look that much more threatening. Andre did not frequently wind up on the mat during his All Japan run (he winds up on the mat more in this match than in several other available Andre AJ matches combined), so him willingly dropping to the mat only made it look like Jumbo and Taue were *that* close to suplexing him. 

I know I'm focusing a lot on Andre, but I thought this was a tremendous Baba match too. Really, it was a tremendous Everybody match, but I digress. Baba had some fun small stuff with Taue to start, giving Taue a great oldhead "okay, okay!" look after Taue backs him into the ropes and chops him. He does a slick armdrag takedown of Taue and works the headscissors, then later breaks out a rolling ankle pick on Jumbo, rolling down Jumbo's leg from a hammerlock to force Jumbo's momentum forward. It's always weird fun watching first couple years matches from guys like Taue or Tamon Honda, as they have 100% different movesets than during their peak years, and it's barely like watching an early version of the same wrestler, it's more like watching a completely different guy. Taue does Jumbo kneelifts instead of big running kicks, hits Baba with a bodyslam/elbowdrop/legdrop combo that he completely dropped, even throws a great lariat that I don't remember him using past 1992. I loved their dueling side Russian legsweeps (a move that always looks like it might cause Baba to shatter), and how Taue and Jumbo pulled off the tandem suplex on Baba, then took turns seeing who could hit him with a harder lariat (jury is out, both Taue and Jumbo really aimed to wreck their boss). Taue has Baba on the ropes and keeps that energy when Andre tags in, and it goes terribly for him. Taue chops away on Andre until Andre has had enough, then just shoves Taue into the corner and triumphantly squishes him over and over again, whips him into Baba's boot, and then drops that elbow. You can see Andre digging that elbow into Taue's chest as he presses down on his sternum with his palm, making sure the punk stays down. Another 90s Andre classic.

Jerry Lawler/Brian Christopher vs. David Flair/Jim Cornette 3/31/2002

MD: There's a moment in here where David has Lawler backed in the corner and lays in some punches. He'd developed pretty decent ones at some point and Lawler might be the best guy in the history of wrestling when it comes to sympathetically taking offense in the corner. I've seen him as an old man build matches over the last couple of years just around that. Anyway, afterwards, Flair goes over to Cornette and eagerly asks if he did good before getting nailed from behind and stooging. That, right there, was probably David's ceiling, but it was a very effective moment. David looking for fatherly acceptance from Russo or whatever obviously didn't work, but a couple of years and a number of matches later, with Cornette in that role? That might have had some legs.

Having Christopher in there (and I have to admit, he sort of felt like 80s Greg Gagne, after he'd already had some success, teaming with Verne) makes you think that David's best was sort of as a poor man's version of him. Where he stood out the most wasn't trying to be Ric Flair but the slightly off-kilter stooging, just how Christopher was best as an over-the-top stooge. Still, he had a pretty decent cut off punch and got some heat with pile drivers. He also took a neckbreaker in an ugly manner. Bumping just wasn't his strong suit. It didn't need to be here, though, since Cornette carried a ton of weight: with the pre-course promo, with the super padded trunks, by trying to coach instead of wrestle until Christopher tossed him in, by getting shaken up and tagging Lawler hilariously, by using the powder and getting believable shots in on the outside. This was pretty close to the whole Cornette experience and the Lawler family knew how to get the most out of it.

ER: This was great, and really there was only one reason to think this wasn't going to be great, but it's a pretty important reason. That said, this is probably the most complete I have ever seen David Flair look in a wrestling ring. Flair is a complete unnatural ("The Unnatural" would be a really funny gimmick for someone like Renegade or Flair to have worked), a guy who looks like he's never moved athletically in his life, who always took the weirdest bumps while having no idea what to do with his body on offense. Here, more than any other awful David Flair performance I've seen, he knew exactly what to do. Before the match, Cornette got on the mic and talked a lot of great hyperbolic BS about how "David Flair is going to be the best wrestler of the 21st century!" And, you know, I gotta say there are nothing but fascinating matches from the last 100 matches of Flair's career, so maybe he was onto something Has anyone here seen any of the Puerto Rico, All Japan, or even remember if the TNA stuff was any good? Any lucky souls get to see Regal/Flair in South Carolina, taped as a Velocity dark match? I hate how I'm talking myself into seeing more David Flair. 

My favorite part of this was how everyone got to show off their right hands, and honestly, every person in this match had a good right hand. Lawler having a good right hand won't surprise you, and he used it well here (including blindsiding Flair with a right before dropping to his knees with a fistdrop), and Cornette at this point is someone who is established as having a great right hand. But they aren't the ones who throw the most punches in this match. We get two actual punch outs between Christopher and Flair, and they were good! They each showed a bit of light on two of them, but the form of Flair was what stood out the most. This was a man who, just a couple years before, did not have good form on ANYthing. And here he is throwing actual punches to the chin and jaw, not cheating by trying to throw them past Christopher's head or doing that weird Abyss punch where he sands the top of their head. David Flair was throwing actual worked punches in 2002, and they were good. He has a nice gutwrench slam and an even better pair of piledrivers, and you can color me impressed. He still looked like he couldn't really bump, taking a neckbreaker like a baby wiggling in his high chair to avoid the mashed carrots. Also, I love how Cornette was the biggest bumper in the entire match. Every piece of Cornette shtick was great, like tagging out to Lawler after getting punched around by Christopher. Cornette even took a big bump to the floor, and all of his big back bumps to sell punches were perfect. I always love how good Cornette is at bumping despite looking like, well, a guy who would be filmed berating a Wendy's employee.  

Low-Ki vs. Necro Butcher JAPW 5/19/07 - EPIC

PAS: This is honestly one of the great all time match ups in wrestling history. I am not sure how I had no idea they wrestled in JAPW in addition to the two IWA-MS classics the year before and the fun brawl a few years later in IWA-EC. Having this show up is like finding a new Santo vs. Casas or Lawler vs. Dundee match. Necro is really the perfect opponent for Ki: he is willing to meet his recklessness and stiffness with recklessness and stiffness of his own. Ki throws full force kicks to his head, and Necro responds with hard shoot punches to the jaw, just sick stuff both ways. FUTEN shit. There is a moment where Ki lands a double stomp on Necro's back and you can see his spine invert. Necro punches his way out of the Warriors Way double stomp and hits a crazy looking top rope rana. They do the thumbtacks spot with Necro getting Irish whipped and stepping on them with his bare feet. It is an incredible spot the first time you see it, but Necro went back to the well a couple of times with it. Still that is a minor complaint for an otherwise hellacious monster of a match.

MD: This was as good of a brawl-with-plunder 2000s match as you'll find, really, two guys who just threw everything they had at each other and did everything they could to prevent the other from doing the same. Violence and struggle from beginning to end. What made this better was that it was at St. Joseph's gym, with a priest obviously holding the keys to letting JAPW run there and getting to do the ring introductions in turn. So, he got to introduce Necro with his "Choose Death" shirt. That's as pro wrestling as you get basically. You can almost imagine Fat Frank reassuring the guy it was okay because Ki was going over so it was a parable about good vs. evil, with good overcoming the excesses of evil...or something. I especially appreciated the fight out of the Warrior's Way set-up because Necro had previously sort of sat around draped on the top rope for the double stomp. It was a great double stomp, but that had seemed a bit off given the match they were having. The fact he refused to allow such a thing to happen again was great and pulled me right back in. It was the sort of a match where the announcers and the crowd would go just as nuts for Necro taking the Cactus Jack plunge through a table as they would for something like Ki hitting a power drive elbow on the floor. Agreed with Phil on the thumbtacks spot, though it obviously worked for the crowd on that night and they used it effectively in setting up the finish. Necro probably went to that well as often as he did because it protected him in a loss.

ER: Athletically, these two couldn't be much more different. Low Ki has maybe the best body control in American wrestling history (I used to say "in wrestling history" but all of our unearthed French Catch footage kind of popped that balloon) and Necro Butcher wrestles like the proverbial bull in a china shop. It's one of wrestling's great juxtapositions, and they meet in the middle with stiffness. Necro takes so many kicks in this match, all to the body and head, and no matter how many times he punches back at Ki and sticks digs his fingers into Ki's mouth, nose, and eyes, those kicks keep coming. I loved Ki kicking Necro right in the eye, causing Necro to get stuck in the ropes like a death match Andre. Necro has a lot of fun ways to fight back, seems like he was always punching while off balance, from his knees, from his back, even hanging upside down. But I thought what set this apart wasn't just the stiffness, it was the way they each sold strikes and how they each fought for offense. A Necro punch is always a great thing, but when Ki slips out of a powerbomb and gets decked right after, Ki - limp bodied - bounces and flops down to the mat while hitting every rope on the way down, and that's just wrestling perfection. When Necro tries to powerbomb Ki into a table, Ki tries to fight out, making Necro fight against physics to re-lift Ki and finally drop to his knees with a powerbomb. when Ki goes for the Warriors Way, he tries to keep Necro in the tree of woe by grinding his boot into Necro's kneecap, causing Necro to reflexively punch up at Ki until he breaks. Necro getting run barefoot through the thumbtacks is a great way to set up offense, distracting Necro long enough to shotgun dropkick him through a table. Their stiffness was often used as a means to distract, not as a means to an end, and I think that's something that really elevates their feud to all time status. Monsta Mack's screeching Chicken Lady impression over every single awesome part of the match couldn't hold this one back. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LAWLER

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW KI

Read more!

New Footage Friday: FUJIWARA! SUPER TIGER! MASCARA CONTRA MASCARA! JUMBO! TAUE! FUCHI! MISAWA! KAWADA KIKUCHI!

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Super Tiger UWF 1/16/85 - EPIC

PAS: Tiger vs. Fujiwara is in the discussion with Lawler vs. Dundee, Santo vs. Casas, Misawa vs. Kawada of all time greatest matchups. Our pal Charles from PWO DM's me and says "I think I found a HH Tiger vs. Fujiwara that wasn't out there before" 2021 is already turning the corner.  

I am not sure where this stands in the pantheon of their matchups, but it was a hand to god wrestling treasure. The story in this is familiar, Fujiwara works for various submissions, while Sayama unloads a Dresden level firebombing on his body.  Can Fujiwara find a tendon to snap before Tiger beats him to death? Sayama just mauls Fujiwara's thigh with gross kneedrops and kicks. It is so relentless and violent looking that it seems like Fujiwara might never walk without a cane.  Fujiwara does land some nasty body shots, but he is mostly overwhelmed on his feet. There are very few wrestlers in history who are as brutal strikers as UWF era Sayama and some of the kicks and punches seemed to violate the unspoken agreement of professional wrestling. Despite that onslaught, Fujiwara is who he is, he can be getting blown out and beaten up, but if you stick out your arm or leg even a little bit, it is getting snatched. Fujiwara looks absolutely done, he is lying on his stomach while Tiger whip kicks him in the head and drops knees on his thigh. The ref pulls Tiger off to give Fujiwara a count, Fujiwara stumbles into the corner glassy eyed, but as Tiger approaches to put him down, Fujiwara catches the spin kick, grabs a fast waistlock and pulls him down. He then tries several attacks on the arm, until he maneuvers it into a key lock and snaps it like a breadstick. Wonderful mix of violence and skill. I am a Fujiwara guy, and finding a unseen prime classic like this, what a treat. 

MD: Absolutely elemental battle. Sayama is the wind, absolutely relentless, constantly driving forward, battering Fujiwara with piercing kicks, tearing apart the knee again and again and again, squeezing out of holds to restart the assault at the earliest opportunity. Fujiwara is the sea, repeatedly dissipated by Sayama's barrage but ever reassembling, patiently enduring the storm, calm and consistent, the wave of his arm able to reach around at any moment to pry off one of Sayama's limbs and recover the advantage. For all of the effusive, medium-criticism-defining praise of decades for Sayama's grace and execution, I connect with him most when he's tearing away at Fujiwara in the corner with his kicks. Later on, Fujiwara fluidly seeps out around Sayama's attempt to contain him and returns the favor with brutal punches in the corner; there's none of his occasional playfulness here given the stakes and the ferocity of Sayama's offense. Sayama wins on points by never stopping, by absolutely decimating Fujiwara's leg, but he's never able to fully take advantage of it, and all it takes is one opening, one mistake, one possibility for the sea to sweep forth and swallow the wind whole.

ER: This is listed as a Death Match, and while I'm not sure what that means within 1985 UWF, it's awesome that Fujiwara worked something billed as that sandwiched between days where he fought Terry Rudge. Can you imagine that schedule? How insanely tough is this man, who was taking on perhaps his greatest rival in a Death Match on a Wednesday, while no doubt getting pummeled on Tuesday and Thursday by Rudge. Handhelds are a pretty amazing glimpse at how our favorites worked when the cameras weren't on, and they almost always show us that a lot of them never held back no matter who was watching. Fujiwara is a punisher, but the most iconic images of him are of him taking a punishing beating. I loved the shots we got of him lying on his side, covering his body with one arm while keeping a hand in front of his face, only surviving because Tiger decided to catch his breath lest he get too tired kicking Fujiwara's ass. Fujiwara is the man this crowd wanted to see, hearing them chant his name while Ride of the Valkyries hit was like hearing AJ crowds go crazy for Misawa. And they kept willing him back into things even when Tiger looked like he was trying to cripple him. Tiger was a real monster here, and it occurred to me that there are probably a ton of people who know Tiger from the Dynamite Kid matches, that have never seen him in full UWF asskicker mode. His kicks to a grounded Fujiwara's head were disgusting, but his leg attacks were what really set this apart. His knee drops were incredibly cruel, dropping down as hard as possible on Fujiwara's hamstrings, including off the middle buckle. You knew at a certain point that Fujiwara was only going to target a keylock, and I loved seeing him weather this awful storm to get there. 

Aguila Solitario vs. Al Rojo Vivo CMLL 12/15/85

PAS: An unseen 80s mask match is pretty exciting, it gives you hope that more is still out there to be unearthed. This was pretty formulaic, but it is a great formula to watch. Rojo takes the first fall entirely rips the mask and bloodies Solitario a bit. Solitario is able to fight back and take the second fall leading a near fall heavy third. I liked the Solitario superfly splash he used to take the segunda, and how he came up short trying it again in the tercera. I could have used one more big moment, a huge bump, a crazy dive, a ton of blood. It was just missing the hook which would push this to another level. Still it was really cool to see, and a big moment in two wrestler's lives we got see play out.

MD: This was exactly what I wanted it to be and hugely refreshing to watch. Rojo Vivo launched the ambush right at the start and controlled the primera with a very solid beatdown. Very little pomp or bs. Aguila's comeback spot in the segunda was actually worked for more than you'd usually see in these. It wasn't a bolt of lightning but instead an errant, desperate backhand followed up by more desperate swipes and revenge-driven offense that really embraced selling the damage already done. At the same time, Aguila threw himself into it, making even armdrags feel like punishing revenge spots. The tercera was exciting, full of nearfalls that had me for a moment. Rojo Vivo turned the tide with a low blow on the outside and Aguila used that to express vulnerability and peril off and on in the stretch. He didn't have the world's best execution but it really didn't matter here because everything was believable and he kept the crowd connected.

Akira Taue/Jumbo Tsuruta/Masanobu Fuchi vs. Mitsuhara Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi AJPW 3/29/92

MD: Great lost six man here. You look for the big things and the little ones with these. For big ones, you get the relative novelty of Kawada and Misawa working together, Kawada going at it with Taue, the huge feel of of Jumbo vs Misawa, and after spending a good chunk of the match avoding everyone and getting little shots in, the sheer inevitability of Jumbo crushing Kikuchi starting a really enjoyable peril segment for him where Fuchi demolishes him (including an amazing neckbreaker hold over the top rope) and Taue lawn darts him into the turnbuckle. The little stuff would be the specifics, like Misawa doing his headstand flip and going for a tag early on, only to realize he'd lost his ring positioning and was in the wrong corner, or Fuchi playing his usual bulldog self from the apron and rushing in to go straight for Kawada's eye to break a hold, that sort of thing. I thought the finishing stretch went on a bit too long, maybe, but that's a me thing. Otherwise, this was really good stuff with a pretty legendary four minute beatdown on Kikuchi that everyone should see.

PAS: Pissed off at the kids Jumbo is my all time favorite Jumbo. He seems to take such glee in brutalizing Kikuchi and man does he kill him here. Kikuchi taking these beatings multiple times a week really shortened his career, but he was one of the best ever at spunkily taking a pasting. Fuchi was a real fucker in this match too, he comes in and tries to rip Kawada's eye out, and enziguiris him right in the kidneys. Kawada was a great supporting player in this match, he was a level below then his opponents at this point, and it was fun to see the ultimate asskicker coming off the back foot instead of firing forward.  This was a Kikuchi show, bravely dying on his shield, and the barbarians who slaughtered him. 

ER: I love these six mans, and it's so incredible to see them working their charismatic, easy to follow formula at every house show. A special thing about this nearly 30 minute handheld, is that we have a genuine wrestling handheld maestro behind the camera. Our footage  shakes wildly for the first 30 seconds, and by the time the match starts the guy is doing perfect framing zooms, keeping all the action perfectly squared up the entire LONG match. When the match would break down and everyone would pair off, he'd manage to jump between all three pairs without missing action. This guy did some shots that made it seem like he knew exactly what moves were going to be happening, just an awesome familiarity with these guys. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a handheld match keep the action this well. I have to imagine he was part of some kind of community, the way Grateful Dead fans know the names of certain prominent tapers who got the best sound mix. I want to see his other work. 

The match was an awesome heel performance from grumpy Jumbo and his goons, Masa Fuchi and Akira Taue. This is the era of Jumbo I love, such a magnetic superstar in that ring. The handheld really gets you in with the crowd, and every time Jumbo showed off just why he still had reasonable claim to being the top dog, the crowd OOOOOOHHH'd along with him every time he pumped his fist. The whole match really picks up when Jumbo's team gets Kikuchi away from the pack and really lay in the kind of beating that Kikuchi took in 1992. Kikuchi is one of the toughest lunatics in wrestling history, and most prisoners don't see the kind of abuse this guy took in the early 90s. Taue lawn darts him face first into the turnbuckles, Fuchi hung him out to dry on the ropes, and Jumbo confidently injured him with a stiff Boston crab while keeping him away from his corner. We get the great fakeouts where Kikuchi is held back from making the tag, and all of it works really well. 

You really get to see how far Misawa came when you see him here versus him as the absolute top guy. Jumbo still comes off like the main hoss in All Japan here, and Misawa doesn't have quite the impact for me he would just a couple years later. Jumbo was practically out of wrestling just a few months after this match. Misawa is such a boss within two years, but here he still looked like a guy who wasn't quite able to move Jumbo around the way he wanted. Fuchi is so good as the second in command ass kicker, behind Jumbo. He never uses Jumbo to hide behind, but you can sense he feels emboldened having Jumbo there. He really rips at Kawada, and you always get a sense of glee when you know he's standing across from Kikuchi, like Kikuchi is his violence muse. But really this left me feeling like the perfect kind of match to soak in the 1992 brilliance of nearly/suddenly retired Jumbo and what might have been in the 90s, with more from a great year of underdog babyface work from Kikuchi. A great find, and a more complete look at one of the most fruitful rosters in wrestling history. 

Read more!

New Footage Friday: All Japan 12/2/96 Handheld

 AJPW 12/2/96

PAS: This was the tail end of the 1996 RWTL, and only a couple of days before the apex of All Japan Tag Wrestling. We saw two pretty great warm up matches for our finalists.

Masao Inoue vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru 

MD: Spirited opener that played up the size difference and highlighted Kanemaru's athleticism. Inoue based well early, as Kanemaru stayed on his arm, did some tricked out chain wrestling, and flew at him from every direction. You were really just waiting for Inoue to catch him and he did, selling the arm still for a bit before really putting the oomph into his mauling. Kanemaru was so spry that he could land on his feet at any moment and he had some hope towards the end, including a well-worked for slam before missing a leap off the top and getting crushed. They made the most of this.

ER: AJ openers were always so much more interesting than NJ openers, as you really got a sense of these guys growing, and the fans were always ready to get excited at the slightest hint of an upset. Kanemaru was someone who really got to show a lot in openers (for a few years) and I really dig the AJ slow burn hierarchy. Kanemaru surprised Inoue with a lot of flash, including really sending him flying into a guardrail on a dropkick. He doesn't skimp on his missed offense, always missing as if he thought there was water in that pool, and I like the little victories that fans react loudly to. Like here, Inoue hits his falling clothesline and then rudely palms Kanemaru's face on the cover, then gets launched off when Kanemaru throws all of his remaining strength into a kickout. It was like Yokozuna kicking out of a Macho Man pin and the crowd was into it, sensing a Kanemaru surprise. Inoue acts incredulous to the ref, but then folds Kanemaru with a hard back suplex and pins each of Kanemaru's arms to the mat, not taking cocky chances this time. 

Tsuyoshi Kikuchi/Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Satoru Asako/Maunakea Mossman 

MD: This was a fun quasi-juniors tag. Mossman definitey shined here with a lot of dynamic stuff, but it was almost too much or too varied. He had the kickpads and the kicks, a bunch of holds, a couple of throws, and a splash off the top. You wanted to see him focus in more on one thing, maybe. Kikuchi continued his run in this footage as a class A cruiserweight bully. When he finally got fed up and intervened to save Ogawa, he just laid in a beating and refused to leave the ring as if he was Hansen or something. Asako and Ogawa were fine though Ogawa, despite working from underneath and having a good connection with the crowd, didn't show signs of being fully developed as of yet.

ER: This felt like two different matches, and I liked both matches, but I wish we could have seen either the last half of the first match, or the first half of the second match. The first half is really neat, with Asako and Mossman working over Ogawa's knee. Asako especially goes off on that knee, really wailing on it with stomps, elbow drops, knee drops, just landing on Ogawa's knee with his body. Asako and Mossman were making quick tags and I was really getting into this AJ juniors southern tag. But once Ogawa rolled to the floor, Kikuchi came in and just beat the shit out of Asako, and then never really left (even though I don't think he ever tagged in at any point). From there, there was nothing more acknowledged about Ogawa's leg, and this became Kikuchi as Hansen, always kicking someone's ass. Ogawa was the afterthought of the match, getting his knee worked on and then stepping aside for Kikuchi, but I thought Ogawa was really great at taking offense. He was whipping himself into the mat on little things like drop toeholds, and his ability to take offense made Asako/Mossman look like a real team. Mossman had a lot of cool stuff, loved how his long kicks always found their mark under chins, and his top rope splash was awesome. His splash focused less on hang time, and was more like a low line drive, getting to the landing point quick and painfully. I also really loved his moonsault feint, as he head fakes a moonsault to get Ogawa to roll out of the way, then nails a Vader bomb instead. Ever since seeing that Zero-1 match where Kikuchi spends 10 minutes literally pretending Hoshikawa's hard strikes weren't bothering him in the least, I've been scared of Kikuchi, looked at him in a whole new light. He comes off like a real bully and feels like he would have no problem taking several Mossman kicks if it lets him land one brutal elbow smash. Also, I really like the Kikuchi/Ogawa finish of a Kikuchi elbow smash into an Ogawa inside cradle, very aesthetically pleasing and Ogawa was right there to catch Mossman as he was falling from the elbow. 

Tamon Honda/Johnny Smith vs. Giant Kimala/Jun Izumida 

MD: Another good, but slightly weird showing from the Kimala/Izumida team. They had great offense, including that same side tandem double elbow drop, a torture rack drop, and an assisted tree fall headbutt, but I swear they worked towards a quasi-hot tag again. Honda knew exactly what he was and how to make the most of it. He was formidable but also hugely entertaining in his exchanges with Izumina. The crowd was into Smith but he was too quick to rush to the next thing. It was a big deal that he suplexed Kimala and he diminished it by not milking the moment at all. That was just the way he was working this one.

ER: A little aimless, but aimless in that fun way where I can just zone out and enjoy these dudes for 15 minutes. I love the Kimala/Izumida team, always love the big hot Kimala tags they build to. The start of the match is really great, with Honda throwing a side headbutt to Izumida's stomach as he was coming off the ropes, then going right into the two of them using their oversized melons to clonk each other. Honda throws a great spinning heel kick (on one leg, Booker T style) that I don't recall him using that often, and I liked how he and Izumida kept going back to different headbutt attacks throughout the match. I liked Honda's never-give-up falling headbutts, where he'll just keep faceplanting until one finally lands, juxtaposed with the super violent Kimala/Izu team headbutts, Kimala throwing Izumida down into some hard landings. I agree with Matt that Smith is from that Dynamite Kid school of hit your awesome looking offense and move right along to your next big of awesome offense. It doesn't make the offense look less cool, but it sure makes the offense mean less. The snap suplex on Kimala should have been the big spot of the entire match, but he was already moving on to a nice elbow smash and cool top rope elbowdrop less than 10 seconds after. The All Japan roster had so many different guys at this point who knew how to properly lead up to their biggest offense that you'd think someone would take him aside and tell him to let things breathe a little. Kimala's hot tag was as awesome as ever, and I think his avalanche is one of the greatest in wrestling history. He doesn't leap into it, it's just this super impactful sudden stop. I love the same side tandem elbow, love his rolling senton and heavy splash. I'm so happy we've gotten so much more Kimala/Izumida footage, since they were frequently edited off TV. 

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura/Mitsuo Momota vs. Masanobu Fuchi/Mighty Inoue/Haruka Eigen 

MD: First, you'll be glad to know they didn't work this one exactly the same as the last. They did repeat a dive tease but who cares as it was funny both times. That's not to say Momota didn't carry things for his side, because he absolutely did, and whenever he was in there it felt like a real match. You watched this and there was no reason to to think a singles match between him and any of his opponents wouldn't have been very good. Kimura, at this point, has to hold the record for getting the most out of the least, right? He occasionally sold his shin and ambled around the ring no-selling mostly everything else and the fans ate it up. I wish I knew what Kimura said post match for any of these.

ER: I really loved the old man trios we reviewed a couple weeks ago (same teams, from the 8/20/96 show), and while this was fun I don't think it was nearly as good as that match. The comedy hit better in that match, and there was an actual cool story thread throughout of the rudos working over Rusher's leg. This didn't have any real threads, and was much more of a time killer, but I like watching these guys fill time. Rusher looked like he was getting legitimate laughs out of his teammates by shaking his head in silly ways to show Fuchi how impervious to pain he was. Baba looked like he was laughing into the turnbuckle and Momota had to lean over the ropes to hide his face. I don't know if I've ever seen any of the old man competitors actually break, but this looked like they were actually having a hard time holding it together for Rusher's antics. I liked Fuchi's fearful selling and him getting backed up in the corner by the crazy Kimura, only to find that Inoue and Eigen had walked to the other side of the ring to avoid tagging in. 

I'd really love to see a serious Momota/Eigen singles from this era. We have evidence that Momota could still go as late as 2009, but Eigen is a guy who seemed like he was a super spry 50 year old still (loved his rolling before the initial lock up with Momota) but purposely played things down. He's a guy who has a lot of genuinely great shtick so I get why he took things easy, but looked at the nice knife edge chops he was throwing to Baba and a few other sequences, I with we got an actual serious old man Eigen run. Fuchi is a bastard as always, throwing a few kicks at Rusher's face and later breaking up a pin by scraping his boot on Rusher's ear. We got the Eigen spit take spots, including my favorite where he and Momota exchange hard overhand chops and Eigen hits Rusher on the apron with his spit. Also, for a 47 year old just a few months away from retirement, Mighty Inoue's rolling senton literally looks better than any modern wrestler's rolling senton. His form and aim on that move are pure elegance. 

Stan Hansen/Takao Omori vs. Dr. Death/Johnny Ace 

MD: Perfectly ok match hurt by my expectations. A lot of this was Hansen or Williams coming in and breaking up holds and it felt like it kept building to a real encounter between the two of them but never quite got there. Williams had his usual mid-90s manic energy and Hansen could still turn it up, including hitting a double dropkick with Omori at the end, and he certainly cut off and leaned on Ace well. But when you see this match on paper and come out of it realizing that most of the heavy hitting (and it was good heavy hitting) came from Omori vs Ace exchanges, something probably went wrong. Both Williams and Hansen had great presence though, of course, especially in the little moments like Ace, on the top rope, having to punch Hansen, on the floor, in order to clear enough space for the double team finish.

ER: I'm with Matt in that the match feels like it's building to that big Hansen/Doc showdown, and that doesn't happen in the match, and the match is lesser for it. The confrontation comes to a head AFTER the match, which is probably their best interaction of the match (though I do love Doc breaking up a pin by yanking Hansen by the hair out to the apron to elbow his throat). After the match Hansen is leaving, then turns around to swing his bull rope at Doc, which leads to both egging the other on, before Hansen decides to leave again. Doc gets up on the turnbuckles closest to Hansen's exit aisle to raise his arms, and Hansen cannot abide. He runs back and knocks Doc off the ropes, Doc gets tangled, Hansen swings at photographers and ring boys, and the crowd reacts louder to this than anything in the match proper. I don't think we are alone in thinking the match didn't live up to expectations, as the crowd is much quieter during this match than during any of the prior matches on the card. They only really woke up during the finishing stretch. But that's not to say the whole thing wasn't enjoyable. Omori and Ace did hit hard, and Hansen made his pinfall breaks count (nobody breaks up a pin better than Stan Hansen). I loved Omori's heavy as hell elbowdrop off the top, and was wowed at the speed Hansen and Omori shot Ace into the ropes for a tandem shoulderblock. Ace had that speed where you could tell he wasn't fully in control of his body, Hansen using that Andre pulling strength on him. Plus, the Doomsday Device finish looked like it came a couple inches away from killing Omori on a house show. So while we didn't get a big batch of dynamite like I wanted, if this match established the floor, it's a nice high floor. 

Mitsuharu Misawa/Jun Akiyama vs. Gary Albright/Sabu  

MD: Peak Sabu doing peak Sabu stuff in AJPW against Misawa and Akiyama. The match turns on a dime a few times, going from a mostly grounded affair into Sabu flying all over the place or Albright tossing people around. The stuff you're going to remember here is Sabu leaping off of Albright's back, poetry in motion style. Sometimes it works, like a huge kick to the face in the corner. Sometimes it doesn't, like the missed moonsault that set up the finish. Sometimes it really, really doesn't, like when Sabu flies out of the ring and lands hard on the guardrail. The fans knew what they were getting and they were happy to get it. It never really comes together as a match, but is that actually what you're looking for when you watch this one?

PAS: Sabu and Albright are such a legendary oddball team, what a way for Misawa and Akyama to warm up for the RWTL finals, face these two weirdos. No chairs for Sabu to use in AJPW so he just keeps using Albright's back as a launching pad, including one springboard dive where he landed ribs first on the guard rail with a crunch. Misawa and Akyama kind of took a backseat to the wackiness, although I loved the Freestyle takedown and ride exchanges between Jun and Albright. We get a couple of sick Albright suplexes including one which dropped Misawa right on his head (always a bit tough to watch with hindsight). More of a spectacle than a match, I almost would rather see Albright and Sabu against a team with a bit more color. Misawa and Akiyama are great, but I bet I would have dug their Hansen and Omori match more. 

ER: Sabu is as incongruous to Kings Road style as anyone, and throwing a wrench into their style is always fun (for the hits and misses). My only gripe is that I wish Sabu had thought of some more interesting ways to insert his offense into things, but I also liked how Akiyama wasn't someone who was going to wait around during overly long spot set-ups. Kings Road worked so well because of the impeccable timing of its best wrestlers, and some of these Sabu spots require a lot of stand still time. Stand still time is not something we typically see in this era of All Japan, and it's weird! Akiyama treating them realistically made these spots work within the framework, and lead to some of the best moments of the match. I loved Gary Albright getting into tabletop position several times during the match, using his refrigerator shaped torso to boost Sabu. I'm honestly shocked they didn't incorporate Albright's unreal throwing strength and have him launching Sabu like a projectile. Sabu takes some rough spills, no more rough than landing stomach first on the guardrail after Akiyama casually walks out of the way of his triple jump plancha. The missed triple jump moonsault (again off Albright) to set up the finish was just as nuts, and it easily could have lead to an even worse landing. Albright is so cool, nobody else in wrestling like him. I loved him and Akiyama working the mat, ending with Akiyama throwing 8 or so nasty elbows right to the face. They build throughout the match to Albright throwing Misawa, Misawa wisely scrambling for the ropes every time Albright tries to get the underhooks in, and it's an awesome moment when Sabu hits poetry in motion on Misawa and Misawa stumbles out of the corner into that Albright belly to belly. They tease that Misawa is going to get dumped with a dragon suplex (on a house show!) but compromise by merely getting dropped vertically with a German suplex. I agree with Phil that Misawa/Akiyama were a bit too stoic for the oddball gaijin team, and I'm positive I would have loved their match against Kimala/Izumida even more. That's the true handheld gem. 

Kenta Kobashi/The Patriot vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue

MD: I really enjoyed this. It caught me off guard as Kobashi caught Kawada almost instantly with a Tiger Suplex and followed up with a power bomb on the floor. That set the stage for a control-driven match as opposed to a back and forth one, with three clear segments before they went into an extended finishing stretch (though one where the Holy Demon Army controlled for the most part, building off of Taue's presence and what went before including the fact he was the one guy not to take an extended beating) about 2/3rds the way through. Kawada did fight back for the hot tag and they immediately crushed Kobashi basically the same way Kawada was crushed (huge suplex + move on the floor). It also meant just a minute or two apart were Kobashi's chops in the corner on Kawada and Kawada's rapid kicks on Kobashi which just felt paralleled and correct. I would have liked to see Patriot more involved in the early beatdown on Kawada, but when he did get a hot tag from Kobashi he came in fiery until Taue targeted his injured arm. Solid selling for the rest of the match from him, especially down the stretch where he was fighting valiantly with one arm. The stretch itself was pretty measured with a couple of big break-ups and one big kickout but nothing that took me out of the match. Taue targeting the arm once again to open Patriot up for the killing blows was good stuff. One Taue and Kawada got full advantage, they were just amazing spoilers. Nothing could kill a wrestler's forward momentum than Taue imposing himself upon him. Just a good focused, lost main event.

PAS: Interesting variation on a classic main event tag. Mitsuhara Misawa to the Patriot is about the biggest talent downgrade I can imagine, but Patriot was fine here, especially for a guy who was a focus of the finish run. Really liked the Kawada vs. Kobashi sections, it is a different vibe then Kawada versus Misawa, but Kobashi's flourishes work well as a foil for Kawada's grimacing ass kicking. I loved the exchange they had when Kobashi came into to try to break the Kawada arm bar, with Kawada waving off the two initial chops, only to cut Kobashi off with a big kick when he tried for more momentum. I also enjoyed Taue taking Patriot apart at the end. He is like a slow moving avalanche, it isn't going to hit you fast, but you will end up buried underneath it all.

ER: I really really liked this match, and it really felt like the best Patriot performance I've seen. Now, while it's true that there were 27 or so guys I was more excited to see on this show than The Patriot, a good performance is a good performance. We don't get many limb work matches in All Japan, and I thought Patriot got his arm tore up nicely and sold it the entire way through. The match started very surprisingly, with Kawada nearly convincingly 2 minutes in after a tiger suplex and powerbomb on the floor, and for almost the first 10 minutes of the match the only offense Kawada gets is throwing some kicks at Kobashi from his back (classic Kawada, selling being only on muscle memory fumes, still annoying the fuck out of Kobashi by kicking him in the eye and back of the knee). Kawada gets to pay Kobashi back with a ruthless as hell backdrop driverWhen Taue makes it in they eventually single out Patriot, and begin coldly and methodically wrecking his protected arm. Taue is wrapping the arm around the ropes and kicking at it, and Kawada is really mean to it. 

My favorite part of the match is Kawada so fixed on taking apart Patriot's arm, that while Taue and Kobashi are fighting on the floor, and somebody gets thrown HARD into the guardrail off camera, Kawada doesn't even bother glancing over to see who hit the rail, he's too busy kicking Patriot's arm as hard as he can, ripping off the protective brace, and stomping on it (Taue casually walking back into frame confirming it was Kobashi hitting the rail was a fantastic moment caught by our cameraman). I was really impressed with Patriot's arm selling, especially when he was making his comebacks, never once slipping and doing a move that required both arms. He was also a super strong presence throughout the match on the apron, and I love a great apron performance. He's great at getting tied up by the ref as Kobashi is getting double teamed, and he has a few fired up moments where he is dying to get in that ring and you can hear the fans buying into it. Taue looked as great as ever, playing into Kobashi's quirks (I hate those Kobashi equalizer spots where he takes a snake eyes to the buckle, powers up, takes a chokeslam into the buckle, powers out, gets dumped with a German suplex, powers up, but then Taue has to sell a lariat for longer than Kobashi sold anything), and Taue's destruction of Patriot for the finish was violent as hell. There are a couple really great nearfalls, like Patriot getting saved after a backdrop/nodowa otoshi combo, and barely kickout out of a hard Taue nodowa otoshi while Kobashi was nowhere close to save him. Loved Patriot trying to punch Taue afterwards and Taue just pump kicking right through it, before slamming the door shut with a final nodowa otoshi. 

Read more!