New Footage Friday: Lawler, Rude, PG-13, Rich, Dougie, Koko, Bruno, Baron, Bruiser, Ladd

Dick The Bruiser/Bruno Sammartino vs. Ernie Ladd/Baron von Raschke WWA 8/25/73

PAS: This was a no DQ match with Sam Menacker the play by play announcer as the special referee. Apparently according to Cagematch the Bruiser/Bruno tag team was called Annihilation Inc. which is a hilariously Progress Wrestling tag name for the early 70s. This a pretty great big star tag match with Bruno and Bruiser walloping the heels and Heenan running around bumping and getting in the mix. It was kind of odd to see Bruno take a subsidiary role, he is usually such a titanic force, but he was definitely the B-Side of the tag team. Bruiser is a trip, super expressive with some fun Stooges spots, including making Ladd punch himself. Finish was wild with Heenan splitting Menacker open with a foreign object and the heel working over both faces with the ring microphone, kind of odd to have such a non-finish in a no-DQ match but it certainly got the crowd into an appropriate lather.

MD: Where to even begin on this one? Apparently Bruno and Dick the Bruiser were called Annihilation, Inc. I sort of loved Bruiser here. He was far enough along that he could be a big ham, but not so far along that he had become a self-parody like he would into the 80s. Bruno might have been the outside attraction but Bruiser was the guy who was the most over with this crowd. He had this way of adding an extra pause to everything, almost freezing time for just a little too long to be believable but just long enough to transcend belief, to push it from faux realism to borderline mythic.

The heel side here was great. Ladd was just larger than life, with an athleticism he'd lose later. He threw himself into Bruno's punches and back out with the bumps. He had this way of maximize his physical presence, not just on offense, but on selling, taking up as much space as possible to get over his writhing and pain, especially by the ropes and on the apron. I also love the idea of a guy so big needing to utilize a loaded thumb gimmick. There's something underhanded and insulting about that. The Baron was more chickenshit than you might expect. I think he was back body dropped about fifteen times in the match.

Menacker was all over this match as the special referee. It was no dq, so he was mainly there to stop Heenan from overtly interfering. If this was a title match or something more serious, it would have grated, but as an over the top tag, it fit perfectly, really didn't take any heat or credit away from the babyfaces, and the fans loved it.

ER: This was a blast and there's so much to cover that I'm not sure where to begin. I haven't seen any Bruiser or Crusher from when either were closer to their peak, so it was wild seeing Bruiser getting reactions like he was all four Beatles in 1964. Every time he would move an inch he would get wild shrieks from the fans, it was insane. I'm not sure I've seen a large crowd in love with a wrestler this much, pure adulation. He clearly loved soaking it up, but I just couldn't get over how much people screamed when he would do something as simple as go for a pinfall (imagine if Bruiser was in the USWA 10 man below, just doing pinfalls! The event would sound like an absolute massacre with all the constant screaming). Due to Bruiser's impossibly huge popularly, Bruno really could have been any man. I don't think I've ever seen a legend as big as Bruno so clearly relegated to second banana status, sheerly due to the popularity of someone he's teaming with. Imagine Hogan and Rock teaming in 2002 and seeing fans flip out for Rock and then look at Hogan as someone who is standing in front of the Rock and could he please move because we can't see the Rock when you're standing there. Bruno is the cute sheep wandering back into frame in front of the cutest sheep in the petting zoo.

The heels basically stooged for 20 straight minutes, which is fine by me. Ernie Ladd looked gargantuan. Obviously the guy is big, but he looked like freaking Andre here. He also took 3 bumps over the top to the floor, was made to punch his own face by Bruiser (and bumped big for it) and was a real great foil for Bruiser. Baron isn't really a great bumper, he has a long awkward body and falls more like 2010 Akira Taue, if Taue was also constantly getting a chair pulled out from under him. But those bumps work tremendously well in a stooge setting, buckling at the waist from kicks to the stomach, falling on his butt after big punches, taking a ton of backdrops, all of it great. Two different times he does this awesome apron pratfall: He's standing on the apron and takes a shot, and his legs fan out so he's basically doing the splits heels first on the apron, holding onto the top rope while his butt is hanging over the floor, before dropping to the floor. The second time he did this bump was when he was holding Bruiser prone and Ladd naturally accidentally clocks him, just an all time great pratfall. Heenan is fantastic at ringside, kicking at officials, running in with sneaky and not so sneaky punches, causing total chaos and distraction, introducing a ringside microphone cord to choke Sam Menacker and others; Menacker got a couple little Walking Tall moments too, got to slide Baron's foot off the ropes during a pinfall, stuff the fans could get into. This was great, real crowd pleaser. Nobody went home disappointed by this one.

Jerry Lawler vs. Rick Rude CWA 8/27/84

PAS: This is from a commercial video tape of USWA cage matches and seems to have fallen through the cracks, no other reviews, didn't make the DVDVR Memphis set, etc. This was worked kind of like a Bruno cage match with Lawler beating the bricks off of Rude for much of the match. Lawler laying in punches to someone is going to be always worth watching and Rude took an appropriate pasting. I am never going to be down with no-selling a piledriver and one of the great things about the Lawler hulk up, is how he remained vulnerable during it, popping up after a piledriver is the opposite of that. Still despite that this was a pretty heated brawl and really fun discovery.

MD: This was just a mauling. Every wrestler in his mid-20s should probably have to take ten minutes of Lawler's offense in a cage while the crowd gets more and more into it. It builds character. Rude already had a lot here, though, and you can hardly belief this is the same guy that started the year off as a bland babyface in Mid-South. I love his attempts to escape, especially the ones that are futile, either trying to go under the cage or in between the two slats. He wanted nothing to do with any of this and it's glorious. His little bit of offense comes late in the match, almost entirely because of Lawler's own hubris, mostly groin-related and wholly appropriate to his character. The no-sell on the pile-driver is fine because Lawler was still so fresh you figure he knows his to protect himself. It's worth it as the place comes unglued with the strap. It wasn't a spot he overused and here it meant a ton. Nice, refreshing violence with Rude coming off as a guy who deserved the comeuppance he received.

PG-13/Spellbinder/Tex Slazenger/Brian Christopher vs. Tommy Rich/Doug Gilbert/Jesse James Armstrong/Tracy Smothers/Koko B Ware USWA 2/6/96

ER: This match was plenty fun and also so so so so so stupid. It's a USWA vs. SMW 10 man anything goes tornado cage match, most pinfalls in 30 minutes wins. If you knew that info, and didn't even know the participants, you'd know that you'd want to see it. And then you see the names. PG-13! Tommy Rich! Smothers! Thicccc affffff KOKO! And then you realize that this is on USWA's home turf so PG-13 and Brian Christopher are working babyface, and you know this is going to be 8 stars. This match seemed too big to fail. These 10 names, in a cage, weapons, anything goes, the easiest win. The match doesn't even go the full 30, comes out to more like 22 minutes, just more condensed violence right?

And then they go and have almost SEVENTY PINFALLS in 22 minutes. That is not a typo. This was a match almost wholly comprised of pinfalls. Every back bump a guy took, that guy would get pinned. This started happening in the 2nd minute of the match, and kept going until the very end, when they hilariously tried to build drama with a last minute kickout. The kickout was absolutely hilarious, a genuine laugh out loud moment, because it was literally the ONLY kickout that happened the entire match. This was a match that had some guy getting pinned in some part of the ring literally every 15 seconds, and most of the match guys would be waiting in pinfalls for waaaaaay too long while a ref finished counting another pinfall at some other part of the ring. The pinfalls were so plentiful that the ref finally just stopped getting down to count some of them. The pinfall kickout was so hilarious because it made me desperately want JC Ice to yell out "Wait...THAT'S an option!?" Whoever it was that kicked out (video is pretty washed out and guys frequently are blocking other guys) was like the first ape in 2001 to learn how to use bones as tools/weapons. More guys got hit with a hubcap AND a cowbell than kicked out of any move. There were more referees in this match than there were kickouts. It was awful. The participants clearly were working under the rules of "Anything Goes, 'Cept Kickouts".

This was the worst All Japan battle royal I've ever seen. Now granted, the All Japan battle royal is one of my favorite gimmick matches, and they always leave a ton of room for personality to shine through. This is like if someone watched a couple of All Japan battle royals, and came away thinking the key to those being fun was the pinfalls. Or a computer noted when the biggest pops occurred on a card and determined that people cheer loudest during ring entrances and winning pinfalls, so the computer spit out some dot matrix paper stating that the most successful crowd reaction would be for a match that is only ring entrances and pinfalls. And for all the guys in the ring, and all the potential action that was happening, and all the guys spending more time on their backs than all the whores in Tennessee, we spend the whole match in a real tight shot from a ringside handheld camera. A match with this match participants needs some distance to put everything into scope, to follow the action. Watching this much action in a tight frame is like showing up late to the movies and having to sit in the front row, needing to turn left and right to follow action across the screen. 

Even with an entire, match long constantly annoying series of pinfalls, there were some small, tiny gold nuggets in this. Maybe not super nice gold, maybe tooth gold, but still it would be impossible to put these 10 guys into any pro wrestling situation and not get *something* out of it. These 10 guys have good enough schtick that you could have made this a "Hands Tied Behind Back, Must Wrestle on Knees" match and it probably would have turned out better than this. But still, there were moments. Tommy Rich looked like a guy who I want to see in more (better) multiman garbage brawls; it was fun seeing PG-13 as babyfaces, their usual (wonderful) schtick being cheered wildly instead of booed; Christopher hits a big dive off the top to the floor, Dougie hits people with a chair, Koko clonks a few guys with a cowbell and drops someone with the ghostbuster, I thought Jesse James actually showed a ton of charisma and was always super active, and we get a cool spirited post match run in with some skinny dirtbag guy in cut offs talking a ton of shit, Miss Texas eating a piledriver from Koko, and coming off far more violent than anything in the actual match. I cannot imagine a worse match featuring all 10 of these guys. I mean seriously put these exact 10 guys in ANY match other than this one, run that fucking simulation a thousand times, and I just can't picture it being worse than what we got here. Literally any singles match combination from those 10 names would have been better. Pick the least enticing singles match (Jesse James vs. Spellbinder?) and I'm positive it would be better than what we got. This was improbably awful. There's no way this match should have been this bad.

MD: Yeah, look, I don't even know what to say about this. Eric's got it covered, right? Ok, I do sort of occasionally enjoy how malleable the rules of wrestling can be. There are norms that everyone agrees upon and when people break those norms, it has the potential to screw up everything for everyone, because it shatters the social contract that allows for suspension of disbelief. Sometimes, however, you can be in a situation so unique that the norms don't apply. Old Survivor Series matches kind of work like that. You can definitely get eliminated on a bodyslam in an old Survivor Series match. This sort of had the makings of that. You had two companies feuding. It was in a cage. It was falls count anywhere and no DQ and chaotic.

Still, this was absolutely nuts. They should have made it so one counts worked as falls. If normal marathon matches are the equivalent of soccer games, low scoring with a lot of defense and very much a test of endurance, this was a basketball game, with everyone hitting layups and running back across the court. There was some cumulative selling as things went on but it was dangerous because anytime you fell down for more than a second, you were going to get pinned. Maybe it was more like Pro Wrestling Calvinball. Of the things I'm fascinated by in this match, it's not really the structure or any specific spots or performances. I wonder how they convinced someone like Tommy Rich to get pinned fifteen times on tape. Was it because he was going to get to pin someone else fifteen times? You know these guys weren't getting paid much for this. How did they put this together? The announcers could barely keep track of the score. It sort of crescendoed to a final moment. It wasn't like a battle royal where you could remember the order of elimination. Somehow they got to where they were going, so more power to them, I guess.

Last thought, this was a cage match where the cage was solely used to corral the participants and keep them in an area. It served a purpose, pushing everyone together so closely that there'd be constant action and constant pinfalls, but it wasn't uesd in any other way.

PAS: This was a mess, such a cool looking match on paper, with all time great guys like Tommy Rich and PG13, plus awesome fun dudes like Koko and Doug Gilbert, hard to fuck it up, but they fucked it up. This reminded me of an All Japan Battle Royal, where Misawa would get knocked down and dog piled to get eliminated, those were light hearted undercard fodder, this was a main event with guys going down to eye rakes and bodyslams. USWA was always trying weird stuff, a lot of times it worked, this time it really didn't. We have very few arena matches from 90s Memphis, so I was amped when this turned up, it could have been left on the cutting room floor.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Brisco, Flair, ROBLEY, Hansen, Bruno, Baba, Idol, Race

Since the Network only dropped one gem this week (although it is a shiny one for sure), we supplemented this post with a couple of cool All Japan Handhelds from the deep well of cool handhelds unearthed by Pete.

Giant Baba/Bruno Sammartino vs. Harley Race/Buck Robley AJPW 10/8/81

MD: The video quality on this handheld is washed out to the point where Robley's trademark yellow shirt barely looks yellow. I'm not going to say it helps, but it is sort of cool to see Baba as this looming, giant presence in poor VQ. This had a ton of novelty. It's not every day you can see Race vs Bruno and even Bruno vs a guy as slimy as Buck seems rare.

If I'm reading the date right here, this was a few days after Bruno's retirement match with George Steele, him finishing up with his last commitment to Japan. I have no idea where this was on that tour, but he must have felt good about it because he was incredibly spry here. He looked like a wrestling machine against Race early on and when he was tagged in later, he was moving so quickly and bringing so much intensity that I had to check to make sure I wasn't on 1.5x speed. Everyone else looked good too, with Robley sneaky and mean, Race bumping and bringing down hammers, and Baba so good at utilizing his size for big, visual comeback moves, but this was the Bruno show. There's not much better in wrestling than watching a washed out, unearthed video of Bruno repeatedly deadlifting Robley from a grounded armbar.

PAS: I thought this was awesome, it isn't technically an all time great match, but for pure enjoyment it is just a blast. Bruno was off the charts in this, he was moving like one of those Shaolin guys CIMA is training, super fast armdrags, great powerful takedowns and reversals, the armbar deadlifts. What a bummer his retirement was, it is too bad he didn't just spend the next decade working UWA and CMLL cards. I really enjoyed the Race and Robley team too, they were nasty cheapshot artists in this, great looking sneaky jabs and elbows, both guys are master dirty boxers, they would always find a way to sneak in a shot. I told Eric we were reviewing this match, and he kept referring to it as "The Robley match" despite having three of the biggest stars in wrestling history, and it is kind of justified. Robley is a guy we don't have much of, but is kind of an American Kurisu, balding sleazebag who will just kick your ass, and he totally feels like he belongs with the all time greats.

ER: Hahaha it didn't even cross my mind to call this match anything other than "The Robley match". Buck Robley turning up on tape is going to be something I'm going to want to see. He's a great guy to turn up in All Japan, as Robley looks like someone who would be in Clint Eastwood's stock of character actors that he would bring along on movies, like Bill McKinney or Paul Koslo, like you'd see Robley turn up as a bartender in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot or as the camp cook in Joe Kidd. He had those narrow mean eyes and shabby muzzle, and looked like someone who would try to rip the nose off your face if he misheard you. If this match was a western and he was the star, then the fans would clearly be watching Buck Robley in: The Man Who Would Be Pinned. And he's awesome in this as Race's scrappy lackey (and would most certainly try to rip my nose off if he heard me call him scrappy), always flying in and dropping elbows on necks, dropping a knee right after Race drops a knee, running interference so Race could sneak in a punch to the eye, kicking Baba in the head to break up a pin, getting ragdolled by Bruno on a great bearhug, essentially wrestling as if he were a man starting a bar fight on Deadwood. He's a proto Necro Butcher who doesn't have the physical gifts or athleticism, so works messy and mean instead. Bruno had a fantastic hot tag here, one of my favorites in recent memory, running in quicker than a cruiserweight and just overwhelming Robley, Robley looking like a guy barely able to keep his head above water, Bruno just effortlessly muscling him around the ring. Bruno was working like if Danielson had packed on 40 lb. of muscle but still wrestled the same. His hot tag reminded me of WCW Finlay matches where he would work really fast for a minute to almost try and trip up his opponent. Bruno looked iconic here. I love a good bearhug and this was a masterpiece, looking like he could snap Buck in two, and Buck selling it like a panicked animal in a trap. Awesome find.

Ric Flair vs. Jack Brisco GCW 4/7/84

MD: I think we were all hoping for another dump of multiple matches, and maybe even expecting at least a few, but if you're going to get one match, a 20 minute unearthed GCW Brisco vs Flair NWA Title Match is a good way to go.

It was Flair as heel champ against a legendary technical babyface, so you know exactly what to expect coming in. Let's face it. By 2018, with the amount of footage we have at our disposal, the old Flair adage is spot on: "Learn to Love It." You know what you're getting from Flair, so come in looking for the positives and be prepared to forgive the negatives. In short, enjoy and take in what unique elements are you going to get from the specific opponent and setting and lean into what we know Flair does as well as anyone: work from underneath during the first act matwork (ignoring the fact that none of it will ever matter for the rest of the match), hit his stuff (and he had more stuff at this point of the 80s than he would later) well, and have a hot finishing stretch that the crowd would be 110% into.

As such, I was pretty happy with this. Brisco had won a TV tournament (over Sweet Brown Sugar and Brad Armstrong) to get the shot. He was working TV as a tweener-heel, refusing, for instance, to give Brad extra time to prepare for the finals after he took an errant shot from an angry Hawk during his semi-final match vs Horner. Unfortunately, he wrestled this as a total babyface. That first act consisted of a nasty headlock and a short-arm scissors, which is one of my favorite holds in general. Brisco kept rolling with it as Flair tried to get out. Good stuff. Like I said, Flair had more offense for his mid-match control here than he'd have a few years later, including a killer neckdrape over the top rope. Brisco did his part, selling well both here and especially in the stretch. The finish was this great cradle/roll up (really, almost a crucifix) reversing a fired-up hiptoss attempt, which was something so good it's crazy Flair didn't use it more in later years. So, as far as basic Flair match grading goes, this hit all the marks really well.

Where it excelled was in the little things. That early headlock allowed a tease for the shin-buster, which was paid off late match when a far-more-tired Brisco would go back to a headlock. Flair then hit the shin-buster and got the figure-four for a finishing tease. The transition to Flair taking over was beautiful. Hebner stopped a Brisco punch in the corner (one that was well deserved as Flair had gone to the dirty breaks first) and Flair got a knee in. Normally, it'd be iffy, because a lot of the heat ends up on the ref, but Flair was savvy enough to follow it immediately with a shoving match with Hebner. In later years, the ref stuff, while always getting a pop, tended to be detrimental. Here, it ensured the heat would stay on him and not Hebner, even as he took over on Brisco. It's small things that would get homogenized later, like Flair making sure to raise his hand as he reached the top rope, as if he actually intended to hit a piece of offense instead of just getting tossed off because it's what the fans expected.

Again, I was hoping for multiple matches/surprises, but if they can manage to post something at this level every week, I'll be happy.

PAS: For a guy who I completely adore it is hard to get excited about unearthed Flair gems. So much of his stuff has been available and picked through over the years, that I would really only be excited if he was against a idiosyncratic opponent. While there isn't much Jack Brisco footage out there, I kind of get his gist. Despite some subdued expectations I did enjoy what both guys brought to the table. I am a total mark for a short arm scissors, and I loved Brisco using that rolling short arm scissors as a control method, rather then just sinking in a headlock or leglock. The match really got rolling when it turned into more of a brawl, both guys have great looking punches, Flair chopping downward shot to the nose is a true classic shot and it looked like he really watered Brisco's eyes with it. That finishing cradle roll up was really awesome looking and such a cool flash pin, really great way for a heel champ to win clean, while still making the babyface look good. Neat match, although the fact that they have this footage is probably the most exciting part of it.

Austin Idol/Stan Hansen vs. Tiger Mask 2/Jumbo Tsuruta AJPW 8/28/87

MD: Good ten minute match. I thought Idol brought elements you don't always see in AJPW to the table. Occasionally, he was there as a random, chaotic element while Hansen was doing his thing, stalking around ringside with a chair getting a cheapshot in. When he was directing traffic, however, it was more of a southern tag. There was a significant section where they were controlling Jumbo by working his arm and that was all Idol. He was practically forcing Jumbo up for moments of hope only to pull his hair to get him back down. I'm not sure the fans were buying it and the eventual hot tag wasn't as hot as you'd hope.

It's striking to see how well Tiger Mask II would, even in 1987, make sure not to get swallowed alive by Hansen in a way that his peers couldn't always manage. He'd reverse a whip or drag him to the corner in a way you wouldn't expect. Best moment of the match was probably Hansen having enough of his kicks against the ropes and taking him down brutally for punches and headbutts. Still, whenever I watch these 80s Hansen matches I wish they were just a few percentage points more collaborative. There's a spot where TMII reverses the whip on the outside into the rail and Hansen chases him back into the ring. TMII sputters out with a few kicks that Hansen ignores. If he had eaten a dropkick instead, popped up and goozled him again, it would have meant more. Likewise, after an assisted slingshot splash on Hansen, there's just a kickout by the ropes. If this happened in, say 1987 JCP, there's a far higher chance the kick out would have sent TMII flying out of the ring, which would have been a much better visual. You never want wrestling to be overly cooperative, but sometimes a little bit of working together goes a long way.

PAS: I am a bigger fan of uncooperative Hansen then Matt. I agree he doesn't work with his opponents very well, but I think there is something viscerally thrilling about how he makes everything feels like an jagged fist fight. My favorite spot in the match is where TMII is whipping out a kick combo, and Hansen just grabs the leg and violently double legs him, and starts wildly pounding on him. The Universal Heartthrob was more of a bit player in this, but he was fun running around and cheap shotting folks, I loved Idol but his real strength is with his connection to the crowd, and this is a crowd who doesn't care about him. Jumbo vs. Hansen is a match up which is a little underrated by fans of All Japan, but I always enjoy how Jumbo stands up to Hansen's stuff, he is an ace and he will not be enveloped.

ER: Uncollaborative Stan Hansen is one of my favorite things ever, I love that when you're getting your shots in on him there's that feeling that your luck could run out at any second and he would just walk through your shots to maul you. I love when he walks through shots to attack, and love when he starts to subtly sell shots like a giant gorilla shot with a tranq dart. He'll run through a punch or a big chop or a lariat and you can tell it hurts and he slows and staggers a bit through clenched teeth, all while continuing to move forward. Earned shots against Hansen are the best, and I loved the spot where Hansen chases TMII. If you pissed off that grizzly enough to get him to chase, it means that you've gotten to him; reversing that whip and then the ensuing chase might have ended with Hansen walking right through kicks to get his mitts on him, but I thought it established a very early vulnerability that doesn't always happen. Hansen always feels the right amount of generous to me, which makes runs of offense against him very special. Once Jumbo tags in and slaps him a few times he seems like a guy who could presumably be tangled with. Idol is the tour's "new white Hansen tag partner", and you could probably make a pretty excellent comp of all the random Americans who were brought in for a tour or two to primarily team with Hansen. Idol doesn't work the crowd at all, which is a shame as the unearthed Rip Rogers footage shows that you can bring your sleazy flash Memphis persona to AJPW and make the fans connect with you. Maybe it wouldn't have felt right in the match, but it would have been interesting to see. Anyway, we got to see him scrape the bottom of his boot over Jumbo's face before grabbing an arm, and that's pretty great in itself. I liked the "not clean" breakdown of this tag, there weren't a lot of pretty moments, whenever offense would be done to Hansen he would kind of thrash like a child trying to avoid a bath, and I like the frustrated "Fuck it I'm just getting the bullrope and choking someone" finish. Also, it should always be noted, these handhelds make Hansen matches even better, as you aren't really sure where he's coming from, and then out of the corner you see a chair fly through the air, and then a bullrope whip through the air, and it's like when Bugs would see the Tazmanian Devil approaching and just stand there watching as trees get toppled and animals get stripped of their fur. Hansen is the greatest.

Read more!

SLL's All-Request Friday Night

Rikidozan vs. The Destroyer - Best 2/3 Falls Match (JWA, 12/2/1963)
Requested by Jingus

The description on the YouTube page linked above says this is their historic match that drew the largest TV audience of any match in wrestling history. Assuming the dates are correct, that's not actually true. That match happened on May 24th of the same year, and to the best of my knowledge is still buried in the NTV vaults if the footage still exists at all. And that's unfortunate for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that - again assuming the dates are correct - this would be one of the last - possibly even the last - matches in Rikidozan's career. This match happened on December 2nd. Six days later, he'd be stabbed with a piss-soaked knife in a nightclub men's room. Five days after that, he'd be dead.

So let's send out Japan's greatest wrestling hero with a bang, as he takes on one of his greatest career rivals probably for the very last time. And I'm sure glad it's him, because while Rikidozan seems to have been mildly underrated as a worker, The Destroyer is one of the best, and at least half of this match's charm comes from him bitching at the referee. "Get 'im out of there! What's he gonna do, stay right there? Get 'im out of there! You don't see anyone in my corner, do ya?" There are kind of a limited number of Destroyer matches out there, but from what we have, he did seem to have a nice formula worked out that he executes here: attack, get countered, complain. This is something like 35-40 minutes, and he could build the bulk of a 35-40 minute match around stuff we usually think of as opening match bullshit. Rikidozan holds up his end of the bargain as the straight man in Destroyer's comedy routine well. He grabs a nice jumping headscissors takedown, and lord knows Destroyer is a guy who can work being in a headscissors. He tries to handstand out of it, but eats a mini-piledriver before eventually escaping. He clings to Rikidozan's leg and gets him backed into the corner, where he rams his shoulder into Rikidozan's gut while the ref was laying in the count before backing off ("I broke the hold, and I'll belt you, too!"). We get a lot of fun trading holds and complaining ("What's wrong with that? What's wrong?"..."I broke it! I broke it! I broke it!") before things start getting rough around the 20-minute mark. Rikidozan slams Destroyer and then busts out the double bootscrape on his face. Destroyer comes back with two big kneedrops. A third from the second rope misses, but he recovers and lays Rikidozan out with a pair of slams, getting the first fall with his feet on the ropes. There is hemming and hawing from the natives, but honestly, it was just his feet. He didn't actually lift his legs off of the ground to get added leverage. He just draped his ankles on the ropes. They should be hemming and hawing about how a wrestler as good as The Destroyer should be able to cheat better than that. Ah, well. It's a minor flub in an otherwise stellar match. Anyway, things get more aggressive in the second fall, including Destroyer shooting face-first into a kneelift, followed by Rikidozan's prototype Kawada short kicks. Destroyer comes back with one of his own, but he can't hold the advantage long before Rikidozan chops him in the throat to tie things up one fall apiece. Destroyer takes out his frustrations on the guy handing out bottled water between falls, and then really takes his frustrations out on Rikidozan when the third fall starts, immediately getting him in the corner and laying in big forearms and kicks. He grounds him and drops some more knees on him, including the nasty-as-fuck handstand double kneedrop to Rikidozan's face. Most of the rest of the match is The Destroyer trying to lock on the figure-four, which Rikidozan keeps countering by rolling with the stepover toehold onto his stomach, which was pretty clever,though I may argue that they dragged it out a touch too long. Eventually, though, Rikidozan kicks him off of an attempt and send him to the floor. He gives chase, and they have a nice little brawl until Rikidozan hits a backdrop on the concrete and makes it back in the ring just in time to beat the count and win the match. The crowd goes wild, blissfully unaware that their hero's most dangerous opponent of all was just about to strike.

Randy Savage vs. Bruno Sammartino - Lumberjack Match (WWF, 2/7/1987)
Requested by Televiper

Pretty great for a sub-five minute match. Savage wastes no time, using Elizabeth to keep Bruno at bay before pulling the QB sneak around Liz and the ref to blast Bruno with an axehandle. He lays into him, but Bruno makes a fast comeback. From what little I've seen of Bruno, I think he gets a bad rap as a worker. Even this late in the game, he's a pretty capable brawler, though obviously it helps to have Savage bumping around for you. Savage comes back with the help of an imaginary foreign object, and gets Van Terminator-level distance on a top-rope axehandle, but Bruno fights back and tosses Savage out of the ring to Ricky Steamboat, who dishes out some payback before sending him back to a Bruno bearhug. King Kong Bundy runs in to break it up, getting Savage DQ'd, and Savage bails as a big brawl with all the lumberjacks breaks out with Bruno and Steamboat standing tall at the end. Nice.

Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage - Lumberjack Match (WWF, 2/17/1986)
Requested by J.H.

This is the rematch of the bout I reviewed last week. In the month since, Savage has won the IC Title and Hogan has had his ribs injured by King Kong Bundy. Beyond that, this match really picks up right where the last one left off, with Hogan rushing the ring and clocking Savage behind in payback for the post-match cheapshot from last time. He also gives Savage a taste of his medicine by repeatedly bashing him in the head with the title belt just as Savage did the month before. Hogan is on fire offensively. His punches all look great, and he also shows off a nice backdrop and a great running back elbow into the corner. This all gets cut short when Bundy trips up Hogan while he's running the ropes, which doesn't immediately turn the match around, but does seem to throw off his game enough for Savage to go to the eyes and then hit a running kneelift to the taped ribs. Savage does a great job working over the ribs, including hitting four top-rope axehandles to them. There also a great spot where Hogan gets thrown to the outside in enemy territory, and Don Muraco holds him in place against the post so Bundy can deliver a nasty avalanche to Hogan. They roll him back in, and Savage winds up for a big right hand...and then just pushes him down and rolls him back out where Muraco and Bundy do it again. Hogan sells the beating really well for the bulk of the match, barely getting his shoulder up on every pinfall. But, of course, we do get our requisite Hulk-Up after the top rope elbow. Match ends pretty quick after that, as the criss cross off the ropes, and since turnabout is fair play, George Steele grabs Savage's leg, and Savage trips and lands in perfect position to be hit with the leg drop. After Hogan's great early offensive run, I kinda hoped his finishing stretch would be a little longer, but I still liked this a bunch.

Marty Jannetty vs. Skinner (WWF, 11/9/1992)
Requested by douchebag

Man, there is some weird-ass commentary between Gorilla Monsoon and Lord Alfred Hayes in this match. I'm trying to decide what the highlight was: Gorilla's off-hand comment about Sensational Sherri having been hit many times before "in numerous places", his implication that Hayes was into teen pussy, or him suddenly yelling that he'd belt Hayes if he disagreed with him over something and Hayes just laughing it off. When you're on a commentary team with Lord Alfred Hayes and you're out-weirding him, that's kinda impressive.

Anyway, match itself is pretty choice. This is one of Jannetty's first matches back after The Rockers' break-up, and he is all fun and athletic, and does a "block a monkey flip by stomping his face" variant where he does a fistdrop instead. That is one of my favorite stock spots in wrestling, and Marty has a good fistdrop, so cool to see him break it out. Cool spot where they fight to a stalemate, and the ref steps in between them, only for Skinner to reach around and smack Marty in the face. Not long after that, Marty takes a spill to the outside and tweaks his knee, and the second act of the match is built around Skinner: Master Technician working over the leg with various toeholds and kneebars. It's kinda brilliant at first, because you remember, "oh yeah, Skinner is Steve Keirn, he's a grizzled ring veteran who would know how to do this old-school stuff, and the fact that he's doing it under a silly early-90's WWF gimmick just makes it weirder and cooler". But then you remember "wait, I've actually seen a lot of pre-Skinner Steve Keirn, and I don't remember him ever doing any of this stuff...is he calling back to his 70's work or something? What am I looking at?". Marty makes his comeback, and does a great job selling the knee all the while before putting the Fabulous Alligator Man away with the top-rope fistdrop. Marty looked really good here, and Skinner did a fine job putting the youngster over.

Masato Yoshino vs. Don Fujii (Dragon Gate, 1/18/2011)
Requested by Brandon-E

Yes, I will even review Dragon Gate matches. Don't expect it to happen often. Especially if they're like this one.

I don't like Dragon Gate. I don't think that's a secret. What might be a secret - if only because it just occurred to me while watching this match - is that Dragon Gate might be my least favorite wrestling promotion ever. And when I say that, that doesn't mean I think it's the worst promotion I've ever seen. Believe me, I've seen far, far worse than Dragon Gate. I mean, from it's inception to this very day, even with the intermittent bits of good they've done, TNA has to be considered a vastly worse promotion than Dragon Gate. But they do intermittent bits of good, and I can laugh at the large swaths of bad, and the embarrassing spin doctoring that goes on after the fact. I can look back at death bed WCW and laugh at their pathetic foibles while digging their final syndie matches and the last-minute resurgence of the cruiserweight division. AAA at their very worst always had something interesting going on somewhere, even if you had to dig for it. But Dragon Gate is a wrestling dead zone, producing nothing good enough for me to really enjoy, and nothing bad enough for me to really laugh at. Dragon Gate is a promotion whose matches I can review with a form letter. In fact, I've got one right here:

"After Scott Keith's "Netcop Busts", the first thing I ever bought when I got into tape trading was a Jack Epstein "Best of Sasuke Sekigun vs. Kaientai D*X" tape. It's been a while, but the last time I watched the "These Days" 10-man, it was '05/'06, and I remember writing on the late, lamented Happy Wrestling Land board how surprised I was at how few dives were in it. Seriously, for a match that often gets thought of as the pinnacle of spot-fu, I remember counting a whopping two or three dives in the whole match. Which isn't to say it wasn't still chock full of spectacular looking offense, I just tended to remember it as being a lot of in-ring action in the first half building up to the out-of-control dives in the second half, and there really weren't that many dives. Even when I first saw it as a largely puro-illiterate kid, I was able to pick up on the significance of that first half ("Oh, they're keeping the match in the ring and just teasing dives right now to build anticipation, so when they actually start diving, I will be extra psyched for it. Cool!"), but when I rewatched it that last time, it really struck me how important that was. It may have only been two or three dives, but I remembered it like it was 30. They knew how to build a match, how to create a sense of scale, how to make things seem important...stuff I don't get from the Dragon Gate guys. I try - with varying degrees of success - to stay on top of the current wrestling scene. To that end, I do check out Dragon Gate matches every now and then. At best, what I've seen has been clean, inoffensive, aesthetically pleasing, but also emotionally empty. At worst, it's...well it's pretty much the same as it is at it's best, it's just more structurally flawed. I can see why people like it, but when I watch it, I just don't feel anything. It's been an even longer time than since I last watched old M-Pro, but I do remember liking Toryumon in it's original form. That might not age so well if I watched it now, but I wonder if there's an issue with the later generations of wrestlers from the company. There was a sense of real wrestling fun and old-school competence in Toryumon that Dragon Gate just abandoned. The fun was replaced by metrosexual fanservice, and the classic wrestling structure by an endless series of mechanically fine and emotionally hollow spots done constantly until the match ends. This isn't what I look for in wrestling, to the point that I'm loathe to even call it "wrestling". This is a demo of wrestling moves meant to get Japanese teenyboppers to touch themselves, and that's it."

But that doesn't really fully describe this match, so I've got to add a specialized post-script to the above.

Yoshino vs. Fujii. Is it a great match? No. Is it a terrible match. No. How does it compare to the average Dragon Gate match? Marginally favorably, largely thanks to Don Fujii. Fujii is the last of the old-school Toryumon guys who hasn't sold out stylistically to Dragon Gate (I'm looking at you, CIMA), and consequently, he tends to be the guy most likely to make a Dragon Gate match watchable these days. Here's the thing: back in the day, Fujii was widely considered the least of the major Toryumon guys. While he was pretty much always good, he was never great, and he still isn't. The fact that the least guy from that era is now the best guy in this one is really damning him with feint praise, not to mention a really damning statement about the rest of the roster. Speaking about the rest of the DG roster, let's talk about them for a second. Here's the sum total of what I can tell you about them: Shingo Takagi is exceptionally bad to the point that fucking Danielson couldn't carry him, Masato Yoshino runs really fast, and Akira Tozawa is actually great when he's put in an actual wrestling environment. That's it. I can't even make any kind of specific comment about Masaaki Mochizuki in 2011, and I had been a fan of his for years. So what we have here is the best of what's left against one of the less interchangeable (but still not particularly good) younger members of the roster. And bless Fujii's heart, he tries to work the grizzled veteran going up against the athletic youngster match to the best of his ability. The nearfall off of the Gedo clutch actually had me going for a second there. And for a guy sold on his speed, Yoshino does deliver on that front. He does Marufuji's stupid, stupid "drape the guy over the ropes, slowly walk away, getting a running start, and dropkick them spot", only here, he goes the entire length of the aisleway, but he runs so fast that it actually doesn't come off as any less stupid than when Marufuji does it. Still comes off as stupid, though. In the end, this is structured a lot better than most DG matches, and I can see how it was supposed to pull me in, and I appreciate the thought put behind it, but these were just not the guys who were going to make it happen.

Read more!