Found Footage Friday: MIL~! GORDMAN~! KOLOFF VS KOLOFF~! GRINGOS LOCOS~! PANTHER~!

Mil Mascaras vs. Black Gordman (Mexican Death Match) Los Angeles 80s

MD: This is from Richard Land's last upload as well. We'll probably have at least one more week of the German footage after this, but we might break it up so we can focus on some things that aren't behind paywalls (even if it's worth paying). I'd never seen it or seen it listed anywhere. Gordman is listed as a 13 time Americas tag champion and winner of the 1974 Battle Royal which makes him feel like a bigger deal than he usually does when he pops up elsewhere in the early 80s. This is a Mexican Death match. The ref can't stop it. There must be a winner after a pin and a ten count.

They go back and forth for the most part, with the transitions generally based around low blows. Mil's stuff looks really good here, including some really solid jabs I don't associate him with, plus a nice bodyslam into a suplex type move, and just keeping the crowd up by slamming Gordman's head into things. Gordman eventually brings a chair in, misses, and gets clocked by Mil. Mil goes one step further and nails who we think to be Pete Collins (the guy who created the Monster in an infamous shlock gimmick that I can't find much about). Collins bleeds big off of the errant shot, putting it over well by staring off in fury as the blood runs down his face (refusing to wipe it off). After Mil and Gordman gnaw on each other a bit, Collins slips Gordman a chain. Mil gets it, clocks Gordman for the pin, clocks Collins while the count is going, and the fans go up as high as they can get for it all. Pretty classic, iconic stuff.

ER: My dad used to mention Black Gordman as a guy he used to see at the Cow Palace when he was a young man, and I remember reading a Meltzer bio about him and Great Goliath probably two decades ago, about how unassuming a star Gordman was. I haven't seen much footage of him (because we didn't have much Los Angeles or San Francisco) and while I know this is late in his career, I do love how unassuming he is. He is a man of my size but shorter, has next to no offense, no real look, and yet clearly knows exactly what to do opposite Mil Mascaras's bright glowing star. Mascaras looks so cool here, like when Eddie came back somehow leaner than ever while also being more muscular than ever. Laugh all you want about the sucked in stomach but what the fuck do you know about Johnny Weissmuller? Gordman had this athletically unathletic way of taking Mil's offense, like how he would get rammed into a turnbuckle differently than anyone I've ever seen, not recoiling at all, just splatting his face into it like the victim of a pie gag. But then when it's finally time to separate from the buckles he takes this beautiful bouncing rolling backward bump and comedic pratfall. The man has no offense and when it's finally time for him to take over, the zeal he puts into biting Mil's fingers is hilarious. A wrestler who finally has their chance to take control who chooses to just bite is a concept that no longer exists in wrestling, in the same way that it would be impossible for a guy who looked like Gordman to be a star. Mil's chain wrapped fistdrop is a cool ass way to earn a 10 count, dropped right into the button of Gordman's jaw. 

Ivan Koloff vs. Nikita Koloff (Chain Match) Peach State Wrestling 10/90

MD: Obviously another great vein of footage comes from the work done by Ben/goc/KrisP/ArmstrongAlley, whatever you want to call him. We rarely focus on the stuff he puts together and organizes because it's more episodic territory work and we tend to hone in on single matches with FFF. This is definitely a single match from a recent batch of Peach State he's been putting together. It's more found than new but it's gotten very little attention over the years.

Yes, this is a touch the corners chain match with most of the blood and guts coming post match as a Sheik and his minion come out to attack (heel) Ivan so (face) Nikita can make the save and they can presumably set up tag matches to come. That said, these two absolutely know how to work one of these to the fullest. That means they go for the corners (and get three) after each knockdown, generally leading to an almost immediate transition and repeating the formula, but there's also escalation in the offense.

That means things start out with punches and kicks, and they slowly work in the chain for punches and whip shots and comedic crotchings, before building to Nikita hitting quasi sickles with it wrapped around his arm. Very effective pacing overall. Finish has the ref take an errant shot and Ivan winning even though he missed a corner before everything breaks down post-match. The save is pretty endearing overall though and while I would prefer a big mauling and a big comeback as opposed to the constant stop-start of going for the corners, they were so good at these matches that they made things feel fairly dramatic nonetheless.

 

Eddy Guerrero/Love Machine Art Barr vs. Blue Panther/El Magnate Monterrey 1993

MD: I don't know if this is the best match we've gotten out of this channel, but it feels almost like the most surprising. You figure you're not going to get another Gringos Locos match and here we are. The alignments were weird here as we were post mask match and Eddy and Barr were definitely going in very hot at times but the ref was stopping them at other times and Panther and Magnate were technically rudos. Barr cut an impassioned pro Monterrey speech at the end as well. But on some level it didn't matter because animosity is animosity and this had a ton of it. That meant lots of Barr going after Panther's match and Eddy running interference. It meant a comeback where they were beating Barr into the seats. It meant a wild dive or two. And maybe most of all, it meant an absolutely crazy finish where Barr went for a Martinete playing on the apuestas match and Panther snuck in an upside-down foul. Great finish. This was better to just take in and enjoy because who knows if anything else quite like it will pop up.

ER: 1997 Eddie goes harder than almost any wrestler I've loved; a blow away great year where he returns from an injury fully formed into the most charismatic heel in wrestling. It was incredible. And you see him here in '93 and he looks good, the movement and impact are getting there. But he's nowhere near 1997 Eddie just like that Eddie was nowhere near 2003 Eddie. And you see Art Barr in 1993 and you see him bringing 1997 Eddie energy with this wild eyed flipped lid intensity that gives an edge to him as a tecnico. Tecnico Eddie never had any edge. Heel Eddie was a more polished and higher end of Art Barr's Gringo Loco rudo. Eddie was more athletic and had better comedic timing and better ring timing and had more impressive body control. As brilliant as it is - and 1997 Eddie really, really is - it's a juiced up version of 1993 Art Barr. Art Barr had this intensity as a tecnico that can only be pulled off naturally. Every part of Barr going after Panther was constantly ramped up, punches building to harder punches to dramatically unlacing a mask to being whipped into a violent tope. Panther ends this with a full armed shot to Love Machine's balls to stop a martinete, a surprise new note in a truly great feud. 

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Found Footage Friday: PIPER IN LA~! ROCK 'N' ROLLS VS. TN VOLS~! 83 EL DANDY~!

Elimination Tag: Roddy Piper/Ron Bass/Moondog Mayne vs. Black Gordman/Alex "KO" Perez/Tommy Sawyer LA 1977

MD: A massive tape of Spanish Language TV LA/SF went up a few weeks ago. It's timestamped to a degree but don't look too closely at that or else you'll think there's a Piper vs Race match we've never heard of before; it's just the set up. This, however, we do get in full and it's a lot of fun, another good look at West Coast 70s heel Piper and especially Moondog Mayne, and it also gives us babyface hero Black Gordman which is not a role we usually think of with him. Perez was a legendary puncher for who I don't think we have a lot of footage and Sawyer is not Buzz Sawyer but a territory babyface from the late 70s. At this point, Bass and Piper were the Americas Tag Champions and Mayne was positioned as the centerpiece. The VQ is terrible. The sound's off. It's still history and worth watching.

Piper got it already, feeding into armdrags and then keeping the face in his corner at first opportunity. We only see a minute of Perez in here but Piper eats his punches perfectly before making him slip on a banana peel to eliminate him on a roll up out of a slam attempt. Mayne was running from Gordman throughout here. It was hard to get a great sense of Sawyer but he had decent fire. Piper managed to eliminate him too by tricking the ref into thinking he tossed him over the top. After that, Mayne had a great moment of getting his partners down to the mat and drawing out strategy to his finger now that it was 3 on 1 but the 1 was a guy that none of them wanted to face. Gordman is sort of a reverse Ricky Steamboat, someone I've pictured as a lifetime heel but he was pretty great destroying everyone here until the numbers game got the better of him. There's a straight up Piper/Bass vs. Gordman/Sawyer tag in this footage too and I want to check that out later if this was any indication.  

El Dandy/Rey David vs. El Climax/El Modulo EMLL 9/20/83

MD: 17 minutes, a little clipped, and without a finish, but think of what we do get instead! Young experimental rudo Dandy matched up with a very game Modulo. Climax's cool gear. An obviously dangerous granny on the outside who is going to jump up out of her chair with the promise of unfilled violence multiple times. I'm not kidding about the experimental bit either. Climax was in one or two matches on the DVDVR 80s set, if I remember correctly and here he and Modulo have nice, flowing exchanges, but they're not who we're here to see. 

Dandy and David worked a little tighter. I'm fairly certain Dandy wasn't even twenty here but he had a real slickness and precision in how he moved from one hold to the next and a ton of agility and flexibility. They did the hold where both guys end up on their head facing each other with their legs tied up. Sometimes you get punches out of that but here Dandy rolled out of it in way I don't think I've ever seen. When things broke down, there were some double spots with David taking down both Dandy and Modulo that didn't look quite right but that popped the crowd anyway, so either they were novel for the time or the crowd just wanted to go along with whatever. And to be fair, there were other spots that seemed a few years before their time that absolutely worked as they were meant to.

This gets cut off but not before we see Dandy get tossed all around the ring, taking turnbuckle bumps like a champ. It's pretty obvious that he was a special talent even so early into his career.

Rock 'n' Roll Express vs. TN Vols (Reno Riggins/Steven Dunn) MCW 1997

MD: The advent of DVD burning allowed for a shift in how we watched wrestling. It became easier to collect and share whole swaths of it. With that, there was a chance to reevaluate instead of just follow along or cherry pick the very best. The DVDVR sets are a great example of this, driving reevaluations of Brody or Tiger Mask or Crusher Blackwell or Greg Gagne, sometimes negatively, sometimes positively. The WWF set was the first and one thing that came from that was a reevaluation of the previously lionized 80s tag scene. It still pokes at the edges of conventional wisdom, the idea that the Hart Foundation and British Bulldogs and Rougeaus and Rockers and Killer Bees and Can-Ams and Strike Force were a part of some sort of golden age. Instead, around the time of the set, the phrase "heel-in-peril" was pretty easily thrown about. If you spend the first half of the match (or even longer) making fools out of the heels and constantly keeping them on their toes, there's far less relative time to get heat and build to the hot tag and the comeback. The fans in the arena might have found it entertaining, but they wouldn't be emotionally invested like they should be. The balance is all off for that. One could argue that the point of these matches on their placement in WWF cards was actually to drive that level of entertainment, but it certainly didn't match up with the conventional wisdom that remained twenty years later. And the worst guy in the world when it came to this sort of structure was Dynamite Kid, especially, as you might imagine, post-injury.

So what does all of that have to do with this? I don't think any of the teams listed above could really make it work. I've maybe only ever seen one team that could, and that's the Rock 'n' Rolls. They had fun, quick, offense, tandem in the set up if not the delivery, but a lot of teams can be entertaining in a shine and a lot of teams had a connection with the crowd. Really, it comes down to Morton's ability to sell. One minute of him getting beat on, fighting for a hope spot, getting cut off, getting beat on some more was worth three or four minutes of almost anyone else. There's a moment in here where he is just reaching out towards the camera as if asking everyone at home for help; we see it on that camera just for a second before things switch back to the wide shot and you can watch him working and garnering sympathy like no other. And he could manage both that and playing to the live crowd at the same time, because he's Ricky Morton in a tag match. 

That's not to say the shine wasn't a lot of fun and that the Vols didn't stooge like crazy, because it was and because it did. They were nice and measured with it, setting up a spot, playing on the fact the Vols had only recently formed, paying it off with some miscommunication or just getting outquicked or outwrestled, having them take a powder and sell what happened, then set up the next spot and repeat. The Vols did their power: For instance, Riggins hit a big shoulder block showing off his strength and then ate an inverted atomic drop and sell it all around the ring. The shine lasted about two-thirds of the match, but Morton, after he missed a corner charge, more than made time with his selling with Gibson helping things along by working the apron. When it was time for the hot tag, the fans went up for it and things petered out to a non-finish because this is a TV match after all.

I only wish we had some of these old R'n'R vs Nikolai Volkoff (which happened early in their Mid-South run but weren't taped) or Ivan Putski (which didn't at all happen and were just a baffling suggestion) matches that Michael St. John and Billy Joe Travis were inexplicably talking about as they got confused about former opponents. (I also hope someone filmed one of the Wolfie D vs King Mabel matches that were advertised for live shows during the break). Still, no one's going to complain that we got an 18 minute 97 R'n'R match against game opponents.

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Jose Lothario is Working, but he is Not Working for You Slack Motherfucker

Jose Lothario v. Black Gordman NWA Houston 1/13/84 -EPIC

I loved this, I described this to Eric as the worlds greatest Eddie Marlin v. Tommy Gilbert match. Two badass old guys with awesome punches making each other bleed. Gordman jumps Lothario at the bell and busts him open with a chain, and from their it is all old dudes throwing hambones, Lothario is awesome, he is pretty much all punches, but he has a bunch of different punches including a fun hook and a big bolo uppercut, and he knows how to time everything right. Gordman has this huge rep, and while he is clearly in the twilight, he still has a presence.

Jose Lothario of the Day

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MLJ Palette Cleanser: Jose Lothario vs Black Gordman

1984-1-13 @ Houston, TX
Black Gordman vs Jose Lothario (nwaclassics.com)

I'm calling this fair game. As best as I can tell (and I could be wrong), Lothario worked Arena Mexico in the 50s, as Gran Lothario, including being the guy who Medico Asesino beat for the National Heavyweight Championship. Gordman had been around years before but was hanging around in Mexico shortly before this as a version of Bestia Roja, losing his mask to Solitario. Of course, Lothario was a Texas mainstay, one of the real stars of the state for decades. Gordman was huge in California, especially teamed with Great Goliath. We don't have a ton of footage of either guy, I don't think, which is one reason why this was so cool.

With Lothario, the sheer amount of footage is one of the best things that have come out of the NWA Classics service. We're seeing him both in the 70s (like the Mascaras tag vs the Funks) and in the 80s (including his feuds with Landell and the Guerrero) and he's stood out far more than I expected. To most fans he's either that vaguely unknown guy who was carted out by Michaels in the 90s and demolished by Sid, or someone with a terrible reputation due to Gary Hart's book. From what I've seen so far, he was pretty great. It helps that he was super over in Houston, but he backed it up with a sort of Memphis minimalism, taking damage and firing back at key moments, charging up the hope spots for the eventual pay off the comeback and then, generally, a pretty severe beating of the heel he's facing to the crowd's delight.

That was certainly the case here, and this was even more Memphis than most. Gordman rushed in right at the beginning, attacking Lothario while he was still on the apron and slamming him into the post both with Lothario on the apron and on the floor. He played king of the mount for a minute until Jose could punch his way back in, infuriated, but took back control with a hidden chain-assisted punch to the gut. Lothario sold it big and the crowd was incensed. From there, they worked it forward, with Jose coming back but the punch equalizing over about two-three exchanges in total, with Gordman less and less able to make it work, until Lothario was able to get the chain; the place absolutely exploded but after one shot, Gordman went flying out delaying and prolonging the satisfaction of it all.

By this point, really just five or six minutes into the match, both wrestlers had bladed but it didn't feel like overkill at all. Due to the sheer focus of the match, everything felt warranted and it took the crowd on a short rocket ride. They finished up by brawling on the floor and back inside, both wrestlers shoving the referee away to lead to the DQ. Gordman retreated again, coming back with a chair but Lothario is just too much. Finally, the ref, acknowledging that he'd thrown the match out, stepped out of the way. Gordman, though, decided to head for the hills thus deferring any sort of real resolution to the next match which I'm pretty sure was a Mexican Death match.

Great functional, heated wrestling. Phil put it as worth about $2.50 of the $8.99 monthly price and that sounds about right to me.

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NWA Classics Price Tag Reviews #5

Andre the Giant v. Stan "The Man" Stasiak 10/31/80 $1.00

Really fun short 2/3 falls match. First fall is all Staisiak bumping around for Andre and trying to work towards the heart punch. The first couple of times hit tried it Andre fired back with this huge thrust punch which looked like he almost beheaded him. Stasiak hits the heart punch and gets DQed for the first fall which felled the giant. Stasiak goes after him in the second fall but Andre counters and takes him out with a big splat. Really smartly worked fun stuff, all of this early Andre has been a gold mine.

Tully Blanchard v. El Bracero 12/11/81 $.25

Fun short match with Tully bumping around for Bracero's old school lucha goof spots, lots of mule kicks and arm drags. Would have liked to see Tully throw out a bit more offense, but this was a nifty little five minutes.

Jose Lothario v. Black Gordman 1/13/84 $2.50

I loved this, I described this to Eric as the worlds greatest Eddie Marlin v. Tommy Gilbert match. Two badass old guys with awesome punches making each other bleed. Gordman jumps Lothario at the bell and busts him open with a chain, and from their it is all old dudes throwing hambones, Lothario is awesome, he is pretty much all punches, but he has a bunch of different punches including a fun hook and a big bolo uppercut, and he knows how to time everything right.

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