New Footage Friday: Waltman's Sampler

Lightning Kid/Jerry Lynn vs. Masa Saito/Brad Rheingans PWA 11/9/92

MD: What a weird match to exist. I don't have a great sense of Waltman's 1992, where he was done with Global early in the year and not into WWF until 93. There was one tryout match with Bob Cook in WCW and some shots in Japan. I could go back through old WONs but it doesn't seem worth it. If there were more PWA tags with Lynn, I'd be curious to see them. This was set up with Saito and Rheingans as monsters and Lynn and Kid as specialists, with the announcers really hammering the underdog status. Brad played de facto heel (and Saito more thorough heel) and it's such a great role for him. I've seen him on 90s undercards from Japan doing the same and he was very good at it. It almost makes you wish they paired him with Patera and Blackwell in early 80s AWA, but that was never going to happen.

PAS: Kid and Lynn were working as underdog blowjob babyfaces against a team of barrel chested murderers, and everyone played their role well. Rheingans hit a couple of big suplexes and a nasty powerbomb and Saito chucked Waltman with a Saito suplex. There was some nice moments of babyface fire, Waltman getting hyped up and throwing all of his karate at Saito was cool, and Saito sold it an appropriate amount. These makeshift teams worked well together and against each other and I would have been interested in a longer arena version of this TV tag.

ER: This felt like a syndicated WCW match in the very best way, with two teams that nobody realized had crossed paths all behaving the exact ways you'd expect them to behave. Rheingans and Saito are like stockier Steiners, and I loved the ways they tossed Kid and Lynn while also loving the believable ways Lynn and Kid fought their way into it. Saito is arguably the most brick house wrestler to ever walk, and I love how Kid goes off on him with cool kicks and Saito leans into every one of them looking like Thing deflecting bullets off his rock hide. Every time Kid or Lynn would hit the mat because of Saito, it looked and sounded like their skeletons were being rearranged. Saito hits a snap suplex on Lynn that should be a finisher, his dragon screw on Kid sent him most of the way across the ring, and his stiff arm lariats look savage. I love his Saito suplex on Kid, looking like one of those rollercoasters that keeps lifting you up higher and higher until the bottom drops out and you freefall. Kid's kick variations looked great, especially impressed at how damaging he made every dropkick look. Being vaulted into a dropkick is a tough spot to pull off, and not only did he do it several times here, but he used them to smartly set up Rheingans finally catching him and hitting a killer powerbomb. I really loved this, and would have loved a more fleshed out version of this pairing.


1-2-3 Kid vs. Diesel WWF 1/15/94

ER: This was worked how I expected, how I wanted, and most importantly how the fans in the building wanted. The whole match was Kid getting launched and tossed from high angles, big biel throws, gutbusting kneelifts, big sideslam, just picking Kid up by the neck and dropping him. Kid did not get a night off working Diesel, he was going to be taking some bumps, and he even took a doozy to the floor when Diesel pushed him away with a boot when Kid was going for his other leg. Kid bumps hard backwards into the ropes, flops around in them, then lands stomach first on the floor (luckily Diesel was cool enough to press slam him back into the ring). The moments where Kid took over were great, as there was no such thing as a wasted second. Kid attacked with speed, and legsweeps, and a ton of spinkicks. When Diesel would go down Kid would pounce immediately, attacking the leg by driving his knee into it. Kid worked like a guy who knew he was about to get caught, so he was just doing as much as he could until he got clobbered again. Growing up we would have a taco night every couple weeks, easy dinner, mom would make the taco meat on the stove and then we'd add our own fixings. Pretty normal family thing. One time I walked into the kitchen to see our cat Inky furiously eating as much taco meat off the stove as it could. She clearly knew she was going to get caught, but she just wanted to eat as much of that spicy taco meat as she could before getting caught. 1-2-3 Kid was just eating all that taco meat, before getting unceremoniously dumped over the top buckle with Snake Eyes. Inky did not have to take any kind of finisher.

MD: Diesel was a week away from his big Royal Rumble push and for Kid, this was during his week of getting to hold the tag titles with Jannetty. Quite the moment in time for these two. There was a lot to like here. Diesel was pretty giving, but not too giving, letting his legs get beat up but never in any real danger. Waltman bumped huge for him as you'd expect. They had some smart spots, like Kid losing the advantage because Diesel repositioned himself away from a top rope move; when Kid tried to follow up with a figure four instead, he got booted out of the ring; also, the big comeback spot of Diesel going for a second side slam off the ropes and Kid turning it into a headscissors take over. The crowd really appreciated it when Kid was on top here and got heavily behind him. Everyone loves an underdog but these two worked the match in a way that kept them engaged. Nice, short encounter that played to each's strength.

PAS: This was fun stuff, Waltman was such a crazy bumper for this era of WWF, and that bump he takes to the floor off of Nash's leg push was some Jerry Estrada level insanity. I thought Diesel was really good in this match too. He bumped and sold well for Waltman's moments of offense and when it came time to hurt him, he hurt him.


X-Pac vs. Bryan Danielson NWA 11/23/07

PAS: This was a real fun tournament match, which had a little more bite then a normal tourney match. I liked how it started almost genial with Waltman and Danielson exchanging armdrags and taunts, but then Danielson got pissed off and really beat the crap out Waltman, and then ended up brawling into the crowd. Finish run was a bit weak, I would have liked to see Waltman break out something a little bigger then an X-Factor, still this was good stuff and they matched up surprisingly well.

MD: This felt like a really good TV match to me, with Waltman really happy to be in there. The moment that will stick with you is when Danielson got the best of Waltman and did the crotch chop, because it's so out of character and because it cracked up Waltman (whether he knew it was coming or not). I think there are certain endemic issues about late 00s Waltman, whereas he's too trapped by the Syxx/X-Pac stuff and some of those moves and mannerisms. They tease and then pay off a bronco buster which really didn't fit the match or the character he was portraying but was sort of inescapable for anyone in the crowd who was more casual given how big a star X-Pac had been. One aspect of "TV matches," as a classification, is simplicity of a finishing stretch. Here, given the scope and the setting, they could have gone around once or twice more.

ER: I had never seen this pairing before (apparently they were on opposite sides of a big FIP elimination match, but seeing this distilled in a singles match is way more satisfying) and I loved how they matched up. I'm with Matt in that I wish Waltman didn't feel so locked into specific X-Pac mannerisms and moveset, though at the same time it lead to a couple of genuinely funny moments: X-Pac breaking an early test of strength to motion for Danielson to suck it, with Danielson doing something similar later in the match gave us the announcer - calling it like an actual sport - to say "and now a suck it from Danielson!" Also, when Waltman was bumping his crotch into Danielson's forehead, Danielson staggered back into the corner selling them like actual strikes, and I appreciate that. I did like the build up to the bronco buster, as it lead to moments of Waltman flying crotch first into the turnbuckles and lead to our finish of him getting boosted up onto the top buckle, but I liked Danielson beating him around the ring even more. X-Pac getting crotched on the guardrail and then clotheslined off looked real painful, as did Danielson's big bump that got them out of the floor to begin with. I love how many wrestlers were inspired by 1-2-3 Kid because they finally saw a smaller wrestler making it on a big stage, only to find out later how much larger Waltman was than they realized. Seeing how much Waltman towers over Danielson is a real sign of one thing wrestling has at least taken a step forward on in the past 15 years.

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New Footage Friday: Funk, Droese, Necro, Jumbo, Rheingans, Hernandez

Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Brad Rheingans AJPW 8/30/83

MD: I'm actually surprised that Phil went for this one when I suggested it and said it was surprisingly good. I'm getting in on this one first so I'm curious if the others liked it. My best guess here is that Jumbo knew that Brad was legit and really wanted to go all out with him. This one had a tremendous sense of struggle from start to end, all the way to Brad's frustration at losing and Jumbo's insistance that they shake hands post-match. I loved how all of Brad's big offense was pure AWA (ok, the gutwrench suplex was a higher level but who else could accomplish so much with atomic drops?) all built to through the match itself. Jumbo had to fight for all of his big stuff, and then they went back around one more time for the finish which is always appreciated. This is the kind of performance which really justifies Brad's intermediary role in Japan years later.

PAS: I really dug this despite being a low voter on early 80s Jumbo. I loved how they started out going full Greco Roman with the grappling, and the first couple of minutes of this really felt like proto shootstyle. We got into more of a traditional 70/80s style heavyweight match after that, but Rheingans has great leverage and power on all of his throws, and those were some really great looking atomic drops. If this was the first you had heard of Rheingans you would think he would have been a huge star in the 80s, this feels like the apex of his interesting but ultimately underwhelming career.

Terry Funk vs. Marshall Duke CWA 10/18/97

ER: I'm a pretty recent convert to Duke Droese, as in I'm not even sure I'd seen an actual match of his before this year. I missed 2-3 years of WWF while in high school, before coming back to the pro wrestling fold. Droese was a guy I knew of only because of people making fun of his gimmick. He was a wrestling garbage man, and that was what I knew. But when I actually watched the footage I saw a guy with great size, great punches, hard offense, someone that the 1995 WWF crowd was genuinely excited to see. So when we unearthed a Duke/Funk match, I flipped. The match is slow paced but engaging, made up mostly of headlocks and punches, building to some bigger bumps and some nice nearfalls. It probably didn't need to go nearly 25 minutes, but I'm also glad it did. From what I've seen of 1995 WWF, Droese was the best non-Lawler puncher on the roster, so seeing he and Funk take turns teeing off on each other's foreheads is something I don't mind watching at length. This was Duke working a Funk match, and Funk took us to plenty of great places. 

We got weird hijinks like Funk's second opening up a canister of blue gas right in Duke's face, like he was Cesar Romero or something. We've all seen salt and powder, I'm not sure I've ever seen someone get Joker gassed. Funk starts taking all of his pratfalls and setting up Duke to interrupt his attacks with punches, coming in slow with axe handles so Duke can throw great body shots and uppercuts, teeter tottering on the ropes so Duke can line up punches, and Funk falling into the ropes and off the apron is one of the most entertaining things about Funk matches. Terry takes a couple nasty spills to the floor in that theatrical Terry way, eating a big lariat over the top to the floor, gets run into the ringpost from the apron and stumbles most of the way back across the apron before falling off, hangs by his feet in the ropes, and in one of my absolute favorite moments of the match he does a trademark Funk Stumble and falls backwards over an on-all-fours Duke right into a nearfall. Funk goes to Germany and starts taking his bumping cues from the Phillie Phanatic, and it's the best. Funk brings some nice weapon shots, smashing a set of rolling metal steps into Duke's leg, and violently throwing a table on him on the floor. And they come back to the ring to work some simple but effective nearfalls and escapes, with a nice sunset flip from the apron by Duke, a few torture rack escapes from Terry (including one where he just punches Duke right in the eye to escape), before Terry gets caught in a nice over the shoulder powerslam for the win. Mid 90s CWA is definitely an untapped source for hidden gems, and the timing on this unearthing was perfect for me.

MD: Here you have ECW era Funk playing a heel against and completely disrupting the orderly German round system with his antics. I had a professor who worked on European Integration that told a story about a resort on the border of France and Germany. On the resort there was a pool and in the pool, the Germans would swim about in an organized line around the edge. As they were doing that, the French jumped in splashed through the middle. I'm not going to say that the German round system is exactly like that, because we've seen too many pirate chain matches (3?) but it's what I thought of here as Duke calmly backed off at the bell and Funk, when he had the advantage, would just press it in the most outlandish fashion on the floor between rounds.

When they did make use of the round breaks, it made for some interesting stuff: the double clothesline to set up the finish and especially Funk's amazing crawling, head-down sell out of the ring. Funk was sufficiently wild (picking up a table on the outside completely uncaring if the legs took out members of the crowd) and Duke was properly indomitable, with solid punches and a sense that he deserved what was probably one of the biggest wins of his career. Huge novelty value and a pretty good match. I'm very glad this one turned up.


Necro Butcher vs. Hotstuff Hernandez TASW 2001

MD: So, this was something completely different. What I liked the most about this was the volume. They started at 7, with a chop exchange and the dismantling of the valet, stuff that you'd generally expect in the back third of a match. That let the things that followed like the (completely misguided but structurally sound) dueling chairshots and the barbed wire to feel like proper escalation. The crowd didn't deal well with Hernandez' mix of underhanded tactics, big bumping (the guy had great, charismatic range of motion at this point, working for a back row that didn't even exist), and huge spots. Necro felt like he was working from underneath, but after a Hernandez dive, the fans were more than happy to cheer for him. It worked out in the post-match but it made the journey a little bumpy. The finish was sick. Absolutely sick. But hey, at least it ended the match, right?

PAS: Really cool early look at both guys and you get a sense of what would make them both such compelling guys in a couple of years. I loved the simple stuff in this match, Necro has great looking punches and headbutts and Hernandez had these awesome looking underhanded thumping shots to the ribs. I honestly could have watched a minimalist fist fight between the two and been super happy. Instead we get sort of an indy version of a Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka match with crazy bumps into barbwire boards and tables and some gross head shots with chairs and stop signs. These are a pair of really fun guys to do Awesome vs. Tanaka. I love Hernandez's no hands tope and we get a crazy Necro flip plancha, it builds to the huge pair of bumps to end the match, Necro getting awesome bombed off the ring apron, and Hernandez eating a sheer drop powerbomb through a stop sign. Not everything was hit cleanly, but man this was a spectacle.

ER: This is definitely among the earliest Necro matches I've seen. This is when he was skinnier and wore facepaint, so he looked like Buffalo Bill if he were into Darkthrone instead of women's skin. I love seeing early career work from guys like this, it's a fun time to see totally different version of guys you liked. Both are still raw here, and what's hilarious is Hernandez is the one trying more stupid dangerous stuff, while Necro is the one who did stupider things the longer his career went. And this was a pretty awesome indy match. If I had plunked down $15 to see this on a Saturday night, I'd be talking about it years later. Fans get on Hernandez a bit when he hits a sloppy spear, chanting "You're not Goldberg", but he was pretty hard to root against by the end of this. He had Necro willing to take some wild offense, and he dished out some risky stuff. He hits a couple huge missile dropkicks, one of them with Necro crotched over the top rope, the other while Necro is stuffed into a garbage can. Phil is totally spot on calling this an Awesome/Tanaka match, because it was exactly that. We got unprotected chairshots, a couple big powerbombs through a table, big bumps on shoulders, and Hernandez breaking out his always crazy missile launch dive. That dive is one of the craziest moves in wrestling the past 20 years and deserves to be talked up more. This was great garbage from two guys who would go on to have real memorable careers, and it's cool to see how great their instincts were this early.

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New Footage Friday: AWA SuperClash IV

ER: Before our first match we find out that Junkyard Dog injured his knee the night before and was being replaced by Baron von Raschke as Col. DeBeers's opponent. I think I would have quite liked even 1990 JYD vs. DeBeers, as DeBeers is a good big bumping match for that era JYD. But there are also no records that JYD fought anywhere nearby the night before this show, or even the prior month, so I assume this was some false advertising leading up to the day of the show. Also, this being a Sunday afternoon in Minnesota, most of the crowd looks like a bunch of guys meeting up at a bar for their local Teamsters meeting. The crowd is Teamsters and 10 year olds, and that's a GREAT wrestling crowd.

Jake Milliman vs. Todd Becker

ER: An opening match that felt like an opening match. I have a soft spot for Milliman and he's a fun area favorite, a barrel bodied man billed suspiciously at 5'6". I know wrestlers exaggerate but that seems beyond the pale. This is 5 minutes and feels like a people getting in their seats match, Becker drops some decent elbows and tries to ground Milliman, Jake throws his weird arms close to body armdrags and a nice monkey flip that gets a good reaction. He also has a nice Super Porkyesque sunset flip where his large solid and compact body stays close to his opponent all the way over. There was a weird missed spot where Milliman hits a low shoulderblock right to Becker's stomach and Becker just stands there, so Jake bumps. Jake should have had way more torpedo body block moves, the guy was a toy tank. This was simple, easy, did what it needed to.

Texas Hangmen vs. Brad Rheingans/DJ Peterson

ER: Solid house show tag, always going to be excited about the Network putting up new Bull Pain and one of Mean Mike/Tough Tom footage. Bull Pain works a lot of this, building spots by complaining of hair/mask pulls early, all to just eventually land one great cheap shot punch. Face team was hiptosses and armdrags and dropkicks through much of this, while Hangmen played big bullies. I dug the Hangmen cheating and liked how Rheingans played Morton, it's cool when the more powerful guy on a team is the Morton, switches up the dynamic. DJ Peterson is kind of boring Mark Starr on hot tag, so it's more interesting to have Rheingans build to a big Saito suplex and German suplex, and I like Hangmen's accidental middle rope clothesline miscommunication to set up the hot tag. I wasn't expecting the Hangmen to get the win here so that was a fun surprise. Also, I am loving how we get no commentary, and instead get audio of a couple kids getting picked up by the camera mics, yelling at wrestlers (they must be sitting in an area where guys are walking in and out backstage). It's fun hearing them tell DeBeers that he sucks, or flip out trying to get Tully Blanchard or Greg Gagne's autograph.

MD: This was a pretty enjoyable house show feeling tag match (Hey, I just looked at what Eric wrote and he went the exact same way with it. Good for us) with the crowd playing along. Rheingans, edging towards 40, was the world's least explosive Kurt Angle, able to hit suplexes with a little effort and manage at least one cool roll up at 75% speed. The Hangmen were underrated and fed well, sold properly, and kept things interesting enough while on top. Some weird timing things throughout, like the long, droning, extended announcement (Gagne daughter maybe?) of the 10 minute mark happening right during the hot tag build up, or Brad getting in the way on the apron during the double-clothesline set up. The Hangmen should have gotten a better run somewhere.

Col. DeBeers vs. Baron von Raschke

MD: This was originally supposed to be JYD vs DeBeers which is a kind of fascinating thought but would have been much more so in 1982. I think the crowd was actually happier with the Baron in there, which is MN for you (not that 90 JYD was any great shakes but you get the idea). DeBeers had lots of heat throughout the night, even when it wasn't his match. This was by the numbers with Baron's stuff (even his knee lift which he used twice to set up the Claw tease) pretty rough. I did like the briefcase block of the claw late in the match. Since it was a replacement, the babyface went over but they immediately beat him down to cover for it.

ER: I liked the sound of this on paper, just because DeBeers is a big guy who bumps big - and bumps plausibly - for old or otherwise immobile guys. DeBeers is big enough that he can easily control and bully, and he's someone who works in his stooging well. And it turns out I like the match even more in execution than I did on paper! They kept it short (around 6 minutes) and Baron (who is just about 50 here) doesn't have any time to get in trouble, so what we do get is DeBeers bumping big for kneelifts that don't quite lift, and working a few really fun sequences around a limited opponent. DeBeers has a great bump through the ropes to the floor, which leads to him slam dunking Baron's neck right over the top rope in an awesome visual. DeBeers controls with nice punches, backing Baron into the corner and throwing uppercuts, short shots to the face, and nice headlock punches, Baron throws some nice comeback punches, and the finish had two VERY great pieces, two things that I absolutely loved: DeBeers gets tied up in the ropes Andre style, Baron calls for the claw, gets people all exciting with some babyface goose stepping, comes in for the claw...and Sheik Adnan blocks the claw with his briefcase!! Honestly, I was way into the rest of this match already, but if the rest of this match had been a 5 minute chinlock leading to that spot, I'd be writing just as favorably about this match. The fact that they roll to the floor and set up a spot where DeBeers accidentally lobs a straight right hand into the ringpost was the tastiest icing. This ruled.

Tully Blanchard vs. Tommy Jammer

MD: This was a Tully performance that would have worked at almost any time, in almost any place, except in front of this crowd and against this opponent. They had been running with Jammer a bit. He was undefeated. There just wasn't anything there. Tully had Christopher Love with him and the subtitles on the network (since I couldn't make it out at first) said that he had the Perfect Ten Baby Doll with him, which merged together, was kind of a horrifying thought. They went fifteen minutes with Tully sneaking a win at the end due to a foot grab from the outside by Love. This was obviously an attempt for Tully to help make Jammer by giving him the near-entirety of a long-ish match, but the fans wanted nothing to do with it. To Tully's credit, when he realized how little they were engaged, he worked even harder from underneath and tried engaging them more, but it was blood from the stone here. Part of it was them not caring about Jammer and part was the fact that Tully wasn't a regular in the area. I honestly don't know what more he could have done here.

ER: 90s Tully feels like one of the bigger things that we wrestling fans missed out on. He was still in his mid 30s here, and his Muga match 5 years later showed he was still a clear top in-ring guy. It sucks to think of how many fun Tully matches could have happened during those 5 years if things had gone differently. And a match like this really showcased the kind of match Tully could craft without...well without much of anything. Tommy Jammer was basically a Tony Garea style good looking babyface with one hold, and not much else. And I thought it was great. It was a cool glimpse at what Tully could do with just about...well, just about literally anybody. This is a 15 minute match and the first 9-10 minutes is Jammer holding Tully's arm behind his back and Tully actually making that interesting. There are a couple times Jammer loses his grip and Tully holds the whole thing together, and I was completely engaged the whole time by just how engaging Tully was while wrestling a match on his back with one arm. 

I thought Tully made the pinfall attempts way more interesting than they should have been, thought he feebly fought back well and made it seem like Jammer was actually bossing him through things, and loved the moments like his little panicked expression when Jammer was dragging him back to the center by his arm, and Bert Prentice yanking his leg from the floor, just Tully panicking hilariously at his potential quartering. Tully took 15 minutes of minimalist wrestling and made me interested at any turn. He hardly used any offense, with his biggest spots being the two times he grabbed Jammer by the front of the trunks and flung him to the floor (for his part, Jammer falls nice and recklessly to the floor). Tully works some interesting stuff with an incomplete Sharpshooter, holding Jammer up vertically and trying to leverage a pinfall out of it, and I loved it all. I was kind of transfixed by Tully the whole match, really begging off and making Jammer look like someone he was actually threatened by. The fans don't seem to care one lick about Jammer, but there is no way in hell that was Tully's fault. There are so many other wrestlers throughout history who would have benefitted from a legend like Tully crafting a match like this around them. I loved it.

Yukon John Nord vs. Kokina Maximus

PAS: This was a little disappointing, both these guys are such huge bump freaks, you would hope this match would have some big bumps, instead we got a lot of Kokina nerve holds. There are some fun clubbering exchanges, and Sheik Adnan getting his comeuppance, and Nord has an all time great big boot, I just wanted more.

MD: This was lead-babyface Nord, and by damn, I think that it could have worked on a bigger stage. Maybe not with the Lumberjack gimmick, but you almost didn't need a gimmick. He was a big crazy guy who could kick people in the face. Kokina here makes me think we were robbed with the scowling sumo gimmick. He had so much swagger and cockiness, like a proto-heel Uso. He could move a hundred and fifty pounds heavier but he could really move here. The match itself was a little too nervelock heavy but Nord really worked it well from underneath. The gimmick was that Al-Kaissie had a 50K bounty on Nord but that the briefcase was actually just full of paper, so after 1.) the colossally big boot (as in the biggest boot ever, as in if they were going to keep doing TV, it should have been the very last thing in the opening montage) 2.) Kokina accidentally squashing Kaissie, and 3.) Nord flattened him with it for the pin, causing it to fly open, Kokina had a babyface turn which the crowd was mostly into. Twin Wars had Nord and Norton face the Hangmen and how great would the team of Nord and Kokina have been instead?

ER: How did it take so long for us all, collectively, as a fully undivided group, to realize how incredible John Nord was. Even just his pre-match routine of putting his giant fur trapper hat on the ref while taking his rapid fire back bump, that stuff just cracks me up every time. I love this guy. This is also a look at super skinny (on his scale, and by that I mean when his weight would have still shown up on a normal human scale) Kokina, and I had a blast with this. Nord is such a gigantic guy, with a big goofy personality and tons of skill, and he really makes this whole thing work. It's a lumberjack stip, even though it really only comes into play when Adnan is thrown back in after the match, but he's the one actually engaging the lumberjacks and putting on a spectacle for fans in the back. We get fun early moments of shrugged off shoulderblocks, and Nord is someone who will run as hard as possible into a shoulderblock, and I loved all the ways Nord made a nerve hold interesting (my favorite was him grabbing at Kokina's hair, leading to a dramatic hair whip from Kokina as he sank the hold back in). 

Things get really good as Nord is left staggered by a thrust kick, so Kokina clotheslines him over the top to the floor. You knew Nord was going to take SOME bump to the floor, and here's where he plays it to the back. Once on the floor, being larger than any of the lumberjacks containing him, he starts stumbling his way through all of them, a man lost in a mosh pit. Nobody is hitting him, he's just making his own action, falling into chairs and then getting tangled in a chair, throwing that chair into the air, and then pie facing Jake Milliman; honestly it felt like he was channeling Terry Funk, and a gigantic Terry Funk is too much fun to even consider. Back in the ring we build to Nord hitting a tremendous big boot, just an all time highlight reel big boot, with him practically doing a mid air splits as his right leg is fully extended and kicking right through Kokina. Now you're talking about boots, kid. These two, both heels by then, obviously never crossed paths in WWF, so this was a dream match for me. It didn't live up to my internal expectations, but I knew those were too high to live up to. It certainly left me smiling and satisfied, and still perplexed wondering how Nord wasn't an absolute megastar.

Larry Zbyszko vs. Masa Saito

MD: Not a ton here. They worked it a little bit like Larry was the vulnerable challenger (likely because he was going over) including a long sleeper. There were flashes of great matwork at the beginning, counter-heavy instead of moving in and out to spots like you'd expect in a title match but it didn't last long. Saito had history but maybe not the right sort and he wasn't the right guy for this role in front of this crowd. The finish felt five years before its time though, with Larry surviving one Saito suplex only to get his feet up on the ropes to press back harder on the second which theoretically (physics be damned) let him get his shoulder up at the last second.

ER: Whose physical appearance in pro wrestling reads more "Badass Motherfucker" than Masa Saito? And here he looks even more badass wearing that big beautiful title belt (truly one of the better belt wearers in wrestling, as this footage shows) while standing next to Business BBQ Riki Choshu in his dad jeans and ponytail. But I really dug this match. Neither man really felt like they were sticking to assigned face/heel dynamics; you assume Saito would be the heel just because "not American" but Zbyszko doesn't really work like a face for large parts of this. But I liked all the work and when heel work would happen it was never cheating, it just meant each guy worked more aggressively, and that's more interesting to me. I thought the early grappling was really tight and a lot of this felt hard fought, more of a struggle than the match structure I was expecting. It looked like Larry tried to take Saito down right at the beginning and Saito blocked it and immediately turned it into a shoot Fujiwara, with both then scrambling for dominance. The standing grappling down to even stuff like their knucklelocks were totally engaging to me.

I liked them working holds, and I thought that was a good way to highlight the other nice feature of the match, an Actual Good Guest Referee in Nick Bockwinkel. I liked how he would handle the holds and pinfalls, getting down athletically and engagingly without ever being tempted to get in the way of action or drawing attention to himself. If it wasn't Nick Bockwinkel and just some guy, he would just come off like a really good ref. It's not a surprise that Bockwinkel is a good referee. It feels like something he would excel at. I loved how they made big parts of this look like a fight, and the turnbuckle spots were some of the absolute best in recent memory. I was impressed with how great Saito was making shots into the buckles look, really looking like Larry was forcing his face into them....and then moments later Zbyszko was ramming that top buckle so ferociously that he looked like he was trying to hardway bleed. You watch Saito slamming Larry's head into the buckles for a 10 count, and you tell me the last time you saw that spot done as well. 

The Saito suplexes were great, loved the way he drops Larry straight down. But man did I hate this finish. It felt both ahead of its time, and completely annoying and nonsensical. Saito lifts for a Saito suplex, Larry walks up and pushes up off the ropes, sending him backwards even harder than the other suplexes he took...the suplex even harder than he took any other suplex in the match. He landed higher up on his shoulders and it looked hard as hell...but then he just got his shoulder up at the 3 count. I hate that fucking finish, and if this was the first time I'd have seen it I'd have hated it for the first time. There's a big muddled confusion as Saito is announced as winner and Bockwinkel slowly and too casually walks over to Zbyszko and raises his hand, and then Zbyszko acts surprised and disbelieving that he won, which came off like a really bizarre reaction. A fan is shown in the crowd holding a "Larry Does Not Suck" sign, which I am still actually laughing about. It's calmly and sincerely meaning to answer a question I didn't realize was being asked, and it open-faced honesty is so hilarious to me. Not "Larry Rocks" or "Larry Rules", but taking the opposite approach and saying "Larry Isn't Bad at This" or "Larry is Trying and I Noticed". I love it and hate every part of the ending, even my favorite front row Teamster immediately understanding what happened and trying to alert officials that Larry got his shoulder up, even Saito sending Larry into a killer postmatch beatdown backdrop (okay no I obviously loved it because I'd probably love a backdrop in any part of a match). This match has now left me confused.

The Destruction Crew vs. Paul Diamond/The Trooper

MD: The more I think about this, the more I like it. Given the purpose it had, it was nearly perfect, actually. The only issue was that the crowd kind of loved the Destruction Crew. There's not a lot that they could do about that, I guess. So the deal here was this: one of the big matches at Twin Wars was going to be Rheingans teaming with Benchwarmer Bob Lurtsema - a local sports star/sports bar owner pushing 50 - against the Destruction Crew. This was going to set it up by having him be a special ref. It follows the formula of Zbyszko vs Ledoux a bit, which feels like it was a success for the AWA but I can't at all quantify that. Two ref shots for Lurtsema (this being the second) and then the match. Therefore, instead of the babyfaces getting a real comeback here, Lurtsema was going to cannibalize that pop.

With that in mind, they sort of flipped the script. At first I thought it was because Wilkes was super green and enthusiastic, but it's because of this. The first half of the match is Enos being petrified of getting into the cage and then tossed into it by the babyfaces again and again and again as he bleeds all over the place. Generally, I like cage matches where they really build to the use of the catch, where the babyfaces barely get to use it at all until their comeback, but it made sense to topload it here. The transition was Trooper missing a ridiculously big elbow drop off the top and what really kept putting him down was Tully putting a chair up to the cage from the outside so that the Crew could toss him into a completely no-give situation. The fans were generally behind the Crew over the babyfaces but that still got heat every time they went to it. Honestly, I get what they were going here and I think, if you add in the post-match promos (of which we have a litany of, including Verne, from off camera, completely browbeating Bischoff who looked like the most uncomfortable sap in the world), it was a fairly successful promotional tactic. The problem is that this was shaping up to be a pretty solid cage match and we got robbed of a comeback. I wish they didn't eminent domain away Verne's collateral so that we would have gotten another year of the Tully/Crew pairing.

PAS: I thought this was really good, and if the Lurtsema stuff had worked for the crowd, it could have been an all timer. Man the 90s pairing of Destruction Crew and Tully Blanchard has to be an all time What Ifs. I could just see that trio running rampant all over a fed with more of a future. Enos takes a big time thrashing early and it was some really good babyface standing tall stuff. Trooper's big missed elbow ruled, and the beatdown was great stuff. I agree that putting all the heat on Benchwarmer made the match feel incomplete, the Trooper just gets wrecked, we never get a big Paul Diamond hot tag or Trooper comeback. You could have still had that, and then run some business with Benchwarmer Bob. I actually like this roster, they are a little light on babyfaces, Saito should always be a heel, and really Nord is better as a heel too, but the heel roster is pretty great.

ER: I thought this was legitimately great. I thought it stood up among the greatest tag matches in AWA history, and honestly it's my favorite tag match I've watch in 2019, and it's one of the greatest tag team cage matches I've seen. I loved this, every bit of it. It was a perfectly condensed 10 minutes of bell to bell asskicking. Both teams were so good, Diamond and Trooper exceeding all expectations and beating so much ass that this was like watching Destruction Crew vs. Destruction Crew. Mike Enos eats a beating on every single inch of that cage, he was such a great meathead pinball, flopping onto his face and comically stepping over the whole ring, taking all sorts of hard face first shots into the cage, and bouncing back and forth between big Diamond and Trooper punches. Enos gets busted open and his big bumping doesn't slow when he gets bloodied up, and watching Diamond and Trooper punch away at a loopy Enos's bloody head gives me a full head of respect for Diamond and Del Wilkes. 

Wayne Bloom comes in and I love what he does with all of this, scrambling up and over the top and getting pulled over, getting punched on the top of the cage, and then coming up with several dramatic blocks of his face going into the cage, all leading to an eyepoke to finally get the Destruction Crew out of the red. Then we get Trooper flying 2/3 across the ring with a missed elbow, and you get Enos and Bloom throwing their dickhead elbows (Enos would run at the faces and hit these rad almost standing elbowdrops, running into them at a nice lean elbow first, whereas Bloom has one of my favorite traditional elbows and all of his elbow strikes look even better with his sharp ass 'bows), and by the time Tully was holding up a steel chair on the floor for the Crew to run the faces into, I was over the moon. And that was before Destruction Crew's insane Doomsday Device had even happened. Swoon. Say what you will about the Lurtsema stuff, I thought it was fine minor celeb involvement. I have no idea how much of an actual local legend Lurtsema was to people 15 years after he was a Viking, like would a 2019 Minnesota native get excited for Lew Ford dropping a leg drop on someone in a cage match? Probably! This whole thing ruled. I genuinely do think it stands up with the greatest AWA tag matches in history, and completely unheralded matches than many knew existed are some of the greatest joys in wrestling. I already knew I was going to eventually do a Destruction Crew/Beverly Bros. C&A; I didn't realize I would be looking through Paul Diamond or Del Wilkes' careers either...

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New Footage Friday: Funks, Cactus Jack, Flair, Murdoch, Race, Wahoo, Choshu

The network continues to disappoint, the first week was Daytona and now we are deeply in the period where Nas is rapping about how vaccinations cause autism. We will not be swayed though, as we continue to dig around and find cool unseen stuff. 

Harley Race/Ric Flair/Masked Superstar vs. Blackjack Mulligan/Dick Murdoch/Wahoo McDaniels MACW 6/18/78

PAS: This was spliced together from several clips on different Jim Cornette garbage tapes, but it gets pretty much the whole match. Really fun big star house show six man. Most of the early part of the match is the heels stooging and bumping around for the faces, and these are all time excellent stoogers and bumpers. Also if you are going to watch guys throw hands, Wahoo, Blackjack and Murdoch have great hands to throw. I loved the Murdoch and Race interactions the best, which included Murdoch press slamming Race and hitting him with a brainbuster which Race sold like he had his neck broken (it actually looked like a ref stoppage on the old Fire Pro Wrestling game). Just a total blast, and the kind of match that could main event a touring show and leave everyone in the audience feeling like they got their money's worth.

MD: There's a two minute span where Dick Murdoch is controlling the action against the heels where he looks like the best wrestler of all time. Look, everyone's great here. The heels stooge like you wouldn't believe. There's an extra bounce to everything Flair does. He's younger and frenetic and wild. Mulligan isn't broken down yet and the crowd is rabid for him to get in there with Flair (so, of course, they milk it for all it's worth). The crowd's rabid for Mulligan in general. He could do so much with so little with the claw and we don't give him nearly enough credit for just what he was in the late 70s in Mid-Atlantic. We lose a big chunk in the middle when the heels are decimating Murdoch's arm, but it looks like this thing had a crazy, bombastic start, at least two and a half heat segments, and a hot finishing moment that makes me want to see the Murdoch vs Race match that this surely set up.

Salman Hashimikov/Riki Choshu/Kengo Kimura vs. Wayne Bloom/Brad Rheingans/Steve Williams NJPW 11/26/89

PAS: Total WAR trios lineup here. Including Hashimikov teaming with Japanese guys which basically never happened. Totally great heavyweight sprint, with all six guys just hurling each other around the ring. Choshu is one of the great sprint wrestlers of all-time, and I loved his first dance with Steve Williams, knocking him out of the ring with two crowbarish lariats and Williams flying back in and rushing him like a pit bull let off his leash. Salman was awesome in this, throwing these huge Greco suplexes on legit huge dudes and having a couple of fun amateur scrambles. Choshu hits an all timer Choshu Lariat on Wayne Bloom, I expected his head to pop off like Beetlejuice, and we have a heated finish with Bloom apparently shoot kicking out at two, and Williams and Hashimikov talking mad shit to each other. Killer stuff.

MD: The cons to this one are the camera angle, directly behind someone's shoulder with moments of impact where it blurs out like a snuff film, and as much as I hate to say it, Bloom. Look, he's fine. In some other match he'd be perfectly fine. He's got an expressive, lanky way of bumping, and yes, there's one absolutely all-time bump off of a Choshu clothesline. It's just that the match is absolutely electric when he's not in there. It begins with Choshu and Williams in a massive battle of the titans. Heel foreigner Rheingans continues to be a revelation in these, willing to take the fight right to his opponent and just toss people around. Hashimikov, unsurprisingly, has this incredibly natural way of dumping you off your feet and onto your head. Short, sweet, dynamic, with Bloom (and to a lesser degree Kimura) slowing things down without the benefit of grounding a story.

ER: I fully disagree that Bloom was any kind of weak link to this match. It's a 7 minute match and he's in the ring for 2/3 of it, and takes almost all of the bumps for the gaijin side. Doc is in right at the beginning for an awesome scrum with Choshu, both men throwing wildly and flinging each other around, but then mostly disappears until the post-bell pull apart with Hashimikov. Rheingans is a fun Hashimikov doppel and we get several big fun throws from him, kinda got the feeling that he and Hashimikov were trying to one up the other with throws, and that's something I can get behind. But the bulk of the match is Bloom, and while we miss what happens on the floor with him and Kimura (and one of the other gaijin), I like what we got from him. He's clearly there as Rheingans' youthful ward, and handles the role great, even hitting a cool top rope Doomsday Device style lariat (with Rheigans holding a bearhug on the opponent). A little moment I loved, rewound a couple times, was right into the finish run where Bloom throws one of the best missed clotheslines I've seen. He cut so fast and low and swung with his full arm, something that either would have broke Kimura's neck or his own arm had it actually connected. I love that kind of commitment and dedication and trust on missed moves, it always adds so much to a match for me. Bloom was pretty early in his career still and to see that confidence to miss a move so violently was really cool. That missed clothesline leads to Kimura hitting a spinkick, and then the Choshu lariat that everyone is rightly talking about. Bloom doesn't take a graceful planned flip bump, but clearly takes the bump he intended to take, high on his shoulders with his lanky momentum naturally carrying over. Short match, but tons of fun.

Terry Funk/Dory Funk Jr. vs. Cactus Jack/Texas Terminator Hoss AJPW 4/6/91

PAS: Cactus and Funk is one of the great feuds of the last 30 years, and this was their first ever match up (Cactus had a feud with Jimmy Jack in USWA). They already had some pretty great chemistry, with Terry doing a great set of dancing babyface jabs to Cacti's face and Jack hitting the hip buster and both guys brawling into the crowd. It isn't what it was going to be, but it was pretty great. Hoss was a Kong and didn't give us much besides a nice clothesline. Dory was Dory although I really dug the finish with Dory hitting the spinning toe hold on Cactus, stops Hoss from interfering with the spinning toe hold and then putting it back on Cactus.

ER: We heard for years about the legendary Battle of the Bam Bams, and now Finally! The first legendary battle between Hoss and Hoss! And to throw another Hoss into the mix, it appears than T.T. Hoss is even wearing Dan Blocker's old hat. Also, I wasn't actually aware that Terry Funk wrestled at all in 91/92. I saw Tag League matches with him in 1990, but then my brain skips to him in ECW or FMW, so it's cool to see dead era Terry. Terry is in a fun goofy mood, hopping around on the apron, and we get a nice elbow and punch exchange with he and Cactus, and who could have guessed what this would blossom into in just a few years. Cactus looked slightly out of his element, but part of the fun in 80s/90s All Japan was seeing out of their element guys show up on a tour. He seemed a bit overwhelmed but still dropped a couple big elbows off the ring apron. I liked Hoss here, dug his clothesline, nice standing splash off the ropes (with a hilarious moment of Terry leaning over the ropes to try to tag Dory, but then acting like he was hit by a monsoon once Hoss bounced off the ropes), huge high up bearhug; he also really sets a great tone for all the Cactus/Terry crowd brawling, with one of the coolest ringside mat removals in history. Hoss just picked up the whole section of blue mat and sent it flying, like a big blue tidal wave. Ending was fun, and I liked Terry skipping around after, celebrating.

MD: Definitely a story of two matches. Foley and Terry were as compelling as a pairing as Hoss (one of the Colossal Kongs) and Dory were not. Foley brought something wild out in Terry, even though this would be a couple of years before the death matches. Foley wanted nothing more than to feed for Funk and Funk obliged with punches and headbutts and just posturing around the ring like a fired-up madman. Hoss could move around the ring (and he had a good splash) but most of his stuff lacked the oomph you want from a guy his size. Sub-Ottman. 91 Krusher Kong vs 91 PN News would probably have been the worst match of the year. If it happened, don't tell me. I'd definitely be up to seeing more 91 Foley vs Funks though.

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