Found Footage Friday: 1982~! OLYMPIC~! AUDITORIUM~! LUCHA~!

 

Azteca Promotions, Lucha Libre, Olympic Auditorium, October 16, 1982

Super Astro vs. Capitan de Oro

MD: Super Astro was young here and though he'd always look small, he looked especially so in this one. This went a worked ten minutes (not quite) for a draw, and never really got out of first gear, but it was a very fun first gear. Lots of takeovers, lots of Astro having to use every big of lucha libre physics to get Oro over. What was most striking was how direct a lot of the landings were. Less rolling and flowing and more thudding than I'd expect. I'm not sure if it was the ring or the experience level or the locale or what, but the points of impact felt harsher than what I was used to. It never really opened up though, just one takeover after another even though some were novel relative to what we see today.

Black Shadow (last match), Santo de Oro, Huracan Ramirez vs. Sergio el Hermoso, Bello Greco, El Medico

MD: Interesting that Black Shadow would have his last match against a couple of exoticos. If there was anything else behind it other than them being a hot act, I don't know it. Though this is second on the tape, I'm pretty sure it's the main event of the evening. Sergio is great in the introductions, just leaning his cheek on the top rope as if to sully the integrity of the proceedings. Despite losing his match to Santo decades earlier, Shadow got to wear it out and then take it off before the match. 

I enjoyed this a lot. For the primera, after Sergio screwed around a bit early calling Santo out, they landed on pairings. Greco and Shadow worked well, very smooth. Sergio did all of his comedy bits with Santo, including where he keeps falling back into a body scissors. I saw him do that in 89 NJPW too. Then things sort of broke down and we got rudo miscommunication with an exotico twist spot after spot, bit after bit, just endless riffing as the rudos got more and more angry at one another. It was delightful how far they took it before the tecnicos won the caida. Second caida started the same way but then got pretty grisly as they tore at Santo's mask and started the woundwork. Tecnico comeback in the tercera was Ramirez having enough and shoving the ref down. And the finish, I suppose protected the rudos for some reason, as Ramirez, after Santo's dive, hit a low blow foul to save Shadow giving the rudos the DQ win. Entertaining stuff, with enough blood (Medico ended up with his masked ripped and bleeding too) to give it some substance even if maybe it didn't have quite the weight you'd expect.

Sonia Orellana vs. Marlene

MD: This was a good amount of fun. It went a worked 15 in two falls. Marlene would press an advantage and Orellana would come back, and it got pretty tricked out at times. In the first fall, Orellana came back in the end with a number of tumbling takeovers including one where she jammed her knee right in the crook of Marlene's hip in a way that looked nasty. She won that with a slam and a big splash. Second fall had Marlene try to grind her down but Sonia fire back. She hit some sort of diving takeover off the top that we couldn't really see and missed a splash from the top that went pretty far across the ring. The time expired (for hook or crook) while Marlene had her in a bodyscissors and they called it a draw. Solid stuff.

Tony Rocco y Gallo Tapado vs. El Cobarde y Muralla Del Ring

MD: All of this stuff has been really good, honestly, and it makes me wish that this was just on LA TV and we end up with a ton of it some day. I haven't seen Rocco since the 80s lucha set and he was very good. All of these guys were in their own way. I expected Cobarde to stand out more and while he had good strikes and occasionally played the coward well as you'd expect, Muralla was probably more dynamic. I loved the early exchange with Rocco where Rocco did his step over armdrag twice and then jammed Muralla when he tried to do it. Gallo had more high flying stuff, all a lot of fun. The beatdown was lengthy but they switched it up with some tandem slingshots and a lot of brutal shots. Eventually Gallo was able to lean into some rudo miscommunication for a quick second fall win, but the rudos came right back.They undid his mask so Rocco had to fight them off two on one, but he managed it until Gallo could even the odds. Finish had them tear off Gallo's mask. The ref went so far as to pull his own shirt off to cover the face, which was a great bit. 

Mando Lopez y Kato Fu Mask vs. Migra Primero y Tony Curiel

MD: We don't spend a ton of time on this one so it's a little hard to get a sense of things, but if I have everyone right here, I liked Curiel's reactions and Kato Fu Mask's bumping. After a little bit of clowning early (on Curiel, I think) by Lopez, the rudos took over and they did a good job controlling the ring and keeping the beatdown on. We only get the primera here. And then the rest of the tape are random Gagne vs Larry Z AWA and Skip Young vs Al Perez matches. Weird things to keep alongside this.

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Found Footage Friday: 1989 NJPW~!

2/8/89

George Takano vs. Hiro Saito

MD: Pretty solid match. Takano was being pushed more at the start of 89 (with his team with Super Strong Machine) than at any point since he dropped the Cobra gimmick. He looked good here in a singles against a very game opponent. He did take most of the match. Saito would try to get him in a hold and he had an interesting technical escape to everything (be it stepping through to set up a takedown or a headstand to get out of a headscissors). Saito had a nice escape or two of his own. Things really picked up down the stretch as they absolutely paintbrushed each other for thirty seconds. That led to a nearfall off of Saito's senton and Takano catching him out of nowhere with the spin wheel kick and then finishing him off with a suplex and top rope splash. You'll be glad to know they shook hands post-match.  

ER: This was good. Tight grappling, real force applied during submissions and lock ups and knuckle locks, real physics used in takedowns and near misses. Takano had some great stuff to steal, including a cool low kip up out of an armbar (going straight into leaning his weight down into Saito's legs to maneuver out) and a cool pendulum swing spinebuster takedown, shifting Saito's weight back and forth before slamming him. Saito's figure 4 headscissors is impossibly snug, and all of Takano's eventual escape looked well earned. Once he escapes he locks Saito into a disgusting leg-grapevined camel clutch that would have played as the finish. You know maybe someone shouldn't steal any of this Takano stuff as I don't know who would be able to apply it as well as he does. They work these holds until the 10 minute announcement and then get right up and go into the finishing stretch. I was getting used to these snug holds and suddenly we're getting suplexes, Takano going up for a high backdrop, Saito hitting his senton famously full weight. I think Takano is much more interesting working holds than he is doing actual running offense. All of his holds looked like he was stretching Saito, but his top rope splash finish looked like he was trying to avoid full contact at all costs. 

Bello Greco/Sergio El Hermoso vs. Hirokazu Hata/Naoki Sano

MD: When Hata and Sano came back from Mexico, they brought their sparring partners with them. There's a Fujiwara match with them that people should seek out. As best as I can tell, Greco was the real base and worker and Sergio was the flash and lead for the comedy. He kissed the announcer before the match and blew one to the ref, causing all sorts of havoc. Hata and Sano had some big climb up armdrags on Greco. And the kiss spot where Sano went flying the first time but Hata blocked it to tweak the nose/lips the second worked about as well as it could. Sano had a bit more style to what he was doing maybe, whereas Hata just played into what he was given more, but both looked good. Finish had Hata hit a dive to the floor off the top and Sano hit a German (but not able to hold the bridge) for the win. In context, a lot of these spots were repeated from the TV matches they were having, but they were all crowd-pleasers for the house show crowd.

ER: The exoticos' music is incredible. It's like someone doing a muted trumpet sound with their mouth doing a sexy Peter Gunn theme. They have a great act. You can tell it's a great act, because they got constant laughs for the full 14 minute runtime, while tons of wrestlers on this card couldn't buy a reaction. Matt Borne and Italian Stallion can't buy a single sound from the people of Sapporo, but they love every single thing Greco and Sergio do, with good cause. The fans love the silly rope running, they love the butt stuff (I wonder if Rick Rude ever saw Bello Greco and lifted an entire career of selling atomic drops), they love the accidents and the misdirection, just involved in every single movement both do. Their timing is great throughout, the absolute best bit being Greco running down the length of the apron to just miss Hata, running his own face into the turnbuckle. Sano looked like a guy clearly in the middle of his breakout year whenever he was in (his stepover armdrag early in the match was so fast and clean) and Hata looked like a guy who was not that, and I loved how they worked with the exotico tandem. They weren't guys being worked around, they were integrating nicely. I would have loved to see Greco and Sergio stick around longer than these few weeks of '89 and work with more opponents, see what the act could do in singles, but all the footage we have is so good in the way that I'm happy it never burnt out. 

Seiji Sakaguchi/Kengo Kimura vs. Matt Borne/Italian Stallion 

ER: This doesn't add up to anything big but has plenty of fun working parts. I have not seen much of Italian Stallion's 1989 New Japan run, and it's crazy how much time he spent there that year and only that year. Sakaguchi makes chopped liver out of him, swallowing him up whole and chaining judo throws while never letting go of his arm, which he caught when Stallion tried to throw one punch. One punch that doesn't land and Sakaguchi treats him like he's Seiji Sakaguchi fighting The Italian Stallion. Stallion isn't bad at all, but he is much better when he wrestles like a poor man's Matt Borne rather than his usual rich man's Joey Maggs. His dropkick hits like a truck and he throws Kimura with a cool belly to belly, but needs a better clothesline. 

I love how Matt Borne moves. He's just as unpredictable as Buzz Sawyer but keeps things more compact. He's a bulldog, goes hard after Sakaguchi and gets hit hard by the large man. I loved a double leg trip Kimura and Sakaguchi pulled on him, like they were actually trying to pull him apart like a wishbone. Borne really smothers Kimura whenever he's in with him, riding him on the mat and not letting him land anything until the finish. He even pulls some bullshit when the ref misses Sakaguchi's tag and Borne goes back to picking on Kimura, shutting down a hot tag. Crowd doesn't react in any way to his bombs away which is just cold. He eventually takes the pin when Kimura gets a piledriver, and I like how he sells the piledriver with confusion instead of neck pain. 

MD: Little bit of a weird one to me. Stallion (and Borne to a lesser degree) gave a bit to Kimura but mostly ate him up on the mat. Stallion would just roll around on top of him. As you can imagine, they'd give more for Sakaguchi though. Kimura did get the win with the leg lariat/pile driver combo so maybe he felt giving but it did seem like Stallion was going to assert himself as much as possible when given the chance (just not with one of the bosses). Maybe that's why he stayed around so much in 89? 

Super Strong Machine vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 

ER: This doesn't rise to levels of Fujiwara singles match greatness, but it is a Fujiwara singles match against one of my favorite New Japan 80s natives so it's obviously a great 12 minutes. Fujiwara is in house show antagonist mode and just trolls Strong Machine with annoying stuff all match. He breaks every lock up with a slap, in a way that's not meant to hurt but meant to rile up Machine into making mistakes. It's all mischievousness where he retains plausible deniability over being a troll but it's all there. Look at Machine finally make his first inroads and throw Fujiwara to the floor, only to see the insanely aggravating way Fujiwara casually walks back around the ring after hitting the floor. Fujiwara gets his head bounced off the turnbuckle bolt and just strolls away adjusting his trunks. I don't think there was a wink thrown to the crowd, but it was implied. Just a cool fucking guy catching eyes with a girl in a car while crossing the street. 

Things open up when Machine starts going after Fujiwara's taped up knee with an ankle lock, and you can tell it's getting to Fujiwara because he starts throwing backfists from his back into Machine's neck. Machine wisely maneuvers things into a single leg crab, much harder to throw backfists from that position. Fujiwara breaks free from it by fishhooking Strong Machine's mask with one hand and throwing punches with the other, gripping a handful of the bottom edge of his mask with his left while punching him straight in the jaw with his right. When he gets to his feet he throws half a dozen headbutts, still holding Machine by the mask, hopping on his bad knee while throwing them. There's a great moment where Machine fires up after Fujiwara kneels on his face, and demands Fujiwara punch him some more, like a man. Fujiwara happily obliges and buckles Strong Machine's legs. 

The finish sequence is hot as hell. Fujiwara catches a clothesline and puts his weight behind an armbar in one motion, but Machine rolls through, so Fujiwara tries to take him down again with a Fujiwara but Machine blocks it, so Fujiwara pulls an inside cradle. Fujiwara's greatest successes come from never wanting to finish a match a specific way, always willing to pivot to whatever might be available. 

MD:  Not top tier-Fujiwara, sure, but it was definitely chippy and snippy. They leaned on each other. Battering in the corner, etc. I'd say SSM had the advantage until he tried slamming Fujiwara's head into the post. Then he tried to stop the headbutts that would come (self aware in a very good way) but couldn't. He did pull Fujiwara out and post his leg and Fujiwara had to fight from underneath for a bit. Fujiwara came back with huge headbutts though and ultimately after two arm bar attempts (first rolled through) locked in a small package. Nice little self-aware bits in this, the sort of thing you'd be more likely to get from Super Strong Machine than a lot of his contemporaries.

Hiroshi Hase vs. Shiro Koshinaka

MD: This was really good. Super high on it. There's a rule for 1987-1989 NJPW Juniors matches: The best ones start with an immediate ambush/advantage, and Koshinaka got that, nailing Hase in the ropes on the first exchange and going after his taped knee. Lots of nasty little shots and bigger submissions. At one point he went for a suplex, and Hase's leg went out and his head just crushed into the mat. Koshinaka hit the butt butt, the top rope knee drop and even the power bomb. Then he shoved Hase out. The ref got in his face and that let Hase pull Shiro out to take over. 

I wouldn't have minded if Hase sold just a little more but I was generally ok with it. Most of his offense wasn't hefting Koshinaka up but slamming his head into the exposed post instead (the best kind of offense). Koshinaka bled. Hase stayed on the wound. The ref tried to stop him at one point and Hase pointed out that Shiro had been unsportsmanlike in going after his leg and this was warranted. 

Eventually he did hit the Northern Lights but couldn't keep the bridge given his leg. He ended up choking Koshinaka for the DQ, which is way better than it sounds on paper, trust me. Post match Hiro Saito came in and they beat on Koshinaka and anyone that tried to stop them. Honestly, as a finish, it's not something we saw much during this era in New Japan and it was grisly and effective for me. Really good match.  

ER: This was really good. There was a different Koshinaka/Hase match on the New Japan DVDVR 80s set that happened the next month, from 3/16/89. I was higher on that match than the consensus (I had it 25 spots higher than the final results) and I think this is the better match. Koshinaka goes after Hase's leg like a heel and works the first third of this match as Junior Heavyweight Tenryu. Hase's comeback goes on so much longer and is equally violent, so much so that it turns Koshinaka into a bigger babyface by virtue of Hase being such an asshole. Hase pays merely lip service to Koshinaka's knee work - had the knee come back in any meaningful way, instead of Hase occasionally shaking it out while otherwise not acknowledging - it would have been one of the best New Japan juniors matches of the late decade. Koshinaka throws sharp kicks at Hase's knee that do not look pulled, so much so that it seems absurd when Hase goes on offense for 10 straight minutes with no sign of slowing down. 

Until Hase just flipped the switch, his knee selling was great. There was this almost third wall breaking spot where Koshinaka went for a snap suplex and Hase couldn't make it over on his bad leg, so instead whips nose first into the mat in one of the more disgusting DDT bumps I've ever seen. It's such a fucked up looking bump that it looked like a blown spot or miscommunication. It hits this meta level of "Hase's leg is so bad that he can't take moves the way you all expect guys to take moves" and it was something that could have made this match legendary. But Hase messes that up to and actually treats the spot like a fuck up, not acknowledging the bump he took at all and kind of quickly getting to his feet. 

But he went so hard on Koshinaka that I think he overcame the lack of selling. I've never thought of Hase as a kicker, but he unleashes some hellish kicks on Koshinaka. At one point, Koshinaka on his knees, Hase is just kicking him right across the bridge of the nose and Koshinaka hangs in for more, so Hase kicks him in the back of the head. He's really merciless, and Koshinaka turns into this fired up screaming babyface while taking everything Hase brought. Hase's torso and legs wound up smeared with Koshinaka's blood and he looked like a deranged animal biting at Koshinaka's head. The DQ finish looked great as there really was nothing the referee could do to separate Hase's mouth from Koshinaka's head. That man looked like he was pulling with all his might to pull him off and it was not happening. I'm curious what the consensus would have been on this match. Enough DVDVR voters would have hated Hase's selling, but I think more would have loved the violence. 

Antonio Inoki/Riki Choshu/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Big Van Vader/Bam Bam Bigelow/Rip Morgan 

ER: A great house show main event that never quite settles into a structure but has the two biggest gaijin taking tons of big bumps for the freaking powerhouse native team. That's a star studded lineup and Vader/Bigelow treat them as size/power equals for long stretches. Bigelow takes a full flip for Riki's second lariat one minute in. Just a full backflip like he's Jeff Hardy. Fujinami isn't taking a flipping bump for Vader's clothesline, he's blocking it and getting a sick backslide instead. This is Riki's lariat though, so even Vader is taking a big leaping bump for it late in the match. Vader and Bigelow get rocked by suplexes and clotheslines all match, from all of them. Choshu even suplexes Vader in from the apron! Everybody was taking suplexes man.  

There isn't even really any hierarchy in this match, it's kind of strange. Going into it Rip Morgan feels like the most obvious Guy Taking Pin in Main possible but he's in there working big exchanges with Inoki and Choshu. He hits a kitchen sink knee to Choshu that Riki takes so well that it made my stomach hurt. Riki leans into his Scorpion Deathlock like he's applying it to Morgan as a shoot submission. Nobody felt like a bigger start than anyone else, it was just six stars working a main event that nobody outside of this sports center will ever see.

Bigelow was the one who worked this with joy. Everybody works with energy but Bam Bam was having fun. He's not a monster, he's the guy working with some color, a little whimsy. He shakes his fist out after punching Riki, bodyslams Inoki with force, breaks up a pin with a falling headbutt to Inoki's face. He's doing light axe handles off the top and throwing headbutts, but also looks like he's giving Vader ideas on how to wreak havoc. Vader had this amazing press slam hoist of Choshu, super impressive, made him look weightless. Bam Bam gets in the ring and directs Vader to throw Riki onto his knee in a gutbuster. It rules.  There's an awesome 1-2 where Bigelow breaks Inoki's octopus hold on Morgan by leveling him with a clothesline, and right when he hits it he gets wasted by a Riki lariat, great bookend to him getting flipped by one early. There are some little clips in this so we don't get a full feel for the finish, but this is six guys I loved watching run around each other. 

MD: 1989 starts with the Power Elite of Inoki/Choshu/Fujinami coming together against Vader and Bigelow. They do a bunch of these matches in January and the start of February, so it's a little overdone by this point, but the plus side is that they've been practicing and honing the match. That meant some spots like the Inoki kicking off out of the over the shoulder double team worked quite well. 

I really enjoyed the start of this one, with the heels ambushing and then Choshu ducking a Bigelow clothesline, hitting a lariat that just staggered him and then hitting the real one that Bigelow took a flip bump for (very rare for 89 in general and especially a guy Bigelow's size). In order to keep things fresh and prep for the Russians coming in, they had Rheingans join Vader/Bigelow as their American player/coach and he was at the margins of this one. 

This was fairly back and forth. You feel bad for Fujinami here. He's fine but he doesn't come off as the ace/champ when teaming with two of the most charismatic wrestlers ever. Vader was there to basically get control again. It boiled over (with a clip, and during that clip Inoki may have actually won it) to either the DQ or the post-match where heels controlled in the corner wouldn't stop double teaming and charging in. 

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New Footage Friday: Boatload of Brazos, Fujiwara, Maeda, Exoticos

MD: When WWE gives you Kane vs. Leviathan, you go forth and find other things. In this case, that would be unearthed Brazos, unearthed exoticos, and unearthed Fujiwara. I think we've done pretty well for ourselves.

PAS: Boy talk about the importance of lowered expectations, we went from "wow the networks is dropping 20 awesome matches a week including multiple unseen 70s and 80s house show matches!!" To "well they are going to only drop one a week, but it is still completely unseen and legendary!" To "suck on a Kane match which has already been on YouTube for a decade." Well fuck them, if you give us lemons we will make Fujiwara and Brazo flavored lemonade.

ER: Fujiwara and Brazo flavored lemonade would just taste like drinking frosting and lard out of an ashtray.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Osamu Kido vs. Akira Maeda/Nobuhiko Takada NJPW 3/7/86


MD: Despite Phil's best efforts, I still have some blind spots that I shouldn't have for someone who writes here. While I've seen my share of Fujiwara, I haven't seen as much Maeda and Takada as you'd think. My biggest takeaway here, other than it's great that this was unearthed, was the electricity in the air whenever Fujiwara was in. While Maeda and Takada working with Kido was fine, with them smartly moving from one hold to the next, there was a certain spryness and even manic energy when Fujiwara was in there. Everything felt more visceral. Maeda might toss a kick at Kido, but Fujiwara was going to catch that kick and smack his face off. There's a difference between working a half crab spot and pummeling someone with high/low combos in the corner. Both are fine but I'm going remember the latter more than the former tomorrow. Then you have the angles that Fujiwara comes at you. He had this great double leg takedown with his own legs, for instance, or the precision leg stab that set up the finish. I thought he looked brilliant here.

PAS: After reviewing so much awesome Fujiwara over the years, I am so happy there is still more out there to watch. Fujiwara is pure pleasure in this match, the only guy in this who wasn't content to work a house show match. He works over Maeda he strafes him with body shots in the corner , it really reminded me of Piper in the Valentine match which opened this project up, then he catches his kick and drops with with a huge overhand slap, we are fighting motherfucker. The finish is an all timer Fujiwara finish too, with a brutal quick knee kick dropping Takada and then slapping on a brutal knee bar for the tap. That low kick was such a great fast KO move, totally unexpected and brutal. There was a bit of meandering from the other three which kept this being from a true epic match, but still getting more classic Fujiwara at his peak is such a gift.

Sergio el Hermoso/El Bello Greco vs. Naoki Sano/Hirokazu Hata NJPW 2/8/89

MD: I'm so glad this showed up. I'm pretty certain the only time I've ever seen Sergio and Bello Greco before was in that amazing Ola Lila vs Space Cadets match from 84. Their act was so good and we've got so little of them online. This is a great handheld match because you get such a sense of the ambient noise of the crowd. They're laughing at every spot and they're right to do so. Bello Greco is a bruiser exotico base, there for everything Sano and Hata do (and they do some fairly complex rope running and armdrag sequences). He's there to stooge, bump, catch, and clobber and he does it all very well, underpinned by the exotico character. Sergio, on the other hand, is 110% over the top and he's brilliant and dynamic in the role. He has a reaction for everything and it hit every single time. He gets more out of leaping over a dropped down opponent than anyone I've ever seen. Someone could loop a gif of him going back and forth with dropdowns and it'd be its own blend of wrestling perfection. The crowd cracked up every time he pranced over even after they'd seen it six or seven times. Just watching what he does with his hands on routine spots is fascinating. Sano shined here, working as fluidly as possible with the exoticos, and Hata was fine. This had some heat towards the middle and then ended hot enough, though I get the sense this was placed fairly low on the card and they held back a bit on spots and dives. They didn't need them. The crowd was more than happy to cheer for Sergio and Bello Greco as they were recovering post-match and you can't blame them in the least.

PAS: This was a blast, what a perfect match to have low on a card. The exoticos are total pro performers, with the Brazos match this was a great week for classic lucha comedy. I imagine Sergio and Bello were performing their greatest hits, but this is the one of the few times we have seen them do Freebird and it is pretty spectacular. Sergio looks like a superstar, he feels right on the level of Cassandro, Pimpinela and Adrian Street, comes off like a guy who will leap right off a Pride float and whoop a homophobes ass and go right back to dancing to Nikki Minaj. I was also super impressed with Sano, what an all time adjustable wrestler, he is just as comfortable working exotico comedy spots and fast rope running as he was ripping Liger's mask and working hard shootstyle with Ken Shamrock, is their nothing that guy couldn't do, I would have loved to see him work as Sumo Sam in Memphis throwing salt with Tojo Yamamoto.

Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Plata/El Brazo vs. Robin Hood/Brazo De Platino/Kendo UWF 3/8/94

MD: The Brazos act is timeless. How do I know? Because their antics here with Kendo at the start of the match, stalling, playing with the crowd who loved to chant the tecnicos' names, pretending to leave, crashing into each other, falling off the apron? They did all of that stuff back in 1990 in a match that we have against Kendo/Asai/Hamada. It was still entertaining here. The crowd still loved it here. The only difference was that the super soakers they came out with probably didn't exist back in 90. My favorite moment in all of this was the lucha ring announcer announcing that five minutes had passed despite the fact that they hadn't even locked up yet given all of the comedy posturing, and the crowd popping for the announcement. Obviously they're all used to working with each other and obviously they've done this hundreds of times, but it's still striking how wild and adaptive the physical movements are. That's the joy of the Brazos. It's like they're riding this wave of comedic wrestling, their sheer girth carrying them along with unstoppable inertia. If the crowd reacts in a way that they couldn't possibly expect (though so often it's the crowd reacting to their expert priming), they just get swept along with it, some how twisting the physical comedy to make it work like the most natural thing in the world. Robin Hood and Platino were, unsurprisingly, fitting cogs in the machine and Kendo was just a blur of color and motion and charisma. His connection with this specific crowd over a span of a few years is way too under the radar.

PAS: Kendo crashes an Alvarado family BBQ and we get a nifty trios title match in Japan. Rob Bihari has been on an absolute uploading tear lately, and I am not sure what counts as an unearthed gem, but he told me he "found this on a random disc" and handheld UWF Hamada Rob found on a random disc seems gemmy enough for me. This is a trios match which really ticks all of pleasure centers. We get some classic Brazos shtick at the beginning, including a great spot where Super Porky accidentally bumps his head on the ring post and starts crying, we get some great rope running exchanges (which is something Kendo excels at), a cool dive train, a Star and a pretty great finishing run. Platino is the ultimate little brother at the end of the match, he actually kicks out of the Porky top rope splash, which feels almost blasphemous in a a way an irritating little brother wouldn't follow the rules in a game of tag, Porky then hits him with a standing senton for another two count and then absolutely flattens him with a top rope Togo senton where he landed flush, just powdering Platino's ribs. It is exactly the kind of unnecessary escalation you might do to a little brother who keeps kicking out of your Hogan legdrops when you are play wrestling on your parents bed.

ER: A bunch of Brazos and a chubby veteran Kendo (trying to get into Brazo shape) match up in Japan, and everyone in the crowd somehow understands the jokes better than I do. Bullshit is the universal wrestling language. We now have a great sample of Rip Rogers getting a Japanese crowd eating from his hand before his matches even start, and here we get a bunch of chubby guys shooting Super Soakers, leading to other chubby guys shooting water gun bows and arrows (did they bring those on the flight, or did they find them while in Japan and think "we need to work in some pre-match water gun spots"), and a bunch of clapping and chanting and pratfalls. Watch the Rip Rogers, clapping and pratfalls work. We get some good pratfalls during the match too, my favorite being Oro (or Brazo? It's tough to tell sometimes in this) slingshotting into the ring but just doing a back bump, not rolling through. That's a good gag. 

This is a great era of Porky, as the thick muscular athletic young man from a few years prior is gone, that metabolism took off and didn't even leave a note, but he's still only 30 so still has athleticism. By 1994 he would reach the size he'd basically be for the rest of his career, but hadn't lost much of the agility. Porky has some great moments here, I giggled at him selling Robin enziguiris as if he had lost a contact (I also assume that he didn't bother selling kicks to the back of his head because under that sick as hell mullet he's rocking some equally impressive hot dog neck, so attacking the back of Porky's neck is akin to headbutting a Samoan), and I really liked Platino in this. He's the baby of the group and he acted like a total pro, and I can't even begin to describe what happened between he and Porky as well as Phil did. But we get an awesome dive train (none as wild as Robin Hood's nutty dive earlier that sent him rolling into the crowd), with a great rolling dive off the apron from Oro (or Brazo?) and a killer hands free lawn dart from Kendo, and of course we build to a mammoth Porky dive as our payoff. 

Imagine how steel nerved Porky was. He was always the most athletic of the group, and the fatter he got the more of an attraction he became to their trios team. So before, he was the muscular stocky guy who took big bumps and did big dives, but as he got fatter the desire from the crowd to see him continue diving just kept increasing the fatter he got. So every single match he's placed into the clean-up role, the guy who always has to deliver the coup de grace, always has to do his dive after the crowd has already seen several dives, knows that if he fucks up his dive then the most eyes will be on him. BUT, that's the beauty of the clutch performance of Porky, in that he knows he can deliver the gorgeous fat guy dive, but everybody in the matches also knows that he has the best comic chops to salvage the moment if he does somehow fuck up his dive. 

The finish is fantastic, with Platino deciding to show Japan just how ironclad his sternum is, starting by attempting a sunset flip on Porky that ends with a fat butt sit, then eats a big splash, a senton, and a freaking high hang time top rope senton that made me cover my eyes. My eyes were expecting to see Platino's intestines shoot out his ass, and we are all winners because they did not. Phil completely nailed what Platino was doing here, made me think back to poor David Lochmann in high school, who always sandbagged everyone when we were acting like wrestlers during P.E. Dave refused to roll with a Texas Cloverleaf I was trying to apply, just staying on his back as I tried to turn him. So, Dave ate a few kicks to the back and then got treated to a Cloverleaf way more painful than the one I would have applied had he followed the script. Platino knew what this was.

Leviathan vs. Kane OVW Christmas Chaos 1/31/01

ER: The match that I have been waiting nearly half my lifetime to see! This hidden gems project has been a total flop thus far, but now that they are filling up that ring with 640 pounds of primo steroid era grade A prime things are starting to look up. Could I have seen this match before this moment? Well, sure, if I wanted to sit through a 5 second Dailymotion ad and watch it in slightly worse quality. I'm not going to dig out and watch my VHS copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey that I taped off PBS in the 90s, I'm watching my blu ray. Thus, I'm not watching one match between two guys I don't really like from a Christmas show that was being held 5 weeks after Christmas. Imagine how devastated you would be if Christmas came and went, and you had to wait another 5 weeks to get your presents? Well, WWE knew that fans had been waiting near 18 years to see this Battle of the Titans on their Network screens, and they unleashed this Secret Santa Surprise with a fireplace warmed holiday grin on their faces. Two larger than life pro wrestling and film mega stars at their most gassed, with film quality that looks somehow worse than the batch of early 80s handhelds we just got. This match is going to be like the sound that a giant side of beef makes falling out of a truck. Cornette calls these two "Mastodons of the Mat" who "move like junior heavyweights" which is like an over the top positive lie you tell a friend who you just witnessed shitting the bed at an open mic.

And if your friend had this match you would definitely tell them some over the top positive lie right after you witnessed it. Leviathan was newish, Kane was bad, but this was a decent poor man's Van Hammer vs. Chase Tatum. If this were on the Pro with at least one mullet and no belly button tattoos, I'd probably call it a win. I appreciated that they took a lot of risks on their punches. Both were throwing big hooking right handed haymakers, which are tough to land consistently, and when they miss they look like fake grade school punches. But when they hit, they look good, and Leviathan threw a few to Kane's cheek and one to the head that I thought looked real good, and Kane threw two rights to Leviathan's jaw that looked good, and looked better than Kane's easier to land short uppercuts. Leviathan took nice bumps on chokeslams, hit a nice and sudden spear and a big hang time spinebuster. Both men threw some horrendous clotheslines. Leviathan had one knocking Kane to the floor that was so so gentle, and Kane's "flying" clothesline is one of the worst signature spots in wrestling history. Kane's flying clotheslines always look bad, but the two in this match are some of his very worst. One is so gentle that Leviathan doesn't really know just when to bump it, and both men kind of tumble softly to the mat like two roughhousing friends falling in the backyard. I bet one of them was making "brassssshhhhhhhhh" sound effects while landing. I really hope we get Van Hammer vs. Chase Tatum next Thursday.

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