Found Footage Friday: TSURUTA-GUN~! VS~! SUPER~! GENERATION~! ARMY~! BARR~! DANDY~! PANTHER~! CHARLES~! ESTRADA~! RAYO~! HERMANOS DINOMITA~!

Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue/Masa Fuchi vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada/Kenta Kobashi NJPW 3/3/91 

MD: Oops, this one's on me guys, sorry. There was a big dump of handhelds that came into the community back in 2018 and it was a lot to parse through. Over the years, we've covered a lot here, and I'd had reached out to all the usual tape trading subjects from years past to see what was really new (albeit with little interest from them who have all moved on) but sometimes something I thought had already been out there actually wasn't. And this wasn't. So, as best as I can tell, it's going to be a brand new Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi vs. Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi match that almost none of you (if not absolutely none of you) have ever seen. And it holds up with some of the best stuff of this period, quite frankly.

The whole thing is good but it probably peaks in the first couple of minutes. The match starts with Kobashi and Fuchi on the mat for a minute, including Kobashi's rolling cradle. Kawada comes in. They'd heated up Kawada and Taue pretty fierce in January and it was still going strong here, so Taue wants in (and Jumbo wants him in), Kawada immediately tags back to Kobashi like a true heatseeker and Taue sneaks in a cheap shot onto Kawada on the apron the first chance he gets. The crowd has come to like Taue by this point but there are no good guys here, just pure animosity, as shown by Kawada rolling back in, ignoring the fact that Kobashi and starting a massive early-match brawl with Taue that everyone has to break up. It's a hell of a way to start a match.

After that it settles down into the beats you'd expect: more Taue vs. Kawada, Misawa eating a beatdown and coming back with the forearm, Kobashi with the superman house afire hot tag until Jumbo shuts him down, both sides getting and advantage and comebacks as the cycle through the pairings, until they finally isolate Kobashi and crush him on an outside table (or in this case, on a chair that they put on a table). The heat on Kobashi is great after they start on the leg, with a Jumbo elevated half cab, a Fuchi STF, and a Taue Scorpion Deathlock, the fans chanting "Kobashi" the whole time. When he's finally able to get a hot tag of his own, there's this cool bit of stuttering alternating structure where they start on Taue only to cycle back to Kobashi (after a rocket launcher off the top to the floor) only for Fuchi to clip his leg out illegally back in the ring, only to do another comeback and cycle back to Taue. This all leads to the sort of high octane, extended finishing stretch you'd expect, including, maybe, the first time they do the combo Jumbo/Taue belly to back/top rope driving clothesline. Put simply, if this is something you like, and this feud is as universally liked as anything I can think of, there's a hell of a lot to like here.

ER: I was saving this one for my Saturday morning. Waking up, making some coffee, settling down to watch an unseen All Japan trios classic, and baby it was everything. This was an untaped Korakuen main event smack dab in the middle of a tour and these guys go so hard that any reasonable person would think this was an end of tour big show main. Everybody goes hard in this and the dynamics are incredible. 1991 Jumbo was my favorite Jumbo, Kawada and Taue fucking hate each other and are at each other's throats the whole match, Misawa was incredibly fast and aggressive and already knew how to carry himself as a superstar, every single person still had a vendetta against Kobashi's knees, it's all incredible. There isn't a single lull in the action at any point, it's all go go go with quick tags and constant oneupmanship. 

The way Tsuruta-Gun went after Kobashi's knees it's a damn miracle the man made it nearly a decade before the knee surgeries started piling up. They're all real dickheads about it, but the best is when Fuchi runs in with a dropkick right to the knee pit...or was it when Jumbo buckled it with a mule kick to the ACL...or was it when Jumbo was holding Kobashi damn vertically in a single leg crab? A real Dickhead's Choice. Taue threw some of the hardest clotheslines of his career, really shutting down some bullshit, and I flipped my lid when he leveled Misawa with a tope suicida after Misawa had leapt off the apron with an elbow into Jumbo's jaw. I don't think I've ever seen Kobashi get thrown with a Rocket Launcher to the floor, just one other thing that's nuts to see on an untaped house show. It's cool that Misawa was a better kicker than Kawada in 1991. Kawada had the same kick routine here that he would continue to hone and improve as the decade went on, but the variety and impact of Misawa's kicks made this look like his peak attack level, setting everything up with kicks and then sealing the deal with elbows. Jumbo's kitchen sink knees looked organ-rearranging, and he threw Misawa with a bodyslam that looked and sounded so painful that all 2,100 people in Korakuen made the exact same pinched face "oooooooooof" reaction. Six legends bringing real emotion and high energy and hate-filled stiffness for 30 minutes in my favorite wrestling style of all time? It's all I wanted. 

Love Machine/El Dandy/Panterita del Ring vs. Blue Panther/Emilio Charles Jr./Jerry Estrada CMLL  5/3/92?

MD: Some great stuff in here even though it was a twenty minute video that went more like fifteen instead of the thirty that went twenty-two and gave us the pairings that I really wanted. Obviously it was a perfect rudo side. My experience with Panther and Love Machine is more the mask match and what followed elsewhere, so it surprised me that Barr was more over with the crowd. The announcers noted that the dynamic had been different in Mexico City for the mask match and tried to explain it.

This had an ambush/comeback/beatdown/comeback sort of structure which was fitting a lot into the time and it never quite settled down. We got glimpses of great things though, Panther running from a fiery Love Machine, Dandy's awesome, awesome cracking punch and the not equal but still great and very different thudding punches of Charles and Estrada. When Barr finally got his hands on Panther, he was really able to tear into him (and tear off the mask). Estrada hit the usual ridiculous dive into the crowd. The ref was the same one we've been seeing who was very hard on the tecnicos and missed the cheating. Charles and Panterita really only got to pair up after the dives and that looked fine, with Charles faking a foul (he'd previously done one of his own). Post match, when Panterita was beside himself at the unfair loss, Estrada walked right over and yanked his mask off hilariously. I wish it had a little more to it but you can't fault any of the action here.

ER: I love that this was the standard for a throwaway weekly trios match in 1992. This adds a new layer to the Blue Panther/Love Machine feud and I don't think I've ever heard a weekly crowd respond so positively to Love Machine before this. Blue Panther as a cheapshot artist who can also wrench you on the mat was probably my favorite era of Panther (even those I do love old man tecnico Panther) but it was eye opening seeing how big the tecnico reactions were any time Love Machine started to wail on Panther, culminating in a tremendous tope suicida that flattens a few people in the front row. Dandy and Estrada worked magic any time they crossed paths, but somehow Panther and Love Machine outpunched them here. I wish we could have seen more Panterita Del Ring. The man worked differently as Safari and then evolved into Ephesto, but as Panterita he could really cut loose and we only got a little taste of that here, as he was the clear 6th banana of the match, and Estrada's perfect unmasking of him after the match only made that status more concrete. This was the perfect kind of unearthed lucha match to just devour like junk food. 

Rayo de Jalisco Jr/Mascara Sagrada/Black Magic vs. Los Hermanos Dinamita (Cien Caras, Mascara Ano 2000, Universo 2000) CMLL 5/17/92

MD: A weird moment in time as a chunk of these guys were main eventing the AAA debut show right around (maybe even two days before) this match. This immediately followed a tribute to Rene Guajuardo, who, among all of his other accolades had trained and promoted in this area, and had just passed away. The match itself made me wish for the tecnicos from the last match.

When they got to the beatdown in the segunda and the tercera comeback that followed, it was pretty good. You can count on the Dinamitas to beat people around the ring and Cien Caras to be a charismatic ass about it. That played into the comeback as well where Rayo could play the other half of that song well enough. The primera exchanges and the crowd-pleasing spots in the end to led up to the foul on Rayo and the DQ, though? Not so great. Again, you can count on the rudos here to get some good shots in (like Cien Caras' hopping knee to the gut) and there was one fairly decent Mascara Ano 2000 and Mascara Sagrada exchange. Black Magic looked best on the tecnico side, charging into things and asserting himself. This late in the game and after all of the animosity of the beatdown and coemback, I wasn't really feeling the multiple headlocks/la estrella/flip-flop submissions like I might have otherwise. Maybe it really was time for the change that was coming. Maybe it was just that some of these guys were focused on the next thing.

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New Footage Friday: PATTERSON! VALENTINE! FUJINAMI! SAKAGUCHI! SCORPIO! MERCURY! BLACK MAGIC! VAMPIRO!

Seiji Sakaguchi/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Pat Patterson/Greg Valentine 1/1/79

MD: Obviously, one element of what we do here on Fridays as we delve into rare and lost footage is see wrestlers that not a lot of footage exists of. It's hard not to compare them against their reps. Sometimes they live up to the rep, sometimes they fall far short, and sometimes they far exceed it. Patterson's rep is amazingly high and he always lives up to it. He was great in the early eighties when he was obviously past his prime. He's fantastic in what bits of him we have in the 70s. You can only imagine were we to stretch back farther. I wouldn't say that's the case with the Ray Stevens footage we have, actually. You can see vague glimpses of the sort of heat he might have gotten once, before his body broke down from his in-ring style and his out-of-ring lifestyle. But with Patterson, there's just so much he brought to the table that everything you add on to the capabilities we see in his post-prime footage is just that, an addition to the greatness.

We come in at the 3 minute mark here. First half of the match is Valentine and Patterson getting advantages on Fujinami with Sakaguchi coming in to clean house. Second half, they take out Sakaguchi's leg and demolish it until the DQ finish and the continued demolishing post-match where they alternate bombs aways and elbow drops onto the leg. Valentine and Patterson make a really solid unit, both laser focused. Patterson is able to go from stooging and bumping to absolutely beating the crap out of someone on a dime. He was legitimate and tough while also being entertaining (lots of jawing with the ref or his opponent) and creative. Sakaguchi really used his size well here. Just huge presence which made it mean all the more when he played vulnerable towards the end.

PAS: The more I watch of him, the more Greg Valentine moves up my list of all time favorite wrestlers, what a vicious grinding killing machine he is at his best. Patterson and Valentine make a great team, giving when they need to give and taking all that they can take. Patterson could bring the violence as well, and had a more theatrical bumping style. The finish run where they destroy Sakaguchi's leg was some truly brutalizing stuff, it really looked like the kind of thing which would send Seiji out of the territory for six months. I am not sure how much Patterson and Valentine teamed, but man were they badasses, I could really see them running roughshod on a territory for a year laying out all comers. 

ER: This really gave us the look at an all time team that never actually was. Valentine/Patterson wasn't a team I've ever thought about before, but seeing them together here (and they didn't really team or face each other that many times other than this New Japan tour) and they are a really natural, vicious team. Patterson is just as savage as Valentine, which I wasn't totally expecting. I've seen plenty of Patterson, but he seemed especially mean here, coming off like a bigger bumping Valentine. When the match started I thought it would be Valentine throwing leather while Patterson took the bumps, instead we basically got two Valentines. Patterson did bump big, taking Fujinami's armdrags faster and harder than any junior heavyweight, and hitting back way harder. Patterson was really great at taking offense, loved how he worked under Sakaguchi (like running neck first into a strong chokehold), and I was really into the hell Patterson and Valentine unleashed on Sakaguchi's leg. Patterson's top rope kneedrop looked incredible, and I was really impressed by the go go go pace they all kept up. This felt like more of a modern indy tag structure worked by tough dudes, kind of anachronistic but impressive to see such a fast pace from some bruisers. We get 15+ minutes of tag team wrestling, but the tags from both sides come so quickly that it felt like we got twice as much action as we actually did. Patterson and Valentine also added Dusty to their team a couple of times on this same tour, and the thought of those three killer blonds on the same team makes my head spin. What a great find. 

Vampiro Casanova vs. Black Magic 10/93

MD: A rarity here, a lucha cage match where you can actually tell what's going on. There are basically two things going on here. One, young ladies love Vampiro. Two, Black Magic fills his time fairly well by beating him around the ring and slamming him into the cage. Look, Vampiro garnered a lot of support without a ton of talent. I think he's fairly good at writhing about in his selling here and he bleeds when he's supposed to, but his bumping is stilted and his offense more so. Smiley is a guy who disappoints me as much as not in 90s lucha matches, but overall, this worked. And full credit to Smiley, because he did the heavy lifting. He kept things vicious and compelling. He gave Vampiro hope spots that worked in the cage and then cut them off. The girls were going to pop for literally anything Vampiro managed to do, so that helped matters along. For the most part, they avoided big spots and kept it to Smiley laying things in (which looked really good half the time and less so the other half) and making use of the cage. When they went big, like Vampiro's bump off the top, it didn't go nearly as well. Vampiro should have built to using the cage more in his comeback too. That would have maybe made the finish - which was a little too opportunistic and banana peel for a cage match - probably work a little better. It's lucha, so the end goals could be different. If this was like a supre libre match on the road to a hair match, that'd be one thing, but I don't see any results along those lines. Still, as a stand alone experience, I'd put this in the "almost worked" category, mostly for Smiley. But don't short change the girls in the crowd.

PAS: I thought this was legitimately awesome, huge disconnect between Matt and me on this match. Vampiro isn't any great shakes as a wrestler, but he had a monster superstar presence and wasn't afraid to take a big beating and bleed a bunch, and what more do you need in a cage match. Smiley was really vicious pounding him with hard punches and kicks and grinding Vampiro's face into the cage. When it came time for Vamp to make his comeback, Smiley really flew around the ring bumping for him, he eats an awesome looking released vertical suplex (which may have just been Vampiro losing him on the move but it looked great), and we have a big triumphant Vampiro climb over the top of the cage. This was like the best version of a Bruno WWWF cage match, and it is wild to see Vampiro at his rock star peak. Might be my favorite lucha cage match ever, which is not a giant bar to clear but still says something. 

ER: I'm definitely closer to Phil than Matt on this one, I thought this was great. Lucha cage matches are some of the worst matches in wrestling, and this may be the only one I've seen that is actually better than its on paper potential. Often, lucha cage matches nearly eliminate the most interesting aspects of any luchador involved, but this match enhances both men. Black Magic's strengths are his strikes, Vampiro's strength is getting girls to cheer for him. It's a format that plays to their strengths and that's all you need for a strong match. Smiley is a known tough guy (basically anyone who worked UWF is clearly a tough guy) but you don't usually get to see him in ass kicker mode. Here he really kicks Vampiro's ass around the ring, push kicking his head a couple dozen times and throwing great right hands to bust Vampiro open. Smiley really kicks him around for 10 minutes, with my favorite being a sliding kick from his back right into Vampiro's jaw, looked like something cool Inoki would do. Smiley sells big for Vampiro's comeback, right after scraping Vamp's face across the cage (I might be reading too much into it, as Vamp had already been bleeding at that point, but his comeback had a fun "not the face!" energy to it). This really did feel like Pedro Morales working an MSG cagematch against Blassie, which was not a comparison I was expecting to make going in. The girls screamed as Vampiro tossed Smiley around (loved how Smiley took a teeter totter, flinging himself across the ring), and I don't recall a lucha cage match having a beginning/middle/end as satisfying as this one. 


2 Cold Scorpio vs. Joey Mercury PWU 9/15/07

PAS: The actual parts of this match that were wrestling, were pretty cool. They started off with some grappling, including an awesome spot where Scorp breaks a side headlock, by throwing an uppercut right to Mercury's knee. They also did some fun leverage stuff around a knuckle lock. Dan Severn is seconding Mercury for some reason, and the really lay in the interference thick in the middle of the match. Leading to a ref bump and run ins by DDP, Devon Moore and Sandman. These two have another match and I imagine with less mishigas it might be a lot better.

MD: A lot to enjoy here. Mercury just seemed very sure in his skin here. A lot of confidence, a lot of antics. I'm not sure I'd say he came off like a star, but he absolutely came off like a pro wrestler who really understood the power of his actions. Who wouldn't want to have Dan Severn out there as his hired gun/coach? He made the most of it, stalling to get advice, having him choke on the outside, utilizing some submission stuff he might not do otherwise, etc. Scorpio, like always, had the fairly unique ability to make offense that shouldn't work on paper look really good and make complete sense. Living in the late 90s/00s, it was really easy to get sick of finishes like this, but when you don't have to deal with them multiple times a month, you can appreciate them for their merits. It would have been even better if this set up a six man tag the next month.

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