Found Footage Friday: SANTO~! NINJA~! YOUNG STUD BABA~! CALYPSO~! WHITE WOLF~! GILBERT~! DUNDEE~! NEW SOUTH~!

Giant Baba/Michiaki Yoshimura vs. Calypso Hurricane/Chief White Wolf JWA 5/12/64

MD: This one fell through the cracks when one of the Baba anniversary specials came out. It's only ten minutes and heavily clipped but what an amazing look at 26 year old Baba. He was an absolute monster. We have him here scrapping on the mat with Adnan, just chucking Calypso head first into the corner like he was a sack of potatoes, hitting this amazing standing kick around the side of Adnan to the back of his head, cutting off the corner so Yoshimura could deliver damage from the outside, throwing these blistering chops, and, after a hot tag, just chopping high and low and stomping the life out of people. There are so many reasons to love 80s and even mid-late 70s Baba, but you couldn't look away from him here. I still can't get over those kicks that seemed to go all the way around Adnan's body to hit him in the head. Points to him, by the way, for really phoning in the Native American gimmick with the laziest dancing and whooping you'd ever see. He did look great on the mat with Baba though, so he gets credit for that.

ER: Of course we all wish this wasn't clipped, but who could complain about a fresh 9 minute look at a young, whip fast, and jacked thicc Shohei Baba, as well as a great look at how damn good Adnan Al-Kassie and Ciclon Negro were in an era where we couldn't see them. Baba is the draw here, both for us and the fans who, during the pre-match introductions, can be seen literally standing and open-mouth gawking at the presence of Baba, who was almost surely the largest human anybody in the building had ever seen. If they had seen a man that large, somewhere, they had certainly never seen him move like this. It kicks so much ass seeing Baba run through Baba spots I know and love, only 3x as fast and with the impact of Stan Hansen. Look at him run the ropes with Calypso! Look at the fucking boot he throws at White Wolf's face! He's like if Yoshihiro Takayama had a few more inches. Calypso/Ciclon Negro is a guy who always had the rep of a great, respected worker, but most of the footage we have of him is from his late 40s/early 50s. Seeing him in his early 30s makes him look like a guy who would be one of my all time favorites, were I my father's age. He had an excellent style of bumping, athletic but appropriately tuned to the offense he was taking, a real immediacy to his work, a big bumper but with weight. Also, check that spot where Yoshimura moves out of the way and Calypso punches White Wolf in the face, off the apron, and then stands there looking and feeling like a real boob. 

El Hijo del Santo vs. El Ninja 12/13/85

MD: Wild structure on this. Primera was an ambush and a comeback attempt and a cutoff. Segunda had the comeback (that we missed the prime moment of) and a double count out after a dive. Tercera had a lot of the back and forth submissions and drama. And then the final extra fall, due to the count out, was basically some more beatdown and a roll up out of nowhere instead of a real comeback. The fans were up for all of it though.

And, just like the structure wasn't calcified into a more familiar form, neither was Santito. He sure as hell had selling of nerve holds down. I'm not sure I've ever seen it done better. Interestingly, the tercera ended with his flipping senton and rush across the ring; instead of hitting a tope, he hit a reverse body press off the top instead. He also had some pretty fun tricked out submission and pin attempts before that, including this neat Rings of Saturn number and a flexible attempt to get a full nelson with one of his legs. Ninja was fine here. He was a journeyman and understood the weight of the match. He made the kicks and nerve holds work, had some interesting stuff of his own during the hold exchanges, and was happy to escalate to choking with a towel in that final fall. It was clipped up so we missed some of the primera and that big moment of comeback; I had thought we were going to get another one at the end but they went with a flash pin instead. Still, it was a very interesting look at a relatively young Santo.

PAS: So cool that this just showed up. I do a semi-regular YouTube search for "Hijo Del Santo" as he is probably the greatest wrestler who has footage on tape that just might pop up on YouTube some day. This is one of the earliest Santo matches and Ninja wasn't the Monterey wrestler, but a re-gimmicked 60s luchador taking a mask loss payday. He had some nice wrestling martial arts stuff (more Stan Lane than Akira Maeda) , but was otherwise pretty much an opponent for Santo to work stuff out on. Great looking tope was probably the highlight, with Ninja getting sent into seats, and I did like the rolling senton into almost a diving RKO from the other side of the ring. More a cool look into an underseen period than a great match, but man was I happy it showed up. 

TKG: New Santo match shows up and it moves to the front of the queue. You add that it’s an 80s, mask match and yeah…plus I originally thought the Ninja was going to be a Garza relative.

First fall is clipped, but Ninja works like an 80s karate wrestler. He may have more different kinds of kicks than most 80s karate offense guys. I especially liked the kick he did in third fall set up by a Yoga tree pose style calf stretch. Kicks ranged between Stan Lane loose and Kabuki stiff. Left match wishing there was a Stan Lane v Ninja match and Kabuki v Santito one.

Like Kabuki, when Ninja wasn’t kicking he was putting on a nerve hold and Santo awesome selling it. In the 80s most people sold a nerve hold by trying to fight to power out. Santo sold it like he had a crystal ball and had seen shootstyle matches, and sprawled for ropes every time Ninja put the nerve hold on him.

We don’t get Santo’s transition to offense in second fall but we get all of Santo’s beautiful offense. And a double count out finish.

Don’t really get this, as Dandy v Emilio Charles draw meant both guys shaved head…and at one point there was interview with Rafael Maya where he talked about similar draw finishes. It feels like Ninja won two falls straight but whatever. Third fall had some real cool tight ras de lona pins and surfboard near falls.

And fourth was mostly brawling and felt abbreviated. The ‘unusual booking’ instead of leading to hotter final fall made the fourth feel really anticlimactic. Still hot crowd, great third fall and a bunch of neat little things.

Doug Gilbert/Bill Dundee vs. New South (Kory Williams/Ashley Hudson) NWA Nashville 4/14/01

MD: Best part of this was probably Williams and Hudson goofing around on the mic before hand and Gilbert and Dundee putting them in their place. The match tried to have its cake and eat it too. It was a "Climb the pole" deal with Hudson's boomerang atop it, and the winner being whoever got it first. Usually it's about getting to actually use the boomerang and this cuts off before we see if that happens. Moreover, there was a bat hanging around the ring early too so that almost felt like it defeated the purpose of it. And finally, despite the pole gimmick, they stuck with standard tag rules, though they seemed confused about what corner they were supposed to be in and New South made a tag in the ring at one point. It made no sense that the partner on the outside didn't just go for the Boomerang at certain points.

That said, the actual work was ok. These guys knew what they were doing for the most part. That meant a lot of Gilbert taking punches and making them look good and throwing punches that naturally looked good; likewise with Dundee's jabs. Williams was more than happy to stagger around the ring selling. It never boiled over, unfortunately, and there were probably way too many low blows. Old(er) man Dundee could get away with that and make it charming but I'm not sure about the rest of them. This needed more heat and a deal where Hudson got the boomerang but Gilbert got it from him and opened them up post match, something like that.

ER: During the pre-match mic work, Doug Gilbert gets the mic to counter Kory Williams' jabs and tells the New South that "at least everyone in this building knows who we are", and after a 5 second pause one of the commentators just says "GAY". That's when I knew we were diving into the good stuff. And I thought this was good! I enjoyed it more than Matt (and Tom, who watched it earlier in the week and opted out of writing about it). This delivered because it had guys up on the top rope who probably shouldn't be on the top rope, and by people I mean Doug Gilbert, who made the match by kicking Kory Williams in the balls while both were standing on the top rope. It's also important that the pole was so tall that the boomerang hanging from it is never even in frame until Hudson grabs it and it's perfect, because every pole match needs a preposterously tall pole that most participants would be unable to climb given unfettered access to it. We got one great Dundee tease where he showed that he still had crazy climbing strength into his late 50s, and the rest of the match he spent punching New South around the ring while Kory Williams staggered and flopped around. This was right around 8 minutes long and had four different ball shots, and I wish that the video had ended with Hudson climbing up the pole completely off the screen, no boomerang ever shown, all of us left wondering just how tall that pole actually was. At least they didn't show the top of the pole, so we are still empowered to dream. 

 

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New Footage Friday: EL NINJA! EL DANDY! MISSONAIRES DE LA MUERTE! ROLANDO VERA!!?!!

PAS: On one of my youtube dives, I discovered a youtube page for Monterey maestro El Ninja, with some super rare Monterey footage from the 80s and 90s, we will be digging more into it over the next couple of months, but we wanted to highlight a few of the biggest finds


Rolando Vera vs Benny Morgan CMLL 1989

PAS: Vera is a legendary figure, the first big Monterey star and a guy who trained Rene Guajardo, Blue Demon and Sugi Sato. He is in his mid 70s this match, but wrestled more like a guy in his 50s (which is the real sweet spot for luchadores). He had some really great looking flippy takedowns, sweeping the leg and sending Morgan ass over teakettle, he also did a really cool arm drag and dropkick. So much control of both his body and his opponents body. Have to give Morgan a bunch of credit for making a guy that old look that credible, and he had some nasty offense too, including an awesome flying cross armed chop to the throat. The finish submission was so cool looking with Vera pressing Morgan up with his legs and jerking his arm back down. Lets hope someday we get a French Catch style lucha drop, because prime Vera looks like it would be amazing. 

MD: Vera was in his 70s here but this was a lot more complete of a match than I was expecting. The first couple of minutes were more along the lines of the maestro exhibition I thought we'd see. For most of the rest of the match, Vera worked from underneath as Morgan took unmistakable but maybe not entirely egregious rudo shortcuts. Vera obviously wasn't at his athletic peak but he still threw out a flying headscissors and an up and over on an arm drag and a dropkick. He also took some fairly big bumps considering, including two off of these arm trap throws by Morgan. Where he shined the most was in the sheer fluidity of his manipulation of Morgan's body, though. Trips and throws didn't necessarily feel like spots but instead a careful and precise, yet wholly reflexive use of leverage. It didn't feel like he was teasing grabbing a limb to set up a throw two counters in the future, but instead that he was able to drift with the wind to whatever opening his motions caused. One of the major narratives of lucha watching is the understanding of what we simply don't have and the way they worked here made me wonder what the first fall of a title match when Vera was in his 40s instead of his 70s might have looked like.


El Ninja vs. Aladino Monterey 89?

PAS: Mascara contra mascara matches are the most meaningful matches in wrestling. Someones life is going to be forever altered and those stakes will elevate any match. Getting a previously unseen mask match is a real treasure, and while this isn't an all timer, it is a really cool match and a chance to witness history. El Ninja was a truly spectacular wrestler, he got tremendous distance on all of his bumps and dives, he gets posted and floats into the crowd like he was flying on one of those floating air compression machines in Vegas. He also hits two awesome dives to the floor, one a springboard back tope and a crazy regular tope where he goes vertical to the floor, I also loved his in ring back topes which set up the finish, he just levitates and lands with force. Aladino was more of an opponent, although he handled the bleeding and hit a reckless tope of his own. Finish never really felt in doubt, Ninja was clearly the better of the two and took a lot of the match, but that is a minor nitpick for a great piece of footage.

MD: I could have used a little bit more hate. Along those lines, it started off really well with Aladino bumping Ninja into the post on the apron twice. It never quite reaches that level again, except for one Ninja chairshot on the floor. That said, it had a lot of the other things you'd want from a mask match. Ninja's style is big and flouncy (except for his jumping front kick; that's solid), but it works because he throws himself into everything that happens. Aladino's a natural in that sort of setting, and not just because they're both basically wearing pajamas for gear. I wanted him to take a little more of the match (he really only controlled one other time due to a foul, mid-match and then was even for most of the finish). The struggle was believable. There was one point where Ninja was able to take back over because Aladino went too far over on a pin attempt and Ninja fell on him after the kick out. Plenty of dives, with the entire closing sequence being Ninja tossing himself backwards at Aladino dangerously. You get the sense that if any of those went wrong, it could have cost him big, which is exactly the sort of sense you want in a match with these stakes.


El Ninja/Tigre Candianese/El Dandy vs. Black Power/Negro Navarro/El Signo Monterey 91-92?

MD: I am torn on this one. On the one hand, you get a long (~10 minutes) El Dandy FIP. On the other, it's only because of some of the worst heel ref stuff; we're not talking looking the other way or holding back a punch, but just outright ignoring blatant tags over and over again. But, on the first, that's the only way we'd get Dandy to stay in there instead of cycling through for an extended team beatdown, and Dandy had his usual great selling and some really good hope spots for a lucha trios. But man, the ref stuff was bad. But, it's lucha, and with lucha, the hot tag doesn't matter almost ever. It's not about that moment of tag, it's abut the moment of comeback and momentum shift. In traditional tag team matches, the tag is that moment. In trios, it often precedes the moment of partners getting to come in. That's what it does here and it works, so in that regard, the ref holding back tags is fine, because the mandate of heaven hadn't changed yet and it doesn't really matter if they're beating on Dandy or Dandy, Ninja, and Tigre, and if given the choice, I'd rather see more Dandy than not. With that in mind, the match's biggest problem was that we couldn't hear the crowd well. That meant we couldn't feel the full value of Dandy's efforts. Otherwise, all good. MDM was having fun in the opening exchanges, with Black Power especially entertaining. Ninja's act was consistently entertaining throughout. After the comeback, Dandy was brilliant at dancing between rudo raindrops and stooging everyone. Even the grainy VQ wasn't an issue because you could always tell who was in there and what was going on.

PAS: It is kind of odd, old man Negro Navarro is one of my all time favorite wrestlers, but I have never seen an amazing younger Navarro performance. Maybe he just got amazing in his mid 40s. The MDM are a legendary trios team and you can see parts of that in this match, although it never really hit anything more then average, Average lucha trios are really fun to watch though, and I dug this. Favorite moment was early in the match when Navarro grabbed some gum from the ref to give to Ninja for his stinky breath, such a beautiful moment of heeling, something I could see Dougie Gilbert doing. Dandy is always great and I love when he strarts uncorking his right hand. Cool this showed up, but the search for the pre-40s Navarro classic continues.

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