Found Footage Friday: SANTO~! PARK~! MIL~! GARZA~! DAMIAN~! AGUILA~! CEREBRO~! FELINO~! SILVER KING~! FUERZA~!

IWRG Retro 28 IWRG Retro 3/8/2001

Halieen/Ryo Saito vs. Siky Ozama/Bestia Rubia

MD: Undercard lucha made fun more for the visuals of Halieen and Bestia Rubia clashing than anything else. Halieen is a little green man gimmick, like nothing I've ever seen, just really leaning into the notion, including some sort of weird Power Rangers collar. Bestia Rubia has a wolfman mask, but it'd be as if Bowie did Thriller instead of Jackson and turned into a Wolfman at the end, or if they made the Ron Perlman Beauty and the Beast ten years earlier and it was the people making Buck Rogers that did. They need to make more masks like these.

Saito and Ozama are fine and do simple straightforward stuff well enough. Saito has fire. Ozama's a bit of a jerk. But you spend the whole match waiting for the wolfman and the alien to get back in there and see lucha sequences you've seen a thousand times, but never from a wolfman and an alien. Pretty solid finishing stretch (this was 1 fall and went around 16 minutes) with the teams trading falls and trying for Last Rites style pin attempts. This was more of a novelty than anything else but you can't imagine these guys didn't get over just on their looks alone.

Hijo del Santo/Dr. Cerebro/Felino vs. Silver King/Fuerza Guerrera/Cirujano

MD: Star-studded, talent-packed trios here. Rudos ambush to start. At some point, Cerebro really gets opened up. I wouldn't say any rudo particularly stands out here. Fuerza's going to sneak in low blows as you will. Cirujano brings a bit more heft. Silver King looked sharp even post-prime (he had a very smooth figure-four in the primera, for instance). Things picked up in the segunda as Santo ran right through Fuerza for an initial comeback. I loved Cerebro's selling here as he was fumbling about punch drunk even in the midst of the comeback. The tecnicos got swept under again and Santo had to mount a second comeback before Felino was able to hit a moonsault on Silver King to set up Santo's big tope off the top and the caballo on Fuerza.

The tercera was short gave us a little bit of the pairings we had missed in the primera but was primarily cycling through until the big finish. Santo hit an absolutely mammoth tope suicida onto Silver King, just a head-crashing, head-crushing impact. It was so good that they reshowed it in super slow motion so that the action missed the finish (Cerebro getting a submission on Cirujano). I don't usually say that something's worth just seeing for the dive, and this has other things going for it too, of course, but people should see the dive.

Hijo del Santo/Mil Mascaras/LA Park vs. Hector Garza/Damian 666/Mr. Aguila Monterrey 2/3/07

MD: Very odd one on paper. Perros del Mal vs. three of the biggest stars ever, in 07 Monterrey. It's a night show and you can see their breath. Park's in blue. Mascaras has a matching bengal body suit and mask. We come in at the start of the segunda after what seems to have been a Perros beatdown. Garza immediately crashes and burns in the corner allowing Santo to pull his pants down and send him to the floor. Chaos ensues. Park is the guy to watch here, hitting a jumping body slam off the apron onto Damien, putting him through a table. Then he hits a suplex on Aguila on the floor splitting a plastic table. Finally he hits a huge dive through the ropes. Meanwhile, Mascaras hits a couple of ginger atomic drops and things and Santo more or less does his "vs the world" routine against everyone. The finish of the fall is Damien creating motion for Mascaras and ending up in an abdominal stretch.

The tercera starts with almost seven minutes of shtick, and it's Hector Garza shtick, and LA Park shtick, and your mileage is going to vary on this, but for me, it goes real far. It all hit. Garza gets funnier and funnier as the decade goes on but even in 07, he had a lot of the act down. They run a minute or two of Park trying to pull his tights down and Damien saving him until Garza accidentally kicks Damien and Damien pulls Garza's tights down and it's unapologetically hilarious. Then they get the ref in on the act with him doing dual spots with Park and the commentary say he looks like "a crazy panda from Chapultepec" and for a spotlight match like this, it absolutely works. Things broke down pretty quickly after that with Mascaras pinning Aguila and Park clowning Damien before Garza, a cooler lid in hand, chose to attack Park instead of Santo. Santo got it from him and threatened but Park turned around and thought Santo had gotten him and attacked Santo who was quickly pinned before Park laid down for Garza as well. It was a little silly, but Garza was the perfect guy to be in the middle of all this and I'm sure it set up something great (or didn't, because Monterrey). What a show. 

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New Footage Friday: Nuevo Lardeo Super Card

This looked like an all-timer of a discovery, and only ended up being a cool novelty

Full Show

Damián 666/El Hijo del Diablo/Espectrito I/Super Crazy vs. Gitano/Mini Rey Misterio Jr/Rey Bucanero/Zorro

MD: This was a ton of fun. I've seen less atomicos with a mini than you'd think and maybe that means that the novelty still gest me, but Mini Rey was really good in his underdog role, Espectrito was very good getting punked by larger guys as a counterpoint, and Damian was incredibly giving (and a real louse, cheating when he didn't have to instead of facing Rey straight!), to the point where I came out of this thing primarily wanting a singles match between him and Mini Rey. I never expected the two of them to be the main pairing for the match but it absolutely worked. Everyone else worked, but maybe not too memorably. I lost track of Zorro after the primera and only caught track of Bucanero at that point. There was a little clipping too but you could tell this was fun nonetheless.

La Mascara vs. Antifaz del Norte

MD: Not going to lie. I'm not sure who Mascara is here, but I thought this was pretty good. They shook hands right at the start, as this was a title match, but Mascara started with the cheapshots almost immediately thereafter. Antifaz had just begun to get back in it when the brazen double-teaming set in and he had to spend the rest of the match fighting the odds. To their credit, they made it fairly compelling and you felt the triumph of his win in the segunda, just as you probably felt like the screwy finish for the tercera made the journey they'd taken you on a little less worthwhile.

Arandu/Pimpinela Escarlata/Pirata Morgan/Psicosis vs. Felino/Mascara Sagrada/Super Parka/Vampiro

PAS: We really only get parts of this, and it gets cut off in the second fall. There were some highlights, with Pimpi looking like a total killer just unloading all of the tecnicos including big overhand right chops and flinging chairs. There was also a great Psicosis vs. Felino exchange, not sure how many times those two interacted, but man did Felino's speed and Psicosis's recklessness meld well. 

Pierroth vs. La Parka

MD: We got a little burned on the promise of this, because really what we have here is most of the primera and segunda and just some clipping of the tercera, but it's ok. I really loved those first two falls. I also really loved the finish. What I didn't love were the glimpses in the tercera of the ref interference, so I'm almost happier not having it. We lose the very initial scene-setting of how Pierroth takes over, but between the heel ref and everything else, you can guess. The beatdown's good enough that it doesn't matter. Pierroth has great clubbing blows and both of these guys can milk absolutely everything, from a punch to the gut to a chairshot on the floor. There was mask-ripping, blood, Pierroth just being a total jerk, and it had that one core element you want from an apuestas match, from lucha in general, that buzzing build towards a comeback. 

Pierroth planted him with a power bomb and the beatdown continued into the segunda. The buzz built too, to the point where the fans were chanting for Parka while Pierroth was all but laying on a chinlock. So it built and built and built, until the lightning crack of Park's kick to the side of Pierroth's head, the greatest thing that can possibly exist in pro wrestling, the moment of comeback in an apuestas match. These guys really milked it too, with Parka having to really fight back after that moment. He did though, getting amazing revenge by wrapping a chair around a trapped Pierroth hanging on the apron. The ultimately finish played off the powerbomb in the primera and that will always work for me. A tercera for an apuestas matters so much more if you don't know the outcome; here, we did. What we didn't know was when and how Parka was going to come back and how that would shoot through the crowd like electricity, the build and the payoff. That's what I want and that's what I got here.

PAS: This is one of the legendary holy grails of lucha libre, a huge drawing feud and one of the bigger mask matches of the 1990s. We have had highlights before, and this looked like it was going to be the most complete version. Unfortunately while we get the first two falls which were great, the third fall was basically clipped to incoherence. There were glimpses of cool shit, though. I loved Parka just slamming Pierroth in the temple with punches, and the big Parka enziguiri was incredible, looked like he beheaded Pierroth. But man this was such a mean tease, hopefully someday more of this will arrive.  

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New Footage Friday: FUCK ITS! SUPER DRAGON! NEGRO CASAS! EL DANDY! SILVER KING! FAMILIA DE TIJUANA! EMILIO CHARLES JR.!

Felino/Emilio Charles Jr./Dr. Wagner Jr./Negro Casas vs. Pantera/Silver King/El Dandy/El Texano CMLL 12/16/95

PAS: This was an elimination 8 man tag with eight all time great wrestlers going out there are just flowing for 30+ minutes. We open with Negro Casas and El Dandy ripping it up on the mat and just go from there. Matches like these are always going to be more about the rhythm then any real story, although I did dig it coming down the Wagner boys. Fun Wagner performance as he was just planting people with powerbombs, and of course Dandy and Casas were both tremendous. As I have said a million times Casas is the master of minutia, little reactions or sells or execution on moves, everything matters and counts, and it is fun to watch him flit in and out of a match with so many other all timers.

MD: It's a 4x4 Cibernetico with some of the best talents of the era. What's not to like? According to the old WON I looked at, this was billed as "for La Copa de altra rendimiento which basically means the Cup of high-class submissions," and Dave was baffled at the pinfall finish. Anyway, it was interesting how this flowed. You didn't get a lot of clear pairings with defined beginnings and endings but instead transitions between one wrestler and the next. Of the pairings we did get, Silver King vs. Negro Casas stood out. I always love the little trip spots they work into their exchanges. Very few dives but lots of great exchanges and big moves. Maybe Casas kicked out of one or two more things than he ought of, especially when there were still enough guys around to allow for interference, but that's a small issue, as was the botch on the Felino elimination. Wagner came out of this looking like a big deal. And yeah, while it's cliché for us to say it, Dandy's punches were sure great.

ER: I love having a collection of these types of matches, the kind of match I can throw on in the background if a friend or two are over and everyone in the room gets their own level of enjoyment out of it based on their individual concentration level. The person concentrating the most gets the benefit of seeing small sequences or individual movements, but someone dicking around on their phone will still look up and see Silver King stomping the hell out of Emilio Charles' knee or Dandy getting Casas out of the way with a breathless magistral. They'll see fast moves done by men they don't know who have large perms. It's worked at such a pace that it's perfectly entertaining for every level of involvement. I thought the major standout here was Texano, looking like the stiffest and most aggressive guy in a match filled with stiff strikes and fast aggressive sequences. Everyone was lighting up everyone, like Emilio Charles throwing skeleton rattling corner clotheslines or Wagner crushing Pantera with a sitout powerbomb. Casas is the perfect kind of glue for a match like this, and Dandy comes off so plucky and punchy. I get why Dandy didn't translate to southern American wrestling crowds, but seeing him in his wheelhouse and basking in his enthusiasm is infectious. He looks like the coolest version of Barbra Streisand in A Star is Born. The first three minutes of this match are just Dandy and Casas tearing through brisk mat sequences and really its all you need. This is the kind of thing you can play through a couple times and notice new stuff each pass.

Super Dragon/Rising Son/Pantera vs. Damian 666/Halloween/Nicho El Millonario Rev Pro 11/30/02 - GREAT

PAS: This was Super Dragon really clearly excited to work a Familia de Tijuana match. Most of Dragon's career was fitting people into his formula, so it was fun to watch him fit into a formula. We get some early lucha comedy, some pratfalls, an awesome somersault rana through the post by Dragon and a killer finish. Really enjoyed Rising Son in this as he was ripping off high difficultly ranas with true pros there available to base for him. The kind of match which must have sent the crowd home on a real lucha high.

MD: Whatever I was doing in the early 00s, it wasn't watching RevPro. I guess I was focused on the East coast scene? I have no idea. That made this pretty fresh for me. The biggest problem was that La Familia de Tijuana was just too over as cool heels, getting more cheers by far, to the point where I was sort of embarrassed for Pantera at one point. They didn't adapt the match for the crowd. That said, everyone seemed to be having fun, especially Damien who was goofing a bit more than usual. They did a lot of groin based offense accordingly. Nicho based beautifully but there's nothing new with that. Super Dragon was in there less than Rising Son but his flipping tope out through the corner to set up the finish was breathtaking. The timing of the dives at the end felt a little off to maximize the moment, but I doubt anyone in that crowd cared.

Nasty Russ vs. T-Money vs. Jay Donaldson vs. Samson Walker NWF 8/15/15

PAS: This was a four-way cage match with our boys the Jollyville Fuck-Its against each other along with two other Kentucky area indy guys. It was a spotfest cage match and the Jollyville boys are guys with huge spots, and Donaldson and Walker were right there. Walker is a big guy, even bigger than T-Money and he does some chucking around including catapulting Donaldson into an ace crusher. We don't get a Nasty Russ cannonball, but we do get a crazy moonsault off the cage into Walker's feet, and several nasty cage bumps including one where he goes forehead first into a steel post. Finish was absolutely psychotic and one of greatest cage finishes I have ever seen. Total blast and a great look at some Segunda Caida favorites earlier in their careers.

MD: If you're going to have four guys in a cage, fatal four-way style, this is a pretty good way to do it. This gave everyone time to shine. When guys had to lay around, it was generally warranted. The characters were well-defined. Walker was comedic yet powerful and explosive. Donaldson had the hype man, the step-up kicks, the attitude, and the opportunism. Russ carried himself like a champ, tenacious, with fighting spirit and an easy charisma, and T-Money was an unquestionable force. The setting felt like an indy lucha match that just happens in a public square, which added to the ambiance. The big spots were sufficiently big (killing your own knees by landing on a moonsault from the top is insane and the finishing stretch worked really well). The gaga at the end (Walker faking an injury in a cage match to get the door open; Donaldson dismantling the ring, a unique use of a wrench to say the least, with the ref going above and beyond to cover for how long it was taking, the friends having victory and the belt between them at the end) was fun, even if you don't usually want gaga in a cage match. You definitely felt the stakes throughout, which is what you want in a match like this.

ER: This was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to watch on my lunch break today. A loose cage with four guys willing to die, with a finish so doomed that if I hadn't seen these guys wrestle at a later date I would have just assumed that this did actually end with two of the guys dying. Russ and T-Money have seen a lot of praise from Segunda Caida. Those Boys from Jollyville are really the two that got us into AIW proper, and they're the team that has probably most often been referenced by us as a dream match tag opponent over the past couple years. I loved seeing the ways they acted as a team here, and even more excited for the gigantic moment where they were not together. I am not familiar with Samson or Donaldson, but came away especially impressed with Samson. As Phil said, he's almost like an even bigger version of T-Money, and had insane pop up strength. He shot Donaldson so far into the air a couple times that his body cleared the top of the cage, once for a super high backdrop and once for a fantastic looking cutter; but he also hoisted T-Money up for a sit up powerbomb like it was absolutely nothing at all, jerking him up sky high before bringing him down. I also loved how Samson basically stopped the match with an injury, waited until everyone was otherwise occupied, then dove for the cage door to attempt escape. That feels like Chris Hamrick Cage Match 101 and I love it. Donaldson had one dodgy strike exchange, but did a lot of things I liked. At one point he broke up a move by hitting an enziguiri right into Samson's armpit (intentionally targeted) and hit another enziguiri that really landed. He also ripped apart the ring ropes and strangled Russ with the rope, beating him with a wrench and buckle. Russ always flew into action with his awesome big punch, everyone took big bumps (Russ moonsault into feet was wild), and the finish was spectacular.

Everything about the finish was great, with T-Money about to escape but getting lured back in when Donaldson threatened to brain Russ with a chair. Money gets back in and just destroys Donaldson with a Pounce, sending him flying sideways into the cage. As Money is about to exit, Russ grabs his ankle, and we get a great bit of friendship when Money looks down and says "come on man". He already saved Russ from getting his face rearranged by a chair, and now the guy won't even let him win? Well, he certainly solves that problem, picking Russ up in a bearhug and running him straight through the cage door, sending both crashing to the grass in brutal fashion. T-Money looked like he went straight down, Russ crashed and burned underneath. Money had to leap, holding Russ, over the top rope and through a cage door, so both of their trajectories were beyond fucked. I can't think of many match finishes more spectacular than this one. I would have lost my mind live, then calmed myself down to make sure I didn't witness a death, then lost my mind again.

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RIP Supreme

Supreme vs. Necro Butcher XPW 5/24/08

PAS: This was a no-ropes barbed wire match for the XPW King of the Death Match title, on the first XPW show in five years (they ran once more in 2009 and then the PDM/XPW show reviewed down below).  Necro is the perfect guy to bring in for this kind of match, he was in the tail end of his prime, and still perfectly willing and able to put together a big time death match performance. Supreme was right there willing to take all of the big bumps, Necro right hands and chairs to the head. There were a couple of really neat cut offs by Supreme, a sneaky lightube shot to stop Necro from pushing him on a barbed wire table, and throwing a bucket of thumbtacks to stop a rush. I tend to enjoy the regular brawling parts of these matches more then the death match parts, and there was some really fun bumping into chairs and jabbing with soda cans.

ER: Anyone who bought a ticket to see Necro Butcher vs. Supreme in a big time death match main event, easily got their money's worth. Necro really knows how to bring gravitas to a match like this, and Supreme does his part by doing what he's good at: dangerous bumps, lots of blood, an ingenious match turning cut off spot, and a hot dog neck roll so impressive that he is impervious to a collar and elbow. Supreme gets busted open all over the place, from mouse traps and barbed wire and gruesome table bumps. We get a big suplex off the apron through a barbed wire and light tube strewn table, then a Russian legsweep through a totally different sharp and stabby table. Necro punches Supreme in the face, headbutts a tube into his head, and walks around barefoot like a total psychopath. The ring and surround area was filled with broken glass and here's Necro walking around with no shoes. And just as I start to think about how stupid and endearing Necro is to be wandering around a death match with no shoes, sure enough, Supreme breaks out one of the finest, smartest, wonderfully timed spots in death match history: Stopping a speeding Butcher by throwing down a spike strip in his path. Supreme utilized two "desperation" moves in this match, making unexpected headway while being dominated, and fanning out a bucketful of tacks into the pathway of Necro is some twisted sadistic Kevin McCallister level evil. Necro is suddenly wounded hopping around and trying to avoid tacks, dropping to his butt to frantically slap tacks out of his feet, and that's when Supreme starts stomping Necro's feet into the tacks! This is sicko stuff, done at the perfect psychological point of the match, the kind of logic that inserts itself into the best death matches. We get a couple of other nasty falls into tacks, and I loved the finish of Supreme just dropping his weight onto Necro in the tacks.


Supreme/Johnny Webb/Kaos/Carnage vs. Halloween/Damian 666/Bestia 666/X-Fly PDM/XPW 8/2/11     Part 2

PAS: This was a really great performance by all 8 guys, and especially awesome performance by Halloween and Damien. This was in a junkyard, and may have been as good or even better then the best Zona 23 stuff. The in between brawling was pretty great, everyone through good punches, and there were a bunch of fun weapons shots including Kaos getting drilled in the head by a flying garbage can from out of nowhere. They built to the big car spots, including Damien taking an totally psycho fall off of a scaffold ribs first on a car windshield. Supreme was more of a minor character in this match, but looked good in spots, and got his bowling ball head smashed into a windshield.

ER: Wow this ruled, a match that we would have placed ungodly high on our 2011 MOTY List (if we had one). This was how you do a wild brawl, with a great junkyard setting surrounding the ring, truly a performance where every single person contributed something big. At the center was a tremendous Damian performance, one of the wildest garbage brawl performances ever, with several different unnecessarily ugly bumps taking by the 50 year old! This was Damian with a boiler as big as Supreme's outbumping the man who was literally known exclusively for his crazy bumps. Damian is a real violent lunatic here, and this was the kind of setting where the bumps from a guy delivering a move were just as ugly as the guy taking a move. Sure, you just suplexed someone onto the roof of a car, but that means you took and arguably uglier bump because your back landed right where the windshield meets the roof. Damian wings a galvanized washtub at Supreme's head (and this washtub was really the 9th man in this match, and was at least the 6th best guy here), powerbombs Kaos on that washtub, hits a big suplex on the ramp, misses an elbowdrop off the bleachers (incredibly rickety bleachers that a 50 year old man should not be even attempting to climb), takes a wild bump over the guardrail into the crowd/chairs, and then peaks things by taking the undisputed bump of the match by getting knocked off the camera scaffold and landing hard on a car. Totally insane bump for anyone to take, totally suicidal for a 50 year old man to take it.

Crazy bumps were the order of the day in this match, with the centerpiece being a cruelly unforgiving washtub that had to have given half the participants sciatica. Kaos ate a powerbomb on it, X-Fly ate a powerbomb on it, Kaos did a suplex that landed the edge of his back on it, everyone else either had it banked off their head or landed kidneys first on it. Whoever brought that washtub was a real sadistic asshole. Halloween bled buckets and hit two different violent spears, including one onto a car that looked fantastic. Carnage got the back of his head sliced open, Supreme took several tough bumps onto chairs and through tubes, Kaos took at LEAST eight different powerbomb and suplex variations, Bestia hit a big crossbody off the scaffold, just total chaos. This whole thing was pure uncut insanity, not a second of it worth the body damage that surely resulted from the insanity. I had no clue this match was out there, but I imagine I'll go out of my way to make sure many more find out about it.

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New Footage Friday: EDDIE!! SABU!! REY JR.!! MOOSE MOROWSKI!! TAKASHI ISHIKAWA!! PSICOSIS!!

Takashi Ishikawa vs. Moose Morowski CWA 1980?

PAS: Takashi Ishikawa is a SC favorite, and this was a match more reminiscent of his epic WAR run, than much of his stuff on tape from the 80s. Lots of aggressive mat scrambling at the beginning leading into tempers flaring, and both guys unloading on each other with hard chops and punches. This was lunchpail stuff, two hard guys standing in front of each other throwing. There was some fun brawling on the floor, Morowski punching Ishikawa in mid air and a nice shoulder breaker finish. This was very much my kind of shit. This uploader has uncorked a fire hose of German 80s footage and we will be reviewing a ton of it in the upcoming weeks and months.

MD: For a thirteen minute match with the wrestlers being announced and round breaks, this didn't disappoint. Ishikawa came off absolutely special and Morowski showed quite a bit too. Things started fairly normally with Ishikawa getting the better of things on the mat, including at least one smooth as silk takedown. Towards the end of the first round, Morowski had enough, launched a cheapshot and started to bully Ishikawa including with a really nasty shot in the ropes. Definitely the wrong move against the wrong opponent. Ishikawa took the round break to stare Morowski down and sip some water, which he then shot right in his face as the bell rang before unloading with offense. That was the rest of the match, with the two of them launching blows at each other, including Morowski choking him and launching him onto a table on the outside. The only thing that sort of dragged this down is that Ishikawa's comeback, fighting out of a bear hug, was disrupted by the round break.

ER: If you had told me these two had crossed paths, I would have assumed that it happened in All Japan (which did happen, at least once), but I had no idea Ishikawa ever worked Germany. I'm a big Moose Morowski guy (if you want to spend 45 minutes of your day watching a bunch of cool short Moose matches, here's a nice primer I wrote), in the same way that I'm a big Col. DeBeers guy. They both bring the same skills to the ring, and I love their specific skillsets. Ishikawa worked this match like a fired up larger Kantaro Hoshino, and I liked how he battled back against the cheapshotting Morowski. Morowski tried to use his size to bully Ishikawa (think about how cool or stupid someone would have to be to bully Takashi Ishikawa!) and it actually works. But it feels like it works because Ishikawa opts to be honorable, and as Ishikawa sticks to his honor it just makes him more fired up as the match goes on. Morowski uses his size to intimidate Ishikawa, loved when he tried to tie him in the ropes and threw big right hands, tossed Ishikawa around (including onto a ringside table), and for me the match got really good when Morowski locked in a bear hug. The bearhug came late in the round, and as Ishikawa fought back with Baba chops, the chops kept hitting harder and harder the more he threw, like Ishikawa had finally had enough and he was taking everything out on the center of Morowski's head. The visual of Morowski completely laid out as we entered a rest period was great. Before, Moose had been so cocky, walking around and delaying the rest period by getting in Ishikawa's face, reaching past the ref to mess with him, and now here he is crumpled on the mat. The finish was cool too, with a fiery Ishikawa flying off the top neck first into a Moose punch, shot down out of the sky, and then put away with a nasty shoulderbreaker. This was short, but very efficient, and very cool.


Sabu/Psicosis/Damian 666 vs. Rey Mysterio Jr./Halloween/Starman AAA 10/1/95

PAS: What a randomly awesome match to run across on the internet. 95 Sabu and 95 Rey Jr. are the two most electric wrestlers in the world and it is really cool to watch them match up. We get the whole gauntlet of Sabu here, chair assisted leg lariat, table spot, blown spot where he potatoes his opponent, reckless spinning moonsault where he lands right on someones ribs. We also get Sabu doing the insincere rudo handshake spot which is pretty great. Rey is so fast and slick back then, there are multiple lightning quick ranas and headscissors, including a bunch of cool exchanges with Sabu. I would guess Starman is a local Nor-Cal worker, he clearly pissed Sabu off, because he was getting tatered during the entire match. Fun to watch Mexico's Most Wanted work against each other too. Sort of an off Psicosis night, as his timing seemed wonky and didn't bump as clean as he usually does. This was a house show lucha match which a bit of bumpiness to it, but it was awesome to watch as a 1995 time capsule for some all time greats.

MD: How has this thing been on the internet for a year and a half without us knowing about it? The match gives you a lot of what you'd want from this grouping. We get Sabu vs Rey exchanges. We get Halloween vs Damien exchanges including some real hamming it up. Tecnico Halloween is a lot of fun, by the way. We get Damien eating a really deep powerbomb pulled off the top by Starman. Sabu is as Sabu as you can get. At times he seems a bit unsure with the lucha flow, like during the initial rudo beatdown where he's stuck standing around waiting to get his stuff in or at the end of the primera where he's just a couple of seconds too late running in for the comeback, but he's still all over the ring bounding around and hitting his signature offense. Moreover, you get the sense the 95 version would have made an amazing singles match base for Rey. His crunchy but dangerous-seeming execution of everything is a perfect contrast for Rey's grace. I'm not sure if Psicosis was off so much as he had a hard time figuring out his role on a side that had both Damien and Sabu, who, combined, covered a lot of his usual ground. The match really didn't settle down into a narrative but the crowd was up for everything and there was always something to look at.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Mike Thunder EWF 1/26/02

MD: It'd get even worse later, because it would happen in front of big arena crowds in the midst of actual angles, but Eddy had to feel like he was constantly in the Twilight Zone during this run, and to a degree for the rest of his career with some scant exceptions (and having a babyface like Rey as an opponent). He goes heel early in the match, pulling a cheapshot off a handshake. He ultimately heels more and more, stalling with his valet, hiding behind the ref to launch another cheapshot, using the ropes as a weapon, jawing with the crowd, spitting at Thunder. The fans wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. Thunder was fine too. Eddy took a lot of it early but still let him get some good counters in, which obviously meant a lot given the pedigree of the opponent. He was fiery enough on his comeback, even if some of the hope spots (like a reverse whip into the post on the floor which led to Eddy just taking back over as if nothing had happened) were odd. Some of the crowd kept on chanting for Eddy. The rest sat on their hands. Despite that, he didn't slum it at all. He was completely on, increasingly so as the crowd didn't want to go along with the heeling. It was just the fault of the booking. No one wanted to boo Eddy during this run.

PAS: Thunder had the look (and the name!) of a power plant guy, and this was like a longer version of Eddy vs. Robby Rage from an episode of the Pro. I don't mean that as a diss at all, that is a good match, and every scrap of new Eddie footage we get is a mitzvah. He is going to play the hits on a spot indy show in Texas, but everything he does is so beautifully executed that I am not going to tire of the hits. Can't believe that Thunder went over in this match, but the missed top rope rana into a flying blockbuster was a fine finish. No frog splash, but we did get to see his gorgeous brain buster.

ER: Rehab Tour Eddie was a real treat, and was actually the era where my Eddie fandom really went into overdrive. Getting New Japan and IWA Mid-South tapes, seeing how hard he was clearly working in ring, and the perfect real life as pro wrestling story situation of a man getting his life together before our eyes, really jumped my fandom to new levels. Getting not just an unseen match from that tour, but a match none of us had probably ever heard about before now, is just an impossibly cool way to spend my Friday evening. It would have been even cooler to get a new Eddie match against any kind of worthwhile opponent, and that didn't happen here, but Eddie is a guy who is still going to be awesome no matter the skill level of his opponent. Thunder is slow to the draw on just about everything, and Eddie does something I've never really seen from him, which is basically shrug off every single piece of offense that he lets Thunder have. It's really weird. He takes a lot of the match (and looks great doing so), but he basically works a less violent Finlay/Lorenzo match only it's 4 times as long and Lorenzo wins. 

Eddie takes some big bumps off Thunder's offense, but ALWAYS sells it by just getting up immediately and going right back on offense. There were at least three times where Eddie beat Thunder to his feet after taking a move DELIVERED by Thunder, and Thunder was clearly caught off guard. Eddie gets rammed into the ring post? Responds by turning around and running right back at Thunder. Eddie takes a high backdrop in the ring? He's already up and charging at Thunder before Thunder even has time to turn around. Eddie takes a big bump to the floor that sends him flying towards the announce table? Right back on offense. It's such a bizarre way to work, and he never once felt like he was taking liberties with the guy, while at the same time making sure all of his work was getting treated as a joke. I loved all of Eddie's offense here, with my personal highlight being the nasty leg grapevine that he turned into a vicious lion tamer, kneeling between Thunder's shoulderblades while bending his legs back, then seamlessly transitioning into a cloverleaf and then single leg crab. I'm just left confused as to why Eddie worked this like he was Kurt Angle, telling Mike Thunder to not stay down and sell so much, so he could hit more moves.

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New Footage Friday: WCW Festival de Lucha

ER: This is one of those shows that I've heard about for 20 years, one of those shows that someone on a message board would pretend to have a copy of, cause a stir, and of course never actually follow through on getting the footage to anyone. It's one of those shows where people just wanted to see it more and more because they thought they would never get to see it, which is the best kind of Hidden Gems gift. And, excitingly, Super Boy is now officially on the WWE Network. Blessed. We get the fantastic mission-front set with traditional dancing, great pueblo set, ring valets all in traditional garb, and what sounds like a loud crowd who is into this. I'm there with them.

TOMK: It’s about time this showed up. You would have thought they would do this in September as some sort of Hispanic Heritage Month deal…but I’m not complaining about October.

MD: I'm dealing with some shifting watching situations that make annotations tricky currently (as in, I watched this show on a commuter bus over a few days), so the comments I provide will be general. Hopefully, Phil and Eric have the heavy lifting here.

I'm not going to say "Nitro lucha" is my least favorite lucha but it's certainly not my favorite. So many things that I've learned to love about lucha libre just aren't present. My remembrance with them is that you didn't really get memorable captain feuding or character driven pair-offs or momentum shifts with builds to comebacks. Clearly defined segments. Dives as means to a bigger end instead of ends in and of themselves.

It was distilled one-fall Lucha with some of the wrong things distilled.

That said, this entire show was a blast. So much of that was due to the setting, the dancers, the fact that they really just embraced this stuff instead of having it off to the side as a sideshow. On this show, these guys felt like stars. Top to bottom, too. You had Disco Inferno main eventing for maybe the only time of his career up until that point, and he felt natural in that role. Jericho felt larger than life, like a Buddy Rose type figure, and almost all the more charismatic or memorable luchadors felt like big deals.

And that was most of them. The talent pool here was great. You had a lot of the usual suspects: Villano III and V, La Parka, Psicosis, Juvi, Halloween and Damien, Hector Garza, Super Calo, Konnan and Rey, and the WCW contingent with Finlay, Smiley, Swinger/Lane etc. but you also had guys that didn't really show up in WCW like Felino, Pirata Morgan, Texano, Rey, Sr., and freaking Super Boy. Maybe coolest of all (not as cool as Super Boy, but...) we had new Blitzkrieg matches, and a bunch of unique pairings that you just didn't think you'd get.

Everything basically worked, from Jimmy Hart's Boricua first family to Jericho's foreign legion, to the fact guys seemed to trade between being rudos and tecnicos depending on the match. There was some sense of overkill or a lack of agenting. For example, I really liked the Juventud Guerrera, Pirata Morgan & Psicopata vs. Hector Garza, Konnan & Rey Mysterio Jr. There was a pretty key story in there with a big fight for the top rope rana through the pairings and ultimately, a bigger fight for the Juvi driver, but in the next match on the taping, someone hit a top rope rana almost instantly, like it was nothing, and then I think a match later, someone hit a Juvi driver, of all things, just as a move. Even if these matches weren't all taped in the order they'd be filmed, that would have been a long term problem. That's not to say the matches didn't vary at all. Some had more thorough beatdowns (Especially the Damien/Halloween ones, I think), and others more comedy, but the general tenor of Nitro style lucha is "good action" and that's a lot of what this was.

Other random thoughts: Psicosis might have been the best masked rudo of his specific generation (guys born in the early 70s). He's so emotive, such a dick, able to play to the crowd, but also able to base so well and hit so much stuff. Juvi just really got it too. He integrated a lot more of US heel mannerisms and it was a good mix. I'm not super familiar with Salsero, but I'm amazed he didn't get himself more of a job out of this. He was playing a unique role and would have probably gotten over on a weekly basis in WCW as a clowning, joke-spot guy that could still go. Lots of clotheslines and DDTs on the show. It's a joy to watch the differences in the selling though: Blitzkrieg folds in half, Hector sails across the ring, and yeah, Disco makes sure to flail sell for quite a few seconds. There was at least one VIII decapitation of someone too. I thought Konnan worked surprisingly well in his trios match. I don't remember him working nearly that spritely in the late 90s. He also gave a lot for Disco who was giving his all. Heel Big Wiggle era Norman Smiley was a lot of fun and Jericho as a corner man made it all the better. I've seen rudo Rey Sr a few times lately (had mostly seen him as a tecnico) and he's just a great stooging pug base. I wanted to see Finlay, Blitzkrieg and Super Boy against literally everyone else on the show. I'm glad we had a few more matches than listed because it would have been a crime not to see Finlay in this setting.

I guess my biggest takeaway from it all is that I wish it had gone on for a while. 


Silver King/Venum/Kendo vs. Super Boy/Villano V/Felino

PAS: This would probably land in the lower half of WCW lucha trios, but it was still a ton of fun to see different guys work in this environment. Kendo's stuff fit in great in the sped up WCW lucha style, and his big tope looked awesome. Super Boy and Felino both looked great too, Felino was fully in his fastest luchador in the world prime, and Super Boy is an amazing short fat agile revelation. I have no idea why this didn't at least get them both WCWSN filler gigs. Venum Black looked not ready for prime time, he was tentative, and awkward, and even his big dive felt unsure.

TOMK: The EMLL announcers used to talk about Felino as one of fastest wrestlers in the world but you kind of forget how fast he could make an exchange look. Not sure if he’s actually “stop watch fast” or just knows how to make every move look sudden. It is a blast to watch Felino and Silver King working their fast exchanges. I think Super Boy and Silver King tried to do a ridiculous exchange near the end that had a 1/50 chance of working but if it did it would have blown every one’s mind and they were completely prepared for it possibly not working. Venum Black may have blown his leg on his dive near end.

ER: The Felino/King sections of this were really hot, and if this match just had their cool trips and ankle picks it would have been worth it. All of the Felino stuff was really great, and then you have Super Boy coming in and being the fast flippy fat guy who looks even more awesome taking falls, because his beautiful round belly looks great on the mat and his shirt always exposes it. It makes him look like when you'd KO King Hippo by punching him and making his pants fall off. Venum looked a step behind everyone but he did hit a wild dive at the end (which Tom thinks may have wrecked his leg). I have no clue what King and Super Boy were going for at the end, but it doesn't happen, and it was fun to see them pick up the pieces. I saw Super Boy work a flea market in the early 2000s, and he did a huge dive, crushed the two chairs in the row in front of me, and landed on my leg. It was great. 

ER: I am LOVING the Jimmy Hart Festival de First Family. What a great bunch of weird dudes, with American Wild Child mugging the whole time, Psicopata dragging around a blow up doll, and Pierroth yelling on the stick. I love Pierroth, and this late 90s period of Pierroth was really great. This was a stable I would have killed to see go up against the LWO. I'm just picturing Pierroth whipping everyone with his belt and hitting hard lariats on everyone. This is great.  

TOMK: Jimmy Hart comes out with his stable, Ricky Santana, Fidel Sierra, Pierroth, American Wild Child and Psicopata. Holy shit why couldn’t this have been a regular WCW stable. Pierroth gets the mic and explains that he is going to wear the Puerto Rican colors. And fuck it Pierroth really is the guy who I didn’t get at first but now when I see old footage absolutely can’t take my eyes off of him in a ring.

La Parka/Super Calo/Salsero vs. Halloween/Damien/El Mosco

PAS: Total fairgrounds lucha match, lots of classic shtick you can see at any small arena around Mexico, except performed by masters of the craft like Familia de Tijuana and Parka. Great stuff by Salsero too, who turned every move into a shake of the hip, and threw out a crazy top rope quebrada to the floor. Loved everyone missing an in ring dive, all of the stuff with the Kendo stick and Parka making the rudos dance to his tune. Usually WCW lucha wasn't this traditional, so it was a fun look into some stylistic differences between the matches.

TOMK: Salsero? Salsero? Of all the guys they brought in Salsero. I guess Salsero and Kendo come as package. But why would you want that package? For a little dancing followed by in ring tope and slapping rudos confusion comedy spots, Rayo is right there. This is mostly a match made by Halloween/Damien heel miscommunication spots and pretty much they are absolute kings of building a match around that.

ER: Damn this was fun. You show me this list of 6 names and Salsero would not be the guy I'd expect to be featured the most, but here we are. This whole match was full of schtick, and it was super welcome. And the pairings were all real fun, starting with Mosco and Calo. Mosco has a big high spinning heel kick, and later takes an amusing bump over the top off a Salsero dropkick. Salsero got to work a bunch of classic schtick, getting the rudos to attack each other (loved FdT ganging up on Mosco and Mosco swinging a chair at them), and boy did I not expect him hitting a gigantic top rope quebrada (to seemingly no reaction, on a show getting loud ass reactions from everything, that's weird). Halloween and Damien looked as good as usual, loved them getting outsmarted by La Parka at nearly every turn, and La Parka was so great at leaning into every single strike. I loved Parka's long  dance evasion from Halloween, ending in a perfectly timed mean slap from Halloween, and Parka was running so fast into Damien's corner boots, catching them right in the neck. This really got to unfold in a great way, and while it didn't hit anywhere near the peaks of WCW lucha sprints, it had a nice traditional charm that was felt throughout. 

  

Rey Mysterio Sr./Villano III/El Texano vs. Blitzkrieg/Piloto Suicida/Raul

PAS: Damn is Villano 3 a beast in this match, just a violent lucha machine, hard shots, great looking DDT, internal organ flattening senton, just a monster. Your tecnico team felt like a green tecnico team being carried by awesome rudos, and we had awesome rudos. I am surprised Blitzkrieg was as subdued as he was in this match, my memories of him were always just a lunatic breaking out crazy highspots, here he wasn't much crazier then Raul (whoever that was). Excited about the run in setting up a killer rudo battle later on the show.

TOMK: Who is Raul? Is that Zorro? Facially kind of looks it. I thought Zorro was a tad taller than that. Anyways this is a fucking Texano showcase match as he just beats the fuck out of everyone and throws himself around bumping and setting up face comebacks. Jimmy Hart’s team runs in at the end attacking both faces and heels and we get an awesome tease of Pierroth vs. Texano. Is Psicopata actually Mando at this point? He doesn’t really move like Mando…If WCW only had been willing to air this show we might have gotten a WCWSN main event Psicopata/Bad Street vs. Psycho/Killer and that would have turned everything around.

ER: Damn check out this Rey Mysterio Sr. showcase, what a brute who knew how to make green fliers looks formidable. He's someone who throws in extras, fills time nicely, a guy who needs to be spoken about in the same sentences as other era workrate lucha gods. I like how he throws in an extra spin while getting into position for a Piloto Suicida armdrag, and on the floor he eats a rana and purposely throws himself into the legs of the guardrail to make the bump look better. Oh but then you had his excellent rudo partners looking like all time asskickers. Villano III gets Blitzkrieg a WCW contract by crushing his ribs with a top rope senton, and Texano was the most explosive guy in the match throwing strikes as hard as his bumps. The thing falls apart in absolutely glorious fashion, I mean three tecnico dives that all miss in increasingly spectacular fashion, terrible catches and botched dives and the most incredibly ugly trainwreck you've seen. Raul (yeah who the hell IS Raul?) slips and dives head first straight into the floor, Piloto apparently pilots the plane on the cover of License to Ill, and Blitzkrieg takes a flip dive into nothing when Rey whiffs. I was so damn into this rudo team, but this ending was too funny. Post match Pierroth run-in made everybody in the match look like a lesser luchador though. It's unfair to people in the match to let Pierroth come in and beat the shit out of people as the last visual. 

Juventud Guerrera/Pirata Morgan/Psicosis vs. Rey Mysterio Jr./Hector Garza/Konnan

PAS: Juvy/Psicosis/Pirata Morgan is a absolute killer rudo team, and it is really cool to see all three of them have matchups with Rey Jr., all great exchanges worked at a high level. Konnan is also working super hard on this show. This was his big opportunity to headline a show, and he was delivering at the peak of his abilities (admittedly a low peak). Run in was fun, although weird they had run ins at two different matches.

TOMK: You forget how amazing Juventud was. Just the entire fucking package, has the crowd in the palm of his hand, able to do the workrate midcard lucha spotfest that was asked of everyone while also just slowing it down to get little things across. It is WCW, so of course they are going to do two matches with invading foreigner heel teams attacking Mexican faces and rudos for a finish. The heel stable of Finlay, Lenny Lane, Jericho, Kaz, Norman Smiley, Chavo and Johnny Swinger is bizarre but would have also liked to see that as a regular WCW stable. Well maybe not Swinger.

ER: Damn now look at THIS rudo team! This is definitely the high profile main event of episode 1, because that's a big time tecnico team too. Tecnicos were fine but this was a rudo bump showcase. Psicosis and Juvy are among the greatest most explosive bumpers of all time, and this was them compressed and burning bright. The way Juvy takes whip snap somersault bumps looks so great, he rolls up tight like Samus and just bounces off that mat. Psicosis bumps to the floor, onto his head, onto his stomach onto the floor, onto his head again, just dude being who he is. Even Pirata takes a totally preposterous somersault back bump to the floor after getting dropkicked off the apron; the bump felt completely disconnected from the dropkick, sending him the totally opposite direction of where he should have bumped, but the dude somersaulted to the floor so who gives a fuck. No padding on the floor, no logic to the bump, but Morgan is here taking a hard bump to the floor on this taping.

The run in was totally badass and I LOVE the invading foreigners stable!!! What a kick ass gang of everybody-but-Mexicans. They're wearing light wash jeans with cuts ranging from "dad" to "Kaz Hayashi's Jncos", black sleeveless crop tops, woven belts, just throwing stomps and beating ass. This is what the stunt doubles would have looked like if there had been a Backstreet Boys Movie. It's so perfect. You can already see the hierarchy of the stable, with Lane, Swinger, and Kaz being the underlings who would actually get their asses kicked in trios matches before either Finlay or Jericho came out to cheat for them to win. Also Tom isn't excited for Johnny Swinger? Swinger is a guy who ate some of the worst beatings on 1997 WCW TV, he's the perfect guy to be the lowest totem pole guy in a stable. Somebody needs to take the ugliest beatings while the top guys escape. I hate that I never got to see this stable until now, and not more.


Juventud Guerrera/Felino/El Mosco vs. Piloto Suicida/Salsero/Raul

TOMK: Is El Mosco really wearing “Live Drug Free” on the back of his tights?” Really?

ER: This was pretty messy, and probably the weakest of the show so far. Felino doesn't vibe really well with Piloto, Salsero breaks out a nice tope con giro and STILL gets no reaction (his dives are like the only ones that get met with silence, it's like people enjoy his shtick but then get mad when he breaks out actual impressive highflying), but this is 100% a showcase for Juventud. Juvy is a genuine frontrunner for best chops in wrestling history. That sentence is not hyperbole. Juvy's chops are the fastest and feel like the best representation of the term "knife edge". His chops absolutely slice and hit harder than the chops of men twice his size. He does have the curse of overly visible frustration when things go wrong, and things can go wrong with a green face team, but there is still gold here. Juvy hits a real hard missile dropkick and Piloto takes a nice classic rolling lucha bump through the ropes, Juvy drops a great springboard legdrop, hits his great spinning rana off the top, basically Juvy on offense could do no wrong. But we do get a real bizarre finish, as Juvy calls for the Juvy Driver, picks up Piloto Suicida, and then drops him twice in a row. Maybe it was supposed to look like Piloto was blocking it? He did eventually get a kinda roll up nearfall, but it just looked like Juvy kept blowing the spot. I really don't think that's what they were going for. 

Kaz Hayashi/Psicosis/Ron Rivera vs. La Parka/Blitzkrieg/Kendo

TOMK: Why is Kaz in this match? He’s in the Jericho outsider stable but just a regular rudo here? They only had one taping and still couldn't keep booking straight? Kaz really leans into all of Kendo’s stuff nicely and the two RPW guys work match up and know how to work their spots together. Parka is over and kind of weird to see him getting this much of a showcase in all these matches when I don’t think he ever got this much of a taste at any other time in WCW. Wait, they were aware that he was super charismatic and can carry a face team on charisma? They knew?

ER: Parks was given a WCW showcase in several ways that other luchadors were not. On the WCW/nWo Revenge game - the highest selling wrestling game on the Nintendo 64 - La Parka was one of only a few luchadors included in the game (Rey, Psicosis, Juvy, Chavo and Eddie if you count them as luchadors), which had a really large roster for video games at the time. And Parka was presented as separate from the "cruiser" luchadors, the only luchador other than Konnan who was lumped in with the heavyweights in the game (tantamount to guys like Barbarian, Stevie Ray, and Yuji Nagata). He was presented separately and as a potential breakout star, and they seemed to know it was a good idea to feature him more in matches and give him side angles to work his gimmick...and yet they seemingly had the coldest possible feet about pushing him as an actual singles star. It made no sense. They knew, but they didn't know. Highlights of this match were Kaz really making all of Kendo's headscissors look great, a great Blitzkrieg dive followed by a big twisting La Parka dive, and Blitzkrieg hitting a big phoenix splash for the win. Blitzkrieg was a cool part of wrestling 1999, and I love that we're getting a little more added to his story. He's a total cult fave, indy white guy shows up as an out of nowhere unknown in WCW one episode of Nitro, gets over immediately when he's treated like a peer by Misterio, and has maybe 30 matches total on tape. He was a nostalgic part of my teen wrestling fandom, and now we get like 10% more Blitzkrieg appearances than previously existed. That's awesome.

Rey Mysterio Sr./Villano III/Villano IV/El Texano vs. Pierroth Jr./Fidel Sierra/Ricky Santana/Psicopata

TOMK: There was some nice Pierroth and Fidel Sierra stuff, but this wasn’t going to live up to my expectations. I was also expecting a big Hart bump, and instead Hart was subdued. He felt like a watered down Andy Barrow.

PAS: I loved this, it was rudo vs rudo and kept up a really killer pace. Pierroth is rocking an amazing Soul Glo Jheri Curl and every time he throws a chop activator juice flies all over his opponent. Psicopata was all over the ring and the outside, stooging, flipping to the floor, bumping huge, total barrel of energy. Really different from a normal WCW lucha match, and I dug that difference.

ER: This lineup is far and away the match I am most excited about on the show. Tom is right that it couldn't possibly live up to my expectations, but damn did I think this was just great. This was our Pierroth showcase match of the evening, and this was an evening that benefitted from a Pierroth showcase match. He was throwing the best punches of the show, kicks to dicks, and the best non-Juvy chops. He came off like a total boss against a very badass team. We got a lot of simple brawling, and it was satisfying as hell. Villano III gets some nearfalls that the ref keeps missing, including a gorgeous small package off of a delayed vertical suplex, and we get an actual powder in the face spot for the finish!! Hell yeah! There was so much powder!!

Rey Mysterio Jr./Silver King/Hector Garza/Konnan vs. Chris Jericho/Norman Smiley/Johnny Swinger/Lenny Lane

TOMK: I think there may have been a good Black Magic vs. Silver King exchange but this was messy.

ER: My god who is the Festival de Lucha girl accompanying Rey? Jesus. And this foreigners stable is so much gold. I love every single stable at the Festival de Lucha tapings!! Every single stable in this 75 minutes has been something I want to watch weekly!

Felino/Psicosis/El Mosco vs. Super Calo/Blitzkrieg/Venum Black

TOMK: Venum Black’s leg is fucked and he comes into this match hobbling. The whole match is just super impressive to watch this guy work a match on one wheel. Should he have worked this match? Should an agent have put someone else in? Whatever. Super Calo does my favorite Super Calo thing where he eats a clothesline by landing on the top of his skull.

Fit Finlay/Kaz Hayashi/Norman Smiley/Johnny Swinger vs. La Parka/Hector Garza/Kendo/Raul

TOMK: I really liked this match. This is hidden gem that you didn’t know you wanted. Kaz’s offense looks great and he sells and bumps to make Raul look like a bad ass. Eats a real nasty piledriver from Raul. Parka gets extended exchanges with Finlay and a dance off and exchanges with Smiley and hits a tope that takes Swinger’s head off. Garza gets some cool stuff in opposite Smiley as well, Swinger and Kendo keep each other occupied, and it’s a cool finish.

PAS: This was really fun, so awesome to watch Finlay and Parka beat on each other. I can imagine an alternate universe where this show was successful and these two had the greatest Apuestas match in wrestling history. Jericho was really fun as a douche on the outside heat seeking. Parka and Smiley had a fun dance off too, honestly Parka is so great he can have dope exchanges with everyone on this roster.

Super Boy/Halloween/Damian 666 vs. Rey Misterio Jr./Piloto Suicida/Salsero

TOMK: This I liked too. A bunch of Halloween/Damien stooging, miscommunication stuff, and you get to see the California guys match up and showcase what they can do together. I really wish Rey vs. Halloween was a WCW series at any point cause it is a cool match up…plus there was an ESTRELLA!!!!

PAS: Really fun stuff, Super Boy has to have some of the biggest missed potential of anyone in the 90s, and it is cool that we get to see a little more of what he could do. Halloween and Damian 666 are such pros and they make everything the tecnicos do look great.

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New Footage Friday: Piper, Choshu, Inoki, Porky, Nicho, Santo, Rey Sr.

Roddy Piper vs. Riki Choshu NJPW 9/8/77

MD: This was very straightforward. Roddy got outwrestled. Roddy went to the cheapshots first. Choshu came back. Roddy cut him off. They went back and forth towards a clean finish. It was all good though even if nothing was over the top. Piper was maybe 23 here. I like how he sold after holds. I liked the viciousness when he took over. He had a fun gutwrench that Choshu went up too much for. Both distinctive Choshu comebacks were after Roddy was verbally taunting him, which was a nice touch. There was that real sense of struggle in this, from the opening Piper headscissors all the way to the butterfly suplex that ended it. I like how different this was from the Inoki match. That's a testament to young Roddy.

PAS: Really fun to see incubatory versions of both of these all time greats. Piper has some of the better headlock punches I can remember. He really pops Choshu right in the nose and eye. This was before Choshu developed his formula, he has an afro instead of his stringy hair, and doesn't throw a lariat or put on a Scorpion. This was fun, but I can just imagine how amazing a 1985 version of this match would have been.

ER: This is like a great Young Lions match, no highspots or rope running, both guys staying close the whole time, and both laying in shots. Piper was 23 as Matt said, but everything he did looked so good and fully formed. Look at that headscissors where he holds his knees tightly together and scrapes Choshu's head across the mat, or when he whips Choshu's head into the turnbuckle like he's slamming a car door as hard as he can. I also like how Piper would whip his arm into the side of Choshu's head, and also loved how he sold for Choshu. At one point he ate a heavy back suplex, and then lay there pulsing on the mat as if he kept trying to get up but suddenly had no working core. My brain didn't even read Choshu as Choshu in this - as Phil said he wrestled and even looked quite differently - as he looked more like "what if Kantaro Hoshino was a powerlifter?" I dug how he didn't put up with Piper's chippiness, and the two suplexes to end it are a suitable ending for the era.  

Roddy Piper vs. Antonio Inoki NJPW 9/22/77

MD: It's been a bit of a surprise but I've really enjoyed 70s Inoki. Maybe the trick is that I'm watching relatively short matches that highlight his energy? Here, there's a ton of craziness on the outside to start, and Piper capitalizes, and the first few minutes are really good. Piper's great at picking someone apart and Inoki's a quality guy to pick apart. He uses the ring, including ambushing Inoki when he comes back in and unleashing a ton of golden gloves jabs. Inoki's big late 70s move was apparently fighting his way back into the ring; when he does it by getting Piper's leg and then doing repeated bull charges to drive him into the corner, the crowd pops huge. They follow it up with Inoki getting some punching revenge and one of my favorite things, an extended short arm scissors section with Piper constantly engaged from underneath, so I'm all for this one. Piper eventually sneak-shots his way back into it, but it's never a real competition after that; at one point, while facing off for fisticuffs, Inoki's able to just shove him down. Inoki just has this forward momentum, always charging forth, that Piper tries to redirect or sneak around, but there's just no stopping it. Another butterfly suplex ends this. It was a good win, one that made Piper seem like a threat, even if not too much of one, and that made Inoki look great in victory.

PAS: This was a very Piper match which I loved. It starts with Inoki and Blackjack Mulligan brawling on the floor and Piper jumping Inoki from behind. Piper has some great wild punch combos, which he did about as good as anyone. Inoki taking control with his "ruined Ali's career" leg kicks is pretty cool, Inoki knows how to handle a guy with great hand speed and combos. I am also a big time mark for short arm scissors. I liked Piper's comeback, but one of my issues with Inoki matches is when he decides its over he just steamrolls his opponent and ends the match. If this had a more exciting finish it would have been a real hidden classic. It was still a great look at young Piper, who has really become one of my favorite guys to watch.

ER: This was so cool, with Blackjack Mulligan jumping Inoki on the floor and Piper opportunistically taking advantage of that...but I love how the advantage doesn't last long and Inoki comes firing back and just lays into Piper. It felt like an MMA fight where a guy takes advantage of a slip from his opponent, but the guy who slipped is a better fighter and the second he gains his footing he just starts punishing that dude. Inoki overwhelms and clowns Piper, legsweeping him, dodging every attack, catching his strikes and forcing Piper into armbars and short arm scissors and trying to wrench him into the octopus, really punishing him for his insolence. But Piper's comeback is nice and fiery and he really laces some shots into Inoki. I really like Piper's full arm swinging shots, really the only guys I've seen who throw similar arm strikes as him are all luchadors, though I know that was obviously not an influence on him (just as Piper likely wasn't an influence on any luchadors). Phil is right about Inoki just deciding to end matches and ending them quick, but this was still a 10 minute powder keg.

Super Porky/Nicho El Millionario/El Hijo Del Santo vs. Rey Misterio Sr./Halloween/Damian Tijuana 6/2001 (?)

ER: This match was every damn thing I want in my lucha. 2001 Tijuana is proving to be one of the all time great lucha hotbeds, and let's thank Roy Lucier for letting us see these matches from the tape trading era of lucha. 2001 Tijuana and shows with 2001 Santo matches were the very first lucha I bought from a flea market, and it was the best lucha I had seen in my then 3 year history of watching lucha, which began with WCW luchadors leading me on to WWF Superastros, before finally getting cable TV and finding lucha on Galavision in 1998. 2001 Tijuana was my favorite lucha I had seen, and it only looks better in 2019. This is lucha perfection to me. Super Porky turns into a physical comedy performance for the ages (focus on physical), Rey Mysterio Sr. continues to look like an absolute legend every time I see him, Nicho shows how insane he is with how many dangerous violent spills he takes on a show that to his knowledge wasn't being recorded; Hijo del Santo is a legend who we know has a 100% track record of showing up on every show he's on no matter the crowd size, and Halloween and Damian are two of the more dependable brawlers of the era (at one point Halloween hits this great leaping mule kick, and it's just one cool thing the two of them do). It's a match with so many standout stars that I have no clue who the standout star of the match is.

Super Porky gave a performance that ranks up with the best of them, a great mid career performance. He hits a super far assisted top rope splash, sets up a beautiful version of his headlock takeover/headscissors, works a hilarious comedy spot that sees him do more rope running than I've ever seen him do at any point of his career (building to a great payoff of Halloween and Damian popping each other), he absolutely crushes Familia de Tijuana's valets with a huge body press of the apron, and his dancing after the primera was impossible to not smile through. Nicho is absolutely nutso. He takes all of his most dangerous bumps here, plus some new ones. He falls on his head, throws high dropkicks on the concrete floor, gets suplexed into the 5th row and appears to hit a baby (!), he insanely wraps himself around the ringpost on a missed charge (as crazily as I've ever seen that  bump done), drops a guillotine legdrop onto Mysterio over the guardrail, he gets powerbombed kidneys first through two freaking CHAIRS!! This guy! Mysterio is like lucha Fit Finlay, it's insane how underwritten this guy is. He comes off like a total crime boss here, sending his henchmen into battle, he hits hard, he knows how to stooge, he'll take a great bump into the crowd (and suplex Nicho further in), and he comes off like a total sadist. Santo is lucha grace personified, hitting his flawless headscissors, his big senton into a dive past the ringpost (set up nicely by Porky), but then when Felino runs in at the end of the tercera we get to see Santo the brawler - which is the best Santo. He's so graceful and moves so smoothly, but he's super aggressive in brawls and the way he went after Felino made me want to see that match. This match was insanely hot, insanely violent, all done for locals only. Everything from this era of TJ needs to be seen, just a total early millennium wrestling hotbed.

MD: This was glorious mayhem. I love that it fit into so many traditional tropes while being bonkers and over the top. I'm not sure I've ever seen Rey Mysterio Sr as a rudo before but he definitely fit the look. Nicho as the post-modern, crotch chopping tecnico who wanted to get his hands on him, worked. That he had Hijo del Santo and Brazo de Plata with him just made everything more surreal. There are so many weird moments in this. Porky flips up and over with a rope assist before hitting the headscissors/headlock takeover. He's the one who holds a guy down for the Santo senton/tope combo. Santo positions someone on the guardrail for a Psicosis legdrop. Porky hits a dive on a valet. Psicosis had more distinct hope spots than you generally see, which I assume was the US style rubbing off on him. We miss the absolute moment of tecnico comeback here, which is a shame, and Felino interjecting himself at the end led to an awesome beatdown but maybe wasn't conducive to a good match. That's the thing with some of this footage. It's honestly good booking. They keep building to the next thing. It just means when you watch it as a capsule, the finishes aren't always as satisfying as the match itself.

PAS: This was a total blast, pretty much exactly what you want from a Tijuana lucha match: you know it isn't going to make a ton of sense, you won't get a clean finish, there will be some nonsense with refs and run ins, but you put all time greats and total lunatics in that formula and it is going to rule. Nicho went full Sabu in this, flying all over the ring smashing himself into the post, getting hurled into the crowd, you totally understand why he had such a short career as a great wrestler as he was dying these kind of horrid deaths regularly. Porky at his best is maybe the most entertaining wrestler of all time and here he was at his best. The Porky top rope splash has to feel like getting hit with a bag of hotel laundry, all of the sheets from all of the rooms in a giant bag landing on your chest.  Santo brings class to the insanity and Familia De Tijuana are great rudo foils. It goes off the rails as you expect, but it was a great train crash.

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Monday AIW - Gauntlet for the Gold 4/26/19

I had so much fun at the AIW live show Mania weekend, I decided to go ahead and buy their shows going forward, it is a fed which deserves my cash. With all of the AIW shows available on IndependentWrestling.tv, I am going to try to do a new show every Monday. Eric will be jumping in when something intrigues him.

Facade vs. Lee Moriarty vs. Louis Lyndon vs. Tre Lamar vs. Wheeler Yuta vs. Zach Thomas

PAS: This was a spotty six way, pretty much what you would expect from that match. AIW does really good spotfests, although it is their tag spotfests which really stand out. I hadn't seen much of Thomas before, and I liked some of his power stuff. Lamar had the best dive hitting a top con hilo with great height. There was kind of a scary moment when Facade tried for Teddy Hart's top rope doomsday destroyer, but slipped and ended up spiking Lamar awkwardly on his head, degree of difficulty of the stuff which inexperienced guys try (Facade has been around forever, but Thomas and Lamar are basically rookies) is always nerve racking.

MJF vs. Shane Douglas (w/ Francine)

PAS: This is as advertised. MJF talks some shit on the mic, Douglas curses out Vince McMahon and Shawn Michaels and steals some of Tommy Dreamers ECW nostalgia act lines (I imagine those guys have the same booker, and if Dreamer is busy you can get Shane for 80 cents on the dollar). Francine looks way healthier now then when she was in her prime, together they look like a successful speedboat salesman and his wife who has really got into Yoga since her kids went to college. Francine may have had the best punches in the match, MJF knows how to bump around and stooge for an old guy, and the fans got to chant along post match to Douglas introing Bam Bam and Candido in heaven. Not my thing really, and doesn't translate to video particularly well, but for what it was designed to do it did it well.

ER: I'm not planning on watching this match, but I can attest to how nicely Francine has aged. I remember seeing her at a con several years ago and actually wound up standing next to her at one point, and had a brief, nice chat. She was very pretty and kind, in a way I was NOT expecting after seeing her in 1998. She aged much closer to an east coast Andrea Savage than a Jersey mob goomah. She seems like a really well adjusted woman for someone who got some insanely disgusting things screamed and chanted at her regularly when she was 25. I like nice wrestling stories.

La Familia de Tijuana (Bestia 666/Damian 666) vs. To Infinity and Beyond (Cheech/Colin Delaney)

PAS: It is pretty cool that Damian 666 has become an AIW regular, what an awesome dude to be showing up as indy fed regular in 2019. I loved the LFT brawl at the Wrestlemania weekend show, but this was much more of a straight tag, which doesn't really work within Bestia or Damian's strengths, best part of the match was probably Damian breaking out the leather belt and starting strapping. I do think To Infinity and Beyond have fun double teams, but this was more a cool idea then a great match.

ER: I really liked this. 2I&B is one of my favorite current tag teams, two guys I've liked for quite some time who have been really clicking, and I like them running wild on FdT due to FdT being forced to work normal. If they had come out stabbing Delaney in the face with forks that would be one thing, but I like them working straight. It never crossed my mind that Delaney would ever somehow get BACK into WWE, considering the weird circumstances that lead to him being there for 7 months over a decade ago. He's still among the very weirdest guys to get an official WWE action figure, and watching him now he's clearly good enough to be in NXT, which is the best. He's really good at working with FdT, setting up fun moments for Damian to attack him from the apron, and I really like Infinity's double teams, especially Cheech's facewash leading into an outside to inside 619 (it's easy to make something seemingly cutesy work when the end result is kicking someone across the face). FdT working straight and getting kind of dominated was great, because then it lead to a great reaction when Damian finally got a belt BY TAKING THE REF'S so he could start whipping ass and strangling dudes. Damian even wraps the belt around Delaney's throat and beals him across the ring, and I thought they set up the comedy tree of woe/69 spot really well. If FdT are going to be regulars (and I hope so because I like how they slot into AIW) then it makes sense to give us some straight matches with them, and this was just the amount of fun I wanted from the tag.

Deranged vs. DJ Z vs. Flip Kendrick vs. Gringo Loco

PAS: This is DJ Z's final indy match, and is a pretty great balls to the wall spotfest. Deranged comes out of deep freeze and looks awesome, he takes the biggest bump of the match, when he gets pushed off the top rope and flies rib first into the ring ramp, and was part of the craziest highspot a double moonsault by Deranged and DJZ. Pretty much everyone looked great though, Loco was right there to base for all of the crazy highspot stuff and everyone in this had great charisma with everyone else. Lots of high degree of difficulty spots all pulled off really well, and some great athletes doing athletic things.

ER: Hell yeah. I don't always love the idea of "dream match" booking, but I really like the idea of someone hand picking their opponent/s for their "retirement" match. DJ Z is going to NXT and we get AIW legend Gringo Loco back, and freaking DERANGED gets on another 2019 indy card! This was exciting as hell and an excellent charcuterie plate showcasing each person's talents. We get big bumps, dangerous flying, nasty car crashes, everything you'd want really. Loco takes a nasty snap suplex on the entrance ramp that lands hard, and minutes later Deranged gets shoved off the top rope and takes a bellyflop right onto the ramp, nasty as hell. Kendrick flies into everyone with a corkscrew moonsault to the floor, his own body whipping across the guardrail. DJ Z shows off some of his pretty lucha sequences he learned from Skayde, we get a couple of tower spots that are actually worthy of the set up (one seeing Kendrick getting lawndarted off the top by Z and Deranged into a Loco cutter, and later a surprise Spanish Fly onto the others on the floor), and everybody fits nicely into the hybrid lucha setting. Deranged drops crazy stuff that still looks good today, and he has that Jack Evans flying ability where he makes complicated spots look like violent breakdancing moves, putting his own twists on flying double knees off the top or a caught standing spinkick. But I like every individual in this one, and especially like how the match really felt like each of the 4 bringing an equal part of their style to it.

Matthew Justice vs. Joshua Bishop

PAS: Fun big boy punch out which really falls apart at the finish. Couple of really fun spots including Bishop catching a Justice dive and powerslamming him into the metal barricades. I also really liked Justice's chops, really lacing into Bishop's chest. Finish had Justice redoing his death valley driver off the ramp because the table didn't break and we got an elongated ref bump/Wes Barkley inference section. If that is going to be the finish, just do it. Here it just dragged on and killed the momentum of the match. Still excited about the rematch next show, though.

26. Eddie Kingston vs. Mance Warner

PAS: I thought this was great. Basically a WAR match, totally built around two relatively big guys punching and headbutting each other really hard and selling that exertion (neither guy is Ashura Hara, but neither guy is Ultimo Dragon sized either). I write this every time I review an Eddie Kingston match, but he is really amazing at all of the little things which make an all-time great wrestler. His reactions after getting hit with Warner's big headbutts were so good, first he wants to shit talk, and it is almost this delayed reaction where the brain trauma hits him a moment later. There is also some great knee selling later in the match, when Warner can't stand in front of Kingston anymore and has to clip his leg. I loved the finish, with Kingston going to the top, getting distracted briefly by the Duke and diving right into a Warner headbutt, which clipped him right on the jaw. It didn't take Kingston down immediately, but it was the beginning of the end. If Kingston is really retiring at the end of the year, he is going out with a huge run. It reminds me of Dick Togo's pre-retirement match streak, and hopefully Eddie will also just travel in South America, read leftist literature and return in a couple of years.

ER: This would have been more shocking if it didn't deliver on its on paper promise, and while I don't think it was quite up to the high standards Retirement Tour Kingston has provided us, there was zero chance I wasn't going to love this. Eddie adds so much to these ringside tour/in ring slugfest brawls, so much added personality, even just getting verbal in so many ways that a ton of indy guys are afraid to get. Seriously, look at how many times an indy guy pumps his fists and opens his mouth for a triumphant scream, only to be totally silent. Once you notice it you'll hate me for pointing it out. Kingston beats Mance with chops, nice overhand shots that always land, and he mixes them up by occasionally smacking Mance right on top of his shaved head. He's really good at making ringside brawls engaging, falling into rails, smacking into a ringpost, getting everyone a good look. But everyone knows and everyone loves when Kingston integrates an unexpected injury into a match, and it's a more unique formula than "guy works my arm, my arm is sore". Kingston always just pulls an injury doing something he regularly does, which is ULTRA relatable to me, person who is the same age as Eddie Kingston. King is great at working those "I slept for 8 hours but woke up with a neck kink" injuries, and here he came off the top rope with a knee across Warner's jaw but then sold landing rough on his knee for the rest of the match. I am someone who will do a goofy dance at work for a quick laugh on office birthday cake day, and then feel a tug in my ribcage for a week after. King knows how to create and sell injuries like this, and knows how to keep working a competent match through that type of injury. He hits an absolutely scorching powerbomb on Warner and is feeling out his knee afterward, and it's those little details that always make King matches mean so much more. His shit talking is always welcome and I love how he uses shit talking in the same way Lawler takes down the strap. It never comes at the same time, doesn't always set up a comeback, but always signifies a sea change in the match. He can use them to taunt his opponent into doing something stupid, he can use it when he's clearly behind and doesn't sense a comeback, he can do it just because he's upset his opponent is making him go through some shit, but it always feels placed with intention. These two don't aim to break noses or concuss, and I'm glad because they have the personality to work a match like this without hurting each other.

Josh Prohibition vs. M-Dogg Matt Cross

PAS: This was sort of a nostalgia match for something I am really not nostalgic for, but I kind of love that these guys are going out there and killing each other 20 years after those backyard wrestling videos. I really dug the story of the match which was put over on commentary, two kids who started together, Cross goes on to tour around the world, while Prohibition gets married and has kids, and Josh always wonders if he could have been the guy on TV. These guys have been doing this for so long, and are still in such good shape that they pull off complex stuff effortlessly. I really loved Prohibitions running tope over the guardrail, and Cross is still an explosive high flyer. It got a bit OTT at the end, although the 20 anniversary match of backyard legends should be a bit OTT. Prohibition gives almost a wedding toast speech at the end, and the whole thing is pretty endearing.

Gauntlet For The Gold

PAS: This was a royal rumble, which isn't really my thing, but I am going to love a Royal Rumble when everyone who comes out is a cool AIW guy. It is just going to be more exciting when music hits and it's T-Money or Weird Body then when its Dolph Ziggler or Baron Corbin. This match had some fun eliminations,  I loved Marion Fontaine grabbing Dr. Dan's tie, and when Dan lets go of the rope to block his face, Fontaine just lets go of the tie so he falls to the floor. There was a lot of Joey Janela in this match, like he runs through about a dozen separate comedy spots, and by the end I just wanted Sandman Sims to tap dance into the ring and eliminate him with a hook. I also am not familiar enough with AIW minutia to understand the meaning of the surprise entrances. Kingston winning is great, although I probably would have had him come in earlier. Kingston vs. Lawlor as a big time main event is really intriguing, and should be a great capper to Kingston's AIW career if he is indeed retiring.


ER: Throw another Kingston match onto our 2019 Ongoing MOTY List. At this point it feels like it's guaranteed every time he shows up.

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RIP Silver King

Silver King was one of the absolute best wrestlers in the world at the exact time my love of wrestling went from love to all out obsession. When I began college and was finally on my own independent schedule, combined with finally having internet fast enough to regularly use, I dove right into tape trading and acquiring tons of lucha and puro. Silver King was a guy who would regularly be added to my WCW perm tapes, and I sought out his new Japan matches for that reason. That was a great era for him, and I wanted to look back at some matches I remember being standouts.

Falls Count Anywhere Mexican Hardcore Match: Silver King/La Parka vs. Halloween/Damian WCW Nitro 6/7/99

ER: This is the infamous match where these four guys beat the shit out of each other, while Schiavone and Heenan giggle to themselves the entire time because it's a MEXICAN hardcore match.   And it's as crazy and great as you remember. This whole match is made up of these psychopaths interrupting each other's spots by throwing chairs at each other's heads. Halloween topes headfirst into a Parka chairshot, Damian baseball slides Parka off a chair, Silver King gets a chair bounced off his head on his Silver King plancha, Park hits a dive into a seated Damian, Silver King moonsaults with a trash can onto everyone; it's constant insanity and really should have been treated with flat out awe and respect. These guys were all total asskickers here and should have been treated like gods backstage. Trash cans get bounced off heads, Silver King hits a tornado DDT off the apron through a table on Halloween, Halloween shows what a bump god he was going to be for the next several years, La Parka powerbombs Damian through a table and Damian KICKS OUT! Damian probably still regrets kicking out of the table bomb, as Parka then immediately powerbombs him through two set up chairs that DO NOT BUDGE. It's absolutely sick and Damian gets pinned while his kidneys contemplate whether or not to keep functioning. Damian had taken a couple wicked flipping bumps off lariats earlier in the match, another example of Damian under the radar stealing the show in a WCW match. Total legendary brawl during the hardcore era, as violent as it ever was.

Silver King/El Dandy/Villano V/Damian vs. Kendall Windham/Barry Windham/Curt Hennig/Bobby Duncum Jr. WCW Thunder 6/24/99

ER: What a killer little gem. The luchadors aren't treated like a joke even though the Rednecks all tower over them. Rednecks treat them like total equals which is practically guaranteed to get an awesome result. This was tremendous. The Rednecks didn't have to be this generous to the luchadors, but the match was given enough time that every single person got time to shine. This was a great complementary effort with some fantastic moments. This is a total El Dandy showcase, he gets to wail on so many Rednecks with his big time whip crack punches, and the fact the crowd was really responding to Dandy (and all the luchadors) made this extra special. There was a fun run where each member of the lucha team got to hit a big move off the top, with a Redneck bumping big for it. Silver King and Dandy each hit big missile dropkicks, Villano V hit a heavy crossbody, and when it got to Damian they added some great psychology by having Hennig sidestep it. Rednecks transitioned to offense and cashed in on all the big bumps they took. Hennig especially looked mean, throwing hot punches and hitting real stiff in general. At one point during a casual luchador corner headstand Hennig just cuts it off with a quick headbutt to the dick. I've never seen that before and it rocketed Hennig up my list of great workers. This was during Barry's absurd "pretty sure he's wearing women's jean shorts" period, but Windham was nicely motivated and moved like his body was healed, so had some nice moments. Duncum was a fun overlooked guy, I like his more John Nord slower bruiser style, kicking Silver King right in the face at one point. Kendall gets to seal the deal on this match, hitting a mammoth headlock style bulldog on King, King taking it like a total nutbar. Great showcase for 8 really fun wrestlers, really shows how well the fans would have accepted luchadors as legit guys if they were actually treated regularly as legit guys.

Silver King/Villano IV/Villano V vs. La Parka/Juventud Guerrera/Psychosis WCW Thunder 9/30/99

ER: Another one of those great WCW compact trios matches that deliver on it's on paper delicious junkfood promise. These things move quick, and it's cool when every guy in the match totally delivers during their moments. King hits some nice power and agility spots, big spinkick, big bump flipping off the top rope and landing on his stomach, always seemed at the center of the important action. Villanos looked like killers and hit one of the great tandem bits of offense here, a sky high flapjack into gutbuster on Juvy. The way Juvy's chest sticks the landing over their knees is disgusting, the whole move looked designed to kill. Parka worked like a maniacal goofball throughout, and we got an awesome spot where the Villanos caught a Juvy springboard 450 to the floor (yep) and then Parka wiped out everyone with a suicide dive. Juvy was a terror throughout, always flying into frame with a fast wild springboard attack, and Psychosis misses a couple big spots with gusto and plants his big guillotine leg for the win. This whole thing was good and even had time to take a couple pace shifts, giving us a nice Villanos control segment in the middle of some big highspots. These guys always shone when given the chance, just another of countless examples by this point.

We are planning on celebrating some more Silver King over the next several days. This one is hitting me hard and I really want to enjoy justifying my love for the guy.

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Long Road Report to Hell 4/4/19 FINAL ACT, Show #4: AIW Slumber Party Massacre

ER: We sadly had to cut out of the MLW tapings at 10 PM (felt like they had enough material to go to 11, and if was going to take an hour to get back to White Eagle). So we missed LA Park, which was amusingly our original reason for even planning this cross country meet-up, when Park/Rush was going to happen. So no Park, but we'd all seen Park more than once in life, and the AIW early show multiman is one of Phil and my favorite things in current wrestling, Tom had never seen one, and we all decided early on in the MLW tapings that we did NOT want to miss than multiman. Yes, we realized in hindsight we should have just camped out at the White Eagle all day I haven't had any liquid since my beer at Bloodsport 6 hours earlier, and my mouth feels gross. Due to lack of options I am forced to buy a pack of gum from the bathroom attendant for $3, but the $3 was worth it. I had mentioned to Phil that I was getting gum on three separate occasions, but once I *had* the gum I never offered him or Tom a piece. Later in the night at 2:30 AM, Phil made me feel like shit for not offering him gum over 4 hours earlier. Even though he never seemed interested any of the times I told him I was getting gum. THAT'S WHERE WE WERE AT AFTER WATCHING 10 STRAIGHT HOURS OF WRESTLING. The whole ride back Tom openly makes fun of the awful Delilah request radio show the driver is listening to, with us openly laughing when she dedicates Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is" to a poor lost soul in love. It's a bunch of hacky shlock that feels weird in 2019 and to my delight Tom made sure this was known. As we pulled up and jogged to the entrance we literally heard the sound of nasty chairshots. We knew we made the right choice when we walked in the door.

34. La Familia de Tijuana (Bestia 666/Damian 666) vs. The Young Studs (Bobby Beverly/Eric Ryan)

PAS: We entered the venue to the sounds of chair hitting flesh and the first thing we see is Damian wasting Beverly on the floor with uncalled for chair shots (We missed the first minute or so, including Damian doing the Fuerza hug, but instead of a punch he stabbed Ryan in the head with scissors) This was listed as a Mexican street fight and definitely had that insane Tijuana feeling as all four guys just tried to mangle each other. The match slows for a bit when it gets into the ring, but the finish of Bestia Death Valley Drivering Ryan through a fork door was completely bonkers. Hell of live experience and a crazy start to the show.

TKG: There were a lot of forks in this Mexican street fight. Guys stabbing each other with forks, forks covered door, Familia de Tijuana doing fork assisted headbutts to transition. Is a fork considered to be a particularly Mexican tool? I mean molcajete’s would be more expensive and don’t know if you could safely do molcajete spots. We saw a lot of big brawls Thursday, start to pick up on the little differences. liked way whole match was about transitions being built around wrestling not around props. Also Bestia and Damian always made sure to hold the chairs for other during spots so Young Studs never had to, also if Damian is putting a chair necklace on opponent he’s going to use it like a horse collar to yoke him around.

ER: It was awesome getting to our seats, and hearing Phil mark out more for the Young Studs than he has for anybody else today. You could tell he was excited to be at AIW with Tom because Tom had seen next to none of these guys, some of our favorite current asskickers. Ryan and Beverly are two of those guys and this was an awesome start to the end of our night. I don't always like stabby brawls, but I really liked this because we didn't just linger on gouging or worked stabbing where guys are wailing on each other's foreheads with spikes and yet coming up bloodless. Here every stab attack at a forehead was done specifically to get blood, so the stabs actually came off effectively and kept the action moving. Seeing belt shots on tape always looks nasty, but belt shots live just echo in your ears and seem like the most painful thing. And the first 5 minutes of this was FdT just beating the bricks off the Young Studs, with chairshots, hard shots to the head, tossing them through chairs, headbutts, and all those belt shots. There was minimal downtime (one chair spot took a bit long) and it was fairly one-sided in favor of FdT, but the show starting energy was strong with these guys. Ryan and Beverly come off like a pair of Arns staggering around a WarGames, and that's a vibe that I LOVE in a bloody brawl. Bestia gets a fork bat dragged across his head and comes up bleeding, Damian gives our most violent AARP member performance of the day (of course outside of Severn I'm not sure we saw anybody else past 55), and my god the reactions from all of us when they brought out the fork door. I'm a man who has never considered attaching forks to doors, and it's one of those great deathmatch props where I would happily listen to a podcast that was just a recording of whatever was said while they made the fork door. I actually screamed loudly when the fork door got used, only because I fully expected Ryan to come out of it with forks sticking grossly out of his body. This was really the burst of violence and energy that we needed at this point in our long day. And then before leaving the ring Ryan gigged himself a bunch of times with a fork for the benefits of the camera. And then I remembered "oh right wrestling is gross."

7. Joshua Bishop vs. Dominic Garrini

PAS: Got to give it up to these kids, they came into this match trying to steal the entire weekend and basically pulled it off. Garrini has turned into a hell of a brawler, which is not where I saw his career going. He opens with a jumping knee and a tope, and then they pull out the stuff. They do a pretty nasty version of the Whitmer/Jacobs hockey fight with spikes (where they both do super obviously blade afterwards). Garrini takes the bump of the weekend, getting Awesome bombed off the stage through a door, which was truly harrowing to see live. I am not normally a fan of skewers, but they were used here as a real bit of torture rather than a geekshow trick. The finish was maybe the best shticky I Quit finish I have seen, with Bishop cuffing Garinni to the ring ropes, spraying him with lighter fluid and threatening to burn him up. With the nuts stuff they were doing in this match, I briefly bought them doing some lunatic WING Kanemura finish. What day Garinni had, total psycho.

TKG: This was batshit great brawl and hard to write about this match without full on going Chris Farley fan boy play by play ‘do you remember the time Bishop did...’. This is submit or surrender and does a great job of escalating so everything just keeps on getting worse and worse and both guys go through crazy shit and sell cumulative damage. Garrini has had a crazy day of impressing me and I love the way he chops bishop straight to the throat to set stuff up. This was the second match on the show, which is a crazy match to happen second match on a show.

ER: This is the kind of violent brawl that is exciting and scary in person, the kind of brawl where real and shocking violence really lands well. These guys beat the hell out of each other and after his day I would hate to be Garrini's body on 4/5. This was paced out really nicely and my favorite thing about this was that a lot of violence often felt retaliatory, especially from Garrini's end, and instead of them moving to stunt spots Garrini especially would always have this look of "you just did WHAT to me you fucker? Really?!" And then he would make Bishop pay. He hits a chair erasing tope to start the damn match, and it set an awesome tone. Garrini eats an inverted suplex on the ring apron, and from where I was sitting I assumed we had just seen the most painful powerbomb of the match. Heh. I don't typically like wooden stake spots as they're always a reminder of how people with my natural translucent pale skin and fang-like canines have been eliminated throughout history, but also because they typically seem unnecessarily gross don't always read well enough to make the assumed pain worth it. But here Bishop sticks them right into the side of Garrini's head and his ear, and Garrini has a great fearful anger response to them. His face reads WTF scared, but his instinct is to yank them right out and use the weapon he's been given. The Whitmer/Jacobs spike spot played great, looked nasty, big shot looked good....but my god did I wish they could have found some other way to gig their foreheads than what they both chose to do: lie on the mat, facing away from each other, jabbing their foreheads with a blade repeatedly, like they were angrily trying to force a straw into a Capri Sun. It was the most blatant blading I've ever seen. And what's frustrating is they COULD have incorporated that into the match. It would have been really easy! If they were already committed to bleeding out of their heads, they could have just worked the spikes spot differently. Throw a couple harder shots, get opened up by a spike, go from there. Or shoot, make the blade a spot in the match, act like he had a blade for use as an actual weapon in an I Quit match. You could have even had Garrini blading so obviously AS A SPOT in the match itself! Eric Ryan did that same thing before leaving the ring, just stabbed his forehead with a fork a bunch to show what a savage he is. Bishop could have spiked Garrini, and Garrini could have gotten up screaming, gigging his head to show that it's going to affect him. But rolling over to opposite corners of the ring and then wild arm blading your head in broad daylight? That's so bush. Roll to the floor, cover it SOMEHOW.

And I really liked the rest of this! It was great! It's filled with tough chairshots, Garrini hitting Bishop in the chest at one point, and Garrini takes an Awesome Bomb off the freaking stage through chairs and a door. That really was the spot of the weekend, and it happened DIRECTLY in front of us. There were only a handful of people closer to that evil, and pro wrestling is just wild. Garrini just got murdered with that powerbomb, but I like that the specific nastiness that an I Quit match could bring, as a big move like that is more likely to KO your opponent, but not necessarily make him quit. Their weapons really played like violent weapons, the chairshots were hard, tacks spot was gross, I even liked the BS interference spot as it lead to Garrini punching the guy on the apron like he was picturing him with a Phil Baroni face, then hitting a fantastic piledriver on the apron. And the finish was incredible, right up at the top with the best I Quit finishes we've had. Bishop handcuffed Garrini to the ringpost, sprayed him with lighter fluid, and then waved a lighter literally inches away from him. And honestly, this finish was so damn effective that IN THAT MOMENT, considering the increased craziness we'd seen from Garrini that day I was thinking that it was entirely plausible that some wacko would agree to get lit on fire because it would give them the most holy shit moment of the biggest week in pro wrestling of the entire year. I literally thought that I was going to witness a guy get let on fire, and I was already thinking about the worst possible outcome of such a spot and was then frantically checking my exit locations so I wouldn't end up trampled at Great White II: Great White Eagle Hall Fire. It was totally plausible that Bishop was going to set Garrini on fire, and that fact alone makes this a super difficult to defeat "finish of the year". Crazy spot to end a crazy fight.

9. To Infinity And Beyond (Cheech/Colin Delaney) vs. The Jollyville Fuck Its (Russ Myer/T-Money) vs The Philly Marino Experience (Marino Tenaglia/Philly Collins) vs. The Production (Derek Director/Eddy Only)

PAS: I absolutely adore AIW multi man tags. They have a ton of guys with a ton of fun stuff who really know how to pace a match like this. Fuck-It's were the standouts, They do their great spot where T-Money airplanes spins Derek Director while Russ punches him in the head. Russ breaks his finger (which he shows our row in gruesome fashion, but he still goes on to do ten crazy things, including his beautiful cannonball. T-Money is slamming and spinebustering and pouncing his way into my heart as well. Everybody was good in this, Cheech and Delaney are very good at making me buy otherwise implausible shit, and the young guys all bumped big and had cool offense. Super excited I got to see one of these live.

TKG: This is exactly how you work this match. A gaggle of tag teams doing double team and tandem moves till no one left standing to break up pinfall. The PME did a bunch of guy blinded performs his signature move on his own teammate comedy spots which I normally think don’t work in this type of match as a joke kinda needs to be built to, and not sure if they worked as comedy but they worked as “this shit is so chaotic that mistakes will happen”, crowd popped for comedy spots as dramatic errors. They also really pulled off a sense of hierarchy which you don’t expect in this kind of clusterfuck spot fest. I hadn’t seen any of these guys before but immediately knew who was the ace champs, who veterans, who underdogs..and what everyone’s role is in those teams so at the point where Cheech and Delaney start doing simultaneous tandem moves on the hoss from both Production and PME you knew where shit was going. Actual sense about who has momentum in a spotfest clusterfuck. This is match I want to see again on tape. I joked at end of season one of LU, that they should bring in Cheech Hernandez or Jesse Hernandez to replace Hotstuff and never explain the switch...but fuck no joke they should have brought in Cheech.

ER: This was definitely the match Phil was most excited to see today, and it was hard for me to not be as excited as he was. Enthusiasm is infectious, and I think we've written some of our most enthusiastic reviews of the past couple years about AIW multimans. It's a real testament to what these guys have done that we spent more time saying "we should leave soon, I do NOT want to miss the AIW 10 man" and not "I do NOT want to miss Shinjiro Otani's first US match in 16 years, against EDDIE KINGSTON". We wanted this match, and this match gave us exactly what we wanted. Phil had been talking up AIW multimans all day to Tom and it's great when you hype something up and then watch it deliver on the hype. And goddamn did this deliver on the hype. Every one of these matches makes me like all these guys even more. I can now easily say that Jollyville is my favorite tag team in the world, Colin Delaney looked like a guy people should be talking about as a top 50 guy, Cheech/Delaney are a great tag team that can take big spots and seamlessly work in some complicated do-si-do cooperative spots without making them look stupid, Eddy Only is damn fearless with his body and does some wild offense and just as wild bumping, Derek Director keeps getting better and is great at landing hard with his body (he had an awesome cannonball and took The Pounce like a brave psycho, Big T-Money had a major coming out party for me, he and Russ are both so damn good. This had every damn thing I wanted. I love Nasty Russ' punches, loved we got to see the airplane spin punch, and love how he would only shake out his fist after a couple of the punches to really sell that sometimes you can land a punch on a sweet spot and other times you get your wrist bent weird. The flying is nuts as we get some big dives: Tenaglia stars the whole match by falling off the top rope onto Delaney), Russ hits a moonsault to the floor but gets caught lawndart style by the group and then Collins crashes onto him, T-Money hits a big man flip dive, all great. And that's the thing, every damn move in the match looked great! The powerbombs were brutal, great attention was paid to punches, DDT's looked vertebrae crushing, Delaney hit a couple cool cutter variations that looked real neck wrenching, kicks to the stomach looked good, just a super snug match with bodies getting run into bodies really hard. Everything was laid out really well so the whole thing flowed and had people constantly moving in and out of action with no break in pace, with a couple of very nice saves that extended the action into an increasingly violent finish. Cheech/Delaney have cool combos that are snapped off well, building nicely to something that would convincingly finish a killer match like this. This three matches really had us on an improbably joyous pro wrestling high, quite a miracle in our literal 11th hour of wrestling.

25. Shinjiro Otani vs. Eddie Kingston

PAS: Otani is a guy who clearly means a ton to Kingston and you could tell it was big deal for him to face off with him. This was very much a Zero-One style of match, which is a type of Puro I really miss. Simple, hard hitting, and focused on selling and facial expressions, like Hash said, it's about the eyes. It the type of thing Kingston does as good as anyone ever, and Otani stepped up and matched his intensity. Awesome selling by both guys, Kingston sells the initial Otani chop like it briefly stopped his heart, and Otani did some cool knee selling like he was working out a leg cramp. Would have liked to see this go a bit longer, but otherwise this delivered it's on paper promise.

ER: Once Rush/Park was taken from us, this was really the main singles match that kept our interest in doing the trip. Both are obviously group favorites and it's one of those great pairings that none of us had thought about before. Kingston is supposedly gone from wrestling this year and his year really has felt like an awesome retirement tour. The problem is, retirement tour Kingston has been some of my absolute favorite damn wrestling of the past decade. So can we just talk him into being About to Retire Kingston for a couple more years? Just do one of those Cher extended world tour retirement tours? And this is great, which makes it even more bittersweet. I think this match could have not lived up to our personal expectations, but it totally did. It's a unique situation as it's not often you get to see a match worked as both Legends Match and Dream Match. So you get greatest hits spots teased out, like the Stones playing the Start Me Up riff to a bunch of different parts of the arena to ramp up the excitement. Otani does this for the facewash kicks, really grinding the toe of his boot on Kingston's cheek while getting the crowd louder and louder, still doing really stiff kicks and scrapes, but then throwing in a few genuinely funny comedy spots when he kept booting his seconds Takeda and H. Suzuki into the front row with the facewash follow through. It's a heartwarmingly violent way to do a signature spot, which is fun when it happens. But while there were legend spots, both played like they were in their prime, and looked it. The stand and trade had a legends feel to it, with Otani riling up Kingston with shots but then paying for it when Kingston crushes him with a hardest-of-the-day rolling elbow or a wicked backfist. Kingston going after Otani's knee was some of the absolute best stuff we saw all day; every time Kingston would kick his knee out it looked like he was trying to hobble him, and Otani sold it by crumbling convincingly with each one. Kingston working a kneebar and a really snug STF was great, the holds looked painful and Otani sold them as dangerous and painful, scrambling to ropes knowing they were a threat. But he punished Kingston back and Kingston was great selling Otani's biggest stuff. Kingston dumped him on his shoulder with a nasty German and I loved Kingston's woozy pain afterwards. Otani is an old dude who has been wrestling a long damn time, but his lariat still looks like a lariat that should finish a match. That's awesome from a guy who was a cruiserweight legend for so long. This was compact but told a great short match story, managed to be a modern match while feeling nostalgic. Would have been a great capper to our long day...

TKG: I ended up unexpectedly going to the MSG ROH/NJ and enjoyed it despite not being much a fan of either current ROH or current NJ and maybe at one point I’ll write about that show. But you watch current NJ style which is built on guys always working as though they are building for a marathon…it’s great watching this instead. This Choshu style “these guys are aiming for a win from the start” just charismatic as fuck guys coming out trying to hit hard and win a match is a path I like and miss. Kingston sells being hit hard as well as anyone can. Post match Kingston does essentially one of those Ian Rotten works Tommy Gilbert and then explains to audience why Gilbert is a legend and hero to him. Kingston has enough charisma and connection with crowd to be able to pull off that speech.

Scott Steiner vs. Swoggle

PAS: I suggested we leave after Kingston vs. Otani and it would have been an unbeatable wrestling experience if we had. This was OK, I guess. Steiner still has a great sleazebag charisma and I was amused at him coming out to Short People. The Cabana Man Dan stuff seemed unnecessary and an excuse to drag the match out a bit.

TKG: Scott Steiner looks old...so old, he looks 5 years older than exclusively sold at Cracker Barrel gospel album era Kenny Rogers. Steiner does some amusing old man bullying mic work and gets PA guy to play Randy Newman’s ‘short people’ he then talks about song and how we all sympathize with narrator of song which is why ‘we made it #1 on top 40’. I mean this is a nerd audience where sure bunch of guys could talk Randy Newman deep cut and Bulgarian exclusive releases but may have been total 3 guys in building who’s record buys contributed to top 40 record placement in 76.

ER: Let me say that while Phil did *technically* suggest we leave after the Otani match, it was never actually brought up as a serious proposition. None of us ever asked if he was serious, we just kind of laughed as somehow two of us at 12:30 AM weren't thinking of leaving a show early. I think if Phil would have asked seriously, or asked another time or two, he could have gotten some support on that idea. And what is a drag, is this whole thing felt like something that could actually work, except every time I started thinking that (and we're talking from the moment we saw this match was announced) that no matter how good the bullshit surrounding this match was - and this match was going to have some major bullshit to pad the time out justify the fly-ins - no matter how good the bullshit was, it was never going to work for one big reason: Swoggle is not good at pro wrestling in almost any way. When people do "most overrated" lists, his name never pops up on them, and sure there are going to be built in complications with Swoggle matches, but damn has he gotten a ton of opportunities with nothing worthwhile to show. This is a guy who was paired with Finlay for 5 years and I'm not sure any of their tags would make it past FUN on a Finlay C&A. When you're paired with a top 5 blog favorite and have zero meaningful matches during that span, you're just not good. The WeeLC gets a lot of praise, but is thoroughly unimpressive because of the awful performance of Swoggle. He was too young to grow up around traditional vaudeville act midget wrestlers, and he physically can't do the style of wrestling on the shows he gets booked on, so none of it works. And yet he's been as much as part of AIW over the past several years as any other wrestler, so I understand his presence on this card. But he's just not good. He was on a gazillion Mania weekend matches, nobody cared about them the moment they were over, and while I'm ecstatic that the guy is getting so many pay days, he is never going to be a part of a card I'll be excited about. Just like I have a running list of guys I would watch against anybody (Necro, Finlay, Kingston, etc.), Swoggle is a guy who wouldn't be interesting against ANY of those guys. This was never going to work, no matter how well any of it worked.

But the bullshit worked. Steiner comes out looking leathery as hell but he still has his kind Steiner eyes. Nobody talks about the Kind Steiner Eyes! But they're an important part of his act. Not many people know, but their WCW theme was originally "Steiner Eyes" and they got scared people would mock their sensitivity so they changed it to "Steiner Line". But look at those tender Scotty Steiner eyes. They're not cloudy or distant like other older roids guys. He can still be a major asshole, but he still has relatably kind eyes which give his asshole rants more personality. He's not a sad old guy, he's an old guy who is scarier because he doesn't look crazy which means he's actively choosing to be mean. There's a "Roided Up Athlete" tree that branches into "crazy" "surprisingly well" adjusted" "sad" and all points in between. Having Steiner show up doesn't feel exploitative because those eyes show he's still a functioning human. Tom mentioned he looks like an older Kenny Rogers from when Kenny Rogers already looked old, but I think it's important that Steiner hasn't had a facelift that completely sapped the warmth from his eyes. Kenny lost that warmth, Robert Mitchum lost that warmth, Bronson just kept getting weirdly smoother, Burt Reynolds lost that warmth, but Steiner kept his normal face and retained that eye connection. And the way he wears shades for the bulk of his appearances makes them oddly even more powerful, showing that Steiner essentially realizes his tender eyes are barely slightly less powerful than Gambit's. We've never had any scary "Scott Steiner pilled up" moments like we've had with many of his peers, and I've enjoyed his actual ring work as recently as a year or so ago in Impact. Steiner milks this fucker for as long as possible and if he had an even slightly more competent opponent, I think this would have worked. Steiner gets a lot of stick work - which I'm sure most in the crowd wanted more than anything else in this match - and demands to come out to his REAL theme music, which turns out to be Randy Newman's "Short People". It's a fun gag, but Steiner makes it so much funnier than the gag should be. He suddenly turns into Davy Jones doing a reading for a Time Life AM Gold infomercial. "Yeah that's right. You remember this song? This song takes me back. Takes me back to a simpler time, where Americans' hatred of little people but love of strolling bouncy upbeats rocketed this song up the charts to #1." And it kept getting more blue and more violent and more hostile, and honestly Steiner on the stick was probably enough to keep this in the "what worked". The wrestling was fine, Steiner threw a little guy around a bit and Swoggle did a good enough dazed sell after a tough weapons shot. If Steiner had broken the laws of time and space and done a Frankensteiner on Swoggle, this would have made List.

Colt Cabana/Space Monkey vs. Ethan Page/Maxwell Jacob Friedman

PAS: The stuff were Cabana acts like he is MJF's dad seems vaguely Anti-Semitic to me. They don't really look anything alike. Page and MJF's shtick is best used as seasoning, and we got big glopping handfuls of it in this match and all over the weekend.

TKG: The joke here is that Cabana and MJF are both Jewish thus must be father/son. I mean I watch dunking booth insult clown videos, so I’m ok with racial phenotype jokes...and maybe you could have pulled that bit off in Ohio or Utah but this is a Jersey/NY wrestling audience where there were 30 other Jewish looking guys in my section alone. I thought Space Monkey looked good on the Family Reunion show, here he looked like a guy with nice gear.

ER: Earlier in the show two presumably very nice girls sat a seat down from me. I think I weirdly recognized them (maybe they were sitting hard camera side for an MLW taping meaning I saw them for 5 episodes of TV) and one of them had on a boss custom Dan Severn sweatshirt. The other one had leaned over to ask me "Has Colt wrestled yet?" "Who?" "Colt Cabana?" "Ughh he's on this card?" I hope I didn't come off rude, it was just a reflex. So I knew we were getting a Colt Cabana match, and now we were paying the piper and at MINIMUM we can be thankful that the other "guys whose brand of comedy I don't care for" were all shoved into one match. We saw Page honing his comedy chops to start our day, and nothing that happened during our day made him any more funny here. MJF is a guy I've enjoyed in matches, but I don't love a lot of his shtick and think a lot of his comedy can be hack. And his comedy has kind of haunted us all damn day. Space Monkey is an unfortunate bystander here, as I think his stock had raised a bit earlier in the day within our group, here he was the guy unfortunately lumped in with a three-way comedy bit that he couldn't participate in. But he at least stood out with big bumps and sold all of the work done on his tail about as well as you can sell tail work. You sell tail work, you lean into a couple of back elbows, you're going to be the best guy here.

Nick Gage vs. Mance Warner

PAS: This was pretty much a lesser version of the Warner match we saw at MLW, and it is always going to be tough to follow that Bishop vs. Garinni match with a lesser plunder brawl. I would have liked this if it was more of a savage fight, but Gage matches are almost good-natured now.

TKG: I liked this match way more than Phil. The MLW match was a match between two bigger than life cartoon characters while somehow one of the coolest stories of last decade is Nick Gage becoming the kind of Post World War II local babyface who does car commercials that Bob Mould talks about. And yes, I realize that he works Ohio and Illinois and crowd has that same connection with him but Gage in Jersey feels like local act from guy that people go to church with and watch son play varsity basketball. Did Annie Social/Roxxie Cotton ever work outside of Philly? That was an act that I think you need to spend time in Philly to connect with. Anyways this was Big Daddy Lafonce Latham v big city outsider in reverse. I also really dug how little in the way of props these guys used vis a vis the Mexican death match, and submit or surrender match. This was an arena tour brawl with just one chair getting set up and one door.

ER: I think this would have looked better if it was the only brawl we saw today. I could see this being the brawl main event of ONE show we were seeing and us walking away talking about it, but this was at least the FOURTH match like this we'd seen at this point today. Gary Jay/Jake Parnell, Garrini/Bishop, Mance/Sami, and half the matches we'd seen on this card already. It had a lot of stiff competition over the prior 12 hours. I think this was honestly really good, it just came towards the very end of a long day. This was good, and the aggression felt high, Mance fell into chairs, they did a headbutt exchange that were probably the two best headbutts we saw today, and it really feels like we're not giving enough credit to the shit kicking that took place here. This will be a match that looks better removed from our circumstance. I watched this back because I was curious how it held up removed and on tape, and it still retained the live intensity while working stronger as a brawl. You see  Mance absolutely crack Gage with a hook while Gage was climbing the stage, and it's going to have legs. Mance takes a nasty vertical suplex across chair backs and gets tossed off the stage in fun manner by plowing through a couple fans. Gage breaks out cool shit like a fallaway slam off the middle rope and a great pop up elbow drop off the middle rope that landed flush. There were nasty yakuza kicks, more nasty bumps, hard lariats to the throat, hard lariats to the back of the head, bad landing powerbombs, just a ton of stuff you'd love to see in a brawl. I'm also reminded of how much I always love The Duke, this guy is a fun Alex Jones type loud mouth second, and he always makes it into the ring at one point to get absolutely annihilated. Here he eats a full force Nick Gage chairshot to the top of the head like this was 1999 or something. Maybe it had one too many stand and trade sections, but this is something that held up really great on rewatch for me, and something I have to admit may have suffered live due to my growling stomach and aching dogs. Jesus I felt both young and old at all of these shows today.

Tom Lawlor vs. Matthew Justice vs. PB Smooth vs. Tim Donst

TKG: So I haven’t seen Tim Donst in forever…When I last saw him he was working babyface guy with amateur high school background and now he is working guy who peaked in high school still trying to live off glory of four touchdowns at Polk High. He is wearing boots and elbow pads held together by duct tape and really looks like JT Jobber gone to seed. Apparently, he had cancer and then started working as heel who used “ohh my cancer” as equivalent of heel manager interference spots. And he is able to project all the detestable parts of Kevin James sad sack characters without any of the endearing stuff. Next level Kevin Owens. This of course is Wrestlemania weekend and an audience full of guys who are wasting the money for their children’s childcare and family heating bill on seeing 4 days of wrestling….so Donst’s hatable sad sack who makes poor life decisions is somewhat more sympathetic than he would be with a regular audience that only spent $20 on a show. Doesn’t matter, it is deep in the night and an audience that’s pretty burned out by this point and so this is match with a million crazy dives, stunts, and bumps and Donst getting back of his head opened up really nastily that all played to crickets.

PAS: This was really a victim of them running so late at night. It wasn't a great match, but it was ambitious, and its ambition wasn't rewarded by a burned out crowd. Justice hit like a half a dozen dives, Donst took a nasty bump which opened up his head. Lawlor was throwing people. It was crazy stuff, but not as crazy as either of the opening two matches, and no one in this was as over as Gage was in his match.  Lawlor winning was a nice moment, but they probably should have made a different match order decision, or worked this differently.

ER: This was a shame honestly, as these guys busted their ass. I'm not sure what would have had to be done to successfully win over a bunch of exhausted bodies at the end of a big wrestling day. It's tough to maintain that because wrestling fans have the gas tanks of manatees. These guys had a killer fight and you could tell they wanted to have a great match for the crowd. They had a LOT of great stuff over a 12 hour period that they had to top and it was a losing battle, but these guys didn't disgrace themselves a bit. This was a hard working performance that did have flaws, but also would have gotten a better reaction in a more conventional setting. Matthew Justice especially had a killer performance. It must be at least a little nerve wracking to be watching your friends have crazy wrestling matches all day, 12+ hours of watching guys kill themselves to stand out early in the Mania week, and all day you know that you gotta go into the title match of the last match on the last show of the night. It's a heavy spot to be in and he really performed admirably as fed champ. He was hitting dives into ever part of the crowd and flying off the apron, really coming off like a guy who is going to be a big indy name. Justice kind of comes off like a more indy scum Seth Rollins, but I mean that in a good way. PB Smooth is really raw, but raw giants are a fucking cool thing in wrestling. Justice bumps big and takes wildman vicious spills into chairs, commits fully to dives, really came off like a big deal. It's cool seeing a 6'9" guy throw someone and land giant elbow smashes. Smooth is open minded and tries cool things that you don't see a ton from guys his size and it's always neat to see a big guy come up through the indies. Donst I think has a the most consistently empty gas tank, but he falls into some pretty perilous stuff here and gets cut open in an ugly spot. That's at least a positive contribution to all this. Lawlor took some big spills too, and that's why this whole thing was a shame, these guys really were busting their tailbones and even with a couple of too long prop set up spots there was still a ton of chaos happening here to make me enjoy it.


PAS: The first four matches on this show were the most fun four match run I can remember seeing live. Show dipped after that, but hard to call the AIW Wrestlemania weekend debut anything less then a huge success. Great to see one of my favorite feds hit such a home run on their biggest stage.

ER: The first half of this show was definitely better than the last half, but I think the violent stuff in the second half actually worked real nicely on tape, and the 1st half held up even better. The first hour of this show is probably the best run of wrestling we saw all day, though the best consecutive hour of Bloodsport would have to be the best competition for that honor. This was still overall an excellent show that was worth staying out late and learning an old guy badge of honor to attend. This show lands 4 different matches on our 2019 Ongoing MOTY List, and that makes it a no doubt show of the year candidate no matter how unfunny we find Colt Cabana.

ER: So we get dumped out into the street tired and hungry at 2 AM, and I say we walk back to our place. It's almost a 1 mile walk. Phil and I had a lovely walk earlier that day before our first show, so, so long ago. I'd like to think that in our properly tailored pants and my black peacoat and his nice overcoat, that we looked like a couple of cool character actor detectives having a walk and talk about a case on some shitty canceled CBS detective show. Jersey City PD. I was even having coffee out of a styrofoam cup while walking and talking! We looked great. But Phil didn't want to get jumped in an alley. He has something to live for now because he has a baby boy. He told me I only wanted to walk because I have nothing to live for. Tom had been watching wrestling for so long that he lost all measure of distance knowledge. "So how long would it be if we walked?" "We could make it 17 minutes walking brisk." "17 minutes so like two blocks? Three blocks?" "Two blocks in 17 minutes? No, like a mile." Phil has been mugged before so I said "It's like people sitting next to Flair because he was already in one plane crash and what are the odds of another. What are the odds of you getting mugged twice, Phil?" "I have been mugged twice." "What are the odds of you getting mugged three times, Phil?" I am not a monster or idiot so I agree to a Lyft, and of course we get the first Lyft driver in my history of using them who is a total bum. She said she was a couple minutes away and soon we had been standing there 10 minutes while everybody else standing near us for 2 blocks was long since picked up. She kept telling Phil she was 2 minutes away while her icon wasn't moving. She finally showed up and had a ton of excuses that seemed like plot holes. I think Phil said it was the only negative review he's ever given. We stumble back into our home with the cruelly steep stairs that our 2 AM legs can barely handle. Phil finds 2 leftover slices of pizza. Phil wordlessly dives into one of them and holds the other out to me. I say "Well what if that's Rachel's or Chelsea's that they were saving..." and while I was being thoughtful he silently held it out to Tom who silently grabbed it and immediately ate. I was left with no 2 AM 10 minutes before bed pizza - arguably the greatest of the pizzas - all because I was thoughtful. Nice guys finish last, kids. Day was totally worth it.

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