Found Footage Friday: PUNK~! RED~! NUNZIO~! JUVI~! MARTINEZ~! HERMANN~!

Luis Martinez vs. Hans Hermann NWA Chicago 1960

MD: Another one that Charles posted a while ago that we're just getting to now. This one went through Lee first as the length would have probably had me deprioritize it. It's only five minutes but it's five very fun minutes with a few comedy spots that I've never seen before. Hermann had a foot on Martinez and was an evil German with a chin to match. He ground Martinez down early with nerve ("muscle") holds and the sort.

When Martinez took over, he never really looked back. He went for a waistlock and Hermann crashed his fists down to break it, but Martinez was gone and he punched himself. Legitimately funny spot. There were a few more like that, like Martinez darting out of the way as Hermann tried to club him in the ropes. That set up Hermann tied up in said ropes and the charging headbutts to the gut. The physics of Hermann going over for Martinez on things like a flying headlock takeover felt weighty to say the least (and Martinez accentuated it with a loud "Arriba!"). He put him down in short order after this flurry with a Thesz press.

Post match, there was a special spotlight segment with John Paul Henning (sic). This is third hand, as in I found it on the internet, but apparently Henning had to stop wrestling because during a riot, he slammed the door and locked it, leaving Sonny Myers out with the rioting crowd to get stabbed. 

Nunzio vs. Juventud Guerrera WWE 11/15/05

MD: The vault released this one fairly quietly a few weeks ago and we're just getting to it now. It was in Rome. Nunzio was wildly over. Juvi was more than happy to get heat in front of a crowd like that. This ended up being incredibly minimalist, way more than I would have expected, but they were eating up everything that happened so it worked.

Juvi was doing a thing where he'd go for a pin at almost every opportunity and it meant that every kickout got a pop and felt almost like a hope spot. He'd cut Nunzio off with kicks to the guts, nothing fancy, but they could do no wrong (and in my mind, they did no wrong). Eventually, Nunzio got the slice rocker dropper off the top and it felt like a finish but Juvi got a foot on the rope, which, in itself, felt like a signal to the crowd that Nunzio wasn't winning in the old WWE style. The Juvi driver that followed would have really signified that but Juvi picked him up at one and demanded another. That allowed Nunzio to slip up and over, get a backslide and listen as the place became unglued. Fun stuff with just an amazing crowd and two guys willing to just bask in the glory of it all.

ER: I'm not sure when it started, but at some point I started writing "Juvi" as "Juvy" and now there's no turning back. I think Matt's right on this one. He also goes Eddy to my Eddie so it's clear my Mexican nickname spelling is nowhere near as good as my taste in wrestling. But one thing I know is that people with real taste in wrestling think Juventud Guerrera is one of the greats. Now, 1997 Juvy is different than 2001 Juvy is different than 2005 Juvy and beyond, but they are all phases of Juventud and that attitude and insanity is lurking inside every iteration. In 1997 he was one of the most insanely athletic ring guys in history, an improviser with nutty ideas and offense that nobody else was thinking about, a guy outshining Rey Misterio on the weekend shows with a degree of danger. 

This was Juvy in 2005, in Rome, against an Italian man who reveals after the match that he can barely pretend to speak Italian phonetically. "Italia Numero Uno" is the kind of thing someone guessing at Italian would say, but for this match Nunzio is a regional hero fighting for a championship in front of 10,000 Italians. Except in no part of this match does Nunzio come off like the star, only the de facto star, because this is expert heel Juventud working a match in Italy in 2005 like he's heel Terry Taylor. Juvy is great at working as heel Terry Taylor. Don't go into this waiting for the springboard improv of 1997, this is Juvy being a smug prick and drawing real damn heat. There is absolutely no highflying in this (well, aside from Juvy taking a mighty high backdrop during Nunzio's fiery comeback) because Juventud is Terry Taylor. Nunzio is the only one who goes up top, and it leads to the greatest part of the match: while up top, Juvy sweeps his leg and Nunzio flies off the top onto his tailbone (a bump I don't really remember him taking) and then Juvy does the fucking funniest little strut that ends with a slow motion shoulder shimmy. Juvy's strut is everything and all I need to tell me how damn good this match is. Juvy could have worked all of this without a highspot - he does the Juvy Driver and picks it up at 1 - because he really didn't need them. He takes the Sicilian Slice perfectly and gets his foot on the bottom rope with expert timing and nonchalance, and you could hear the crowd realizing they wouldn't be seeing this ox-eyed prick defeated. Until he is, by his own smugness, and the roar is deafening. Juvy fully understood what could be accomplished within a stripped down "safe" WWE style, a totally different kind of star than he was a decade prior. 

CM Punk vs. Amazing Red WWE 5/14/05 

MD: Not a ton to say here. I didn't think they were totally on the same page during the comeback and down the stretch and that felt a little more on Red, but he worked well from underneath before that and got to show off a bit in general. Punk stood out though, adapting to what he thought they were looking for like he always did in these situations. Just canny stuff. Lots of being vocal, wrestling for the last row, trying to get the crowd engaged. Yes, he had a couple of flashy things like the curb stomp and his grapevined DDT finisher, but in general, he was working this like it was fifteen years earlier as a way to show his mettle and that he wasn't some spot-laden indy guy. A worker working.

ER: I feel for Amazing Red here. I had no idea he ever even got a WWE tryout, let alone after he had already been done with his first several year run in TNA. It was clearly a case of them making him work a restrained version of whatever his match would have been in 2005. By the early 2000s they weren't really letting tryout dark match guys go out there specifically to Wow the audience, they wanted them to work a basic face/heel match with Young Boy restrictions. Hey Amazing Red, go out there and show every one your armdrags and dropkicks and your inside cradle. Maaaaybe a sunset flip. Red is a guy capable of Amazing things timed very nicely, and he was basically not allowed to be Amazing or use his timing. 

But - and I can't say "lucky for Red" as this tryout clearly went nowhere for him - CM Punk went out there and had a superstar performance that made this crowd fully get behind a generic Young Boy. Punk kept the crowd engaged the entire time and worked like an asshole from the second he appeared through the entrance. It's a super vocal performance that made me want to go back and rewatch all of that 2004-05 Punk that I haven't watched since 2004-05, just to see how much of this kind of heel wrestling he carried over from the indies. He sold loudly but not theatrically, yelling not to be funny but in a way that stood out as unique. Not like "Barry Darsow Unique", not hammy noise, but noise like nobody else was making on 2005 WWE cards. Seeing how vocal Punk was made me wonder if everyone else on the roster is given directives to be as quiet as possible. Rob Conway, Sylvan Grenier, the Bashams, I don't remember any of these guys making noise in a 2005 WWE ring. Punk kept people invested with great selling - vocals being a big part of it - and small movements. He came off like an asshole but kept them there with details, like that punch to the jaw after a rope break or the way he absentmindedly shook out his arm long enough after Red had driven his knee into it that it would have been understandable if he never referenced it again. 

Red wasn't allowed to be Amazing, and it didn't matter because people wanted him to shut CM Punk up. This crowd bit so hard on Red's swinging DDT, 100% convinced that Punk was going down, and I think it was all because he made himself out to be a guy who people wanted to see get beaten. 

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New Footage Friday: YATSU~! TAKANO~! RED~! JOE~! FUGO FUGO~! TAKAYAMA~! JOETA~! CHAINS~!

Yoshiaki Yatsu vs. Shunji Takano AJPW 6/5/89

MD: This was a recent Classics drop, a match we never had from the big 6/5/89 show. We don't have a ton of singles Yatsu matches from this period, as most of his big ones were tags or six-mans, so it was a welcome pick up. Takano is a guy that, if you had asked me in 89, and from performances alone, I would have told you would have been a much bigger star than Taue. He was a couple of years younger than him but much farther along, with more presence for his size, able to scrap with anyone on the roster, possessing a decent athleticism, and with those kicks that he'd use when the situation was warranted against someone like Abby or Hansen (or as the case may be here, Yatsu) as his secret weapon. They were loose allies as Takano was often the third guy in a Jumbo/Yatsu trios and started respectfully enough, but after Takano took a but too long on a break, Yatsu just exploded out of the corner on him with forearms and knees in the ropes and it became a heated ten minutes from there. This was 1989 AJPW so you could get a momentum shift from Yatsu just catching Takano off the ropes and shoving him down or Takano escaping a hold and just stomping Yatsu in the head on the way up. We got most of their big stuff, including Yatsu's power bomb (and a top rope elbow which was not one of his usual moves) and this great full rotation Saito suplex from Takano. When Takano did lay in those kicks in the corner, it felt like a full payment receipt for those early knees from Yatsu. The finish was weird, as Takano did seem to get his shoulder up and he was hot after the match. Definitely a good one to have escape the archive.

PAS: 80s All Japan is going to deliver big dudes hitting each other very hard, and this totally delivered that. Yatsu especially threw real heat including some big shots in the corner and a great looking throw. Yatsu had really powerful hips and he also got a ton of torque when he chucked someone. That finish was pretty badly blow which is why I imagine this was stuck in the vault for 30 years, but it was an entertaining 10 minutes nonetheless. 

Red vs. Samoa Joe ICW 6/26/15

MD: If the Red vs Rey match we saw a few weeks ago was worked like a dream match, this felt like much more of a sub-10 minute TV match sprint. It was a lot of fun though. The first half had Red try something only for Joe to one-up him: he hit a punch exchange and Joe just crushed him into the corner with a flurry; he got some chops off and Joe flattened him with one of his own. Things picked up to the point where Red's speed got him a DDT and a frog splash but the size differential made it so he could barely even reach over to hook a leg. After that it was just a matter of time before Joe caught him out of the corner and dropped him with the muscle buster (which Red somehow managed a face-first bump out of). You could haved tacked on a few minutes at the start with Red evading Joe and in the middle of Joe grinding Red down to have a more complete match but it was fun for what it was.

PAS: This was really fun stuff, it did feel like the best TV match of a week. Joe is a great bruiser and Red is one of the best working babyfaces of his era. I loved Joe just running through Red with a big shoulder block,  and his killer punch flurry in the corner. Red's comeback's worked really well, that snap rana was very cool, and the frog splash landed big. All of Joe's big bombs looked huge and it ended right when it should have.  

Fugo Fugo Yumeji/Yoshihiro Takayama vs. Joeta/Kendi Takeshima WUW 1/1/15

PAS: EXIT Underground is my new favorite wrestling thing. Takayama fits the chains perfectly as he has always been his best as a guy pushing the limits of violence, and he lays Takeshima out at the end of this match with a great looking side suplex and vicious knee strike. Still these matches are Fugo Fugo showcases and he delivers here, his stuff is like a mix of FUTEN and Kurisu which is an incredible mix. I love how he just will shut off all strike exchanges with sick headbutts, and he splits Takeshima with one after the match. He has great chemistry with Joeta and they are really killing each other with strikes and kicks in this match, Joeta has one whip kick from the floor which looks like it sends Fugo's jaw into the stand. Nothing I love more then super stiff wrestling in a filthy looking arena and this totally delivers on that promise.

MD: This wasn't quite as confined as the last match we saw with the chains, but no one was going anywhere anyway (except for that time where Fugo Fugo got knocked out of the ring). This had a real sense of inevitability given the way Takayama towered over his opponents and just crushed them down at will. It then became about whether or not Fugo Fugo would ever kick out or if he was bullheadedly going to fight off two guys forever. For a while, you got the sense he just might, just meeting them strike for strike for strike, just nasty shots all around. At one point they had him in their corner and you got the sense that Fugo Fugo's hubris might do him, but he roared back and when his thirst for violence was finally sated, he made that tag and that was basically the end of it. These chain rope matches need to make the rounds so they become Daniel Garcia's signature match and his blow off with Dante Martin in 2025 is in a match like this where Dante can't make use of the ropes to vault off of. In the meantime, we're more than happy to see 2010s Japanese vets beat the snot out of each other.

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New Footage Friday: IKEDA~! ISHIKAWA~! KANEHARA~! ITO~! REY~! RED~! SANTO~! ULTIMO~!

Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Red HOG 8/21/15

MD: Given where Rey's knees were in 2015, this was pretty high end stuff. They had nice early exchanges building to some tit-for-tat mirrored work, including both guys teasing the code red and 619. Red, early on, took a great bump through the ropes but then felt the need to bump himself again after the landing, which was a little silly. What really made the match work was how, once it got going, Rey ended up working from underneath with Red using the fact he at least matched Rey's size to play cruiserweight bully. Rey would get well-layered hope spots, but Red was there each time to cut him off in clever and interesting ways. On the other hand, Red would lean into the hometown crowd a little too much or play up his Eddy tributes instead of going for victory, and give Rey another shot at that hope. There was escalation with Rey at least able to try and then finally get more offense, but Red was pretty firmly in control right up until the point where he went for the three amigos and Rey was able to sneak out a victory. Red taking so much of the match protected him (not like he really needed it) and also let Rey do what he could do best in 2015, get sympathy and help someone else shine.

ER: I really enjoyed this, had a lot of fun seeing two of my favorites, and also didn't love the match structure very much. It's tough to do a baby vs. baby match and I'm not quite sure what structure would have pleased me the most, but this one did not. That's not very helpful. I love what they did but not how they did it? Who exactly is that helping? There was some neutralizing stuff to start, and it makes sense that we would get some mirror exchanges as Red's greatest matches were mirroring the kind of things that Rey made possible. I love how Red bumped for Rey. I actually liked the extra bump into the rail that Red took (that Matt not-unfairly called "silly"), as I thought it looked great, like he recoiled off the landing and flew head first into the railing. But mainly I loved that it established Rey as the goodest good guy, as he went to the floor to actually check on Red and make sure he could continue. I would have loved to see Red go full heel on Rey, or Rey go full heel on Red (and disappoint all of those kids so excited to see Rey) but Rey being established as the evergreen babyface was handled in a smart way. 

I did think they leaned too heavy on Rey getting cut off, as literally any time he went for any move down the last 10 minutes Red was right there to stop him. My least favorite match layout is "one guy takes all the offense but then immediately wins the match with two moves" and this felt like an extended - but more interesting - version of that tired Randy Savage Nitro match formula. The best parts were seeing how the two legends took each other's offense, and seeing how much Rey inspired Red's early career, and how much Red inspired Rey's late career. Both are underrated bases because they are both small enough that they don't play that role, so there was a lot of joy in seeing them take ranas and headscissors, seeing Rey try a code red ON Red, seeing Red flatten Rey with that pancake powerbomb out of the Santo roll. A match filled with joy, that also somewhat underwhelmed. That said, fans of either will find plenty here to love. 

PAS: I am somewhere in the middle of Eric and Matt here. I thought all of the countering made a ton of sense, considering Rey was such an inspiration to Red. Red is going to know all of Rey's stuff, and Red's stuff is Rey's stuff so he is going to be on the lookout as well. I was also into the big Red bump into the guardrail, fun violent stuff, and it made perfect sense that Red might have been discombobulated.  I didn't love how heavy the Eddie tributes were in the finish, both guys in the match have such rich histories, and this was such a dream match, that you didn't need to shoehorn Eddie in too. Still this was really fun to finally see, and with the Ki match and this Red match Rey had a very cool mini-run against the 2000s indy greats in 2015.

57. Daisuke Ikeda/Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Yuki Ishikawa/Takafumi Ito GPS 9/26/18 - GREAT

PAS: THE BOYS!! I remember trying to reach out to GPS on Facebook asking them to upload this match three years ago when it happened, and it just shows up! This was worked BattlArts style, and while it didn't hit the absolute heights of the best of that style, even good BattlArts is awesome. I really liked Kanehara here. He is a UWFI guy and looked really good on the mat and threw hard kicks, and I loved how fast he threw his axe kick and how deadly that was sold. Ito looked good on the mat too, and went at Ikeda only to pay for it. We don't really get the extended Ikeda vs. Ishikawa section you really want, and they do square off a couple of times and Ikeda really bounces his fist off of Ishikawa's head, but it felt backgrounded a bit when you really want it foregrounded. Still every part of this was really well worked and any chance you get to watch these guys be these guys, you want to jump on it. 

MD: A satisfying watch even if it never entirely boiled over. I wasn't sure we were going to get much Ikeda vs Ishikawa at all, so it was good to see them scrap towards the end. The good thing here was that the other matchups were all interesting. I agree with Phil that Kanehara showed a lot. His kicks were dangerous, with the axe kick built up early so that when he hit it on Ishikawa later, you believed that it'd get his team solid advantage for a time. He also had a nice, dominant mat exchange with Ito though. Otherwise, the most memorable bits were Ikeda just crushing Ito in the corner and Ishikawa's amazing catch and duck under switch of Kanehara's leg. There were a couple of funny moments for balance and that expected familiarity between Ikeda and Ishikawa that just bleeds through whenever they're in the ring together. It ended up feeling very complete even if it never quite went over the top.

ER: Glad that GPS finally got around to checking their Facebook Messenger three years later to fulfill Phil's request. The match is a really fun violent take on an All Japan Legends match, with them getting a mixture of laughs and awe with old bits and old violence. Kanehara and Ito work nasty leg locks and Kanehara throws the kind of kicks that made 90s UWFI so fun. Ikeda is a real bully to Ito, so while he's weathering an ankle lock he's always ending things by punching or elbowing or kicking Ito in painful ways. But there's that All Japan old guys match element that makes this a different kind of violent BattlArts, so we also get great weirdo moments like Ikeda whiffing on a 619 attempt and landing on his head. That felt like the first time Ikeda has ever come off like Rusher Kimura, and it made me realize how great the potential might be for old man Ikeda/Ishikawa comedy matches. I've spent so many years wondering how those two were going to keep up their level of violence into their even older age, that I've never thought about how good they might be at adding more comedy as the violence becomes less sustainable. Ishikawa is a fun foil during their exchanges, teasing him with Inoki legsweeps and taking Ikeda's headbutts the way an old man accepts a refreshing glass of homemade lemonade from his wife of 43 years. They each take some shots, but it's Ikeda's work opposite Ito that most stood out for me. Ito knew his fate but it never slowed his attempts to tap him. Ikeda always looks like he's having a blast when he maneuvers another man into a crossface, and that's just the joy of old man shootstyle. 

Ultimo Dragon vs. El Hijo Del Santo PWR 10/5/19

PAS: This was basically a maestro exhibition and a fun version of one. Dragon is definitely slower but still solid on the mat, and even breaks out a Navarro family spinning figure four. He also takes a big top rope armdrag, which was a big bump for some oldsters. Santo appears to move no differently than he did 30 years ago, and it is always a pleasure to watch him break out old hits like the head spin headscissors and la Caballo. Unnecessary BS run in finish mars this a bit, but I imagine the audience came away feeling their money was well spent. 

MD: Pretty minimalist affair but we like those. There was one big spot in this thing and they milked it for everything it was worth. They milked everything, actually. Dragon waggled his finger in the air for fifteen seconds before trying to get a pin towards the finish. Santo can get away with that. He ate up Dragon on the mat for the first five minutes but everything was smooth. When Dragon came back with some kicks, his reverse figure four looked nice (though well-milked and barely sold). Crowd was clearly behind Santo and that let Dragon play the aggressor a bit more. The big spot was an arm drag off the top after a teased superplex and it was fine even if it took Santo forever to get up the gumption to charge up there and toss him off. No one in the crowd cared though. They were all just happy to be there and see these two (or at least see Santo).

ER: This match happened two hours away from me, on the total opposite side of the Bay Area, promoted by Pro Wrestling Revolution. They're the far and away consistently highest drawing indy in the Bay Area, and nearly every time I have been coaxed and lured into attending one of their shows over the years I have experienced one of the most unsatisfying in-ring products of my fandom. I hate Pro Wrestling Revolution, the only local lucha fed, who only insist on promoting to excess the worst parts of lucha libre. The entire promotion gravitates entirely around heel referee Sparky Ballard (here, El Sparko), an entire promotion focused entirely about preserving the tradition of a referee getting in the way any time any match begins to gain momentum. I've never seen a PWR match end without bullshit, and it's always the most unnecessary bullshit you can think up. It's an authentic lucha fed who flies in authentic lucha talent and then books lucha like someone who has the worst taste in lucha. 

But they booked El Hijo del Santo in his first singles match in over two years so I was going to drive 4+ total hours to see how Pro Wrestling Revolution could fuck up such a joyous occasion. Me and my pal Tim Livingston took an entire Saturday to see Santo, one of us being smart enough to buy a ticket in advance, the other of us deciding to buy his at the door. And when the only tickets left at the door cost $50, one of us decided to spend the entire first half of the show walking around the exterior of a large San Jose high school looking for a way to sneak into the show, before resolving himself to just wait until intermission and walk right into the building as everyone else flooded out. So I missed half the show, of a promotion who has never put on an enjoyable undercard. I found Tim, forced to endure the heel referee Revolution alone due to my ticket buying procrastination, and together we endured more heel referee lucha while waiting for Santo. Cain Velasquez was there with his family. 

The match was minimalist but enough to keep a smile on me (until the bullshit). It's a good Santo performance for a crowd who was hot to see him, but also the weakest Santo performance of any that have made tape over the past 5 years. He is still quick, especially for a man in his mid-50s, but at some points your handsprings don't land you on your ankles and you instead land on your butt and stand up. The matwork has moments but doesn't attempt to go anywhere with the moments, instead giving you some nice snapshots of moments. I like when Santo does little things like kick Dragon in the knee before picking a single leg. Dragon has some things that look good, decent back elbows and a willingness to lean into a great Santo in-ring tope, but Dragon can also take an eternity in between movement. I loved the top rope armdrag and will count myself incredibly lucky if I'm able to breezily hop to the middle rope and twist my body like Santo when I am 56. JR Kratos throws some of the most embarrassingly soft strikes on his run in, punching and stomping at him like he was made of porcelain, making an already preposterous run-in even more unsatisfying. Cheap Heat is the name of Pro Wrestling Revolution's game, and they do it as obnoxiously as possible. If they ever successfully bring in Negro Casas (two prior attempts were thwarted by a natural disaster and a broken rib courtesy of Sam Adonis) then they will trick this old foolish clown once again into enduring their dull brand of lucha. 

2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DAISUKE IKEDA

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New Footage Friday: SATS~! RED~! BRIAN XL~! QUIET STORM~! FAKE CHRIS DEVINE~! FANTASTICS~! SATANIC WARRIORS~! GREEK CATCH~!

Apoostolos Souglakos vs Giorgos Pefanis/Masked Man 1980s

MD: Phil Lions has done it again with some great research into what Greek wrestling footage is out there. This is from a comp tape highlighting Souglakos and it's pretty fascinating footage. This particular match is a two on one based on a gym mat, in a gym, but with a big, hot crowd. There was some loose set of rules that kept them from double teaming Souglakos constantly, but I couldn't tell you what they were. The mat had a line drawn on it to keep one guy in place for a lot of this but it wasn't like they didn't leave the mat to walk over to the rail to use it as a weapon too. Despite the strange setting, there were a lot of familiar pro wrestling trappings, be it the moves (mares, headbutts, armdrags, etc.), the bs (Souglakos getting the masked man's mask off only for another mask to be underneath!) or the drama of Souglakos having to completely bloody Pefanis to the point where he was out of the match so that the two heels wouldn't interrupt a pin; what he won with was a pretty nasty crab where he grabbed the toes to yank. The fans were into everything Souglakos did, more so than they gave the heels much heat. Souglakos did come off as a superman, if not invulnerable, as he fought off two men at once. I'd love to see some lost match with him and someone like Flair, something like the Jack Veneno one. He was obviously good at being a local hero in a pro wrestling sense. Someone filmed this so maybe there's a lost footage vault somewhere in Greece too.

Fantastics vs. Satanic Warriors NWL 6/22/90

MD: Yeah sure, this was fun. It was a game crowd. The Satanic Warriors were your sort of D-Level Texas Hangmen, but they were goofy and liked to pose and stooge more than the average masked bruiser gimmick. The Fantastics here were Bobby and Jackie and there was a pretty solid FIP. Part of the strength of a southern tag is that you really only need one guy out of the four who knows what he's doing and a crowd that'll play along and it'll almost always work and this had more than that going for it. They were following up from the night before with powder-to-the-face from their manager Rustee Foxx that let the Warriors win, but this time the Fantastics had Bambi to even the odds. The pre-match Satanic Warriors promo was great as you had a guy who obviously wasn't well-suited for this, in English at least, mumble to them "I heard you cheat," and they ran with it from there talking about satanic power. This is definitely something that pro wrestling can be and that it should be now and again. There's always going to be a place for this sort of match on any card in the world.

ER: I'm always going to be a sucker for one of those teams with an incredible name like SATANIC WARRIORS who are just a team wearing black masks who wrestle like twin Barry Darsows. Satanic Warriors are both big guys, one of them worked as Super Destroyer #2 in pre-Extreme ECW, the type of wrestling team that made up a lot of the independents in this era. You know, one of those teams where the guys were trained by either Afa or Johnny Rodz and so they all work like Los Conquistadors. And that's really all you need to be to work the Fantastics in Guam. Warriors used a ton of good looking axe handle smashes on Bobby and Jackie, and had the good timing necessary to bump for dropkicks in quick succession. Jackie was pretty raw here but had that nice high dropkick that gets full extension off the chest of Satanic Warriors, and Bobby was the kind of pro you want to have on a tour like this. His strikes look the best of anyone in the match (so good that sometimes the Warriors do quick back bumps for him, even with the size difference) and there's a great spot where he gets thrown quickly through the ropes and bumps hard to the floor. As Matt said, a match like this really plays anywhere, anytime. You could run this same note for note match in any high school gym this weekend and get a great reaction with it. There's great chaos with Bambi and Rustee Fox at ringside (loved Bambi telling her she was going to yank out her stringy hair) and we got a huge powder finish from Jackie (with the ref counting his pin in the midst of a massive powder tornado), and I will never tire of formula pro wrestling being played in front of crowds who might not know the formula. 

Amazing Red/The SAT vs. Brian XL/Quiet Storm/Boogalou PCW 7/8/01

PAS: This is listed on the video as Divine Storm/XL vs. SATs/Red, and that is also what the commentator says, but that is Boogalou (Homicide's Natural Born Sinners tag partner) in there instead of Devine. This match up was a revelation when it first got run in CZW, and it is fun to see a new touring version of it show up. Boogalou adds a fun twist, as he does some big suplexes, including belly to belly throwing Red over the top onto a crowd on the floor, there also was some crowd brawling which may have been his contribution. You come for the wacky SAT triple teams and highspots, and while a couple of ranas didn't get caught cleanly, you get a bunch of both. XL hits a crazy springboard tornillo to the floor, and the SATs set up a bunch of cool ways for Red to spin kick someone. It has been 25 years and a million variations, but the Spanish Fly is sill a cool finisher, and totally blew my mind back in the day. 

MD: I'll do my best not to wax poetic about this and, of course, the June match which it follows (albeit with some deviation not just because Boogalou is in for Chris Divine). I don't know who reads the blog; sometimes I think it's all just the same people we've been talking to about wrestling for twenty years but that's probably not the case. The June CZW match between these six is something that feels a little bit lost in the annals of time, but it felt entirely transformative to me at 19, watching it in Real Player in a tiny screen because of the heavy compression, back when it dropped and the entire DVDVR board was going nuts about it. There were obviously predecessors to this in 00 and 01 (and even earlier) but that was the one where it felt like everything came together and nothing would be the same, the switch from indy wrestling being Rik Ratchett vs Billy Reil to being something that would take your breath away. I'm not a big proponent of Meltzer's thought that you have to give matches a lot of passes due to their era, as there's good and bad stuff, stuff that builds narratives and stuff that breaks narratives, in every era, but this is one of those spotfests that gets a pass for me. It was just that symbolically important in the switch from indy wrestling to superindy wrestling.

And, of course, the Woburn crowd is full of a bunch of jokers that spend most of the match laughing at one smartass heckler comparing everyone's ring gear to the Bad video. Honestly, there's no reason that I wasn't at this show. It was probably a 20 minute drive from where I was going to college at the time. I have no idea why this wasn't on my radar. Obviously, I must have felt like it was a better use of my time to watch Arch Kincaid against Dukes Dalton or whatever I was watching at Chaotic Wrestling that month.

A lot of words to get to me saying that this was very similar to the other matches of theirs we have (CZW, PR). I don't think they missed a step with Boogalou in there, and if they did, they rushed right to the next step so quickly that no one was going to notice. Lots of tandem spots. Lots of quick exchanges. Nothing overly blown. Oohs and Ahhs from the crowd, even despite itself. Buzz for red especially. Everyone blown away by the tapitia double stomp and the Spanish fly. This had some more crowd brawling, which was an interesting wrinkle. While it seemed obvious that only a few people in the crowd knew what they were about to see (though those people were trying to sell the others on Red at least), it was still good on them for not just working the same rote match but twisting it up a bit. Everything was moving and changing so quickly in 2001 that this might not have had the same impact on people's minds as the version a few months earlier but I know I'm kicking myself now, twenty years later, for having missed it at the time.

ER: This match is from an era that I will always feel nostalgic for, even though it was happening at the farthest geographic part of the country from me. Indy wrestling was still territorial at this point, and my age and increase in tape trading was a perfect time for me to be seeing all the hottest juniors from the east coast while getting to see guys like Mike Modest and Christopher Daniels live (and in 2000/2001 I'm not sure there was any other wrestlers I wanted to see live more than those two). The All Japan/NOAH exodus and the shakeup that caused plus the burgeoning east coast indy scene made me quickly make more wrestling message board fans to trade wrestling with, using my access to TV lucha libre as my in. We're 20 years past the era where this was revolutionary, but I will always be impressed by the ways these guys moved off of and around each other, and can't imagine what the (match-long) heckler in the crowd would have rather wanted to see (maybe there was a Rapid Fire Maldonado/Axl Rotten match he was waiting for?), but I love it. Gimme Red doing crazy spin kicks after being vaulted off another man, Brian XL doing a gorgeous springboard tornillo, lucha armdrags done well by New Jersey youth. It's kind of amazing how good everyone was at catching ranas (sure some didn't land as smoothly, but you can watch literally any given week of CMLL TV and see several ranas that look worse), and it gives their matches an almost Crosswalk Lucha vibe that really tapped into something special. This match also had a fun crowd brawling section that I'm not sure I remember seeing in any of their other matches, plus Boogalou working as a little Taz. I watched so much of these guys in 2001 and 2002, but I don't see ever not getting excited to take that trip back. 

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New Footage Friday: RED! BALLARD! BASHAMS! SATO! ISO! WATANABE! KONAKA PALE ONE!

Joan Ballard vs. Jean Noble 9/14/56

MD: We sat on this for half a year, but when the Chicago archive posts something, we have to watch it eventually. This has no sound but you guys have been watching empty arena matches with jump cuts for the last year so that shouldn't slow you down too much. If I have them figured out right, Noble's the heel here and she'd eventually have the Yulie Brynner bald gimmick. Honestly, I think this could have been a 20 minute attraction match in 1956 France and it would have gotten over with no one blinking an eye. That's a testament to how hard they were hitting and the sort of stuff they were doing. Noble snuck in the cheap shots when the ref was out of position and had those leg dives off the ropes on breaks that we've seen a lot out of desperate French heels. Ballard had a lot of revenge holds, most especially a rolling leg nelson, though worked as more of a nelson and less of a face-grinder. They hit hard, though it's interesting that they went down on almost every blow. No being staggered or stand up striking. Every shot led to a bump and I need to go back and look at other women's matches from this period to see if that was a conscious difference in how they were trained to work. The crowd seemed fairly reserved, though it's hard to tell without sound, but they definitely deserved some heat and adulation, whether they got it or not. 

Red/Steve Corino vs. Damaja/Doug Basham PCW 8/31/02

MD: This was the second round of the Russ Haas memorial tournament. Stryker (Teacher/Commentator Matt Striker, I think, in this case) had "suffered an injury" in the first round and Corino was a surprise partner. This was structured exactly how you'd want a ten minute tag in a middle of a one night tournament to be. The Corino surprise, though it didn't get a huge pop or anything, created almost an artificial addition to the shine, which combined with how good Red's stuff looked meant it didn't need to be so long. That meant they could lean into a double heat. Red's size made all of the heels' power moves look all the more potent, which again added value per time to the first half of the heat. At one point I almost thought this was setting up Corino refusing the tag and going heel on Red, even though there was nothing in the match itself other than how long a couple of minutes of beating on Red felt to make me feel that way. It wasn't usually the role he was cast in but Corino, once he got in, really understood the timing of working from underneath and the proto-Bashams worked well as a unit with blind tags and cut offs. The comeback was crowd-pleasing and didn't wear out its welcome before the Bashams again utilized Red's size to dramatic effect for the finish. Nice compact package here.

ER: The more Bashams I go back and watch, the more they feel like one of the best tag teams of the last 20 years. They really didn't get widespread hype during their WWF run, but watching them now while comparing them to literally any current WWF team and they feel so far ahead of the pack. Here I thought their tightness as a team shone because Corino looked pretty bad (until the final 30 seconds of the match). Basham has the great thinning tight curls mullet and beard, which gives him a cool late 80s Terry Funk vibe, and I loved his delivery of big clotheslines and his corner hip check. He's smart about when to stay out of the way (like when he saw Corino was behind on timing, so Basham did this sudden weak kneed sell so he wasn't just standing there like a goon waiting for Corino), and his timing with Damaja is strong. Red is a great guy to showcase their offense, getting wasted by clotheslines and flying high on a flapjack, and they're strong at selling Red's offense. Damaja threw an awesome right hand that seemed to wake Corino up for the finishing stretch, with he and Red both running wild, Red landing a great tope con giro, Corino throwing two really great overhand rights before being taken out, and Damaja laying Red out with an awesome Baldo bomb. Basham and Damaja had only teamed a dozen or two times at this point, and they already looked like a perfect pairing. A reevaluation of their WWF run would be a really fun project.

 
Hiroshi Watanabe/Hideya Iso vs. Yasushi Sato/Konaka Pale One Mumejuku Pro 2/5/17

SR:  Hiroshi Watanabe is a PWC guy who has been around since at least 1995, along with Sanshiro Takagi. He was a talented wrestler but way too short to ever receive a push. Thankfully, he stayed around long enough until a tiny offshoot indy arose that would give him the opportunity to shine in long matches. Mumejuku is as if a bunch of aging geeky wrestlers who all agreed that matwork and 70s style moves are way better than 2.9999s and elbow exchanges, all got together and started a promotion. This was a really stretched out match with everyone involved hitting the mat for a good 15 or so minutes. You don’t see this kind of extended pro style matwork much outside of lucha anymore and it was very refreshing. It basically felt like MUGA mixed with llaves. Watanabe was the standout by far, going from doing holds to bald head comedy to unexpected bridge ups and escapes, hitting a really nice dropkick and awesome well-timed Robinson backbreaker. He is one of the few guys who can pull that kind of throwback style of and not feel phony. Konaka Pale One is an indy guy doing a yoga gimmick meaning he does some freaky contortions, and he has a wonderful little matwork section with Watanabe. Hideya Iso is the guy who looks like a mini-Yatsu and he is solid. Yasushi Sato is apparently in his 50s, but he looks good here. The finishing run was built around Sato throwing cool suplexes and doing leg grapevine moves. There are some really intelligent spots, and Sato is actually able to make me give a shit about things like a russian leg sweep, and the constant build to his finishing hold was really cool. Whole match felt very antithetical to the current landscape which is very welcome, and I hope this channel drops more stuff like this on us. 

MD: Long, tricked out, hard worked Japanese indy tag. It more or less worked in a three act structure, the first being matwork and pairings where each guy got to bring something to the table: Konaka Pale One (despite neither acting or working like a ghost) carried a lot of this and looked great throughout, including a nice rolling arm scissors early and more elaborate things later on. Iso and Sato weren't as smooth but the former used his weight advantage well and the latter brought a lot of energy. Watanabe had a bunch of well-received comedy bits with his bald head. The second act had Konaka and Sato fed up by said comedy and while it was still worked mostly back and forth to start, they took more and more liberties and ultimately seized an advantage. The third act was Watanabe and Iso coming back with some huge bombs and then Sato returning the favor, with Konaka doing damage around the margins. It all led to a series of grinding stretch attempts turned into modified Russian leg sweeps until Sato was finally able to lock in the hold he wanted for the win. I can't tell you much more about this one except for that it was good and you should watch it.

PAS: Man Sebastian can dig them up. Never heard of any of these guys, and I am in all on all four. They open with nearly ten minutes of mat wrestling and they keep it interesting, which is a total unicorn for 21st century wrestling. The finishing run had cool moves without overkill and a sensible build to a sensible finish. Watanabe hits a great backbreaker, Sato has a Hondaish delayed German and I loved how Sato worked the whole match to set up that trapped arm abdominal stretch, including hitting trapped arm Russian leg sweeps. I don't know why all Japanese wrestling stopped being stuff like this and to find it we have to dig deep deep into the internet.

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New Footage Friday: RED! NECRO! BRAZOS! DAMIEN WAYNE! VOLADOR!

Volador/Misterioso/Lizmark Jr. vs. Los Brazos Early 90s? 

PAS: The Brazos are one of the most purely entertaining acts in wrestling history, so finding a new Brazos match is mitzvah. Lizmark Jr. was a guy whose spirit was truly crushed by WCW but he was really feeling himself here, flipping around, kipping up and hitting cool armdrags. Of course the focus of the match was on Super Porky doing his thing, we get a long section where he keeps accidentally smushing his brothers, causing him to cry and hug the tecnicos. In the tercera he turns on his new friends and unleashes the power of fat landing one of the most splattering top rope splashes in a long career of splattering. Cool opening section, some fun comedy spots and a big finish, exactly what you want to main event a lucha house show. 

MD: This one is well worth watching for some great work and even greater antics. Tecnicos take the first chunk which leads to miscommunication and a great tree falling spot with Porky, who citing the subsequent ill-treatment by his brothers, switches sides. We've all seen this sort of thing before, but it's not every day you can see it with the Brazos and see them commit so thoroughly to the gag. You keep expecting Porky to turn back and he eventually does but not until they've milked every bit of it that they could. Around all of this are three spry tecnicos and rudos that will gladly base and feed for them, including a memorable Volador dive.

ER: There are few wrestlers in history I love more than Super Porky, and watching him spend 20 minutes doing his specific thing is always going to be the best kind of panacea for me. This has some of his best gags, played to their fullest, in front of a crowd who adored his gags. Not only do we get to see him take several slick armdrags from Volador, we move past that into his great misdirections. Los Brazos keep trying to hold Lizmark prone while accidentally hitting each other, leading to Lizmark ducking a Brazo sunset flip attempt, and a hilarious long pause before the punchline. Brazo is "forced" to sunset flip Porky, and Oro misses Lizmark and chops Porky...and Porky just stares at him. Everybody knows the spot is for Porky to butt splash Brazo, and here's Porky just standing, looking at his brother, seconds disconnected from the actual momentum of the spot...before Porky finally, purposefully, plops down onto Brazo's chest. His brothers smack him around and Porky openly weeps, drawing the biggest cheers of the night as the crowd rallied behind him. 

We get a great pratfall bump where Porky steps to the apron and Oro lifts the middle rope on him, sending Porky to the floor with a wild banana peel bump. I couldn't get enough of Porky working with the tecnicos to get back at his brothers, flopping to his back to give up the primera, getting all possible mileage out of the tecnico turn before eventually rejoining his family. Give me more and more of Porky doing silly poses while getting "YAY/BOO" cheers back and forth from the crowd. It all ends when Porky smacks Misterioso in the face, and he ends the segunda with an all time great top rope splash, getting Oro to help him balance, then standing on the top triumphantly before doing a full squat...and just flattening Volador. Who can not love this man? Who couldn't get excited for Los Brazos? 

Necro Butcher vs. Amazing Red PWS 3/5/11

PAS: Match I had no idea ever happened, which is a real battle of aughts era indy legends a bit past their prime. Necro is at his most acclaimed as a walking heavy bag who takes enormous ass kickings, but he is also pretty great on top, and mauls Red around the arena for most of the match. Much like his obvious predecessor Rey Mysterio Jr., Red is an unexpectedly stiff worker, and fires back with some pretty sharp kicks, including some down right Sanoish solebutts right to Necro's bourbon and Percoset laden belly. He also absolutely savages Necro's bare feet and ankles with chair shots. We get a nifty finish run with Red getting some plausible near falls before falling to a perfectly executed jumping Tiger Driver (Necro's move execution was always an underrated part of his overall excellence). What a treat to run across this match on youtube, delivered on it's promise for sure. 

MD: We lose a little bit in the front here, but you still get the general idea. Necro lays in a beating around the ringside area in the expected walk, pound, and toss style. Red's hope strikes are super credible, which was half on Necro leaning into them, but every time he creates some distance it just knocks Necro back into another chair he can use. Eventually, after a horrific running crotch into the pole that would haunt Red for the rest of the match, it ends up back in the ring and that means no more chairs for a bit. That gives Red a fighting chance though he's still half a step behind due to the groin injury. He works on Necro's ankle, more as a way to keep him down than as a direct path to victory, including using a chair of his own, but the amount of high risk moves he needs to utilize (while always a little slow due to the grade A selling) means he's bound to get caught. Pretty much the sprint you'd want it to be.

JR: I think my feelings on Necro Butcher are pretty well established at this point, but one thing that I haven’t really written about is that he is a tremendous “on paper” guy. Think about basically any wrestler you can that is remotely competent, and putting them in a singles match against Necro is at least a perverse curiosity. Throughout this I couldn’t help but think about how wonderful it would’ve been to see Necro having a walk and brawl against Rey Mysterio, stumbling drunkenly into the 619, grabbing his toothless mouth and bleeding face after Rey clobbers him in the face with his knee brace. I guess I was sort of hoping I’d get something similar here, although that probably isn’t fair because Red and Rey are two different workers. What we got here was a relatively interesting match, albeit one that I think has issues that bother me specifically. I think, in a perfect world, we would have had a longer control section from Necro once they got back in the ring, as I think Red taking control almost immediately didn’t give the crowd an opportunity to get invested. I wish that Red’s control segment was a little more dynamic; it almost felt as though he was trying to work heel here and slow Necro down and not bounce around, which I found confusing, especially considering the finish was a pretty overt monster heel finish from Necro. Perhaps I’m being too hard on this. When I saw the names and the match time of under 9 minutes, I thought I was going to see something like the Demus/Iron Kid match from a few years ago, especially once I saw the opening portions were a crowd brawl. Instead we got a perfectly fine midcard match and I can’t help but think there was something better that could’ve happened here.

ER: JR brings up Necro as an on paper guy, which was precisely the criteria that made Necro one of my literal three favorite guys in wrestling for a really long time. When you ask yourself "Whose matches would you watch, regardless of opponent" it's a good way at getting to the heart of what wrestlers are truly your favorites. For a large portion of the 2000s the only wrestlers who fit that criteria for me were Finlay and Necro Butcher. It's a pretty accurate litmus test. There are plenty of wrestlers who I love (Super Dragon, Low Ki) who have matches against wrestlers I decidedly do not love (Davey Richards, Joey Ryan) that I have never watched. But I would watch Necro Butcher or Finlay against Davey Richards, because every possible opponent gives me the opportunity to see what Finlay or Necro would have done with a total negative factor. Play the game yourself, you might learn a thing about your personal preferences that you never realized. 

This match was incredibly entertaining, tons of great stuff that was over way too quick, and just like Phil I had no clue these two ever crossed paths. Necro throws Red into the crowd and bodyslams him back over the guardrail, buries him under chairs, deals with mouthy NY kids, takes a thrown chair right on the top of his head, the kind of tour around the venue you expect from any Necro match. The real gold happens in ring, as Red lands so many awesome shots to make the size gap vanish. Red has really great kicks, great solebutts to the bellybutton that Necro expertly and accurately sells like a guy who ate poisonous berries he found while camping. All of Red's stomps to Necro's feet and malleolus were looked super painful, and the chokeslam into a gorgeous tiger driver (while palming Red's face for the pin) was a great finish. I'm so happy this match happened, even happier that it is now online for all. 

Damien Wayne vs. Lance Erickson NWA Mountain State 6/4/12

PAS: Lance Erickson is nicknamed the Canadian Lion and has maple leaf tights, and based on his pre-match interview must come from Charleston or Wheeling Manitoba. He must be working some sort of PY Chu Hi or Krusher Kruschev gimmick where he renounced his Mountain State roots to join an evil group of Canucks. This is what you hope a dog collar match between bad ass southern wrestlers will look like. Damien Wayne is a DVDVR favorite from way back and has great looking punches and chops and a killer top rope elbow (which he wraps in a chain). He opens up Erickson early with a chain shot, with Erickson really cut deep as the blood starts to look like Merlot. Wayne bleeds too, which looks great on his bald head and they crack each other with hard chain assisted punches and chain chokes. They didn't bother with the touch the turnbuckles gimmick which is a much better way to do this kind of fight. 

MD: I think we've seen so many dog collar and strap matches with the four corners stip that it's refreshing to see one without it. They use the chain well, with Wayne opening Erikson up early (after a failed ambush to begin) with it, a real gusher. The crowd seems a little split here (I get the sense that Erikson was more of a regular that they loved to dislike) and it means that while the violence is ok, the heat isn't necessarily there, even after Erikson takes over on a missed chain punch in the corner and subsequent hanging and opens up Wayne as well. It makes things more back and forth than something with a real tangible comeback. They work in some moves as opposed to just chain shots but it all works because there's always the chain they land on the chain. I really like the finish where Wayne had taken out his ribs on his first top rope elbow attempt and figured out to wrap it around the elbow for the second one. Could have used Erikson leaning on him a bit more but all of Wayne's stuff was good and you can't fault Erikson's gusher here. It sounded like the match ended up this way because they couldn't get a cage going for logistical reasons (maybe they didn't have one, maybe a commission, who knows) and I think I would have been pretty satisfied with what I got if I was in that crowd.

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Matches from ICW 3/19/10

Grim Reefer/Azrieal vs. All Money is Legal (K-Pusha/K-Murda) vs. The SAT

ER: Yeah gimme this. Azrieal and Grim Reefer are a good multiman tag team, same kind of undersized heel flyers that feel adjacent to Special K. SAT did that great thing where one of the members of a brothers-who-look-alike tag team gets like 35 pounds bigger than his brother. It's really easy to tell Joel and Jose apart when writing, because Joel looks like Sonny Siaki if he stopped lifting, and while Jose has also moved up to heavyweight it is visually much less so. This also happened on the west coast, to one of the Ballard Brothers, twins who are now very easy to tell apart. And I wonder if this happens to these tag teams in every single indy territory, that the United States is filled with lookalike brother tag teams who now look very different, and I think some indy needs to run a tournament with teams like this. I liked this enough, but would have liked it more as a tag. Azrieal/Reefer are a good team, and I would have been way more interested in seeing them work NE stalwarts SAT or see what they could do with the younger AMiL. As it was, nobody got to shine for long, but there was some shine. The dive train was big, with SAT hitting a kind of sunset flip bomb to the floor on K-Murda, Azrieal hitting a gorgeous tope con hilo, Reefer flying onto and past everyone with his own dive. SAT can still hit the Spanish Fly, AMiL are basically in there to be crash test dummies for the more known teams (which they did well), and Azrieal definitely looks like the money of the bunch. He's as quick here as he was on the JAPW tapes I have from earlier in the decade, and Grim Reefer isn't far behind.


Dan Maff comes out and cuts a kind of Ian Rotten promo but gets interrupted by an absolutely ON FIRE Prince Nana. The announcers weren't expecting Nana to be here, and Nana draws actual heat, and it doesn't sound like people are playing along. He is actually out here riling up fans, cutting down hecklers, and has a wild eyed intensity while running everything down. He talks about how he plans on ending Maff's career, and how he wants to end his career TONIGHT. I like Nana holding a grudge for all those times his teams and charges got wrecked by Da Hit Squad earlier in the decade. So now he's going to bring out a murderer's row of goons to cripple Maff.

Dan Maff vs. Rob Fury

ER: Nana's plan has a bit of an inauspicious start. Fury is a beanpole of a man, has a Batman tattoo on his chest, and doesn't have a ton of pro matches under his belt, but he looks professional. I like how it starts with Fury landing running elbows in the corner, throwing downward strikes until the bottom inevitably drops out. Maff hits a buckle bomb that meets the turnbuckle in that perfect spot between Fury's shoulderblades. He scrapes his boot across Fury's face, hoists him up for a big press slam, and then caps it off with a big man standing moonsault. Fury is disposed, so Nana brings out a new challenger...

Dan Maff vs. Maximus Sex Power

ER: This pudgy doofus eats a hard lariat from Maff, then holds on for dear life to the top rope as Maff aims to hit a burning hammer. Once he scrambles out of the BH attempt and makes it to the apron, he just quits. Obviously I wanted to see this guy get shortened by a burning hammer, but I like how they focused on his mad attempts to escape the hammer and leave with his life instead. It made for a more interesting twist. And then Nana brings out the REAL challenger...

Dan Maff vs. Xavier

ER: I loved the cockiness that Xavier entered with, not a single beat missed in 8 years. He doesn't have that speed, but he credibly stands toe to toe with the larger Maff. Xavier flummoxed him with some ju jitsu, and he hits Maff hard with a nice mix of shots. His elbows land right in the middle of Maff's jaw every time, has a couple of killer running back elbows that hit as hard as anything in the match, and all of his knee strikes look good. Xavier's muay thai knees are cool, and I've always been into how he logically starts throwing knees to the thighs and lower abdomen, and keeps working his way up until he's hitting leaping knees into Maff's face. It's cool how much Xavier took control, impressed with how he dished offense to Maff as well as he took it. Maff pays him back with a quick running knee to the face, but hits knees on a senton, and then Xavier actually hits the Xavier driver on Maff, totally crazy looking lift. We got to a great burning hammer tease, but Xavier slipped out of it only to be accidentally punched from the floor by Nana, which allowed Maff to bounce Xavier of the side of his head with a half nelson suplex. Maff breaking a triangle with a powerbomb looked good, and I thought it was cool they established Maff's big lariat finish instead of making Xavier take the burning hammer. Because you have guys like Rob Fury around, with their young fresh unkinked necks, and THEY can take burning hammers and fold in disgusting ways. This match was different than it would have been in 2002, but the best elements were still present in 2010 and I thought was cool.


Amazing Red vs. B-Boy vs. Bandido Jr.

ER: I was not feeling like one. I think the extra person threw off the timing, and there was too much hitch with the extra man. B-Boy was the surprise, and man I wish they had done an angle where he had jumped Bandido and replaced him. So we got a lot of punching guys into position, a lot of guys bumping awkwardly because they had to land not on an extra guy, and too much time spent on getting the third man out of the ring to the floor. Bandido wasn't bad, but his striking was the weakest of the bunch (and yes we got one or two of those dumb moments where three guys stand in a triangle and take turns punching each other). At minimum he hit a dive and took a mean sitout powerbomb from B-Boy. Red didn't have his signature crispness, although still managed to hit a couple nice spots (his senton atomico into both on the floor was the flying highlight here) . His spinkicks didn't have the same snap that they typically have (both 8 years prior and 8 years after) and they felt off because he worked a third man into them, like vaulting off B-Boy to spinkick Bandido. It just meant for more of guys standing still waiting to take complicated spots, and couldn't ever come off organic. B-Boy had a lot of punch and was my favorite guy here, as he flew harder into offense than the others and made his biggest moves land with an exclamation point. The only times he didn't look good were when the match format got in the way. It felt like the format was actively working against the wrestlers. Finish was fun, with Red battling over and finally hitting the Code Red for a nice nearfall only to seamlessly connect on a standing shooting star off the Code Red kickout to win.

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Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 18: Ki vs. SAT vs. Red

Low-Ki vs. Amazing Red vs. Jose Maximo vs. Joel Maximo NWA-TNA 8/21/02-FUN

PAS: This was an elimination four way for the X Division title, which made no sense, but was undoubtably a barrel of fun. The Maximos are not rewarded by a deeper dive. There are a couple of pretty bad moments, including Jose getting hit with a dropkick and instead of bumping, pausing and then stumbling through the ropes. There were also some triple teams which didn't come off. I did dig Ki just kicking Joel in the face multiple times, and there was some fun Red versus his cousins spots. The Red vs. Ki stuff was great as always, I loved Ki countering the Code Red by hurling him back first into the turnbuckle. We had a bit of a kung fu standoff and a finish with Ki absolutely murdering him with a top rope Ki Krusher. The crowd was clearly ready for Red to get a win over Ki at some point, they blew it by never paying that off.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 15: TNA Trios Match

Low-Ki/Elix Skipper/Christopher Daniels vs. Amazing Red/SAT's NWA TNA 12/18/02 - EPIC

PAS: This match has probably more sketchy moments then almost any match I have rated EPIC. There are some really preposterous SAT triple teams, ridiculous even in the context of ridiculous SAT triple teams. There were punch exchanges between Joel Maximo and Elix Skipper and no one wants to see that, plus the whole thing was set up by Daniels, Skipper and Ki forming Sports Entertainment Xtreme (SEX, get it, SEX, like FUCKING) a Vince Russo run stable. Still with all of that hamstring it, they still put together a raucous six man with an absolutely nuclear crowd (TNA never should have left Nashville.) Don West even stands on the announcers table to start a "Let's Go Red" chant. This is star making performance for Red as he is worked over by the SEX crew (fucking Russo) and while we don't get a matrix minute, Red and Ki really have some great chemistry and there a some really great near falls and reversals by Red.  They time the near falls perfectly and I buy Red getting the upset a bunch of times, before he is killed with a second rope Ki Krusher. This should have led to something great, but I am sure it led to Russo worked shoot nonsense (looking it up, Jarrett beats all three of SEX the next week, and  AJ Styles turns and Dusty comes out, next week has Russo cutting a promo on making David Arquette champion and Mr. Wrestling 3 unmasking as Nikita Koloff, SAT's and Red never wrestle SEX again.)


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 12: Low-Ki vs Red 2

Low-Ki vs. Amazing Red ICW 9/14/01 - EPIC

PAS: This was one of the first events in NYC after 9/11 and it was a special moment. This period of indy wrestling is my all time favorite, you had these young Puerto Rican kids inventing their own thing, a mix of lucha, New Japan Juniors and Sonny Cheba movies. ROH kind of took this movement and commodified it, pre-ROH it was young guys trying to steal the show from the Balls Mahoney vs. Crowbar main event, it was way more punk rock and pure.

We open with the famous Matrix minute, with both guys having a martial arts movie fight. Attempts to replicate this by others have almost always failed, Red and Ki make it look like a Kung Fu movie, almost everyone else has it look like a dance routine. After that it is more a standard juniors match, with Ki landing big thudding kicks and Red firing back with hard shots of his own, and some real breathtaking agility. No one takes Ki's offense better then Red, that finish Ki Krusher looks like he compressed his spine into an accordion. I think I might like some of their lesser known works a little better, but that is very hipster of me. This was their classic match, what put them on the map, and is truly an all timer.

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Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 9: Matches from HOG High Intensity 7 8/17/18

80. Low-Ki vs. Sami Callihan

PAS: This is one of my favorite matchups in current wrestling. They had an AAW match last year that was an awful ending away from being our MOTY. At their peak against each other, they approach Ikeda vs. Ishikawa levels of insane stiffness. This is only their third singles match, the first being a 2011 JAPW match, then last years AAW and now this one. I don't think this got to the dizzying heights of last years match, it only got really crazy at the end, but it was a lot to love. Callihan really pushes pace, and this was much more of a sprint then some of Ki's MLW matches. Ki took some huge bumps to the floor, including laying out a guardrail and a couple of rows of seats while taking a Callihan basement tope. We got some great chops and elbows from Ki too, and an awesome heavy bag combo of bodyblows to Sami on the outside. The finish run took it to the next level with Callihan hanging Ki by his tie and thrust kicking him in his head. Callihan does his thumbs up/ thumbs down taunt and Ki responds with a huge uppercut that looks like it could have knocked Callihans teeth through his eyelids. Then Ki tries to rip Sami's jaw off, before Callihan lands an enormous uppercut to nuts to lose by DQ, but keep his title. I selfishly wanted to see more violence, so the finish was a bit deflating, but it is hard to complain about an uppercut to the nuts ending a match.

ER: Phil is right about last year's match. That was one of the stiffest matches in wrestling history. I legitimately don't know how those two didn't KO each other at several points of that match. I liked that match a lot more than this one, as that one had a lot more focus on strikes and violence, whereas this one felt more abridged and a little disjointed (much of it taking place around the very dark ringside area didn't help, unless you feel the poor lighting lent a feeling of creeping despair to the match, as if it was the wrestling equivalent to a Pedro Costa film), but these two are exactly who they are and they're always going to hit each other hard and take some not recommended bumps. Callihan flies around a couple times off running Ki dropkicks, both guys crash hard into the guardrails, Ki gets dropped throat first on a rail, Callihan crashes into him hard with his low tope, all mean stuff. Fully with Phil that things really jumped up once Sami tied Ki's necktie to the ropes. I love integrating the ring or somebody's attire into a match, and you'd think you'd see more of Ki getting choked by his holster or strangled by his tie but it really doesn't happen, so this was a nice payoff. Ki slipping out of the necktie and popping Callihan with an uppercut perfectly placed under the chin was the moment of the match, not a strike I see out of Ki and it's no shock that it looks like murder. The finish makes a ton of sense in context and looks great, with Callihan taking that uppercut, reeling, and immediately looking for a way out by dishing out his own uppercut square to the balls. Two of the finer uppercuts I've seen all year, can't complain about that.

16. Red vs. Anthony Gangone

PAS: Hell of a brutal spectacle, this was a no-ropes match and an absolute apocalypse. Red is a 20 year vet and semi-retired, I have no idea why he is taking these kinds of brutal shots and psychotic bumps. Haven't seen Gangone before, and indy cult leader is a pretty played gimmick but I have to respect his willingness to take this kind of drubbing too. They did a bunch of cool stuff with the no-ropes gimmick, both guys took early awkward spills into the exposed turnbuckle posts, including Red hitting a fancy lucha armdrag which sent Gangone forehead first into the exposed bolt, I also liked how Red lured Gangone to the edge of the ring and Spanished flied him through a table.

We have three refs go down very violently. One eats a thrown chair to the head, one gets thrown through a table, and the commissioner gets violently chair shotted by Red after Red refuses to pin Gangone. When this gets to the big bump section, the bumps are enormous. Red dives off a super high ladder to double stomp Gangone who has a chair necktie. That is when Red refuses to pin him, instead bodyslaming Gangone on tacks, and then removing the padding from the mat (which has become a bit of a 2018 cliche, but this is my favorite use of it so far). Red climbs on top of the giant ladder, but Gangone is able hurl a chair at his face and superplex Red off the ladder onto the exposed boards, totally insane bump for both guys, and I have no idea how someone didn't shatter an elbow on the fall. Red at one point gets Gangone to tap after putting a chain around his mouth, with no ref to count it.  Gangone gets Brian XL (who looks like D-Lo Brown now)  to throw in the towel after nearly breaking Red in half by falling with all of his weight on the ramp with Red on his back (basically the move Foley tried with Vader at Halloween Havok when Foley was trying to end his career on purpose) and wrapping a chain around his neck and stomping him in the head. Gangone refuses to lose by surrender, and wakes the last KO'ed ref and forces him to count the pin. I liked how the lack of refs, allowed both guys to sell the beating they were taking, I never though any of the huge moves got shrugged off. My only nitpick might be the weak blade jobs by both guys, both guys bleeding a lot would have even added to the spectacle.

ER: Phil picked up on a lot of the things I loved about this so excuse the repetition, he makes a lot of great points about the logic of working the length they did, with the bigs moves they did and the placement of the out of commission refs, and fairly points out the weak blade job (seems a waste when both guys just looked like they had blood that would be notable if we were grading on popped zits, but not worthy of mention when graded against wrestling blade jobs). This was a New Jersey-bred version of a modern NXT TakeOver main event, it was overblown in different ways and indulgent in similar ways. But the violence was great and it did justice to the overindulgent story. Red is a guy who needs to have a Cruiserweight Classic built around him, a guy who we all enjoyed as an almost novelty 15+ years ago (like he was the new Blitzkrieg or something) and now in 2018 he seems far more comparable to a new Rey Mysterio. His whole game is tight, and as we came for some innovative offense when he was new, now we show up for stiff strikes, big bumps, and there's something about an older guy working death wish spots that creates different emotions than a young punk kid doing death wish spots. Young daredevils feel almost disposable, you expect them to burnout quick and you enjoy them for what they are; old daredevils have a weird built in sympathy combined with an almost can't look away freakshow factor. This match was violent enough that I had one of those "Why are you still doing this!?" reactions, but what they did undoubtedly added to the match.

We got a bunch of insane spots, but I much preferred the early focus on simpler and greater bumps, like both guys showing off how violently they can get whipped into a guardrail, or both of the ringpost spots. Those two ringpost spots were some of the coolest and nastiest spots of the year, with Gangone bouncing off ribs first and Red flying face first into it, wrapping around the post to the floor. Red's eyeball could have easily hit one of those eyelets, and eye stuff is an instant nope for me. The big moments are cool, Spanish Fly off the apron through a table, Gangone flying backward through a guardrail, a freaking ref flying backward through a table, Red hitting a frog splash off a ring post onto a still standing Gangone, and the piece de resistance is a superplex off the top of a very tall ladder onto exposed ring boards. Superplexes are a crazy spot anyway, definitely something that's finisher worthy to me. Then you add a ladder, then you take away the padding, then you do it toward the edge of the ring instead of the center...and man you wonder how that affects a man's back longterm. One of the boards is left popped up and I wonder if anyone fell on the edge of that board. Good god boys. I thought they did good justice to the big spots, positioned the big ref bumps and interference moments well to allow them reasons for both surviving through the big spots, and by the time Gangone is stomping cruelly on Red's face this more than felt deserving of the epic they were striving for.


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LKAC NIght 7/New Footage Friday: Low-Ki, Red, Colon, Flair, Dory, Abby, Race, Tenryu

Harley Race vs. Genichiro Tenryu AJPW 7/16/82 

ER: About the match you'd expect, that was robbed of a finish by a sudden run in caning from Umanosuke Ueda, but also given a lot more life and energy because of Ueda's appearance. The match is pretty typical of these two from this era, with Race dominating Tenryu but them finding nice ways of working Tenryu into it. Race has a nice jumping knee, big kneedrop, elbowdrop, works some headbutts in the corner, and throws a couple of really awesome knees to the stomach. I don't know that I've seen a standing knee to the stomach look more vicious in pro wrestling, but Race just grabs Tenryu by the left arm and buries his knee into Tenryu's stomach, leaving Tenryu with nothing to do but take that damn knee. Tenryu peppers in nice comebacks, hits the enziguiri (and I liked how Race treated it more like he got his bell rung than as a KO type move) and some cool gutwrench suplexes, but while all the action looks good it never really feels like it ramps up in intensity. When Ueda runs out of nowhere and starts beating Tenryu with a cane, however, things pick up, and get even better when Race intervenes and both of them start beating on Ueda. This was fun (although if this was later on surly jerk Tenryu vs. this era Race it would have been epic) but nothing essential.

MD: This was a fun ten minutes of action with a rousing post-match of Race and Tenryu working together and standing tall that stands out, first and foremost, for Harley taking 90% of it. If you just know the guy's rep, there's nothing surprising about that. If you actually watch his matches, it almost never happens. We've seen tags even in the last few months (the Kox one in particular) where Race was working like a heel manager and not one of the toughest guys ever. He had a tendency to give and give and bump and feed and stooge and I get why he might do that as a traveling heel champion, but he did it all over. Here, though, he absolutely crushed Tenryu, cutting him off again and again. Those knees to the gut jumped through time and caused me some physical pain over thirty-five years later. It never quite came together as a match but as an exhibition of just how brutal Harley could be when he actually turned it up, it felt very worthwhile. I can think of a dozen Race matches where I wish we had gotten this version instead of.

PAS: No idea why these guys are wearing identical purple trunks, really distracting, they have other trunks, I don't know why someone didn't put a bug in their ear. I really enjoyed this as an opportunity to see meat grinder Race. He kicked the shit out Tenryu, crushing him with knees and suplexes, and hitting the best headlock punches to the face I have ever seen. Tenryu had his moments, but this wasn't peak Tenryu and he worked this more like a young guy taking his shot at a legend, then as a legend himself. I really liked his enziguiri, and the Ueda run in was fun, this was mostly a Harley showcase though and a nifty one.

Carlos Colon/Abdullah The Butcher vs. Ric Flair/Dory Funk Jr. WWC 1985

ER: Cool find and an awesome big babyface performance from Colon (though it's always weird to me seeing the babyface biting at people's heads) with a big bumping heel team performance from Dory and Flair. What is probably most fascinating about all of this is seeing Flair and Dory as a team. What other situation would we have ever seen these two team up? It's not two guys I ever thought about teaming up, so it's a pretty awesome snapshot at Dory working Terry-free and adopting some of his new partner's mannerisms. There are two moments where Dory bumps almost Flair-like that don't feel like any bump I've seen him take before, him snapping back off a Colon punch and then going with a slow upside down vertical bump off a big headbutt felt VERY Flair to me. And it should be noted that bearded Dory was the coolest Dory could look. It made him look like a cool character actor, like David Morse, instead of his usual look which was more like David Morse playing a substitute teacher. Dory bumped big here but teaming with Flair and working slight heel gave him a little edge, made him come off meaner, gave his knees to the gut and his uppercuts some extra snap. Colon has some of the all time greatest punch comebacks, it's invigorating to see him firing off big right hands while fueling a rabid Puerto Rican crowd (who were much closer to the ring than I'm used to seeing), and I really loved how they handled a partner miscommunication with Colon accidentally hitting a leaping knee on Abby when Flair moved. Abby gets hit, bounces back into the ropes, then immediately punches Colon hard. It was an interesting take on accidentally getting hit, there was no mulling it over, no overdone/stupid late match turn after not acting the whole match, or refusing to tag in, it's just reactionary. When I was maybe 8 or 9 my dad was coming home from work, and I hid around the corner of the divider between our dining room and living room, waiting to jump out and surprise him. Well, I jumped out, and he was definitely surprised because he instinctively struck, belted me before he had any idea what he was reacting to. Abby punching Colon felt more like that, a guy surprised he got hit just instinctively hitting back. Abby eventually does leave when things get hot, and Sweet Brown Sugar (the Texas guy, not Koko B. Ware) comes out to replace him but it's all over for Colon from there. Puerto Rico really is the territory I need to watch more, the energy and atmosphere alone always makes things great, and this was just what you would want out of 10 minutes with 4 legends.

PAS: The match is joined in progress with Abdullah already bleeding, but honestly with Abby that might just mean we missed 45 seconds. There is an alternate world where Flair and Dory are a great touring heel team, as opposed to a one time (maybe more, but I can't imagine when they would have matched up before) dream team. They do a nice job working over both faces and bump great for the big Colon comeback. I have no problem with Abby immediately firing back on Colon when, Carlos hits him, but he did come off kind of churlish leaving the ring, since when is Abdullah the Butcher running away from a fight? He should have just forked everyone in the ring. Abby leaving turned the match into more of a set up then a complete match, but the individual work in this was pretty cool, and it is a nifty discovery.

MD: Our Man in Puerto Rico, PWO's Boricua, let us know that this was either the initial airing or an early repeat, as opposed to what's been easily available for a few years. This set up Colon vs Abby at Aniversario 85 and I love how Memphis Puerto Rico always feels with this stuff.

We miss most of the heat on Abby and while it was probably just him laying about as Dory and Flair worked on the leg or some such, it still seems a shame. They're a very fun heel unit here. I'm pretty certain at this point, I'm always more glad when a new Flair tag pops up than a new singles match.

Colon clearing house as a hot tag for Abby is a great image and for a second, you think all of this might actually work. Then they end up accidentally hitting one another though and reality sets in; no, this would never ever work. Abby figures it out and decides to leave. The crowd remains disappointed and pelts him with garbage. Sweet Brown Sugar does run in (maybe a bit too early for what they were trying to accomplish) to take Abby's place, but Colon, despite fighting valiantly, can't make it to the corner.

Good stuff and very effective use of Dory and Flair to set up a match that neither of them would be in.

Amazing Red/Ice XVII vs. Low-Ki/Stevie Lynn 3CW 11/11/05

PAS: I thought this was shockingly great, Lynn and Ice XVII were a pair of feuding opponents in Britain who I had never heard of. They brought in Red and Low-Ki the way Lawler and Dundee might work paired with random Tennessee money marks in the 90s. I actually thought Ice and Lynn brought a fair amount of juice to the match, they clearly had stuff worked out with each other, but served as nice dance partners for Ki and Red as well. We get a couple of Red vs. Ki sections, which were unsurprisingly nice, we get a matrix which is always incredible,  but much of the match was focused on the Brits. Ki is a great hot tag and he just brutalizes Ice XVII when he tags in, there was some especially nice selling on Ki's kappo kick where he went limp (although with Ki it is always possible that he got legit dimmed). We had a pretty hot finish and I really was into the finishing combo which Lynn used, a lightning fast fisherman's buster for two and a brainbuster for the duke. No idea what happened to Lynn and Ice XVII, but on first glance I would rather watch them then a lot of your current British indy guys.

MD: What stood out the most here was how grounded all of this was. I haven't seen a lot of 2005 UK tags in a while or anything, but the thing doesn't break down until 20 minutes in and when it does, it leads to the finish. Most lauded 2018 WWE tag matches break down in the second minute and just stay tornado tags with fifteen minute finishing stretches. I guess I was expecting less discipline here.

While I get it was mainly them doing their usual shtick, I liked the anticipation early for Red and Low Ki locking up (they ran through other pairings first). If, in a normal match, you'd get holds with spots worked in and out, the Low Ki vs Red pairing served here as the spots. Everything popped when they faced off against one another. Ice felt like you'd expect an indy guy of the era to feel. He had a bunch of stuff and hit it well enough. Here, it served the match fine. Lynn brought a little bit of size but I'm blanking on him past that, and I only saw this thing a few minutes ago. Obviously that means he didn't stand out negatively either though.

Past the measured escalation, what I liked the best was Low Ki working the apron. I know it's a crazy notion, but as it comes to the belief in his own character, I liken him a bit to the Ultimate Warrior in my head. My favorite thing about Warrior is how into what's going on he gets when he's on the apron. Here, Low Ki was selling the action and you could viscerally feel how badly he wanted the tag. That's the sign of someone who's fully given himself to the moment.

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Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 2: Matches from ICW 3/4/11

Doing some internet surfing I discovered that there was a 2011 Red vs. Low-Ki match I had no idea happened, considering that is one of my favorite rivalries ever, I signed up for Titlematch Wrestling Networks service to check it out. The show also had a Kingston vs. Moxley match which fits our C+A Kingston so I made a double post

Eddie Kingston vs. Jon Moxley - FUN

PAS: It feels like a real blood feud between these two would have been awesome. A chance to do competing promos, really stretch out and get violent would have been great. This was more of a house show undercard contest.  Moxley is a fun Piper style seller, and he had some fun flopping and gesticulating when he was hit with Kingston's big shots. There was a neat arm sell by Kingston when he got hit with a tope, but this was mostly just exchanging shots until a tights roll up finish. Entertaining but pretty unessential, you should mute the commentary for sure, as one of the guys does a racist gibberish Japanese announcer gimmick which is unbearable

Low-Ki vs. Red - GREAT

PAS: This is their first singles match in eight years, and worked very differently then their turn of the century series. Ki was coming off of his WWE stint and Red had finished rehabbing his knee injury. This went 30 minutes, and was worked at a slower pace, with the focus more on stiffness then on mind bending athleticism. They open up doing some shtick with the crowd including Red shit talking a dipshit fat NYC fan who tried to start a boring chant during the feel out process (Low-Ki takes a second out of the ringside brawling section later in the match to dump a beer on his lap).  Ki really unloads with his kicks and chops as usual, but Red brings it just as hard, including a nasty running forearm to the face which landed with a base deep thump. We do get a Wushu section, which was pretty cool, although a bit slower then in 2001, I love how Ki mixes it up by landing a stiff straight kick to the chest instead of a pose to the crowd. They built to a pretty dramatic finish, although Red didn't really have the kind of big offense needed for this kind of 2.9 finish run (a red star press is a cool flash pin, but doesn't really feel like a milk the drama near fall). Ki wins with a head and arm choke which also seemed a bit of an incongruous finish for the match they were telling. Still those are minor quibbles for what was a really nifty match, it isn't the Red vs. Ki you were expecting, but a cool experience anyway.

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Step Into Ki's Zone and Get Blown

Low-Ki vs. The Amazing Red NWA-TNA 7/24/02 - EPIC

ER: This provided the exact blend of dynamite and Piccolo Pete I was looking for. This felt like a really cool, forward thinking move for TNA to bring in Red and let he and Ki have a showcase for their exceptional talent. This was probably the first time these two got to do their thing to a national audience. I have no clue how many thousands of people ordered TNA PPV #6, but it was surely more than had been seeing them work this match in East Coast indies. It's the absolute best kind of juniors wrestling, as not only does it feel fresh and completely innovative (even now, with 15+ years of guys bastardizing matches like this, there were moments that stood out as unique in 2018), but you get the stiff strikes and big bumps, and most importantly ALL of the strikes are good. These two don't go through the motions on transitions. When Ki needs to be farther back to take a move properly, there are at least 5 different occasions where Red straight boots him in the stomach, hard, knocking Ki believably backward in recoil. Red really was amazing, so early in his career and his ring placement is phenomenal, dude somehow knew exactly where he was going and how he would land. Ki hits a nasty koppo kick and Red bounces off his shoulders and nearly flips through the ropes to the floor, hanging himself from the bottom rope by his armpits. Amazing indeed. They do a lot of cool strike stuff that isn't just timed combos, my favorite being Ki grabbing Red in a knucklelock and backing him into the corner with headbutts, Red trapped...until he uses the knucklelock to his advantage by posting off the buckles and heel kicking Ki in the face, trapping Ki in that knucklelock. It's great seeing new fans reacting to the Jackie Chan moments, there are more lightning fast violent spin kicks here than in Bloodsport, Mike Tenay drops knowledge that Ki takes his name from the Blackstreet song No Diggity (is this true? Either I learned this and forgot it, or Tenay is pulling the deep knowledge from Ki's enjoyment of popular 90s R&B), and this all rules.

PAS: This is one of my favorite match-ups in wrestling history, and was always great whenever it hit a new territory. This minimizes the Jackie Chan stuff, throwing near the end of the match, rather then the beginning, and instead has more of a juniors focus. Red was such a great in-ring bumper, he makes all of Ki's stuff look amazing, he flies insanely off the kappo kid, it was like Wile E. Coyote recoiling after an errant explosion, he really gets smashed by the Ki Crusher at the end of the match too, total full body compression. I loved how they worked out of the knuckle lock, and even after seeing a million variations of it the Code Red looks amazing. So much fun, and another example of how this match universally delivers.


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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Red vs. Ki 2018!!

4. Amazing Red vs. Low-Ki House of Glory 2/3

PAS: I have made an argument that this could be the greatest juniors feud in wrestling history, so it is pretty awesome to see these guys face off fifteen years later. This is worked very differently then their matches in the early 2000s, here Ki is working straight vicious heel, and is this is more like a Tenryu match then Rey Jr. vs. Psicosis. Ki seems to be trying really new things in his big singles matches, the awesome Callihan match had all of the crazy spots around Sami's broken jaw, and this match had a crazy kung-fu battle on a stage. The didn't open with the Wushu, they built to this really cool showdown on a stage which not only had their cool martial arts feints and counters, but also had Ki and Red having a weapons battle with a pair of sticks and a chair. I did think the Ki beatdown went a little long, and the ref stuff seemed a bit unnecessary (although Ki punching the chair into the ref's head was awesome), but this was a nifty spectacle and both guys are still really great.

ER: A totally blown out epic take on the match they pioneered over 15 years ago. They go for something different, crazier in some ways, more reserved in other ways, and bizarre in ways their feud never has been. Ki makes offense look so spectacular and he immediately bumps huge to the floor and then into the guardrail, and nobody will make you look more devastating than Ki. A chair gets involved, and things get weird right out of the gate as Ki punches a chair right into the ref's face and the ref stays knocked out for the entirety of the match - over 20 minutes - so that man is clearly dead at this point. Low-Ki  killed a man and nobody removed his corpse from a ring while people are crash landing around him. But this allows the match to be No DQ-ish, and then it's Red's turn to take a crazy bump over the top to the floor. The crowd brawl is really cool, using their weird timing and understanding of the other's movements, and once Red gets backdropped onto the large stage of the venue, things get downright weird. The two of them basically break the 4th wall and put on a kabuki performance of their kung fu movie scenarios, right on the stage, only playing to one wall of crowd. It's so strange, like they're in 2D working as Street Fighter avatars. Things normalize once they get back to the ring, although Ki beats him down for a LONG time before Red starts coming back. But they put so many cool moments to build to the comeback that it's always satisfying. I love how big Ki hits, but I might love how big he misses even more, and the big miss in this match is Ki leaping for Red in the ropes, missing, and Ki bouncing off the ropes. I have no idea how this guy isn't a mess of knee and ankle injuries. Home stretch is really huge, with Ki hitting a couple brutal double stomps, and Red pulverizing him with a few tornado DDT variations (again, Ki makes a DDT look absolutely skull crushing). The knocked out ref was flat out stupid, and there's overdone drama with a new ref (why is this new ref counting so slow?), but everything between the two of them was gold.


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ALL TIME MOTY LIST Head to Head 2002: Ki vs. Dragon VS. Ki vs. Red

Low-Ki vs. Amazing Red PWF 11/10/02

PAS: Breathtaking stuff, I think there is a solid argument for this being the best juniors rivalry in wrestling history. The stuff they were doing felt like the future of wrestling while it was going on, but it turned out that they were the only guys who could do it. The opening Kung Fu movie battles between these two are always incredible, this was one of the coolest, I loved Ki head butting Red's fist on the punch, who the fuck thinks of that,   but they kept it up the whole match. Just mind bending physics throughout, there is this crazy knuckle lock sequence which has Ki throwing elbows in the corner, while having his knuckles locked, Red hits a La Mistica style DDT as fast as I have ever seen it. There is some real textbook Ki brutality, he obliterates Red with a kappo kick and nearly rips his body in half with the Ki clutch. The two lost legends of 21st century wrestling, this should have been on a Dome show or at Wrestlemania, but it was great to see in a random gym in Pennsylvania.

ER: Phil brought up the idea of these two having the greatest juniors rivalry of all time, and it's an idea that on mention seems kind of ridiculous, but really only because that early 2000s New Jersey indy scene doesn't get the same level of respect/adoration/acclaim that lesser stuff seems to get. Is it because it happened during the VHS/DVD transition period, so it was not only seen less, but also didn't see as much of it survive a widespread media transfer? I'm not sure the reason both men aren't more acclaimed, but Red is one of the more underrated wrestlers of the last couple decades, and Low-Ki has consistently been one of the best workers in the world for two decades. Their matches together felt revolutionary at the time, and I still think they're just as exciting. Their style was imitated often, but rarely as interestingly. In fact a lot of the modern awful sexy dance fighting that would be direct descendants of these two are actually missing a lot of the parts where you're trying to actually hurt and pin your opponent. This match was choreographed, but there were no moments where either guy was showing off who had the better handspring backflip pose off the ropes, instead the choreography was used to block hard strikes or do violent leg sweeps. 

Ki is one of those wrestlers whose stuff always looks great, but always makes opponents' stuff look the better than ever. So he'll kick Red square in the chest a few times, but also get totally upended on a leg sweep, flip fast on a Code Red, rotate dangerously fast into the mat on La Mistica DDT (no clue how you go that fast and not crash chin first into the mat), or whipping himself face first into the top buckle off a Red headscissor counter; and while Ki took a lot of this match, he took Red's offense so great that Red always looked in it. The countering really is breathtaking, so many cool moments like Ki blocking a fast punch with a headbutt, fast kicks getting blocked by forearms or caught into dragon screws, and not one time do we ever see that vacant look in either man's eyes, that moment that you see a lot in wrestling, when guys are thinking of the next sequence. These sequences are all so quick and pulled off so convincingly that it's amazing how unplanned all of the planned stuff comes off.

Ki vs. Dragon Review

Verdict:

PAS: Ki vs. Danielson is always awesome, and the JAPW match is especially to cool to watch them torture each other, but I have seen RINGS and BattlArts, I never saw this. Red vs. Ki is a style that only they did and I think this was their best match. I am giving it the win.

ER: This is a special match, and a special feud, but I gotta go with Dragon/Ki. That match hit a level of violence that this one didn't quite reach, and while we've seen RINGS before I don't think any part of that match came off as Japanese imitation, in fact there were elements of that match that I don't think have been duplicated by anyone since. Both matches still feel innovative, I just think Dragon/Ki has even more substance. Split vote, champ retains.

NOTE**Feel free to watch this match on mute or while listening to some favorite tunes (here's a cool EP by a band called Flat Worms, with a song called "Red Hot Sand", you know, because you're watching Red) so that you don't have to suffer through the racist commentary stylings of Gino Giovanni. His portrayals of Asians make Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's look woke.

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