Found Footage Friday: CROCKET CUP 87 NIGHT 2~!

Crockett Cup 87 Night 2 JCP 4/10/87

MD: We had a lot more of Night 2 than Night 1 but some of that was still handhelds or pieced together and this is a big VQ upgrade regardless, so we're just going to go through this as much as possible on the idea that a lot of this is very much Found even if not entirely New.

Round 3

Bob & Brad Armstrong vs. Tully Blanchard/Lex Luger

MD: Really great stuff here. That's not a surprise. There's an extended (almost ten minute) heel-in-peril shine to begin where Tully gets a few moments but mostly gets clowned over and over. What makes this work is how he constantly tries to drive to the corner and everytime things go really wrong for him is when he tries to stretch the rules, like using his foot to make a tag. JJ complains and the Armstrongs do a phantom tag while the ref is dealing with that. I love the wrist control by Bob here. You get such a great look at how he's holding Tully's hand and the torque involved. So simple but so good. Eventually Luger does get in but the Armstrongs come back only for JJ to pull down the rope and send Brad flying.

The FIP isn't as long but they get a lot done quickly, using the guardrail and working over the back. Brutal stuff with Brad on the floor reaching not for the fans, but for his dad even though there's no way to make a tag, just trying to drag strength and power from his love. The hot tag is great too with Bob coming in fiery as can be, laying into the Horsemen with basically machine gun chops in the corner. I got a kick out of the finish which had the ref miss a pinfall due to the chaos and JJ and Tully do a double clothesline with JJ on the apron to pick up the win. It's funny to think that would add so much but it had symbolic value so it totally worked. Good tag and great to see it in this level of video quality.

ER: I thought this was tremendous, 8 perfect minutes of tag team wrestling. Also, 8 minutes reminding us of what a perfect wrestler Tully Blanchard was. Tully was the primary highlight of this, but I think the whole thing was highlights. Every single second of Bullet preventing Tully from tagging out is pro wrestling perfection. Every second. The cameras catching the perfect angles of the inches Bullet was letting Tully get from Luger, the cut to the hand-on-brow disappointment and disgust from JJ Dillon looking like Robert Prosky in Thief, Luger's teenage quarterback hands on hips frustration when the tags keep being prevented, the way Tully's legs dragged and floated when Brad held onto a side headlock, it was all perfect. Luger was a great partner for Tully. This was Luger's best hair era, by fair. It never came close to looking this good again. His fringe, his gentle approach to being a jacked Ramones superfan. I loved how all of Tully's long build to the hot tag was more about Bullet tagging in his son to square up to Luger, who looks like Asshole He-Man. 

Tully Blanchard has the same kind of physical bumping style as Bobby Heenan. Heenan's bumping gets talked about more because it's flashier and one of the greatest bumping styles anyone has ever attempted. Tully doesn't use the same physical movement as Heenan, but he bumps with the same physicality. Tully has the ability to work these inches and near misses as well as he works big looping O-face back bumps when tugged and pulled and thrown by the Armstrongs, in a way that only makes the Armstrong Family Biceps look like main event power. I don't think there's a more perfect bump than Tully ping ponging perfectly onto his belly into the corner right on his mark, after leaning into Brad's missile dropkick. It's that kind of precision that people see in Chris Candido, the things is that Candido is just 0.7 Tully. Candido was tan, shaped, modeled. Tully looked like your friend's dad who was the asshole orthodontist accused of touching a girl under the gas. The guy in your church denomination you don't want to talk to in the lobby after service.

Road Warriors vs. Midnight Express

MD: The feeding early on, especially by Bobby Eaton, is all time great. The way he's able to rush in and take things and contort pro wrestling physics and make it all look good is up there with the very best ever. He somehow hits the guardrail after getting tossed out and you buy it. He makes a press slam into a snake eyes look like a move that people should be doing weekly now but it's something I've barely seen this century and that if anyone else took wouldn't look nearly as good. Likewise, he took a chop (looked like to the chest to me) and then sold his face, pointing to his jaw repeatedly like he just lost three teeth. Lane does okay too, going head over heels just bouncing off a Warrior, but it's not quite the same as Bobby.

When the Express take over on Hawk, it's from going to the eyes again and again and again and double teaming at every point. They just have a few frenetic minutes in charge, but the sheer amount of varied and interesting cheating they're able to do in believable ways is just remarkable. You buy that the ref just didn't see it because they were so good and Animal was so frustrated. Eyerakes, tossing Hawk over the top illegally, using the racket, again and again. When the hot tag comes, everything becomes chaos and the ref goes down. Cornette threw a fireball at Animal and I thought Animal no sold it but on the replay you see that Ellering pulled Cornette's arm so he plausibly just missed. It's a dangerous thing to devalue though so I'm not sure I loved that. To the crowd, it must have looked like Animal just no sold it. Still that infuriated the Roadies and they took the racket and got themselves DQed the ref came to. This was another really good one as they matched up well and everything had the perfect weight to it, save maybe for that fireball at the end.

ER: This is a famously great tag that has never looked or sounded better. The sound on these new uploads is so key, it makes every bump seem like an impossible physical feat to maintain. There's so much good about this, including Bubba, Cornette, and Ellering at ringside. They all got reactions and none of the reactions took away from the others, just an insanely hot match where everything clicked. Bobby Eaton in 4K is truly something to marvel. He and Hawk are a perfect combination of wrestling physicality. Eaton was so gifted, another guy who moved all in his own way...and Hawk wrestles like the ideal jacked cool guy to be knocking Bobby Eaton around. Bobby was such a ham here, in a way that totally works when selling for the Roadies. Hawk hit a short hard chop that was so loud, Bobby improvised on the spot that it him right in the mouth, backpedaling all the way across the ring to tag in Stan. Sell it to the 18,000 people who couldn't see that it hit chest. Lane took some big shots too, getting whipped upside down into the buckles by Hawk and then calmly begging off as Hawk approached, like hey easy man we got other towns to make. Lane getting yanked by the arm from the apron into the ring was such a great bump, the athletic grace of the Midnights combined with the power of the Roadies. Bobby and Stan get great reactions for their bumps, but probably not as big as the reaction Bubba gets when he steps to the apron and removes his coat and hat. Huge. 

The finish is incredible, one of the great chained together bullshit finishes I've seen. The Midnights throw Hawk over the top to the concrete with full distraction, then Bobby hits Hawk in the ribs with the loudest racket shot and kicks him straight in the guts. It completely breaks down into chaos and pandemonium after the bell and it's fucking pro wrestling baby. That's chaining it all together. That's what we used to do. We used to cut off the ring and drink a case of beer and we used to chain bullshit together without reversals of reversals of reversals. A Cornette fireball to endless racket shots to bodies going every direction in perfect chaotic order. The Roadies murder Bobby with a Hart Attack to cap it off. Bubba takes a hit through the ropes that sends him crashing to the apron and down to the guardrail. He looked humongous and the fall was grand. Incredible pro wrestling. 

Rick Rude/Manny Fernandez vs. Superpowers (Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff)

MD: The #1 seed vs. the biggest babyfaces in this. While the first round had its share of fairly lame teams (especially compared to the year before), now in the quarterfinals you see the breadth of the talent here. This was a huge match. They'd only run it once before at a show at the Great Western Forum. It was a way to put the tag champs up against these guys with the belts not on the line. Rude vs. Nikita was such a natural pairing too and they leaned into that early with some fun strength stuff including Nikita breaking out of a full nelson.

Dusty played FIP after taking a post shot on the outside, with him gradually working back towards a comeback and these guys all knew how to milk it of course. Things broke down after Dusty hit a leaping clothesline off the ropes. Rude came in and then Nikita. Manny went for a flying body press but Dusty rolled through for the wins as the fans went nuts. 

ER: This was short but hot the entire way. I love the Raging & Ravishing team. Everyone in Crockett is so physical. I keep using various forms of that word because everyone is so physical in a totally different way. Manny Fernandez doesn't even look like someone who exercises, he looks like the most dangerous man in a bowling alley, but then he's throwing these impressively controlled kneedrops and holding back his body to keep his shots worked, and it's crazy how dangerous he can make himself look while being this safe. Rude is so good at working with Nikita and Manny knew exactly how to work as Rude's partner, I just love how these men fell around the ring. 

Round 4

Giant Baba/Isao Takagi vs. Tully Blanchard/Lex Luger

MD: Baba/Takagi had a draw as Ricky Morton was out (what a shame to lose that weird match). This was a kind of weird one too. Lots of leglocks early. It looked like things would open up when Luger slammed Baba but then he missed an elbow drop and Baba just beat up Luger and Tully. Novel pairings at least and fun to see them take his stuff (chop, big boot, Russian leg sweep). Takagi looked strong in there, good strikes and the fans really got up when he mowed through both Tully and especially Luger. Takagi missed a corner charge and weirdly Luger couldn't get him up for the rack. He hit an elbow drop for the pin instead. Up until the finish I could see there being interest in a Takagi vs Luger match back in Japan but after that, nah.

Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff vs. Midnight Express

MD: This was a blast really, the whole shine especially. There was an early bit where Koloff broke clean on Eaton, Eaton refused to break clean on Koloff, punching him in the face, Koloff gave chase, Eaton dodged a shot back in the ring and pointed to his brain, Koloff slingshotted him back into the ring and then dropkicked him, which was absolutely perfect pro wrestling. Beautiful stuff. Then Lane got thrashed about and claimed it was a tights pull and Eaton got caught in the ropes as Dusty pinballed him again and again in a teeter totter only to fall outside and immediately get hiptossed onto the floor. Pure Eaton right there. He does the silly painless bit to pop the crowd and decides to take the huge bump anyway. Dusty finished it by giving all of the Express and Bubba elbows and basking in the glory of it all.

Heat was on Nikita and they did what the Express did best, fit a ton of egregious offense into a very small amount of time. They focused on the neck cheated in both large ways and small, and made use of numbers and ring-positioning. They pushed it just a little too hard, had just a bit of miscommunication and Nikita used that to hit the Sickle, no hot tag needed. Given all the different finishes at play, it worked. It also felt a bit like a banana peel, definitive as it was, because of the lack of the hot tag, so that almost protected the Express in loss in a weird sort of way.

Ric Flair vs. Barry Windham

MD:A lot to cover in a paragraph or two. This match, given how it was preserved/presented over the years and that it was going back to a relatively dry well, has traditionally not been thought highly of. But I do think it was very good. There are individual bits that I love, and I honestly do think they come together. 

Some of those bits:

• After the initial feeling out, Flair chops Barry in the corner. Barry puts on a grin and storms out. Flair backs off but struts it off. They repeat the process and this time Flair falls down before strutting. Then Flair gets in a knee and does it one more time. This time Barry sells it big but still storms out and threatens to do a ten punch on Flair. He backs down. Flair goes for a cheapshot and Barry fires off on him. It was such a great exchange in part because how it escalates.
• Late in the match, Flair, who has been knocked around both inside and outside the ring, gets an advantage and scales the top. We all know what's coming, but the execution is so different than what we'd see in the years that would follow. Flair slows himself down to jaw with the fans. Once he reaches the top, he does it again. Barry gets up and waits for him to turn. When Flair does, he's shocked and begs off. Barry shoots a punch to his gut before grabbing him. Flair shakes his head repeatedly. Barry goes to throw him. They struggle over it. Flair grabs his hair. Barry finally gets him over.
• The biggest tease of the match is Barry hitting a one legged missile dropkick which looked so out of the norm for 87 that it felt like a big deal. He pins Flair for 3 but flair had his foot on the rope and got his hand there too at the last second. The hand drew the ref's eye to the foot and after he made the count, he had to restart the match. He was beside himself over it.  Barry immediately gets his finisher, being the leaping clothesline off, only for Flair to get his foot on again. The moment had passed.

Structurally, they go from Flair getting a hotshot and taking over and working the arm to Barry coming back and Flair taking back over to work the leg and getting the figure-four. They got in and out with advantages switching, throwing in plenty of high spots and building to some of the big moments above. When Flair wins it after a series of back and forth pin attempts and holding the tights, it's acceptable but not exactly satisfying, but it didn't need to be given the victory that would follow.

Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff vs. Tully Blanchard/Lex Luger

 

MD: Ok, so I'm running out of time on this one and it's definitely been out for years. One thing I do want to point out that you get watching the show in context is how people controlled Nikita and had a chance by targeting the next throughout the show but the whole show builds to this one where they tear the brace off of his neck. So I really did appreciate that in context. 

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Found Footage Friday: BOCK~! HEENAN~! SD MARK II~! CMLL 4 vs 3~! DUSTY~! DUSTIN~! CODY~!

Nick Bockwinkel/Bobby Heenan vs. Greg Gagne/Super Destroyer Mark II AWA 10/3/80

MD: A recent find from a Wrestling Playlists disc buy. You know the deal. Follow along with the work. This was a blast. Perfect pro wrestling. Destroyer is Slaughter of course. Heenan and Bockwinkel make a big stink out of it to start. This was supposed to be a Loser-Wears-the-Weasel Suit match and they refuse to wrestle if that's the stip. Therefore, they will be heavily fined or suspended but the local promoter says that the match will still take place for the fans. 

Heenan is great here as you would imagine, but he spends a lot of this on the apron or getting cheapshots in with one big moment of comeuppance in the middle and another at the end. It's really all on Bockwinkel who stooges all over the place. Because he doesn't have a competent partner, he's even further behind the eightball and he absolutely wrestles that way, getting knocked around the ring, keeling over after shots, getting abused by both wrestlers. They have a few moments of heat where they're able to get over either by Gagne missing a dropkick or Bockwinkel getting Destroyer in the eyes and following up with a King of the Mountain but it's never for long. Gagne has a great hot tag in as he hits his dropkicks with the second into a nice upkick right onto a charging Bock. 

Finish is Heenan loading up his broken arm and nailing Destroyer from behind so Bockwinkel can pin him. Post-match he demands the weasel suit to put on Gagne because they won but the babyfaces get the better of them and slip it on him. Nice bit here as Destroyer goes to Bockwinkel who is all tangled in the corner and  forcibly shakes his hand before they leave. Post match, Bockwinkel gets the weasel suit off of Heenan and starts beating it up. Just a great bit of emotional vulnerability to send the fans home happy by someone who is usually so buttoned up. 

ER: What a perfect vibe. I think I need to go through a real AWA phase. The vibes don't get much better than this. Heenan and Bockwinkel are a perfect team, Greg Gagne is a guy who is way underrated and undervalued as a babyface, Slaughter is legitimately one of the hardest working big men of all time. The Peg never felt hotter. Everyone did everything I loved seeing them do in this match. Heel Bockwinkel is some incredible stuff. Heel Bockwinkel feels like Billy Robinson crossed with Ric Flair. Heenan is like Buddy Roberts crossed with Tully Blanchard. Everyone throws strikes here that are perfect for who they are. Heenan's 3/4 arm slot attacks with his cast looked like Gagne should have been left bruised. Heenan looked like he should have been scared of Slaughter and fought him accordingly. Bockwinkel looked like he really wanted to snap Greg's neck over the top rope. 

Heenan's Race bump was one of the most incredible versions of that spot. Heenan had this amazing knack for "holding on". Race would tumble dangerously to the floor on his. When I think of any great over the top bump it's always accompanied by "to the floor". But Heenan had this way of hanging onto bumps that made them feel even more dangerous than if he had let go and flown to the floor. It feels like he's body is being torn in multiple directions. I wonder how many weasel suits there were. He's the only wrestler in history to get pulled into a fur suit to rabid reaction for well over a decade. It's impossible to not love Bobby when he's losing his mind in his Where the Wild Things Are fur suit. The zipper always gets stuck, but this time we get to experience the joy of Nick Bockwinkel being flustered while he's trying to get Bobby out of the suit. We have that now. 

Gigante Silva/Atlantis/Tinieblas Jr. vs. Fuerza Guerrera/Gran Markus Jr./Pierroth Jr./Violencia CMLL 09/05/00

MD: Another that Charles salvaged from old discs. I'm not sure I've ever heard of CMLL doing a 4-on-3 match like this but here we go. Pierroth and Silva were the captains and Pierroth had a ton of heat with the crowd,  especially the Arena Coliseo tecnico cheering section which was loud and rowdy and chanting for Mexico the whole way through. The rudos swarmed Atlantis to start staying on him and then Tinieblas pinballing them from one to the other. Once Tinieblas went out they did something I'm not sure I've ever seen before; they pulled Atlantis back in so that Silva couldn't come in. They were even cutting off the ring.

This all led to a huge tug of war spot, but with Atlantis' arms being what they were tugging on. All of the rudos and Atlantis went tumbling across the ring, heralding Silva's real entrance to the match. The rudos tried to swarm him but he managed to whip all of them across the ring in a 4 person Irish Whip. Then he hit a corner clothesline and let me tell you, if you told me that he had killed someone in the ring and not Khali, I would totally believe you with how brutal his shots looked. I don't know if the rudos just asked him to go full on or if he didn't know how not to but every strike was grisly.

The comedy kept coming as Atlantis and Tinieblas lured them into a bunch of rudo miscommunication (a lot of which was Markus, who had lost his mask by this point, crushing his own partners), before they built to endless Atlantis and Tinieblas big splashes on all four rudos, before Silva got to finish it off. This was about ten minutes of ringtime in one fall and definitely didn't wear out its welcome. Fun stuff.

Dusty Rhodes/Goldust/Cody Rhodes vs. Dudebusters (Trent Baretta/Curt Hawkins/Caylen Croft) FCW 7/9/10

MD: If the Vault isn't going to give us old Greensboro and Omni, something special like this, something one of a kind, is up there on what I'd want. This was Dusty's last match, teaming with his sons (one a face, one normally a heel), up against the hottest heel act FCW had to offer at the time in the Dudebusters. Baretta and Croft had their act and it was bolstered with Hawkins returning. At the time, I thought they'd all join Ryder (who had spent 2009 coming into his own on ECW) on the main roster to be his muscle and they could have gotten a good midcard (maybe IC title level) act out of all of it. It was not meant to be. 

I love the presentation here. It's one camera with a bunch of interface noise (like a 16 bit line and contrast or whatever and a little golfing guy icon). The Dudebusters come out with white Dusty Sucks Eggs t-shirts. Dusty and family come out to his WWF theme song, cowbell and all. Dustin is Goldust. Cody is Dashing (but no mustache or faceguard yet).

Cody is set to start but Dusty tags in and I absolutely love how the Dudebusters sell for the idea of him, scattering and leaping up to the top rope just because he entered the ring. Obviously the crowd is going to go nuts at the idea of Dusty driving them nuts. They're selling not a punch or a kick but an idea and an ideal and a larger than life presence. That's beautiful pro wrestling and we see so little of it in 2024. Cody felt a little looser than usual in this setting and Dustin was having a blast, including playing off a Dudebusters deal where the kept kissing his cheek by moving so they ended up kissing each other. This was the first time that Cody and Dustin teamed that we know of and they had some fun tandem stuff (like a catapult bounce back onto the knees/second rope move combo). In general, Dustin was moving great in there and looked like a million bucks.

Eventually the Dudebusters used a distraction to take over on Cody and we got the first of a double heat. They controlled the ring well. The hot tag to Dustin wasn't so hot but that's because the real one was going to be to Dusty later. They took back on him with another bit of distraction (they were good at that). It all built to the true hot tag to Dusty, the place exploding, and Dusty hitting a couple of things before picking up the win. As celebratory and reverent as it should have been but a better match than it needed to be because they let the Dudebusters take so much of it.

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FOUND FOOTAGE FRIDAY: OMNI '87~! OTTO~! STRONGBOW~!

Otto Wanz vs. Jay Strongbow Graz, Austria 7/7/79

MD: This is the earliest Otto Wanz footage I'm aware of. It's part of Richard Land's patreon drop for this month. It goes ~40 with 30 of that being actual wrestling and not round breaks. It has an absolutely remarkable crowd. Hopefully he has a bit more of 1979 Austria/Germany in that tape collection because I want to see more of these fans. They were singing and chanting early, but they were up for absolutely everything and did they ever love Otto.

This is also an incredibly rare look at heel Chief Jay Strongbow. Maybe surprisingly, he brought the goods. This was right in the midst of the Valentine feud where Valentine broke Strongbow's leg, and he came in off of that and was an absolute bastard here. Otto spent most of the match trying to fight fair while Strongbow would fire off on him in the corner and punch and tear at his wound. If Otto was able to fire back, he rolled on out to the floor and they repeated the cycle. 

While the fans went way over the top every time Otto fired back, he controlled just a bit too much of this. Strongbow might charge in before the bell and he'd find ways to get under Otto and the fans' skin but he needed to be on top just a little more in the middle rounds. That said, when Otto finally had enough and started hitting back on Strongbow's terms, ignoring the rules, the fans were in high heaven. This wasn't quite as good as the Studd match but it was still an accomplishment for them to be able to go that long and still get it mostly right. Primarily though, this was about atmosphere. Just an amazing crowd; hopefully we get to see them again.

JCP Omni 2/1/87

MD: Almost anyone reading this watched it in real time and knows how special it was. Yes, it was a short card full of "tournament lucha"-esque short matches because we don't have the main event (Flair vs Windham - 60 minutes) as that was on another card, but it was our first new Omni show in years and hopefully the start of a new trend.

Bill Dundee vs.  Dutch Mantel

MD: Dundee was the Central States champ here. Dutch controlled the center to start, was Dundee stooged around, eating a back body drop, complaining about a phantom hair pull, wanting time out. They had a great bit early where Dundee got an eye rake and went for Shoo Baby only for Dutch to get it back and Dundee to take a whip trip. Eventually Bill managed a low blow and took over on the arm for a bit. Mantel hit one of the many great punches in such a short match and they went towards the finish, with Dundee escaping a roll up and pulling the tights for the win. Starting a trend for the night everything looked great in this one.

Bob Armstrong vs. Jimmy Garvin

MD: 30 second crowd pleaser. I wouldn't have minded seeing what they'd do with a little bit of time but it wasn't meant to be. My favorite bit here was Garvin acting like he won after the fact (to no small amounts of heat too).

Arn Anderson vs. Brad Armstrong

MD: These weren't just matches for the sake of matches. This was shortly after Lex's debut and this show was another cog in the machine of getting him over as a key associate of the Four Horsemen, even if he wasn't wrestling on the card.  For something that's been locked in a vault for so long, the amount of care in the production is interesting. It's not just a single camera. They cut to JJ or cut to a reaction from Luger. This was meant to be shown. It just simply never was.

Obviously, Arn and Brad match up extremely well. There's a certain elaboration to the early sequences where they go around one more time than you'd expect or turn things in a way that feels just a little unpredictable while throwing everything they have into it. We had another quasi low blow to set up the heat, two matches in a row, this time off of an Arn inverted atomic drop out of the corner. One of the best things about this set up (more on this next match) was how well we could hear the wrestlers. Arn, after taking over, just says "Now, then..." and what came after the ellipse is his beatdown of Brad. They moved through it quickly with the spinebuster (being the most versatile move in wrestling) serving as a cutoff to a hope spot, before Bard caught Arn coming off the top. Finish had Lex intervene by pulling out the leg on a suplex. Just a small movement, nothing over the top, and then right back into his seat. A way to get him over as efficient and professional. Obviously it would have been nice to get a few more minutes of this but they made the best of the time they had.

Tully Blanchard vs. Wahoo McDaniel

MD: It's hard to go from modern wrestling to any of this, even for me who spends all of his time jumping around time and space. This match is the trickiest though. Everything looks so good and so credible. Every strike is a violent delight. It's almost shocking to see Wahoo chop away in the corner. It's so different from anything else you'd see today. There's nothing framed about it. It's not a product for TV. It's was there to capture every eye in the arena and somehow that translates better onto the screen than something perfectly posed for a hard cam.

Tully is so vocal here, blabbing on about how he's an honorable man, complaining about every perceived offense perpetrated by Wahoo. I imagine only the first few rows could even hear it but it was part of his full immersion into the moment. There was no going through the motions. He was living and breathing the part. It's magic watching him scramble out of the ring or try to dash his way back for a sneak attack only to get caught and have his limbs somehow fall over one another. Selling isn't even the word for how he takes Wahoo's stuff. His portrayal was so good that it warped reality and made the the lie more vibrant than any truth could possibly be. 

The finish was simple, straightforward, matter of fact. Wahoo had him down. JJ drew the ref. Lex casually rose, clocked Wahoo with the belt, and sat back down, crossing his arms. Nothing over the top. Everything subdued. Just a great way to establish Luger.

Elimination Tag: Ron Garvin/Robert Gibson vs. Midnight Express (Dennis Condrey/Bobby Eaton)

MD: Very fun seeing Garvin in there instead of Gibson for whatever reason. He was tagging with Windham regularly at the time, including feuding with the Midnights. You have to love Gibson in the shine. There was the spot where he leaped frogged over Eaton after Condrey had tagged in and you expect Condrey to be about to tag him, but Gibson just stops short and hits a bodyslam instead. Or Eaton feeding for Gibson when he was outside after tagging Garvin in. You'd half expect him to try to take Gibson off the apron with a cheapshot but he just gets nailed over and over. It plays with expectations just a little while feeling totally organic. Likewise, they played with them by having Garvin get his foot on the rope after the Bubba shot, something that followed two finishes where Lex had interfered in a similar way.

This morphed into a conventional tag for a bit with Garvin working from underneath. His comeback just being a shoulder block out of the corner was actually unconventional but fit him perfectly. The racket shot that took out Gibson was pretty nasty. Then, as Eaton was rolling Gibson out, Garvin rolled him up to even the sides. Maybe you would have wanted a second bit of heat to play on the numbers advantage instead but they were wrestling against the clock and these matches were so rare that almost any tweak must have felt new and fresh. They still had Condrey control for a bit until they cracked heads and went into the finish. Garvin went over after the miscommunication, but they made sure to get some heat back on him after the match.

Super Powers (Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff) vs. Ivan Koloff/Vladimir Petrov

MD: Shame we miss out on the Dusty/Nikita entrance here. Non match as the Russians immediately use the chain. It's a little surprising how little the fans seemed to care. They were just happy about Nikita firing back and Dusty and Nikita having their hands raised. Not sustainable but it was early enough into the turn, maybe that was all that mattered. Just a crazy notion in 2024 that people would care so much about their guys winning that they'd accept a non-match like this. Different worlds. You can barely even compare them.

Road Warriors vs. Ragin' and Ravishin' 

MD: Definitely a show where maybe too many heels had the titles. Again, when the Roadies were proclaimed as the winners by DQ, the place went nuts, so maybe I'm wrong. Business doesn't stay good forever though. This was fun just to see Rude and Manny bounce off of the Warriors. When it was time for Hawk to get worked over, he balanced being a Frankenstein's Monster with being properly vulnerable extremely well. It's a tough line to walk but he walked it, things like popping up from the pile driver but only half way, just in his body language. It's tough to play sympathetic while remaining a entirely larger than life but he managed it and that just ramped things up for the hot tag.

ER: An hour of perfectly shot Omni footage shows up with little warning, incomplete but a gift nonetheless. I didn't expect the work to offer us any new insight into any of the workers as most of these undercard matches were short, but I am an easily persuaded man. I have the kind of simple brain that can watch one hour of wrestling from 1987 and come away with new opinions on workers that we have hundreds of hours of footage from. I'm going to say that it's because we got this footage in such sparkling HD, and more importantly some of the most crystal clear sound you will ever hear on a wrestling show. That might have been my favorite part of this gift, that there was no commentary so you didn't even have to turn your TV up too loud to hear details happening in the ring and the crowd that you would have otherwise never heard. I love any new handheld footage that we get. Handhelds might be my favorite kind of wrestling these past few years, giving us the experience of being in the crowd seeing pairings that otherwise never made TV. But this footage? This footage makes it feel like you're standing at ringside in 1987. You can hear so many little things, and the footage looks beautiful. There were 4,500 people in the Omni that night and due to the way they lit the place we can see maybe 30 of them. But we can hear what sounds like 10,000 of them. Wrestling is mic'd so terribly now that crowds are muted, commentary is king, and we realize that the crowds are muted because there just weren't instances of audience members trying to get themselves over in 1987. It was pure. 

When some woman screams out"Work on him, Dutch, work on him!" it's because she cannot stand Bill Dundee. Being here at ringside you can feel how badly these heels were hated, feel how adored every babyface was, and here in-ring insights that we've seen but never heard so clearly. When the ref admonishes Dundee for grabbing Dutch's hair, I've never heard Dundee say anything as hilarious as, "The hair? I don't want to touch his hair." Dutch Mantel did not give anyone a chance to not touch his hair. We get to hear better than ever before, every single Tully Blanchard dumb asshole flip out. Tully looks like Wings Hauser and screams at the ref over every non-infraction like a small-dicked high school assistant basketball coach. You've seen the body language of Tully being the biggest asshole in wrestling but you've never heard him like this. Every wrestler on this card is a wrestler with great body language, but getting such clear audio to pair with the body language is so special. It would have been great enough seeing Manny Fernandez and Rick Rude stumble and beg off from the Road Warriors, but things like hearing Manny screaming out NO! as Rude almost goes for a one-handed knucklelock with Hawk, or Manny screaming NOOOOOO! in a totally different way when he's getting press slammed for the second time. It gives such a new dimension to these workers and these matches. 

The two big tag matches on this show were as great as they looked on paper. Rick Rude was one of the hardest workers in history and my opinion on him goes up whenever we get new footage. I don't think I've ever seen a Rude match where he wasn't On the entire time, and seeing he and Manny both On against the Roadies is just great pro wrestling. Rude and Manny don't just bump all over the place, they're doing a constant physical routine against two of the most physical monsters of the era. Also, is Hawk one of the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time? If you had asked me 5 years ago I wouldn't have considered either Road Warrior for a Top 100, but Hawk was something else man. After going back and seeing how great "washed" 1998 Hawk was and seeing more and more footage from the decade before, it's clear that Hawk never needed Animal to be a real force in wrestling. This man had It. An unreal aura and some damn great in ring. I don't know how many better flying clotheslines I've seen than Hawk's in this tag. The clothesline off the middle or top buckle is one of the tougher clotheslines. You have to worry about your landing more than the impact of your clothesline, so they often land soft. Hawk's lands as hard as any of his running clotheslines and he follows it through all the way to the mat, like he was doing a flying STO. I think I've seen Daisuke Ikeda hit one better, but Hawk, man. I love this guy. 

This was a one hour presentation with nothing but highlights. The crack of Dutch's whip with this HD sound. Dennis Condrey making me ask aloud "wait was Dennis Condrey the better worker in the original Midnights?" The way Big Bubba held Robert Gibson for racket shots, and the perfect timing of Jim Cornette jumping to the apron to racket Gibson mid-headscissors. The way the Ragin Bull chopped Animal harder than either Road Warrior could hit. Lex Luger's two perfect pieces of interference to help Arn and Tully, remaining completely uninvolved in each match until the finish, sitting arms crossed and observing the matches like an indifferent-faced innocent boy, other than two quick moments of a grabbed ankle and a belt to Wahoo's face. The noise these people made for Nikita. This whole show was moment after moment after moment. And finally, we got to see them and hear them clearer than the folks in Atlanta that night. 

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WWF 305 Live: Uncle Elmer! Big John Studd! Boss Man! Dusty!

Big John Studd vs. Uncle Elmer WWF MSG 8/10/85 - VERY GOOD

ER: Anyone who says the Hillbillies were not an insanely over act in WWF's main touring markets is an outright liar who has never actually watched any Hillbilly matches. Because on this night in 1985 there were 22,000 people packed into MSG and they lost their collective minds when Uncle Elmer made his comeback, and it was glorious. The whole match is a lot of clobbering and stomping, with Studd jumping Elmer the moment Elmer crossed the plane of the ring ropes. Studd clubs and stomps Elmer so much that Elmer isn't even on his feet until his actual comeback! Studd clubs him to the ground and then stomps away while Elmer rolls around in a daze, and when Studd drags Elmer to his feet (lifting him up by his overall straps), that's when Elmer starts clubbing Studd in the ears and throwing a couple great forearms to the chest, then hits a big avalanche in the corner. 

When Elmer calls for the powerslam the MSG crowd loses it, just an insanely loud crowd reaction for these Hillbillies. And just as Elmer is about to lift Studd, Heenan flies into frame and starts throwing stiff as hell shots at Elmer, and the crowd loses it all over again when Hillbilly Jim gets in the ring to punch Studd in the head as Elmer starts to choke Heenan. I immediately go to look up where the follow up Elmer/Hillbilly Jim vs. Studd/Heenan matches happened, and of course Elmer never had any kind of interaction with Studd OR Heenan after this match. WWF had this very bizarre habit during this era of using an MSG match for an angle to set up a molten hot return match, and then never cashing in on that return match in any way. This whole match was maybe 4 minutes (including the excellent post match Heenan involvement) and it is so weird to me that something this and a match this fun was sadly both angle AND blowoff. 

Big Boss Man vs. Dusty Rhodes WWF SNME 11/25/89 - FUN

ER: This was good but really should have been great. Instead it was a short match that served as more angle than match, bringing Sapphire from exuberant ringside Dust fan to Dusty's new manager and setting up a run of house show stips matches. There's a lot of Slick distraction, a lot of Boss Man and Slick yelling at Sapphire, and some fairly unnecessary arm work from Boss Man. But there are also several memorable exchanges. Every time they are throwing strikes is great, with nothing but exciting right hands from both. We got some nice flashes of young Boss Man's speed when he chased Dusty to throw him into the ringpost. Best moment of the match is a real beast of a kitchen sink that Boss Man buries in Dusty's belly. Boss Man's kitchen sink was so great that it would have made a believable finisher, and I love how Dusty bumped for it. There are a few fun big misses, like Dusty missing an elbowdrop and Boss Man missing an avalanche and winding up draped over the top ropes, but the schoolboy finish is incredibly weak. The match would have been way better if they had just brawled to a count out, and we didn't ever get another TV singles match between them. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

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New Footage Friday: Faulkner~! McMichael~! DUSTY~! MX~! CHOSHU~! RED BULL ARMY~! FUJINAMI~!

Vic Faulkner vs. Mick McMichael WOS 7/1/72

MD: It's not every day we get a new UK match from 72, though, of course, we know there's a lot out there locked in a vault. This was six rounds and generally worked blue eye vs blue eye, with Faulkner more the trickster and McMichael more grounded and dogged. Faulkner had all of his tricks: elaborate escape attempts, "look up" spots, not letting go of the handshake between rounds, and so on, but he let himself get clowned and countered and kept in holds a lot too which made this balanced and even and made those times when one of his tricks did work mean even more. McMichael was a great foil (I don't think base is quite the word here but it's in the right genus of words), patient, steadfast, solid, but also able to take it up not just one but many gears when it was time to. One of the most unique elements of this style of wrestling is that draws can be satisfying and even preferred; Walton indicated at such at the end, that it would have been a shame if either of these wrestlers had to be the loser and you sort of have to agree with him.


Dusty Rhodes/Magnum TA vs. Midnight Express NWA 9/11/86

PAS: This hits every beat you would want out this match. Dusty doing a chicken dance with a rubber chicken stuck in his pants, Cornette taking a big Baby Doll assisted pratfall, Bobby Eaton dinging his awesome punches off of Dusty's skull, Big Bubba standing around looking mean. Just a pitch perfect shtick heavy 80s wrestling match, Dusty is so great in these matches, rock star charisma, pitch perfect timing, signature spots, awesome selling, so awesome. Dusty was past his athletic prime at this point, but man did he know how to squeeze every drop out of the orange. MX are tremendous foils, especially Eaton, lays it in when they need to, but feed and bump their ass off when the time comes. This kind of tag is a perfect bit of business, and these guys did it so well. 

MD: Everything you'd want out of ten minutes of these guys. I loved the opening with the chicken flapping, Bobby's awesome cheapshot punch in the corner and his subsequent flapping, and Magnum trailing right behind him, nailing him, and doing the flapping again to a big pop. There are a few different ways to achieve perfection in wrestling but that's definitely one of them. It was followed immediately by Dusty elbow dropping the rubber chicken which was more transcendent than perfect? Once they rolled over to heat (and given how the fans were going nuts for every bit of stooging BS before it, I wasn't convinced it was going to happen in the first place) with Cornette sneaking in a racket shot on Dusty on the outside, the fans just went nuts. It was southern as it could be with Magnum emotionally drawing the ref and the MX laying in cheapshots not to keep the damage up but to keep Dusty down. His selling was amazingly sympathetic, at one point clinging to the ropes prone and in agony after a racket shot as the Dusty chants rang on neverending. The place became absolutely unglued with the hot tag with everyone on their feet. To be fair, they were popping for everything they should have been the whole match from Dusty elbow dropping a chicken to Magnum taking guys out with the racket at the end. What a show.


Riki Choshu/Tatsumi Fujinami/Kengo Kimura/Osamu Kido/Masa Saito vs. Timur Zalasov/Wahka Evloev/Victor Zangiev/Vladimir Berkovich/Salman Hashimikov NJPW 5/22/89 - GREAT

MD: If I'm figuring this right, this was three days before the big Vader vs. Hashimikov title change and it absolutely served its purpose of heating Hashimikov up for the run. In general, it's 35 minutes of guys grappling, getting positioning for suplexes, hitting those suplexes, and then using said suplexes to lock in holds. That was true with Fujinami and Zalasov who started out, with the two of them setting a good, believable pace until Fujinami broke the code by hitting his suplexes one after another instead of immediately going into a hold with them which wore Zalasov down enough for the dragon sleeper. Kimura felt like the weak link on the Japanese side. There were moments where you thought he might be able to start getting strikes in, but Eveloev caught his leg before he could get momentum going and he was just fighting to get to the ropes again for the last minute or two of their match. Kido and Zangiev came off as very evenly matched until the end when Zangiev got momentum with a series of suplexes in a row (much like Fujinami's in the first bout). Zangiev just got pro wrestling and theatrics a little more than his countrymen.

With the (2-1) stage set, the last two bouts really did the heavy lifting for what they were trying to accomplish. Berkovich targeted Choshu's arm and Choshu sold accordingly, but one thunderous lariat off the ropes and the Scorpion took him down quickly. Then, after back and forth and a struggle that matched the Fujinami and Kido bouts, Saito hit the same pattern on Hashimikov only for him to survive the Scorpion. Saito leveraged that advantage into two Saito suplexes however, but kept going for more instead of pinning him and Hashimikov got under him and dumped him on his head for the win. It felt like a big, triumphant moment, one punctuated with Vader coming out to cut a promo on him before the trophy ceremony. If I was in that crowd, I'd wonder how even Vader might be able to put Hashimikov down.

PAS: Red Bull Army are great, hairy pasty Russian dudes who will just grab and throw anyone they are wrestling. Zalasov, Evolev and Berkovich are the lesser know members of the group and all looked good although didn't leap out the way Zangiev and Hashimikov did. I did really like Evolev's quick fireman's carry into an armbar which took out Kimura. 

Zangiev is a treat to watch, his signature headscissors escape is so cool and such a smart bit of business for a guy who was clearly new to wrestling. Kido is a UWF alumnus and seemed very into working hard grappling with Zangiev. Man when Zangiev puts you away, you go away, some really great looking belly to belly throws which landed Kido awkwardly, and a cradling scissors kick takedown into a kneebar for the tap. Choshu really brought the Choshu in his fight, landing a right hand to the temple, and some big supelexes and a lariat before the tap, he seemed the least willing to play along with Red Bull, and just did him. I love Choshu and it worked. Final match felt like a final match. This was a series of matches with a lot of Saito Suplexes,, but man you can see why the move was named after him, such torque and force. Hashimikov feels like a beast and really can get explosion on his shot, he is at Saito's legs with such speed. Very excited that our friend Loss has dug out so much of the stuff and I am excited to dig in. 

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New Footage Friday: CRYBABY BOB!! SANTO! SUPER PARKA! ! DUSTY! PEDRO! FUJINAMI! INOKI!

Crybaby Bob Corby vs. Sheik Lawrence of Arabia NWA-Los Angeles 2/19/51

MD: Eight minutes of pure entertainment. Corby's definitely my kind of heel: always on, totally committed, and able to be both dangerous and credible with his offense and a complete coward when he loses advantage. He was lightning quick when taking offense, like how he was ready for Lawrence's initial somersault, but then he was just as quick to try to dive behind the ref when the tide turned. And the fans responded accordingly. A group of female fans in the front row throwing jelly beans at a heel because he tried to pull the tights to get a pin is the most 1950s Americana thing possible and a fun counterpoint to all the French Catch we've been seeing lately.

PAS: This was a blast. Corby was a really fun over the top bad guy. I could almost see him as an oafish bank robber in a Keystone Cops short. The fact that he enraged the mothers in the crowd so much that they were chucking jelly beans at him, just incredible stuff. He controlled much of the match with his antics and hard shots, but I liked the little glimpses of Sheik Lawrence we got as well. He seemed really agile, and his Argentinian Backbreaker into a airplane spin into a backslide was a nifty bit of business, someone should jack that finisher.

ER: Loved this look at the LA wrestling scene from a time where my grandpa would have been watching. Crybaby Bob Corby is getting reactions from women in the crowd from the second his name is announced, and it's cool to see a Sheik gimmick as a handsome soft cheeked babyface (as if the next 70 years of wrestling weren't about to happen). This of course is the infamous TE Lawrence, whose pro wrestling career would be made into a real crowd pleaser of a film just a decade later. Lawrence had this fun spinny pirouette bumps off of Crybaby Bob's cheapshot punches, spinning into the mat like he was in a Looney Tunes short. Bob threw several rabbit punches into the back of the Sheik's head, then would run crying and cowering to the ref any time Sheik mounted any kind of comeback. Crybaby had several early variations on Eddie Guerrero's running on his knees to hug his partner at the waist, always trying to get the ref in between he and Lawrence. The ref was a former boxer from the 30s, Cecil Payne. He was billed as 5'5" in his boxing days but he towers over these two like Sterling Hayden, so either those numbers are wrong or Bob and Sheik are 5'2 with good posture. The women of all ages kept getting more loud and upset at Bob's cowardice, and I absolutely adore stuff like that in old pro wrestling. Phil accurately described the awesomeness of Sheik's finish run; some small but strong guy like Lorcan or Gulak could pull that off convincingly and make it work in a match.


Antonio Inoki/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Dusty Rhodes/Pedro Morales NJPW 10/26/79

PAS: Fun opportunity to see two of the most iconic babyfaces in wrestling history work cheap shot heel, and they are pretty great at it. Dusty has such an iconic vibe, and it is cool that we get to see him apply that vibe to evil rather than to good. Match moves along at a nice pace and then really kicks into gear near the end, with Fujinami hitting an awesome bullet tope which sent Pedro flying into chairs. I wonder how many topes Morales took during his career? It can't be a ton, but he took it like a seasoned luchador.

MD: This was a lot of fun. There are only so many heel Dusty matches in existence and while it's a little different when he's a foreigner, he was so good in the role. I don't know if many other heel Pedro matches exist (do any?), and while the first couple of minutes of him being on the wrong end of Fujinami's headlock (which was a strange place for him to be considering he was the one working the shine for most of his career) wasn't exactly dynamic, he seemed to enjoy himself once they started to heel it up. Dusty was great at playing chickenshit and then seizing upon weakness when he saw it. When they did take over, it was by cutting off the ring, making quick tags, frequent double teams, illegal and legal, and goozling there opponent. Once Fujinami made the first hot tag to Inoki, they were just relentless, with the ref admonishing one while the other cheated away and then vice versa. The fans were hugely into this, just a constant buzz, and every time it went to the floor, the beatdown became electric. It had an almost lucha feel with the momentum shifts mattering more than the tags (even rolling hot ones) and with Dusty fouling Inoki from behind once it was obvious he'd taken control to end the first fall. For every cool thing, like Pedro's double stomp or Dusty working over Inoki's stomach through the ropes from the floor, there were certain things that looked iffy like Pedro not making it on a whip or Dusty's hilarious pile driver on the floor, but some of that was counterbalanced by the fact Dusty was doing a pile driver on the floor to get heat, you know? Good look at some legends and a rare look at two of them playing roles that they sparsely played by 79.

ER: I've seen very little heel Dusty, and I'm sure I've never seen any heel Pedro, and I'm pretty sure I'm in love. With the crowd rapturously behind Inoki and an impossibly fired up babyface performance from Fujinami, it was a perfect canvas for two super charismatic babyfaces to show off their heel side. Heel Pedro is a real revelation for me. I've seen enough hot comeback dropkick Pedro, but I've never seen "kick someone directly in the ear" Pedro. Morales was such a thug in this match, it was nuts! He was landing shots on Inoki like Inoki was some young lion, and Dusty was this super cocky opportunist sneaking shots where he could. I loved the spot where Pedro was holding Inoki in a full nelson and trying to let Dusty get in close for a cheap shot, but Inoki keeps kicking his legs out at Dusty, fighting every piece of dirty work. Everything on the floor was really electric, and the Fujinami tope is a real all timer. You can see him building up that head of steam and just letting loose, looked like he flew 12 feet. Matt is right about the outside brawling having a real lucha feel, and that tope just rubber stamped it. I'd love to see how rabid an Arena Mexico crowd would get for a match like this.


El Hijo Del Santo/Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Blue Demon Jr./Super Parka Lucha Libre Reynosa 2/2/08

MD: This was quite the spectacle. A couple of clips but nothing too worrisome. Lots of posturing post match after Wagner turns on Santo, but if you're going to have posturing peppered with post match brawling (and even a dive) these are two good guys to do it. Some overachieving here (Super Parka looked really spry for 2008) and the underachieving you'd expect (Blue Demon's offense looked really good; his bumping and selling less so). The star power carried this though. By 2008, Wagner was a victim of his own charisma and he'd ham it up to an extreme extent but that's what the crowd wanted. The crowd brawling when the rudos took over in the segunda looked good but we were missing a chunk of it due to the camera angles. It devolved first to mask pulling and then to lots of miscommunication between partners, including Santo hitting the somersault senton (pre-dive) on Wagner by accident. That led into the finish and the post-match posturing. Worth watching but something like this is just too weighed down by the sheer mass of its combatants to settle on being great.

PAS: There is no wrestler in history that enjoy watching go through his formula as much as I enjoy watching Santo. He pretty much just breaks out his greatest hits during the wrestling portion of this. match, and man do I love those hits, three great dives, his spinning headscissors, just awesome to watch. Pretty bizarre that Wagner and Demon would go on to have the MOTY 11 years after this match, as their exchanges weren't much here. Super Parka brought some brawling and bumping to the table, and the post match was cool. I didn't really buy the turn, they really should have had Santo hitting Wagner lead to the finish or something, because he just shrugs it off and does some two count exchanges before deciding he was pissed off and attacking Santo. I would be excited to see the singles match this sets up, hopefully that is sitting around somewhere too.

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New Footage Friday: NWA GREAT AMERICAN BASH TOUR 7/10/87!!

Misty Blue vs. Kat Laroux 

PAS: Surprisingly fiery 3 minute women's match. Laroux comes in with a crutch (fishing rod?) and starts pounding on Blue with it. That sets the tone and it ends up being a nasty little brawl. Blue finishes her off with a superfly splash which is a big move in 1987, and then wears her out with the same crutch.

Chris Adams/Sting vs. Barbarian/Thunderfoot #1

PAS: Weird tag, as you have a bunch of biggish name and then Thunderfoot #1. The sections where the Barbarian was in with either Sting or Adams was pretty cool, and then you had the parts with Thunderfoot. Barbarian vs. Sting was an especially neat match up, I would have liked to have seen that be a feud at some point. Barbarian has to be one of the most underused wrestlers of the 80s and 90s.

Italian Stallion vs. Black Bart

PAS: This was another fun short match. Stallion was really good at what he did, undercard dancing babyface who is going to put up a fight. Bart isn't a guy I normally have a ton of time for, but he was good here too, nice clothesline, bumped well on a monkey flip and the second rope legdrop in a heck of a finisher.

Buddy Roberts vs. Jerry Jackson 

PAS: I am not sure who Jerry Jackson was, he had the feel of WCW's Tom Magee, a roided up guy who they put in with a veteran hand to see what they could do with him. The answer here was not much, there is a reason we never heard of this guy, he was really tentative with his movement, there is a point where he triple clutches before trying a knee drop, and the stuff he hit looked really bad. Magee at least had some highspots, this guy didn't even have that. Roberts is going to do his thing, he is as professional a guy as it gets, but nothing was going to be salvaged here.

MD: I really don't have a lot to say about the undercard. The best thing was the 3 minute Laroux vs Misty Blue sprint. The Sting/Adams tag had the two of them very over in the entrances and at the finish but not during the body of the match itself. I liked Barbarian skulking around the ring weirdly at the start and the clash of the titans opening bit with him and Sting was good but it suffered from too many tags later in the card so the couldn't give it heat. Plus Thunderfoot had no credibility. Stallion vs Bart was fine but I would have rather seen them added to the Sting tag to make it a six man, maybe? I don't know what the Buddy Roberts match was about. He gave way too much if he was the face there. 

Lightning Express vs. Rick Steiner/Eddie Gilbert

PAS: Fun if kind of oddly paced match. The Express take about 75% of it, with a short face in peril section which is mostly a Rick Steiner bearhug. Steiner does have a really nice lookin bearhug though, that is a rawbone strong dude to be squeezing your ribs. Quick hot tag and a finish. Felt like it needed a couple more minutes to really work, but Gilbert is a fun bumper and I enjoy Rick Steiner.

MD: This felt more like a TV match than a house show match. It really didn't have any room to breathe. It was a good match of its kind though. Eddie was maybe a bit too over in front of this crowd. He worked like a competent manager more than anything else, which made Steiner's athletic strongman work seemed all the more potent. I liked how they went the extra mile on the transition: Gilbert drew Armstrong out of his corner which distracted the ref and let Gilbert catch Horner with a knee from the outside coming off the ropes. If they did that spot today (EDIT: Or you know, elsewhere on the card in a match with less thought), they'd ignore the ref distraction and just let the knee happen in plain sight. Most of the heat was a Steiner bear hug with no real hope spots, so there wasn't much there, but the finish was nice and chaotic, if pared down like everything else.


Big Bubba Rogers vs. Jimmy Garvin

MD: Really enjoyable 4 minute match that felt like it could have been a taping dark match main event and the fans wouldn't complain too much. You got all of the hoopla of Garvin getting his entrance, super over as a face. Bubba coming out to the theme from Peter Gunn was so perfect. WWE should have licensed that for his 99 heel run. The match was basically two minutes of Garvin throwing these great punches up at Bubba, Bubba cutting him off, Garvin getting some low blows, Bubba cutting him off, and then after Garvin's last comeback, going into a BS DQ finish that you knew was coming. It was obvious by this point just how much Bubba got it, just in the way he paced things and how he would really milk the selling/bumping on the low blows, etc.

PAS: This was a bunch of fun, super babyface Garvin isn't someone I have seen a ton of, but man he was great. Loved the double strap drop on the suspenders and the energy he had. Bubba had to be 70 pounds heavier then he was during his Bossman days and he really used that girth menacingly, but still had really surprising agility.


Michael Hayes/Terry Gordy vs. MOD Squad 

MD: The first half of this didn't even feel like wrestlers going up against broomsticks. It felt like wrestlers working with the crowd with no opponents at all. Some of that was the handheld cropping which would cut out the Mods entirely. A lot of it was just Hayes (and to a lesser degree Gordy) hamming it up. When the Mods had a chance, they stooged and pinballed valiantly, but they almost didn't have to and this would have been exactly the same. Amusingly, they used the same knee to the back transition but they did it right in front of the ref. The back half of the match was actually a match, with the Mods looking fine in control and Hayes working well from underneath and really engaging the crowd. Amusingly, when you watch a whole card like this, it wasn't just the second knee to the back transition but the third "heel goes to the top" transition so far. But this was a perfectly fine look at the 87 babyface Freebirds doing their thing in front of a less familiar crowd.


Dr. Death Steve Williams vs. Dick Murdoch 

PAS: This was unsurprisingly excellent. Both guys come in with casts on their arms, so it is a battle of who can wreck the other guys arm the most. Williams does this really cool almost torture rack armbar where he hangs Murdoch over Dr. Death's back by his arm. Eddie Gilbert is at ringside for Murdoch and keeps cheap shotting Williams and allowing Murdoch to hit his arm with a cane. We had some great Murdoch stooging where Williams punched him, Murdoch fell into his arms, and Williams propped him up to punch him again. Finish was really cool too with Murdoch flying off the top rope directly into a Williams elbow, felt like a Misawa finish. I really liked how this built from a body part match into a bomb fest. A real hidden gem.

MD: The injury angle where Murdoch took out Doc's arm was in May. The TV match with Doc's comeback was in June. This was July and felt like a more refined version of the TV match that had less color and lower stakes. Doc had a cast that he wasn't supposed to use but that played into the finish. He was as dynamic as you'd expect, both in the way he worked over Murdoch's arm early in in his comeback attempts (even just trying to dart around the ring on his knees to get Murdoch after the initial shot to his arm). The counterpoint was that the early shine armwork was all sorts of loose and weird and nothing actually looked like it ought to hurt, but he was so enthusiastic and Murdoch sold so big that no one was really going to care. You get house show Murdoch in the stretch, which wasn't at all lazy, but was ridiculously over the top in the stooging about. But it's not 1985 or 1995 or whatever. It's 2020 and we're all stuck in our houses and stooging Dick Murdoch is the joy we all need.

Midnight Express (Bobby Eaton/Stan Lane) vs. Ron Garvin/Barry Windham

PAS: This incarnation of the MX was such a fun act, you had dancing Kung Fu Stan Lane, the always amazing Bobby Eaton, Cornette heat seeking on the outside and Big Bubba standing around looking menacing. Windham I though was kind of just there, but Garvin was a blast. He is a guy with some big exciting spots, and he knows how to time his headscissors or big punch for the maximum pop. I think I like the Lane MX more then the Condrey MX, Lane is such an amusing dipshit, his little dancing or strip mall karate adds so much character to the match. I loved him squaring up against Garvin's boxing stance, only to let discretion be the better part of valor, and bailing out.

MD: The difference between this match and comparable WWF Heel-in-peril matches from the same time is how many tricks they pull out. It's not just endless armwork control. It's one elaborate spot after the next and one gimmick after the next. They'll do a blind tag where Barry will get out of the way and Stan will have to leapfrog his own partner only to walk into a slam. Eaton will lose his pants and work for half a minute before realizing it. Bubba will get involved as part of the heel miscommunication that almost brought them to blows (the second of such spots; I'm surprised they didn't do one with Cornette too). Bobby will have the advantage over Garvin for a second but he'll come right back with a great headscissors takeover. When Stan finally takes over (and that takes about three steps, too - a missed elbow drop, a superkick to the gut, and Barry catching Stan's foot but Stan getting him with the other one), the Midnights start dancing victoriously. After all of that, they really needed another minute or two on top though. I love that Barry, even at his size, could still believably go through a smaller guys legs for the hot tag. He was like Dustin in that he could hide his height when he had to work from beneath. Garvin had the instinctive timing of a folk hero. He got more mileage out of pulling Eaton's pants down than most people would get with three minutes of elaborate rope running spots. For all of his eventual flaws, Hebner's timing and attitude in finding the hat in the middle of the ring really added something to the finish. Plus, the last person I was expecting to see during this match was Pat Roach! I'll take a short cut in the match for him.


Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard/Ric Flair/Lex Luger vs. The Road Warriors/Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff

PAS: What a delight this match was. Watching this you really see the charisma which is missing in today's wrestling. Is there anyone even as charismatic as Nikita in the WWE? Much less someone like Ric Flair or Dusty Rhodes. This match was all fireworks, big moments of the heels bumping, including Tully and Flair feeding into Animal press slams, and Flair taking an atmospheric high backdrop. There is a moment where Dusty tags in and he elbow smashes all four guys at once, so much fun to watch Dusty shuck, jive and jiggle. We get a couple of moments of heat on the faces, which leads to a couple of crazy hot tags. The crowd is on their feet for the entire match and it was really easy to get into the swing of things. Such a thrill to watch.

MD: Just an iconic match, with a hot crowd, where every interaction felt larger than life. The early image of the Horsemen on the turnbuckles and the faces standing tall in their corner will stick with me. Dusty in a circle with the heels launching bionic elbows and double punches is something they could get away with on a house show, but it's also the purest distillation of Dusty possible and I think it elated everyone in a two mile radius. The spot where Arn backs Animal towards a neutral corner so Tully can run up the apron and dive up the top only to get caught and set up an Arn elbow drop is one of the best possible transitions to heel control I've seen in ages, even if they didn't actually use it as such. The big problem with heel-in-peril, by the way, is that it doesn't have the same value as face-in-peril. There it's all build and payoff. There's much less value in a payoff which is the heels taking over, so all the build gets sort of squandered. There's value in a shine in general but usually only so much. Animal becomes vulnerable with the very next spot as he takes a bump out of the ring off a missed clothesline and then gets slammed, but there was really no reason not to let Arn's elbow drop be the move that turned the tide instead. That's all I'm saying. I did like Animal working from underneath as he kept going for the tag but was swarmed at from every angle due to the sheer number of heels. The second bit of heat on dusty was good too and built to a hot tag for Nikita and a that finish was nice and chaotic. You got exactly what you wanted out of this one.

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New Footage Friday: NEW OMNI 11/6/83

Brad Armstrong vs. Chief Joe Lightfoot

MD: This was a weird one. Lightfoot wasn't necessarily a heel, but he ended up playing that de facto role here. It just took a little too long for him to get there given the structure. Lots of headlocks early on. That can work if they're full of struggle, and they were, but it only works if guy fighting from underneath has some heat and obviously he didn't here. Lightfoot always looked pretty good when I've seen him in Portland and he had good stuff here once he took over. Everything had a snap, especially the mares, which came at an odd, satisfying angle. He's the sort of guy that would have made a good FIP teaming with Wahoo or Youngblood. Once it got going, it was good, but this was the wrong match for the headlocks, especially considering just how well the same stuff was done in the main event.

ER: This one had some long headlock moments that kept threatening to take me out of the match, but execution, a hot finish, and other things kept pulling me in. It went a bit long for what it overall accomplished, but I did like what we wound up with. Armstrong can work some compelling headlocks and I do dig seeing sequences bases around headlocks and headscissors. Joe Lightfoot has a weird way of getting into position off Irish whips, I kind of love it and hate it. Lightfoot would get real close to the ropes when shooting Brad in, so Brad would smack into him immediately after hitting the ropes; it was close enough that it didn't felt like Armstrong could get any momentum recoiling off the ropes, so the hits never looked as tough as they could have looked, but it also makes sense from a physics perspective that Lightfoot and Armstrong would catch each other off guard and make a collision more likely (but it still feels like he was getting too close). Lightfoot has some simple offense that ends with impact, getting nice reactions from things like legdrops. And the finish is really hot, because Armstrong is a guy who is going to make small packages and roll-ups look like something that can finish a match. A major feature of the match was establishing that we got a real primo front row wrestling audience. The best fans are sitting at the left side of the screen, including an old lady yelling at the action, an older old lady next to her, and a younger girl looking bored and cool while kicking her legs over two chairs and focusing on a lollipop. 80s territory feuds added so much color to broadcasts.

Ron Garvin vs. Jake Roberts

MD: 1983 Georgia Jake is the Jake we were always promised. He was amazing here, absolutely amazing. The way he uses his body to always make sure that he's putting a hand or foot on the ropes and never kicks out is just a step above, as was the corner spot. Let's go over the corner spot. Garvin had him in the corner. The ref was trying to force a clean break. Jake couldn't capitalize. Therefore, he went and whispered to Ellering. They repeated it and this time, Ellering swiped at Garvin's foot and it still didn't work. I know that doesn't sound much, but it was a ton of set up for a spot that wasn't even going to work out for the heel. No one ever puts that much thought into something unless it's ultimately going to work. Moreover, the finish centered on the corner again so it all paid off in the end. Anyway, all of that was great as was every single punch Garvin threw and, of course, Jake's reactions to the time being counted down as the belt was only on the line for the first ten minutes. Again, it's the Jake we were always promised.

ER: This was Jake using some of his peak powers, a guy who really knew how to conduct a 10 minute TV match. Jake is absolutely massive (I don't know why his size started standing out to me these past several years, but he really intimidatingly towers over nearly everyone while still knowing how to get beat. Garvin is a guy I always look forward to seeing and this was the match that excited me most on paper. And it was a concise, wonderful version of exactly what I wanted. Garvin put over the height difference by hopping up half the time he was throwing hard individual right hands at the top of Jake's head, landing big close fists to the head with Jake leaning forehead first into every one. We get some great moments around this punching (and a significant portion of this match is punching), like Roberts getting put down hard with several straight punches, kicking out at 1, rushing to his feet and then immediately falling straight back; and Garvin set up these match long leaping punches to eventually build to a great leaping headbutt, leaving his feet to just smack heads with Jake. 

Garvin always comes off tough as hell, the best possible version of Da Crusher, dropping nothing but knees and elbows and fists. Jake was at his slithery best, adding personality to things as small as stepping into the ring (the moment where Jake steps over and slides over the top turnbuckle felt like a dance instructor doing a chair step routine for her students), and the way he can subtly keep his same demeanor while projecting dominant and dominated is really special. The moments he was beating down Garvin were great, and the moments where he is getting walloped were great, and Roberts is the same guy with important differences through both. The cheating finish is great, and Jake is one of those great cheating wrestlers who knows just how confidently to act after clotheslining your wrist tape into an opponents' throat and hitting that DDT. This was all I wanted.

PAS: Totally class match. Jake is such a master at timing out a match. He slows it down and then builds to these crashing heights. Garvin is such an explosive wrestler, and Jake orchestrates those explosions. When Garvin finally throws hands and lands the big headbutt, it is like the drum solo in "In the Air Tonight." Loved the heel sneaking in the throat thrust and DDT to sneak under the clock and get the pin.

Jimmy Valiant vs. Great Kabuki

MD: The first minute was legitimately great. The last minute was legitimately very good. Valiant grabbing the mic, threatening Hart, and then immediately living up to the threat, was such good folk hero stuff. He was lightning for the first minute with these awesome awkward clumsy skull-shattering forearms. The last minute where he brought out the chain and just pinballed his fist against both guys was also really good. There was too much BS on this card, up and down, but generally the talent overcame it. Everything between the beginning and the end was just okay, but overall, this was just primal stuff. Someone should have written a song about this match based on thirty year old memories of being in the crowd as a kid.

ER: I dug this. There's plenty of nothing happening, but plenty of great stuff happening. I'm not really a Valiant guy, while also recognizing that Jimmy Valiant is pro wrestling as fuck and that makes me a Valiant guy. He's definitely more of a "the feel of wrestling" guy rather than an execution guy, and that's cool. Wrestling ain't pretty and Valiant looks clumsy and dangerous at once. Valiant dodging so that Kabuki ends up misting his side is some excellent stuff, but I'm also a sucker for claw holds and we got several Kabuki clawholds. The match would gift us a minute (or two) headlock or clawhold, and then it would gift us something genuinely special like those two bumps Kabuki took off Valiant shoulderblocks. Honestly they could have done anything they wanted in this match, they could have sat on the mat in the loosest chinlocks you've ever seen, and been 100% redeemed by Kabuki getting absolutely upended by two shoulderblocks, bouncing off Valiant's shoulders like a kid getting bounced off the Blob in Heavyweights. Kabuki was taking those kind of bumps where you couldn't know how you're going to land, and it happening in a match like this made me love it even more.

Abdullah the Butcher vs. Buzz Sawyer

MD: As much as I love '83 Jake, the most interesting thing in this footage has been babyface Sawyer. It feels like one of the great turns of all time that has been virtually lost to history. We saw him teaming with Brett vs. the Roadies and in a match vs. Dibiase before. We haven't gotten the Thanksgiving tag with Rich yet though. This was right at the moment of the turn. I hadn't been sure it happened yet. In fact there's a promo where he calls out both Dusty AND Abby with Ellering with him that builds to this. When he just appears out of the corner of the screen like a bullet, it's magic though. The crowd goes absolutely nuts. Eventually, in this run, he'll go up against Leduc and the Sheik, but this is the first of these clash of the monsters. It's great. The match itself didn't go long but they just keep fighting and fighting and fighting, with Abdullah being the one to try to withdraw and Sawyer just leaping at him. It all ends up with what had to be the most triumphant moment of Sawyer's professional career up til that point, when he slides back to the ring, hits the kneeling mad dog stance, and just bathes in the adoration of a crowd that wanted his head only a few weeks before.

ER: Buzz Sawyer is such perfect pro wrestling. The horseshoe hair with an all time great wrestling build, a real crazy presence, the perfect brawling babyface who can bleed. He's a guy who territory fans love, whose case as a legend only grows with the release of unearthed footage. Vintage footage findings have raised Sawyer's stock as much as anyone's, and it's smoking performances like this one that will continue to do so. The "fighting bleeding babyface who doesn't want to stop fighting" is a role Sawyer can play to perfection, and this match was a total messy tangle, the kind of fight that goes on just as long on either side of the bell. Abby is a presence that I love, and Sawyer crashes through this thing with amazing intensity, getting old moms in the crowd behind him and cheering for him to bash Abby in the head again, even if it means him taking more shots himself. This has no finesse, and the parts of this I loved the most were the ugly, rolling on the dirty floor bleeding on each other moments. This is the kind of thing absent from major platform wrestling cards (you know, if we aren't considering Coacalco or Zona 23 to be major wrestling platforms).

PAS: This was really great, one of my favorite Abby matches ever and I am a guy who loves Abby. Abdullah is this slow moving movie monster wrecking everything in his path, so when you put a pinball bumper and and pace pusher against him, it works really well. Buzz kept coming forward and getting repelled, dusts himself off only to get repelled again. When he finally gets the upper hand it this cathartic moment for the entire crowd. That ending with both guys brawling and bleeding over the entire crowd only for Buzz to return to the ring as a concurring hero. That is just wrestling perfection. God bless the network for giving me all of this Mad Dog.

Road Warriors vs. Brett Wayne Sawyer/Dusty Rhodes

MD: I can assure you that if I was a ten year old in this crowd in 1983 (instead of being two and in New England), Brett Sawyer would have been my favorite wrestler. He was the scrappiest guy, just a never say die babyface with a lot of good daring looking stuff. Dusty was Dusty and he always stood out, even on the same card with '83 Valiant. I like how giving the early Road Warriors were, because they still came off as completely dangerous but it made for better matches. I liked the focus on Sawyer's back but they needed to build to better hope spots to keep the bearhugs interesting. I think Dusty shouldn't have gotten the slams in during the shine because then they meant less when he did them after the hot tag. The finish of these last few matches were all pretty weird and this one seemed to be about Dusty getting DQ'd for breaking up a pin. What will stick with me here though was Buzz coming back out to save his brother.

ER: This was a really terrific performance from Sawyer, a guy who - like his brother - has also had his stock raised through new footage finds. He reads as such an undersized guy in matches like this, but his shots pack a wallop and occasionally he shows flashes of the same kind of strength possessed by his brother. Dusty grabbing a knucklelock only to have Brett crawl between his legs to pop Animal is a moment that could come off silly, but since Sawyer sticks the punch it works great. Dusty was at his silky charismatic best, moving around the ring with impossible charm, and that Sawyer turns in such a compelling babyface performance while teaming with one of the most charismatic humans of all time is a true testament to Sawyer's skills. I thought he made great work out of the bearhugs, and I fully agree with Matt that early Road Warriors, far more generous than they would become just a couple years later, where incredibly fun. Road Warriors attacking Sawyer's arms was some nasty business, the two of them and Ellering dropping heavy legs on both arms. And it lead to perhaps the great moment of the match, which was Buzz coming out and Tasmanian Deviling his way quickly through the heels. Dusty gets a comeback blow against Ellering, Jake the Snake is out helping other heels, and Buzz protecting his brother came off like some of the most effective wrestling relative drama.

Ted DiBiase vs. Tommy Rich

MD: I wasn't really excited about this coming in. We've seen some lackluster heel Dibiase during these footage drops. This was next level stuff though. Dibiase was replacing a no-showing (or not booked, depending on who you ask) Race, so the crowd was robbed of a NWA championship match. They made it up by going at triple speed and getting mean and bloody. I can't say enough about the opening headlock exchanges. They were working it so hard while really entertainingly going in and out of them. Dibiase constantly went for the tights, until Pistol Pez (the special ref for the title match who just kept the booking) ultimately stopped him. Some of the best 80s opening headlock spots you'll ever see. When Dibiase ultimately took over (with just enough of him earning it and capitalizing on mistakes to be really satisfying), he was extra mean, probably the meanest I've ever seen him, with goozles and pounding and eventually opening Rich up and just trying to get as much blood as possible. The hope spots were equally satisfying though obviously the finish (likely Dibiase getting DQ'd for not stopping his assault in the corner despite Pez pushing him off repeatedly) was more confusing than effective and the post-match brawl probably shouldn't have been on the same card as the Abby vs Sawyer match. The action we did get was great and it was certainly a way to escalate the feud and build towards the loser leaves town match, even though they hadn't planned for this specific encounter in the overall booking.

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WWF 305 Live: Festus! Dusty! Akeem! Big Show!

Akeem vs. Dusty Rhodes WWF Wrestling Challenge 11/19/89 - EPIC

ER: Damn. A truly legendary showdown, a literal DREAM match! How often have we ever had the reigning American Dream vs. the reigning African Dream? Showdowns between Dreams are a rarity. This match here was everything. It was every single thing. Who among us knew when I started this project that it would already yield fat boy perfection a mere 3 posts into the project's existence? We are truly blessed. Dusty had the best theme music in wrestling, and there was nobody in wrestling who could move like Dusty to his music. That alone makes this era Dusty extremely worthwhile. Akeem was such a big giant goon, Richard Moll who got fat, and such an awesome wrestler. Dusty and Akeem have a dance off and it's exactly what I wanted out of my pro wrestling at that precise moment. Dusty had the best moves, and if this wasn't even a match at all and instead just Dusty shaking his ass while Akeem sways his hips and swims through air, this was going to be the greatest. Is Dusty the greatest dancing babyface of all time? Watch him here and you might think so. The best part is, outside of the dancing, is we get two huge dudes clonking each other in the head! Akeem bumps around for Dusty, throws some great shots of his own, yells at the not-yet-named Sapphire, attacks Dusty after getting counted out and bumps big to the floor again. This was all about movement, big guys moving with rhythm, Dusty an absolute legend.

The Big Show vs. Festus WWE Smackdown 1/30/09 - GREAT

ER: We as a people have collectively forgot about how great the brief Festus singles run was, and this will maybe remind you. This was not even 3 minutes, but this was everything that anyone could have wanted. This was a condensed sprint that opens with Festus trying to pick up show for a big double leg, getting him off the mat, and then getting absolutely SPIKED into the mat on a DDT. I mean Festus' head was tucked and he landed bad. He sold it like my parent's cat when it ran straight into the freshly cleaned sliding glass door. Both guys threw big shots here, like Big Show's cool punches buried into Festus' gut, or Festus getting caught off the ropes with an overhand chop right to the throat. The best strikes in the match were Festus unloading two rights and a left out of the corner, really cracking Show with nice shots, before...well, they attempted a tornado DDT, and this is arguably the most combined weight we've ever seen doing a tornado DDT spot. Show breaks out his awesome alley oop facebuster, and Festus really whips his melon into the mat. Big Show's Big Punch sends us home just shy of 3 awesome minutes. Festus, baby!!


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE!

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New Footage Friday: Outlaws, Ladd, Piratenkampf, Kawada, Ishikawa, Shinzaki, Watts, Andersons, Thunderbolt

Dick Murdoch/Dusty Rhodes vs. Sailor Art Thomas/Ernie Ladd AWA 12/16/72

MD: This was on the Luce footage that was out there, but I haven't seen it and it's a classic match/angle. I'm pretty sure there's a reality where we talk about Dusty Rhodes as one of the great heatseeking heels up there with Buddy Rose and Negro Casas and Tully and Piper and whoever else. You watch a match like this and you can't help but feeling robbed of hundreds of matches where Dusty was just pissing off the crowd. He had this way of bobbing in and out, of taking up space and real estate in parts of the ring he shouldn't be in, only to dash back out to the apron. He was a disruptive force. Murdoch's great here too, but we've seen more of that. Maybe he spits a little more here, but he's the Murdoch we know already. Ladd was an amazing monster face. Thomas was pretty much all bearhugs but he was just about fifty at this point. I assume it worked for the crowd. As good at the turn at the end was and as great as conniving heel Ladd ultimately is, it's a bit like Dusty. It's a shame we don't have years and years more to see the other side.

PAS: The match was clipped up enough that it was hard to get a sense of it as a whole (we jump right to Thomas and Ladd arguing, without getting a sense why for example), but we did get to see a bunch of cool moments and performances. It is a real trip to see Dusty do all of his Dusty mannerisms as a heel, and it works just as well. Lots of bearhugs and headlock punches by the face team, but these are a great pair of stooging heels to be placed in headlocks and bearhugs. Man I wish I had a time machine and video camera to capture everything for all four guys.


Ole/Gene Anderson vs. Bill Watts/Thunderbolt Patterson GCW 6/24/77

MD: So here's something. We've gotten our hands on a lot of 70s territory wrestling over the last five years, be it Houston or what the Network has dropped, or new Memphis or dusted off CWF or what. As such, we're always able to reevaluate certain notions. One notion I always had was that old school traditional tag team wrestling was all the Arn/Tully mode: cutting off the ring, grabbing a hold, working a limb, distracting the ref, doubleteaming, the grindier version of the Southern tag, I guess. I think we've found that hasn't always been the case. It wasn't usually quite so locked down. With the Andersons, however, it was, and it's telling, then, how much they manage to stand out in that regard. I'm not going to go out on a limb and say 100% that they were more the exception than the rule, but relative to a lot of what I've seen lately, they felt exceptional here. There's not a lot else to say about this. Thunderbolt looked better than he would a few years down the line. Watts was Watts, portraying himself as tough as nails John Wayne and getting over for it. The finish was such BS that you could see the cops getting into position before it happened. They could have gone with the visual pin counted by Watts and just had it be a DQ after that, but instead they let the heels go over. The sound on this was virtually non-existent but I bet the heat would have been amazing.


Franz van Buyten vs. Frank Merckx (Belgium 1984)

MD: Sometimes you watch a wrestler for the first time and that ends up just being your image of him forever. That was the case with van Buyten. I love the Andre/Van Buyten/Ali Bey vs Isamu Teranishi/Rusher Kimura/Thunder Sugiyama IWE match from 72. It's just this amazing lengthy comedy match where van Buyten comes across as the most put upon guy in the world, a Belgian Basil Fawlty of pro wrestling. I've seen spatterings of matches with him since, usually from at least ten years later, and they're much more on brand Segunda Caida fare.

This is right down our alley. A Piratenkampf match (which if you're not familiar is a combination flag/chain match, something pretty unique to Europe). A huge chunk of this is Merckx choking or decimating van Buyten's face with the chain with Franz mounting heated comebacks only to end up back in that spot. If you're going to work hope spots in and out of a hold, having the hold be your face getting torn apart by a chain is pretty compelling. They have time to really let this build and lots of "outs" for believable comebacks as Merckx needs to allow distance to get the flag. It means when the actual comeback comes and van Buyten gets to bloody Merckx, the fans are more than ready for it.

I have no idea how much of this exists, waiting to be uncovered, but it does feel like one of those underexposed troves.

ER: Ah yes, the guy in 1984 Belgium who was taping an old man pirate battle. I love the feel of all this, tons of real grappling struggle, with the big bonus of a heavy chain being raked across eyeballs, noses, and gums. The crowd is absolutely on fire for this, and I really loved the cutaways to the crowd, filled with Belgian children and teenagers all going wild for two older guys bloodying each other up with a chain. It's so wonderful to me that this idea of pro wrestling is a form of entertainment that somehow was picked up and accepted all across the world, a real touchstone that people of all upbringings could respond to and get excited for. It's 25 minutes of two guys choking each other with a chain in a violent capture the flag battle, and boys and girls of all ages are hot for it. Merckx is a guy I've never seen before and for all I know I'm being tricked into spelling his name wrong. But he sure knows how to rearrange van Buyten's face with a chain, and we get some great handheld closeups of the chain smashing across the bridge of van Buyten's nose, ripping across his mouth, and great shots of Merckx throwing hammerfist blows with that chain wrapped around his fist. A lot of this match is basically in a phone booth, two guys locked together trying to choke each other to death with a chain. There aren't even many bumps, with one notably big one that sends van Buyten over the ropes to the floor, and I do wish we got more striking, as the blood and strikes don't really come until we're 20 minutes in. But that final visual was fantastic pro wrestling, with van Buyten climbing the buckles and reaching for that flag, holding the flag pole in a pose like he was planting the flag at Iwo Jima, while Merckx lies on the mat trying to pull him down off the top. I absolutely adore these snapshots into a pro wrestling culture that I didn't know existed.

PAS: There is something so grimy about a chain being raked across someones eyes with this yellowed film quality. The whole thing is kind of icky in the best possible way. Merkx is a burly barrel chested guy and makes this whole thing feel like a fist fight, this is van Buyten's match, and he has a bunch of interesting ways to work within the oddball gimmick. Actually climbing a pole with a chain is cooler visually then trying to touch turnbuckles, and I really liked how van Buyten used leverage and the finish was really exciting. Loved this, and Europe is really an undiscovered mine.


Toshiaki Kawada/Maunakea Mossman vs. Jinsei Shinzaki/Yuki Ishikawa AJPW 7/11/00

PAS: This is the only time Ishikawa and Kawada ever faced off, and you get the sense in an alternate universe this would be an all time legendary match up. It is really fun to see the indy team slotted into an All Japan tag, Shinzaki toned down a bunch of flourishes and really went in on uppercuts and leg whips, he and Kawada have some really fun exchanges, including Shinzaki doing his praying top rope shoulder block directly into a Kawada face kick. Shinzaki and Ishikawa sensibly tried to keep Mossman in the ring and went after his knee, Ishikawa had some very cool leglocks, although he left himself open to a Kawada jumping kneedrop so nasty that I imagine it made him nostalgic for Ikeda. I would have liked to see a bit more of an aggro finishing run to make it a real classic, but what a fun treat to show up randomly like this.

ER: Man, Phil is really underselling that this is the only time Ishikawa and Mossman ever faced off. I think a bunch of us were aware this match happened, because Ishikawa really only worked All Japan a handful of times, and knowing there was potentially a match opposite Kawada was just a cruel tease. And now we have it and it's still kind of a cruel tease. It's a long match (nearly 25 minutes, even with some clipping in a couple spots) but doesn't really ramp up to much, with the last few minutes not really feeling any different than things that happened in the first 10 minutes; and there were some odd stumbles or miscommunications or power plays, like Kawada popping right up from a Shinzaki powerbomb, causing Shinzaki to start selling giving a powerbomb, and then Kawada notices Shinzaki is selling for some reason so then kinda just sits down. So there were some awkward moments. And, Yuki Ishikawa is in this thing far less than the other three guys, including a really long stretch at the finish where he was just kinda watching from the floor after getting dumped there by Kawada minutes before. So, the match has issues, it isn't great, but I still would have watched it with a smile had I known all of those things ahead of time. It was totally worth it to see the moments of Kawada and Ishikawa squaring off and rattling jawbones. Ishikawa has such powerful elbow strikes, these short unwavering blows right to the jaw, and Kawada is a guy who is going to react great after getting his jaw rattled. I liked Team Indy working over Mossman's leg, though I wish it would have gone somewhere more interesting. Mossman is a guy with some cool kicks, and clearly those kicks were going to happen no matter what, and I loved Ishikawa eventually catching one at chest level and dropping down into a kneebar. Kawada had several fun bits with Shinzaki, my favorite being him doing an absolutely all time Kawada sell after taking an enziguiri and then stumbling slowly backwards halfway across the ring before plopping on his butt. It's my favorite Kawada sell, and this is one of the best ways I've seen him utilize it.

MD: Coming in behind Phil and Eric here, this was NOT the only time that Shinzaki and Kawada faced each other. That said, what's going to stick with me on this one months from now, past Shinzaki and Ishikawa absolutely demolishing Mossman's leg, are the interactions between the two. Yeah, that's not why we looked forward to this. That's not why we put this at the top of the list. There was just this amazing dissonance to it, as if the existed in a slightly different reality. Kawada had this tendency of just stopping before Shinzaki was about to land something. With Kawada, you have to suspend disbelief far less than with other wrestlers (that's true with Ishikawa too, for instance, which was part of the appeal). That's the long and short of it, right? That's one reason we all love these guys. That's why I sort of get short circuited by the mid-late 90s AJPW when it gets just a little too kickout/excess heavy. With Shinzaki on the other hand, there's an additional level of suspension necessary. Everything is a bit more stylized and affectated. That, in and of itself, is fine. It can be great. If you're willing to go along for the ride, it can be a hell of a ride. Kawada rightfully wasn't willing to go along for the ride and that made for a bunch of great little spots of him just accepting no nonsense, even as Shinzaki kept going back to the well. That part ended up way more enjoyable than you'd think.

Overall though, the match itself was problematic at times. It was a lot of the same, even with the limbwork. The clips meant that we lost a transition, which is the truest sin of all clips. I don't feel like the finishing stretch had enough to it. It was feels like a great find, just maybe one that wasn't as great for the reasons we were hoping for.

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