Found Footage Friday: GARZA~! DRAGON~! BLONDY~! CHICANA~! LOVER~! GUAJARDO

Blue Fish/El Sanguinario/Gato del Ring vs. Hector Garza/Ruben Juarez Jr./Franky CMLL 1992

MD: It's a real testament to the footage we've gotten over the last few months that it's been so long since I chipped away at Roy's Monterrey uploads, but here we are. This is a blurry, staticy undercard match with some local guys (like Blue Fish) and Garza as the star of the future very early into his tenure. And it was fun straightforward lucha trios action.

The rudos controlled as we came in, really laying a beating on Franky. The commentary noted how he was such a flyer that he even flew well when he was taking a back body drop. He flew well into the stands when they tossed him in and followed it up with a chair too. Nice mugging from the rudos, solid stuff. The comeback was spirited like you'd want with Garza looking great to the point where Franky couldn't quite keep up. He would throw a dropkick off the apron to the floor in an attempt to do so though.

Then the tercera had holds broken up with matter-of-fact hard shots. It worked well and built to a big Garza flip dive before Jaurez got the win. My favorite bit in it was Juarez not able to get a monkey flip going and Garza having to leap behind him to flip them both. Pretty novel spot. I like Garza from later in the decade fine even if I think his real strength was as a rudo stooge later on, but there was something dynamic and exciting about him all the way back here. 

Fabuloso Blondy/Rick Patterson/Sangre Chicana vs. Ultimo Dragon/Cesar/Apolo Dantes CMLL 1992

MD: This is one of those ones that we'd probably never really even look at otherwise. It has a big chunk missing due to static in the middle and a Mil Mascaras commercial between the segunda and tercera. But it also has Ultimo Dragon doing maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen him do, rearing back and hitting a Yoshiaki Fujiwara style headbutt onto Rick Patterson. 

That was during the tecnico comeback in the primera. They'd been literally pulling Apolo (listing says their father Alfonso, but I think it's Apolo) apart until the tecnicos rushed in. Blondy was post-hair match but he and Patterson made for two solid big lugs with Chicana to add the flair of violence. Post-static we come right back to Blondy clocking Apolo with a chair and the tercera was a beatdown exacerbated by the fact that Cesar had decided he wasn't going to get along with his brother and Dragon. Instead, after watching for a bit, and right when Dragon was making a comeback, he clocked him allowing the rudos to pin him. Post-match he tossed a chair right in Dragon's face and paraded around the ring. 

ER: I really liked all the tecnicos going after Rick Patterson's meaty hamstring. Cesar ends the primera grabbing him by the chin and throwing two swift kicks, Ultimo sweeps his leg out with one in the segunda, and Patterson is very entertaining selling them. He treats them lethally and it shuts him down every time. When Dantes hit his, Patterson didn't even retaliate, he just got up and limped exaggeratedly back to the apron. It's funny seeing Blondy and Patterson in there with the smaller Cesar and Dragon, and I think Apolo was really good at selling the chokes and clubs of Blondy, getting dragged around on his knees and choked with a cable on the apron. The Cesar turn on Dragon was angry enough (for reasons I do not understand) that I'd love to see a singles match that surely doesn't exist...yet. I wanted to see Dragon work BIG against the big men but that didn't happen. Matt is 100% right about his Fujiwara headbutt, though. I have watched hundreds of Ultimo Dragon matches and I have never seen him rear back and headbutt someone like that. Funny, in classic Dragon style, that this violent piece of offense came one minute in and nothing else he did matched that energy. 

Bronco/Latin Lover/Valente Fernandez vs. Sanguinario/Rene Guajardo Jr/Canadian Butcher CMLL 1992 

MD: Pretty complete match with a few interesting wrinkles. Pairings for the primera were Bronco and Guajardo, Lover and Sanguinario, and Fernandez and Butcher, but we got a lot of Fernandez and Guajardo throughout too. They were pretty perfectly matched up even in look and both were over. Pretty much everyone was over here. Even Butcher (Brett Como/Black Dragon/Ultimate Dragon) was over due to his very unique look (a mullet and a mohawk, but the mohawk was just one patch of hair gelled to stick up two feet like a unicorn horn) and a pretty astonishing 1992 Monterrey Shooting Star Press towards the end of the segunda.

Bronco danced about and Guajardo had some great, great punches, the sort of punches that make you want to ask around and say "Hey, do we know as a community that Rene Guajardo, Jr. had some great punches?" because I don't remember people ever talking about that. A lot of the story here however, was making Lover look good. This was shortly after the gimmick's debut and the match went out of its way to make him look strong. Certainly whenever he was in, women screamed, and there was one point in between caidas where he was getting beaten on the floor that two stepped forward to protect him. He ultimately had the comeback (or at least set it off) and was the last man standing after Bronco wiped out on a brutal missed dive where Butcher just walked away and they pinned Fernandez. It was ultimately three-on-one at that point but he got his share of near-falls before Sanguario finally got the better of roll up reversals. Fernandez still felt like the star of the moment but there was a torch passing element here. 

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Found Footage Friday: BABY TAUE~! HARA~! BRET~! VIRGIL~! BABY MONEY INC~! BLONDY~!

Akira Taue vs. Ashura Hara AJPW 10/28/88

MD: This isn't long, but if I'm not mistaken, it might be the earliest Taue singles match on tape. And honestly? It wildly overachieves. I'm used to 89 and even into 90 Taue who is trying to figure out how to be Taue. This is not that guy. This is a big athletic guy trying to figure any of it out. And he's trying to do so against Hara who is stoic and brutal and ready to kill him. Taue hits a Thesz press right at the bell and the crowd ooohs. Great, effective start. The first two minutes of this are pretty sprint light, all building to Hara clocking him with the ring bell on the floor. Throughout this, Taue will throw chops and kicks and there really is the sense that he's learning in the moment, even from a purely kayfabe perspective. He's trying to figure out what angle to throw his strikes from, what technique to use, how to get enough mustard behind the kicks to actually impact Hara, despite his size and presumably strength advantage. It means that every four or five shots from him equals one of Hara's. It means that when he hits the hundred hand sumo slap in the corner and it doesn't register and he escalates to outright smacks across Hara's face, Hara is going to clean his clock with one massive retribution shot of his own. It means when he's able to score four or five kicks, Hara's able to cut him right off with just one off his own off the ropes, even if both of them will keel over after the fact. 

When it comes to the actual execution, Taue bumps big, most especially for the clotheslines at the end, but there is a sense of him telegraphing his stuff (especially the missed stuff) way more than it ought to. We get a great camera shot of Hara managing the same exact thing, a missed clothesline in the corner, with a lot more intensity and grace. I think, and this is just a guess, that Taue didn't know enough to get in his own way yet. He has some single matches with Taue over a year later, right as Taue was on his way out, and in those, he tries to fight from underneath and show fire and I almost see more of that here, naturally, against Hara. Watching the AJPW mainstays this early in their development is so interesting, because you can see all sorts of possibilities and realities that didn't happen. This Taue, one that was more than willing to run into Hara's open hand, and then throw his entire body right back at him, was a different sort of Taue than the one we'd eventually get.

ER: I can't get enough Taue, the man who took over as my favorite pillar sometime post-Misawa death and together we haven't looked back since. I just like how he moves and how he falls and how he sells on his feet. He's a permanently old man and this is the youngest I've seen the old man doing his thing, Akira Taue with the fluffed up city pop hair of All Japan Young Boys. Taue is an athlete who is clumsy in form and clumsy in fall in all of the best ways. He is in his first year - which means he has been thrown to the wolves for over a hundred matches already on the Kings Road schedule - and can barely budge the Hara the Tank. It's one of those fun reaction worthy young boy matches where a brick solid stoic badass in his 40s lets a young boy hit him as hard as he can while he barely budges until he shows him several times how to throw proper kicks to the ribs and butts to the head. Ashura Hara barely reacts to Taue's slaps and yet also feels the need to bash him with a ring bell a couple minutes in. Early! Taue sells slaps really well and Hara knocks him silly really well. He lets Taue kick him in the chest and back if it's hurting him he's wearing it all inside. He catches a kick when he decides to catch a kick - casually, like he was just throwing Taue's leg around with his buddy - and gets to his feet with an uppercut to Taue's left cheekbone. Taue absorbs all of Hara's clotheslines and kicks really well, and Hara literally just clotheslines and kicks him until pinning him. They all looked great and none of them looked clean. 

Fabuloso Blondy/Guerrero Negro vs. Stuka/Apolo Estrada CMLL 1989

MD: Three falls in fifteen minutes or so. Blondy was in his full glory, and Guerrero Negro, sans mask, seemed just happy to be there with him saluting along to the anthem. Tecnicos charged in immediately thereafter. I haven't seen a ton of Apolo Estrada but I like what I have seen. He's very charismatic and over the top in his own particular way. Blondy fouled him to lose the first fall but take over the momentum which is not something you see often actually. They focused in on his stomach and took the segunda after a solid beatdown. In the tercera, Estrada came back after shrugging Blondy into the post on a ram attempt on the floor. Nice pop for it. The fans were into these guys. He got some solid revenge on Blondy's stomach, too, which is again not something you see a lot of focus on. As they cycled through Blondy did a sleeper, which, again isn't usually part of the diction of lucha libra. Finish was fun with Stuka getting Guerrero Negro but Estrada missing a big leap off the top only for Blondy to get overconfident and rolled up. It was a good, over act and here was another look at it, brief, a little slight, but still enjoyable.

Bret Hart/Virgil vs. Ted Dibiase/IRS WWF 8/16/91

MD: This came out of nowhere. They started running this matchup in July, with Duggan sometimes teaming with Virgil. It's still very early in the Dibiase/IRS pairing. We don't have a ton of them with Sherri so it's fun to see it. Super hot crowd and you can hardly blame them as there was always something to look at here. Just having Sherri out there meant that there was a constant reaction to everything that was happening. That meant lots of attempts to interfere which didn't come to anything but drew the eye (and the fancam) to holding her head during a double noggin knocker, to taunting every single person in the arena when Dibiase and IRS finally took over. I almost can't comment on some of Rotunda's holds because the cameraman was more interested in seeing what Sherri was up to. There was a long, long shine here with a couple of false calls on the heels taking over but some very fun stuff, like Bret feigning an eyerake from the outside from IRS (that never happened) which let Virgil unload on Dibiase illegally and this great bit where Virgil did an arm wringer to IRS and then Rotunda's fist right into Dibiase's face. I'm sure I must have seen that spot at least a few times but it felt new to me. The heels had to work three times harder (and dirtier) than the babyfaces to get anything which, I suppose, made the fans care all the more when they finally took over. There was a ton of heat for it at least. Bret ended up taking maybe 80% of this match though Virgil seemed plenty competent when he was in there. Finish was probably what people usually got around this time, with Virgil, almost, almost getting to triumph over Dibiase only to have it stolen out from underneath him (by a loaded purse). Summerslam was just around the corner though.

ER: I have bad taste in wrestling, so this kind of thing is the kind of new match that excites me. I love seeing new WWF pairings from this era, matches that didn't exist in any other form. They ran this tag on a few house shows leading up to Summerslam '91, the peak of Virgil's career and Bret's first singles match title win. Other than these few house show tags, Bret and Virgil rarely associated. Both babyfaces, both careers on the upswing, both in wildly different places one year later. Virgil's World Title Challenge the next year would be by far Bret's shortest match of his first World Title run. This is our lone Bret/Virgil partnership on film and it's a really good tag match, and every person in the match is really great at their role in the match. Bret gets loud crowd sympathy out of getting out of a long chinlock, Dibiase reacts perfectly to a hot tag, IRS works faster and hits heavier than later Money Inc., and the timing of everything is pinpoint. 

But this is a Sensational Sherri. Whatever single Montreal man snuck their camcorder to horsily record Sherri's every single movement at the importance of anything else on the show, was correct to do so. Regardless of the intentions of a lone Quebecois cameraman probably named Edouard, this camera belonged on Sherri. This was one of the hardest working, entertaining, constant motion and broad breathless interaction that few managers in history could replicate. Sherri works an incredible and active manager role with the best looking legs of her life, running around the ring to stop and rub specific fans' faces in it, shouting specific encouragement to IRS or Dibiase in between interacting with fans, physically interact with all four men in the match multiple times ranging from big to small ways, all while adding to the match by getting the crowd more invested in the match by also being more invested in her. She is incredible to watch. It's like she's acting a big scene out for her own biopic; an incredible confident performance that is bigger than any TV performance. You put this performance of hers in any territory and she is a megastar. 

This is a gem of a tag. Every participant did a leaping punch off the middle or top buckle, and any match with jumping or falling punches is going to be a house show gem. But this is a Sensational Sherri match, a match I'm not sure I've seen anyone work better. That it plays like a documentary scene about a Great Manager due to our French New Wave handheld with swirling squeals of in the red crowd noise makes it a wrestling match that should be referenced going forward. 

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