Found Footage Friday on Saturday: LAWLER~! IDOL~! RICH~! BAM BAM~! ROSE~! HENNIG~! SHEEPHERDERS~! NIGHTMARES~!

Sheepherders vs. Nightmares CCW 1/17/87

MD: Charles has received a new set of DVDs in the mail. He's going through it and has already identified some very interesting sounding lost matches. Be sure to follow his work in general. Here's one of the matches and it's a very straightforward, very solid tag. Got to love Solie here, first calling the Sheepherders "twisted steel" which made me wonder where he was about to go with that, and then refusing to differentiate Butch or Luke or Davis or Wayne for the entirety of the match, just calling them "A Nightmare" etc. Thanks Gordo.

This hit all the right notes balancing being grounded and maintaining a slightly chaotic feel throughout. During the shine, the Sheepherders kept rushing out of the ring every time the Nightmares got the better of them. It put a certain sort of punctuation on everything and really got across the slickness of the Nightmares. I'm pretty sure it's Wayne that works FIP here, and the transition was this great over the top bump due to the rope being pulled down. He got color as time went on and had some really well timed hope spots. When the fans started to chant USA, he'd reward them by giving them hope. That's exactly how these things should work. Always be struggling to get back into it but struggle the most when the fans are getting behind you. Some nice cutoffs too, including him going to the wrong corner. Plus a missed tag due to drawing the ref. They did a bit where the Sheepherders chair use backfired to set up the hot tag and had everything thrown out on the comeback as they used a chair successfully this time. The Nightmares got the best of them on a subsequent attempt and everyone brawled to the back. A good use of thirteen minutes of your time.

ER: Love this kind of 10 minute forward moving simplicity. When I think of Nightmares tags I think of minimum three great Danny Davis bumps. This had no Danny Davis bumps and instead had one great Ken Wayne bump that built to a great Davis hot tag. In between that bump and that tag we got the Sheepherders clubbing and kicking ass. Aggressive Sheepherders were a thing man. What a cool team. I would have loved to see heel Bushwhackers in WWF. Heel Bushwhackers during that couple month of '93 when Rock n Roll Express was in. Do we have any of the Well Dunn house show tags? They have such a great asskicking look here. I've always appreciated how clean Butch Miller's bald spot was. He had that young Bob Hoskins cut. Luke Williams had great pop and execution that you'd never expect even if you were familiar with some of their best brawls. He had this nice missed Hitman elbow off the middle buckle (more like a diving forearm smash) and paid it off later as they're cutting off Wayne when he hits a truly excellent falling elbow on him. You don't think of "precisely worked offense" when you think of the Sheepherders or Bushwhackers. Ken Wayne's backwards bump over the ropes to the floor was a cool Big Bump of a match to set up the nice long heat, which had one of those really well done moments when a ref cuts off a freshly tagged babyface with a near spear, making for a waist tackle and actually holding Davis in the air for a moment as Davis is reaching past his shoulders to join the fray. The eventual hot tag was hot, Luke bumping these nice careening pratfall bumps while getting punched around by both Nightmares. As they fight to the floor, Butch monkey flips the ringside commentary table onto himself in the chaos after getting smashed into it. It's all hot. 

Jerry Lawler/Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Austin Idol/Tommy Rich Memphis 3/9/87

PAS: Lance Russell saying "Tommy Rich is split wide open" is my love language. Incredible stuff, one of the best matches we have unearthed in the history of this project. Wild bloody Memphis brawling with three of the greatest ever to do it in Rich, Idol and the King. Add in a green but game Bam Bam Bigelow, who came off as such a force of nature. 9 minutes bell to bell with the wild pushed pace of a bar brawl. So much of this feud was built around nasty ball shots, and I loved how they teased the posting on Lawler, and then had Lawler finish Idol with a top rope fistdrop to the nuts, an awesome NO DQ finish. Bam Bam flying through the hard ringside wood table was wild and unexpected and the post match beatdown and bloodying of Lawler was tremendous, especially considering how rarely Lawler bled. Pure joy, the platonic ideal of what I want from wrestling and a hell of thing to wake up to. 

MD:  I feel like you could watch this a dozen times and see something remarkable that you hadn't noticed yet each time. It's great that Russell is not looking on some sort of monitor but calling what he's seeing, so we hear different tastes of chaos than what's right in front of us. I've seen this a couple of times now but on my last watch the things that stood out the most were the way the heels just charged into every bit of offense, Lawler's ability to create organic and interesting violence from all sorts of obtuse angles at any point, and how well a guy as relatively early into career as Bigelow knew when to give and when not to give. There was a sense that Rich and Idol really needed to get either Lawler or Bigelow (the latter being more of a challenge) down and out of the match to control 2-on-1, but they simply couldn't. Lawler was too savvy and Bigelow was just too much. The big moment in that case was when Lawler more or less blocked the chair shot and came back to even the odds. Maybe my favorite bit of all of this from bell to bell is when Lawler scoots up from the second rope to the top to hit the very low fist drop as Solie notes it's legal in this match. The way the table bounces and contracts as Bigelow hits it post match is a wild bit of physics to really cap everything off. You can read about this one but it's really best experienced yourself.

ER: Our 1980s DVDVR sets were so comprehensive. The first time Phil and I met, we hung out in his parent's apartment watching 4 hours of handheld 1989 Memphis footage and made the historic decision to each vote YES to include the match that would go on to place 125th out of 125 matches on that set. The Memphis set was better for having Jerry Lawler, Jeff Jarrett, and Freddy Krueger vs. Dutch Mantel, Master of Pain, and Ronnie P. Gossett. Just like it was better for including Buddy Landel vs. Freddy Krueger. Also, what kind of idiots were voting on that thing who thought there were 121 matches better than Jackie Fargo vs. Jimmy Hart? Anyway, if that Ronnie Gossett trios match had been unearthed in 2024, you would be reading about it on Segunda Caida. Instead, we're talking about a match that could have placed in the Top 10 of that Memphis set if we had it then. If we had it then, one of the Freddy matches wouldn't have made the cut, so this is for the best. It's incredible we're still getting new matches of this caliber. What a powerhouse, even better than it sounds on paper. 

I've watched this thing three times now and I've come away with a new favorite thing each time. Well, that's not true. My favorite thing ever single time is Lawler piledriving Austin Idol and dragging him spread eagle to the turnbuckles, climbing to the middle buckle, doing that perfect pause that Lawler does to build suspense on whether or not he thinks he needs to come off the top rope, then doing that perfect no look step to the top rope he does (that is one of my favorite signature movements of any wrestler in history), before flying off with the greatest fistdrop ever committed to tape. If there was one man in the world I trusted to safely fistdrop me in the balls from the top rope, it would be Lawler, but it's still a real Wheelbarrow on a Tightrope situation and I don't know if I can name a wrestling finish I've ever loved more. Look at the way Idol straightens and kicks his legs! Look at the way Idol holds and rubs his balls with his left hand during every second of his post-match spike attack on Lawler! I might have been too bearish in thinking this was only a Top 10 Memphis set match. 

So my favorite thing is locked in. But Matt's right about seeing something remarkable each time you watch. By the third viewing I was wondering if I had ever seen a babyface physically chasing a heel through the crowd during a brawl. I've seen a hundred ECW matches where guys walked together in the crowd while holding each other's hair, but I don't think I ever saw anyone getting punched in the face and running from the back of the arena for the safety of the ring only to run directly a Bam Bam Bigelow punch. God I wish I could have seen Chris Candido do just that, even if Candido was no Tommy Rich or Austin Idol. Rich and Idol took offense, ran into offense, and turned violent as great as any heel team of the 80s. Lawler and Bigelow were great at surprising them with a punch or a knee, and it's incredible how well everyone in this match had a constant innate sense of where everyone else was at all times. I've never seen such precise, out of control chaos. 

Everyone in this match was constantly turning around into a punch or turning around to punch someone, and there was more struggle in these 10 minutes than I see on entire wrestling cards now. Not every punch came easy, a face didn't get smashed into a guardrail every time someone tried. Lawler held onto the ropes to prevent Idol from pulling his balls into the ringpost like he was fighting against being pulled into hot lava. Bam Bam shoved Idol's head back by the chin before punching him and it looked like violent mafia shit. I couldn't believe Bigelow's bump through the ringside table, and was astounded that a match that ended with The Greatest Finish Ever wasted no time moving into the biggest bump of the match and some of the most violent sharp stake work we've seen. If Lawler punched one ball of Idol's he was going to take it out on his face with a broken piece of wood, and Lawler's gusher after being run face first into Idol running at him with a stake tells me that fistdrop crushed nuts. Tommy Rich is like Bobby Eaton for me, a guy who I love more with literally every new match I see. If there was a wrestler today who moved in and around and through a brawl the way Tommy Rich does here, I'd show you my favorite wrestler in the world. I watched this match a fourth time while writing about it. 

Buddy Rose vs. Curt Hennig Portland 7/2/88

MD: This was a special "Curt Hennig returns" episode of TV. He commentated on a match, cut a promo with the babyfaces, wrestled Buddy, and then came out at the end to explain to the ref how the heels cheated to have a result overturned. The appearance was setting up a match against DeBeers who he said was part of why he lost the World Title two months earlier. My memory is a little iffy on that one though. Rose was primed for a loser leave town match with the Assassin. The stakes on this particular TV match, however, was that the loser would end up a dunk tank later that weekend. Curt would be in WWF by the end of the month after a few more AWA shots, but here, he felt like a very big deal. In some ways it reminds me a little, thematically, of that post-world title match between Martel and Race right before Martel goes to WWF. Just a last burst of someone being a certain sort of star before they ended up stamped by the WWF machine for the rest of their career.

The match was very fun but obviously, coming in at just ten minutes, wasn't going to live up to the previous Hennig vs Rose feud. Some of the usual brilliance though. Buddy started by turning a rear bearhug into a dropping body scissors. Then after Curt escaped, Buddy dodged something with a cartwheel only for Hennig to get him in that self same drop down body scissors. They did a tit-for-tat bit with Buddy bumping off the top with a press, only for Curt to turn it into a great small package when Buddy tried to get him the same way. Cute finish where Hennig was able to eat a Superplex but hook the legs at the last second and get a shoulder up. That meant Buddy thought he won and started to gloat only to realize what had happened and that he had a dunk tape in his future. Just a fun glimpse of something that had been out of our reach for a long time.

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Ken Lucas Punks the Road Warriors! Nick Patrick Takes the Nightmares!

Road Warriors vs. Ken Lucas/Zulu AWA 12/12/84

ER: I always save matches in a giant links draft, and often forget to leave notes if there was a specific reason why I planned to watch/write a match (like if it was specifically recommended by someone). So I forget why I set this one aside, but it was probably because it had a whole uncomfortable vibe throughout, far more uncomfortable than a typical squash match. Lucas is an old pro at the end of his career (literally just a few more matches before a car accident injury forced him to retire), and he clearly didn't like the idea of putting over the Road Warriors. He and Hawk are not at ALL on the same page from go and I kept waiting for Lucas to either get decked by Hawk, or continue treating him the way Regal treated Goldberg. Lucas kept intentionally crossing Hawk up, which seems like such an absurd thing to do. Lucas would bump for Hawk, while also not really giving Hawk any satisfying moves? He keeps throwing Hawk's rhythm off and it's great, like seeing some guy punk the Steiners. Hawk even tries to punch Lucas at one point and Lucas awkwardly forces him into a headlock, then punches him. It's weird, and makes Lucas look like this legendary man with a death wish. Animal and Zulu stink up the joint, Animal looking like a guy with maybe two weeks of training, no ring presence, a worse size guy than any bad size guy people complained about in WCW. It's almost stunning how much of a "size only" guy Animal was here, looking like a guy who was going to wash out like every other bodybuilder. This match is amazing, as the Road Warriors are absolute murderers and they look like a couple of dumb jock klutzes here. Lucas trolls the Road Warriors into wrestling like their boots are tied together, and even their match finishing clothesline looks like absolute shit. It rules. Both guys flub their post-match promos too, I mean total amateur hour out here. Ken Lucas really exposed this pair of Chase Tatums, and it ruled. Never heard of these two jabrones again. 

Nick Patrick/Brickhouse Brown vs. The Nightmares Continental 8/26/85

ER: There isn't a ton of Nick Patrick just floating around out there on the free and accessible internet, so I'll review any I can find. Now, this match wasn't really about Patrick, but it was fun nonetheless. It was amusing, as we start with a full music video for the Nightmares (I assume the music was originally "On the Dark Side" by John Cafferty, because they show a clip of Michael Pare in Eddie & the Cruisers), and then the Nightmares let Brown and Patrick take most of the match. Patrick isn't in this much until the finish, as it's mostly Brickhouse running wild on Wayne and Davis. I dug how Brown would use punches and Irish whips to set up his great dropkick on both of them, which leads nicely to the Nightmares taking over by dodging one of the dropkicks. Patrick is set up for the hot tag, and it's good! Patrick is green but filled with potential, good size, good energy, and nice punches. His enthusiasm makes up for some of the execution, and the Nightmares could have done him a favor by taking his flying back elbow a little more dynamically. The finish was good, with Patrick getting a sunset flip but getting axe handled off the top by the other Nightmare. I want some more Patrick! There is too little out there.

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RIP Bullet

Bob Armstrong/Eddie Graham vs. Dick Murdoch/Bob Roop Florida 12/28/74

ER: This is only a 6 minute clip, but there is so much value in these 6 minutes that of course you have to see it. It's one of those tags where the ref never seems to have control, with all four combatants and Gary Hart running around potatoing each other at will. Armstrong is too much fun to watch in this, as he wiggles and glides and dances his way into and out of the ring, firing downward punches and elbows, giddily hopping and bopping into the action. All of the bumps in the match are cool and off balance, more guys spiraling away and stumbling out of punches than guys taking back bumps off strikes. Eddie Graham was a good staggerer and great at coming in with a well timed punch, and I loved seeing he and Roop grapple. All of their standing lock ups look tough as hell, constant struggle, and Roop crushes Graham with his shoulderbreaker down the stretch, which looks just as violent in 2020 as it did in 1974. Murdoch was a major standout, as while Bob is wiggling and punching his way through things, Murdoch is working everything. His belly is big but he is fast, and he runs this entire show. He's a great heel bumper here, not over stooging, but in there to be a threat while also making the babyfaces look like a threat. I loved him and Bob fighting over a brainbuster, how Murdoch's legs wobble when he's eating Armstrong's punches or getting a chair shoved into his face, how athletically he spills to the floor while not looking at all athletic. A lot of this was a battle on just who to focus on, because these guys all do interesting things when they're not even in the match.


Bob Armstrong vs. The Mongolian Stomper NWA Mid-Atlantic 9/9/75

ER: This was a ton of fun but stopped right when things were getting great, but what we got rules. It's a hot Mid-South Coliseum crowd and Lance Russell is calling the action, meaning it sounds the exact way wrestling should sound. Stomper is an absolute physical specimen. Armstrong is also as in shape as he always was, but Stomper looks like a final boss. It's based nearly entirely around the tightest side headlocks you've seen, with both men using their big arms to try and separate each other's melons from their shoulders. Stomper gets shot into the ropes, Bob leapfrogs over and flies backwards with a back elbow, with Stomper slipping to the floor to avoid the big elbowdrop. Back in, and there is a ton of super engaging Armstrong side headlock work. Armstrong has the most apropos surname ever, and Stomper is a master at being an oversized heel going through all the physical throes of being trapped in a snug headlock. When Stomper finally gets loose of it he flings Armstrong into the corner, Armstrong leaps gracefully to the middle buckle and hits an axe handle. Stomper is super generous here (no doubt building to running this match back a few times) and just stooges all over for Bullet, never managing to block a single kick, punch, or chop, and falling prey to every single leapfrog. There's a great theatrical ref bump where Armstrong runs the ropes so fast that Stomper runs him right into the ref after a dropdown, and the ref flops around fantastically after taking an Armstrong shoulderblock. If that shoulderblock is enough to send a mountain like Stomper to the mat, what would it do to a mere referee? Armstrong gets the pin after a big elbow, but Stomper grabs his belt and Gulas sets up the title match that I don't think I have access to. Armstrong knew how to make the most out of the most basic pro wrestling movements, and Stomper is the same thing, heel category. It's a special thing seeing them play off each other.


Bob Armstrong vs. The Mongolian Stomper NWA Mid-America 9/16/75

ER: This is under 5 minutes, not a full match, but it's essential. It's the final few minutes of a rowdy bloody match for Stomper's Southern Heavyweight title, and we get it before the blood starts flowing. They throw big swinging punches and constantly have to be separated before throwing at each other more. Armstrong gets busted open and Stomper doesn't go for anything other than working that cut for the rest of the match. Armstrong's face is covered and Stomper has Armstrong's blood on his legs and body. Bob is not someone who grows squeamish at the sight of his own blood, and it just inspires him to bust Stomper's head open. Not long in, and this loses all pretense of a wrestling match and it becomes a fight. It's so great, just the two of them clutching at each other's heads and refusing to break holds as they strangle each other on the apron. This was an expertly done non-finish, the kind of bloody realism that made you forget there had even been a match happening.


The Bullet/Adrian Street vs. Robert Fuller/Jimmy Golden Continental 9/1/86

ER: Not a Bullet showcase by any means, but a showcase in strange bedfellows. I don't know how much babyface Adrian Street I've seen, but a Bullet/Street babyface team is a fun idea, especially with Fuller and Golden to bump around acting confused by Street's wiles being turned on them. Street freaks everyone out, goes after the ref, goes after Golden and angers him by making him feel things, really gets under the skin of Kevin Sullivan on commentary, is constantly backing Golden up on his heels. Everybody was confounded by street, and the dichotomy was more amusing because of how much Golden and Fuller towered over him. Bullet was the guy saving Street throughout, and I liked the few moments they worked together. Bullet hitting Golden with an atomic drop, sending him flying forward into a Street kiss, sending Golden bumping wildly backwards (selling the kiss 4x as much as he sold the atomic drop) is pro wrestling. Bullet basically worked this match as Street's groomer, dragging Golden to their corner to be assaulted, and punching him in Street's direction for more kissing. Fuller and Golden finally cut Street off from Bullet, and I loved Fuller choking Street from the apron, Bullet getting a hot tag but the ref missing it, and finally Bullet going after Fuller on the floor. Tom Prichard runs out and things get gross with him forcing kisses on Miss Linda while Sullivan talks about how she's getting it finally from a real man. Luckily Steve Armstrong runs the heels off, wearing a neck brace and short white OP shorts.

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