Found Footage Friday: BRAZOS~! CASAS~! LOVE MACHINE~ BEYER~! LUBICH~!

Dick Beyer vs. Bronco Lubich NWA Upstate 1962

MD: Just watching them get introduced, I half wondered if this really was Beyer. We couldn't get close enough to see the nose and the frame from a distance seemed a bit off even for the youngest Beyer I would have seen, but no, within the first few seconds, he gets Lubich in a full nelson and repeatedly slams his head in the top rope and that was enough to convince me. I'd continued to be convinced as the match went on. He wrestled with incredible confidence and presence and ingenuity and imagination. That's Dick Beyer.

He was given the Destroyer gimmick this year so this was towards the end of him wrestling unmasked. Lubich was longer in the tooth and may have even been more managerial. They mention a birthday cake at the start (a birthday cake angle in 1962!) and Poffo (presumably Angelo) as allied with Lubich but hard to say exactly what was going on there. If it's documented somewhere I'd love to hear about it. This was all about Beyer having his way with Lubich though, with Bronco finding ways to get some shots in at the margins. For instance, Beyer dropped him into the leg nelson (with quickfire legwhacks) but right on the rope break, Bronco was on him. Or Beyer got him with an airplane spin but when he went for the second, Lubich grabbed the rope and landed on him. Or after a Giant Swing, Lubich rolled out and was able to ambush Beyer and drive his head into the side of the ring.

Lubich was credibly tough but Beyer looked like the best wrestler in the world and kept on him, finally beating him with a rolling bodyscissors sort of deal and a dropkick. Just a great look at Beyer in 62 right before he'd become the Destroyer.

ER: I wonder if there were any Sell The Arm fans in 1962 Buffalo who were upset at the ways Lubich never paid much mind to Dick Beyer standing and stomping and dropping knees onto his arm and shoulder. Some smart guy in Buffalo rolling his eyes after Dick Beyer gets run the length of the ring apron and flies off into the ringpost, because Bronco was in the ring holding up both arms instead of rubbing his shoulder. Maybe that man existed, because if Dick Beyer was moving like this in 1962 Buffalo then I'd believe anything. Beyer was so far ahead of his time and moved like no other American wrestler, so quick and crafty while built like a spark plug, an acrobat with thump. I love the desperate little ways Lubich tries to stop the onslaught, with his only chance briefly shifting his weight by grabbing for the ropes. If he wasn't a manager, it was a great "wrestling like a manager" performance against one of the coolest to do it. 

Los Brazos vs. Jaque Mate/Dusty Wolfe/The Viking Monterrey 1992

MD: I have no idea who the Viking is. I know it's our job to figure this stuff out for you but no idea. Past one fun staggering bump into the corner off a Porky headbutt, we don't really care about him anyway. Dusty Wolfe is doing his best Jimmy Jack Funk impression with a silly mask but we don't really care about him either in this one. We're laser focused on El Brazo and Jaque Mate, because right from the get go, Mate opens Brazo up and never, ever looks back.

Brazo spends a chunk of this out on the floor bleeding buckets. They seem almost reluctant to put the camera on him before he towels off which is something I'm not sure I've ever really seen in lucha from this era. That's how much blood we're talking about. And while Mate's happy to beatdown the other Brazos with his compatriots, he makes sure to come back out to do more damage. At one point he goes for a chairshot and a fan puts a chair up to try to block it. They even play music to try to rouse the Brazos.

Eventually, Viking tosses El Brazo back in and he goes wild, crashing across the ring, rubbing his own blood on his fist to use it as a weapon, tearing at Mate's mask and then opening him up on the outside. It's a great Brazos comeback but ends abruptly with a Mate foul that the refs miss and the rudos taking it. Great bloody mayhem here.

ER: What a world. Exhausted on a Friday night, I throw this on and am taken away to another world where somebody's 1992 Monterrey tape survived and we get a perfect color distorted tracking lined masterpiece that may as well have been from another dimension. This is a bloody match even within the annals of bloody lucha matches, with Brazo's entire face and torso covered in blood maybe two minutes in, and a long primera beatdown where Porky and Oro also get busted open. It's an all time bizarre rudo team as Jaque Mate recruits two real American goobers - longtime WWF job guy Dusty/Dale Wolfe and another guy doing a truly great job Bad Brody impression - and they all punch the shit out of Los Brazos. I actually liked The Viking as a poor man's Sylvester Terkay, and I thought Wolfe did a real good job punching and scraping away at Porky. Wolfe's punches to bust Porky open were on point and he kept doing a bunch of cool things to work over a cut, like scraping his boot eyelets across Porky's face. 

But yes, the real show is the brutal beating El Brazo takes at the hands of Mate, and the way the crowd physically rallied behind a man completely covered in blood. Men in white dominant polo shirts are coming to Brazo's aid as he's trying to catch his breath and maintain his balance, and then things get surreal when they start playing music mid-match. With the hazy video and choppy tracking, it feels like another channel is bleeding over into ours. Brazo is bleeding out and suddenly an angelic choir is playing over the top of it and it elevates everything to high art. Porky and Oro were great at taking secondary beatings throughout, knowing their brother was the show but not content with hanging back and out of the way. Porky was still in there taking backdrops and getting worked over by both Americans. The Brazos comeback in the Segunda, with a primera dragged out long enough to build that anticipation, was shockingly brief and even more shockingly ended in a Brazos loss. We never get the full satisfaction of Wolfe or Viking getting busted open, even if we get Porky and Oro throwing headbutts that look like they should open cuts. As we eagerly await these American goons getting squashed in various ways by Porky, Jaque knees Brazo in the balls for an undignified loss, music still playing, his brothers confused. Now we need another 30+ year old Monterrey tape to surface that has Los Brazos' bloody revanche.   

Love Machine/Apolo Dantes/La Fiera vs. Negro Casas/Hijo del Solitario/Stuka Monterrey 

MD: Stuka was a replacement for Black Magic. Everyone else was fine in this one, but this was the Casas vs Love Machine show. Two dynamic, imaginative wrestlers, who knew how to mug and make the most of things. You always see something new with both of them and they were matched up here. We start with Casas beating down Love Machine with a table, including jumping on it repeatedly from the apron with it on top of him. Later on, Love Machine gets some great revenge, taking Casas's head and driving it down into the ground from the apron before chasing him into the crowd. And then towards the end, we get the spot that closes the circle, with Love Machine basically punching the table towards Casas. It's just a joy to watch these guys do their thing. Completely iconic stuff.

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WCW Worldwide 8/15/98

Stevie Ray vs. Todd Griffith

ER: We get a lot of matches on deep cut WCW where the winner is never in doubt, but we don’t often get an outright steamrolling. But then some guy named Todd Griffith opens the show, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this guy before. He’s a Kid Kash looking guy with long hair (later during the match Schiavone says that Griffith hasn’t been able to do much, and Larry says “well he’s got a full head of hair!”), and Stevie Ray worked amusingly stiff in a quick 2 minute match. Stevie throws some nice forearm shots, throwing his whole body into them, and throws stomach kicks better than you’d expect Stevie Ray to throw a stomach kick. Griffith is clearly some legendary indy bump freak as he takes the Slapjack at a 0.7 Cham Pain. I’m sure I’ve written a match or two of his before and just don’t remember. Hell I’ve rewatched entire episodes of old WCW with minimal memory of ever seeing it before, how am I gonna remember Todd Griffith? [I checked and I had reviewed at least one other WCW episode from this era that also had Griffith, but I wrote it in 2013, so I’m not gonna beat myself up too much for not remembering the guy]

I’m still on a plane flying to Mania weekend, and we’re circling Newark airport because a couple other planes were in front of us and we were all jammed up, and the pilot gets on the PA and starts with “I just wanted everyone to know that we have plenty of gas” which is DEFINITELY something that NOBODY had been worried about until the pilot LEAD OFF AN ANNOUNCEMENT by saying “Hey everyone, TOTALLY CHILL up here in the cockpit, just thought it would be cool for everyone to know that our fuel tanks are FILLED UP. Nothing at all to worry about here, just takin ‘er easy.” What the fuck dude. He leads off talking about how we obviously have plenty of fuel, and then goes into a long explanation about how we’re in line behind a couple planes so we might be circling a bit, and then ends on, “And again, we have plenty of fuel.” This fucking guy. Just sitting down for dinner with his wife, leading with “You don’t look fat.” Hours later he doesn’t get what he did wrong. “I said you DON’T look fat!!!”

Alex Wright vs. Tim Cheeks

ER: This whole thing felt weirdly long, and Cheeks was very not good. Wright looked pretty frustrated at a couple points when Cheeks rushed timing or didn’t execute well. Cheeks worked this kind of like a not good Owen Hart, trying to moonsault off the top over a rushing in Wright but getting no distance on it, then trying to stumble into an armdrag that goes terribly so Wright just kind of muscles him down with an STO and palms Cheeks’ face. Wright throws some nice elbowdrops but looks a little rattled by Cheeks’ frequently incorrect positioning. Kind of a rough start to a Worldwide. Two Dodgy-by-WCW-syndie-standards and a PA announcement of my imminent death.

Public Enemy vs. Tony Carr/Dusty Wolfe

ER: Weird episode as this is the third straight match with a clear jobber role. We usually know who is going to win on Worldwide episodes, but this might be the first time I’ve seen the bulk of the matches featuring guys not on the roster. This is unexpectedly odd only because Dusty Wolfe gets the most offense of anybody in the match. This is mostly a Wolfe showcase, as until they win, PE is basically working this the same way you’d expect Wolfe/Carr to be working this. Carr is also amusingly working a Marine Corps gimmick, black sleeveless T and camo pants just like Pittman. I don’t think Pittman was around WCW at this point so were they just bringing in another similarly built black marine who was cheaper than Pittman, or still wanted that character and assumed nobody would notice the replacement? I liked Wolfe here, one of those good southern hands who I’d probably watch in 2019. I like that we got a weird Dusty showcase in 1998, and it’s so rare to see a guy not on the roster get so much offense. Really Wolfe’s team was in control the whole time, right up until they tried to tandem suplex Grunge but Rocco pulled him down, allowing Grunge to DDT both of them. Then, Drive-By. Before that the PE was at Wolfe and Carr’s mercy. So bizarre.

Fidel Sierra vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan

ER: This really isn’t much, probably most worth it for Zbyszko going on about how Duggan used to be good, but he reached a point where he stopped getting better and had just been coasting. “You’d think most guys would want to be World Champ but here he is just not improving on his skillset!” He’s not wrong here. Duggan is really lazy about getting from a to b, doesn’t give Sierra much to work with. Sierra looked really jacked here, I don’t remember Sierra having big guns, but there they are. ’98-’02 were wild for wrestling bodies. Duggan kinda just kills time here not selling a beating until it’s time for him to hit a lariat and Old Glory. Not the best Worldwide episode we’ve seen.

Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Psychosis

ER: The onscreen graphic actually spelled Mysterio with the y, but I don’t think that was a thing yet. There are frequent misspellings on these things. Fans are really hyped for this one. There’s a group of late 20s meatheads and their cute girls, and all of them are very invested in this match. A lot of it is Psychosis grounding Rey, cutting him off, not as many Rey showcase fireworks as we could sometimes get. Psychosis hits a pretty big guillotine legdrop off the top onto Rey on the apron, feels like a bigger spot that the camera crew didn’t expect, so didn’t get to shot it as impressively. Rey hit a big springboard legdrop, sold nicely while locked in chinlocks and armbars, and won with a nice rana off the top. A more grounded match than we typically got from these two, with no scary Psychosis bumps, but their expected professional match.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WCW B-SIDES

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