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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!!! Matches from WAR-ISM 11/11/93

Full Show 11/11/93 Handheld

 

1. Ultimo Dragon vs. Dan Sileo

ER: Is this the same Dan Sileo who was a football player and lame sports talk host on Bay Area's KNBR in the 2000s? I didn't know his football career but I remember him on KNBR, but it can't be the same guy. That guy was a defensive lineman and this guy doesn't look that much larger than Ultimo, but whoever it is, this True Blue Rex Kwon Do practitioner really adapted to pro wrestling almost shockingly well. I thought this was great, and I loved every part of it. Sileo has a gaudy stars and stripes gi and, while I know the Danny McBride strip mall karate guy is an easy and well-used reference at this point, goddamn is this guy just the millionth strip mall karate guy to look exactly like that. 

I loved the way they kept advancing this. The leg work was really cool, with nasty heel hooks off caught kicks, and a cool deathlock where Sileo was applying different kinds of pressure and then even ripped his gi off before rolling through the deathlock (which I don't think I've seen before?). When he got frustrated and threw a chair into the ring, Ultimo did incline push-ups off the chair and then had the ref hold his ankles down while he did a couple sit ups. Everything had nice snap to it, from things like (both men's) chops, to a super impactful version of Dragon's handspring elbow, to all of the kicks everyone threw. Sileo had an impressive command on selling, too. I was really impressed when Dragon whiffed on a spinning heel kick over Sileo's head, and he knew not to bother selling it and instead went right after Dragon. That's not an instinct most heavily trained wrestlers would have. Sileo broke out a majistral that looked as impressive as any I've ever seen Ultimo do, and the two counts down the stretch were all incredibly well done and worked through. This is the first time I've seen Dan Sileo and I am now honestly wondering how Dan Sileo didn't become a bigger star. This man understands pro wrestling, has great instincts, and is incredibly entertaining. This man takes a German suplex high up on his shoulders and somehow has great suplex selling? Who the hell is this guy? 

There is an incredible moment when Sileo is whipped into the buckles and does this awesome cocky flip over the top to the floor, landing on his feet, posing for the crowd, and by the time he turns around thinking he had evaded Ultimo, Dragon was already doing a suicide dive past the ring post into him. I did not think we'd be seeing Ultimo hitting a dive onto a some karate guy, trusting some strip mall karate guy to catch a high speed tope, a high speed tope that is already well in motion when Sileo is facing away from Dragon. This spot was timed so well, it was somehow a great catch, and Sileo was able to be facing away for most of it and turn around just in time to be annihilated. The most seasoned wrestler you know will never look this natural while waiting to catch a blind dive. I am going to need to write about more Dan Sileo matches. Complete & Accurate Bonecrusher Sileo coming soon!

PAS: Rewatching WAR over the years, I have been pretty underwhelmed by the Ultimo Dragon matches, but I guess I just needed to see him working ex-NFL linemen in Gi's rather than juniors matches where he's being outclassed by luchadors. Loved this, an awesome weirdo fight, with Ultimo ruling and Sileo being really fun too. Loved Ultimo doing pushups on the thrown in chair and hitting a wild tope on Sileo while he was celebrating. Sileo's entire shtick was great, he took a German suplex right on his neck and hit a cool jumping La Magistral. I really need to see Sileo work Dave Taylor and Ulf Hermann in Germany, and I really wish that Ultimo got a chance to work Jerry Flynn on a WCW Pro or something. 

2. Nobukazu Hirai vs. Shigekazu Tajiri

ER: This was a rounds match between a gi guy and a pro wrestler, and the best parts of this had the bad blood that we all associate with pro wrestlers vs. gi guys. There were multiple moments, in the first round especially, where it was clear that Tajiri did not want to cooperate, which is a best case scenario for a match like this. A couple of things got crossed up, Hirai grabbed Tajiri aggressively by the gi lapels, and then you had Hirai forcing his way into a shoot northern lights suplex and shoot bodyslam with Tajiri very clearly trying his hardest to sandbag. Hirai had started all this chippiness by throwing a playful kick at Tajiri when the former was entering the ring for the match, and that energy kept coming back, like when one of the rounds ended and Hirai kicked Tajiri in the ass on the latter's trip back to his corner. Not all the kicks land, and that plays to the match's benefit, as one of the best moments is Tajiri suckering Hirai into doing a spinning heel kick and just ducking it, then kicking Hirai in the face. Hirai does some great cocky shit like throwing a couple of German suplexes and then standing on Tajiri's neck, then deciding to let the ref count Tajiri down for a potential KO. I don't think the submission or kicks in this worked as well as the ones in Dragon vs. Sileo, but the 3rd round build was satisfying, and I liked Tajiri increasing the use of spinning heel kicks down the stretch. His (surprise) winning spinning heel kick looked Hashimoto level.

3. Masao Orihara vs. Satoshi Kojima

ER: I have a feeling there are a LOT of unseen or unheralded classics in the WAR vs. NJPW feud and this is ranks with the best of them. This was the only time Orihara and Kojima wrestled each other, and brother, I don't know why that is but based on this match alone they seem to fucking hate each other. These two are total assholes to each other for over 10 minutes, egging each other on into really violent match that stayed within a pro wrestling framework, just a really stiff constantly-verging-on-unprofessional pro wrestling match. The fans chant for Orihara at the bell, but after Kojima refuses a handshake and instead slaps him and German suplexes him on his head before the bell, then throws elbows as hard as possible and dumps him with a powerbomb, and the fans start chanting KOJIMA. 

Every single thing in this match was thrown with the intention to hurt, and there were a ton of great moments that looked like they were luring each other into fully committing to a move only to pull the rug out at the last possible moment. Kojima goes for his elbowdrop and lands teeth first into Orihara's boots, but the elbow was thrown with the confidence of someone who never thought his face would meet boots. Orihara does a pescado into nothing and his body does not look like someone who expected to be diving into an empty pool. They manage to make missed dropkick and sidestepped spinning heel kick spots look good, because every single thing done in this match was thrown with real intent. Orihara's leg work and heel hooks were as violent as anything you'd see in a Fujiwara fed, with the holds really sunk in. You could see how suctioned he was to Kojima's leg when Kojima was trying to yank away like he was in a bear trap but Orihara's grip only tightened, so Kojima had to start throwing legit strikes to desperately try to force some kind of break. 

It's tough to find cool examples of no-sold piledrivers but I'll have to tip my cap to them here, because this was it. Orihara spikes Kojima on the top of his head with a classic Lawler piledriver and Kojima rises to his feet and attempts to cripple Orihara with a Tombstone like he was Undertaker working Hogan in 1973 PRIDE. Orihara responds by spiking Kojima even harder with another Lawler piledriver, and brother, it feels okay to throw selling out the window when your neck is suffering this much real impact. These were piledrivers thrown by men who wanted to just feel something. No move is guaranteed to land, and it doesn't stop either man from throwing everything with full conviction, and yet the whole match maintains a vibe of "worked pro wrestling" while also feeling like both guys are sneaking in offense that the other wasn't expecting. It sure didn't look like Orihara was expected to be dumped on the back of his head by a couple different suplexes, and it sure didn't look like Kojima expected to take two boots up kicked into his chin....and yet it also seems like both guys fully expect it? Let me tell you, *I* did not expect Orihara to hit his insane moonsault over the ringpost to the floor, because I cannot imagine the level of trust it took in Kojima - a man who had not felt trustworthy at any part of this match - to even think about hitting that moonsault. Orihara wins by kicking Kojima in the eye and rolling him up with la majistral, and Kojima is so pissed after that he starts punching Orihara, and Orihara just leaves the ring, no selling all of the punches as he goes. YES!!

4. Arashi vs. Yuji Yasuraoka

ER: Arashi is in his mask and just poured into his bicycle shorts. He looks like a dream scenario where they brought in Giant Brazo as part of Los Brazos. He is humongous, and his tits are spectacular. This was short but entertaining, with Yasuraoka throwing kicks as hard as fast as he can but none of them ever phasing Arashi, so Arashi just lets the man kick him for a bit and then just starts throwing him around the way a large sumo would throw around a smaller man, with years of training and muscle memory behind the throws. The finish is great, as Arashi absorbs kicks and decides to let Yuji know what striking is really like, and so bullies him into the corner with open hand sumo thrusts and I swear, Arashi is just palm striking Yasuraoka's head back and forth between his open hands like he was forming a pizza dough. Arashi wins the match with two headlock takeovers, locking his arm around Yasuraoka's neck so tightly and then rolling over with his own large body with such force that it looks like he's trying to pop Yuji's head off his own body like a Barbie doll. 

5. Great Kabuki vs. Tommy Rich

ER: Tommy Rich still comes out to REO Speedwagon's "Roll With the Changes" in 1993 and it's hard not to think of this song within the context of Tommy Rich's life. 23 years old, making towns around Georgia in his Ford Fairmont, waiting to see if there's another radio single off You Can Tune a Piano But You Can't Tuna Fish before committing to buying the 8-track. Rich and Kabuki go way back and worked each other several times over the preceding decade, but it's hard not to be disappointed with this match. You could not call this a bad match, but on this card it kinda was. I love Tommy Rich kneeling on the inside of Kabuki's leg and throwing worked elbow strikes, complaining to the ref about hair pulls and shit, but this was a show where every match so far has had moments where someone almost got knocked out and moments where guys were actively trying to knock the other out, so the bar had been raised pretty high over the first half of the show. The final stretch of this was great, when Rich blasts Kabuki with a stiff clothesline and a perfect fistdrop off the middle buckle, and Kabuki starts throwing knee trembling thrusts to Rich's throat, but Rich losing to a small package is going to feel like a downer after the violence that had taken place in every match prior. 

6. Black Cat vs. Hiromichi Fuyuki

PAS: Total out of nowhere classic. This was a lumberjack match and part of the WAR vs. NJ feud, with Black Cat coming in as a New Japan stalwart and trainer to take on Fuyuki. Just a pair of barrel chested bruisers clocking each other with clotheslines and hard punishing shots, each one a little further then it was supposed to go. Cat, for example, cracked Fuyuki right in the eye with a short elbow and Fuyuki responded by splitting his head open on a turnbuckle bolt. Cat then proceeds to lose blood at an alarming rate, leaving stains over the mat. Cat fought valiantly, but eventually was felled by a pair of super nasty looking powerbombs. Hard nosed violent WAR style stuff, just an ugly treat to watch.

ER: The WAR/NJPW feud has produced some of the most agreeably great matches ever, an incredible success rate, unparalleled heat, and this show has two more of them that we've never seen. Orihara/Kojima and Black Cat/Fuyuki are completely different matches and completely great additions to the WAR/NJPW legend. The latter has great blood and is much more punch based, the former is two guys doing pro wrestling moves as stiff as possible. It's wild that the one with juniors and without blood is more violent, but even without blood the hate was palpable. This match felt less like hatred, and more like a great bloody pro wrestling dramatic-selling brawl. This was long, nearly 20, and I don't think the holds moved the match along as well as Orihara's leg attacks did, but this was a bloody match between two brick shithouses cracking jaws, and we don't have to choose a favorite. This was also a Lumberjack Death match, and I wish I knew all the things that went into these two needing a Lumberjack Death match. WAR really wasn't a gimmick match fed, choosing instead the superior gimmick pairings. Who needs stipulation matches when you can just team weird guys up against each other? 

Fuyuki looked like the best version of Takeshi Morishima, or perhaps a more accurate comp to Gordy than Morishima was. This felt like the most violent version of a classic Crusher match, two guys with barrel torsos throwing hooking punches across each other's jaws and throwing clotheslines set to smash. Fuyuki's diving clotheslines were engulfing, blowing through Cat with insane closing speed. Black Cat threw short elbows across Fuyuki's temple and Fuyuki threw down right back, and whenever it threatened to spill into the middle of warring WAR vs. New Japan Lumberjacks, it only got better. This feud was so perfect, because everybody involved on both sides of it was a total asskicker, and everybody seemed like they really fucking hated each other. Satoshi Kojima acted like a fucking asshole to Orihara, Tenryu trolled Tatsumi Fujinami so hard earlier in the show that Fujinami got Actually Upset and ripped off his suit jacket while needing neck tendon flaring restraint from Manabu Nakanishi. Tommy Rich and Bonecrusher Dan Sileo are left looking like cornered southerners trying to stay between the WAR gang and New Japan crew whenever Fuyuki got an asshole smirk across his face and threw Cat into the fellers. The blood came midway when Cat got run face first into a turnbuckle bolt, and Fuyuki must have sent the sole of his boot into Cat's cutout least eight times. Black Cat wobbled his legs and fought back and Fuyuki managed to dominate and make Cat bleed out without coming off like a bad guy, instead looking like a man representing his cause. Sometimes a 30 year handheld shows up online and when you're done watching it you can say that you've seen upper echelon Kodo Fuyuki, Satoshi Kojima, Masao Orihara, and Black Cat performances, and everything feels right. 

7. Koki Kitahara/Super Strong Machine vs. Heisei Ishingun (Kengo Kimura/Tatsutoshi Goto)

ER: This is a really cool tag that brings together four guys who I think are almost always universally underrated as workers. Out of these four, I think Kengo Kimura probably gets the most respect as a worker, and when was the last time you saw literally anybody talking about how much they love the career of Kengo Kimura? Super Strong Machine is the best possible Bison Smith, throwing nothing but hard elbows and clotheslines and slams, Vince McMahon's idea of a perfect wrestler in 1977, and I don't think I've ever not been entertained by a SSM match. Koki Kitahara is a WAR punk through and through, and it gave this match a fun dynamic, as he was the one WAR guy in with three NJPW guys, with Strong Machine the guy who's playing both sides without acting passionate allegiance to either side. So This match was all about three of these guys having a tough but professional tag, while Kitahara tried to get under everyone's skin before eventually succeeding in doing just that. Everyone else has no problem throwing spirited elbows and clotheslines but Kitahara's the one kicking people in the eye and throwing kicks at knees, with Kimura's Red Gi crew yelling at him from the floor only causing him to act like more of a pudgy punk. It all escalates when Masashi Aoyagi gets on the apron to try to settle him down, and Kitahara chooses to go after AOYAGI with a chair! Kitahara is enough of a crazed asshole to go after AOYAGI with a chair and you just have to love and appreciate a psycho like that. I love how Kitahara finally gets Kimura to snap, kicking at him mockingly while he's down, and getting the vet all riled up until Super Strong Machine can't save him. I loved Aoyagi sneaking in at the finish to hit Kitahara with a spinning heel kick to set up the finish, and thought the tag unsurprisingly kicked ass. 

8. Genichiro Tenryu vs. Ashura Hara

PAS: This delivered everything you want from this matchup on paper. A pair of guys built like sacks of flour chopping, lariating and headbutting each other in unsafe and violent ways. Not a lot of fancy moves, although Tenryu did hit a enzigiri right to Hara's eye and cheek, but just crazy violent shots. I love how Tenryu just lets his chops float. At one point he catches Hara right in the trachea and the ref looks at him like "c'mon man I am just trying to do my job." Hara doesn't back down at all either, laying in some really meaty clonking headbutts, and sick lariats right into the clavicle. This is WAR as WAR gets.

ER: I always associate Hara with Tenryu. Hara was the longest term Tenryu tag partner in Revolution, left All Japan at first opportunity to join him in SWS and then retired in WAR in 1994. Hara is a Tenryu guy, and that means that we really don't have many Tenryu/Hara singles matches. I think they had less than 5, and I'm sure this is the only one I've actually seen. This is Tenryu VERSUS Hara and that is an incredibly cool thing. And this really is the exact thing you would want from a Tenryu/Hara match, which is two best friends trying to urge the other one to hit them harder and harder, except you've never had a friend who wanted you to hit them harder and harder because we've never done competitive sumo. Tenryu and Hara hit each other so fucking hard in this match and I've never known another person in my life who could hit somebody this hard. WAR Hara is the fattest Hara which makes him the coolest Hara, and he looks even cooler when Tenryu runs into him incredibly hard with a shoulderblock and then drops his shoulder and winces hard and shakes out that limp arm after Hara doesn't budge an inch. 

After Tenryu hurts his shoulder on Hara's torso and Hara didn't even give him the liberty of acting like he had even been touched, Tenryu makes it his match long mission to make Hara lose sensation in at least one of his arms. These two are old ass running buddies and if you are old sumo running buddies that means that sometimes one of you will get chopped over and over in the neck and slapped insanely hard across the face. Hara does his best to not budge whenever Tenryu hits him and is shockingly successful, and none of us can ever comprehend how hard Ashura Hara has been hit in his life, and how hard he has hit people. You have to get hit in the face and neck an absurd number of times to be able to take six straight chops to the neck from Genichiro Tenryu without registering any pain. Hara is able to walk through a shocking amount of pain to repeatedly murder Tenryu with his perfect lariat, but Tenryu drops him to his knees with a chop right to the throat. The only time I even notice the referee in the match, is after that throat chop when he steps up to Tenryu like "hey man that guy is your best friend." Hara can't use one of his arms his whole chest and neck and shoulder is all purple bruising just a few minutes in, so he has to just spam Tenryu with lariats from the arm he can lift. When he keeps hitting Tenryu in the ropes as hard as he can, he gets a full head of steam for a killshot and flies hard through the ropes to the floor when Tenryu just drops to the ground as his only possible defense. Hara's sell of Tenryu's enziguiri is more perfection, taking it to the teeth and crumbling to his chest and knees, butt up in the air. 

Imagine the ways these two could have surpassed Ikeda and Ishikawa if only their friendship was just a little bit different. I'm glad we got them murdering each other a few times over the span of their Revolution. 

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Andre, Heel Tito, Funk, Baron, Hara, Jericho, Bestia Salvaje

Terry Funk/Ashura Hara vs. Baron Von Raschke/Killer Karl Krupp AJPW 12/12/81

ER: This was an okay tag made up of some doppelgangers. Hara seems like he's trying to look like Funk with their matching trunks and matching curls, Baron and Krupp look like relatives, and they have an okayish match that the crowd was rabid for the whole way through. Baron is always so weird to me, as he's a legit athlete who rarely moves with any kind of athleticism, and this is cool because it's one of the very few times he ever was up against Terry. Seeing a stumbly goose stepper going up against Terry's stumbly punch drunk style brings some joy, and there's a fun haymaker blowout that ends with both of them comically flopping to the mat. There were plenty of clawholds, Krupp throws some nice knees, Krupp takes a big bump over the top to the floor (where we see a ringside area with no guardrails, which is intriguing), Terry hits a nice piledriver as the major highspot of the match, and again the fans are into it the whole time, rabidly. But I've seen tons of Funk matches against dodgy opponents that I enjoyed more than this.

MD: This never quite got to where I wanted it, but it was interesting for a few reasons. First, I love watching Funk, maybe the best seller ever, sell one of the coolest visual tools in 70s-80s wrestling in the claw. It makes me want to see a whole bunch of Funk vs Spoiler and Funk vs Mulligan matches that probably happened and we just don't have. Second, him stooging against the Baron is one of those match-ups I never realized I wanted. Funk would have fit in very well in mid-80s AWA. Third, Krupp is a guy I've always sort of written off but between the knees and the hip toss bumping, he was pretty spry here. Any new Funk performance is worth watching. Any unique Funk match-up is worth watching. I'm glad there's just more to discover.

Andre The Giant/Chavo Guerrero/Tito Santana vs. Willem Ruska/Tatsumi Fujinami/Riki Choshu NJPW 5/16/80

ER: I was drawn to this by the allure of Heel Tito - something I have never seen - but this was much more Heel By Default Tito in the background of a superstar Andre show. We got one little stretch of Tito acting as an honorary Guerrero brother helping Chavo take apart Riki's leg, but Tito really is the 5th or 6th banana of this one. Really, everybody was the 5th or 6th banana, because Andre was all kinds of bananas. Andre is fast and aggressive and takes a ton of risks, and an Andre who will run at you and throw his entire body towards you is downright horrifying. Look at the enthusiasm as he misses a big splash...but then outdoes himself by climbing up the turnbuckles from the apron, all the way up and over to the middle buckle, to miss another splash. Did he really almost slip and fall off the turnbuckles backwards to the floor!? Did he add that in the same way a tightrope walker does a couple of slips just for show? Or did a gigantic man almost plunge to the floor with no parachute? Check out Andre setting up being trapped in the ropes, and look how far into the ring he was when he threw himself backwards full speed to get caught. He is 40% of the way into the ring, takes a couple of dropkicks, and flies backward so fast that I fully expected the ropes to completely snap. Imagine the trust he must have had in that ring crew! And my god look at that Rockette kick that he flat out stuck when attacked in the ropes! He sticks that leg as high as I've seen him and it just gets buried. Our tecnicos acted like cavemen to Andre's wooly mammoth, taking cover when he stormed around the ring and jumping on him all at once the second he showed any weakness, although the Fujinami double leg takedown to start was spectacular. I loved Chavo attacking Riki's knee, the spot where he pole vaulted with his leg and seemed to float was my favorite non-Andre spot of the match. But here's Andre with his cheat code, the ability to end the match whenever he wants, deciding enough is enough, throws a lifeless Chavo into the ring from the floor, wasting Fujinami with an spine rearranging atomic drop and treating Ruska like a child's backpack. I think I only want to write about Andre the Giant.

MD: So, as you guys must know by now, a lot of the footage we've watched over the last year is because people have navigated Japanese ebay successfully. This was on a NJPW 1980 TV set and if you want to see more, go head over to PWO and find my pal PeteF3. We'll get to some of that stuff eventually (like some cool Spoiler matches and maybe the best look at Keith Hart being really good we've ever had), but not for a bit, so don't wait for us. The version I was working off of didn't transfer well, thus the four parts and audio problems, but the disc itself is better. I'm just not all that great at transferring things. You get the gist of everything here though (we miss one Chavo leap into the ring move that I wish we had) and hey, it just gives you kids a sense of what tape trading was like thirty years ago, right? This is something that everyone needs to see though.

Yes, there's an appeal to heel Tito, the legwork towards the end (which was really cool from all three foreigners), him eating the fall as Andre's drawn away with Hansen, the quick tags with Chavo, some of his feeding, the flying forearm that was more of a sledge, but this gets dwarfed by the amazing Andre performance. The first chunk of the match is pure Andre as Fezzik, or maybe the world's best Colossal Connection Andre performance. He gets swarmed and shrugs people off. He demands people get down off the top rope instead of jumping at him. One touch is death, but he's able to move so much better. This is heel Andre, in a tag setting, with partners he cherishes (which was always part of Heenan family Andre), but with him fully dynamic. As the match goes on, though, he's just all over the place. He misses two splashes, one off the second rope. He hits two suplexes, the biggest suplexes in history. There's a pile driver! Throughout this, the other team is bouncing off of him and trying everything they can. I love Ruska constantly badgering Andre and then running away from him as he gets furious and charges in like this was some sort of old cartoon. This is all Andre, right down to the finish where he chucks Chavo (who just ate a dive) back into the ring and lets Ruska bounce off of him from the apron, ensuring the count out by being a one-man wall. Even with the slight technical issues, there's nothing in the world I'd rather watch than stuff like this.

PAS: This was the uncut Fentanyl Andre, one of the purest examples of what makes him an all time great. He was both totally out of control and totally in control. The spot where he almost falls off the top rope (where he would kill several members of audience I imagine) only to steady himself, only to empty pool smash into the mat, fucking perfection. I also dug how much he seemed to be into his role as the monstrous Guerrero that Gory kept in the basement. There is a great spot where he is giving double fives to his partners, and Choshu comes over and dropkicks him. Andre turns around with such fury "MOTHERFUCKER I WAS DAPPING UP MY HOMIES, I AM GOING TO FUCK YOU UP." Loved the heels losing the fall because of Hansen only for Andre to clean out the faces and tie it up. Even as the show was going off the air, he was celebrating with Chavo and Tito by carrying them around the ring. What a fucking legend.

Chris Jericho/Crazy Boy/Falcon de Oro vs. Bestia Salvaje/Poison/Principe Joel Compton Lucha 3/1/96

MD: There was a lot to like here. When I come into these things (we'll say a lucha match in an alien setting, only being familiar with half the guys) I tend to look for a few things, first and foremost, the framework for how to watch a match: how are the opening pairings? Where are the momentum shifts? Are the transitions interesting? How much effort do they put into the beatdown? Do they sufficiently ramp up expectations for the comeback? How's the moment of comeback? Where do they go from there? What's the finish? Specifics like the quality of matwork or whether or not there's a central rivalry in the match or coordinated tandem offense and crowd control in the beatdown or if there's an interesting dive train or what sort of crowd or wrestler-to-wrestler interaction are in there? All of that then fits in.

This hit a lot of those marks. The opening exchanges up to the tecnico primera win were all good. Great energy from the tecnicos. This was really good use of 96 Jericho: fiery, enthusiastic, throwing himself into everything, getting triple teamed and trying to fight back, game enough in his exchanges. I was honestly amazed that Falcon de Oro was able to hit something of the stuff that he did given his body type. The transition in the segunda was great, as it played up the Jericho vs Bestia central story and had the rudos act particularly despicable. That helped ramp up pressure for the eventual comeback, which was spirited, with fun dives and a nice bit of satisfaction snatched away as Jericho couldn't get his revenge. Presumably that set up another match, though with the really fun late run in, who knows?

PAS: This was house show HH trios match which hit all of the expected beats, but had enough cool wrinkles and great performances to push it up a level. Bestia is one of the greatest all time swarming heels, kind of like a lucha Buzz Sawyer. He really pushes the pace when he is in there with Jericho, and Jericho is game and willing to go there with him. All of your So-Cal regulars looked really good too, with Falcon De Oro being a really fun Super Astro style tubby flyer. They clearly all worked with each other a bunch and their primera caida exchanges were all super crisp. Principe Joel is Bestia's brother and he was very much in the spirit of the family, working just a little stiffer then you might expect. He apparently had (or has?) a wrestling school in Colorado, and I am guessing trained a bunch of local luchadores here in Denver (Luchawiki is the best). I liked the finish with the rudos going overboard until Misterioso (maybe, not super familiar with the booking of mid 90s Compton lucha) runs in and we get a nifty post match.

Read more!

On Brand Segunda Caida: More Bubba in Japan!

Big Bubba/Jimmy Snuka vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Ashura Hara AJPW 4/19/88

ER: This is the kind of pure uncut Bubba you wanted to see when you dive into the existing Bossman in Japan footage. This hit the exact tone I wanted it to, with Tenryu and Hara not holding back but also not just treating a new gaijin with disrespect. From the moment you see Hara slamming full force into Bubba with shoulderblocks and neither man budging, then saw Hara attempt a ton of shoot bodyslams without Bubba fighting him on them, you knew exactly what it was going to be and it is the best. Bubba looked like a real threat here and the native stars took him really seriously. Bubba was already a very expressive and smart salesman, and it especially shone through in the way he took a couple Tenryu enziguiris: we've gotten used to some fairly dramatic and also psychics-breaking sells of an enziguiri, here Bubba sells it like taking a stunning blow to the back of the head; drops to a knee, shakes his head out like he got loopy, blinks more, grabs at the back of his neck, a really mature sell that you don't see enough of. Any time Bubba was in the ring was exciting, he knew how to miss a strike or bit of offense (watch him swing his axe handles really low to miss Hara, and watch how fully commits to his missed standing splash to Tenryu), his Bubba Slam looks like it crushes Tenryu, he hits a big ol' lariat on Hara, and he roots Snuka on late in the match from the apron while casually buttoning his dress shirt. He really stood up to beatings nicely, took full force lariats from two guys who can throw really mean lariats (although Hara's sleeper/lariat on Snuka takes the cake), takes some murderous shots from Tenryu (I mean you know Tenryu's chops and these were some legendary Tenryu chops), and lets Tenryu stick him with the falling elbow to end things. Snuka had some pretty bananas moments in here, from throwing his own sharp knife edge chops, to doing a treacherous springboard splash, and surprising I think everybody by breaking out a cannonball off the top, landing all of his weight on Tenryu. I don't remember seeing Snuka break out a cannonball before and it looked crazy with 2019 eyes. This whole thing ruled.

Big Bubba vs. Jumbo Tsuruta AJPW 4/22/88

ER: Damn this is good. This was real exciting for me, as it's his first big Japanese singles (and he'd be in WWF just a couple weeks later), so it's really cool that on the final night of the tour they throw him into the semi-main opposite late 80s hoss Jumbo. Bubba is in the all black gear with white suspenders  (which admittedly looked a little prohibition gangster cosplay), and for whatever reason I really got the sense of size from Jumbo hear. There was a lot of back and forth between them, and maybe it was just Bubba being head to toe in slimming black, but I really got a sense of what a big guy Jumbo was here. The stand and trade throughout was really cool, as they were wear down shots off the big guy, and he knew it, so Jumbo would hit a leaping knee and Bubba would recoil into the ropes and then come off smothering with a slam or other attack. All Bubba's selling of the knee strikes was cool, and he did his killer knee dropdown sell as Jumbo was assaulting him with uppercuts only to spring back up and throw his great leaping headbutt and a shockingly good worked right hand straight to the forehead. Neither guy was going to have a super easy time throwing the other around, although we do get a killer Bubba Slam out of a bearhug that really shook Jumbo into the mat. Jumbo added extra force to his big boots and the placement of the leaping knees throughout the match was really well laid out, allowed the match some specific touchstones to monitor Bubba's condition, letting you know if Jumbo was able to exploit some armor cracks. Bubba gets a big flurry before the sudden finish, throwing a punch of punch combos in the corner. But the finish is a little sudden, with Jumbo grabbing an abdominal stretch and then turning that into a kind of heel hook when they toppled. It was a sensible finish, because beating Bubba by wrenching his ankle makes tons of sense, but I wish they had gone a little longer before going to it. Still, the match packed a lot of story and action into 7 minutes, and even with the abrupt ending was as good as I hoped it would be.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: WE DECLARE WAR!!! 6/25/93

WAR 6/25/93

This is a six match series with WAR vs. Heisei Ishingun. Sort of a border skirmish in the WAR vs. NJ conflict, with Koshinaka's band of outsiders taking on a group of WAR defenders. Weird show, having a WAR card in 93 with no Tenryu, but tubby interpromotional asskicking is about the best thing in wrestling and this had it in spades

Show starts with sort of a drawing of straws to set up the match ups


Koki Kitahara vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi

PAS: This was the longest of the matches on the show, and goes into several different phases, all of them pretty great. It opens with both guys throwing taters at each other, they spill to the floor and wildly fling chairs. One of the things that made this match so great is the raggedness of it. There isn't very many smooth exchanges, and lots of the time they are just grabbing each other by the hair and sneaking in punches and headbutts. Large parts of this feel  bar fight, where both guys are a little unskilled and a little unsteady. I loved Kobayashi just throwing multiple fisherman's suplexes and not going for the pin and Kitahara's dickish little kicks to the head. Finish was cool with Kitahara DDTing Kobayashi on the floor, rolling him in and locking in a bodyscissors sleeper for a but until Kobayashi passes out, it wasn't really a dramatic pass out, and it almost felt like a questionable UFC stoppage, I loved the shoving and the "hold me back" from both camps. Thought it worked really well for the opening of a series like this.

MD: I love the dissonance of a tug of war rolling right into this match. It's a twenty minute match that's almost entirely uncooperative all the way through, which feels pretty long for this sort of thing. It's brutal and it's great. Kitahara took the brunt of this, coming off like an absolute killer, with nasty headbutts, chair shots, and kicks, but throughout most of it, he couldn't really lock in a hold. Midway through Kobayashi comes back with these amazing running headbutts, really just a momentum-laden collision and then finally locks in a leglock which feels like a big deal given the struggle up to there. They roll into the finishing stretch not long after with Kitahara hitting a German, Northern Lights, and Backdrop Driver all in a row. It felt like a clear moment of escalation which means Kobayashi popping up almost immediately thereafter to hit three fisherman's suplexes of his own felt a little unearned. It was somewhat forgivable due to the unclear death match rules but it did take me out of the match a bit. Thankfully, it set up the further escalation with the three DDTs on the floor and the rear naked choke to close it all out so it more or less worked out in the end. Anyway, the sheer brutality more than makes up for that. What a way to start a show.

Ashura Hara vs. Akitoshi Saito

ER: Tenryu may not be on this show (which is weird for a WAR show, but I see Tenryu worked a Hashimoto singles match a week before this show and then didn't work again for a month, so taking a month off work after 20 minutes opposite Hash does make sense) but Hara is clearly the Tenryu proxy as he works this match almost exactly like I think Tenryu would have, and even has a bunch of great Tenryu selling moments. It's almost as if Hara was ALSO great or something. This is the kind of match you want out of a WAR/NJ showdown, Hara roughing up the relative newbie, beating him down with chairshots on the floor and lariats to the neck, and there's a great moment where you hear the buzz of the crowd building as they anticipate Saito finally hitting his first big spinkick of the match. Hara is running to set up a killshot lariat, and the crowd knows exactly the mistake he's making, and Saito hits that spinning heel kick that is arguably the best spinning heel kick of anyone who does a spinning heel kick, and that sets up the next several minutes of Saito kicking Hara a TON. Hara's selling of Saito's kicks is downright lordly. He leans into brutal baseball bat shots to the chest, Saito comes off the ropes with a punch right to the guy that sends Hara staggering beautifully into the ropes. Saito stops him in his tracks with a couple high kicks, throws a couple of crescent kicks that glance off Hara's temple (loved Hara's selling of a glancing blow) and Hara gets literally moved back on his feet like a tackling dummy by a couple of Saito lariats. We get a couple great moments of Hara eating kicks and occasionally catching one, only able to toss Saito away to get a couple seconds or reprieve before eating more kicks. And the longer Saito kicked him I knew Hara wasn't just going to just keep getting kicked and NOT pay him back for it, and when we got to the Hara payback it delivered. Hara throws the three meanest kicks of the entire match, one to Saito's ribs and two more right to the face - the kind of thing that would make Futen main eventers blush - and then gets to show off a couple more lariats of his own. This is the match I want to see when I sit down to watch WAR.

MD: Great, straightforward nine minute match. Hara's initial demolishing of Saito was great, straight up to the nonchalance in his nasty clotheslines and chairshots. I liked how he kept tossing him out of the ring. There was just so much personality to the violence. Saito's comeback spin kick was a thing of beauty. I'm a sucker for matches that can turn on a dime on one big move like that. Speaking of personality, Saito losing the gi and then posing before every kick like he was charging up was definitely memorable and seemed to work for the crowd. Hara willfully absorbing kicks (gritting through) is a much preferred method of selling than just eating three suplexes with no real effect and the finishing flurry of clotheslines felt like the inevitable destination the match had to go.

PAS: This was pretty much a poor man's Tenryu vs. a poor man's Hashimoto, but you can match up poor man's versions of those two and have it still be fucking incredible. I loved Hara hurling Saito to the floor and plastering him with chairs, Saito's big spin kick was incredible, and he really leaned into those body kicks, those are the kind of things which would turn ribs into popcorn. Hara just grumping his way out and chucking lariats was great stuff too, I love a larait to the back of the head and Hara was just cracking Saito with them. WAR as fuck.

Masashi Aoyagi vs. Super Strong Machine

ER: I both liked this, and was disappointed by this. I didn't love the layout, there were a couple dodgy moments from Aoyagi, and the finish is literally the exact same finish as the Hara/Saito match that happened right before this match. What I liked, is further evidence that Super Strong Machine may be one of the more under discussed ass kickers of this era. He is not flashy, his offense is simple, but he executes the offense with a Finlayesque reasonable recklessness, hitting his body slams hard, sitting down fast on his piledriver, throwing running and standing lariats with a full arm, the kind of guy with a vertical suplex you can set your watch to. He's a real bully in this, beating Aoyagi through the crowd and battering him with a chair. Now that I think about it maybe the entire layout of this match is a lesser executed version of Hara/Saito. But SSM is a fun smotherer, I can really get into a guy with a nice headlock or chinlock, and he really looks like he's hooking that arm to suffocate Aoyagi. Aoyagi throwing fast kicks over his head to escape was a great touch. Aoyagi's kick section isn't as nice as Saito's, he even whiffs a kick over SSM's head by several inches, but he hits a couple really nice rolling kicks and I always love his out of control corner spinkick that ends him spilling to the apron. The leaping knee to the back of Strong Machine's head is just icing. It is strange to me that Machine finishes this in the exact same way as Hara, even bouncing off the same ropes in the same order. And the match had flaws, but really played as a nice Super Strong Machine showcase for me, made me want to dive into some more.

MD: Context has an impact on this one. As a standalone match, it was definitely good, but following the two matches that it followed, it came up a bit lacking. I liked the opening exchange with Aoyagi rushing SSM and the paralleled violence on the outside, though the punctuation of the DDT on concrete felt like it came a bit early, especially considering how it was used to end the first match. I suppose it did set the stage for Aoyagi working from underneath for most of the rest of the match, though with no particular focused selling. I like SSM because he stands out relatively with the clubbering and power moves and presence, but I don't necessarily want to see Aoyagi fighting from underneath because his stuff is so good (like that knee to the back of the skull off the ropes!). The best parts of this was when they were going toe-to-toe and there just wasn't enough of that. At least Aoyagi got to take it out on the ref after the match. Again, still good, just not "this card" great.

PAS: I agree with Matt and Eric, this basically felt like the same match we just saw, just not as great. I dug chunks of this, Aoyagi is a C+A guy, one of our all time favorites, and had a bunch of fun athletic spin kicks and I loved his early bum rush. There was a great heads up section with both guys throwing bombs at each other, but man was that finish hurt by comparing it to the previous match. Hara is looking to decapitate with his clotheslines, and SSM just didn't deliver that. This was solid WAR undercard stuff, but we are getting bigger and better then solid on this show.

Tatsutoshi Goto vs The Great Kabuki

MD: Whereas the SSM vs Aoyagi was more of the same as the first two matches, just not as good, I thought this was a nice palette cleanser on the card. Goto rushed in early (though instead of a killer knee to rush in on, it was more hugging and rolling) and took an early advantage on the outside. He pressed that into the armwork that would take up the entirety of the match. There was a great consequence-laden hope spot early into this where Kabuki punches with the bad hand/arm and immediately drops down selling it. Past that, Goto working on the arm wasn't super varied but it was focused and mean with Kabuki selling well. When he finally was able to fire back, late in the match, the crowd was definitely into, but then things sort of meandered to an out-of-nowhere finish. If they had tightened this up by a couple of minutes or let Kabuki get a more sustained comeback at the end, it would have been better. I liked most of it for what it was though.

PAS: Very different match with this being mostly just Goto working over the arm of Kabuki and Kabuki selling. The arm work was fine, and Kabuki's selling was great, the moment where he finally hits his uppercut only to collapse in pain was awesome. Still Kabuki is a so much more dynamic offensive wrestler then Goto, it was a bit of a bummer to see him smothered for most of the match. I liked the surprise roll up pin, but I just felt a little robbed of a big Kabuki explosion. 

Hiro Saito vs Kengo Kimura

MD: Another very solid match. This one felt just as violent as the others (especially everything that happened on the outside), but at the same time, somehow more cooperative, or at least conventional. I think that says more about the rest of the card than about this match in and of itself. The first third of the match was focused around chairs, beatings on the outside, one brutal whip into a tiny table, and the setpiece of the exposed corner buckle (Kimura's attempt to expose it partially lets Saito come back, Kimura cements one transition by tossing Saito into it, etc.). The exposed buckle is a non-factor for the rest of the match, which is a shame. The finish is set up by Saito missing a top rope senton out of that exact corner. Kimura diving to crotch him on it to set up the exact same finish would have been more rewarding. Small thing. Also, this was probably a good spot on the show for color with Saito's head rammed into the buckle a few times. (Note after the fact: PWO's Jetlag got to these before we did and I went to check his review on this and he had the exact same notion. That makes me feel less monstrous). Some of Kimura's jumping knee offense looked muddy with the fancam, but I really love his double axe-handle clubber. He throws himself into it more than anyone I've seen. This was a good mix of brawling and more conventional moves and transitions.

PAS: I dug this, there is something very appropriate about sitting in the front row of a WAR show and having fat ass Hiro Saito flying over the railing and landing on top of you. No reason to think that this feud should respect the fans anymore then the wrestlers respect each other. Hiro Saito doesn't do a lot of different things, but does the things he does exceedingly well. His senton is honestly one of the greatest looking individual wrestling moves ever, just pulverisingly beautiful, the standing one looked bad enough, but that second rope one was like an anvil hitting Wile E. Coyote. If Kimura didn't move out of the way of the tope rope attempt he would have looked like spilled condiments. I do think this was the match that could have used blood, but otherwise this show keeps delivering. 

Shiro Koshinaka vs Takashi Ishikawa

MD: This was one-third a really good match and two thirds an excellent one. I loved how Koshinaka took it right to Ishikawa to start, but that first third got dragged down a bit by holds that lacked struggle (though, once the armwork started, not necessarily direction). What it did manage to have, however was Koshinaka being the only guy on the card really to play to the crowd and just enough brutality to keep things somewhat interesting. They get way more interesting when Ishikawa takes over. Everything he does here is great. He can't transition from one piece of offense to another without making sure to pepper in a stomp on Koshinaka's face. In the middle here, it breaks down to a lumberjack match of sorts with both camps going at it. We only see bits and pieces of this as the camera stays with Koshinaka's selling. That's ok, I think, because that was another strong part of the match. He's definitely a guy who could get the crowd behind him and they pop big when he hits his comeback butt bump (and as goofy a move as that always is, it has a symbolic power with the crowd so it absolutely works). His offense on the back half was a lot better with nothing seeming meandering in the least. Instead we get some nice knee drops and an unforgiving double stomp off the top.

I liked how smart the end of the match was too, with clever use of repetition and payoff. As much as anything else, the key moments of the match were the transition points: Ishikawa armdragging his way out of an armbar (followed by a huge stomp, of course), Koshinaka countering a three point stance clothesline attempt with a butt bump, and then late, when Ishikawa turned the third butt bump attempt in the match into a snap clotheslining on the top rope which allowed him to set up a series of chokeslams and the second three point stance attempt clothesline (this time successful for the win; I need to work in how great his rapid fire clotheslines to the front and back of the head were earlier in the match so I'm sticking that here). A match like this didn't need that sort of narrative cleverness. It could have just been these two guys killing one another. It's a testament how good this was and how well it closed out the show that they went a step beyond.

PAS: Takashi Ishikawa's WAR run was one of the great short term wrestling runs of all time. He was there from 92-94 and was uniformly excellent including several all-time level matches. This was a step below that level, but not a huge step and his performance was excellent. Koshinaka was really great as a underdog babyface (which is weird because this was a WAR show) and takes a big time bloody beating from Ishikawa and really rallies the crowd behind him. Matt is right about how awesome that butt but is as a momentum shifter. I loved all of Ishikawa's nasty stomps, he really looked like he was trying to extinguish a brush fire on Koshinaka's head. The spot were Ishikawa blocks a hip toss, lands a judo throw and just stomps Koshinaka in the eye was good stuff. Loved the die on his sword performance by Koshinaka at the end, as he is able to string some big stuff together before getting absolutely smashed by a big clothesline.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Gypsy Joe, Hara, Billy Robinson, Ray Stevens, Chic Cullen, Dynamite Kid, Bruce Hart

Billy Robinson vs Ray Stevens AWA 9/13/81

MD: The Ray Stevens Rule is as follows: No matter what wrestlers say about another wrestler, if the footage doesn't bear it out, we have to see it as suspect.

With every new (or more complete) Ray Stevens match, I hope to find some hint that proves every other Ray Stevens match I ever saw wrong. I never do. Yes, he's old. Yes, he's broken down from a life of bumping and partying and fast driving. Yes, there's so much we don't have. None of that matters. Why? Because we have other old, broken down guys and you can see it so clearly in the ruins of their movements. Why? Because we have old Flair, who idolized him, and while old Flair is heavily flawed, the remnants of wonder are still there. Why? because we have plenty of Stevens' partners, Bockwinkel and Patterson, and they are two of the most amazing 40-something wrestlers ever.

And you know what? He's pretty good here. He's pretty good at garnering heat in the beginning through stalling. He's pretty good at stooging for Robinson throughout. He's got some good back and forth punching. He's ok, decent enough, with his King of the Mountain segment. He takes a great beating, both physically and emotionally. I'd say a lot of the rest of the stuff he did on top wasn't very interesting, but he did manage a nice little headbutt to the gut out of the corner.

Unfortunately, he's in there with a far, far more memorable verison of Billy Robinson. This is Billy Robinson the master, Billy Robinson the trickster, Billy Robinson the super-over babyface in a territory that values the idea of wrestling skill more than any other. It's a Billy Robinson who is out there to make a fool of his opponent and then to fire back after he's kept out of the ring by him. He's great. He's larger than life. I've seen some great Billy Robinson matches, but I've never quite seen him so triumphant. He completely and utterly eclipses Ray Stevens in maybe the best Ray Stevens performance I've ever seen and you know what, unless you find me some 1960s footage, I don't think I ever need to see another Ray Stevens match. I've seen enough. He's not that great. Billy Robinson, on the other hand, absolutely is.

PAS: I enjoyed Stevens in this, he came off as a less sprightly Dick Slater, a tough guy who will oversell and stooge but still dish it out. Of course poor man's Dick Slater isn't an all time great wrestler, and it feels Stevens maybe a Sayama/Brody style lie. Any chance to see Robinson do his thing is awesome and he does a ton of nifty little twists and additions to the match. I liked how he got a little aggressive and ended up hurting his own neck, allowing Stevens to get some shots in. I also really dug how he worked his way into the Boston Crab reversal which led to the pin. This felt a little undercardish for a match between two such legendary wrestlers, but I liked what we got.

Davey Boy Smith/Bruce Hart/Keith Hart/Robbie Stewart vs Duke Myers/Kerry Brown/Dynamite Kid/The Great Gama Stampede 10/9/81

MD: Ed Whalen is the king of jerks. I knew when this was announced as a 20 minute clip, it wouldn't be a full match. It made me wonder just how long the original match actually was. This shows us about five minutes of shine early on, another ten of the finish, and a promo from each team. It's still a meaningful chunk of Stampede and well worth watching. The very worst thing about it was Whalen saying "hoo boy, I wish you could have seen that action!" or whatever when it came back. He was the asshole who decided to (litearlly) cut the tape!

Anyway, this was the Chic "Robbie Stewart" Cullen show, and how cool is the idea of that showing up on the WWE Network in 2019? The bits of shine we got were great, but also suffered from diminishing returns. All action, quick tags, just go go go in a way that wouldn't seem out of place today. There's no denying how workrate heavy Stampede was. I will say this though. The crowd was buzzing at the start of the five minutes and they weren't at the end, except for maybe when a groin shot was teased. It was great, but maybe too focused on one heel without enough teased even exchanges. They were pacing for sixty minutes but as five taken in a bubble, it was unsatisfying (but tasty) candy.

The heat was really strong, though a bit too focused on ref ineptitude/chicanery. Instead of them booing the heels (or even JR Foley), the crowd was shouting about wanting a real ref. I'm not sure what they went back with on this, but if it was something with Stu as a special ref, for instance, that's totally fine. In a bubble it was a bit of a shame because there's better way to get heat.

Cullen's a perfectly serviceable, very solid, brit wrestler in a lot of the 70s-80s footage we have of him. Here he got to shine as a highly sympathetic face-in-peril with some really great hope spots (including an absolutely lightning cross body out of nowhere). I'm guessing they put so much of this on him so that the Harts and Davey could be the ones to clean house at the end. There was a great moment where Keith (I think) rushed around the ring on the outside and just brutalized everyone in a mob scene.

The heels were more than capable in repressing Cullen. The tension kept getting ramped up because and in spite of the ref. The hot tag was well timed and hot. The babyfaces got to run riot on the heels to the crowd's delight. The finish was wonky and had to be hugely disappointing for everyone who just sat through 60 minutes, but I bet they all came back the following week anyway. Very fun footage, both ahead of its time and of its time in both good and bad ways, and it's a downright crime that all of this footage was cut and lost forever.

ER: I really loved all the action we got here, and came away super impressed with all of these Stampede babyfaces. Matt did a tremendous job of laying out the joys and frustrations, the ebb and flow, the reasons Ed Whalen can suck it, so I can just focus on how much I loved literally all the action. I have seen hardly any Chic Cullen/Robbie Stewart and he came away from this match looking like an all time great babyface. He was super fiery and fun on offense, loved his piledriver on Kerry Brown. Brown is a big guy and Stewart really looked like he had to strain and muscle him up to hit it, which only added to it for me. Also loved him hyperextending legs and threatening to drop his head to groin, and when the match quickly became him as the FIP it was as good as any FIP work we've seen. He bumped big (look at that grisly suplex over the top to the floor that Dynamite gave him!) and his small stature and teen idol feature hair made him come off like "The Cute One" in a boy band. But I thought all the babyfaces looked great. Apparently Bruce Hart throws the best elbowdrops this side of Hansen, really fast and full weight, and Bruce worked really violent in general, also hit a mean elbow off the top, and came off like a cool asskicking babyface. He always looked vicious when he would come in, and his viciousness made Stewart come off even more sympathetic. Davey Boy looked exactly the same as Dynamite, same size and look, even moved the same as Dynamite. He came in and hit a great jumping headbutt and later in the match Dynamite did one exactly like it. Davey Boy had these long arms and I thought he did a great job every time he tried to save Stewart before being sent back to the apron. Keith wasn't in as much but he also looked good in limited time, hitting a cool dropkick right under the chin. The heels were at minimum serviceable and it was great seeing Gama kick Stewart between the eyes, they all looked good bullying Stewart around. Dynamite was a clear standout for the heels, bumping huge to the floor off a miscommunicated dropkick, dropping Stewart with suplexes and a great high kneelift, and that killer suplex he hit to the floor, and his always strong strikes to a prone opponent (he hit this awesome falling lariat/fistdrop on Stewart that someone should steal). Preaching to the choir, but obviously it is a major crime that so much of this footage is completely gone. What we have here is gold.

Gypsy Joe vs. Ashura Hara AJPW 2/4/82

ER: I love an early 80s AJ garbage brawl, and this one felt like we had a cool layer of "is this FOR REAL!?" Gypsy Joe is almost 50 here and is a total savage, with William Murderface hair and a cinderblock forehead. He has a bunch of great strikes that all seem to land hard, probably because his strikes all land hard. Hara is no pushover, obviously, the dude played professional rugby through his athletic prime (weird he wasn't a Schneider guy earlier) so he's going to hit hard and absorb a beating. Hara surely threw some meaty chops, but Gypsy Joe looked dangerous. Hara would hit him with a shot and Joe would just stare at him and hit him back a couple times, harder. Joe had sharp uppercuts and these whipping shots to the the head and back of neck, and clonked Hara a bunch with headbutts from his big flat forehead. Hara kept getting pissed off and they played it like Joe was being unprofessional, so Hara kept going to the floor for chairs and he absolutely blasted Joe with a couple shots, getting that great Japan seat popping visual as it flies off Joe's head. But you know Joe gets that chair and hits Hara in the face with it, right with the fucking edge, then chokes him over the bottom rope and keeps bouncing Hara's head off it. You knew this wasn't likely to get an actual finish, but who cares as this had all the charm you wanted and even more of the violence than you could have expected.

MD: We've been doing this since May or so. I will admit I get some real enjoyment when I find something I know Phil or Eric will love. This one was totally down Phil's alley and we had to rush it to the front of the pile. It's an iconic Gypsy Joe performance. He's been in all sorts of spatterings of matches over the years, but this feels absolutely iconic. It's violence that doesn't stop and that goes on for a few more minutes than you'd expect. It takes one of my least favorite tropes, the idea that someone would just stand there and brace himself and take a chairshot, and somehow makes it completely and utterly believable. It's not about some sort of manliness or some sort of obtuse turn-taking when Joe braces himself in the corner and awaits the chair to come. It feels more like inevitability, like he somehow how knows this is his fate and his lot and all he can do is weather the storm. The affront offends him and he answers in kind, but he has seen the hopelessness of life and knows that all any one person can ever do is to meet it head on. Or it's just a fifty year old taking unnecessary chair shots. What do I know? It's still a really cool find.

PAS: This two are frequent dance partners (I remember an awesome IWE match between the two from 79, which I have to find and review now, and they matched up a bunch in AJ during this time), and there is no mystery to why it is a great match up. Both guys are willing to dish out and receive grim and grizzly amounts of violence, Joe walks forward and eats these sicko chair shots to his head and shoulders, and Hara absorbs some brain melting headbutts. Joe may have the most unprofessional and violent looking headbuts this side of Kurisu and he wallops Hara with them, along with a nice tasting menu of his famous lung flattening chops. Of course we get a double count out, but it would seem silly for this to end in a pinfall, of course it ends with both guys wandering around in the stands bleeding and hurling things at each other.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Jake the Snake, King Tonga, Piper, Dick Slater, Inoue, Steamboat

Mighty Inoue/Ashura Hara vs. Dick Slater/Ricky Steamboat AJPW 5/14/82

PAS: What a nifty match. Steamboat and Slater were working as a workrate heel team, dominating the natives with hit and run offense,  which is one of the only times I can remember Steamer working heel  The late Dirty Dick was an offensive juggernaut he had this great amateur scramble with Hara and lands some nasty jabs and knees to the throat and a dope piledriver. Inoue had a great series of rolling sentons, but this was mostly the native team fighting from underneath. So weird to see Steamboat hit his big crossbody as a heel double team, there is an alternative universe where Steamboat/Slater was the Midnight Express as opposed to a random one off team on an All Japan tour.

MD:It's hard to understate just how much we have to watch right now. We're looking at dozens of matches virtually unseen by the eyes of the community over multiple years of AJPW TV as well as handhelds and whatever else pops up. Just on what we have available to us in this moment, we could probably run this feature for six months or longer. That said, when Dick Slater dies, you probably should watch a Dick Slater match.

He gets a rap for being a Terry Funk clone/tribute act, but if you're going to be a tribute act for someone, you could do a lot worse. As a kid, I first encountered him as one of the Hardliners, with Murdoch, and while both guys were past their prime and while the act was short lived, they left a mark on me and probably set the stage for my enjoyment, later in life, of that sort of mean, gritty meat and potatoes heel tag team that would just credibly beat babyfaces up. Later on, I encountered him as heel ace while Flair was away being champ in 84 Crockett or attached to Dark Journey as a heatseeker in Mid-South or as a wild babyface in Southwest/Houston and that's not to begin on the stuff we don't have much of his like his big runs in Florida or his reportedly excellent team with Orton. He's a guy I really like and that I'm always glad to get more footage of.

This is just a straightforward, well worked, tag with a bit more substance/narrative than you often get from this setting. It might be the best I've seen Steamboat look in one of these random AJPW matches and maybe the closest to a heel I've ever seen him look. After the initial workrate-heavy (and very good) back and forth, it settles in with long stretches of dueling legwork, well-executed, and Slater and Steamboat working well together as a heel unit. Steamboat doesn't do anything outright dirty, but he's focused and unrelenting with just a hint of flash. It's a trip to see him breaking out a tandem elbow drop or atomic drop with Slater.

TKG: Aw man, I dug this a bunch. I am a big fan of Slater as WCW 89-97 rudo who you can just stick in anything and he’ll make it work, and that’s what this felt like. We need some scientific wrestling with Steamboat on one side and Inoue, Hara on other…get Slater and let him take over body of this. This is some fun scientific wrestling here and a neat Dick Slater showcase. I think my favorite section of this match was the early mat work where Inoue/Hara are working over Slater’s leg. Slater is just super active as a guy getting body part worked over, constantly looking for escapes, ways to break hold, ways to reverse etc.

Brett Sawyer vs. Jake Roberts GCW 10/23/83

MD: We watch footage. That's how we get at wrestling. That's how we understand it. Footage is our language. Most of the time, that's a blessing. When it comes to conventional wisdom and remembered narratives, sometimes it's a curse. It's disheartening to watch Ray Stevens matches and not see evidence of what everyone said made him special. It's downright aggravating to see Brody's offense look terrible time and time again. Then there's Jake. Jake Roberts, the self-professed master of psychology, the grand manipulater of the crowd. If you watch a hundred Jake matches, more often than not, it's either not there, or it's there to no great purpose. If it's there at all, it's there, instead, to replace greatness, as a lazy crutch to make it through the match, one that might bring a crowd up and down a bit, but never too up and never too down and never, ever all the way over the top.

Here, in the midst of one of the most legendary nights at the Omni, buried in the middle of a card that they had to structure somewhat carefully to leave the crowd with something left for the big main events, here against Brett Sawyer of all people, we get to see the Jake we were always promised and frankly, it's glorious.

Sawyer came in with a taped up leg, but despite giving up size to Jake, took the early part of the match. That is until Jake caught his leg in the ropes and starts in on it. After that he's just unyielding, attacking it from every angle, utilizing the full breadth of his tall, lanky frame to dive onto it for the sake of the last row, preying upon the weakness to bust Sawyer open, using dirty tactics like tying him back up in the ropes or hitting chop blocks from behind even when he didn't have to, and soaking in the rising tide of boos from the crowd. He oscillated between tearing it apart and letting everything sink in, slinking around the ring as Sawyer writhed. There was a palatable anticipation in the crowd for Sawyer to maybe make it back up in those moments and downright outrage when Jake rushed back in. Buzz came out as did your elder statesmen babyfaces in the form of Ole and Wrestling 2, making this seem downright momentous.

In the end, after the towel came flying in, Jake was escorted out by four police officers, and even then, I think the only things that halted a riot were the promise of the main events to come and the hope that sooner than later, Buzz was going to get his hands on Jake to avenge his little brother. It's everything we were always promised, finally.

PAS: It is pretty crazy on the night of Buzz Sawyers most legendary match, that Brett Wayne had the better match. This was masterful stuff by Jake, such a sleazy cheapshot artist abusing a poor babyface. From the moment he points to the knee brace, you could tell he was going to unleash some violence. I loved the early knuckle lock section where Jake kept climbing to the first turnbuckle to gain leverage, and even put his knee on Brett's shoulder. I also loved all of the knee work, it felt less like a scientific wrestler working on a limb for a submission, and more like a sadistic child torturing an animal. Roberts slinking around and chop blocking the knee, kicking Sawyer, lifting him up by the knee (which led to a great spot where Sawyer climbed up his body to land a big punch). Sawyer really leaks all over the ring too, and it brings out the council of elders 2, Ole and Buzz to eventually throw in the towel and save this kids career, as Jake just starts punching at the knee and staring down the crowd and the babyfaces. Bizarrely they didn't run Roberts vs. Buzz in the Omni after this, because this was one of the best set ups I can remember seeing.

TKG: I don't know man. I always like Brett Wayne Sawyer, and normally dig Jake egging on crowd. And liked some of the little moments like when bleeding Sawyer firing himself up by shaking fists and slapping mat and Jake cuts it off by stomping on his mat slapping hand. And loved the big Ole, II, and Buzz stuff ringside. Ole wanting to prevent Buzz from getting involved while interjecting himself and trying to fire up Brett was cool, but didn't do a ton for me

It felt like it just stayed at one level of intensity for 15 minutes, never felt like I wanted it to go from Jackass taunting audience and attacking leg to jackass challenging audience and trying to break leg...it went from jackass attacking leg and egging on audience to him continuing to do it until match ends

Roddy Piper/Cowboy Bob Orton vs. King Tonga/Superfly Afi WWF early 1986

MD: There was a moment right at the start here when I saw the paltry, somewhat disinterested crowd and all those empty seats, when I realized it was 1986 and not 1984, when I saw the two teams standing in the ring, seemingly calm, that I thought they might just phone it in. What gain was there to give this crowd, in this setting, anything but chinlocks? Yeah, it was Piper and Haku and Orton, but I had my doubts. No one's ever talked about this match, or even really this tour. There's not much evidence of it anywhere.

So, I was wrong. Very wrong. Piper saw this as a canvas full of possibilities and gave a performance that reminded me of Terry Funk in Puerto Rico as much as anything else. Some wrestlers see empty seats as an opportunity to have a night out. Piper saw them as hundreds of weapons with plenty of space for them to be thrown. It became less of a match and more of an open world battle, down to Haku chasing Piper across a field to tackle him.

Eventually, it more or less settled into a normal match with the heels getting heat and the crowd slowly but surely figuring out how to react, but even then there's the ever-present possibility that Piper was going to run off into the field at any moment. He'd settled down a little since 84 but really only a little. My biggest regret with this one was that the camera didn't stay on him all the time. Orton's great but it's the manic unpredictability that you can't look away from. When I watched this, it only had about 130 views and it still has less than 200 as of this writing. Go watch this now and boost that number. You'll thank us.

TKG: Was this good enough to have made the WWF 80s set? It’s not as good as any JAPW or Puerto Rico arena tour match but it is a fun arena tour match. And doesn’t have the inexplicable heat of the Spoiler v Rocky Johnson match from the same Kuwait tour, but this is so much more entertianing. The arena tour stuff is fun as all the attached chairs seem super awkward as they got tossed around and I dug big chunks of the in-ring stuff. Was this a smaller ring than they normally use? Really felt like the heels could hit a top rope knee drop to anywhere in the ring. I dug all the top rope knee drops to cut off faces. I think there were three or four. People complain about big finishing moves getting used in body of matches, but fuck those people. The Sivi Afi eating death finisher also looked as nasty as you wanted it to.

PAS: On the eve of one gulf state stadium show we get a look at an earlier version. There have to be max 150 people at this show, and for some reason Piper/Orton and the Tongans go completely crazy, I can't remember any 80s WWF match being worked like this, as it was closer to a Memphis arena brawl then anything else. They immediately spill into the crowd and guys in thobes are fleeing as the wrestlers are stumbling through the crowd hurling chairs at each other violently.  Piper and King Tonga was especially great with Tonga open field rugby tackling Piper in the soccer stadium grass and whaling punches at him. Afi some how ends up busted open and is really bleeding badly, and one point he is trapped under a table as Piper tries to crush his chest. Both heels take some athletic bumps, and Piper does his awesome blinded shadowboxing. Totally off the wall match, which would have been legendary if it was on a Saturday Night's Main Event instead of in front of two dozen Kuwaiti shieks.

ER: I had no idea WWF did a Kuwait tour in 1986, though I found an LA Times article from that year talking about how Hulk Hogan's single was popular in Kuwait. I always love wrestling matches held in unfamiliar areas, wrestling fans arranged around a ring differently than you're used to, and most importantly a crowd filled with people who don't seem like they typically go to wrestling shows. I have zero clue what the Kuwait wrestling scene was like in 1986, and it's not too much of a stretch to picture Piper and Orton talking backstage before the match and saying "Let's put on a show for these guys in dresses." And almost immediately the match spills into the crowd and the people in the crowd respond as if they have zero idea how to handle what is happening. People are scrambling to get out of the way, Orton takes a flying bump over the guardrail, all the chairs in the crowd look like every single person just brought their own chairs from their kitchen, Orton jams a chair into Afi's groin, Piper runs from Tonga and gets tackled from behind at the knees like a fleeing perp, there's a good chance the commentator thinks Afi is actually Superfly Snuka (which could help us timestamp this match more to the first 3 months of 1986, as the Superfly nickname certainly didn't last long, and Piper was gone after Mania and came back months later as a babyface feuding with Orton), chairs get thrown and there's a genuine sense of confusion and chaos among the crowd. Nobody has identifiable Event Staff gear, so there are some random guys just running up to the action, really could have been any old psycho. In ring there's some classic ring cutting off, Orton especially is awesome doing false tag claps and actively talking trash to ringside fans. We spill out to the floor again, Piper upends a table and throws it on Afi, stomping on it. Fans genuinely seem unsure how to react to any of this. When we get back in the ring we get a great spot where Orton and Piper cheat enough to make Tonga get in the ring, and as the ref orders him back out Tonga gets rushed and knocked off the apron, taking an absolutely nasty bump, falling backwards while getting his foot caught in the bottom rope and lands right on the back of his head. The ref checks on him while a double team front suplex easily finishes off Afi. Phil is totally right that none of this at all felt like a WWF tag match from this era or the next couple eras. Do we have any info on what else was on this show (other than the Rocky Johnson match that also showed up)? Do we have any information at all on why WWF ran Kuwait in 1986? Hogan popularity? Sold show? Fascinating discovery.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Rudge, Steele, Fantastics, Goldens, Kawada, Fuchi, Tenryu, Kabuki, Jumbo, Hara

Terry Rudge vs. Ray Steele WOS 7/25/87

MD: This is eight three-minute rounds. We get all but round two. You don't even notice due to the sheer consistency that these two wrestle with. It's exactly what you'd expect. Rudge is the world's best imaginable Barry Darsow, mean and grimy and grinding, quick to throw in an uppercut or a clubbering blow. Steele has the height advantage and looks like some sort of aging vicar, with the stiff upper lip, but a righteous meanstreak if you get him mad.

It has the sort of escalation you want from a UK heavyweight match, a lot of struggling over specific holds (they spend the fourth-round almost entirely fighting over a double knucklelock/test of strength), but Rudge's tendency to sneak shots in leads to Steele firing back, then they're right back into it. I loved how the height advantage played into things. Steele could come over the top to gain advantage on holds, but Rudge would grapevine the leg and turn it into a trip. He'd also come in from underneath with cheapshots now and again.

Ultimately it's a draw, so while we get that escalation, we never quite get payoff, just the two swiping at each other in exhaustion at the end. In this case, I actually think the payoff would have been as simple as a Steele bodyslam. They tease it twice in the match, once in the end of the fourth and then once in the fifth as a counter attempt to a Rudge cross body. Because they make the struggle matter so much and because it never even pays off, it means the next slam that this crowd sees, no matter the match, ought to matter all the more. It's good stuff in the way that most classic UK wrestling with solid wrestlers is; a bit long, a bit daunting because you really have to pay attention to value the connective tissue, but worth it in the end.

PAS: Remember when British wrestling was cool instead of embarrassing? This was the kind of thing which made Euro wrestling great, a pair of past their prime Thatcher voters with fag ash on their trousers having a mid day pub dust up over a five quid cricket wager. Rudge is an all timer, he is in that Finlay/Regal phylum, world class wrestlers who would smash in your teeth as soon as they would put on a leg lock. I loved how he kept throwing these little cheap shot headbutts, where he would grind his sweaty bald head against the cheek and eyes of Steele. Steele was great too, he would use his height to really lean into holds, and threw some nice kidney shots, and an awesome diving in ring tope which looked like it cracked Rudge's cheekbone. I would have liked a real finish, but the match ending with both guys exchanging dental surgery level uppercuts is a great way to ease into a draw. Class stuff.

ER: Fans of modern New Japan would likely just complain about how nothing happened in this match, and it's a match that goes the full 8 rounds with no pinfalls, a 0-0 draw, with big strikes that don't really happen until the home stretch. But I was hooked the entire time. Rudge is just so cool, England's answer to Australia's Roger Ward. He does this great act here where he's a clear asskicker who's playing coy. The entire match was worth seeing just for the post-bell interactions between these two after every round has ended. Rudge does all these annoying little things begging to be hit illegally without outright begging, practically rubbing his big toe into the mat while going "Who meeeeee?". He kept rubbing and pressing his head into the larger Steele, avoiding eye contact the whole time as if he was somehow coming off innocent. Eventually Steele does finally slap him late, and Rudge goes into this great drama routine, holding his face and staggering, really playing it up to the ref while the announcer knows exactly what he is doing. It was all beautiful. But I also loved how Steele came out to start the next round with a handshake, and Rudge reluctantly accepts it as he assumes it's a trap, as he was being a total shit and knew he had it coming. But it was just that, a handshake. It's amazing how "little" can happen in these matches but the style is so engaging to me that suddenly we're through 8 rounds and I'm still excited like it was the first round. Steele is a big guy and gets a couple of great leverage chokes on Rudge, really forcing Rudge to lift up his weight to get out of them, and we get a couple of great long moments of struggle and balance. They both work each other's necks in a way that give me flashbacks to weeks of chiropractor appointments, blocking snap mares with their neck muscles. Those European uppercuts down the stretch look like they would have dislocated my neck from my body. I love this stuff.

Jumbo Tsuruta/The Great Kabuki/Masa Fuchi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Genichiro Tenryu/Ashura Hara AJPW 2/24/88

PAS: All Japan six man tags are pretty consistently great stuff, and this was a murderers row trios which hadn't made TV or tape before. Look at this line up of badasses and they beat on each other like you would expect. I loved all of the nasty rear naked chokes we got early, both Kabuki and Fuchi look like they are trying pop Hara's head off his shoulders, and Kawada throws a nasty one on Fuchi too. Kawada had some awkward moments of flying, and it was clearly a good move for him to ditch all of his Tim Horner offense later in his career, he gets down to asskicking later and is the Kawada we all love. Everyone in this was great, Tenryu and Jumbo were killing people with saves, Kabuki was throwing his awesome uppercuts and thrust kicks and Fuchi was doing some torturing. We get a frantic finish run full of big bombs and the whole match was a joy.

MD: Totally agree with Phil here. This was good stuff with guys just crushing each other. Of course Kawada was going to end up as good as he was, sharing the ring with guys like this. They gave him a surprising amount of the match. Kabuki, on the other hand was heavily protected, but that let him come in and decapitate people with his strikes and then head back out, never harming the match. There was a good ebb and flow here, with limb-based control segments. I absolutely love that they used the crab both to target the leg in one and then the back in another. When do you ever see that in a single match? My favorite thing about the finish is that it was set up with a shot from the outside from the opposite corner. It was visually jarring but in a good way. There are a lot of late 80s/early 90s AJPW six-mans at this level but that doesn't mean we're not better off for having one more.

Fantastics vs. Eddie Golden/Jimmy Golden SSW 8/5/93

PAS: SSW is a Beau James run indy in Kingsport TN, which has been running for over 25 years. They have had a bunch of southern wrestling legends come through the fed and they just launched a subscription service. This is an early card in the feds history (so much that at this point James, sort of the Lawler of the fed is still working as a ref) and we got a chance to see early Eddie Golden and Jimmy Golden in the tail end of his prime (he was pretty old, but the Buckhouse Bunk run was still in the future) against the Fauxtastics (Jackie Fulton is replacing Tommy Rogers, which is a nice sized step down). This had some really great moments, I really liked Eddie faking a cheapshot punch, and a lot of the heel miscommunication stuff (I am a mark for an over the shoulder arm ringer spot). Bobby Fulton can really milk a hot tag, he isn't Ricky Morton but he is close, but this match went 35 or so minutes, and I think that is bloated for a southern tag. A 20 minute edit of this match would be really great, you could keep the early heel stuff and the long beatdown section on Bobby, but at 35 the seams started to show. I am excited about this service, there have been some great matches in the little bit of SSW I have gotten my hands on over the years, and I imagine their are some classics which will show up here.

MD: This had all the pros and cons of its setting. It was an indy match in 1993 on a fairly big show for the promotion (at least as best as I could tell). That meant it had all the time in the world and could press the southern tag stylings to their full potential. It meant that they could have an extended shine broken up by heel stalling and shtick after payoff-laden set pieces (often involving heel miscommunication). It's amazing how giving Jimmy Golben was in these moments given his size and that he could have put all that weight on Eddie. It meant that they could still build a double heat with comeback attempts and cut offs, and focused limbwork. Having Bobby Fulton in there always helps because he's one of the best at milking moments. It also had a 20 year old scion of a wrestling family, who was a total natural at some things, like the opening match shtick, but also had to hold up his end of a fairly long match. There were some baffling moments, like when Jackie didn't bump on a forearm miscommunication spot (it'd be repeated a few minutes later in a different context) or Jimmy breaking up a pin that should have won his team the match because it wasn't the finish, or even the ref just spending a bit too much time with Bobby on the distraction spots (though it's Bobby so you sort of buy it anyway). If you like the elements of the southern tag style (and if you don't, I feel bad for you), this had deep dives into those, so there was a lot to like.

Read more!