Dark Match Legends: Vic Grimes vs. Erin O'Grady

Vic Gimes vs. Erin O'Grady WWF 1/20

ER: This is one of those legendary rare "both men get signed" tryout matches, two acclaimed APW students getting a dark match on a local Raw taping and tearing things down. Grimes and O'Grady had some great APW matches and this was a super condensed version of the best parts of those matches, two guys fully understanding all of the fireworks they could use to grab the attention of strangers. O'Grady had some mind blowing athleticism that was never present in this specific way once he became Crash a year later. He is so damn nimble here, and the way he moves in the first two minutes of this match are just as impressive as the first time I saw Low Ki or Amazing Red. He gets from point A to point B in surprisingly quick ways and has really impressive body control. There's this wild bump where he gets lifted high up in the Savage/Steamboat choke, thrown down hard on the back of his neck, but somehow just absorbs this concussion worthy drop and floats back up to his feet with a kip up. O'Grady gets to the apron and up to the top rope for a missile dropkick quickly that the crowd was buzzing just watching him leap to the top rope, before he even did anything OFF the ropes.  

Of course, so much of O'Grady's offense wouldn't be possible without the sincerely top drawer basing of Vic Grimes. Grimes caught huracanranas better than anyone, and O'Grady was athletic enough to effortlessly pull off ranas leaping off the top rope and a fly dragonrana that flipped him into the ring from the apron. These two were real dance partners, a west coast Reckless Youth/Mike Quackenbush. Grimes manages to steal the show away from O'Grady's athleticism and make it all about his crazy high slam offense and even crazier bumps. Grimes takes such an insanely huge bump on a missed avalanche, like Sgt. Slaughter's bump with 100 extra pounds, that the crowd takes to him like Jerry Blackwell in Minneapolis. Grimes' fall is so fast and dangerous looking, that the crowd hadn't even fully processed what had happened. As they're processing, as he staggering away from his own wreckage, he gets wiped out by a full sprint O'Grady springboard crossbody. Taka Michinoku as a crazy leprechaun. Grimes is more than bumps, and has strong attacks big and small. He can really level a guy with a well-aimed back elbow, but then do something extravagant like his sitout torture rack slam, something that looks skeleton shifting.

But, he is an all time lunatic death wish bumper. Grimes manages to outdo his earlier bump with one that should be every bit as legendary as Chris Hamrick's bump against 1-2-3 Kid. Vic sets up and elbow smashes O'Grady into a folding chair (after smashing that chair against his own head at ringside, a dark match gesture done only to entertain the dozens seated directly at ringside). When Grimes gets into the ring and runs into a head of steam off the opposite side ropes, you don't think there's any way you're about to see what you're about to see. No way. Grimes is too big and shaped like a larger Mick Foley. Grimes was a really nice man. He was a guy nice enough to drive up to be interviewed by me on my college radio show. He was really open about his dumbest bumps, and honest about the things he said behind the scenes that he shouldn't have said. This man proposed to Vince McMahon that he be brought in as Mick Foley's brother, a team of hardcore psychos pushing each other to bigger stunts. It's a great idea on paper, but imagine being the lunatic who pushes to the owner of the company that you should be immediately affiliated with one of the three biggest stars in the company. I love it. You should bring me in as Stone Cold's even more badass brother, Mr. McMahon!

But I get why he wanted to be associated with Foley, because he was as insane as Mick Foley. Grimes runs off the ropes and flings his surprisingly limber body to the floor, flattening the now O'Grady-less folding chair and giving a dark match crowd that was still filtering to their seats the likely biggest bump any of them had ever seen. They are completely in Grimes' back pocket. Later in the match Grimes climbs to the top rope with impressive balance, BACKING UP the ropes to the top, crashing and burning off a missed somersault elbowdrop. Grimes is great at bumping his opponent back to control, and O'Grady gets to show off in ways that even Juvy hadn't invented yet. Grimes shows off that base ability, taking a springboard tornado DDT, crazy flipping dragonrana from the apron, but catches the next one and tossing O'Grady into the air for a cutter. Grimes was a big fat Rupert Pupkin out there, showing up unknown and crushing every joke, catching every rana and sticking the landing on increasingly bigger and more dangerous spots. 

I'm lucky I got to go to a lot of APW shows in my formative teenage wrestling fan years, and this match deserves its legendary tryout status. They brought something new and different to an unsuspecting crowd. These people didn't know what to expect from Grimes and O'Grady, because none of them had imagined their style of match to be possible. 

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2002 Boss Man Crashes Into Crash

Big Boss Man vs. Crash Holly WWF Heat 2/3/02

ER: Man, Boss Man was an absolute killer here. He looked amazing, a real bully, every strike looking awesome. It really looked like he was killing Crash out there. It's pretty one sided, yet it's also longer than his other 2002 syndicated matches. Crash kind of worked his brief offense section like he was Pepe-era Chavito, more goofing off than actually going for offense, so the bulk of this was 4 minutes of Boss Man beating his ass around the ring. I am totally okay with that, because Boss Man has nothing but great looking offense, clearly a guy who could still work way above the level he was being used. He has really impressive presence and everything he throws looks lethal. He hits Crash with four different punch variations in the corner, and I have no idea how to pick a favorite. There's the overhand right and the uppercut, but I think my favorite is when he just rears back and pops Crash straight in the forehead. 

Boss Man decks Crash with his sliding punch, throws an all time great cross chop to the throat, and makes something as simple as a running stomp look devastating. He leans into Crash's nice elbow strikes, and drops a great knee right to Crash's temple. At one point he literally just stands on Crash in the corner and it's the greatest thing: One boot on the stomach, one on the throat, just standing on him like a hate filled surfer. Crash takes the kind of beating that makes it look like he's on his way out of the fed, and basically his one bit of offense is a sunset flip that ends on a one count when Boss Man pops him in the eye with his calf. Outside of looking like the best striker of that era WWF, Boss Man shows insane amounts of personality. I laughed out loud watching his reaction to loud "Boss Man Sucks" chants, not getting fired up and yelling back, but instead standing there with his hands on his hips, lips pursed, equal parts annoyance and disappointment. I love this guy. 

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Heel Tommy Dreamer: It's a Gag!

Tommy Dreamer/Mike Awesome vs. X-Pac/Albert WWF Metal 10/27/01

ER: This was only a technical heel performance from Dreamer, because nobody was going to be booed opposite X-Pac at this point. Living through X-Pac Heat was a really weird time. I'm not sure what other situations are comparable to it. He'd been a very popular babyface for a long time, and was then a popular babyface who acted like a heel, and at a certain point people just got loudly tired of him. The Uncle Kracker theme didn't help matters. But X Factor are clearly supposed to be the faces in this match, and it's worked with them as the faces, only the crowd didn't react to it that way. In fact, Mike Awesome got the biggest cheers of the match, any time he would do damage to X-Pac. Dreamer doesn't work as an overt heel, but he has one quality in his heel work that isn't around his babyface work: he staggers and stooges amusingly into position for offense. There are a couple of instances of this here, with the best being he and Awesome missing a double clothesline on Albert. Watch how Dreamer misses versus how Awesome misses. They both whiff, and Awesome just turns around and waits for Albert to bounce back off the ropes to level them both. But Dreamer whiffs, then acts like the motion threw his whole balance off, staggering into place to fill the perfect amount of time before getting leveled by Albert. Dreamer is a real satisfying heel bumper, as he's a good bumper in general for a man his size, but it's better utilized bumping for a big babyface Albert comeback. Dreamer was good from the apron, too, loved him nailing X-Pac with a knee to slow him down for Awesome, and Awesome's top rope clothesline looks great leveling X-Pac. This was a short, tidy, but fun match, and Dreamer makes the Baldo Bomb look crushing.

One Year Immunity Battle Royal WWF Survivor Series 11/18/01

ER: Rock solid battle royal regardless of how stupid the stipulation and the Invasion was. Bradshaw was a real beast, potatoing anyone close to him from WCW or ECW (as I typed that sentence it didn't really sound that surprising) and we got a lot of big spills on eliminations. All you really want from a battle royal is some surprisingly stiff shots, a couple of guys taking death wish elimination bumps, and no lying around. This ticked those boxes, was worked quick (only flaw might have been this needing a couple more minutes to space out eliminations), and had a nice extended run once they got to the final 4 (and I loved that the final 4 was Bradshaw, Billy Gunn, Test, and Lance Storm of all people). It started with a perfect moment: Shawn Stasiak being the first to charge into action, getting backdropped to elimination as the match started. The eliminations were strong, like Bradshaw hitting big lariats to send guys out, Tazz eliminating Crash and Tommy Dreamer while Dreamer was powerbombing Crash, Bradshaw throwing out Kidman with a fallaway slam, just a bunch of guys smacking the ground hard. We also get the great battle royal joy of noticing guys who were in between gear, like Stevie Richards wearing black slacks and a black t-shirt, post Right To Censor/pre-Anything Else. Test wins this thing, but what he sadly doesn't know is that the winner of this specific battle royal gets a) immunity from being fired for one year, but also b) a death sentence within the decade. They did not tell that to Test before the battle royal, he found out after. Also, Crash's death was not related to the battle royal, only Test's was.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE HEEL TOMMY DREAMER

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New Footage Friday: CMLL Handheld 11/25/95

Migra I/Migra II vs. Mexican Blanco/Súper Diablo (Erin O'Grady/Spike Dudley)

MD: I almost skipped this but I'm glad I didn't. It was a very fun opener. Blanco and Diablo were pretty creative and the Migras were solid bullies who weren't afraid to give and stooge. Very emotive and into what was happening. This followed southern tag structure more than you'd expect and the Migras looked like a million bucks in the heat. There were some wild and effective but very unfortunate acrobatics (the sort that land you on your own head) by the babyfaces but ultimately this was all pretty satisfying stuff for an opener.

PAS: I am guessing this was an all APW match. Diablo was listed on the file as Erin O'Grady (Crash Holly) and I am guessing Blanco was Matt Hyson (Spike Dudley). I assume La Migra was a pair of APW guys too (maybe Mike Modest and Maxx Justice). These guys all worked really well together, with Holly and Spike bumping like you would expect those guys to do, flying super high on monkey flips and eating shit on clotheslines. There were a bunch of dives which looked totally reckless in an awesome way, lots of flips which looked seconds away from killing both the guy who took it and the guy who dove. I really liked the German suplex which finished the match, fun stuff from some green guys who would go on to do things.

ER: Phil is right, this is definitely Modest and Justice as La Migra, a gimmick that has somehow sustained itself in northern and southern California indies. Modest and Justice were the first ones doing the gimmick, and after they stopped using it someone else would use it. even Brian Cage was a member of La Migra at one point in the 2010s. I'm not 100% certain that Matt Hyson is the non Erin O'Grady here, but my only other guess would be Chris Cole (I don't think Hyson ever had the muscle the non O'Grady had, and the offense didn't seem like Hyson's from this era). And this match is really great. This ranks among the best APW stuff I've seen, and I've seen more of it than most. Modest was so polished just a few years in, he really was a natural. But Maxx Justice/Mike Diamond also should have gone places and did bigger things. He was a legitimately intimidating dude with a great angry face, tall, with a big upper body (his day job was throwing luggage around for an airline, which feels like a great workingman's job that a 60s/70s regional babyface like The Crusher would have). But he takes moves really well from flyers. He caught dives and saved a huge rana from the top rope to the floor, and had this great base moment where he cut extremely low on a lariat before catching O'Grady. O'Grady had some crazy stuff, a guy who really did deserve to make it. He gets alleyooped into a dragon rana, hits a great tope, tope con hilo, that rana to the floor, all really big stuff for this era, and he also took two big bumps off the apron skidding across the floor. Hyson/Cole/whomever had some wild stuff too, great somersault senton off the apron and from the middle buckle to the floor, and hits a nice tandem dive with O'Grady. La Migra actually felt like a dangerous gimmick to be working in Los Angeles, feels like a thing that could have got Modest jumped. This match really showed the level of talent in mid 90s bay area indies,  incredible to get talents like this all at once, when you looked at what other American indies looked like in 95/96.


Los Brazos vs. Apolo Dantés/Pirata Morgan/Satánico

MD: This was just the second match on the card. The fans were familiar here and knew what they wanted and what they were getting, which was heaping amounts of Porky. The Primera had a bit of feeling out and one rudo swarm tease (the Brazos rushed in) before the rudos went cheap on a handshake and took over for real with triple teams. The segunda was a long bit of FIP heat, cutting off the ring, before the Brazos had enough and rushed forth. I'm not sure I'd have been as okay with that with normal tecnicos (as it defies logic more than having a thematic beatdown on one wrestler after another) but there's such a chaotic element to the Brazos that it worked. Most of the match was in the tercera, with Oro fighting off everyone and Porky doing a lot of comedy before they launched the dives. Satanico hit a nestea plunge off the apron on the far side of the ring which I don't think I've ever seen him do and somehow adds to his legend. They were chanting for Porky to dive well before it was his turn. The finish was fun as it was one of those everyone gets pinned out of a multi-man submission spots that never actually works and did here. I always appreciate that. The fans appreciated all of this and money was tossed in post match. There was literally no way this was going to be bad given who was in there.

PAS: Brazos are maybe the greatest formula wrestlers of all time. Nothing is more enjoyable then watching them do their match, you don't need any extra juice, the rudos really just have to show up. This match however had two first ballot hall of fame rudos and Dantes who was a king in the 90s. So not only to we get awesome Brazos stuff, but there is so true class to play off of. Satanico is a great Super Porky opponent, very comfortable with playing along, but also willing to get really nasty when it is desired. That Cactus elbow off of the apron was a true Holy Shit moment. We get some big time Pirata bumps too, and Dantes hits a great looking Superfly splash. Porky is of course a joy, he was at both peak fat and near peak agility at this point, and he hits his top rope dive so hard he nearly bounces out of the ring, he also reverses a double wrist lock by springboarding off the top rope into a flip, mind bending stuff from a guy who looks like Homer in the Simpson episode he got Obese to get on disability.


Silver King/Vampiro vs. The Headhunters

MD: This cuts off midway through the segunda, so all we really get is a mauling by the Head Hunters. Really, though, that's all we needed. They were tremendously effective at what they did. Not much more to say here except for that the crowd really wanted to get behind the tecnicos and that Silver King was one of the top guys in the world at working the apron and milking a moment at this point.

Atlantis/Héctor Garza/Pantera vs. Eddy Guerrero/Emilio Charles Jr/Felino

MD: I really liked this. Captains are Atlantis and Charles, and they set the tone immediately by having Charles get a cheapshot in on Atlantis during the announcements. After a brief exchange early where Atlantis gets the advantage, he dodges him for much of the rest of the match (though runs all the way around the ring into a quebradora as the tecnicos take the primera). The other main pairings are Felino and Pantera which works out quite well and Eddy and Garza which starts off a bit slow but on the second and third time through gets great. Late Garza is one of my favorite wrestlers period, so sometimes I don't give Early Garza enough credit, probably, but the point of comparison is always Eddy. I have no idea why the latter is here as he'd been working WCW for a few months now, but I'm not complaining. Once he really unleashes the rudo fury on him (after Felino sneaks in a foul on Pantera to turn the tide in the segunda), the beating is primal. Guerrero refuses to pin him after a nasty, wild powerbomb and then superplexes him and has Felino hold him down for the frog splash. Between falls, he slaps him and hits the brainbuster and locks in a STF for good measure. The comeback is a little all over the place, with Atlantis fighting to get his mask back on and just whipping Charles (who cries foul) around the ring, but Garza sliding all the way from one side of the screen, through the ring, to the other to get revenge on Eddy is great stuff. I could have used another minute or two of comeback, but Pantera gets to creatively upstage Felino, Atlantis gets the decisive win with the Atlantida on Charles, and post match, Eddy perfectly catches Garza on his signature dive. Post match, after the other rudos had left, Eddy wants a shake and Hector gives him one and it felt a little like a passing of the torch even if the real points of comparison would come years later. Always something to see here and it was always something worth seeing.


Mascara Ano Dos Mil vs. Rayo de Jalisco Jr.

MD: Phil's already covered the Casas vs Santo match elsewhere, so this is our de facto main event. Lucky us. Look, it's been a while since I've willingly watched a Rayo match, especially a singles match, but the flip side of that is that it's been so long that maybe I'd be happily surprised? I love how if you go to the official ELP youtube page and find "Touch and Go" almost all of the first comments are in Spanish and about the Dinamitas. This is, obviously, a completely bullshit title match. Instead of matwork in the primera, there's lots of competent Mascara Ano stalling and a bunch of dancing foolishness by Rayo. There are basically two holds, one to stooge Mascara so he can go out and stall again, and one to finish it. The segunda is even less substantial, just a couple quebradoras, a couple of whips, and a missed top rope move by Rayo. My favorite spot in all of this was probably Rayo hitting two bouncing grounding headbutts and then comedically missing the third. My other favorite bit was him accidentally diving on the wrong person twice. We didn't even get Mascara punching him a bunch. This was not good lucha and I was not happily surprised.

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Hotstuff Hernandez in WWF

Hotstuff Hernandez has always felt like one of the notable guys over the past couple decades to have never worked WWE, but he's also not a guy who gets talked about much as someone who could have been in WWE. He feels like a guy they would have wanted at some point, and a guy who could have been a pretty big name in certain WWE eras. He's worked nearly everywhere else in his 20+ year run, has been a visible TV presence, but has never worked for WWE. However, he worked two matches for WWF, in the year before they became WWE. How many guys work a couple matches early in their career, and then go on to make good paydays everywhere else for 20 years? It's an interesting case. Here are those two matches:


Shawn Hernandez vs. Crash WWF Jakked 11/11/2000

ER: Little did they know that they had the spitting image of future shaved head Kurt Angle right here, in a match where they talked several times about Kurt Angle, yet never made the connection. And part of that was our cursed announce team of Michael Hayes and Jonathan Coachman mentioned the name Shawn Hernandez early, but not again once the match was rolling. What Michael Hayes *does* do, is make several non-jokes about women he would like to have sex with. You now, the kind of non-jokes where suddenly any kind of verb is flipped around and made to sound dirty. "So, Molly Holly got a big win this week." "Ohhhhhh, I'll let Molly Holly get a big win over me heh heh." "Well we're still running those XFL cheerleader tryouts..." "Ohhhhh, I'd like to tryout for those XFL cheerleaders heh heh." It's great stuff and obviously they are great jokes that you cannot NOT tell. And Hernandez gets a lot of play here, most notably throwing a great high arc powerslam early. Crash makes up the size difference by hitting nice and hard, nice punches to Hernandez's eye, flies into him with a couple of nice short elbows (one of which slumps Hernandez back into the corner), knocks him down with a big bolo lariat, then hits a good enough missile dropkick. Now Crash probably needed a better, flashier comeback, as Hernandez was more in control the first couple minutes, and with the size difference Crash should have gone for some more explosives. But the bulldog finish plays with this crowd, and the match itself is good enough.

Shawn Hernandez vs. Haku WWF Jakked 4/7/01

ER: This was cool, as Hernandez gets to be a hulking Kurt Angle, bigger than Haku, and Haku is enough of a man that he basically lets Hernandez run this thing. Haku can let some hulk in a singlet look strong, because he's Haku and he knows he can always just rip his eyeball out at any point. The whole match is remarkably simple and effective, with few moves and none really needed. Haku is in his early 40s here and gets to show how spry he still was, working some face rope running/dropdown/leapfrog sequences with Hernandez in a way that Haku really wasn't doing with anyone else at the time, and the match peaked with something as easy as Hernandez chopping the hell out of Haku. Seriously, it's so great. These guys have gotten by this whole time by just running into each other and being two guys butting heads, and we finally get Hernandez whipping Haku into the turnbuckles...and then he just starts beating him down. Hernandez throws heavy clubbing forearm shots to Haku's chest, then starts throwing big hard chops. And not super fast Kobashi chops, he's laying them in Ric Flair style, and Haku just yells louder every time another one lands. Hernandez is standing and chopping Haku as hard as possible, and the fans are getting into it, and Hernandez keeps chopping, and the fans are into this big man slugfest. Hernandez tosses Haku into the opposite buckles, Haku angrily headbutts the buckle, Hernandez gives chase...and Haku catches him dead to rights in the Tongan Death Grip. I had no clue these two ever crossed paths, had no memory of this match (even though Metal/Jakked was my favorite show during this era), but this was what you would want from 3 minutes of two hosses.

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Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 21: Ki vs. Crash

Low-Ki vs. Crash Holly WWF Metal 2/17/01 - FUN

PAS: This was Ki working WWE Metal jobber duty, but he gets to show off some stuff, including his big handspring tornado kick right to Holly's jaw. I don't really remember much about Crash Holly, but he seemed to be working a bunch of fun carny roll-ups. I thought he was all comedy bumps, but instead he was wrestling like Checkmate Tony Charles.

ER: I thought this was some fantastic syndicated pro wrestling. Metal was my JAM during this era. I was doing my college radio show midnight-2 AM on Saturday nights (The Late Night Honey Run), and during my show I would set a tape for Worldwide and Metal. I would play music, get calls from drunk students, pick up some Taco Bell on the way home (2 bean burritos, 2 double decker tacos), then plop on the couch and see what jams were on my syndicated pro wrestling. I loved it. Metal was basically thee place to see snippets of random indy guys that I had read about. Ki was a semi-regular on Metal/Jakked during this era, popping up memorably every month or two and actually getting talked about by commentary during matches. That wasn't a thing they did for every indy jobber. I remember being really excited when Ki worked the West coast and I got to talk with him about his Essa Rios match on Metal, and Ki said "You see that guy in the front row flip out when I threw that kick?" I followed Crash more than Phil did, if only because he came up in local indies and I was extremely excited when he made it to WWE. But even I didn't remember him breaking out trippy nearfall roll-ups. I don't remember anybody working these kind of roll-ups in early 2000s WWE, or even in 2000s indies. World of Sport tape watching didn't seem to hit indy wrestling until maybe 2003. But Crash breaks out a couple cool ones here, trapping Ki's arms behind his head (as if he was standing backwards during a stump puller) and flipping that into a roll up, then later trapping Ki's arms, pulling them through Ki's legs and flipping him into another cool pin. Both of these roll ups are ripe for stealing today, nobody would know the reference point by now. Crash also has a dope reversal on a tornado DDT, turning it into an inverted atomic drop. Most WWE Metal Ki matches were more competitive than your average WWE guy vs. indy guy, and Ki getting to hit his handspring roundhouse kick is a super showcase move for someone to get, and the crowd responded accordingly. Lots of fond personal nostalgia from me for this era, glad it still holds up as good fun.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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