WWF 305 Live: Colossal Connection vs. Demolition

Demolition (Ax/Smash) vs. Andre the Giant/Haku WWF WrestleMania VI 4/1/90 - GREAT

ER: This was it right here, a 10 minute clash of the titans, four meaty hosses swinging at each other in front of an unreal 68,000 screaming Skydome fans. Andre's excellent acting was always even more incredible in front of a genuine all time audience, and even though this is one of the least active in-ring Andre matches (even his end of days All Japan matches saw him step in the ring more than this), I couldn't take my eyes off him any time he was in frame. He literally did not tag into this match one time, relying on Haku dragging Ax or Smash over to their corner where he could headbutt them, punch them, throw an overhand choke, anything he could do to put on a show while keeping his feet in almost the exact same spot. Haku takes on both of Demolition and it is the best, with Haku punching them in the throat and Demolition throwing hard lariats and axe handles. There are a bunch of great camera angles of Andre looking so large against the crowd, and his facial reactions from the apron are the greatest in wrestling history. Watch him rooting on Haku and counting along with the referee when he thinks the match is over. 

My favorite moment of the match was Andre catching Ax in the corner and wrapping a tag rope around his neck. Watch Andre's body language as he's tightening his arm on the choke, watch his jaw, watch his eyes watching Ax. Andre's wrestling acting is second to none, and it's why he's able to be this important to a match without leaving the apron. The Demolition comeback gets a huge reaction from the huge crowd, making Demolition tandem clotheslines seem like the most exciting action in the world. Andre eats a Haku superkick when Smash wriggles out of his grasp, and that sends Andre flying back into the ropes and leaves Demolition free to take out Haku. Andre's struggle to free himself is always so convincing, as it's not only a spot that looks spectacular but Andre is able to convey the vulnerability of a large trapped animal. Heenan slaps Andre after the match and gets wailed on, and Andre throwing Heenan and headbutting Haku out of the Ring Rope Entrance Cart is a favorite WrestleMania memory of mine. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE THE GIANT

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

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Andre is Hit on The Head With A Frying Pan, Lives in A Garbage Can

Rumble Match WWF Royal Rumble 1/15/89 - GREAT

ER: Andre is in the Rumble for 15 minutes, but it's easily one of the best performances in the whole match. It's not news that Andre is an incredible presence in any battle royal he's in. There's a reason Andre in a battle royal was such a durable pro wrestling draw, but this is an Andre battle royal performance completely different than any other. This is 15 minutes of Andre as an aged mastodon, with Demolition, Mr. Perfect, Ronnie Garvin, Greg Valentine, and Jake Roberts as the cavemen trying to bring him down without getting stepped on or gored. Demolition started the Rumble, and Andre was the 3rd entrant, and the second Andre stepped into the ring Demolition were beating the hell out of him. It's so cool seeing Andre immediately reeling, and his wounded mastodon performance was incredible. He's taking constant kicks and punches, lashing out almost blindly, and when he connects it always does serious damage. Every new guy that enters the Rumble goes right after Andre, with Perfect coming in and immediately punching Andre in the face only to nearly get headbutted over the top. Garvin comes in and he, Ax, and Perfect tie Andre up in the ropes, leading to a great spot as the agonized giant kicks all three of them off. Perfect is great bumping around for Andre, with he and Garvin each trying to attack him while Andre is sitting on Ax in the corner. There are all these tiny moments of Andre's mounting anger getting interrupted, the giant reacting with gritted teeth, one second away from nuking someone before getting blindsided by someone else. Andre never knows who to focus on, so he just keeps absorbing shots until he gets his hands around someone's throat. 

Once Jake comes in, Andre puts his blinders on to everyone else, and just goes off on Roberts. Andre lets Roberts punch him a few times and gets a big grin on his face before clobbering him, then uses his singlet strap to strangle him. Valentine is hilarious the whole time Andre is smashing Jake, as he keeps running across the ring with huge swinging clubbing shots, and Andre completely ignores them until finally turning around and headbutting Valentine. Andre tosses Jake (and several others throughout his 15 minutes), and I'm sad to see his run end so quickly. Roberts runs back to the ring with Damien, and Andre nopes the hell out of there, eliminating himself. Andre running the hell out of the ring was a great spot, and a fine way to defeat Godzilla when conventional weapons weren't working. But I wish it happened way later in the match, would have been much more satisfying to have Jake come out 10 entrants later, give Andre a 30 minute run. Still, for 15 minutes, it was impossible for me to watch anyone but Andre, a man who knew how to fill battle royal time better than maybe anyone. 

Andre the Giant/Mighty Inoue vs. Cactus Jack/Texas Terminator Hoss AJPW 4/5/91 - FUN

ER: I love that we have these kind of oddball match-ups preserved, how we get a 25 year old Cactus Jack going up against a top 5 all time legend, and putting in one of his greatest early career performances. We do not get an Andre vs. Hoss match up, which is honestly probably for the best. Hoss is great at hitting big slams on Inoue, and while it would have been fun seeing him bump for the still much larger Andre, it probably protected both by having them not cross paths. Besides, Cactus vs. Andre was so damn fun that I didn't miss Andre vs. Hoss. Inoue takes a pounding but the crowd is hot for an Andre tag, and Andre - still  looking like a total mountain mover - punches Cactus right in the head and throws chops like Col. Steve Austin swinging a tree branch into a heavy. Andre looked like a gigantic Punch Out boss dwarfing Little Mac, and Cactus made Andre look like the legend he still was. Cactus took two big backdrops, one on the floor and one in the ring, Inoue hit two terrific rolling sentons on him (there is presently nobody who does a Mighty Inoue style standing rolling senton, and that's idiotic because it would be a solid add to anybody's moveset). Cactus runs valiantly into the middle turnbuckle in a Grade A bump, and then makes Andre's big boot in the corner look like a pipe to the face. Andre looking at Hoss on the apron with "Go ahead, break up this pin, motherfucker" eyes while he just falls on Cactus for the pin is some classic final years Andre presence.

PAS: Fun stuff, turns out Cactus and Andre are pretty perfect opponents. Late era Andre is going to stand there, be huge and have people bounce off of him, and Cactus is willing and able to bounce off of people. We get a crazy Cactus shoulder bump into a post and a backdrop on the concrete, and he absolutely gets flattened by an Andre elbow. That's really all you need to make something like this work. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE THE GIANT

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Richard Charland: Most Nondescript Wrestler Ever!?

I saw a post on Twitter a couple of months ago from Rob Naylor, calling Richard Charland "the most nondescript wrestler", and I was intrigued because I had never heard of Richard Charland. Or, it's possible that I had heard of him, and had seen him multiple times, because perhaps he was so nondescript that I had forgotten about him multiple times over. Well, no more. I'm going to increase the digital footprint of one Richard Charland, who has also gone by the name Garth Vader, which is such an incontestably great and stupid gimmick name that it may disprove Naylor's claim before any footage is even watched. Imagine Big Van Vader dressed up like Garth from Wayne's World! Before now, I never have, and never would have. But because of Richard Charland I can't stop thinking of Vader in a huge Aerosmith shirt, flannel, and big black glasses. Richard Charland has already brought untold joy into my life before ever seeing one second of his wrestling footage, so I am now afraid I am so biased and in the "I will die for Garth Vader" camp that I won't fairly and accurately judge these cherry picked Charland matches. But I will try. 

Richard Charland/King Tonga vs. Jacques & Raymond Rougeau Montreal 6/13/85

ER: This was more angle than match, as Tonga is eventually jumped by Butch Reed and Charland aids Reed in the attack! But he looks fine up until the attack. His tandem dropkick with Tonga looks good, he takes a great backdrop bump, I loved him committing to his missed standing splash that allows Jacques to hot tag Raymond, and I loved him desperately leaping for Jacques a split second too late to stop the tag. There were only a couple minutes to judge, but he seemed like an interesting wrestler in those couple minutes. I'm giving Charland the point in this one.

Richard Charland/Eric Embry vs. The Fantastics AJPW 8/18/90

ER: I really love All Japan matches from the 80s and 90s featuring gaijin who went on only one or two All Japan tours. You get a fun mix of WWF job guys, or guys who just knew guys, and it adds another dimension to their work. And Charland is more interesting than many of them for the fact that he was not on the winning side of ANY of his All Japan matches. It is fairly common practice to give a gaijin a win on their first night of the tour, even if they're only going to be the guy taking a fall in six mans the rest of the tour. Richard Charland took the pin in every All Japan match he worked, and got pinned in a singles match by Haruka Eigen to end the tour. Eigen was not a guy who was winning a ton of singles matches in 1990. He traded wins with Mark Scarpa and Goro Tsurumi, and beat Richard Charland. He lost 3 times to Rusher Kimura. Richard Charland may have had the losingest All Japan tour of the 90s. And this feels important. Richard Charland was Christian Laettner at every Dream Team practice. Charland's squad was going to lose just by virtue of having Richard Charland on it. Now, it should be noted that this is also Eric Embry's only All Japan tour, and while he was also on the losing side of almost all of his matches, he did pull a draw with Isamu Teranishi, and I assume he would have had the opportunity for other tours if it weren't for his accident.

This is joined way in progress, and we only get the final 4 minute stretch, but it is a great final 4 minute stretch. The Fantastics came off like a tiny Kroffat/Furnas, with both impressing the hell out of me with their stiffness and aggression. It's a tight 4 minutes, starting with a cool rope running section where Charland ducks out of the way of a flying Fulton, and Fulton immediately returns the favor ducking away from Charland, leaving him uncomfortably on the top rope. Fulton and Rogers came off almost mean here, and were seriously working like a tiny muscled up Can Ams, which is great! Rogers hits a heavy Samoan drop and a really great powerslam that made him look like a mini Dr. Death. Embry is awesome here, giving us a glimpse of exactly what it would have looked like had Dutch Mantel did some early 90s AJ tours, bringing that brawling element and just planting Fulton with a sick piledriver. Fulton was mad in this one though. I'm not always a Fantastics guy, but now I want to see all of the Fantastics in AJ. Fulton is throwing great punches and even flies off the apron with a knee. The Fans' short legs work to their advantage, as they get no hang time so every time they leave their feet for a move it feels like it's landing faster and heavier, like Fulton cannonballing Rogers with on arc, just flipping him straight down. Fulton's kneedrop/Roger's splash is a cool combo hit well. The Fantastics kind of owned this 4 minute stretch, and Embry outclassed Charland, but Charland looked like a guy who belonged and could have managed just fine in All Japan. I wish we had the full match. 

Richard Charland/Eric Embry vs. Dan Kroffat/Doug Furnas AJPW 8/21/90

ER: This was JIP just like the Fantastics match, but had some great moments, including an absolute holy shit spot. The Fantastics match was hotly sequenced and made the Fans look like mini Steiners; this doesn't seem as tight, and the layout was a little more "guys doing things until the end happens" without the same build. That's not an uncommon early 90s All Japan tag structure. And I liked watching these guys do stuff, so I liked this match. Furnas hit two really big "couldn't stop them if you tried" suplexes including an Albrightesque belly to belly, and the Can Ams don't seem to be treating these two as very credible threats, even though Embry has a singlet that perfectly matches the red/blue AJ ring, and Embry brings the south to Japan by lowering BOTH STRAPS. But this JIP tag was all about one spot, and my god what a spot it was. I have no idea why Kroffat even agreed to take it. Charland plants Kroffat on the top rope and tags in Embry, and Embry climbs up to the middle buckle, his back to the ring. He's fiddling around with positioning, Charland is holding him steady...and Embry jumps backwards into the ring with a classic piledriver, off the middle rope. We've seen more flipping piledrivers than we ever needed to, but I honestly don't know if I've seen a classic piledriver delivered this way. It looked insane. Picture how great Lawler's standing piledriver looks, the way he kicks his legs forward to land in a perfect seated position...and now picture him doing the same thing off the middle rope. But it does not win the match. Obviously. It was performed by a man teaming with Richard Charland. But at least Furnas broke up the pin instead of Kroffat kicking out of THAT piledriver. Charland eventually takes the L by eating a big Doug Furnas powerslam off the middle rope, but I would have taken that powerslam 10 times out of 10 over that piledriver. 

Richard Charland vs. Demolition Ax NEWF 9/27/91

ER: Now this will be a true test of Charland. Teaming with a cool wrestler against other cool wrestlers in the coolest fed of the 90s is going to produce some fun matches. But this is Charland working a newly mostly retired star on a Vermont indy show. And there are a few things that you could say certainly prove the thesis we set out to determine, and one is that the commentator for this match doesn't know who Richard Charland is, and he even says "I don't know who this guy is". That's bad. The screen graphic then states it is Demolition Ax vs. Richard "The Magnificent" Sharlan. The commentator misses the (misspelled) name and from that point on refers to him as "Richard the Magnificent One". And look, I've enjoyed my little dip into Richard Charland, but he's not a guy who is magnificent, at least not how the term is commonly used in wrestling to describe pretty and/or egotistical heels. But he is now Richard the Magnificent One. And to add to Richard Charland's problems, he's literally chased into the ring by a giant lumberjack holding a giant axe. It's Paul Bunyan, who was a legitimate giant that worked one New Japan tour (teaming mostly with Ax) as "Canadian Giant". 

But I dug Charland here. He was a stalling stooge, a guy who got clubbed in the neck every time he got close to Ax, so he would bail to the floor, beg off, toss a microphone, and then get in close and get clubbed all over again. When he took over he did it by cheating, a lot of choking Ax with a ring mic cord, and Ax was always a guy who put over a choking really well because everything about him read like a guy who wasn't getting proper blood flow to his heart. Charland even blasts him with a great kick from the apron, and the pan back reveals this to be a very well attended Vermont indy show. When Ax fires back Charland gets thrown nicely several times into a ringside table, and eats a great clothesline. I love how quickly Charland went down, and I love how low swinging and blunt Ax's clothesline was. Ax even goes to the middle rope for a crossbody. After losing, Charland refuses to leave the ring, claiming it was only a two count. He starts appealing to individual fans and it's hilarious. He points out people, holds up two fingers, points to another guy, nods and points at him like "yeah this guy is with me!", gets down on the mat and does a slow 2 count followed by a slow "safe" sign like it was a play at the plate, and call me crazy but all this reads even better because of his full motorcycle cop mustache.


ER: So what did any of this prove? Is Richard Charland the Most Nondescript Wrestler EVER? He's got a mustache that makes him look like Liam O'Brien opted to get into wrestling instead of forming a bowling team with Jesus Quintana, and he was a non-zero part of these four very fun and different matches. He worked a fun 10 minute match around punches kicks and chokes with an aging star, and it ruled.

So...if Richard Charland ISN'T the most nondescript wrestler ever...who is?


It's Ted Dibiase Jr.


Obviously.

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