Found Footage Friday: WCW in Manchester 1993~!

ER: We get a full 1993 WCW house show from a week long UK tour that had great sounding matches and really big crowds every night. This one is from Manchester and looks great. If there's a new Vader/Cactus match we get to talk about, it really wouldn't matter what the rest of the card looked like, but this is great. Aside from Vader/Cactus, we get something even more valuable, in a different way. We get fully into the handheld spirit of Dad Recording Events With a Camcorder by starting with some incredible man on the street interviews asking Impossibly British people about their favorite wrestlers. This is a professionally shot and assembled show and these interviews are supposedly professional, but it's crazy that they sold 8,000 tickets to a show and seemingly couldn't find more than a couple fans who had ever heard of WCW. This is essential. 

By the third interview they are talking to a shabby bearded man in a stocking cap who looks like Badly Drawn Boy if he had a bad childhood with a really strict loveless father. The man says his favorite wrestlers are Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo, because he saw them live a coupla times and saw them on TV. Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo have not wrestled in over 10 and 20 years, respectively. The man started acting like he was being asked too probing a question about his taste in wrestling. One Brilliant older lady says she loves Marcus Alexander Bagwell and then politely seemed embarrassed to say that she doesn't like Dustin Rhodes! She calls Barry Windham "Big Barry" and asks if he's married, then yells to her friend Barbara. She shows mild disgust at the mention of Big Van Vader. There are numerous kids with Arn Anderson signs. The most British kid in the fucking world wearing a bowtie and talking about how much he loves Sting. 

Johnny B Badd vs. Scotty Flamingo

MD: Good opener. It was obvious almost immediately that Scotty knew exactly what he had with this crowd. I'm not going back to looking at gates around this time but he was probably not in front of a crowd like this often. They were going to react to everything he did, every forced break in the corner, every complaint about a hairpull that didn't happen, ever stop in the action to interact with them, and he milked it to the fullest. Badd was used to these openers by now and stooged Scotty around for a bit before getting dragged down for most of the match. Scotty's stuff was varied and credible and they worked a few believable hope spots in before going to an energetic stretch of Badd coming back with a few inversions, be it Scotty reversing him off of multiple whips into the corner or just ducking the KO Punch. It wasn't until Johnny snuck in a late match headscissors takeover that he got Scotty off balance to hit it. This was exactly what it ought to have been and the crowd responded accordingly. 

ER: Sorry, Scotty Flamingo fucks. When the cameras cut to him in his fringe and his bulge, he looked like a sex god bringing color to a washed out colorless world. He looks like a Happy Mondays concert. Johnny B. Badd's sequined Naval blue and gold jacket, Captain's hat, and lampshade knee fringe is hotter and far gayer than any gear Cassandro ever wore to the ring and I am frankly stunned at how much bedazzled sex they brought to this town. Flamingo knew exactly what kind of heel to be, trying to sneak things in behind the ref's back, bumping comically when needed, while leaving the biggest bumps for babyface Badd. Johnny took a huge bump over the top to the floor and later a fast one through the ropes, and Scotty had this fun way of playing an innocent little guy. Flamingo used the Curt Hennig corner bump effectively, and the way he went down for Badd finally landing the left hand looked good. This crowd was clearly into all of this and I love a crowd who shows up ready to see some wrestling. 

Maxx Payne vs. Michael Hayes

MD: This peaked in the second minute. Not to say anything else they did was wrong, even if Hayes was 34 going on 60 in how he moved, but I liked the shtick the best. Probably not a surprise. It was good shtick too. Hayes came out decked to the nines and knew the crowd was going to be up for it all. Weird, you couldn't really hear the impacts in the ring (even of the nice punches that needed a louder stomp to go with them I guess?) but you could heard the crowd stomping and cavorting. Even just Payne pointing to each side of the ring to boos and Hayes doing it to cheers felt refreshing. Payne leaned on him like you'd expect and it was fine. Hayes came back and it was fine if a half step slow. And then the finish was nice as Payne shrugged off the DDT and dropped him right down with the... what was it? The Paynekiller? I need to look this up. Yep, the Payne Killer Fujiwara Arm Bar. Perfectly ok house show match but I wish they had done even more goofy stuff at the beginning. The crowd was eager to eat it up and Hayes could make it work.

ER: I liked this quite a bit, but mainly because it was worked around a lot of nice punches that hit and missed. Both guys have nice punches and the ways they would weave the misses in with the hits always felt different, like they kept telling the same punch story and ending it in different ways. I like "old man" Michael Hayes (as Matt said, somehow 34 years old here) and I like that nobody in England had ever seen a man move this way before. That moonwalk is something that would have made him a major star had British wrestling not collapsed already. Maxx Payne is a guy who lands with real heft. A super dense guy who isn't fat enough to be a big fat guy and clearly isn't a body guy, but is big and dense enough that the fat guy spots - like falling on Hayes after Hayes can't handle the lift - work well. I loved how he blocked Hayes' DDT attempt but just anchoring his feet to the mat and shoving off. 

Dustin Rhodes/Van Hammer vs. Barry Windham/Rick Rude

MD: This was a blatant lie as Barry took out Dustin with a chair right after he got to ringside (after a brief scuffle) and it turned into just Rude vs Hammer.

Van Hammer vs. Rick Rude

MD: In general, obviously it's a disappointment that we don't get Barry and Dustin in this tag but it did really let us see Rick Rude at the height of his power working a fairly complete match against Hammer. The early parts where he let Hammer show him up again and again with strength bits and comeuppance and bluster that made him look like a fool was all done extremely well, really getting the crowd moving in exactly the right ways at exactly the right times.

When things settled down, it was all a little weird. A lot of these wrestlers aged better than you'd think because the sheets were valuing so much of the wrong things back then but Hammer is an exception. Rude had to call the match against a broomstick; that's the impression I got at least, because he had him do heel spots and have them go wrong on him only for Rude to do the same spots and have Hammer overcome. For instance, the seated chinlock, which Rude liked to do and then miss on a jump onto the back. Hammer did it first and then when Rude tried to repeat, Hammer was able to lift him up. Likewise the leap onto an outstretched foot. Hammer did it first and you don't often see a babyface wipe out like that. Despite all that, it worked, because Rude made it work and the crowd wanted it to work and Hammer... I mean, he did what he did by this point, a few years into his WCW run. Rude hit almost a snap, swinging sort of Rude Awakening which I'm not sure I ever saw him do. So this had value, but not nearly the sort of value the tag would have had.

ER: Yeah that tag match we didn't get sure looked worlds better than a 15+ minute Van Hammer singles match, but you can't deny how over Hammer was. Before the show when Cappetta was running down the card, Hammer got louder cheers than anyone but Davey Boy, which is incredible. And Rick Rude is probably the best person on the roster at getting a good match out of Van Hammer. Rude knows how to sell effectively for guys like Van Hammer and he knows how to keep crowds interested to make up for the babyface skills Hammer lacks. Rude sells his back better than most wrestlers and takes higher backdrops than anyone, gets ragdolled incredibly on a bearhug, limbs swinging and flopping everywhere like he was giving something to the real Bez-heads in the crowd, blows snot rockets on a downed Hammer, and swings his head around so sweat flies off in waves when Hammer stands up out of a camel clutch. The finishing stretch of this is really good. Rude ducking and moving to avoid Hammer punches until Hammer fakes him out and catches him with one. Rude gives the crowd exactly what they want with his duck walk atomic drop sells and getting run over with clotheslines. I imagine the swinging Rude Awakening was to deal with Van Hammer's height, but it looked good for it. 

Davey Boy Smith vs. Vinnie Vegas

MD: What Worked:

- Vinnie Vegas' cutoffs, including a big boot that went over Davey's head and a great slam back into the corner.
- Vegas' lightning bolt tights that feel like they should have been worn by Sasaki.

What Didn't Work:

- Nash having no idea exactly how much to give at any one point (he gets it sometime in the next year; maybe he was just put off by the size of the crowd?)
- Nash's mannerisms in general. None of it seemed organic.It was all cartoony and over the top in a way where if he dialed it back fifteen percent the crowd would have eaten it up more.
- The crowd doing the same Bulldog chant for ten minutes straight. I shut my eyes and can still hear it.

ER: I got too excited for Matt talking about Vinnie Vegas's cutoffs before watching this and now I'm disappointed. I wanted to see leg. That said, I thought Vegas was a good Bulldog opponent here and I thought this all kinda rocked. Nash might have been more Skywalker Nitro here than what he would be in a couple years, but I thought they were great opponents and both looked good. All the early shoulderblocks and Vegas no sells were great. Bulldog threw a perfect dropkick to a large man and he ran very hard in to Vegas with shoulderblocks. They worked through some compelling slow exchanges that the crowd stayed incessantly attached to with a repeated Airhorn Bulldog chant. All the small stuff built to big Bulldog moments: The long test of strength blow job spot, the heavy sleeper that ended with Bulldog powering to his feet to run Vegas multiple times into the buckles, a sleeper that builds to Bulldog throwing clotheslines and slams. I thought it was all great. 

I thought Vegas looked great. He had a lot of good ideas and a good mix of offense. His two big boots had a nice visual look and were well timed, he threw Bulldog far with his bodyslam, and jumped into a good hard connection landing on his elbowdrop. Vegas did something that I loved as much as anything I've seen in a Kevin Nash match - and I'm a guy who loves a lot of Kevin Nash matches - when Vegas blocked a vertical suplex with a quick punch to Bulldog's kidney. It was so badass, caught perfectly on film. His running missed elbow into the turnbuckles to set up the running powerslam was a full speed miss meant to hit. I thought it was a performance that has aged really well. This felt more like a match he put together for Bulldog than a match Bulldog worked him through. 

Big Van Vader vs. Cactus Jack

MD: Race certainly earned his pay on this night between moving the guardrail out of the way when Cactus was having a superhuman run on the outside to being there for a lot of pivotal moments of Vader taking back over by eating Cactus' stuff while he recovered, including on the finish. The middle felt a little flat to me with Cactus kicking out of the two Vader Bombs a little too early in the sequence maybe, even though there was going to be an escalation to Vader coming off the turnbuckles with a splash. Maybe I just don't remember exactly where Vader's offense was here in 93.

On the other hand, watching Cactus taking Vader's punches is a pretty magic, horrific experience. Just gnarly shot after gnarly shot. Cactus' comebacks were all really good too, be it just getting his foot up at the exact right time or throwing a few DDTs or slamming him out on the floor. Vader was so big that Cactus could believably get a sleeper on him by jumping on his back. And when he took out Race once, he had a great heads up standing tall look to him, a hero you could get behind. So this was good overall, if maybe a bit too reliant on Race and a bit off in the middle. We're better off for having it certainly, if only to see those punches land one more time.

ER: I thought this was pretty fantastic; the match that obviously leapt off the page when the show dropped. A new match added to the legendary feud and it has moments just as violent as the best matches they had. The punches were there but sadly obscured; instead we got Vader taking a diving bump off the ring staging across and over a guardrail. It's one of the bigger Vader bumps in their feud and it's crazy to see on this show. It looked no different than a dangerous Cactus bump, but this match was about Vader and Harley Race being the ones taking bumps on concrete and ring edges, not Cactus. Vader was taking big DDT bumps with slick vertical pause, missed a big splash off the middle buckle. Honestly Cactus got out of this one easy. Jack was the one announced to the crowd multiple times as one of the main attractions but the reactions were not there. Nobody was talking about him in the pre-show interviews, nobody seemed to know how to react to him as a man. 

Vader knows how to get reaction and works impressively overtime. This is a match that raises Vader's stock. He was an incredibly hard working mammoth man. He worked 125 matches in 1993 and he's out there playing up to the large crowd, falling hard, swinging harder. In between his big bumps are the big hits. Beyond our obscured sequence of definitely shoot punches, there were straight kicks to the ribs and headbutts; a little kid smile before jumping ass to chest with a bombs away. I thought the Race involvement was hilarious and unnecessary but love that Race is a psycho taking suplexes at 50 and looking 65. Vader is good at being specially vicious taking over after his interference. He mule kicks Cactus so hard in the balls that it felt like a finish. But Vader is an artist. A fan's wrestler. While Jack is selling his balls Vader delivers his biggest hardest swing of the match into the side of his head. 

Cactus/Vader was an excellent feud to get another match from. They always had new ideas, and this one had a structure I hadn't seen from them. 

Sting vs. Paul Orndorff

MD: The good in this was really good. Orndorff looked amazing to start. There's an early sequence where he begins with an awesome grinding headlock and moves into faster rope running than you'd think into almost a snap press slam by Sting and the recoiling that followed and it was all great. I wish we had a little more stooging before he took over, but his offense for the transition was all credible, jabs and a perfectly timed knee cutoff.

The problem was that there was both a lack of motion and a lack of heeling once he did
take over. He mostly ground Sting down as they built to a few hope spots and I get why he might contain him and Sting sold well, but it maybe wasn't the match I would have wanted as a main event. I half get the impression that since the fans were just chanting for Sting over and over, Orndorff felt like he didn't need to do a whole lot to get more heat. They did have a good finish though with Orndorff taking a front bump into the corner and Sting splashing him to the back and then rolling up. I'm not sure I'd seen that in too many Sting matches. So good overall but maybe not rising to the moment.

ER: I thought Orndorff looked incredible here. Sting was a great babyface, I loved all his flying and his comeback punches might have been the best on the show. But I couldn't stop watching Orndorff and his weird arm but mostly his incredible skillset. He was fast, dynamic, bumped everything like he meant it and It mattered. He knew how to use that little arm to throw short sharp elbows to the jaw and pointed elbowdrops straight down to the throat that were exquisitely worked. He took a damn vertical suplex on the floor; his back suplex landed Sting firmly on his shoulders in a way that looked distinctly All Japan. I thought about Paul Orndorff in 90s All Japan as the crispest possible Johnny Ace and thinking about how differently things could have been. Sting/Orndorff is a match I don't think I've ever seen. I don't think of them as guys who feuded. This felt like a NEW new match to me, and they probably could have done more and built to something bigger than the Vader/Cactus match that preceded them. But for guys I don't think about as wrestling each other, Orndorff felt like one of the best to take Sting's offense. This man knew how to draw money wrestling wild eyed babyfaces like he was born to do it. 

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Gypsy Joe, Hara, Billy Robinson, Ray Stevens, Chic Cullen, Dynamite Kid, Bruce Hart

Billy Robinson vs Ray Stevens AWA 9/13/81

MD: The Ray Stevens Rule is as follows: No matter what wrestlers say about another wrestler, if the footage doesn't bear it out, we have to see it as suspect.

With every new (or more complete) Ray Stevens match, I hope to find some hint that proves every other Ray Stevens match I ever saw wrong. I never do. Yes, he's old. Yes, he's broken down from a life of bumping and partying and fast driving. Yes, there's so much we don't have. None of that matters. Why? Because we have other old, broken down guys and you can see it so clearly in the ruins of their movements. Why? Because we have old Flair, who idolized him, and while old Flair is heavily flawed, the remnants of wonder are still there. Why? because we have plenty of Stevens' partners, Bockwinkel and Patterson, and they are two of the most amazing 40-something wrestlers ever.

And you know what? He's pretty good here. He's pretty good at garnering heat in the beginning through stalling. He's pretty good at stooging for Robinson throughout. He's got some good back and forth punching. He's ok, decent enough, with his King of the Mountain segment. He takes a great beating, both physically and emotionally. I'd say a lot of the rest of the stuff he did on top wasn't very interesting, but he did manage a nice little headbutt to the gut out of the corner.

Unfortunately, he's in there with a far, far more memorable verison of Billy Robinson. This is Billy Robinson the master, Billy Robinson the trickster, Billy Robinson the super-over babyface in a territory that values the idea of wrestling skill more than any other. It's a Billy Robinson who is out there to make a fool of his opponent and then to fire back after he's kept out of the ring by him. He's great. He's larger than life. I've seen some great Billy Robinson matches, but I've never quite seen him so triumphant. He completely and utterly eclipses Ray Stevens in maybe the best Ray Stevens performance I've ever seen and you know what, unless you find me some 1960s footage, I don't think I ever need to see another Ray Stevens match. I've seen enough. He's not that great. Billy Robinson, on the other hand, absolutely is.

PAS: I enjoyed Stevens in this, he came off as a less sprightly Dick Slater, a tough guy who will oversell and stooge but still dish it out. Of course poor man's Dick Slater isn't an all time great wrestler, and it feels Stevens maybe a Sayama/Brody style lie. Any chance to see Robinson do his thing is awesome and he does a ton of nifty little twists and additions to the match. I liked how he got a little aggressive and ended up hurting his own neck, allowing Stevens to get some shots in. I also really dug how he worked his way into the Boston Crab reversal which led to the pin. This felt a little undercardish for a match between two such legendary wrestlers, but I liked what we got.

Davey Boy Smith/Bruce Hart/Keith Hart/Robbie Stewart vs Duke Myers/Kerry Brown/Dynamite Kid/The Great Gama Stampede 10/9/81

MD: Ed Whalen is the king of jerks. I knew when this was announced as a 20 minute clip, it wouldn't be a full match. It made me wonder just how long the original match actually was. This shows us about five minutes of shine early on, another ten of the finish, and a promo from each team. It's still a meaningful chunk of Stampede and well worth watching. The very worst thing about it was Whalen saying "hoo boy, I wish you could have seen that action!" or whatever when it came back. He was the asshole who decided to (litearlly) cut the tape!

Anyway, this was the Chic "Robbie Stewart" Cullen show, and how cool is the idea of that showing up on the WWE Network in 2019? The bits of shine we got were great, but also suffered from diminishing returns. All action, quick tags, just go go go in a way that wouldn't seem out of place today. There's no denying how workrate heavy Stampede was. I will say this though. The crowd was buzzing at the start of the five minutes and they weren't at the end, except for maybe when a groin shot was teased. It was great, but maybe too focused on one heel without enough teased even exchanges. They were pacing for sixty minutes but as five taken in a bubble, it was unsatisfying (but tasty) candy.

The heat was really strong, though a bit too focused on ref ineptitude/chicanery. Instead of them booing the heels (or even JR Foley), the crowd was shouting about wanting a real ref. I'm not sure what they went back with on this, but if it was something with Stu as a special ref, for instance, that's totally fine. In a bubble it was a bit of a shame because there's better way to get heat.

Cullen's a perfectly serviceable, very solid, brit wrestler in a lot of the 70s-80s footage we have of him. Here he got to shine as a highly sympathetic face-in-peril with some really great hope spots (including an absolutely lightning cross body out of nowhere). I'm guessing they put so much of this on him so that the Harts and Davey could be the ones to clean house at the end. There was a great moment where Keith (I think) rushed around the ring on the outside and just brutalized everyone in a mob scene.

The heels were more than capable in repressing Cullen. The tension kept getting ramped up because and in spite of the ref. The hot tag was well timed and hot. The babyfaces got to run riot on the heels to the crowd's delight. The finish was wonky and had to be hugely disappointing for everyone who just sat through 60 minutes, but I bet they all came back the following week anyway. Very fun footage, both ahead of its time and of its time in both good and bad ways, and it's a downright crime that all of this footage was cut and lost forever.

ER: I really loved all the action we got here, and came away super impressed with all of these Stampede babyfaces. Matt did a tremendous job of laying out the joys and frustrations, the ebb and flow, the reasons Ed Whalen can suck it, so I can just focus on how much I loved literally all the action. I have seen hardly any Chic Cullen/Robbie Stewart and he came away from this match looking like an all time great babyface. He was super fiery and fun on offense, loved his piledriver on Kerry Brown. Brown is a big guy and Stewart really looked like he had to strain and muscle him up to hit it, which only added to it for me. Also loved him hyperextending legs and threatening to drop his head to groin, and when the match quickly became him as the FIP it was as good as any FIP work we've seen. He bumped big (look at that grisly suplex over the top to the floor that Dynamite gave him!) and his small stature and teen idol feature hair made him come off like "The Cute One" in a boy band. But I thought all the babyfaces looked great. Apparently Bruce Hart throws the best elbowdrops this side of Hansen, really fast and full weight, and Bruce worked really violent in general, also hit a mean elbow off the top, and came off like a cool asskicking babyface. He always looked vicious when he would come in, and his viciousness made Stewart come off even more sympathetic. Davey Boy looked exactly the same as Dynamite, same size and look, even moved the same as Dynamite. He came in and hit a great jumping headbutt and later in the match Dynamite did one exactly like it. Davey Boy had these long arms and I thought he did a great job every time he tried to save Stewart before being sent back to the apron. Keith wasn't in as much but he also looked good in limited time, hitting a cool dropkick right under the chin. The heels were at minimum serviceable and it was great seeing Gama kick Stewart between the eyes, they all looked good bullying Stewart around. Dynamite was a clear standout for the heels, bumping huge to the floor off a miscommunicated dropkick, dropping Stewart with suplexes and a great high kneelift, and that killer suplex he hit to the floor, and his always strong strikes to a prone opponent (he hit this awesome falling lariat/fistdrop on Stewart that someone should steal). Preaching to the choir, but obviously it is a major crime that so much of this footage is completely gone. What we have here is gold.

Gypsy Joe vs. Ashura Hara AJPW 2/4/82

ER: I love an early 80s AJ garbage brawl, and this one felt like we had a cool layer of "is this FOR REAL!?" Gypsy Joe is almost 50 here and is a total savage, with William Murderface hair and a cinderblock forehead. He has a bunch of great strikes that all seem to land hard, probably because his strikes all land hard. Hara is no pushover, obviously, the dude played professional rugby through his athletic prime (weird he wasn't a Schneider guy earlier) so he's going to hit hard and absorb a beating. Hara surely threw some meaty chops, but Gypsy Joe looked dangerous. Hara would hit him with a shot and Joe would just stare at him and hit him back a couple times, harder. Joe had sharp uppercuts and these whipping shots to the the head and back of neck, and clonked Hara a bunch with headbutts from his big flat forehead. Hara kept getting pissed off and they played it like Joe was being unprofessional, so Hara kept going to the floor for chairs and he absolutely blasted Joe with a couple shots, getting that great Japan seat popping visual as it flies off Joe's head. But you know Joe gets that chair and hits Hara in the face with it, right with the fucking edge, then chokes him over the bottom rope and keeps bouncing Hara's head off it. You knew this wasn't likely to get an actual finish, but who cares as this had all the charm you wanted and even more of the violence than you could have expected.

MD: We've been doing this since May or so. I will admit I get some real enjoyment when I find something I know Phil or Eric will love. This one was totally down Phil's alley and we had to rush it to the front of the pile. It's an iconic Gypsy Joe performance. He's been in all sorts of spatterings of matches over the years, but this feels absolutely iconic. It's violence that doesn't stop and that goes on for a few more minutes than you'd expect. It takes one of my least favorite tropes, the idea that someone would just stand there and brace himself and take a chairshot, and somehow makes it completely and utterly believable. It's not about some sort of manliness or some sort of obtuse turn-taking when Joe braces himself in the corner and awaits the chair to come. It feels more like inevitability, like he somehow how knows this is his fate and his lot and all he can do is weather the storm. The affront offends him and he answers in kind, but he has seen the hopelessness of life and knows that all any one person can ever do is to meet it head on. Or it's just a fifty year old taking unnecessary chair shots. What do I know? It's still a really cool find.

PAS: This two are frequent dance partners (I remember an awesome IWE match between the two from 79, which I have to find and review now, and they matched up a bunch in AJ during this time), and there is no mystery to why it is a great match up. Both guys are willing to dish out and receive grim and grizzly amounts of violence, Joe walks forward and eats these sicko chair shots to his head and shoulders, and Hara absorbs some brain melting headbutts. Joe may have the most unprofessional and violent looking headbuts this side of Kurisu and he wallops Hara with them, along with a nice tasting menu of his famous lung flattening chops. Of course we get a double count out, but it would seem silly for this to end in a pinfall, of course it ends with both guys wandering around in the stands bleeding and hurling things at each other.

Read more!

Regal's Mentality Catches Up With His Biology

Lord Steven Regal/Dick Slater vs. Davey Boy Smith/Sting WCW 11/28/93 - GREAT

PAS: We get a nifty chance to look at Regal work a house show tag match along side fellow classic heel stooge Dick Slater.  This is mostly the heel bumping and clowning for the faces and these are a pair of great clowns. Regal and Davey Boy had a great PPV match full of WOS spots, and they break out a bunch of those tricks here. This stuff has been spammed a lot by indy dudes lately, but it is pretty crazy to watch them do wristlock cartwheel counters in 93 WCW. Sting and Regal have a really fun knucklock sequence, with Sting doing a super impressive bridge with Regals weight on top of him. The finish came a bit abruptly after a long heel kneework section on Davey Boy, but that was my only quibble. Fun stuff and a great out of nowhere upload.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE REGAL

Read more!