Found Footage Friday: I SHALL RETURN TO YOKOHAMA~! TIGER MASK~! ANJO~! DANDY~! SCORPIO~! SABU~! TAKAYAMA~! ABBY~!

Tokyo Pro 8/25/96

MD: This is more Found than New, with the Scorpio vs. Sabu match being the one most seen/known. Some of this you can find online.

First Tiger Mask/Yoji Anjo vs. Takashi Ishikawa/Yoshihiro Takayama

MD: Of course this is Takashi Ishikawa but that's ok because Takashi Ishikawa is still great. Here he's even older and has a mullet, grizzled as can be, trademark purple trunks a big more voluminous. Anjo and Tiger Mask are such a weird pairing, but they crack each other up in the pre-match interview and it's charming. I'd like to see a sitcom with these two. Anjo can be such a jerk. Sayama can be such a jerk, but it's weirdly wholesome when they're together. And of course Takayama is imposing and looks here like he could have been the villain from Karate Kid Part III. 

I'd love to say that my favorite stuff here was Tiger Mask up against some unique opponents, but we don't see him a ton against Takayama (mostly grappling when we do), and it just doesn't clear Anjo flexing. He does pretty well against Takayama honestly, but it's Ishikawa chopping the hell out of him in the ropes that stuck with me. Actually, Takayama wailing on him with forearms did too. I do love to see Anjo get beat up, sorry. That's not to say that Tiger Mask vs Ishikawa wasn't great, because it was. Tiger Mask did his spin out drop toe hold and looked as good as ever. He bridged up on his head just to show everyone he still could. He had his blue gear here, looking more inspired by Liger than inspirational to him. Finish had Anjo break up an Ishikawa Scorpion but then Ishikawa not break up Anjo's cool modified figure four, instead shouting for Takayama who had to tap. Overall, unique and a lot of fun.

ER: What a great mix of personalities and stiff work. Ishikawa looks so professional in his sit down interview because you can't see the mullet, then in the match he looks like he's doing Riki Choshu cosplay and it rules. It also rules that he clearly can't stand Yoji Anjo. Anjo is a guy who it seems a lot of people cannot stand, a babyface here only because of being teamed with Tiger Mask, but otherwise a man who is clearly miserable and cocky in equal measure, and I love that kind of self loathing overconfidence in a dangerous wrestler. Takayama during this era is the closest he ever can to being Hot. He had the slick back in the ponytail, his face wasn't yet entirely messed up, still had the one weird eye, but he wasn't as lumpy and horsey as he'd become in a few years. 

This was short but intense for the full nine minutes. Takayama and Anjo really went at it, loved the ways Anjo would drop fast hard knees into Takayama's legs (leading to the eventual tap) and the way Takayama started punching down to Anjo after letting him up from an armbar. Ishikawa only wanted to fight Anjo and Anjo hilariously played it off nonchalantly. When Ishikawa locked in a Scorpion Deathlock because he is TPW Choshu, he points over and yells at Anjo to no reaction from the crowd, and Anjo just kind of ignored it, shrugged, and adjusted his gear. I loved When Anjo threw several stiff kicks as the illegal man, dashing three hard shots off on Takayama before calling for Tiger Mask to throw a sweeping kick to finish. Tiger Mask looked good, and I was especially impressed by this wild physics-breaking moment where Takayama had him in a heel hook, and TM did his front roll kip up to escape, while Takayama never let go of him. I don't know how TM made it to his feet so smoothly while being trapped in a submission. 

Sabu vs. Black Wozuma

MD: This is Scorpio under a mask that has a bit of a stormtrooper or Stuka vibe to it. I don't know why Scorpio is under the mask but it doesn't hinder his work. He does a bit more with body language or head movement to help, but it's clearly Scorpio. No one else moves like him. This was exactly what you'd expect it to be and exactly what you'd want. Sheik is on the outside. They mat wrestle to start, and it's pretty gritty but it's not really what you came for. When things pick up, they really pick up. Sabu goes for a triple jump dive to the floor and Scorpio tosses a chair at him. After that, they play the hits. Sabu flies all over the place. When Scorpio flies, it's interesting, his slingshot somersault splash (which I've only seen Tiger Mask do so it's fun they're on the card together), a twisting splash, a splash allllll the way across the ring. Sabu hits an amazing triple jump back DDT. Scorpio catches his once with his side body attack but then gets nailed off the top rope with it a second time. Sabu goes through a table that doesn't look like it should break. That's when he gets the chants from the crowd, by the way. The hits played well for a game crowd. Post match, after he wins, Sabu tries to go through another table that looks like it shouldn't break and this time it doesn't, even after he keeps trying. They appreciate the effort. I'm wincing decades later. Wherever he is now he's still feeling that.

ER: What a strange happening in the uniquely cursed PACIFICO Yokohama. Why are the ceilings of this convention center so high? What happens in this building? Why would the ceilings possibly need to be so high and what kind of gas are they pumping into this preposterously cavernous room to make the crowd this quiet. This was the quietest crowd I've ever witnessed, in the most echoing building created, and it led to a fascinating study in Sabu and Scorpio having a full conversation in the ring. You didn't get to used to see something like this. Supposedly 4,500 people are there. It looks like 1,000 but the building is haunted and someone clearly fucked up a measurement somewhere so maybe there are 4,500 there who knows. Whatever is happening, there appears to be a moment where Sabu and Scorpio are working to get people involved, and they aren't really getting there, and the silence as they ramp up the action means we get an inside look at two greats calling their way through a match. 

At first, you get simple spot calling like "Watch the kick" and then it grows into an amusing back and forth between two of the best. Scorpio waffles Sabu with a clothesline and as he's pinning him says,"I got you there. You okay?" And as the hits get bigger, the banter evolves to a couple guys who sound like they're having a goof, while also killing each other with shots. Before Scorpio's slingshot splash, as he's dragging Sabu into position, he says, "It's gonna be stiff." It is! When he sets up much too far away for a top rope splash - I mean way across the ring - Sabu is chanting the entire time, "Oh you're gonna kill me. You're gonna break my ribs." It's an incredible look behind the curtain of two guys stiffing the hell out of each other, Scorpio landing heavy weight on Sabu's ribs a half dozen times, Sabu takes multiple bad crashes on moonsaults and takes a dive through a table on the floor. By the time this was over, Sabu had gone through three tables on four attempts. The fans catch up with them as the landings got worse, and the entire time our heroes sound like they're just having a laugh while beating each other up. I loved their fist fight after the bell and Scorpio's heavy pescado, Sabu still feeling the need to put himself through unbreakable tables in 1996. He moonsaulted ankle first onto a table that didn't budge, but I'm not sure it was worse that Scorpio doing a tumbleweed crotch first onto a chair. 

El Dandy vs. Gekko

MD: Gekko is Masao Orihara. He came out with a mask and then took it right off. This went five minutes or so before they did a great ref bump where Dandy move out of the way and Orihara flattened him with a dropkick to draw a DQ. Then Orihara went nuts including really lawn darting Dandy into the chairs and they restarted the match. He was maybe on the verge of victory when the bell ran again for the time limit and he obviously didn't like that. 

Along the way, Dandy looked like a million bucks. He was just hitting killer lariats and then clapping after the fact. He controlled a lot of this and everything he did looked great. The crowd didn't seem to want to go up for it until after the ref bump but afterwards they were with him. Late in the match he had a Gory Special on and brought the arms together and it looked pretty nasty. Orihara was a bit more all over the place, but he his springboard moonsault on the outside and was game taking all of Dandy's stuff. He almost won it with a kappo kick out of nowhere, but it wasn't meant to be. I'd call this a good Dandy showcase made better by Orihara's antics.

ER: This rocked, all of it. All of it rocked. Orihara is one of my very favorites, for his sincere punk attitude and the authenticity he brings to any match. He's extremely tough, works fast and stiff, and wears his emotions externally in a way I respond to (and crowds and wrestling officials seem to respond to). He's a menace in every way, attacking Dandy before he's announced and throwing him with a cool unstoppable overhead belly to belly. Everything Orihara does in a match is fueled by spite, and his sequences are so tight. Every landing looks hard, and yet he's clearly not unprofessional. He throws working punches, he feeds for Dandy when it's time for that, but in between he's just a damn menace. My favorite thing about Orihara is his commitment, specifically the way he commits to missed offense. He threw a missed clothesline here that was so beautiful I watched it a half dozen times. I don't tend to judge people negatively for poor missed clothesline, but I praise a wrestler to the heavens if he has a great one. Orihara's miss is one of the greatest I've seen. He swings so hard with his miss that it sends him off balance careening into the ropes, and he gets up looking pissed that it didn't land, just before he gets wasted by Dandy's. Everything about it was perfect. 

He's just a menace. His stomach kicks might be the best in wrestling. There's never light, always a firm connection, great placement. The way he strings his offense is so tough, the kind of guy who will suplex you but then run and drop a knee or senton on you before you even know he's approaching. His moonsault is a wrestling gift, never thrown with any kind of arc, just a violent fast whip onto Dandy. I even got into his (ever-present) beef with officials of all kinds. The way he dropkicks the ref to draw the DQ was such a great spot, as he had previously back elbowed the guy and shoved him across the ring, but this miss was another Classic Orihara Miss, where the dropkick landed flush while also looking like a complete accident. Great way to set up a mid-match DQ. When he convinces everyone for 5 more minutes, one of the first things he does is hit Dandy with a truly disgusting piledriver, dropping that man right on his head  and leaving Dandy looking like a man who did not expect to be dropped on his head. Maybe the thunder fire powerbomb after will snap him awake. When the time runs out on Orihara's second attempt at beating Dandy, he again argues with the ringside official for more time, and the exhausted look to the side this man gives is perfect. I'm surprised Orihara didn't knock him over the table.  

First Tiger Mask/Yoji Anjo vs. Abdullah The Butcher/Daikokubo Benkei

MD: Past a couple of Six-Mans from 82, this is the only Tiger Mask vs Abdullah encounter (and one more tag in September), and if youw ant to see Tiger Mask stomp and kick the crap out of a grounded Abdullah, this is the match for you. Overall, he wasn't in a ton. Pre-match, Abdullah did a promo backstage in English talking about how tough his partner was, or at least repeating it a few times. Always surreal to see. The joy here was Abby taking the fork to Anjo and then Anjo fighting back. Just when that was getting good and Anjo was getting revenge on the timekeeper's table with the fork, Benkei broke it up. Overall, he was fine, a big solid dude, but he's not the guy we were here to see. The previous tag was for the #1 Contendership and this was for the title and Anjo won it turning a bodyslam into a great Fujiwara Armbar. There are other encounters in Tokyo Pro between Abby and Anjo and now I'm curious if any made tape.

ER: A good match with a solid formula of cutting Anjo off from Tiger Mask, that would have benefitted from more Tiger Mask involvement. Daikokubo Benkei is a unique man with an extremely large head, but he is also not great and not a guy I'd like to see working the bulk of a tag. During the pre-match promo it really seems like Abdullah knows next to nothing about Benkei, referring to him almost exclusively as My Partner before eventually referring to him by a name that almost sounds close to Benkei. Tiger Mask's match opening work with Benkei might be the best part of this, as Tiger Mask shoot punches Benkei twice in the stomach while Benkei looks like he might toss his cookies. When Tiger Mask tries to snapmare him after, Benkei blocks it like a badass and stays standing. Anjo punches him in his giant head and hurts his hand doing so, it's the best. 

When the match settles down into a southern tag, it's from Abby stabbing Anjo with a fork while shrieking in the echoing Pacifico. Yes, this match settles down when the stabbing starts. Abby gives Anjo a tour of ringside so everyone can see how hard Anjo is getting stabbed and it gets good when a bloodied Anjo starts fighting back. But it's crazy how Abby somehow seems more violent doing his taped up finger strikes than he does literally stabbing someone. There was a slick moment where Abby caught a kick and swept Anjo's plant leg from under him. It got more heated and electric whenever TM would come in and save Anjo or fight off Benkei, and it was a great moment where Anjo started spiking Abby and drew the man's poisoned blood, leaking it all over the timekeeper's table before dropping several knees into his cut. I love how Anjo started shrieking like Abby during his comebacks, and how much louder Abby started shrieking while Anjo was driving knees down onto Abby's arm. Sick style clash, I had no clue how seldom Abby and TM ever crossed paths, and I wish we got them truly going at it. Glad we got what little work we did.  

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Found Footage Friday: DEAN~! 2 Special!!

In honor of DEAN 2~! tonight. Here are some found footage gems from DEAN 2~! stalwarts

Torneo Cibernetico: Felino/Mega/Rambo/Super Mega/Ultimo Vampiro vs. Blue Panther/Bombero Infernal/Dr. Cerebro/Negro Navarro/Scorpio Jr. (Torneo Cibernetico) IWRG 2/15/01

MD: Once this got going it was a lot of fun. You never expect too much out of the battle royale seeding part at the start and there wasn't a lot to see here either, save for everyone piling on Ultimo Vampiro in the corner at the end. The sheer talent in the match was such that once you got into the pairings, there was always someone amazing in the ring. Even though they were eliminated relatively early, Navarro and Cerebro got to stand out during those first few minutes, Navarro with his tricked out holds and understanding of how to project himself as a star and Cerebro by creating a lot of motion, taking a lot of stuff and contorting at least one person in unholy ways. Unfortunately, we only had one brief moment of Panther and Cerebro going at it, with Cerebro sitting up out of a Panther Tapatia.

They teased Mega vs Super Mega which the crowd wanted to see but if it happened, we didn't get to see it. There was a general excitement for rudo vs rudo pairings though. In general, I could have used a little more of both Dandy and Panther, but they both looked good in what they did do. Rambo got to shine with two rapid fire eliminations, first with this great double top arm wrench that someone should really steal and then with a seated campana. He fell almost immediately thereafter to a clever enough Scorpio foul only to get revenge at the end by sneaking one on him from the apron to let Panther win it. So fun stuff all around even if we only got the tiniest appetizer of Cerebro vs Panther.

PAS: This was fun rather then truly exceptional. We have some all timers on both sides, and we get glimpses of what made them great. A taste of Navarro, an appetizer of Cerebro, a sip of Dandy. Panther and Cerebro are the reasons we wrote up this match, and I did dig the little bit we got from them, 24 years later I am expecting more of a dish tonight. I really need to dig into this 01 IWRG Bihari is putting up, because I suspect their are some really hidden bangers (Panther vs. Felino on this show is closer to what we want) This wasn't one of them, but still well worth checking out.  

ER: Rob Bihari uploaded this lost gem not long after we announced the DEAN~! 2 Cibernetico, when I publicly said that we have no actual footage of Dr. Cerebro mixing it up with Blue Panther. The opportunity to prove me wrong led to us finally getting this Cibernetico out there for public consumption. When we found out who CMLL was letting us use for DEAN~! 2 we all immediately salivated at the idea of Cerebro getting minutes with Blue Panther and Virus, two compatriots that Cerebro hardly has any (taped) ring time against. There's an incredibly fun Cerebro/Virus singles from a decade ago (that Matt wrote up when he was just getting into lucha, which is funny to think in retrospect that it's only been a decade since Matt dove into lucha libre) and this Cibernetico that featured both Cerebro and Panther that was not in circulation. Once I publicly proclaimed that we had never seen Cerebro and Panther in the ring together, Rob swooped in minutes later proclaiming that we actually DO have that match in circulation now. Ask and ye shall receive, and we received a real gift. 

The DEAN~! 2 Cibernetico was one of the best Ciberneticos I have seen, and when I watched this match the morning of DEAN~! 2 my mind was in another place. I was somewhere else and watching this in a hotel room and pacing around my room until we left to go see the event space that morning and meet the crew. This match was on, and I was in theory watching it, but I knew I wanted to see it again. In the heat of the insanity that was the DEAN~! 2 live experience, every person backstage was buzzing during and after the Cibernetico. Blue Panther - at 64 - had one of the great performances of his life, young upstart Virus looked as good as ever, and really all 10 guys overdelivered in ways I don't think anyone expected. The DEAN~! 2 Cibernetico was, for me, the best case scenario for a match that looked like dynamite on paper. We got several to book several names that we never dreamed we'd have access to a year ago, and put them in a match with pairings we were dying to see. Then, it actually happened, and I was moved by how hard these men worked at our weird, exciting, outdoor Arizona mall show near a fountain display, lit by the neon signs of Universal Citywalk chain and axe throwing barcades. Nothing is going to compare to my memory of seeing this Cibernetico. Losing my mind with Phil, my good friend Will who I was meeting in person for the first time, wrestlers from DEAN~! and wrestlers who weren't on the show at all, is never going to be beat. Bryan Danielson coming out after your Cibernetico to give one of the greatest promos of his life, somehow convincing hundreds of people in the life affirming power of pro wrestling. 

I stated to at least a dozen people (probably more) over the rest of the night/weekend/next week, that I had watched a newly unearthed early 2000s IWRG Cibernetico and OUR Cibernetico, the one we all got to share, was better. I remember El Dandy suddenly being a top 25 guy on a DVDVR 500 and it made me want to get as much IWRG as possible. Trading for Negro Navarro matches, buying the Dr. Cerebro/El Hijo del Santo mask vs. mask match - and so many other shows - for $5 at Franks and Son Collectibles in some City of Industry warehouse whenever my friends and I would drive down to see wrestling. A 21 year old who now had opinions on Bombero Infernal and Rambo. Had this Cibernetico been available on VHS on any of the trips we made to Franks and Son lucha shows, I obviously would have bought it. Blue Panther, Cerebro, Dandy, Navarro, Felino, all guys I was buying tapes specifically to see. But I had never seen this match until Rob uploaded it, and it had the misfortune of being watched on the same day I witnessed live the most special Cibernetico of my life. 

So the competition was going to be stiff. The mindset was different, my brain was operating on other matters, I am no longer in a hotel room after binging on a breakfast buffet with the DEAN~! crew since we wouldn't be eating again for another 12-16 hours. Now, we're a couple weeks removed from DEAN~! 2, I've finally floated back to earth, I was finally ready, I can finally admit...this is a really great Cibernetico. I still don't think it's better than the one on DEAN~! but I don't think that matters because as with all Ciberneticos, this had things that no other one had. Maybe the only knock against this one is that it never felt like it built to a fever pitch and didn't have as much ongoing story threads, but at the same time it's filled with guys who I could watch wrestle in 2nd gear for hours. That is not to say that anyone dogged it, it just never built to any big bumps and dives, and I think that's incredibly cool in a different way. 

Also, all of these legendary names enter the ring collectively to Survivor's Burning Heart, which feels more like something you'd see at the beginning of a 90s Germany catch tournament show when everyone on that card has to come out and stand in the ring like an idiot. I don't think these Cibernetico teams were chosen based on their allegiances to Communism or Capitalism, but maybe this match is aligned deeper than I realized. 

I think everyone here had some legit moments. My favorites? Cerebro, Panther, Navarro, Bombero Infernal, Rambo. Maybe Rambo. I love Rambo. I love luchadors who move like Rambo. He looks like a poor kid in faded camouflage pajamas, just looking like total shit in there, but then he and Dandy are rolling and he dives into Dandy's leg with a takedown and Dandy is selling for him with that spirited 2001 energy he had and it's everything I want in lucha. Rambo's huracanrana roll up on Navarro is such a great surprise, smoother than even Dr. Cerebro's. Nobody bumps to the floor over the bottom rope like Rambo anymore. The old man luchador style of getting to the floor has been phasing out for a long time, and Rambo's exits are smooth and graceful and faster than you'd expect. "Faster than you'd expect" is one of the joys of older lucha statesmen. He hits two great butt butts into Dandy and the man shouldn't be this damn good with gear that bad. He's 15 years past losing his mask here and he's hitting his double wristlock and butt attacks like a 30 year old. 

The guys I fully expected to be standouts - Cerebro, Navarro, Panther, Dandy - were, and had a half dozen sequences each that any fan of theirs would want to see. Negro Navarro started the whole thing super hot with Super Mega, with the kind of llave and rolling I could watch for an entire match. Navarro had this drop toehold that seemed to work in reverse, body going one way, legs tripping Mega the other way, bending space and time for what could have been a simple single leg trip. Navarro has a snapmare strong enough that it could have been a piece of actual offense, and he kept gravitating to teaming with Panther to target Dandy in cool ways. Cerebro was incredibly vicious, a totally different approach than he's worked the last 15-20 years. He was real aggressive and rudo stiff. In the battle royal he was always running into frame swinging hard horizontal rights. He had great shtick to accompany mat bumps that were harder than everyone else's. His short run against Blue Panther was great fun, with a Cerebro huracanrana roll up and excellent Panther surfboard with awesome power. He also got all his limbs tied up by Bombero, who was holding the ropes so blatantly while laughing like a supervillain that nobody got in his way. Panther's crucifix on Dandy was maybe the most vicious submission of the entire affair, with Panther bending him back forceful, not smoothly, while Dandy screamed and crab walked slowly to a bottom rope.

Watch this Cibernetico. It's great. It's got as many special moments as the best Ciberneticos. They're all unique snowflakes. Can any nation truly stand alone? Maybe we'll answer David Bickler's question on DEAN~! 3. 

Rhyno vs. Low-Ki PWS 6/7/14 - GREAT

PAS: This was kind of a compact TV match, about seven minutes, pretty stiff, just a nice piece of business. Ki hits a couple of nasty kicks on Rhino a guy that square must seem like a perfect heavy bag for him. They each get a kick out of their big move, Ki liquifies his insides with a Warrior's Way for a two, and Ki gets a kick out of the Gore. Match ended with a bit of an awkward roll up, which kind of felt like two guys who couldn't agree on a finish. Give it another big move or two and it would really sing. 

JR: I'll always have a soft spot for Rhyno. I remember being right at the age where I could read magazines when he was coming up in ECW and finding out he had done time and being both mystified and terrified. I remember going to those Hardcore Homecoming shows less than 10 years later, and him working heel, cutting promos about how he was slumming it for a night before going back to TNA, and the guy behind me trying to get a "Bound for Glory" chant going.

What can be said about Low Ki that hasn't already been said? A captivating worker, an inscrutable person. If you hate Low Ki, you are anti-labor.

I had no idea what to make of most of this. I thought it funny that Rhyno is always notable for making his stuff look great while working pretty light, while Low Ki is notable for...the opposite of that. Here, I think they kind of don't know what to do with one another. In someways, it's a match between two guys who are good at working from underneath but primarily want to find ways to control pace, and I don't think either of them really found a way to get in a groove. I thought at the beginning, Rhyno was going to work kind of like a Stan Hansen brawl on the outside with Ki doing a Tommy Rich impression, and then when they didn't do that, I thought Ki would find a way to stick and move around the bigger man, but neither thing happens. Instead, we kind of get a house show match with a finish that feels like more generous on behalf of Rhyno, which I suppose is to be expected.

MD: I loved the look of this one, shot from underneath with those big windows up top. The crowd was more behind Rhino though he tried to turn them. Ki didn't care about them one way or the other. He just did his thing, full steam ahead. Rhino treated him like an absolute equal, like they were the exact same size. There was a small feeling early on that if Rhino just caught him that'd be enough, but it didn't last. He recoiled from Ki's chops. He focused on the back because size alone wouldn't cut it; it would open the door but it wouldn't even contain Ki, let alone defeat him. That led to a fairly long bearhug in a fairly short match but you didn't mind it much. I didn't mind the finish either, where Rhino kicked out of Warrior's Way and Ki kicked out of the Gore before Rhino got rolled up with a lumpy sunset flip as he went for the second one. I would have just liked those kickouts to register a little more emotionally. No one was expecting Ki to kick out but once he did, life just moved on. It's less the shocked face I'm looking for so much as the resolve that one gore simply wasn't enough and he had no choice but to charge back in, even though he was unknowingly charging towards defeat. I never got that feeling and to me that would have put the match just enough over the top.

ER: It looks like I'm the unexpected high voter on this match. It was everything I wanted out of a Ki/Rhino match and more. This was in the back half of a *13 Match Show*, some kind of damned spiritual successor to vintage post-midnight USA Pro shows of a decade prior, and it gets harder to harder to stand out in any way on a show like that. Well these too stood out. Low Ki hit Rhino hard enough multiple times to actually move him. I bet Rhino hasn't felt many chops harder than Ki's, and I know he felt that kick to the thigh later. I have now stood next to Rhino and realize that he is the same height as me, while being probably twice my width. He is a large freezer garage filled with 36 count packs of soft drinks but Low Ki's palm thrusts to the chest looked like something that actually would have tipped that fridge over. 

Rhino is one of out more uniquely shaped men and I love him working a bearhug down to one knee after press slamming Ki onto the buckles. Low Ki has excellent selling and this unmatched ability to recoil on bumps like no other wrestler has (maybe Lio Rush?), selling something huge like a bump to the apron or something less like a headbutt to the stomach or creating activity in a bear hugs. It makes him an ideal opponent for a man of any size, but a big couch of a man like Rhino can make him pinball and rebound in the best ways. And, as Rhino is the size of a couch, Low Ki treats him like me doing Macho Man elbowdrops onto my parent's couch, fucking up that couch with a Warriors Way, just messing up this living room set of a man.

Ki took the Gore so well that it makes the move feel new all over again. It was a great Gore anyway, and would have been great no matter who was taking it. What I loved most about it was how Rhino did not do his typical set up out of the corner but instead used it as a much cooler 180 surprise. He shot past Low Ki with a clothesline and turned on a dime to stop him cold as Ki was rebounding off the ropes. It looked fucking awesome and I don't remember seeing him use it as a momentum stopper. Rhino is always the one supplying the momentum behind it. I wasn't expecting Low Ki to kick out of that surprise Gore and I wasn't expecting Rhino to kick out of the Warriors Way so both popped me good. And I loved the finish, with Ki leaping over a  Gore that Rhino had set up at a charging distance, showing that Rhino should have kept trying to surprise the ninja and not give him any of time to quick react counter. When Low Ki is given actual time to react to an attack, he has too many ways to use that time against his opponent, and Rhino paid for that error. 

Mad Dog Connelly vs. Jordan Blade PPW 9/25/22

PAS: This was Connelly's first dog collar match, and outside of the Demus match I think it is my favorite. These were two staples of the PPW UWFI rules division, and this had the pace of a one round MMA brawl with a chain. All gas, no breaks stuff with both wrestlers trying to decapitate each other with huge chain shots from the break. I loved how nasty all of the wrestling moves felt with the chain in the mix, everything felt like it could go wrong and someone could land temple first on steel. The whole thing felt like a finishing run, sometimes you want to sip, sometimes you want to shoot straight whiskey. 

MD: There's such a Hansen-ian bent to Connelly and especially his chain matches. It's all implicit storytelling, the path of least resistance. They're not building a castle in the sky. They're not loading Chekhov's Gun. They're hitting you with a shotgun blast to the face. There's a cold hard logic to eternal forward motion. The train's coming. Either you can stop it or not.

And at times, Blade could. Connelly went for a choke with it almost from the get go and that put him at a disadvantage that allowed for a German Suplex. Less could be done when he hit the floor and simply pulled. That said, it wasn't until the chain came loose and the ref halted proceedings that he was finally able to start choking Blade with it, striking mercilessly by surprise. That was the opening for the gutwrenches, three in a row, with the chain dangerously dangling between them enhancing the image of each impact.

Blade was skilled, strong, and tenacious though and had an honest shot at it, but wrapping the chain around Connelly's face to further mangle him wasn't the way to go. Thus equipped, loaded, primed, he burst forth, that aforementioned shotgun blast in the form of a headbutt (because I can load Chekhov's Gun in this review, even if he won't). Maybe one last hopeful Blade Rear Naked Choke followed, but it was too little too late, for Connelly was able to roll through and end it with the selfsame sense of brutality that he tried to begin it with. There's no out-hating the Mad Dog in a dog collar match. The chain knows who it serves.

ER: I'm not sure this even goes 5 minutes and it clearly didn't need to go longer than that. I saw this match for the first time in 2024. Phil showed it to me in our motel room the night before the first DEAN~! show. I was sitting up in the bed that we would be sharing - there was some mistake because the in-over-his-head motel manager messed something up with our reservations, giving us a small room with one bed and Tom K the literal largest hotel room I have ever been in - and Phil was seated at the motel desk, laptop on desk. We were both exhausted after a very long travel day. I had a red eye flight and had hung out with friends in Philly all day, so I had not actually slept in over 36 hours. But we were both excited about the show the next day, and Phil asked if I had ever seen Mad Dog vs. Jordan Blade. I had not. 

Now we are in a post-DEAN~! 2 world and I saw more than one person disappointed that Mad Dog vs. Adam Priest "only" went 7 minutes, but I am of the mindset that Mad Dog Collar matches don't need to go that long at all. This is a wild man, unleashed, and most humans aren't going to be able to take a "normal" main event's worth of time enduring a chain beating and chain choking. This match against Blade is a complete match in its 5 minutes. There's no way to stop Mad Dog, only briefly slow him down, and I thought it was great how Blade didn't wrestle a bad match, she just got overwhelmed and couldn't find a way back in. It doesn't diminish her, doesn't mean her strategy was bad, she just got beat by a maniac. She tried to stop the boulder from rolling down the hill but those arms get tired real quick and before long you realize you can't even step aside, that boulder is going straight over the top of you. 

Hard to believe this was Mad Dog's first collar match and he already had full mastery of the chain. I lost my mind when Blade wrapped the chain all around his face and it only made Mad Dog want to use his face as a weapon. It was a good idea but she couldn't have predicted how Mad Dog would have reacted to having a face full of chain. If you've already taken balled up chained up fists to the head and barely weathered those, you just can't prepare for a chain wrapped maniac's face. I love how Mad Dog's violence does not just revolve around the chain. The chain is a weapon he will use but also a tool he will use to facilitate violence, in the same way the Gracie's used their gi to advance to the real violence. He knows how to use the chain to cut angles and change distance, but it is not his only method to bring violence. One of the more violent things in a match made of violence happened on the floor, when Mad Dog just charged into Blade's face with a back elbow. No chain needed, while the threat of the chain loomed always.

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: KONG~! MEIKO~! CACTUS~! ATLANTIS~! MASAKRE~! DANDY~! JT SMITH~!

Cactus Jack vs. JT Smith TWA 8/20/91

MD: Guessing on this date from the finish. It's surreal to see Foley go from Manchester vs Vader back to this (just a couple of years earlier). He did stuff on top of stuff to keep it entertaining, smacking a chair into his head (two chairs; the first wooden which he sold more), going on the mic for a big rant (after which he ran right into Smith's offense), the Cactus clothesline over the top, a flip bump in the corner, so on and so forth.

His shots in the corner all looked great and he was there for every little thing Smith did. Smith was in the right place at the right time hitting the right stuff for a lot of this, keeping the crowd engaged as a babyface, but it was hard not to be overshadowed by Cactus. I'd call this more entertaining than coherent or great, but you still didn't want to look away which was the hallmark of early 90s Foley. Great finish too as Foley got his throat caught in the ropes leading to a count out, a very clever way to get Cactus Jack out of a tournament if need be.

ER: A cool match, and I love the timing of this coming just a week after we covered a new Cactus/Vader match. That was 1993, this is 1991, and Cactus seems like such a different wrestler in this one. Just two years later he was slower, beefier, and his execution on almost everything was completely different. Here he threw punches with his arm and threw them more overhand, completely different arm slot than he would use for most of his career. His punches looked great here. Every time he hit JT Smith it looked like a real shot. JT Smith was in there to take shots, and the crowd responded to it. They really got behind him, even though every single time we got a glimpse of the crowd there didn't seem to be a single person in attendance who looked like him. How about that. 

JT Smith isn't really a guy with offense, so of course you were going to have Cactus make up for that. That's when you get him wandering around the building hitting himself with chairs, cutting a promo mid-match, keeping people riled and wary against him and hot behind JT. He knew JT was going to bump big for him - JT Smith got thrown, hit, or clotheslined to the floor three times in under a minute and every fall he took to the floor looked great - and he is Cactus Jack so of course he's going to take some bumps. That said, I don't know if I've seen Cactus take that Ray Stevens bump in the corner before. It's not the Shawn Michaels roll up bump, it's the Stevens bump that John Nord and Mike Modest took neck/shoulder first into the buckles. Nord and Modest took it more horizontally and landed flat, but Cactus takes it messier and ends with an uglier bump down into the mat. 

There were two really great moments, as judged by some guy sitting near the cameraman who exclaimed "Oh SHIT!" two different times: The first was when a charging Cactus clothesline knocked Smith sideways on landed him on his stomach; the second was when Cactus got himself hanged in the ropes very near to where he was sitting. His verbal exclamations were absolutely correct both times. 

Atlantis/Rayo de Jalisco Jr/El Dandy vs. Pierroth Jr/Masakre/MS-1 CMLL 9/92

MD: Really a blast in the about ten minutes we get here. The primera and segunda function almost as a fully formed sprint and then we get at least part of the finish of the tercera. Atlantis looks like a huge star here. He bounds into the ring and gets ambushed starting the rudo control. Masakre is a menace here, sneaking in and punching anyone he can at any point, even when they're in holds.

Atlantis comes back basically on his own, including eating a punch and kipping up immediately to fire back. While this is happening Rayo is fondly holding the hand of a prone Dandy. Atlantis just outslicks all three rudos until his partners can come back (and when they do, it's with a huge Dandy punch and Rayo doing his shtick; it all felt balanced here). For the tercera we come in on them switching matches around which is a little weird, but the tecnicos pretty quickly overcome. I would have liked to see how we got to the mask switching but overall what we did get here was great.

Aja Kong vs. Meiko Satomura GAEA 6/14/03

MD: We're going to try to tackle some of these GAEA uploads that people think are rare/new as we've done a bad job at that. I have no idea about the context here, but I do know that Aja Kong might be the most immediately watchable wrestler ever. You can drop into almost any of her matches from almost any period and while the match might be enhanced by content, you're going to be able to figure out exactly what's going on. 

I call it the "Problem of Aja" which has to be overcome by any opponent she faces. She's too big, too strong, too fierce, too much, and even against someone like Satomura, you see it right from the get go where Aja just stuffs her and starts to pull her apart, wrenching her arms in all sorts of ways they don't belong. With a little bit of distance Satomura can get a quick shot in, but by giving Aja a little bit of distance, she'll get run over in turn. She can smash her head with the metal bucket (or throw it at her) but Aja will just take it and headbutt her back, or even worse: she'll get the bucket and smash Satomura and then drop her head first on it. 

The great equalizer here was Satomura's death valley drivers. Any move that took so much effort could justifiably have such an effect, and they were enough to turn the tide and even to almost put Aja away, but almost isn't enough and while she was able to duck the uraken a few times and get ten strikes in for every one Aja hit, all it took was one landing to end this.

ER: I thought this was incredible. This wasn't out there before? This is new? We're just seeing this match, that feels like one of the classic matches of a classic feud? That can't be. If this match happened on this week's Dynamite it would be a 5.5 star match that people actually remember two months later. Aja Kong is an unstoppable danger that must be endured, and I've never responded to a woman wrestler the way I respond to Aja. The same way I can show any of my non-wrestling bubble friends any Stan Hansen match from any era and they recognize on sight that this man is beating the shit out of everyone and moving and falling and reacting in ways they have never seen yet instantly understand, Aja Kong has that exact same level of accessibility. If this is your first Aja Kong/Meiko match, you will understand everything. The fight Aja forces Meiko into bringing, Aja's unbeatable and at times literally unmovable condescending honesty, and Meiko's urge and determination. Aja feels like someone who cannot be moved and it requires Meiko to do it for real, and when Aja takes something for real she's finally a monster wounded. 

The GAEA girls at ringside keep taking this to higher levels, their volume and cries and anger growing over a brisk 12 minutes, and the crowd actually sounds upset when Aja kicks out of Meiko's final surge of fire. The anguish of her girls at ringside was felt as much or more than the emotion all over Meiko's face.  Every hit in this match is honest as can be. The death valley drivers compress Kong, the slaps seem like they should all swell Meiko's jaw and wreck her hearing. Kong gives this woman a brainbuster on a metal bucket and it's not as violent as a half dozen of Kong's strikes. The emotion is huge for a "short" match, and Kong pulling a fucking small package - and a small package so well executed that it would have brought a tear to Bret Hart's eye - is one of the greatest bullshit asshole heel spots I've ever seen. Can you picture Stan Hansen needle dicking his way into pulling a small package on Misawa? Riots. I've never seen something so brazen. She eventually buckles Meiko's entire body with a uraken but I wanted to see the looks on everyone's faces and the boos from every mouth had Aja Kong won with that perfect small package. 

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Found Footage Friday: PUNK~! LOD~! DANDY~! SILVER KING~! SHU~! PANTHER~! SUPER PARKA~!

IWRG Retro 7/27/00

El Dandy/Silver King/Black Dragon vs. Shu el Guerrero/Mosco de la Merced/Hijo del Diablo

MD: VQ is tough with a lot of freezing but you can tell what's going on and the talent is so much here that you want to see it through. No real signature pairings here. I'd say that this was driven by the talent, energy, and star power on the tecnico side and structured accordingly. That meant in the primera, each tecnico got a chance to lean into rudo miscommunication and entertainingly fight them all off at once. There are things you'd note, like Silver King sliding across the ring or Dandy's punch or Black Dragon's crave dive at the end of the caida, but it was all good.

Rudos took over in the segunda after they teased pairings and they did the bit where they flip their opponents over and toss them into a kick in the corner. This could have probably used a couple more minutes, for once they hit the tecera, it was a quick reset and into in and out submissions and break-ups and really overall chaos with things breaking down. Finish had Dragon roll forward into a tapitia which you don't see often and Dandy hitting a jumping DDT for the win. Rudos did their job but this really was the tecnicos show, and even with the freezing, it was a good show.

ER: It's a shame this has so many freezes and bits of missing action because everything we get is really great. Everybody got their own moments to cook and I love a trios like this where everyone tries to take over the show the longer it goes. Mosco de la Merced and Hijo del Diablo were the real standouts to me but every brought something big. Silver King is so good at pushing pace and guys like Mosco and Diablo rise to that pace and it makes their bumps even crazier. The Segunda opening with King and Diablo really cooked, Diablo early on looking like the one guy in the match who was going to hang back and let everyone else handle things, building to him stooging and bumping as big as anyone. Mosco took at least four big bumps and worked comedy into half of them, including a great bit where he kept removing pieces of clothing while ramping up for a one on one confrontation, whipping his shirt and bandana into the crowd and firing up by almost removing his pants. Black Dragon is a guy who I literally only remember because of his incredible tope over/past the ringpost into the corner, which he hits beautifully here after pulling off a super smooth rana. His tope is one of the great lucha topes in history, one of those spots like Super Calo's slingshot senton that makes a luchador's career seem bigger than it really was. Shu el Guerrero is a total tank of a luchador, or dream build Valiente, but Mosco and Diablo handle all the toughest basing and catches. Shu's best bit of basing is sliding across the entire ring for a frankly breathtaking Dandy headscissors, Dandy getting full glorious extension and not tucking early, really making it look like he flung Shu 10 feet with his ankles and leverage. It would have been great to have the full uncut action (and crowd noise, and the actual screen presentation instead of the annoying TV screen aesthetic) but there's no denying the action we did see. 

Blue Panther vs. Super Parka

MD: WWA Title match. Parka's the champ. It's worked like a title match with just a bit of the dancing/histrionics from Parka, which he tends to pay for whenever he does. I liked the primera a lot. Nothing too tricked out but they kept close body contact for a lot of it in a way you don't always see in lucha matwork. It was all up tight and combative. Parka had advantage for a lot of it working over the arm. When they got moving towards the end of the caida, you had no idea who would get the ultimate advantage but Parka took it with a snap 'rana. 

Segunda was super short, but Panther won it with the old French Catch standard waistlock into a leg nelson (no roll). Not something you see every day, even from him. Then the tercera had all the bells and whistles and drama. Parka took out Panther's leg early and worked it over. Panther sold big on his comeback attempts. There was another 'rana for a nearfall and a long Cavernaria. Parka hit this amazing tope sending both of them over the barricade. Then Panther went for a submission and then pinned themselves. Only a couple of spotty moments VQ wise with the freezing, thankfully, as this was a very good title match to be unearthed. 

CM Punk/Doug Delicious vs. Legion of Doom WWE 5/13/03

MD: As WWE Vault stuff goes, this is better than something we already had, worse than if they had given it to us in full, and especially worse than giving us Omni shows or something. But it has its novelty and we should cover it, clipped as it is. Punk explaining that he had been on the banned list for doing a hammerlock DDT the night before gives his performance here color. Obviously, just in general facing the Road Warriors in this setting, he's going to do everything he could to stand out and bump and feed and stooge for them.

Since he was in hot water, however, he really went above and beyond, on from the get go. The fans absolutely loved seeing the LOD as a surprise and popped huge for them as Punk covered his head in shock in the ring. They cut out a lot of the stuff with Delicious and only give us Punk but I don't really mind that too much. He screamed as he went over for Animal's power slam and went sailing for the belly-to-belly throw. Hawk was totally on too, hitting his shoulder first post-bump to the floor. He even ate a Punk snap suplex. This isn't the first or hundredth thing I would have wanted, especially not clipped, but I was still smiling despite myself as I watched it, so I'll certainly take this sort of thing over nothing. 

ER: I was not actually expecting this to be really good but I have a feeling the full uncut match was actually quite good. I'm a big fan of 1998 LOD even though history says they were totally washed. Well, they were pretty washed, but Washed Legends is one of my favorite kinds of wrestler. 1998 Hawk was a particular favorite of mine. He wasn't lifting much anymore so he wasn't working as a power wrestler, so he just leaned into being a puncher with a couple of surprising big bumps. Hawk was a great puncher and a guy with great bumps, so it really felt like a super vulnerable version of the Road Warrior Hawk, boiled down to his most basics; still dangerous, now beatable. I loved it. It's a shame they were stuck feuding with DOA for most of the year during their final real run. I have a feeling that some good Hawk stuff was cut from this tag in cutting the Doug Delicious work, and that's a shame. I don't know much about Doug Delicious so maybe they were right to cut most of his work out of this, but I sure stood at attention when he lit Hawk the hell up with chops on the floor. I cannot imagine someone chopping either Road Warrior the way Doug was chopping Hawk in 1986 but this is 2003. That's the kind of things that makes vulnerable legends so compelling. They're on the way down and now fucking Doug Delicious is doing things that would have gotten greater men killed. 

Punk was great in this, reminded me again of why I liked him so much during this era. He bumped huge for everything the LOD did and even sold their entrance music. He fed really well for them both and I was pretty shocked at the amount of offense he got. The snap suplex on Hawk was a real surprise, but I liked how he worked the match as a guy who really belonged in the ring with the Road Warriors and not just a stooge who just lied on the mat in between moves. He set up Hawk's ringpost bump perfectly, moving out of the way at the last second so it made it look like an actual miss and not a set up bump, and Hawk spills past the apron to the floor as well as any of those times a missed western lariat sent Stan Hansen tumbling to the floor. I thought Animal looked good here too, taking on the bulk of the match (well, at least the way the match was edited) and I thought his movement looked strong. That leaping elbowdrop was fire and they each seemed real pumped at the crowd's loud reaction and chanting for them. WWE always hated the idea of bringing back older legends to work undercards but I wish we had years of All Japan old men matches on the undercards of house shows, it would have been incredible. They only viewed people on what they could potentially add to the top of the card but any time they brought back an older name and just plopped them in the third match it worked perfectly. I needed more runs like the Tatanka or, well, Road Warrior Animal mid-2000s Smackdown run. 

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Found Footage Friday: SANTO~! DANDY~! MONSTERS~! OF~! THE~! MAT~! '87~!

El Hijo del Santo vs. El Dandy Monterrey 6/14/98

MD: The biased ref: the rock that sunk a thousand lucha indy matches. But, at the end of the day, it's a tool, just like anything else, and whenever you give a tool to two absolute masters, two of the all time greats, they can use it to make magic. That was much the case here, as (Cuato?) Guerrero, that self same ref that I've encountered in countless old Monterrey matches in the last year, was completely on Dandy's side. Throughout the first two falls, every time Santo would start to come back, he'd been there to slow him down. In and of itself, that might have been frustrating and dumped all the heat on Guerrero. Instead, Dandy made use of the situation each and every time to slip one foul or another in, infuriating the crowd as he was taking advantage in the dirtiest, cheapest way possible. Therefore, it served it's best possible purpose, to build and build and build the heat until Santo was able to finally come back and get bloody, brutal, satisfying vengeance.

Dandy had started the beatdown in the primera by choking Santo with a shirt, and after the first foul cutoff, locked in La Casita for the pin. During the segunda, he started opening Santo up, especially after the next ref interference and foul, and made like an absolute vampire with his gnawing and tearing. When Santo finally did come back, he was constant motion, keeping well out of the reach of the referee as he darted across the ring to kick Dandy in the skull, including hitting the gnarliest diving tope in the center of the ring en route to a Caballo where he was pulling Dandy's head back by the hair in grisly fashion. The tercera started with him trying to split Dandy's head completely open in a row of chairs and never really let down. The commentators noted that there was strong rudo energy within Santo here, and maybe he went overboard, letting Dandy fire back in the crowd. They went into a more conventional tercera finishing sequence from there with big dramatic pin attempts as they continued to bleed all over the place. 

Just when it looked like Santo was about to lock in the Caballo once again, Bestia Salvaje stormed the ring and everything broke down. You knew that Santo was about to win, however, and even before that, they had gone through all the proper stages of the ritual: the beatdown, the hope spots, the cutoffs, the comeback, and then the back and forth bloody battle. This was a match that came out of nowhere, that we never thought we might have, one that defied and overcame the inherent failings of the local trappings to turn a convention that usually feels like bullshit into something absolutely serene. Two masters at work, painting a vivid landscape in blood and retribution. 

PAS: Incredible discovery, Dandy stops off in Monterey for a month in between jobbing to Chris Jericho in less then a minute on Nitro and beating Lash LaRoux on WCW Pro, to carve up El Hijo Del Santo and bleed buckets all over the ring. Intense, fevered brawl with rows of chairs being tossed willy nilly and Santo responding to the heel ref by just getting more and more vicious, tearing at Dandy's skull, smashing his head into wooden chairs and ripping at his hair. These guys had a legendary hair match a year earlier, and while this doesn't have the epic scope of the match, they make up for it with nastiness and grime. Finish was a bit deflating, but that is really the only thing that keeps it from legendary status. 

JR: El Dandy is such a wonderful heel. He feels like a fictional character almost, as though he has been written to be perfectly slimy. He is such an obvious scumbag, so violent and so cruel. Yet he still functions with these flourishes and affectations while on offense, spinning on his strikes and preening between stomps. He’s like a mafia hitman who uses big words he learns from a word a day calendar in between his routine of torture and murder.

Santo is perfect here, perhaps the most patient wrestler of all time. There are so many places in this match where his spots would make sense and would get the crowd to react, but he holds them until the very last possible moment. He makes people wait. He builds anticipation better than any wrestler except for maybe Hogan. Truthfully, this performance is almost Hogan-esque, is it not? He sells wonderfully. He works with the referee in a way that would feel almost heelish if he did not have such a beautiful connection with the crowd. He hits his dive late and Colliseo erupts.

This isn’t the best Santo match. It’s not the best footage we have of Dandy as a heel. But if you wanted to show someone the essence of why both are so effective, you could do worse than using this as a guidepost.

 

 

Monsters of the Mat WWA 6/15/87

MD: Sometimes we don't have a choice. The footage decides itself. This was a Luce production at the Kats Bar in Chicago and is very much what it sounds like. It began with an arm wrestling match between the Sinister Minster of Fear and Calypso Joe (who wrestled sometimes as Bobo Brazil, Jr.). It ended after a bit too long (The announcer even said "something will have to happen soon" or something along those lines) with seconds crashing into each other and the proceedings after a missed punch, leading to Calypso winning by DQ, more or less setting the tone for the night.

Moose Cholak vs. Shotgun Willie

MD: (Yukon) Cholak was somewhere around 57 here, billed at 450 pounds. He felt like both a star (of sorts) and a regular at the bar in this setting. Willie had the Minister with him and had that DDP/Jimmy "Jam" Garvin look a few years early. He was a few inches away from solid TV job work. You found yourself looking forward to every time Cholak would whack Willie. Willie would do these big sweeping shots and then Cholak would just shove a satisfying fist in his face, ram his face into the corner or hit him with his belly. Then Willie would escape, stall, work the crowd, and try again from a different angle only for the process to repeat. Willie played hide the object (a chain maybe), but it really didn't do him too much good as Moose manhandled him again and again. Likewise with the Minister grabbing Moose's legs from the outside. He'd just shrug off the damage, muss his hair a bit, and pummel Willie. On some level it was probably repetitive, but everyone seemed to enjoy it well enough. Willie dodged the splash and things sort of devolved into a finish I didn't entirely understand but at the very least Moose had a moral victory and the Minster and Willie ended up scrambling.

Golden Lion & Polynesian Wildman vs. Beach Boy & Calypso Jim

MD: Golden Lion worked as Dick the Bruiser, Jr. That's all I've got on any of these guys. This was 2 out of 3 falls and had to do a lot of heavy lifting on the card. Sinister Minster was out with the heels (Lion/Wildman). I have conflicted thoughts about this. The leaned into traditional roles. The simple fact of the matter is that tag wrestling, so long as the formula (we'll say the southern tag formula) is stuck to, simply works. It's not rocket science. Shine/heat/comeback. Hope spots, cutoffs. The 2/3 structure allows for wrestlers' to either play that into the ebb and flow for falls and comebacks, or to have multiple face-in-perils and hot tags. That's basically what they did here, and it worked.

It's alarming how well it worked. These guys may not have ever been stars, but they were at least competent. The heels fed well for both faces. Jim had charisma. Beach Boy worked hard and had a lot of energy. The transitions were basic but effective. When the heels were in control they had swagger and kept things moving. Lion would strut to set up a Beach Boy hope spot and then cut him right off and set up some cheating. He hopped on the mic between falls to get heat. They built to big hot tags and big payoffs.

So why is this alarming? Because these guys (these guys!) could have this match and front of this crowd, could take up so much time and bring people up and down so well, and I'm not sure how many people watching wrestling would value what they did here or how many people wrestling could actually pull it off. These guys could do this in a random Chicago bar in 1987 with maybe a quarter of the athleticism. It shouldn't have felt so refreshing to me in 2024.

Igor Zatkoff vs. Dick the Bruiser

MD: Zatkoff was maybe Psycho Sam Cody and I've got a lot of time for him as a fake Russian. He looked like an oversized Rasputin with the beard and the shaky hands. He was there to fly around for Bruiser and he did, going feet over head for punches. They did some pretty solid test of strength stuff to start, working out of that position so Bruiser could toss Zatkoff about. Igor took over for a bit in the middle, mainly working Bruiser over in the corner but the comeback was more or less matter-of-fact. Minister managed all the heels in the night but this is the first time where it really felt like he got his comeuppance as things led to a big double noggin knocker; pretty smart way to build the card and put Bruiser over in the end and send the fans home happy.

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Found Footage Friday: ROSE~! WISKOSKI~! BASTIEN~! ZULU~! MARTINDALE~! ARAKAWA~! MARKUS~! DANDY~!

Tommy Martindale vs. Mitsu Arakawa NWA Chicago 10/22/54

MD: According to our buddy Ohtani's Jacket, Arakawa was Japanese-American and his gimmick in territories (though not here) was that he was a Hiroshima survival hellbent on revenge. This went about twenty in one fall and was solid stuff. During the pre-match stomping and bowing Martindale flew forth with a dropkick to get things going. He was a chippy and fiery babyface, always trying to work his way out of holds. In that regard, they seemed fairly evenly matched. Arakawa controlled the first third with a series of headlocks, constantly switching from one side to the other and taking him over. Eventually he used a "back bend" that he had been working for to get a reverse headlock in and break it up. You have to love the struggle. The fans did too. When Martindale went for a chinlock later and Arakawa had to escpae by going to the ropes, he drew big boos for it. These fans were conditioned to see wrestlers fight to get out of holds and everything was better off for it. Towards the end, Arakawa started to fight dirty with throat shots. Davis said Martindale had a boxing background but he didn't get to show it here. What he did get to show was that perseverence in constantly trying to fight out of holds, as he turned a body slam attempt by Arakawa into a pin and scored a banana peel victory. Nothing groundbreaking here but you have to love that underlying sense of struggle that could make six minutes of headlocks enjoyable. 

Buddy Rose/Ed Wiskoski vs. Red Bastien/Ron Pope Big Time Wrestling 11/4/78

MD: I don't know how new this is in general but it's a recent Orcutt upload and it's new to me and I've seen as much Rose as I can find. This was to establish Dr. Ken Ramey as Rose's new manager. Pope was a black strongman with a headbutt and a bearhug who I'm not super familiar with.The first five minutes of this were all worked around headlocks and while Wiskoski is good feeding and stooging for them, you can see the difference with Rose. He goes over perfectly for Bastien's walk up headscissors takeover in the corner, the legs going over in a picture perfect manner but one that still feigns impact and heft as opposed to seeming cooperative. Rose had a way of making over the top bumps seem completely natural. Likewise the way he'd flail his arms as far as was humanly possible during headlock cranks; it was for the last row, incredibly memorable, but still somehow felt like that's just what his body would do. Wiskoski was clunkier going over and more artificial on the flailing and it's not like he didn't bring things to the table. He just wasn't Buddy Rose. That's the thing though. No one was. He just instinctively knew what to do at every moment. 

The heels took over when Bastien went to the well once too often and Rose turned it into a belly to back. They got heat for a few minutes before a big comeback where Buddy ended up slammed by Pope and in Bastien's fireman's carry. When he got put in it a second time, they had a great finish of Ramey pulling Bastien's tights behind the ref's back so that Rose would go sailing over the top to draw the DQ. Very creative and it reminded me a little of the moment a few years before when Heenan debuted as Bockwinkel and Stevens' manager. Obviously this didn't have the same staying power, but it was a very effective capping of a pretty entertaining and purposeful TV match.

ER: I've probably been to Sacramento more than 98% of people who write about pro wrestling and I have zero familiarity with the Roy Shire Sacramento shows. I dated a girl whose uncle worked for KTXL as a camera operator. He was not a wrestling fan, he just filmed whatever was being filmed that day at KTXL. He viewed pro wrestling no differently than he viewed news broadcasts, talk shows, or people renting the studio to record their own paid programming. But he was still someone with up close wrestling stories from the sidelines, who did remember a lot of guys who came through Sacramento. Rocky Johnson was a name he brought up the way you'd bring up a college roommate's name, the way an old boss of mine used to talk about Pepper Gomez. This era of wrestling is underwritten about in general, and the Bay Area territory is way underwritten compared to other territories. Red Bastien is under-talked about because his career ran from 1950-1980 instead of 1960-1990, so most of the footage we have is from him in his late 40s. Ray Stevens too. The Bay Area guys all peaked in years we don't have, but now we get to watch Buddy Rose and Ed Wiskoski working a Sacramento TV studio within their peaks. 

Matt talked about Buddy Rose because Rose is a guy always worth talking about and seeking out. He takes multiple backdrops from Big Ron Pope and swung his loose floppy arms around in a side headlock like the Mighty Zulu had hit him with a second tranquilizer dart. Buddy is great, and this is a great Buddy match. But I love Ed Wiskoski and Matt shit all over him. Ed Wiskoski is great because he had two really great wrestling names: Ed Wiskoski and Col. DeBeers. He has some of my favorite wrestling posture. I love how he stands board straight like a Marine, like late 70s Nick Nolte. I love how he has a mustache and flattering shag cut, like late '70s Nick Nolte. His haircut and posture make him look like a Shakespearean surfer, and I love when he does his full rigid body flip over bump. Ed Wiskoski is a hulking version of Tom Atkins in Halloween III, the kind of guy who would show up to a street fight in brown corduroys. When he fights Bastien, he looks like and wrestles him like he's Bastien's younger, bigger brother. Buddy Rose is a guy who can and does steal many of the matches he's in, but Wiskoski wrestles like Chuck Connors would have wrestled. I get something out of him I don't get from any other wrestler. 

Gran Markus Jr/Monje Negro/Milo Caballero vs. El Dandy/Apolo Estrada/Monarka CMLL 1989

MD: Sometimes we get a 13 minute match and it's the full thing. Sometimes, like here, we come in at the start of the segunda. There's a short bit to begin where Markus does a pretty good job basing for Estrada's flashier stuff (think that was the main pairing) followed by a bit of dissension, I think because Dandy didn't like Estrada kicking Markus out of the ring (a tecnico taking pride in being a tecnico?) but then I got that from the commentators and they are unreliable narrators as usual. Regardless, that dissension helped the rudos take over. Of note, Caballero is a rudo here, which isn't what I'm used to and Monje Negro has to be up there in age, but he cut a forboding oversized figure, especially when put next to Markus. He had a knife kneelift and lawn darted Dandy right into Monarka, so that was fun. 

During the beatdown Markus really leaned on Estrada, bloodying him, gnawing on him, and tossing him into the third row in the most satisfying way. I don't remember Markus gnawing on bloody people often but the aftermath was a great visual with the white mask. The comeback was pretty great too as Estrada dodged a Markus knee as Monje Negro was holding him and the two ended up on their knees throwing shots at each other. Estrada got a few pin attempts in before Markus just jammed him, slammed him, and crushed his face with a nonchalant kneedrop. They cycled through after that, with Dandy and Monarka finally locking the other rudos into La Estrella, but Markus caught an Estrada body press, tossed him onto the mass of bodies in the submission, and then pinned said mass. I have to admit that Markus kind of looked like a beast here. Anyway, post-match kids got to hang out with the tecnicos in the bloody ring, so all's well that ends well, I guess?

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Found Footage Friday: CASAS~! CHARLES~! SIGNO~! DANDY~! HAMADA~! AZTECA~! TERRY~! FELICIANO~! SILVER KING~! BATMAN~?!

Batman/Chuy Escobedo/Ausente vs. Halcon de Oro/Mongol Chino/Astro Negro (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Some great names in the next couple of matches, but we have to see what we have here first. Astro Negro looks like a guy who never had a chance at recovering from losing his mask. Apparently he lost it to Mongol Chino so he's a forgiving sort. He is a mask maker of some renown ("El Pony") too. It's possible that Batman is a young Mr. Niebla but I couldn't say one way or the other (he had the swagger at least). The central story of the match was Batman vs Halcon de Oro.

I do have to admit that watching these six a month, it's nice to see the structure change up a bit. This was about Halcon dodging Batman. They cycled through Chuy vs Astro Negro (which was fine if slight) and Ausente vs Mongol Chino (nice and flowing; Ausente looked pretty good throughout) before teasing that third pairing between the prime combatants. Halcon took a powder, however, and upon reentering the ring, staged an ambush and started the beatdown. I haven't seen that sort of disruptiveness in a primera in a bit with these matches.

I'm not going to say that these were the smoothest guys we've seen in the Monterrey footage, but the segunda and tercera had the sort of wild abandon that's found in the best of these matches. The segunda started with a comeback and a lot of quick exchanges. Here we finally got a taste of Batman vs Halcon and they worked well together but it was just a taste, as Halcon got run off to the back to draw a count out. The tercera had a pretty brutal second beat down and an even more brutal comeback, wrought with mask ripping, before they cycled through submissions and break-ups and went for the ring-clearing dives: Chuy got all caught up on the ropes in a dive so that was brutal in its own way. Still, that left Batman and Halcon and from there it was a clear, crisp and direct tecnico triumph. The talent wasn't a high as it could be here, but the effort was admirable.

Negro Casas/Emilio Charles Jr/El Signo vs. El Dandy/Gran Hamada/Angel Azteca (Monterrey 1991)

MD: We lose some of the beginning, I think (my guess is an initial Signo vs Hamada pairing). We lose a lot of the tercera. It's still 22 minutes of these guys being absolutely amazing. The level of talent, commitment, trust, confidence is just off the charts. You have matches that follow a certain structure, that might be one dimension or two dimensional, moving this way or that on an axis or two. With these guys, there's a new dimension added. At any point they can deviate from what seemed to be going on in the match, take a side journey, but never, ever lose the true north of where they need to return to and their destination for that point of the match.

Look at the primera. We come in on Dandy and Casas doing their thing, sweeping movements, counters and counters to counters, all building to Casas putting his head down and getting kicked backwards and the two brawling out of the ring. Then it's Azteca and Charles, with tighter holds full of struggle. It breaks down after that, with the rudos having an advantage on Dandy, only for him to flip the switch and make a rolling hot tag. That allows Hamada to come in and crush everyone with headbutts. That entire mini beatdown segment was a deviation and they managed it flawlessly before heading back to where they would have been going without it. It adds drama and a sense of organic believability in the match. So much of lucha is ritual and meeting expectations, but these guys were good enough to switch partners and weave in whole bits without ever losing the plot or confusing the crowd. It could be something as simple as a Hamada/Signo strike exchange or Casas rope running with Hamada, eating an enzuigiri and stumbling right into Dandy's fist.

With lesser talents, the match would leave the ground, devolve into chaos or endless spots, and would never come back. These guys, though, could take moon leaps and always move in the right direction and land and sprint before leaping off again. There's talent and then there's mastery and people like Casas, Dandy, and Charles are in that rare, rare group of the latter.

Jose Luis Feliciano/Black Terry/Mr Terror vs. Silver King/Asterisco/Centurion Negro (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Great to see two thirds of the Temerarios here, but man is Mr. Terror ever not Shu El Guerrero. Moreover, the focus on this match was Terror vs Asterisco. There were pros and cons to that. I'm not going to say Terror brought nothing to the table. There was some mask ripping, some decent enough battering during beatdowns (though Feliciano and Terry were kind of edging him out to get shots in), and he took an entirely admirable bump on a back body drop on the floor to set up the finish to the primera, but his big move tends to be a clothesline (in a match where Silver King's was way better) and there's not much else there.

The flip side is that we got to see Terry and Feliciano go up against Centurion Negro and Silver King for a lot of this and all of that was great. Terry started with Centurion with all of the little movements and earnest openings you'd want from lucha matwork. Feliciano and Silver King brought the motion and all of them hit hard when it was time to do so. This one had too much heat on the ref too. That wasn't uncommon for the Monterrey footage but here it played too much into the finish and the ref got his comeuppance instead of Terror. Usually when watching a match with a singular focus like this, you come off annoyed that the apuestas match either never happened or we don't have it. I could probably live without seeing Asterisco vs Mr. Terror mano a mano though.

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Found Footage Friday: TSURUTA-GUN~! VS~! SUPER~! GENERATION~! ARMY~! BARR~! DANDY~! PANTHER~! CHARLES~! ESTRADA~! RAYO~! HERMANOS DINOMITA~!

Jumbo Tsuruta/Akira Taue/Masa Fuchi vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada/Kenta Kobashi NJPW 3/3/91 

MD: Oops, this one's on me guys, sorry. There was a big dump of handhelds that came into the community back in 2018 and it was a lot to parse through. Over the years, we've covered a lot here, and I'd had reached out to all the usual tape trading subjects from years past to see what was really new (albeit with little interest from them who have all moved on) but sometimes something I thought had already been out there actually wasn't. And this wasn't. So, as best as I can tell, it's going to be a brand new Jumbo/Taue/Fuchi vs. Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi match that almost none of you (if not absolutely none of you) have ever seen. And it holds up with some of the best stuff of this period, quite frankly.

The whole thing is good but it probably peaks in the first couple of minutes. The match starts with Kobashi and Fuchi on the mat for a minute, including Kobashi's rolling cradle. Kawada comes in. They'd heated up Kawada and Taue pretty fierce in January and it was still going strong here, so Taue wants in (and Jumbo wants him in), Kawada immediately tags back to Kobashi like a true heatseeker and Taue sneaks in a cheap shot onto Kawada on the apron the first chance he gets. The crowd has come to like Taue by this point but there are no good guys here, just pure animosity, as shown by Kawada rolling back in, ignoring the fact that Kobashi and starting a massive early-match brawl with Taue that everyone has to break up. It's a hell of a way to start a match.

After that it settles down into the beats you'd expect: more Taue vs. Kawada, Misawa eating a beatdown and coming back with the forearm, Kobashi with the superman house afire hot tag until Jumbo shuts him down, both sides getting and advantage and comebacks as the cycle through the pairings, until they finally isolate Kobashi and crush him on an outside table (or in this case, on a chair that they put on a table). The heat on Kobashi is great after they start on the leg, with a Jumbo elevated half cab, a Fuchi STF, and a Taue Scorpion Deathlock, the fans chanting "Kobashi" the whole time. When he's finally able to get a hot tag of his own, there's this cool bit of stuttering alternating structure where they start on Taue only to cycle back to Kobashi (after a rocket launcher off the top to the floor) only for Fuchi to clip his leg out illegally back in the ring, only to do another comeback and cycle back to Taue. This all leads to the sort of high octane, extended finishing stretch you'd expect, including, maybe, the first time they do the combo Jumbo/Taue belly to back/top rope driving clothesline. Put simply, if this is something you like, and this feud is as universally liked as anything I can think of, there's a hell of a lot to like here.

ER: I was saving this one for my Saturday morning. Waking up, making some coffee, settling down to watch an unseen All Japan trios classic, and baby it was everything. This was an untaped Korakuen main event smack dab in the middle of a tour and these guys go so hard that any reasonable person would think this was an end of tour big show main. Everybody goes hard in this and the dynamics are incredible. 1991 Jumbo was my favorite Jumbo, Kawada and Taue fucking hate each other and are at each other's throats the whole match, Misawa was incredibly fast and aggressive and already knew how to carry himself as a superstar, every single person still had a vendetta against Kobashi's knees, it's all incredible. There isn't a single lull in the action at any point, it's all go go go with quick tags and constant oneupmanship. 

The way Tsuruta-Gun went after Kobashi's knees it's a damn miracle the man made it nearly a decade before the knee surgeries started piling up. They're all real dickheads about it, but the best is when Fuchi runs in with a dropkick right to the knee pit...or was it when Jumbo buckled it with a mule kick to the ACL...or was it when Jumbo was holding Kobashi damn vertically in a single leg crab? A real Dickhead's Choice. Taue threw some of the hardest clotheslines of his career, really shutting down some bullshit, and I flipped my lid when he leveled Misawa with a tope suicida after Misawa had leapt off the apron with an elbow into Jumbo's jaw. I don't think I've ever seen Kobashi get thrown with a Rocket Launcher to the floor, just one other thing that's nuts to see on an untaped house show. It's cool that Misawa was a better kicker than Kawada in 1991. Kawada had the same kick routine here that he would continue to hone and improve as the decade went on, but the variety and impact of Misawa's kicks made this look like his peak attack level, setting everything up with kicks and then sealing the deal with elbows. Jumbo's kitchen sink knees looked organ-rearranging, and he threw Misawa with a bodyslam that looked and sounded so painful that all 2,100 people in Korakuen made the exact same pinched face "oooooooooof" reaction. Six legends bringing real emotion and high energy and hate-filled stiffness for 30 minutes in my favorite wrestling style of all time? It's all I wanted. 

Love Machine/El Dandy/Panterita del Ring vs. Blue Panther/Emilio Charles Jr./Jerry Estrada CMLL  5/3/92?

MD: Some great stuff in here even though it was a twenty minute video that went more like fifteen instead of the thirty that went twenty-two and gave us the pairings that I really wanted. Obviously it was a perfect rudo side. My experience with Panther and Love Machine is more the mask match and what followed elsewhere, so it surprised me that Barr was more over with the crowd. The announcers noted that the dynamic had been different in Mexico City for the mask match and tried to explain it.

This had an ambush/comeback/beatdown/comeback sort of structure which was fitting a lot into the time and it never quite settled down. We got glimpses of great things though, Panther running from a fiery Love Machine, Dandy's awesome, awesome cracking punch and the not equal but still great and very different thudding punches of Charles and Estrada. When Barr finally got his hands on Panther, he was really able to tear into him (and tear off the mask). Estrada hit the usual ridiculous dive into the crowd. The ref was the same one we've been seeing who was very hard on the tecnicos and missed the cheating. Charles and Panterita really only got to pair up after the dives and that looked fine, with Charles faking a foul (he'd previously done one of his own). Post match, when Panterita was beside himself at the unfair loss, Estrada walked right over and yanked his mask off hilariously. I wish it had a little more to it but you can't fault any of the action here.

ER: I love that this was the standard for a throwaway weekly trios match in 1992. This adds a new layer to the Blue Panther/Love Machine feud and I don't think I've ever heard a weekly crowd respond so positively to Love Machine before this. Blue Panther as a cheapshot artist who can also wrench you on the mat was probably my favorite era of Panther (even those I do love old man tecnico Panther) but it was eye opening seeing how big the tecnico reactions were any time Love Machine started to wail on Panther, culminating in a tremendous tope suicida that flattens a few people in the front row. Dandy and Estrada worked magic any time they crossed paths, but somehow Panther and Love Machine outpunched them here. I wish we could have seen more Panterita Del Ring. The man worked differently as Safari and then evolved into Ephesto, but as Panterita he could really cut loose and we only got a little taste of that here, as he was the clear 6th banana of the match, and Estrada's perfect unmasking of him after the match only made that status more concrete. This was the perfect kind of unearthed lucha match to just devour like junk food. 

Rayo de Jalisco Jr/Mascara Sagrada/Black Magic vs. Los Hermanos Dinamita (Cien Caras, Mascara Ano 2000, Universo 2000) CMLL 5/17/92

MD: A weird moment in time as a chunk of these guys were main eventing the AAA debut show right around (maybe even two days before) this match. This immediately followed a tribute to Rene Guajuardo, who, among all of his other accolades had trained and promoted in this area, and had just passed away. The match itself made me wish for the tecnicos from the last match.

When they got to the beatdown in the segunda and the tercera comeback that followed, it was pretty good. You can count on the Dinamitas to beat people around the ring and Cien Caras to be a charismatic ass about it. That played into the comeback as well where Rayo could play the other half of that song well enough. The primera exchanges and the crowd-pleasing spots in the end to led up to the foul on Rayo and the DQ, though? Not so great. Again, you can count on the rudos here to get some good shots in (like Cien Caras' hopping knee to the gut) and there was one fairly decent Mascara Ano 2000 and Mascara Sagrada exchange. Black Magic looked best on the tecnico side, charging into things and asserting himself. This late in the game and after all of the animosity of the beatdown and coemback, I wasn't really feeling the multiple headlocks/la estrella/flip-flop submissions like I might have otherwise. Maybe it really was time for the change that was coming. Maybe it was just that some of these guys were focused on the next thing.

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Found Footage Friday: PIPER IN LA~! ROCK 'N' ROLLS VS. TN VOLS~! 83 EL DANDY~!

Elimination Tag: Roddy Piper/Ron Bass/Moondog Mayne vs. Black Gordman/Alex "KO" Perez/Tommy Sawyer LA 1977

MD: A massive tape of Spanish Language TV LA/SF went up a few weeks ago. It's timestamped to a degree but don't look too closely at that or else you'll think there's a Piper vs Race match we've never heard of before; it's just the set up. This, however, we do get in full and it's a lot of fun, another good look at West Coast 70s heel Piper and especially Moondog Mayne, and it also gives us babyface hero Black Gordman which is not a role we usually think of with him. Perez was a legendary puncher for who I don't think we have a lot of footage and Sawyer is not Buzz Sawyer but a territory babyface from the late 70s. At this point, Bass and Piper were the Americas Tag Champions and Mayne was positioned as the centerpiece. The VQ is terrible. The sound's off. It's still history and worth watching.

Piper got it already, feeding into armdrags and then keeping the face in his corner at first opportunity. We only see a minute of Perez in here but Piper eats his punches perfectly before making him slip on a banana peel to eliminate him on a roll up out of a slam attempt. Mayne was running from Gordman throughout here. It was hard to get a great sense of Sawyer but he had decent fire. Piper managed to eliminate him too by tricking the ref into thinking he tossed him over the top. After that, Mayne had a great moment of getting his partners down to the mat and drawing out strategy to his finger now that it was 3 on 1 but the 1 was a guy that none of them wanted to face. Gordman is sort of a reverse Ricky Steamboat, someone I've pictured as a lifetime heel but he was pretty great destroying everyone here until the numbers game got the better of him. There's a straight up Piper/Bass vs. Gordman/Sawyer tag in this footage too and I want to check that out later if this was any indication.  

El Dandy/Rey David vs. El Climax/El Modulo EMLL 9/20/83

MD: 17 minutes, a little clipped, and without a finish, but think of what we do get instead! Young experimental rudo Dandy matched up with a very game Modulo. Climax's cool gear. An obviously dangerous granny on the outside who is going to jump up out of her chair with the promise of unfilled violence multiple times. I'm not kidding about the experimental bit either. Climax was in one or two matches on the DVDVR 80s set, if I remember correctly and here he and Modulo have nice, flowing exchanges, but they're not who we're here to see. 

Dandy and David worked a little tighter. I'm fairly certain Dandy wasn't even twenty here but he had a real slickness and precision in how he moved from one hold to the next and a ton of agility and flexibility. They did the hold where both guys end up on their head facing each other with their legs tied up. Sometimes you get punches out of that but here Dandy rolled out of it in way I don't think I've ever seen. When things broke down, there were some double spots with David taking down both Dandy and Modulo that didn't look quite right but that popped the crowd anyway, so either they were novel for the time or the crowd just wanted to go along with whatever. And to be fair, there were other spots that seemed a few years before their time that absolutely worked as they were meant to.

This gets cut off but not before we see Dandy get tossed all around the ring, taking turnbuckle bumps like a champ. It's pretty obvious that he was a special talent even so early into his career.

Rock 'n' Roll Express vs. TN Vols (Reno Riggins/Steven Dunn) MCW 1997

MD: The advent of DVD burning allowed for a shift in how we watched wrestling. It became easier to collect and share whole swaths of it. With that, there was a chance to reevaluate instead of just follow along or cherry pick the very best. The DVDVR sets are a great example of this, driving reevaluations of Brody or Tiger Mask or Crusher Blackwell or Greg Gagne, sometimes negatively, sometimes positively. The WWF set was the first and one thing that came from that was a reevaluation of the previously lionized 80s tag scene. It still pokes at the edges of conventional wisdom, the idea that the Hart Foundation and British Bulldogs and Rougeaus and Rockers and Killer Bees and Can-Ams and Strike Force were a part of some sort of golden age. Instead, around the time of the set, the phrase "heel-in-peril" was pretty easily thrown about. If you spend the first half of the match (or even longer) making fools out of the heels and constantly keeping them on their toes, there's far less relative time to get heat and build to the hot tag and the comeback. The fans in the arena might have found it entertaining, but they wouldn't be emotionally invested like they should be. The balance is all off for that. One could argue that the point of these matches on their placement in WWF cards was actually to drive that level of entertainment, but it certainly didn't match up with the conventional wisdom that remained twenty years later. And the worst guy in the world when it came to this sort of structure was Dynamite Kid, especially, as you might imagine, post-injury.

So what does all of that have to do with this? I don't think any of the teams listed above could really make it work. I've maybe only ever seen one team that could, and that's the Rock 'n' Rolls. They had fun, quick, offense, tandem in the set up if not the delivery, but a lot of teams can be entertaining in a shine and a lot of teams had a connection with the crowd. Really, it comes down to Morton's ability to sell. One minute of him getting beat on, fighting for a hope spot, getting cut off, getting beat on some more was worth three or four minutes of almost anyone else. There's a moment in here where he is just reaching out towards the camera as if asking everyone at home for help; we see it on that camera just for a second before things switch back to the wide shot and you can watch him working and garnering sympathy like no other. And he could manage both that and playing to the live crowd at the same time, because he's Ricky Morton in a tag match. 

That's not to say the shine wasn't a lot of fun and that the Vols didn't stooge like crazy, because it was and because it did. They were nice and measured with it, setting up a spot, playing on the fact the Vols had only recently formed, paying it off with some miscommunication or just getting outquicked or outwrestled, having them take a powder and sell what happened, then set up the next spot and repeat. The Vols did their power: For instance, Riggins hit a big shoulder block showing off his strength and then ate an inverted atomic drop and sell it all around the ring. The shine lasted about two-thirds of the match, but Morton, after he missed a corner charge, more than made time with his selling with Gibson helping things along by working the apron. When it was time for the hot tag, the fans went up for it and things petered out to a non-finish because this is a TV match after all.

I only wish we had some of these old R'n'R vs Nikolai Volkoff (which happened early in their Mid-South run but weren't taped) or Ivan Putski (which didn't at all happen and were just a baffling suggestion) matches that Michael St. John and Billy Joe Travis were inexplicably talking about as they got confused about former opponents. (I also hope someone filmed one of the Wolfie D vs King Mabel matches that were advertised for live shows during the break). Still, no one's going to complain that we got an 18 minute 97 R'n'R match against game opponents.

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Found Footage Friday: REY JR.~! PANTHER~! GILBERT~! FIRE~! INFERNALES~! LA PARKA~!

Eddie Gilbert vs. Huracan Castillo WWC 8/6/94

MD: This was limited by the gimmick, obviously, but you watch it to see the spectacle of it and how Gilbert chose to work it and milk moments. For one, before they got into the ring he took a head into the post and immediately bladed. That way, if nothing else, there would be color. There were flammable pieces of material in fixed intervals just outside the ropes and visually, things were most spectacular when the wind was blowing and the fire seemed to be reaching into the ring. Much of the match was based on Castillo trying to work Gilbert into those ropes and it portrayed that sense you get in exploding cage or barbed wire matches that the heel simply cannot escape. For most of the match, the payoff was Gilbert's hand getting whacked into the fire. Gilbert was able to get a little bit of control and get some revenge, but after Castillo's comeback (off of a Hotshot of all things), Gilbert took some shots to the face into the fire, bumping around and recoiling like crazy for it. The overall effect was diminished by the end since the fire had gone down significantly, but the finish revolved around Gilbert getting some barbed wire and choking Castillo with it, moving things forward to the next match in a very Memphis manner.

PAS: I thought this was awesome, it would have ruled if it was just a bloody Memphis punch out, but add the spectacle of the flames into, what a treat. Tremendous Gilbert performance, his punches looked great, got great early color, and did a wonderful job of making the fire bumps look horrific. Castillo was a fine regional babyface, and got amped up, but this was an Eddie show. I am surprised they used powder as the transition weapon, rather then the Gilbert fireball, but I dug Eddie using the barbed wire to set up the rematch, clever booking, and I need to search out the barbed wire match between these two.

Winners/Rey Mysterio, Jr./La Parka/Octagon vs. Blue Panther/Los Payasos AAA 9/2/95

MD: Maybe the biggest appeal here is just seeing Blue Panther hang out with a bunch of clowns. Really straightforward structure on this one. Exchanges in the primera leading to a tecnico pin, beatdown in the segunda, comeback in the tercera leading to some of the flashier spots, the dives, and the finish. A lot of the details were very good though. I loved the Panther vs Parka exchange in the primera. That felt like a fairly unique match up and they had fun with it on the mat. Coco Azul based really well for Rey too. I was less into what Winners and Amarillo were up to. Payasos and Panther worked well on the beatdown including some nice tandem offense and submissions. The comeback was great as Rey just went through everyone's leg to create chaos for La Parka to dance around. It was exactly what it should have been and the fans loved it. In general, it was a lot of fun to see the other tecnicos keep Parka chants going throughout the match. Rey's backflip dive over the top with a La Parka boost was memorable, but just the way he'd get up on a floating armdrag was endlessly impressive for the time and even now. Finish involved Los Payasos beating down Octagon after a dive and then starting to fight with the crowd, allowing Rey to slip in for a last second countout win. This was pretty much as enjoyable as you'd expect.

Infernales (Satanico/Pirata Morgan/MS-1) vs. Hector Garza/Lizmark/El Dandy CMLL 9/2/95

MD: Fun bit early on here where Satanico and Pirata had Garza held hostage in their corner and Lizmark and Dandy had MS-1 in theirs and it was a bit of a standoff. You're not going to win fighting Los Infernales on their own terms, however, so they eased into the beatdown almost immediately thereafter. No one can direct traffic quite like Santico and lucha beatdowns don't get better than Infernales ones. The comeback moment was just ok, Lizmark coming in to get a shot in, but he was really over with the kids on this night, so it's hard to complain. It was followed by Dandy throwing amazing punches at everyone, including an all time shot to Pirata on the floor. There weren't a lot of exchanges in this one, Satanico putting Garza through the paces to start and then later on a really good Dandy and Morgan one but given who was in there, it all flowed well and did what it was meant to.

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