Found Footage Friday: BIG BUBBA~! ARNOLD~! HAMILTON~! MIGRAS~! FALCON~! HALCON 78~! TAKANO~!

Larry "The Missouri Mauler" Hamilton vs. Don Arnold Hollywood Wrestling 8/31/53

MD: This was 2/3 falls and went over 30. The first fall was clean and mostly hold based. Arnold would put on a hold (armlock, toehold, headscissors), and then after a great deal of struggle, Hamilton would get a counter (hammerlock, bodyscissors) and control with that for a while. Within five or six minutes, they were looking fairly haggard, just for how hard they were working the holds. Arnold was clearly the aggressor here, but Hamilton took it with his great "rodeo" headlock takeover, which has a big windup, enough to be a viable finisher. Second fall had the cracks start to show. Early on Arnold turned a legsplitter into a standing anklelock and the commentary called it a "Hackenschmidt". When he won the fall with an abdominal stretch, called as such, which he got on cleverly by ducking another windup for the headlock takeover, commentary called it a Billy Varga special. As the match went on the fans started to boo Hamilton as he kept going to the ropes to escape. It was subtle. He also grabbed the hair for a smaller headlock takeover and went for a toehold after a rope break too soon. It wasn't much but it was enough to turn the crowd. That meant when Arnold put on a long and fast airplane spin to pick up the win, everyone was pretty happy with the result. A lot to like here in between the formula of the first fall and how hard the holds were worked, the callback counter that won Arnold the second fall, and the subtle but definite heeling from Hamilton as things went on. 

Migra I/Migra II vs. Falcon/Halcon 78 WWA 9/19/87

MD: Los Angeles WWA with two teams that basically look alike. Cheat sheet is that Falcon has some extra flourishes on the sides of his mask. And Migra I is the more massive Migra. The commentators work with the ring announcer and spend the first three minutes of this trying to figure it out while the Migras just hug one another repeatedly to get heat. We only have the first two falls of this (best as I can tell) but they're fun.

Primera was full of fun stuff. Halcon clowned Migra I on the mat. Migra II kept going to the eyes and hanging on to Falcon's mask to keep a headlock on until he got shrugged to the floor and ended up punching the post. They had a pretty elaborate finishing sequence where Halcon and Falcon had to figure out how to avoid getting tossed into one another so they could get distance and lure the Migra's into a trap. Crowd-pleasing stuff. 

Segunda had Migras take over just by separating their opponents and leaning hard on Falcon. This ended up mostly mask ripping and wound work, but we like mask ripping and wound work. It seemed like they were going to end a caida once Halcon finally got past the ref to get in and they took him out too, including with a nice stump puller, but things kept going. At one point, Falcon, bloodied and sprawled on the ground was offered a drink by a kid through the guardrail so that's always nice. Eventually the ref just called it and the tape cuts after twenty minutes with the last fall still to go. Good for what we had though. 

Shunji Takano vs. Big Bubba AJPW 3/27/88

MD: Maybe the most fun four and a half minutes you'll have today. This was a Classics drop we're just catching up on. Takano, by 88, had a lot going for him. Size and fire. He'd grow into it even more in 89 before his career started to take weird turns. Looking at him here and he looked like the future of the company though. Also, oddly enough, Bubba looked like the future of the company too. He looked like a guy who could have toured as much as Doc and Gordy and fit right in. Yeah, he was a different size and shape, but he had such presence and could move. He looked like a million bucks here.

He pressed in right from the start with punches to the face and this great axe handle. Takano turned it around and dropkicked him out. He sold it with huge frustration, going after the guardrail, only to come back in and dominate. Lots of great power offense here, his spinebuster slam, back body drop, clothesline, and more great strikes, a headbutt and this beautiful sweeping chop. Then he got out the belt and started choking Takano with it, jarring, effective stuff. He climbed up to the top with it but that just let Takano come back tossing him off in a big moment. Takano followed up with a body press off the turnbuckles but Bubba turned it around for the Bubba Slam. It felt like a really refreshing WCW Syndicated TV match in a way AJPW very rarely does. Ah, what could have been.

ER: Shunji Nakano is a kind of under-discussed guy. Maybe people just hated Super Ninja, I don't know. His look was Larger Japanese Mike Awesome and he could really take a hit and throw a suplex. This is 4 minutes of Big Bubba dishing out hit after hit after hit and Takano had one suplex that might have been the biggest suplex bump Bubba had taken to that point in his career. Bubba is barely 100 matches into his career, in his 2nd match ever in Japan, a couple months away from WWF, just a baby. Boss Man was my favorite wrestler as a kid because he was shaped exactly like my dad. That same exact belly, dress shirt pulled tight, hugging his stomach because of the tuck. Never fat enough where they had to get larger pants and tuck their stomachs into their pants - that's what we call Ronnie P. Gossett fat - but incredible belly hang over the waistband of their slacks. Some of us have Bald Dads, some of us have Tall Dads, I was lucky enough to have a Fat Dad. 

How quickly did Bubba get this good? When was he Actually Good? He's a marvel here. Find me a single misstep, all match. It's the perfect 4 minutes of material. Every detail, every hit, every miss. Complete package. 15 year pros don't have a fast swing and miss clothesline as good as Bubba's. The speed he takes a dropkick bump over the top to the floor, and the anger he shows after (scaring a few ringside fans) is done with a veteran's confidence. He double axe handles Takano in the back of the head; the man hits a sidewalk slam with one suspender down like the world's largest Jeff Leonard. He tosses Takano so high with a back body drop, and the visual looks nuts because you never see guys Takano's height taking back body drops. Bubba throws his full weight into his falling clothesline, like a big fat guy STO. His enziguiri slashes across the face. The casual removal of his belt before choking Takano to his knees, climbing to the top rope for choking leverage, was like something you'd see a hitman do in an 80s Hong Kong action movie. 

And, while I'm not sure it needs to be said, I will say that the Bubba Slam clears the Black Hole Slam every day of the week. This isn't swing dancing. This stomach goes over the belt. 

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Found Footage Friday: LAWLER~! KEIRN~! HOGAN~! PATERA~! WRESTLING FROM RAINBO~!

Jerry Lawler vs. Steve Keirn IWA 3/24/90 

MD: Nice little lost TV match here, with Lawler defending the Unified Title and Keirn the PWF title. It's exactly what you'd expect from heel Lawler from this period. Stooging, hiding an object that may or may not existed. Obviously, it's masterful if not particularly groundbreaking or complex. The timing is perfect. The crowd is up for it. Keirn knows how to play against it and make the most of it and make himself look as good as possible. The finish put over Keirn without giving him the more prestigious belt and theoretically built to some sort of gimmick match where the fans have every reason to believe he has every shot at it. As a bonus, there were some fun moments on commentary between weirdly mustachless Lee Marshall and DDP who is surprisingly anti-Lawler in this one.

Hulk Hogan vs. Ken Patera WWF 3/15/85

MD: Clipped but new with a pretty unique point of view, both backstage and down the ramp trailing Hogan to start and then at ringside looking up, like a far less talented Black Terry, Jr. Except for it's Hogan and Patera in 1985 in Miami. You get a lot of the match and a few pretty interesting things, like Hogan hitting a school year trip on Patera out of the corner, followed up by a JYD style headbutt on all fours or some of Patera's great expressions as he reacts to the crowd and stooges. It looked like the heat (of which we only saw bits and pieces) consisted of a front facelock, a chinlock, and later on a bearhug, but Hogan's drenched, exhausted selling is a lot of what got the crowd so into his comebacks. Here, he won by getting a leg up in the corner on a charge and then hitting the legdrop. We saw some signs of him staring down some of Patera's shots earlier on but less of an actual hulk up towards the finish. What we definitely see, however, is the sheer elation of the fans when he wins. Nice close up look of a Hogan that hadn't yet become complacent. 

Don Arnold vs. Ed Francis Wrestling from Rainbo 10/30/52

MD: We get the last seven minutes of this. It's interesting to compare and contrast this presentation with the Russ Davis Chicago footage we're more used to. Arnold had taken the first fall and we're JIP into the second. Arnold's leg and arm manipulation is top notch as is Francis' subsequent selling and stooging. Francis milking the clean break and the handshake before sneaking in a gut punch and taking over with over the shoulder eye gauging is timeless (and well-timed) heeling. The bumps out to the floor that follow are pretty nasty and Francis makes Arnold's shoulder block look great before they go into the airplane spin and the finish. I don't think we have a ton of Ed Francis outside of being an old man in Hawaii so this was good to see.

Bobby Ford/Robert Rouche vs. Ali Pasha/Tommy O'Toole Wrestling from Rainbo 10/30/52

MD: This joins late in the first round (which went twenty minutes or so) with Pasha vs Rouche and Pasha leaning on Rouche. Apparently Pasha had a deal where he used his beard to scrape people's eyes. He wins it fairly quickly with a cobra clutch that Griffith actually calls as a "cobra hold" which is pretty crazy to have already been named in 1952. Second fall had a lot of jockeying over a hammerlock between Ford and O'Toole with Ford carrying the advantage and both sides pulling hair liberally. When Pasha and Roche made it in, Roche got his revenge with mares and dropkicks and a quick pin. Third fall had O'Toole and Pasha leaning on first Rouche and then Ford (who had done some heroic apron work). O'Toole could really sneak in the inside shots and he won the thing with a 1952 Oklahoma Stampede. For a match that went 40 minutes, it probably needed a bit more of a finishing stretch but the work was all good.

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