Found Footage Friday: PARK IN PANAMA~! LAWLER~! CHRSTOPHER~! KING~! STARR~! PORKY~! GRUNDY~!

Principe Island vs. Sandokan Panama 1988/89

MD: Almost certainly, Principe Island is LA Park. He's got be around 23 here. Overall, this is a pretty impressive apuestas match to have in his "pre-history." He ambushed Sandokan to start and the primera was bloody and visceral. We lose about twenty seconds to static and when we come back, he's got Sandokan down and is biting the wound. That sums it up pretty well. He ends it with an impressive flurry of bounding back into the ring, over the ropes, and then hitting a flipping dive off the apron, before launching a back flipping kick in the ring for the pin. Occasionally some of his kicks look off and he's a half step behind on feeding for bits of the comeback, but overall he does very well here. That comeback is good despite that, by the way. Sandokan ducks punches and hits big ones of his own to the crowd's delight and then he's able to turn a jumping Principe knee into a back body drop. Pretty rousing stuff. 

Then they really go all out for the tercera, with both guys missing moves off the top rope (Principe missing a senton atomico) and hitting dives (Principe with a bit tope and Sandokan flying off the top to the floor). It's an exciting stretch at the end with a fight over who would hit a move off the top (Sandokan eventually gets a superplex) and a ref bump leading to Principe scoring a phantom submission. When he went to celebrate, Sandokan got behind him, holding him up in an electric chair position while on the second rope and dropping back for the win. You can never get a sense of how full these arenas are because so many people are out of their seats mobbing the ring side area. Post match, Principe seemed to make it through the various stages of grief as he walks around trying to not have his mask taken off by Sandokan. I'm not sure he ever quite gets to acceptance though, as he's still jawing on the mic with his mask off at the end. Not perfect, but a very good overall performance for young Park.

PAS: What a discovery! This is a bloody wild lucha apuestas with one of the all time greatest wild bloody lucha apuestas workers as a pup. The crowd was seemingly on the verge of a riot the whole time, and I thought we might get Park brawling with the fans when he spilled into them. Loved the early violent beatdown on Sandokan: Park busts a bottle over his head to start and grinds the pieces of glass into his head, cutting him badly. He also throws a classic Park chairshot where he let it go as he swung it so it careened awkwardly into Sadokan's head. Sadokan is a real discovery too. We have enough footage now to really get a sense of him as a top level local charismatic babyface brawler, kind of a Panamanian Colon, with some big dives and hard stiff punches mixed in. Matt mentioned a bit of awkwardness but I like my apuestas to be a bit raggedy. I thought this was completely awesome, one of the greatest unearthed pieces of footage we have found since this project started. 

ER: This was tremendous. An apuestas match that really felt like an apuestas, that universal wrestling language we've seen is that way because it works regardless of language or era. Not too long ago we knew collectively very little about the Panamanian lucha scene, and now we have this cool snapshot of local babyface legend Sandokan, who really does seem like Panama's Carlos Colon. At this point I'm going to need to see the Costa Rican Carlos Colon, and the El Salvadoran Carlos Colon, I'm sure there's someone similar in Honduras, and I'm going to need to see the LA Park matches with all of them. Panama is nowhere near Mexico City, so I have no clue how often Park was going down that way, who facilitated his trips there, nothing. I know how often I've driven from the Bay Area to Omaha, NE - the same distance from Mexico City to Panama - and that's zero times baby. Park is just showing up 1500 miles away making locals bleed and starting near riots. He bloodies up Sandokan and runs him mouth first down the apron into a ringpost, then gives him a real LA Park chairshot with an open metal folding chair. It's a real beating, with hard right hands and plenty of flash (I can't imagine cannonballs off the apron were anywhere near the norm in late 80s Panama) while also bashing Sandokan into the ring steps. 

He bumps huge for Sandokan's comebacks and knows exactly when to act cutthroat and when to get his ass beat. Sandokan has great babyface punches and Park's bumping takes over the rest. Park bumps like Jerry Estrada (or, like LA Park), taking essentially four straight backdrops, the 4th sending him flying head first flipping through the ropes to the concrete, goes up for a big spinning backbreaker, takes a nasty full extension stretched out bump into the ringpost, always managing to out-bump Sandokan x2. Sandokan misses a big top rope splash? Just look how high Principe is going to bounce on his missed flipping senton. The ramped up flying is cool, with Park's tope suicida and Sandokan's plancha leading to believable moments of each man barely beating the count, and there's a cool superplex where Park tried to drag Sandokan up to the top turnbuckle by his ears before getting thrown off. If you have to have some drama at the finish, I at least like how this was done. The referee gets knocked to the floor in a big bump, and Park gets the ref-less win after a back suplex. As he's celebrating on the turnbuckles, he eats a flat out crazy electric chair drop off the middle buckle, and the post-match unmasking and mic work sounds heated as hell. I'm going to need any and all unseen La Parka footage, and at this point I want to see more big Sandokan title matches. Model citizen, zero discipline. 

Brazo de Plata vs. Aaron Grundy (Mike Shaw) CMLL 12/15/92

MD: This is hair vs hair. It's 6 minutes, two per fall. It's a Porky hair match so we pretty much have to cover it at some point and it's ok, you know? I'm sure people knew what they were getting here: big guys crashing into each other over a short period of time. Grundy had the advantage to start and did beat Porky around the ring. He took a shot to the post on the outside but no color. He ate a clothesline (meaty enough) in the ring and a pretty woeful splash from Grundy. Porky's big comeback in the segunda (after a missed corner charge) was an unlikely slam and an iffy splash of his own. The tercera saw Grundy take back over with a pokey punch after a handshake lure-in, but he had the good manners to miss a splash off the second turnbuckle and this time Porky got some air on his splash. This was clipped so we just had the action and a few seconds of the haircut but you can't really say that these guys didn't do what they set out to do. And hey, Shaw had nice headbutts, an ok clothesline, some decent punches in there, even if he was no Tugboat on his big splash.

ER: It would be easy to view this match as a disappointment, because I don't think it's possible to have a wholly fulfilling three falls hair vs. hair match that is less than 6 minutes of footage. Super Porky is one of my favorite big match workers and I was dying to see what he could do with Mike Shaw a mere four months before Friar Ferguson's debut/final match. This match just might be the final time that Mike Shaw ever looked like a normal human being. He's a big fat guy of course but his red singlet actually fits him, and he has a nice lush beard that covers up his goiter-like swollen bullfrog neck area. Losing his hair to Super Porky clearly made him go insane, and the man never had a normal head of hair, beard, or eyebrows past Christmas '92. So outside of the weirdness of seeing the last normal glimpse of Mike Shaw, you got a tremendous small scale Porky selling performance. 

I always talk about how Jerry Lawler is not only the greatest puncher in history, but he's the greatest punch salesman in history. He knows how to sell his own punches, and how to sell his opponent's punches better than anyone. Well, of all the praise I've heaped on Porky over the years, I don't think I've ever talked about how Porky is one of the great punch salesman in wrestling history. This match gets sincerely great when Grundy starts throwing punches directly at Porky's poor overworked heart. Grundy clearly starts targeting the ever sensitive heart of Brazo de Plata, and I love how Porky sold each one of the shots. He was in their recoiling from the blows, treating smaller shots like he was dealing with some rough heartburn (I now need to see a handheld where Porky chomps through a handful of Tums before spitting out a chalky mist after getting punched again), and as the punches get harder (and Grundy threw some awesome punches at our big boy's heart) Porky starts recoiling with his whole body, rubbing at his chest and desperately trying to create space before his ticker stops for good. Everything else in the match was rushed or a bit underwhelming - no matter how endlessly entertaining it is to see Mike Shaw throw a standing splash that is literally him just falling forward without leaving the ground an inch, his ugly missed splash off the middle at least had to have hurt his knees - but Porky getting his heart attacked was amazing. You can't ask much more from a 5 minute pro wrestling match than "an obese man tried to force his fat opponent into cardiac arrest". 

Jerry Lawler/Brian Christopher vs. Derrick King/Dustin Starr LAW 8/29/04

MD: This was the main event of the Lethal Action Wrestling 2nd Anniversary show and it was basically the Lawler Family Comedy hour. Before the match got going, Christopher did both his whole dance routine and threw his beads and Lawler seemed like a proud father for how into the crowd was, even if he refused to take the imaginary shovel. It's a little sad to think this was after Christopher's national run was basically over. Lawler's comedy was pretty funny here. They ended up riding both of the heels like bulls; Lawler did a fun dropdown bit off rope running; and the best part was King pulling the strap down fighting out of the corner and Lawler patiently putting it back on before clocking him. 

In general, whenever King and Lawler were in there together it was at least great, but it was probably just fun the rest of the time. The finish was someone sneaking King a chain and him actually getting to pin Jerry so that's probably why Team Lawler took so much of this. The heels started some real control on Christopher and that was fine (even if Starr was probably a half step behind what he might have done a couple of years later) but it was a bit too little, too late to put any drama into this. Lawler rushed in after the hot tag and really crushed everyone though, immediately dropping the strap and hitting some of his better stunners. It's always nice to see Lawler and Christopher as an over babyface team together, but the way this was structured meant that this had a relatively low ceiling, even if it did have a fairly high floor.

ER: This is a match that takes its time getting to where it's going. It also keeps the whole crowd of children and adults wildly entertained with a match that at times felt like something put on for an elementary school. This was a full Brian Christopher Go Brian Go babyface match, started with a 10 minute comedy stretch before building to some punch throwing, and was a 20 minute match with Lawler/Christopher taking at least 90% of it. I didn't care for some of it, Brian Christopher is in for most of the match while Lawler just laughs at G-Rated Brian antics. But then there are some incredibly inspired sections where Lawler and Derrick King work the exact type of match I want to see. Everything Lawler and King do against each other is the exact reason you'd be watching this 25 minute match. You knew the punch exchanges would be good, but you wouldn't have been able to predict the tights game on display. 

Lawler is in flamingo hot pink trunks and singlet, with black pink and turquoise tights paint splatter tights. It's an incredible combo, and one you'd have never guessed he was sporting back in 2004. This is a 1991-1994 era tights and singlet combo. I mean that singlet is PINK. I don't associate bubblegum and splatter paint with the 2nd George W. Bush term. Lawler must have shared his notes with King, because King is wearing his own set of hot pink trunks and singlet with some colorful big stars on his tights. It's nothing at all like anything that was happening in 2004. But the punches in the corner are universal. Derrick King has the best punches in the match. Lawler finally throws some good ones but King's are supreme. King throws a fistdrop and excellent right hooks, and the match peaks when King takes his strap down only for Lawler to slide it back up like Bugs Bunny and deck him. It's perfect, and it almost makes you forget about Lawler dishing out middle fingers and the worst looking Stone Cold Stunners you've seen. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LA PARK

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE JERRY LAWLER

Read more!

New Footage Friday: PG13! FINLAY! KILLER KARL KOX! DERRICK KING!

Killer Karl Kox Turns Face! AWCW 1973     Pt. 2     Pt. 3     Pt. 4     Pt. 5

MD: We don't do whole TV shows often but this feels worth covering. It's possible this has been out there but quick googling and youtube searches didn't bring it up and it popped up on a TV youtube channel as opposed to a wrestling one, which is always a good sign. This is just a great episode of territories TV, one that felt close to ten years before its time. 73 is not that deep into the decade and things are already defined by the war between Big Bad John's crew and the People's Army.

Lord Layton's perfect as the host, always feigning a struggle with his own moral quandary of journalistic neutrality vs rooting for the good people against the very bad, which just somehow makes the good feel better and the bad worse. The fans are interesting here, never popping at individual lines in the interviews, but waiting until the end. As Karl Kox (who had just turned face) was going on about how he did it for his dead mother who didn't want to see him reviled anymore, I wasn't sure if he really had the fans because of it. In the end though, they were on board. It's such a novel, unique to this area, thing that Big Bad John's biggest gripe was that he had paid $1500 to fly Kox out to be part of his crew and now that money was wasted. That wouldn't have worked almost anywhere else in the world.

This episode had four matches, all of which at least a little competitive. The first (part 2 video) was Bulldog Brower/Abby vs.  Larry O'Dea/Billy White Wolf, with Brower taking a good chunk of the match and the promo after. It left me wanting to see more of him. He had a great presence, a bulky force of gravity in the center of the ring, with big wind-ups to his shots and smart use of his size. It was a weird setting to see Adnan, but he was mainly there to bounce of Brower. Post match promo had Brower enthusiastically talking over John so they couldn't entirely stay focused but it worked for what it was.

Part 3 has the second match, which is Tiger Jeet Singh vs. Kox. The match was short but effective in establishing Kox as a tough and mean looming presence, now a babyface but not one that changed up his style at all. Singh moved and bumped around a bit more than you'd see a decade later, but he was still mostly what you'd expect. The forearm out of nowhere that ended it was great though. Post-match, Kox talked about how the other faces didn't trust him yet, which brought them out. This was the best part of the whole show as King Curtis, untrusting but pragmatic, said that they needed the greatest weapon in all of wrestling, the brainbuster (said like only he could) on their side.

Part 4 introduced Angelo Mosca to the territory, with Layton (who claims to have personally recruited him) playing up his sports and academic credentials like JR might fifteen years later. George Barnes is the sacrificial lamb and he stooges and bumps around well for him, but obviously doesn't have the chance to shine like in the recent Memphis footage we saw. Mosca is fine, but honestly, what's most notable is how out of breath he is in the post-match promo, even noting it and his nervousness, which is a good cover. Definitely not the sort of crazy Mosca promos we'd get in 84.

Then it ends with Waldo von Erich vs. Mario Milano, and if you can get past how deep Waldo still was into the nazi stormtrooper gimmick, even in 73 (it felt more severe than the Barons' goose stepping), this was actually really good. I don't think I've seen a ton of Waldo but he really worked the glove gimmick well, just absolutely unrelenting with a lot of different but all credible bits of offense surrounding it. Milano was fiery in his comebacks and revenge spots, quick to throw out headbutts. Just a good TV main event to put some heat back on the heels after the Kox turn and his win over Tiger.

The fact that we have this whole episode, and with TV Roll information at start makes me wonder just how much is out there. I know there are bits and pieces floating around but I really did enjoy this.

ER: I'll primarily focus on the Kox stuff, but this was a fun episode of TV, presided over by the presumably 7 foot tall Lord Layton, we got to see Abdullah the Butcher without big flapping tiddies but just as stabby as ever, Bulldog Brower even bigger than Abby and with work that looked more than worth seeking out, a fun main event, and a classy 70s TV presentation. But I came here to see the Killer and I loved what we got. His opening promo was open faced and tender, talking about how he recently lost his dear mother, and how his hated ways had turned his family into targets of harassment, and how he wanted to change his ways to honor his mother. I loved his understand of the skepticism, and his reasoning that if he betrayed the fans and his word, he was also betraying his mother, and that couldn't be. It left me not knowing whether he was genuine or not - after all, we've seen old heels go back on their word after much greater promises - so Layton's skepticism is warranted. Kox's match with Tiger Jeet Singh was fascinating to me, as it seems like Kox might be the perfect kind of opponent for Singh. Kox is an expressive seller who can make a claw hold mean something, but I also like Singh digging his nails into Kox's neck and face, loved the way Kox would fight back and struggle up to his feet, and Kox throwing fists is always going to land with me. The finish even feels like a rarity, because how often have you seen a Tiger Jeet Singh match with him actually getting pinned? Kox pins him after a quick, sharpe forearm shot, the kind of shot that looks like it should end a match. Kox throughout this episode looks like Robert Duvall in Killer Elite, a tight mustache with hair that slowly unfurls around the edges, leaving him with fantastic wings that could even bely his plain faced honesty. I loved this whole presentation.

PAS: This really made me wish we had more Australian stuff from this period (do they have a TV archive we can raid?), the idea of these two warring armies full of super charismatic dudes is really appealing. Kox is just incredible in the role of the humbled man trying to atone for his many sins and this really made me want to see him face off with Brower and Abby and everyone. Really felt like a Florida style promotion 10 years before Florida was doing this sort of thing.

TKG: Everything I’ve ever seen from the People’s Army v Big Bad John has been a blast but I’ve only seen “best of never” full shows before. And these full shows are well paced. The whole Kox turns babyface because of his mother’s cancer is amazing. I dug the opening tag a bunch. Bulldog Brower is a guy I associate with dull WWF undercards and I left this thinking that I need to rewatch all of those. All his offense is nasty looking and he’s really fun as immovable object slowly getting knocked down when eating offense. Larry O'day is a guy I will forever remember being killed by the Miracle Violence Connection and it will take something spectacular to make me see him as anything else. The Mosca v Barnes match I thought was really dull but everything else was worth watching and neat watching a whole show format.

Fit Finlay vs. Rico de Cuba CWA 8/7/97

MD: This was a 10+ minute glorified squash where late 90s Finlay (having shrugged off a lot of the chickenshit stooging from his 80s career) just steamrolled some poor, long-haired doofus. He let Rico toss him a couple of times early on and gave him a thing or two as the match went on (especially due to slipping on a banana peel), but this was mostly Fit jamming elbows and forearms into different parts of Rico's skull, turning him inside out with an over-rotated powerbomb, unloading on him utilizing the apron like 00s Finlay, stretching him for fun, and getting so fed up with the guy's last comeback that he ate a red card DQ for half choking him to death in the ropes. More of a novelty for its length than anything else, since you come in expecting the cruelty. It's 2x your 98 WCW Saturday Night Finlay squash and it's good that we get to highlight that sort of thing to the world.

PAS: Rico De Cuba definitely looks like a guy who should have been walking across the beach with Joe Gomez, Jim Powers and the Renegade, and Finlay treats him like that guy. We get all of the classic Finlay brutality, nerve holds which look like he is ripping out chunks of his traps, elbows directly into the trachea, knees across the nose. Cuba gets a couple of comebacks, which didn't look great but Finlay bumped huge for, including flying over the top rope twice. I liked Finlay psychotically trying to rip his head off for the DQ, and this was exactly the kind of thing which made us fall in love with him.

ER: This was so great, this was like if one of those Finlay vs. Johnny Swinger matches from Saturday Night were given 12 minutes instead of 3 minutes. The beating was just as cruel, it just went on 4x as long. Rico de Cuba was given a couple of very short flourishes, and Finlay sold like Cuba was a total superstar in those brief moments. My favorite stretch of the match was when Finlay took two super fast bumps over the top to the floor, working a great Berzerker routine of taking a fast (flipping) bump over the top and landing on his feet, rushing back in and getting tossed just as fast out the other side. Almost all the rest of this is Finlay absolutely mugging Cuba. It is a true greatest hits of every piece of Finlay offense that I love: numbing bodyslams, hard strikes, cruel elbowdrops, snug cravats and chinlocks, precision kneedrops, stomping right on Cuba's chest, and drawing the match ending DQ by tying Cuba's head into the ropes and yanking on his legs. Finlay on WCW Saturday Night is some of the greatest wrestling displays in history, and this is him sharing that formula on some non-Karagias long haired shiny trunks pretty boy 5,000 miles away from Universal Studios.

TKG:  It’s Finlay beating the stew out of some putz. I will always watch that. The early elbows to the nose were so fucking great. And Finlay doing crazy flying out of the ring for de Cuba’s stuff was wild. Man when Finlay puts a guy in a crab that is a fucking deep crab.

Drew Haskins/Derrick King vs. PG-13 SAW ?/?/09

MD: My big takeaway from this is that Haskins with this same gimmick and attitude, would be pretty in demand right now. There's a pre-match promo here establishing the (newly turned?) heel character and how he's on Tiger Beat, etc., just ridiculous over the top snotty heel pretty boy claims. When he actually comes out, a big chunk of the match and commentary is based around the fact he's sans knee pads and wearing dress shoes. Dundee seemed way more into this than Wolfie, both in interacting with Haskins early on (taking the shoe off and tossing it, etc.) and the way he worked the apron during Wolfie's face-in-peril later on. Lots of charisma there still, even in 2009. This hit the marks for a TV tag match but what I'm going to remember the most is the shtick.

PAS: You don't normally see JC Ice outshticked in a match, but Drew Haskins was really on one here. The dress shoes was a great bit of nonsense, and when JC Ice wearing cut off acid washed jeans shorts and a hockey jersey is clowning your clothes you know you have really done something. I think this was hurt a bit by having most of the heat on Wolfie come during the commercial break, as it goes from heel bumbling almost directly into the count out finish, where a midget comes out and hits Wolfie with a broom. I do love watching Derrick King throw jabs, but I imagine there is a better match between these two teams out there.

ER: Hell yes, gimme something like this once a week to watch and write about, just the best kind of Wrestling is America footage you can get. Shown on regional TV, sponsored by a local bail bond company (Grumpy's) that has a crudely drawn rockabilly babe logo, Derrick King wearing hot pink gear, Drew Haskins in ice blue trunks, dress socks and loafers (wrestling in loafers is far more funny than it should be), and PG-13 looking like versions of their heyday selves who have since done time. Haskins takes great pratfalls related to his shoes, including faceplanting after tripping on the low rope getting back into the ring. Derrick King takes two of the highest backdrops, certified Memphis classics. Everyone throws punches at the level you'd want to see, with King's jabs and Wolfie's overhand right standing out especially. We even get an appearance of Half Dollar in the double count out finish, the cohort of King cohort Big Dollar. It's all classic Memphis bullshit, the best junk food.

TKG: The midget was named half dollar!!! I absolutely don’t understand how Drew Haskins didn’t become a bigger deal.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: UFC vs. Memphis, Blackhearts, Can-Ams

Shinya Hashimoto/Riki Choshu/Ricky Steamboat vs. Big Van Vader/Animal Hamaguchi/Bam Bam Bigelow NJPW 10/11/90

MD: We went with this because it had Vader in it so it was timely. It's not the best showcase match for him, though. There's some exciting brawling with Choshu to begin but this one is really much more about Bigelow, Steamboat, and Choshu. Vader and Hashimoto just aren't in the ring as much. I love Bigelow from this era. Vader may have been more willing to ham it up with crowd interactions than he would be later, but Bigelow takes it a step further. He does a flip bump on a Choshu clothesline. How great is that?

Steamboat really is the X-Factor here, though. He's as Steamboat-y as it gets, providing the heart of his match with his selling, allowing for a stretch of heat that you'd never get in a match like this without him, but also realizing he's in Japan and being double tough in his attempts to fight back and way, way over the top in his offensive bursts. There's this clothesline duck-jumping kick to the head-karate pose that he does against Bigelow that is the most flawless bit of pro wrestling imaginable Post-match angle goes on forever but Hamaguchi makes it worth it with his unexpected charisma. I imagine most people would be glad to watch this.

ER: I've not actually seen any Steamboat/Vader matches in WCW, but I don't think they matched up that often and I certainly didn't realize they had matched up before WCW. But I don't seek out a lot of Steamboat, so this is not something I likely would have known. I am definitely low vote on Steamboat, and didn't think he looked good here, but it worked because everyone treated him like Kikuchi in the classic AJPW six mans. He was nowhere near as good as Kikuchi here, but his light chops and almost connecting dropkicks made him the easy choice to isolate from the group. At one point Bigelow is throwing nice right hooks and has to remind himself to acknowledge Steamboat's little chops. Bigelow had a really great performance and never tried to out-monster Vader, who looked like an outright monster. Hamiguchi would tag in and work like an actual animal let out of a cage. This heel team probably only teamed up on this show, but man that is a winning trio. Bigelow was there for big man bumps (even taking this great banana peel bump onto the apron after the pinfall), Vader looked gargantuan and completely unstoppable, and I loved Hash and Riki as the guys running in to save little Ricky. Bigelow and Vader are a fun team and I loved them using their fat, like Bigelow holding onto Steamboat in the corner while Vader just squished him in a fat sandwich. We didn't get a ton of Hash, but he made his presence felt with a squarely planted DDT, and not many people are better than Choshu at tagging in and blasting folks with a hot tag lariats. I also loved Hamaguchi hugging it out with Choshu after the match. "Hey, no hard feelings, I just teamed with who they told me to" leading to Bigelow and Vader immediately calling him out on his bullshit. "We were still here dude. We saw you."

PAS: I thought this was great and mainly great because Steamboat was spectacular in it. I thought he was a great face in peril, he is an all-time great seller, and I loved how he kept fighting back during the beatdown section, he gets pounded by Bigelow or Vader, but he always fires back with a chop. I loved the section where Bigelow and Steamboat kept exchanging and each shot was faster and harder until they were just unloading on each other. That is a matchup I can't remember seeing before, and I feel like they would have had an all time singles match. The Vader vs. Hash sections were awesome, although it was more of a taste then a meal, but man is that an all time battle of badasses. The finish run was great, with every body running in a throwing big shots ending with a classic Choshu lariat.


Can Am Express vs. The Blackhearts AJPW 9/4/91

MD: This got a lot of time and was big and dumb. Kroffat is one of my favorite AJPW 90s guys because he is a hugely natural de facto heel in a place where you don't always get that. Here, though, the Can-Ams were playing de facto babyface, and they don't hold up as well. Furnas is a solid muscleman hot tag in that role, but Kroffat, even with some flashy flourishes, was playing against type.

The Blackhearts deal is that they have a great entrance in the dark, will bump big, and have so, so many ridiculous tandem double teams, none of which actually look good. The sum of it all gives them an A for effort but this was far more fun than good.

PAS: This was an amusing big dumb heavyweight tag spotfest. It was more Eliminators then Steiners, but it was some big dudes with ideas. Some of them looked bad (the Blackhearts double bulldog was conceptually interesting, but looked dumb), some of them looked cool ( the assisted face buster by the Can-Ams was nifty) but they were all kind of thrown out there without a ton of substance. Still I enjoyed large parts of this in a turn off your brain off kind of way. I could see an ECW video montage of this match set to an Alice in Chains song being pretty cool.

Dustin Starr/Din Thomas vs. Derrick King/Matt Serra 6/15/18

PAS: This was a match in the long storied southern tradition of the sold show money mark tag match. Instead of opposing high school football coaches, we have two ex-UFC guys Thomas and Serra working with old Memphis hands Dustin Starr and Derrick King. This was part of Dana White's Looking for a Fight travel show. Starr and Thomas work heel and Dana White and Jerry Lawler are at ringside along with Starr's valet. Fun shticky match, with King and Starr having really great punches and Thomas and Serra doing some nice amateur rolling. The stuff with the UFC guys against the Memphis guys was a little awkward (Thomas looks like he might have gotten knocked silly by Starr's axehandle), but I am always going to enjoy this kind of match.

MD: Well, this was something. The best thing about this was the fact it felt so Memphis. Really, the first twenty odd minutes or so (out of 27) were pure Memphis. Calhoun was ref. Lawler switched the sides and big timed Dana. Starr is pure throwback, not the Brian Christopher we want, but probably the Brian Christopher we deserve in 2018. There was stalling, jawing, strutting, pretty good punches and over the top selling. The next best thing was Serra and Thomas sparring, with Serra throwing Thomas all over the place. And the last best? Probably Dana White's shit-eating grin as he watched Starr stooge all over the ring.

It all fell apart in the last few minutes with Serra and Dana spending the entire run-up to the hot tag just talking to each other casually as King struggled his way to the corner. That was pretty much the worst hot tag in wrestling history. There was maybe one too many bits of White getting involved with Maria post-match but ultimately this was fine. I was curious how they were going to protect the UFC guys, especially when they were in with the wrestlers and that all worked pretty well. Serra bullied Starr. Despite Serra having the cartwheel, Thomas was the one who seemed more natural for wrestling. He was having a blast, even relishing a bodyslam. And it all ended with a reminder that everyone should spend some cash on Jerry's food. It's the most Memphis thing I've seen out of Memphis in a while

Read more!

Wrestling With Death: Thoughts As I Watch It and Waste My Life

I had to add that colon into the title so that people wouldn't misinterpret this as me having an internal struggle and wrestling with my own disappointing mortality.

So Derrick King is on a national network. That's weird, right? He got married to a gal named Jaime, who possibly set a record for "BumpIt Use on Wedding Day" and the family he married into has an indy fed in Arkansas. And a funeral home. And he works at both. I am completely unfamiliar with Mid Southern Championship Wrestling. I mean, I'm unfamiliar with Arkansas. I would wager before it became known as Bill Clinton's home state that it was our least talked about state in the union. That would probably be Delaware now. The hashtag for this show is #WrestleInPeace. I have never heard of Lafonce Latham - owner and proprietor of both MCW and the funeral home -  before but he seems like a guy I would have dug. He's clearly in his 60s now and from the clips shown he still seems like a guy I would dig. I would definitely go to these shows if I lived in Arkansas. Also, living in Arkansas, I would have already made a series of several horrible life decisions by that point.

I wonder who or how many people TNA would murder to get on a network like this. WGN is pretty huge. TNA is on Destination America right now, which I just confirmed yesterday is an actual television channel available to watch on televisions. 90% of the programming on Destination America appears to be advertisements masquerading as actual programming. Tuesday is filled with hilarious Disney "programming". They are supposed to be actual shows, but they have names like "Inside Disney Cruise Lines" or "Behind the Scenes: Walt Disney World Resort". The channel also shows an incredible sounding show called "Buying Log Cabins" which officially has to be the most niche reality show ever. Buying Log Cabins looks like a joke that got cut from UHF. Looking deeper at their schedule, and 40% of the channel seems entirely focused on the Alaska real estate scene. And literally all Friday is episodes of TNA Impact on a loop, 18 hellish hours. 6 AM to midnight. At what point in that 18 hours does Impact turn to Suicide Pact?

And here's this show, on an actual network that produces original dramas and shows Cubs and White Sox games.

I stopped watching after 20 minutes or so when I noticed MeTV was showing an old Gunsmoke episode with Anthony James as a hillbilly trying to operate a secret still.

Read more!

The King Could Go Right Insane, Cause He Can't Buy The Time

Jerry Lawler/Brian Christopher v. Precious/Derrick King WFW 6/2/12-EPIC

Derrick King travels the south ruling it at professional wrestling. He is a master at the old school Memphis style wrestling match, and here he is working opposite Brian Christopher and the GOAT Jerry Lawler and it is awesome. Precious is a black guy working a purple wigged exotico gimmick, and is a fun stooge with pretty good punches. Christopher looked good too, although the money stuff was obviously Lawler v. King. They square off early with King taking a Rock level crazy bump on a stunner. They have a longer section in the end which feels like a classic Lawler v. Dundee style matchup. DK is throwing hands and Lawler gets fired up right back. Finish is pretty great with Precious smashing Christopher with a not in 2012 chair shot. A contender for MMOTY, Memphis MOTY.

ER: I think this is a legit contender for MOTY, not just Memphis MOTY. This may be the best Brian Christopher match ever (this or the '93 Jarrett match), the Lawler/King segments are somehow even better in practice than you would assume they'd be on paper. One of their jab exchanges was one of the greatest punch exchanges I have ever seen. Every person in the match has a battle to see who can take a better looking backdrop. Precious wrestles exactly how Vicki Lawrence wrestled in the Mama's Family wrestling episode, but with better punches. This match is just awesome, amazing stuff

Jerry Lawler v. Dutch Mantell NWA-ME 7/1/12-SKIPPABLE

Not much of a match, Dutch may not have much left. We get a long monolauge from Lawler to start where he talks up how he and Dutch are 244-244 in records (it is a Lawler shtick, he did the same thing with Dundee), and how this would be the ultimate tie breaker. Match doesn't come close to living up to that lofty set up. Dutch spends a lot of the match putting on an armbar, until we get a big schmozz ending with the fake Sheik manager. A couple of Lawler punches, but not much else.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

Read more!

THE MOTHERFUCKING INTERNET: DERRICK KING, FRANKIE TUCKER, GOLDEN NUGGET AND CHIEF HILL RAISE SOME CASH

Frankie Tucker/Golden Nugget v. Derrick King/Chief Hill 6/9/12



The Souther fundraiser tag is one of my favorite kinds of formula matches. Old pros team with a local football coach, roller rink owner or in this case I assume a fire chief and work a southern tag around an untrained guy. This is the kind of thing which has been going on for years. Here we get King and Tucker running through their awesome touring match, while heel manager Golden Nugget is dastardly. Chief Hill is a bunch of fun too as he is a total awkward crowbar. He puts on a shoot hammerlock which looks like he might dislocate Nuggets shoulder, and totally potatoes him with kicks and punches. Finish is a little clustery, but this was this kind of thing done very well, and I am excited it showed up on the web.

Read more!