Found Footage Friday: STEAMBOAT~! ORTON~! PIPER~! ORNDORFF~! HARTS~! BEES~!

Ricky Steamboat vs. Bob Orton Jr. WWF 3/6/86

MD: We've got a trio of matches from Richard Land's patreon that weren't in ready circulation here. It's worth checking out. There's a well known Steamboat vs Orton match from Landover in 85 and this is a good partner to that.

They go fairly long here (I thought it was headed to a draw actually, especially after Orton survived the flying body press), and it's relatively back and forth thought with fairly lengthy stretches of momentum. Orton's a bump machine here, flipping into the corner and flying all over the place for Steamboat's shots.

Likewise, Steamboat sells like you'd expect him to. After the first minute or so, you can tell that they were going long, but it really picks up in the back half. Steamboat gets a win out of nowhere but then Orton pile drives him after the bell and hits the ref, getting himself suspended immediately (got to put over the PA commission).

Roddy Piper vs. Paul Orndorff WWF 3/6/86

MD: Even Monsoon said this feud had been going on for a while at this point, but they get in and out and get the job done here. Great hot start. Piper's one of the best at throwing fists to start like this, making sure to lose and get knocked out of the ring, only to throw a drink right into Orndorff's face.

Orndorff spends most of the rest of the match selling the eye, and Piper uses to to full advantage anytime Orndorff starts to get over on him, including one great fall away (in the basketball sense, not the wrestling sense) eyepoke. Just when Orndorff finally has Piper on the ropes (or in a Crab as it is), Orton rushes in to cause the DQ. The feud was a little worn out at this point, maybe, but they covered a lot of ground with high energy in just a few minutes here.

Hart Foundation vs. Killer Bees WWF 3/17/86

MD: We come in slightly JIP here, but this was really good. Anvil takes the first chunk of it, getting clowned by the Bees. Brunzell has a great drop toehold, but more of a trip with his arms and there are some good rope running spots. Hart sneaks in on commentary to complain about the (legal) doubleteaming.

Harts take over on Blair and they keep it moving and interesting. Brunzell's hotheaded and draws the ref repeatedly giving this a real southern tag feel. Choking with the ring rope. Double teams (including a modified decapitation). Illegal switches. Some really good hope spots in there as well. Brunzell comes in hot after the (very earned) tag and hits the dropkick for a nearfall. The Bees pick up the surprising (to me at least) win after another bit of miscommunication. Honestly one of the best heel Hart Foundation matches I can think of.

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Found Footage Friday: WWF IN MLG~! IRON MIKE~! HARTS~! ROUGEAUS~! CHARLAND~! WARRIORS~! BAD NEWS~! SAVAGE~!

WWF House Show Maple Leaf Gardens 10/9/88 

1. Richard Charland vs. Scott Casey 

ER: Something about WWF Network on Peacock doing a big upload of several unseen Maple Leaf Gardens shows, and giving people a long-awaited glimpse at gassed up Scott Casey and Richard Charland, a man I once wrote about after seeing Rob Naylor call him the most nondescript wrestler ever. Charland is not the most nondescript wrestler ever, of course. That honor belongs to Ted Dibiase Jr., of course. Casey is GASSED and Charland  has almost the same torso, looking bigger. Not as defined, but bigger. I didn't plan on writing this much about Richard and Scott's bodies. Casey simultaneously works this as both a strong man and a fast undersized opponent. He knocks Charland onto his ass with a shoulderblock, but then works fast armdrags, but then gets out-knuckle locked. Charland draws actual heat by complaining about how much his hand hurt after Casey reversed that knuckle lock. Charland actually walked over to the ropes and showed off a small bruise on his hand, and I think I might really like Richard Charland as a worker. 

The Sean Mooney/Gorilla Monsoon commentary team is realll comfortable listening here. Gorilla is telling amazing stories about working in Canada and starts talking about a wrestling bear. There's a Yukon Eric story with a great punchline, and I fell out of my chair when Mooney asked him how he did against the bear and Gorilla matter of factly replied "Nobody beats the bear, Sean." Charland is great at working a side headlock and not letting for when Casey tries to push him off, occasionally unlocking it to quickly felt at the ref and crowd. When he does get knocked off he makes to leave the building, then walks back to the ring and gets brought in the hard with, landing right on his face. Segunda Caida is about to be adding Richard Charland to our "We're the Dumb Guys Who Like" display case. Tell me we have his singles matches against Haruka Eigen and Joe Malenko. Charland even takes a big bump over the top to the floor, then stalls around before coming in to slam Casey's knee and face into the mat a bunch. Scott Casey doesn't have great punches to comeback (his headlock punches looked good) and the bulldog finish is ugly, but it's the kind of ugly where it looked like a guy dragged a man down by the neck in a suddenly touch football game. Shocked by how much I liked this. 

2. Iron Mike Sharpe vs. B. Brian Blair

ER: Canada's Self-Proclaimed Greatest Athlete almost politely chastises the "small pockets" of fans who booed him, before going out to find a sign proclaiming him Canada's #1 Greatest Athlete and cutting off the ring announcer to show everyone the sign. Sharpe is incredible, running from turnbuckle to turnbuckle to show off the sign like Stone Cold cracking beers, even doing a dead sprint toward the turnbuckle the ring announcer and ref were standing in front of, sending them scattering. By the end of the whole routine the crowd is laughing and cheering for Sharpe, building to a real Iron Mike chant. It's 5 actual minutes of crowd work before Sharpe's opponent is even through the curtain. When his actual routine is finished, it takes forever for Blair to come out, long enough that the crowd gets restless. Sharpe wins them back immediately by doing jumping jacks and push-ups to stay fresh, then yells on the mic about what lousy treatment they were giving him. 

Sharpe taking over after two minutes with one big headlock punch, then another, and he hilariously uses the ref John Bonello as a human shield when Blair gets too fired up. Just two years later, Bonello would attempt to pay $5,000 to an undercover cop to use his wife as a human shield, but the crowd didn't know that Sharpe was actually in the right in 1988. Sharpe is good in control and great at stumbling around like a big goof for every in-road Blair makes. He gets caught in the ropes like Andre (though it doesn't really lead to anything) and staggers around after getting back racked, then comes up blinded and swinging at ref Bonello after getting his eyes raked across the top rope. Blair's finishing run is okay enough, but he's more interesting when he doesn't work like Brad Armstrong. Also, considering how BIG Sharpe sells every move ever done to him, it's almost startling how subtly he sells an atomic drop. If you were shown how he sells an armdrag, and then told the next move is him getting dropped ass first on someone's knee, you'd expect him to shoot up in the air like Yosemite Sam falling into the fire pit. Still, essential viewing for Iron Mike Heads (read: anyone with taste). 

3. Blue Blazer vs. Steve Lombardi 

MD: Watching this felt like watching an episode of AEW Dark with Excalibur and Taz. Obviously, it's kind of the other way around, but still. Monsoon went on about how he found a mask backstage once and hated wearing it, suggested that Mooney get in the ring with him to better call the action, positively expressed how much Lombardi learned from Terry Garvin and Pat Patterson, and compared Blue Blazer to Killer Kowalski because of their constant motion. The match itself was ok. My most recent Blue Blazer comparison point was his tryout match which was just a lot of noise. This was worked pretty much as you'd expect but they worked in some fun spots, like Blazer getting caught backwards in the ropes on the way back in to get clubbered. It was more or less exactly what you'd think, but unlike the tryout match, had some build and payoff and Blazer worked the crowd well both in his shine and from underneath.

ER: This was the weakest match of the show so far. Lombardi works like a more boring version of Charland and Sharpe, Owen works like B. Brian Blair without any kind of personality or fire. Lombardi really looked like a swarthy foreign heel during this era. He looks like Tiger Jeet Singh. Meanwhile, Gorilla is calling out Jesse Ventura for stealing every mannerism and article of clothing directly from Superstar Billy Graham. Mooney tries to laugh it off and Gorilla says, seriously, "I was there, Sean." This is a literal GREAT commentary duo. Owen has some individual things that look nice, but he's so dry about connecting anything, just has no flow at all. His leaping kneedrop looks good but he never strings anything together, and he goes to chinlocks more often than any babyface ever should (hint: no babyface should do a chinlock). The best thing Owen does in the match is a great version of the Bret chest first turnbuckle bump. He hit the buckles really hard, and I love how Gorilla explained that Lombardi whipped him into the corner so hard that Blazer didn't realize how close to the buckle he was, having no time to go in back first. He also takes a nice bump halfway across the ring when Lombardi holds onto the top rope to block a monkey flip. Blazer's belly to belly to set up the finish looked great, but then he won the match with an ugly ass Superfly Splash. It never makes me feel good to be a low voter on Owen. 

4. Bad News Brown vs. Koko B. Ware

MD: I've been spending a lot of time with 1986 Brown wrestling the UWF guys and Inoki in NJPW, primarily as Steve Williams' second fiddle and the guy directing traffic, so this was a little jarring. It's one of the better WWF Brown matches I've seen, very back and forth but with transitions that were believable and made sense. Both Brown and Ware are guys who really knew how to milk something, how to create a big visual, how to get the most out of the anticipation. Early on, that would be Brown letting Ware get one up on him but with only one move at a time, and they built to where Koko was able to string 2-3 together. That's not much different than having a superheavyweight who needs 3-4 shots to get knocked down instead of one, just more complex and created a similar effect. As the match went on, Koko would really play to the crowd before hitting a shot to the breadbasket or tossing Brown off the top, and Brown would take a big pause after bumping himself ridiculously after an errant headbutt. For a guy with such a tough guy rep who might be difficult to work, Brown wasn't afraid to look like a fool. He knew exactly how far to go and exactly what he needed to do to get his heat back. I found that true of his NJPW stuff as well, that he understood his role and his place, knew when to put his foot on the gas and when to let off.

5. Randy Savage vs. Dino Bravo

MD: If this was the only 1980s blonde-haired WWF Dino Bravo match you saw, you'd come off thinking that he was probably a pretty good hand for the run and it might be interesting to see him against Tito or Duggan or whomever else. He was in Canada, in the main event, up against Savage, going for the title. That meant that he put a little extra oomph into everything he did and threw his head back a bit more on each shot. He fed with some extra effort and seemed more engaged while in the holds. He hit both the pile driver and the side slam and didn't spend forever in a chinlock or bear hug. This was part of a two match series where Bravo won here with a count out and Savage would win later in the month. Savage kissed the belt as he handed it off before the match, but the finish was all about Savage going after Frenchy Martin (who had interfered once or twice) and Bravo coming out and shoving Liz. Savage tended to her, going so far as to carry her to the back, and Bravo, gloating, took the count out win. Post-match he held up the title belt while Savage focused on Liz, a nice bit of character considering Savage kissed the belt and basically ignored Liz at the start of the match. It was only a mid-level Savage title defense and the crowd didn't seem particularly up for Bravo until the end when he was holding up the belt (a terrifying image, really), but it was a top-tier WWF Bravo performance, for whatever that's worth.

6. Hart Foundation vs. Fabulous Rougeaus

MD: The Rougeaus had a corny but kind of hilarious promo with Jimmy Hart earlier in the night about deflecting to America. Then, before this one could start, Brother Love was introduced as the special referee and had a long monologue. The idea was that it'd go on so long that the tension and pressure and heat would build so that when Neidhart grabbed the mic and went nuts, the fans would erupt, but I don't think it entirely worked. The match was the dirty ref special. Slow counts. Fast counts. Most importantly, he completely ignored the double teaming, so it was almost all heat on Neidhart and the Rougeaus were great in making the most of it. The hot tag was tremendous with Jacques cutting of a Neidhart comeback and it looking like the heat would continue, him gloating in front of Bret, and then Neidhart sort of spasming the rest of the way there in a sudden motion and Jacques stooging to high heaven with his reaction. Beautiful stuff. They eventually tossed Love and a second ref came in to count the three after the Hart Attack. A pretty unique match for the WWF at the time, and it stood out more because of it. The Rougeaus were meant for this sort of thing.

ER: I thought Brother Love's time killing was more engaging than the Rougeaus, and somehow more confident, and this might be the earliest I've seen WWF do a full heel ref slow count match. I'm sure there's a famous one I'm forgetting, but heel refs weren't something they were doing until the Attitude era a decade later. I love how every single match to this point had at least one Canadian in it, but Bret and Owen were the only two Canadian babyfaces out of all of them. Well, Iron Mike Sharpe was a heel that got a ton of laughs, and the laughs are what's going to be remembered on the drive home so I guess he should count. I'm with Matt that this is the exact kind of match the Rougeaus excel at, their perfect role. Jacques and Bret are a great match, that's no secret. This has little things you don't see a lot, like the way Bret dropped the Hitman elbow onto the back of Jacques' neck on a dropdown, to Anvil playing the face in peril to Bret's hot tag. Brother Love cheats so much for the Rougeaus that Gorilla says that Helen Keller would be doing a better job. And, sure, to be fair, Helen Keller was a bad referee based on all available footage, but it felt like an unnecessary cheapshot to bring up her early territory work. There's a reason she got out of wrestling and into public speaking and activism, we don't need to throw dirt on her grave. Bret's hot tag inverted atomic drops really crushed some balls, and when Hart Foundation threw Brother Love out of the ring, Love looked like he was really resisting being thrown. It didn't really help him, he flew really fast through the middle rope to the floor holding the middle rope. Great bump. 

7. Haku vs. Hillbilly Jim

MD: This was taped for international Wrestling Challenge but it has one of the absolute best Monsoon-isms I've ever heard. "Hillbilly’s biggest problem in this match is making mistakes... That’s Hillbilly’s big fault. That’s been his big fault in his career: Making mistakes.” I wish there were more places in my daily life I could use that. The match itself was okay. Between this and the Hogan match that we saw previous, it's striking just how credible Haku's offense was. He had graduated from being King Tonga and out of a tag team and was put over with the win over Race as he was on the way out for surgery but between how tough he really was and how dangerous he presented himself in the ring, it's a shame they couldn't have found a way to push him even higher. He could have held down a role like that if presented in that manner.

ER: This wasn't great, but man was Gorilla tearing into Hillbilly Jim hilarious. I agree Gorilla, the ones who make mistakes are the ones who don't succeed. He even talks about how Hillbilly Jim isn't smart and never goes into a match with an actual strategy or plan. Sure, Haku may be the one in the match with a crown, but to Gorilla, Hillbilly Jim was a royal fuck up. Jim overpowered Haku on a long knucklelock, Haku threw a dropkick right under Jim's chin. Haku outpunched him but I did like Hillbilly's comeback right hands after Haku was ripping at his face. Haku is really good at being run head first into turnbuckles, Jim missed a high elbowdrop, Gorilla commentary far and away the highlight (and has been entertaining in literally every match). 

  

8. Honky Tonk Man vs. Ultimate Warrior

MD: A rematch for the IC title. It went a few minutes before Honky Tonk Man used the guitar and got DQ'd. Warrior caught it as he kept swinging it at him and smashed it. I think they had some longer matches with more heat and a build up to HTM getting his comeuppance but this wasn't one of those. Warrior was over and the fans were pretty happy anyway though.

ER: I liked this a lot more than Matt and thought it was a great use of, and great showing for, Warrior. It was a 4 minute sprint with no down time, and everything that was supposed to look violent did. I thought Warrior's right hands looked good (better than Honky Tonk Man's all match), and press slamming Honky back through the ropes into the ring came off a lot better than that spot usually looks. Warrior went hard into the buckles on a missed avalanche to give Honky a stretch of control, and I liked Honky working over Warrior's ribs with a megaphone shot and boots. Warrior's big comeback had a couple of great spots, including one of his best flying shoulderblocks, torpedoing right into Honky. The DQ finish was gnarly. Honky Tonk's guitars looked heavy and he blasted Warrior right in the stomach with a full shot. Warrior's chest was fully open, leaning in the ropes, and that shot had to HURT. I get why Honky Tonk got the hell out of the ring right after. 

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New Footage Friday: 1984 WWF MSG Shows

3/25/84

B. Brian Blair vs. Charlie Fulton

MD: Pretty good second match on a card. Straightforward but well worked with Blair controlling a shine on the arm, where he kept it interesting and varied, a pretty pedestrian transition where Fulton wouldn't break clean on the corner, some solid back work that followed, and a fiery comeback with good, chippy shots from Blair. All the offense looked good, the selling worked, the crowd barely cared, and Monsoon and Patterson were entertaining on commentary talking about Tony Garea and old injuries. About as good a mid-80s MSG second match as you could hope for.

Ivan Putski vs. Iron Sheik

MD: Well, you can't say the fans didn't care about this. It didn't last long either. Sheik looked fine in there, with good clubbering in his early ambush and then quality stooging and staggering and feeding after Putski came back with his belt and the rapid headlock punches. Putski knew what he was doing, I suppose, and even hit a nice suplex reversal. The Polish Hammer looked crummy as Sheik recoiled into the corner off of it to set up the finish. Four minutes that worked but that definitely shouldn't have been any more than that.

Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Tony Garea

MD: This wasn't listed in the results. Lucky us. Look, it was fine, but the only thing worth mentioning is how Sharpe got heat to start by complaining about his weight being announced as 282 when it's really 284. I like the sort of subtle image that evokes. This isn't like the Buddy Rose deal. It instead shows just how irritating Sharpe is to the crowd. Who cares if it's 282 or 284? What's the difference? Why get so worked up over that? What a pest. Of course, knowing about Sharpe's OCD, who knows?

Bob Backlund vs. Greg Valentine

MD: They were building to a rematch to end the next show, so this ended inconclusively, but what we got was good. Monsoon was playing up that Sheik had hurt Backlund's neck and shoulder, and Valentine eventually was able to target it, including a pretty nice short arm scissors. Backlund managed a back bridge while in it, before shifting Valentine over, which is not something I'm sure I've seen before. Of course the hold ended with the lift, before a brief comeback and a subsequent second bit of heat with the leg. There Backlund pushed Valentine off of a figure four attempt only for Valentine to run right back with an elbow drop which is an all time great cut off. It ended up on the floor with them slugging it out convincingly and set up the more decisive rematch the following month. Backlund got to interact with all the matinee kids after the match.

Paul Orndorff vs. Tito Santana

MD: We didn't really have a good match for Orndroff when he died earlier this year, so this feels like as good a choice as any. I know there's a readily available match vs. Santana (the May MSG) that a lot of people watched at that time. This goes back to the Sharpe bit (or Albano's pre-match antics) but Orndroff really lingers on his way in, including complaining about how his robe was being carried. Trying to get heat that way is up and down the card on this show and it's something no one in wrestling even thinks about doing today. Match itself was solid. They were working towards a draw. Some production elements are just funny. Patterson got there late to announce the first match because he was stuck in traffic. No one clued Monsoon in on the finish so he was aghast that it was even a 30 minute draw let alone a 20 minute one (let alone an 18:30 draw). Everything Orndorff did looked good. They were fairly minimalist in the matwork but it all worked. Tito doesn't get enough credit for his strikes though a good chunk here was Orndorff making them look good too. Tito had a great atomic elbow off the second ropes and his big comeback move was a diving elbow into the ropes after Orndorff had tossed him back in. Both guys could be absolutely explosive when the moment called for it. Finish was the sort of BS people were used to in New York and it sets up that May match which doesn't even have a much better finish.

5/21/84

Bobo Brazil/SD Jones/Rocky Johnson vs. Samoans(Afa/Sika/Samula)

MD: Historic match to some degree as it was Brazil's last MSG appearance. He was almost 60 and it showed whenever he tried to do anything complicated, though he looked pretty good moving around in general. I swear there was one moment in there where it seemed like he wanted to do the headscissors take over/headlock takeover at the same time spot with two Samoans and it just did not work. He got to clear house at the end with headbutts before they double clotheslined SD on a leapfrog (sounds better in theory than it was in practice, like the rest of this match). Rocky was almost 40 and he looked very good in there. I get that Brazil was a sub for Atlas for this short run but I don't see why they couldn't give them the nod on this. Brazil was billed on the way in as the greatest black wrestler of all time, but it wasn't a great showing and I can see why this stayed in the vault.

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New Footage Friday: SANTO! CASAS! ANDRE! SPOILER! RUDE! HASE! LIGER! B. BRIAN BLAIR?

Andre The Giant vs. The Spoiler Houston Wrestling 6/29/79

MD: This is one that was NOT on the NWA Houston channel. I had pushed Sharpe to find it but he never did. Thankfully, it's been out there anyway, just rare. Pretty fascinating match to watch because of the size differentials. Spoiler is a guy that would use his size and the ring as a weapon and just crush smaller guys and most guys were smaller. Here, it was his chisel to pick at the giant and I thought those moments were very effective. He was a big man but one that could and really would move around for Andre, so maybe the usual disdain Andre had for other giants didn't shine through. You really can't do a match between these two (or Mulligan and Andre, for instance, where it worked better) where the claw doesn't come into play as the great equalizer, and as much as that stuff seems larger than life, the bearhug bit here went on a bit long. This was especially true in a match where Spoiler was divebombing him all over the place, and because the finish was going to be Andre catching him hesitant on one of those attempts and tossing him off the top. Still, this was novel, a great look at both Andre working from underneath and the Spoiler having to chop down a bigger foe.

ER: Loved this. Minimalist, sure, but Andre is a guy who knows how important every little movement can be and he's someone I can't help but engage with. This is Spoiler's claw vs. Andre's bearhug, and we get a couple of great moments before we dive into that part of the match (with my favorite being Andre's armdrag takeover, holy cow!), but I dug how Spoiler decided early that the Claw was his only chance and he was going to play that record until the needle skipped. Spoiler grinds in the claw and the first time we see an Andre bearhug it's actually out of desperation. The Andre desperation bearhug is a fun treat, it's a giant wounded boar from the forest trying to use his strength, and it makes Spoiler come off like a legend that he had Andre desperate. Andre fights to his feet, Spoiler bets on the claw, and the eventual visual of Andre's buckling and going down, Spoiler essentially riding him down to the mat, Claw besting Bearhug, were wrestling movements I've not seen before. The visuals in any Andre match always seem to defy reality, in the ways he's able to appear both larger and smaller than he actually was, in the way he recoils into the ropes or moves in a way that nobody else has ever moved. I'm watching him here, driven down to one knee by Spoiler's claw, and Andre appears to be as large on one knee as Spoiler is standing over him. I know it's not true, but in feels that way, and in every Andre match you glimpse at least one visual angle that just seems impossible. I like the way the strategy and the attempts play out, like when Andre knew a claw attempt was coming so ducked under the arm to perfectly settle into a bodyslam; or Andre looking to pop Spoiler's head off his neck with a great headscissors to reverse out of another claw. We even get Andre "flattening the head" of Spoiler with a seated piledriver as Spoiler tried to get out of that headscissors. The finish is a great play on the match story, as Spoiler went right back to the claw, climbing the ropes to gain more leverage on the hold (a frequent Spoiler trick), but he gets too high chasing that Claw victory, and Andre simply slams him off the top. The simplicity of the match played to the strengths of both men, and I was hooked the whole way through. 

PAS: Really nifty match, I loved the dying animal aspect of Andre falling slowly to the claw, one of the cooler wrestling sells I can remember seeing. Andre was amazing at portraying invulnerability and vulnerability in the same match. Spoiler is one of the guys I want to see more of, he has been in some real classics, and has this unique style. He is one of the densest high flyers ever, all of his attacks land with so much thump and thud, Andre is a great landing platform too.

Hiroshi Hase/Jushin Liger vs Rick Rude/Brian Blair NJPW 3/20/94

MD: As a sharp wrestling analyst, I'd like to point out that this match is all about Rude being pretty racist in his pre-match promo, about Liger, Hase, and then, at the end, Liger AND Hase together, doing Rude's pose back at him, and then Hase mocking him on the mic post match. I guess there's also B. Brian Blair doing all the bee mannerisms in 1994. That's commitment.

I mean the wrestling was good too, but let's keep things in perspective. So, as long as he didn't try to overachieve, which didn't happen often, Blair looked sharp and crisp in most things he did. He could have still had a useful run somewhere at this point (like SMW, maybe?). You got the sense that Hase loved how riled Rude got the crowd because he ate it up, both in tossing people around, but also just in standing on the top rope and basking in it, or launching a 20+ rotation giant swing before stumbling about and doing Rude's pose. Rude was just completely iconic. I think my favorite moment in this might have been him hitting a top rope axe handle and then getting caught on the second one. You knew it was coming. Everyone knew it was coming. But Rude's timing and presence were just perfect. There's probably no one in wrestling history that was better at getting "caught" in that manner than Rude.

Really, the only thing that would have made this one more enjoyably over the top was if Liger had a mustache too.

ER: Rude bookends our match with some casual as hell racism, which undoubtedly leads to a hot crowd and some playful personality that we don't always get to see from Hase. Liger doesn't always need much coaxing to be playful so it was a treat to see Hase really rub in all of his comebacks, and Hase/Liger each doing a few variations on Rude's hip swivel is the kind of taunt that kept getting the crowd louder. I really liked the Rude/Blair team, and came away missing the kind of in-ring professionalism both of them brought Blair had the awesome bald spot ponytail, buzzed his wings like a bee during rope runs, hit a fantastic standing lariat, works fast juniors spots with Liger (with a real fast bump to the floor to cap it off), and was great on the apron. Watch Blair's reactions during Hase's long giant swing as he is unable to get in there to save Rude. Rude was heel perfection, and my favorite thing from him might have come early, as he locks in an insanely tight looking headlock on Liger, then gives him two punches to the kidneys as he's tagging in Blair. Sure, his overall meathead antics are what gave everything heat, and that spectacular top rope knee is the best, and I guess what I'm trying to say is that Rick Rude was too real to be real, a guy whose stock rises nearly every time I see him. Seeing the kind of work that he was putting out on house shows really cements him.

El Hijo Del Santo vs. Negro Casas CMLL Japan 2/6/97

MD: This has been out there but clipped on a commercial tape, apparently. Here we have it in full. We're into Santo's rudo phase, but not too deep into it, in front of an audience that only seemed half aware. This isn't a huge crowd. They're quiet for the most part. Midway through, Casas works to engage them and they sort of split the chants. This sort of felt like an abbreviated title match, or maybe one on fast-forward. Memorable was some really good matwork to start which led to the escalation into rope running and a crazy flipping senton through the ropes by Santo. Santo wasn't over the top with his rudo-ness. He oversold heavily a Scorpion Deathlock attempt (not even the hold) by Casas but that was to lure him in. He also threw a really nasty chairshot towards the finish, but ultimately missed a top rope splash and lost to the Casita. It was a good digest, with the right sort of intensity at times, and these two can do no wrong, ever, but would have been better in a different environment.

PAS: Really cool to watch these guys a 10 minute version of their match. It was a 97 Santo versus Casas match too, not just an exhibition of cool spots (although there was some very cool spots) but a nice capsulation of the brutality that these guys could and did bring on a regular basis. We get pretty spinning headscissors and dives to the floor, but some really cool struggling mat work and Santo kicking Casas directly to the back of his head.  I loved the early counter work out of the headscissors and I loved Santo smashing Casas with a chair, we really get everything we love about this feud boiled down to it's marrow.  Great, great stuff.

ER: No big deal, just the two GOATs working a hot Nitro lucha sprint lightning match in front of a largely apathetic Japanese crowd. CMLL Japan crowds tend to be small from what I've seen, but they are usually hot and appreciative. This match oddly came with the atmosphere of people sitting through a lucha show to get a free 2 week timeshare rental. But it's a perfect 10 minute synopsis on what was going on with these two in 1997. It was a highlights match (as much as any match with these two, as obviously they are highlight reel machines) with something to say, a match where the biggest spots shone just as brightly as their transitions. The big spills play well, like Santo surprising Casas with his gorgeous rolling tope senton too the floor. I've grown so used to Santo hitting that rolling senton in ring as a lead up to his tope past the turnbuckle, that seeing him take the opportunity to hit it to the floor - in a way that didn't seem like part of the plan or even something that had been fully thought through - made the moment even bigger. But the small moments played as big for me, like the way Santo held on to a waistlock as Casas tried to violently shake him, or the way Santo lost the camel clutch but gave up one of Negro's arms to yank his head back by the hair as a way to salvage things.

All of the scrambling was real snug, and honest. If they didn't fully have the other, nobody was pretending they were stuck. They rolled with the exchanges and reevaluated where the other was during the brief periods of pause, and I got the sense that they could have woven their way through similar sequences and ended up somewhere different entirely (and no doubt, they have done exactly this during their careers). Santo has the best stomps in wrestling history, just give me a match where Santo only stomps at Negro's body and cerebellum. Show me someone in wrestling who has a better boot to the back of the head/neck, and I'll show you someone who wrecked brain cells. Santo's stomps feel perfectly worked, for maximum visual. The knee work was all cool, Santo kicking at Negro's thigh and Negro going down hard for a fast dropkick to his patella. Everything felt like it happened because of something else they had done earlier. Were Santo's shots to Negro's knee meaner because earlier Santo had gone for a knucklelock and Casas just opted to lurch in and punch Santo in the face? It felt like that to me.  I loved the mean ways they kept the distant crowd guesses, like when Casas gets booed for ripping at Santo's mask, then eats an insane fast head over heels bump to the floor off a Santo dropkick. After getting the loudest heat of the match with that mask rip, Santo follows him to the floor and pastes him with a chairshot, not caring that they had booed Casas for something less severe, more concerned with wrecking Casas. These two give me life force whenever I watch them, and this was no different.

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