Found Footage Friday: RIP BART SAWYER~! VOLS~! WOLFIE~! FLASH~! ISHIKAWA~! JAGUAR~!

Lucy Kayama/Mimi Hagiwara vs. The Young Pair (Rimi Yokota/Seiko Hanawa) AJW 1979

MD: This one had been out there for a while, but never complete. The first nine minutes were always missing. Yokota is pre-Jaguar here. Those first nine minutes seem essential to the overall match; after a bit of feeling out with dueling foot stomps, Yokota and Hanawa lean in hard on Hagiwara. This includes some nice roll back guillotines and a rolling headscissors by Hanawa and Yokota, a lot of arm stretch surfboards, and tying Hagiwara to the tree of woe. It's a pretty brutal mauling, that lasts into the footage we did have, with a southern tag bit of the ref missing the tag before Kayama is able to finally get in. They steady revenge that followed (highlighted by the Kayama using the seated bodyscissors with roll-back and slam-forward we saw so much in the French footage) for the next many minutes doesn't resonate nearly as well without the lengthy initial beatdown.

We miss the Pair's transition back to offense (maybe just an off camera slam by Yokota) but the back half of the match is them demolishing Hagiwara's leg. Hagiwara is already an emotive seller, always active, always engaged and engaging the crowd and to be fair Yokota and Hanawa give her a lot to work with, just tearing it apart with targeted offense on the inside and outside of the ring. The comeback isn't as clean and focused as I'd like but it's still clever, with Hagiwara snatching a flying octopus hold out of nowhere and Kayama coming in hot. They go to that old southern tag standard of the FIP wanting back in too soon to set up the finish. Good match made better by the restoration of the missing footage.  

Yuki Ishikawa vs. Isami Shinkiba Tournament 12/25/2018

MD: It's old man Ishikawa vs a kind of tubby karate guy in a gi. Pretty self-explanatory really. Ishikawa controlled early by not allowing Isami to strike. Isami would have to occasionally use a rope break (and Ishikawa smacked him on the butt afterwards for his trouble). In the stand up, despite Ishikawa throwing some mean headbutts, Isami had a clear advantage. It was just once he got him down that he wasn't quite sure what to do with him. Ishikawa could absorb most of his seated blows and he almost needed to let him back up so he could get his full body behind his strikes. That opened him up for Ishikawa to snatch a limb though and it tired him out, making that possibility all the more likely. Finally, Ishikawa was able to move around him, getting a mare. Isami tried to escape with a nice roll through into a hammerlock, but he wasn't in his striking world anymore; once he left it, Ishikawa put him away with a nasty no-give arm trap.

ER: I thought this was going to be much more of an exhibition based on how things started, with Shinkiba looking like Sammo Hungover and Ishikawa grinning like a goof while playing Inoki leg kick games from his back. Shinkiba really doesn't look like he can do much of anything for the first few minutes, like Ishikawa is essentially working an exhibition with an easily takedownable tub in a gi. He takes him down and easily locks in a couple submissions while Shinkiba puts up about as much fight as I would against Ishikawa. Yuki even swats him playfully on the butt after Shinkiba quickly lunged for the ropes after a smooth Ishikawa rolling kneebar. Maybe that swat on the butt is what set this guy off, because then he starts throwing inside leg kicks and high kicks from both sides, Ishikawa leaning into all of them, and even starts open hand chopping Ishikawa in the arm to get access to his ribs. Shinkiba does a really great solebutt to the intestines, with a smack that sounded like a thigh slap but I saw no thigh slap in sight. When Yuki starts throwing headbutts, he hits an even louder one so I guess this guy just throws great kicks to the stomach. I loved him teeing off on Ishikawa's body with punches, pinning him to the corner with short closed firsts aimed at the torso. But he can't KO Yuki, and because of that, Yuki is going to find a way to tap him. 

Bart Sawyer/TN Vols (Reno Riggins/Steven Dunn) vs. Wolfie D/Flash Flanagan/Ashley Hudson MCW 12/25/98 (Aired 1/2/99)

MD: I wanted to do a Sawyer match since he passed away recently. I can't believe that we've never covered this one before (I had to take it back to the center to ask) because it's wild. Almost book worthy. Maybe book worthy. It's fifteen minutes of absolute chaos, ten of it being the match. This is the master footage so there's no announcing over it and you hear everything. The camera and even the crowd have no idea who to focus on since the violence is all over the building. You can be focused on Sawyer and Wolfie brawling off in the corner and hear sounds of impact from off the screen. It was back and forth. I won't say it was full of brilliant transitions or even a heroic comeback but it was full of memorable moments and lots of blood, most especially from Dunn.

There's crazy, heated stuff in here. Chairshots galore, including a battle between Wolfie and Sawyer. Riggins lawn darting Flanagan into the fourth row. Tons of Australian flag shots. The set piece where Sawyer climbed up some sort of roofing. The post-match beatdown where the heels got their heat back. And of course the crazy finish where Riggins shoved Wolfie off the balcony through a table and then Sawyer tried to leap down after him for the pin and had his foot jam on the concrete as he landed. These were a bunch of pros who knew how to handle a match like this, to keep it moving, to keep the crowd into it, to build to some very big spots, and then to keep the heat up to try to get people back for the following week.

PAS: The Nashville Fairgrounds has seen a lot of blood spilled in matches just like this over the years. From Jackie Fargo through the Moondogs through early TNA. Just a really cool example of the kind of main event all over the fairground brawls which have been mostly lost to history. No really structure, just a bunch of bloody brawling in every nook and cranny. Flash Flanagan is well known for taking insane stunt bumps, but Wolfie took it on this day, falling recklessly off the balcony and awkwardly nuking himself on the table and the hard concrete. I really prefer this kind of stunt to what we see now. Not only was there no crash pad, there was no athleticism. It really felt like a guy zooted out of his mind falling off a roof, which fit well with the chaotic atmosphere of the entire match. Sawyer wasn't the focus here (not sure this had a focus) but you could see how well he fit in this kind of Tennessee street fight.

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Five Years of Found Footage Friday: EARLIEST KOBASHI~! KAWADA~! A SAWYER~! A MICHAELS~! ARAI~! SATO~!

MD: We started this on May 25, 2018 given the weekly footage we were getting from the WWE Network and the wellspring of handhelds that were popping up from Japan ebay. Somehow, amazingly, we've kept it up for five whole years, at least three matches a week. It went from being New to being Found, but that's more for the alliteration than to smooth the possibility that some of this stuff had been out there before. While yes, some had, there's no downplaying just how amazing it is that we have been able to find three new matches a week, without fail, for five years. And that's with us first consolidating French Catch and now the Panamanian Lucha to Tuesdays. Let's face it, we live in remarkable times. In some ways, while getting all the way through the French footage was an accomplishment, us being able to find things to watch that have been outside of our broader community week in and week out for five whole years is more of a challenge. It's not all in one place. Someone posts it. We find it. We vet it. We expand the  knowledge of what's been out there. It represents the ethos of the blog as much as anything; digging in the crates, leaving no stone unturned, watching matches that might not pass some sort of old conventional wisdom test to ascertain their quality, spreading the news far and wide. The master list is mostly updated. We plan on foraging on so long as there is still footage to be found. Hopefully people have enjoyed this. Hopefully people find it useful and interesting. 

Toshiaki Kawada vs. Kenta Kobashi AJPW 8/30/88

MD:  It's just the first encounter between Kobashi and Kawada. It's just the earliest full match on tape of Kobashi. Totally outside our circle until the last year or two. No big deal right? And hey, it's good. Or at least, it's good for the experience level at play. There's a certain pluckiness to Kobashi here, a certain creativity towards the finishing stretch, certainly a willingness to lean into Kawada's kicks. Most of his offense is the sort of inexperienced technical stuff you'd expect: dropkicks, cross-bodies, a very fun short arm scissors. Kawada, meanwhile, was more fully developed, quick to throw kicks or just take Kobashi's head off with a back elbow or the clothesline that ended it. They played with the spin kicks, with Kawada missing as many as he hit. They worked in a missed body press and senton. Kobashi tried to contain Kawada by working his arm but it didn't help him against the kicks. Raw talent but full of potential. You get the sense watching this that these two were outright refusing to work the typical undercard match and that, as time would go on, they would absolutely refuse to be constrained. Kobashi had been a fan who refused to take no for an answer and in Kawada he had a game partner to stretch the rules. Even this early, there was an inkling of what was to come. 

ER: Nothing like a Kobashi vs. Kawada match as we all remember them: Kobashi in his classic blue trunks, Kawada in his classic red tights, just the classic Kobashi Blue vs. Kawada Red. As Matt said, this is the earliest Kobashi match we have in full on tape. And I love these early matches of favorites, because we get to see them working completely different from any era where people know them. Kobashi works like a full on young boy, with painful arm work and a snug short arm scissors, some crossbody blocks, and a super impactful back bump missile dropkick. Kawada was my favorite worker in the world for a stretch, but I do not and have not ever liked Footloose Kawada. Here, Kawada works literally exactly like young Misawa, like they were just trying to make a Misawa clone and Kawada was like 0.7 Misawa. Kawada threw sidekicks and a leaping solebutt almost exactly like Tiger Mask Misawa, hit a full weight senton exactly like him (which lead to a great moment later when he ducks a middle buckle Kobashi crossbody and then barely misses him with a senton which he had hit earlier). 

Kobashi works over Kawada's arm for 2/3 of the runtime - you know, all those matches where guys target Kawada's infamously lethal left arm and not his legs - and the arm work is painful enough that I don't really care that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the finishing "moves" stretch. Kobashi is someone I think had kind of middling stomach kicks, so it was cool seeing an 80-matches-in Kobashi just haul off on Kawada's arms with kicks thrown exactly like his stomach kicks, only really good. Kobashi's crossbodies land heavy and he leans into and bumps for offense differently than he would just a few years later. His bumping is faster and more upended, exciting. When Kawada lands a couple of his spinkicks (the ones thrown like Misawa spinkicks, not Kawada spinkicks) Kobashi gets just rocked with them, flying out with his heels in the air. Kawada's back elbow kind of whiffs (which could have been due to Kobashi bumping big and slightly early for it) but his clothesline is a 100% finisher level clothesline. Kobashi worked that left arm all match, forgetting that Kawada can hook that man's neck with impressive force with the right. What a clothesline. 

Bart Sawyer vs. Chris Michaels (Dog Collar) USA Pro 2001

MD:  So much of this worked for what I was looking for that I'm going to lead with what didn't work: 1.) While Sawyer bled plenty, Michaels didn't bleed despite the violence probably warranting it. There was a spot towards the middle where he went soaring into the ringpost. While I would have preferred the chain to open him up, I would have gladly accepted that doing it and then the chain serving as a focal point to woundwork. We got neither. 2.) The chain was too long. That had its pros and cons. It allowed for a few nice spots, including Sawyer pulling Michaels off the top to the floor into a dive. It meant that there was a ton of slack for hanging attempts or wrapping it around the fist or elbow and it allowed for crotchings in key moments. On the other hand, it took away from that intimate sense of desperation where the two parties just can't get away from one another that you expect in a dog collar match. This lacked that sort of close-quarters atmosphere. 3.) There was no finish; the New South came out to hang both wrestlers instead. But that's TN wrestling for you. It had to lead to the next thing. Between this and the Wildside channel we get bits and pieces of the Sawyer/Michaels feud and never all at once, so I'm not entirely sure what led up to this and where it was going, but this definitely would have made me want to buy a ticket to see what happened next. It just didn't make for the most compelling ending twenty years later.

As for what absolutely worked, the transitions were all great. Whenever there was a shift in momentum, it stemmed from either a mistake, an opportunistic moment, or just Michaels powering through and fighting back. They were varied and creative and used the chain well. They kept it moving. They kept it violent. The chain added to the match but it wasn't the entirety of it and sometimes, trying to utilize it too much backfired. It was a living, existent entity within the match just like you'd want it to be, and the hate and disdain between Michaels and Sawyer bled through, and not just through Sawyer's lacerated forehead. So not a perfect dog collar match, but certainly one with a lot going for it.

Kenichiro Arai vs. Yasushi Sato Mutoha Wrestling 11/3/20

MD: Grappling worked about as hard as grappling can be worked interspersed with larger than life yet entirely stoic character flourishes out of Arai. Sato had the intensity advantage, the striking advantage, probably the grappling advantage, but Arai's developed into a tricky bastard. Early on that'd just be a refusal to engage. By the middle, he'd be missing knee drops off the top and selling his knee to lure Sato into a figure-four so he could immediately turn it over and gloat. And then, towards the end, he'd just outright go for a eye. For most of it, though, he was cool, calm, and collected, biding his time, patiently waiting for a mistake or an opening, while goading Sato forward into either. Despite that, by the end of this, he was a sweaty mess, just a testament to how hard they were going and how much work, torque, and struggle was put into each and every hold. This was a Sebastian special but it was a great middle ground between pure technique and pure shtick.

ER: Kenichiro Arai is one of many criminally underwritten-about wrestlers in Segunda Caida's history. For a guy I've liked throughout his whole career, you wouldn't really know that by reading us. But he's great, and he's wrestled constantly with no kind of break since my teens, and no matter what fed he's spent time in he has always come across as someone wrestling and moving completely unlike anyone else in that fed. From his beginnings as weird headbutt offense guy in Toryumon, to his current vibe of grease monkey who moonlights as a carnival wrestler, he's stood out in unique ways the whole time. He moves and reacts differently. Moving differently is cool. Remember when all of us saw Johnny Saint for the first time and instantly knew that the reactions and timing was different? Kenichiro Arai moves different, and so, does offense differently than anyone. He works a busy yet simple style, acting calm while pushing the match in his direction; stylish, without style. He can grab a wrist or foot and not necessarily work a hold like Fujiwara, but just kind of twist and grip without letting up. Strong Grip based wrestling. 

The feeling out process is cool and has cool little things that you don't see, like Arai catching a dropkick to the ribs while sliding into a dropdown, or the way he just kind of knocks Sato down with a close shove and trip, like messy shootstyle. In fact, a lot of this match is pro wrestling style as theatrical shootstyle. They never treat it like shootstyle, but there's a sincerity in selling the pro wrestling holds that makes this come off as important. Sato is Mutoha's ace and in Arai he's up against a guy who's blowing into town for the first time and already working as the established ace. That gives things a cool energy. There are a lot of convincing cradled pins, and things jump up a level when Arai misses - intentionally or not - a kneedrop off the top. His missed kneedrop leads to an actual dramatic and painful looking figure 4 exchange, where he suckers Sato into doing one that he instantly reverses (complete with finger pointed to temple), before Sato reverses it back and it leads to a series of painful submissions. Grapevined legs, rolling heel hooks, a nicely leveraged trailer hitch, all of them looking like straight pro wrestling but with a BattlArts sensibility. Also, an excellent standing sub into a fought-for back suplex plainly shows that there is absolutely NO give in this ring, as Arai drops Sato in a way that makes it look like he was suplexed in a parking lot. How was this the first Arai match we've written about? Guess we need to keep watching wrestling. 

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: DOUBLE DOG COLLAR CAGE MATCH~! ADNAN IN IRAQ~! GUERREROS~! CHICANA~! LA FAMILIA MARKUS~!

Adnan Al Qaisi vs. Ian Campbell Iraq 1970

MD: Long 2/3 falls match that ends 1-0 for Adnan at the time limit (either 45 or 60 depending on clipping). This had been out there in parts but is newly clipped together in a welcome effort. You get a real sense of the imperial pageantry here, officials and a band and parade feel, even though the same footage of a few fans (out of the very many) is interspersed now and again. Let me put it this way. Campbell knew what was good for him here, knew what was safe and what wasn't. They weren't going for heat. They were using this as a showcase for Adnan's technical superiority. As such, it was a pretty effective dog and pony show.

Campbell had a size and strength advantage, but Adnan had an answer for every hold. Towards the last fifteen minutes, the answers were a little harder to find and Campbell could press harder with a full nelson or chinlock, but even those ended quickly enough by prying off an arm or pulling out a leg. In return, Campbell could use his strength to escape Adnan's stuff, but he'd find his way back in sooner than not. It meant that individual exchanges could be interesting, but that the total picture was a bit toothless. At times they'd break out into strikes. This first happened around the ten minute mark as Campbell was starting to register some of the damage to his arm. He had a great little bit where he trapped the arm behind his opponent's back with a hammerlock and tossed in a nasty forearm, but even there, Adnan fired back with a flurry and a jumping elbow smash soon enough. They repeated this a few minutes later and that's when Adnan got his one fall.

Considering the locale and the one repeated shot from the crowd of someone sweating profusely, it was probably sweltering there and Campbell was a big, hairy guy, but they kept a pretty good, competitive pace throughout. They'd go from a handshake to mean shots and back to a handshake so things were never going to come close to boiling over, but as they got towards the end of the time limit, Adnan increased his intensity, using leg kicks and just tossing Campbell out over the top repeatedly. That made it seem something of a moral victory for Campbell that he was able to survive to the bell (whistle?) even if he was a fall down. It was wrestling as celebratory propaganda, but as such it was fairly fascinating to watch, just maybe not 50 minutes worth of fascination.

Sangre Chicana/Gran Markus Sr./Gran Markus Jr vs. Chavo Guerrero/Hector Guerrero/Mando Guerrero CMLL 9/18/87 

MD:  Roy's back posting, always a good thing. This was from the 54th CMLL Anniversary show and at the very least hasn't been streaming online for quite a while, if ever. The bits in between falls are clipped out so it moves at a fast pace. The announcer also gets Mando and Hector confused for a good part of this and almost psyched me out, but no one moves quite like Mando. Primarily, it's another Sangre Chicana match in his prime, so that's exciting, but he's more of a dodgy chickenshit here, throwing shots now and again but mostly on the run. He gets slammed onto the floor right as this ends, so that's some comeuppance but it's more about everyone else. Markus, Sr., maskless, has a sort of enjoyable weighty swagger to himself. This is the guy we saw in so much of the Houston footage, just older. Jr. on the other hand, is younger than what I'm used to and a bit more spry. This opens up with fun in-and-out matwork between him and Chavo. Chavo's in the most but Hector has a nice snap belly to back and the end of the primera is a combo of that belly to back and an axe handle off the ropes. And of course, Mando is a ridiculous beast like always, full of contorted, tricked out offense: takedowns and monkey flips and bounding around the ring. There's a lot more to the opening feeling out stuff than the beatdown or the comeback, but both are spirited enough. If this led to some sort of Chicana vs Hector or Mando match, I would have liked to see that too.

Bart Sawyer/Steven Dunn vs. Ashley Hudson/Flash Flanagan (Double Dog Collar Cage Match) MCW 1997

MD: Very timely Bryan Turner upload here, though not timely enough to make Phil's list as an honorable mention. Sawyer was attached to Hudson and Dunn was attached to Flanagan. Babyfaces dominated early. There were a bunch of chairs in there, both wedged in the corners and just free floating and Dunn used them liberally. That led to free flowing blood. They'd switch advantage for a bit. Very few big setpieces here and just a lot of violence. That said, both Sawyer and Hudson did fistdrops off the turnbuckles with the chain wrapped around their hands onto the other. My most vivid memory of the match itself was probably Sawyer choking Hudson with the chain as Dunn stomped on his groin. There was a lot of that sort of thing here, but plenty of cage shots, chair shots, and chain shots too. It all built to a ref bump and Dunn accidentally clocking Sawyer. That's when things got really fun. Sawyer stared at Dunn, slowly took off the dog collar, snatched the key from the ref, and went to leave the cage. Dunn tried to stop him and ate a kick and a DDT for his troubles and Sawyer locked the cage back up on the way out, taking the key as the fans shouted 'traitor' at him. Hudson and Flanagan made short work out of Dunn after that, finishing it with a leg drop off the cage from Flanagan. Then, as Prentice (I think) taunted everyone on the house mic about how this was his New Year's present for everyone and not to worry because "It's just Steven Dunn", they absolutely dismantled him after the bell. No one could help since the heels had the key. Finally, Sawyer came back in to finish him off. Good match and a truly great post match angle.

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