Found Footage Friday: 1975 CANADA~! SHEIK~! POFFOS~! VON ERICH~! STASIAK~! JAY YORK~! RED LYONS~!

Canadian Big Time Wrestling (Unaired Pilot) 1975

Gene Dubois (Dave McKigney) vs. Waldo Von Erich

MD:  Lord Layton is our commentator because that's what you do with retired Lords apparently. They led off with the national anthem. This is from London, Ontario. I don't know how much Dubois or Waldo Von Erich I've seen (you figure I would have at some point but I don't think I have), but this made me want to see a whole bunch more of both. Waldo had headgear on at first and slugged Dubois (wearing his jacket still) before the bell before taking it off. They really didn't look back from there. Dubois was a shaggy singlet wearing guy and came off like a world's best Brody in a lot of ways. At one point early, after eating a thrashing, he landed on his feet out of a back body drop and started to fire back. They really just threw themselves at each other the whole time, going in and out of the ring. Dubois caught Von Erich a few times, either pulling him out by the legs or landing him stomach first over the ropes on a corner whip. Finish was a let down as Waldo wouldn't let Dubois back in the ring and kept kicking at him again to draw the DQ, but this was a great start for this endeavor and I now need to see how much other footage we have of these two.

ER: I am a man who has watched a lot of wrestling in my life, and I don't think I've ever watched a Waldo von Erich match. That's probably not true, I've forgotten about 75% (more?) of the wrestling I've ever watched, but I figure that if I had seen him, then I would have remembered him as a shit kicking badass because man is this guy a shit kicking badass. Waldo crafted this match around a hypnotic blend of kicks to the ribs and body, and thumbs jabbed into throats. Wrestling needs thumbs jabbed into throats more than ever. That kind of sleight of hand simplicity isn't really a thing anymore and that's a bad thing. I don't know if I can ever respect any wrestler who does a flipping cutter more than a wrestler who does swift attacks to vulnerable body parts. Some 11 year old kid yelled "Go back to Germany!" while von Erich was kicking the shit out of Dubois' ribs and there's no 11 year old in the crowd that would have that kind of reaction to a flipping cutter. I love how Gene DuBois also went by Dave McKigney; two equally, specifically Canadian sounding names but names describing two completely different types of Canadian man. The finish was von Erich kicking Dubois in the ribs from the apron, knocking him to the floor repeatedly, until he gets DQ'd after the fifth or sixth time. How much of Waldo's 1976 All Japan tour do we have? I need to see it all. 

The Patriot vs. "The Alaskan" Jay York

MD: Patriot was from "the heart of America" and someone in the comments suggested it was Michael Farhat but I can't say. York was working singles for some reason and they went a different direction than the first match, keeping it on the mat. Some really good mat wrestling in here though, including York rolling across the Patriot to switch positions into a headlock. Eventually he got fed up and started clubbering and they went right home after that with York hitting a neckbreaker drop off the ropes out of nowhere. So far, I'd pick this show up if I was the network. 

ER: Holy shit Jay York. More people in wrestling and life need to look like Jay York. We've drummed the Jay Yorks out of wrestling and we're so much worse for it. I went to at least a hundred Giants games in the 80s and 90s. Good seats in the Candlestick right field pavilion were $6. Worse seats in the upper deck were $8, because you could smoke up there. Baseball's insane ticket prices drove away the Candlestick upper deck dirtbag in cut offs, no shirt, suntanned the way a guy got when he wore his faded black jeans outside with no shirt often, cig stuck to lip. Jay York looked like one of those dirtbags, only he's 6'5", and he's wrestling really well. 

Because why was Jay York this fucking slick on the mat? Why is this guy working fast Negro Navarro escapes and rolling wrist clutch advances? York escapes an armbar by rolling up Patriot's body into the cleanest damn headlock and he looked like 2x speed Jake the Snake. Jay York reads in no way like a guy who would be this good on the mat. I haven't seen a Jack Brisco match with matwork as well executed and interesting as York's. He throws short headlock punches and neck twisting leveraged snapmares. Every contact he makes looks good, authentic. He throws the best neckbreaker drop I've ever seen for his finish, turning one of wrestling's weakest clotheslines into a finisher clothesline. The key is York's fast drop, hitting the mat in a low quick ark like a reverse bulldog.  Where are men like Jay York now, and why aren't they wrestling? 

Cage Match: The Sheik vs. Tiger Jeet Singh

MD: Layton made sure to let everyone know how rare it was to see a cage match on TV. Singh was, I suppose, at least de facto babyface here mainly because people wanted to see the Sheik lose. Apparently in this one you could ONLY win by going through the door. Going over the top was illegal which is something I can't say I've heard before in an escape rules match like this. A few early shots in to the cage, a lot of scrambling for the door and cutting each other off. Sheik went to an object early as well. They both ended up trading the object back and forth. Lots of what you'd expect here with tossing and grinding against the cage. At one point, Sheik did try to escape over the top but got dragged back. Finish had Singh errantly punch the Sheik through the door and to the floor. I imagine people tuning into this would have gotten their money's worth here at least.  

ER: The best part of this match was one of the cage escape spots where Sheik is holding Singh's whole boot to keep him from getting out, hooking his hand into the top of the boot so he's shoving four fingers in with one hand and firmly gripping Singh's bridge with the other. It was showed close up and the struggle looked so real, which really stood out to me from Sheik's kind of phony old man brawling that I can never fully get into. 

North American Championship: Stan "The Man" Stasiak (c) vs. Ron Doner

MD: Fairly short one here. Stasiak ran into armdrags to start, including an assisted kip up where he got put right back down. He had big meaty shots that he took over with but they had a great bit where he missed the heart punch in the corner and had to sell his hand. He got caught up in the ropes and pummeled too but all it took was him taking over one last time and locking on for the heart punch to win it. Love the heart punch. This was fine for what it was but it wasn't meant to be much.

ER: All of the stuff I wrote about wanting to see wrestlers (and citizens) who look like Jay York up above, all of that could be said romantically about Stan Stasiak. I wish there was anywhere I could go to see a wrestler who looks like and wrestles like Stan Stasiak. Wrestlers should look like him, and have names that sound like his. He is a man who looks like one of the guys drinking beer with your dad after their strip mall office car club meeting. Stasiak has a body like Dennehy, head like Meatloaf, muttonchops of the truck driver who starts a fight with an outsider at a diner. Stasiak's heart punch is the greatest version of one of wrestling's great Lost Finishers. Loved the heart punch miss, putting over how he throws it hard enough to hurt his hand. The last guy I saw use a sincere heart punch was the late Bison Smith, early in his career when he was wrestling as Super Destroyer 2000. You know that wrestler I don't like on Beyond undercards who works a wink heavy heart punch finisher? I don't know if there is one, but, if there is, he sucks.  

World Tag Team Championship: The Poffos (Angelo & Lanny Poffo) w/ Saul Weingeroff (c) vs. "Irish" Mickey Doyle & Billy Red Lyons 

MD: There's a self-published Mickey Doyle biography out there and I'm tempted to get it. He was touted here as the fresh young star of the promotion, though I don't think he was quite as young as they were billing him. It's great to see Angelo and Lanny all the way back in 75. Lanny had to be 19 here tops and he was full of cartwheels and backflips as you'd imagine. He had a singlet over his tights and took the singlet off, which was silly.  

Honestly, this was a bit of a mess. It was almost refreshing to see how much of a mess as it was because you never see old matches that go over the rails quite like this. Lanny bumped and stooged all over the place, just flailing and flapping around. At one point he took a back body drop face first in the oddest way and he hit a pretty odd missile dropkick too. Angelo begged off and got bodyslammed what must have been six times to the point of it being very funny but not making much sense. Doyle's hair started springing every which way like it was Lanny's cartwheels. Lyons looked great ("rolling like a winner" as Layton put it), full of fire and solid looking shots but that was kind of beside the point.  The ultimate finish had Lanny and Doyle crash into each other and Angelo push Lanny on top of him from the outside. That brought Layton out to tell the ref what happened and get things overturned (because of that push!) and when Saul and Angelo complained, Layton said that he wasn't just a commentator but that he represented all of the people in the crowd, which was a unique way of putting it. Anyway, this was entertaining but definitely unmoored. 

ER: How weird is Lanny Poffo? Lanny is one of wrestling's all time weirdest guys and we should probably write more about him at Segunda Caida. What an off putting fucking weirdo. This unaired pilot was great fun, filled with guys tailor made for Michigan/Canadian fans. Then we get to the main event where a bleached blond weirdo who you would avoid in a supermarket sucks in his stomach in a threateningly sexual but gross way and you know exactly why this shit never aired. What a weird guy. I've never seen bleached blonde Lanny and it's horrifying. He looks like gay porn Lurch and cartwheels around, then stands in postures you never see a man stand in. Poffo bumps weirder than the World of Sport roster, falling in a way that seems inspired by nothing. Every bump he takes is weird, every move delivered as if by a ribbon dancer who had only heard about offense described verbally. His greatest weird guy bump is easily his back body drop. The first time you see it, it looks like an accident. By the time he's done three crazier ones, you just realize Lanny Poffo was a teenage genius. His back body drop is taken horizontally, flipping over his opponent like a log rolling off a cliff, not end over end. It's so much harder to get height on your bump that way, and yet here's Poffo taking increasingly higher versions. I need to see more first two years Lanny, but I think we can say that at one point, he might have been a more interesting and unique wrestler than his brother. That's an incredible revelation.

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Found Footage Friday: GATTONI~! LYONS~! MILLERS~! CARPENTIER~! STANLEE~!

Maple Leaf Wrestling 1/15/57 

Baron Gattoni vs. Billy Red Lyons

MD: Lyons was so young that they were just calling him Red Lyons. They said he had worked in the States for a year but was newly debuting in Canada. Apparently Gattoni (who was billed as Italian though he was from Argentina I think) was also new to the territory. This was mainly to establish him as a threat while giving people a look at Lyons, being a plucky young Hamilton native. Gattoni controlled the center, shoving Lyons down repeatedly. Lyons threw some shots. Gattoni would hit him once for every four or five and floor him. He won it with a bearhug in just a few minutes. The sequence post match where Lyons was totally prone as they waited for the stretcher might have lasted longer than the match.

The Millers (Bill/Ed Miller) vs. Pat Flanagan/Ken Kenneth

MD: I can't say I'm super familiar with Flanagan and Kenneth but I'm kind of annoyed they didn't team Ken Kenneth with Stan Stanlee. Ah well. Kenneth was from New Zealand. Flanagan had a nice spinning back heel kick (mule kick as they called it) and they were fine. Good heart. Stayed in it. Slick at times. But this was the Millers' show. They were hulking brutes, one bigger than the other, but both far bigger than their opponents. They would yank an opponent into the corner by the leg, but would also cheat at every opportunity: hairpulls, tights pulls, double teams. If you got too close to the heel corner, you were in trouble and even two refs couldn't keep them at bay. In fact, the two refs did a better job of missing tags on the babyface side than they did controlling the Millers even if they tried. Usually that'd put heat on the refs but it felt a bit like chaotic joshi matches with lots of interference where you throw your hands up and wonder what the refs could even do.

They controlled for most of this with little bits of hope if the babyfaces could get a tag or even just stay out of the heel corner for long enough, but even just the reach of the Millers made it hard. They were very good at what they did and they won it by switching off on Torture Racks (Ohio Backbreaker) to create a strong visual. Solid stuff overall but maybe a bit too much of the same for a bit too long.

Eduoard Carpentier vs. Steve Stanlee

MD: This is what we're here for, as Carpentier comes off as a star as well as anyone of his era. Stanlee was Mr. America and the commentary likened him to Buddy Rogers (though maybe a little less unscruplious). He faked out Carpentier on the shake before the match but that was the last time he was going to get one up on him for the next ten minutes. Every time he did something (a trip, a cheapshot) Carpentier had an answer, bounding onwards and upwards entertainingly and always with a flourish after the fact to let the fans know that he was special. Stanlee was a good sport, playing along by failing to do some of those flourishes himself to high stooging effect. One bit and one tricked out escape after the next. Carpentier didn't come off as quite as technically sound as some of his French Contemporaries but he made every bit he did do resonate and stand out more.

Stanlee did get up on Carpentier eventually just by smashing at him with knees and punches, especially out of a headlock. Then he shited it around for an inverted headlock and that worked for a bit, right until it didn't as Carpentier did the Sliced Bread (and Chris Hero's joke, not mine, is that it's #1 if it happened back in the 50s). counter for the win. Quick but the fans got some value nonetheless. Post match Stanlee tried to make a scene and got his head twisted multiple times for his trouble.

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Found Footage Friday: LYONS~! SCHMIDT~! SUPER ASTRO~! SUPER BOY~! OGAWA~! SAWADA~! FUJITA~!

Billy Red Lyons vs. Hans Schmidt 11/13/59

MD: Schmidt was announced here as a replacement for Dick the Bruiser. We don't have a ton of Lyons footage in his prime and he was quite young here, on the way up. Davis says this was his biggest challenge yet. He was quick though, which seemed to light a fire under Schmidt too. By the five minute mark or so, they were both on their knees slugging it out with each other. Lyons held his own for fifteen minutes or so, but ended up counted out when an over-excited admirer wouldn't let go of him on the outside. Pretty clever count out spot that let Schmidt win while making Lyons look like he really had a shot.

Super Astro/Principe Joel/Jalisco vs. Super Boy/Fobia/Mano Negra Compton Lucha 6/5/95

MD: The primary pairing here was Super Astro vs Mano Negra and while Negra was high energy both in stalling and in his exchanges, the few glimpses of Super Astro vs Super Boy that we got made me wish that was the primary pairing instead. Jalisco stood out too as he had a certan swagger, even posture I would say, that made him stand out. He would take out all of the rudos with the same move and then the ref too for good measure. Super Boy had a great dive at the end (with Jalisco following up with a sort of elbow dropping dive) to set things up for Mano Negra vs Super Astro again. At that point, however, Joel turned heel and it ended as a pretty big rudo beatdown that probably built to some bigger match later on. The turn didn't really take away from the match as it felt like it came right at the end.

PAS: Very fun lucha trios filled with talented professional luchadores. The extra juice was getting to see bits of Super Astro and Super Boy two of the most electric exciting luchadores of all time. I love a fat highflyer and both of these guys were perfect example of melding chub and athleticism. Super Boy hits a crazy flipping senton to end a fall, and Astro is twinkle toed as ever. Finish was a bit of a dog's breakfast, but the stuff preceding it was a blast

Naoya Ogawa/Atsushi Sawada vs. Kazuyuki Fujita/Kendo Kashin IGF 4/11/15

MD: 8 minutes here and it's all action. The Fujita vs Sawada exchanges are great, just that right mix of intensity and flair and headbutts. Sawada really brings the energy whether it's his initial takedown or just scooting around the ring out of the way when Fujita gets the advantage. We don't get a ton of Kashin and Ogawa here, but the contributions are worthwhile, with Kashin trying to kill Sawada on the outside with some cloth around the neck and Ogawa giving in to Sawada's desire to get STO'd by his own partner so that he can hit a ridiculous and serene tandem DDT. I'd happily watch a 10 match Sawada vs Fujita series if such a thing existed.

PAS: This kind of hardhitting quasi-shoot puro stuff is right up my alley.  Fujita is such a rock headed dim bruiser and it is great to watch him bully Sawada and have Sawada fire back. Loved the flurry of strikes in the corner by Sawada, one of the advantages of wrestling Fujita is that you can hit him as hard as you can and it won't faze him a bit. Kashin and Ogawa are smaller players in this match, but Ogawa has such a great arrogant bruiser vibe, that he works great in this match as a foil. Taunting and bullying his partner until he had enough and just disposed of him. 

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