Found Footage Friday: 80s SPAIN~! PANTHER~! PSICOSIS~! REY~! FANTASTICS~! KIKUCHI~!

Santi Rico(c) vs. Manuel Acapulco 3/30/83

MD: Spanish wrestling! Don't get too excited. This looks like a one off and it is well, well past the glory years. As an overall presentation, it's fascinating though. This is on a variety show of sorts and likened to when they had someone run two days straight from one city to another or a stunt man on. Here it's the defense of a title. That said, they were ready to put their best foot forward and it was a celebration in its own way.

The centerpiece was not Mr. Ferraras, the president of the Castilian federation who was interviewed beforehand and presented  the belt/sash (a nice collection of flags upon it) to the world champion at the end. It wasn't the wrestlers, Santi Rico billed from Spain who had been active for a few years at least and Acapulco (Montezuma?) who was billed from Mexico. Apparently neither had 100 matches under his respective belt. More on them later. It wasn't even Quasimodo, our friend from the French footage, who was known in French as the Caribbean Cyclone, who was there to witness and talk about his school of 30 wrestlers he was training. 

The centerpiece, to me was Bobby Deglané, who even with my rough Spanish and YouTube's translate function, came off as an exceptional commentator, especially for someone who was never on national TV as such. He was a stalwart of the radio days however and was as poised and collected as one could be. He introduced all the rules (which part of the foot you could hit with, for instance, or the twenty count on the outside which was different than boxing) and explained all the techniques. They describe the realness of wrestling as half spot and half spectacle and he was quick to point out the damaging effects of shots to the head for instance. 

Some of the normative things were interesting. They called it American wrestling, Catch as Catch Can. The referee had a whistle for rope breaks. It was set up in six rounds of five minutes with a minute in between. There were ring girls to kiss cheeks and present trophies at the end as well as hold up the round numbers. They even said "Seconds out" at the start so there were elements of British wrestling as well as French (or vice versa depending on how things developed). The crowd was very into it despite being potentially unfamiliar.

And the wrestling was ok, spirited, high effort. It was rough around the edges based on what you'd expect, but that made sense given how quiet the scene was. I'd say that Acapulco looked the smoother of the two as one out of every three things Rico.went for didn't quite work. A lot of the holds did, headscissors, inner armbars, headlocks, mares, with all of the escapes. Rico had dropkicks and they varied. Acapulco leaned rudo as the match went on, throwing knees and rabbit punches and eventually headbutts that led to color (have to make things feel legitimate). This was not Cesca vs. Catanzaro. I'd say it wasn't even Flesh Gordon vs. Eliot Frederico but it was a pretty fascinating glimpse into a people trying to showcase and remember their lost tradition, a tradition that we've more or less accepted that we'll only ever be able to marginally touch.

Isamu Teranishi/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Fantastics (Bobby Fulton/Tommy Rogers) AJPW 1/11/91

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HjFd7h3fKU

MD: We've missed a few matches from AJPW Classics but it's a bit tricky since some of what gets shown are matches we already had JIP where we just get the first 5 minutes. Maybe we still should go back for something like MVC vs. Jumbo/Taue but I never know. This, however, is, I think, new. And it's fun if flawed.

I struggle with this Fantastics run as they tend to do a lot of stuff and really eat up their opponents if possible. They got the memo and knew they had to look strong in order to be over in All Japan but it really doesn't make for great matches, especially when they're up against Footloose. Then you just get noise. This was better than that because they were able to dominate and Kikuchi's a lot of fun working from underneath. Lots of individual fun stuff whether it was Teranishi trying (and sometimes succeeding) to land on his feet against Rogers or the Fantastics hitting a bunch of double teams. 

Still, when Kikuchi was able to fire back or Teranishi able to stand strong, the Fantastics generally just shrugged it off. The worst of this was when Fulton missed an axe handle onto the guardrail from the apron. Pretty good spot, something you don't see every day. Didn't change the trajectory of the match a bit. Ah well. This isn't Can-Ams vs. Kikuchi, that's for sure. Still pretty fun for what it was though. Just what it was had a ceiling.

ER: I thought this was real tough, hard fought, with a feeling like it was going to turn unprofessional any moment. There were moments of miscommunication between Rogers and Teranishi, but it added to the vibes of Something Going Down. Really, it was probably just because everyone worked real stiff and kept fighting all match. Matt correctly notes some seemingly big spots that don't change the trajectory of the match, but I thought that just made everyone come off tough, wanting to fight. I like Asshole Bully Fantastics as their style is totally different. You still see those moments of babyface grace - look at how clean Tommy Rogers hits a sunset flip off the top - but there are more moments of these little guys throwing real shots. Rogers throws two hard back elbows at Kikuchi's eye when he seems surprised by a hammerlock reversal, so Kikuchi throws two elbow smashes at his eye. I love when Kikuchi is targeted with real abuse, like they all know he can take it and it gives them license to fill up their asshole meter. 

Tommy Rogers bodyslams Kikuchi from the ring out to the damn floor, just slips out the back and throws him over the top on his back. It looked more like John Nord eliminating a job guy from a battle royal, not little power pack Tommy murdering a fellow junior. It looks nasty...but Bobby Fulton's full speed baseball slide dropkick as Kikuchi is recovering looked even worse. Fulton flew between the bottom and middle ropes and connected so flush that he bounced back clean. Now, I expected this to lead to a long heat section on Kikuchi, but there's that thing about everyone just coming off tough, because when they go outside to capitalize Kikuchi just fights them both off with elbows and a stiff clothesline. Bobby Fulton looked like a real killer here, even more than Rogers, and seemed to work a bit better with Teranishi. I was shocked by how fast old man (same age as me) Teranishi flipped onto his feet, and Fulton seemed surprised by it as well. Kikuchi's comeback was real choice, ducking a tandem clothesline and hooking Fulton's waist for a "surprise" German suplex that Rogers instantly dropped an elbow on. The finish was real sick too, with Fulton scooping up Kikuchi for a Samoan drop and flinging Rogers onto him with a cannonball. The Fantastics worked as bully heels in All Japan better than the similar sized State Patrol, and I bet there are many who have never seen them quite like this. 

Blue Panther/Cien Caras/Psicosis vs. Konnan/Rey Misterio Jr./Angel Azteca Promo Azteca 11/30/96

MD: Roy says this is new and even though it cuts out before the finish, that's over 20 minutes and when you look at who's in it, it's worth checking out. Blue Panther was paired with Konnan early and it was sort of fascinating what they did. I'm not saying it was always exactly what I wanted, but it was always interesting. Panther had all of his tricked out stuff and Konnan just sort of roughed his way through in a believable, competitive way. Psicosis or Caras would sneak in to get cheapshots whenever he had the advantage. Rey and Psicosis was old hat but the best damn hat you might want with how Psicosis would base for Rey and Caras and Azteca had some stalling and cheapshots around Azteca getting things in. That was the primera, ending with some rope running with Panther and Azteca and Konnan vs. the world before he set Rey up with a monkey flip right into a 'rana that was pretty damn spectacular.

Segunda has a brief but great Blue Panther vs. Rey exchange and Psicosis stooging beautifully as he was heading into the ropes when Rey was doing the 619 dive tease and he bumped on it. Psicosis also got jammed on a monkey flip in the ropes by Konnan and took a bump over the top after some great struggle. Caras overpowered Rey and the rudos took over. They kept the beat down going into the tercera (including Blue Panther just tearing at Konnan's eye) before Konnan mounted a big comeback against everyone and things picked up towards the finish as it all cuts off. Some very fun pairings and imaginative stuff here though. Tons of personality too.

ER: Any time 20+ minutes of prime footage turns up of these guys, it needs to be covered, and this is a fun as hell way to watch these guys, so many fun exchanges and individual performances. Any new Rey/Psicosis interactions are going to cause excitement, and the more Psicosis footage we get (there is a lot) the more obvious it is how much better he was before WCW. WCW really sanded all the edges off a tremendous all around rudo and boiled him down to being a base with a couple big bumps who wasn't really great at working 3 minute singles matches. Whenever I watch a lucha match from the same exact era he was working WCW, he's so much more of a character, so much more fully formed, so much more of a star. His stooging is an incredible part of his rudo character, one that was mostly boiled away when he became Rey's touring dance partner. Here it's alive and thriving. Tripping over the ropes and getting upset with the ref about it is a great Psicosis trademark that wouldn't have translated to American audiences but was perfect for Mexican audiences. He's able to work more violently here than he would in WCW, and him being more of a flagrant asshole gives greater weight to all of his big bumps. 

My favorite things about this were the Panther/Konnan matwork in the primera, and Cien Caras's increased involvement as the match went on. I don't think I've ever seen Panther hit the mat with Konnan and I thought it was awesome. I am someone who thinks Konnan is better than given credit for while acknowledging that many of the criticisms are fair. He doesn't look like someone who can keep up with Panther on the mat, but he doesn't need to. Panther doesn't need someone who can mirror his abilities on the mat, he is good at working with anyone's personality and ability. Konnan is no slouch, and I like the strength component he brings to mat reversals. Panther may catch him with slickness and technical ability but Konnan is able to use strength to adjust the hold around himself. There was a cool takedown where Panther went inside and used his body to force a single leg, working himself up to an armbar, and Konnan started escaping from it by getting one of Panther's legs in a scissor and forcing it one direction, then grabbing the leg nearest his head and pushing that another direction, so both wound up in this awesome tangle where Panther still had a sub but Konnan was forcing his limbs apart. 

If Psicosis was someone who dumbed his style down for American TV audiences, Cien Caras was a star whose character wouldn't have translated to American audiences at all. He is such a stud, but wouldn't be perceived as a stud to Americans, so all of the great stuff he does here wouldn't get over at all. This cool Mexican stud in his goatee, who keeps going for cheap shot attacks all match and bumping almost to avoid interaction. I loved the end of the segunda, where his boys started being pinned and he bumped himself over the top to the floor, eating shit in the process, running away from Konnan just to avoid being one of the guys taking the fall. But in the primera he also bumped around for Azteca and took a big charge over the top to the floor after missing him, setting up one big bump on offense to get over his big "own goal" bump later, meanwhile always running in and kicking an opponent hard to break up a pin. It's a shame we don't have the finish as I really wanted to see the payoff of Panther goes after Konnan's eye, but you don't need to watch this for its Great Match potential, just watch it to see some legends at various peaks, doing exchanges you haven't seen. 

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Found Footage Friday: TULLY~! BUDRO~! HARDY VS HARDY~! GANG~! PITTMAN~! FANTASTICS~! BUSHWHACKERS~!

New Dimension Wrestling 7/18/98

MD: This was a show at a racetrack with Chris Cruise and John Hitchcock announcing and Bruce Mitchell in the crowd. The announcing was as insider as it could get for 1998 as Hitchcock spent the whole night trying to pop himself and his friends. It was a moment in time, so there were crotch chops in about three matches but they still put on a good show overall. 

Ring Masters vs. Rikki Nelson/Colt Steel

MD: I'll move through this one quickly as there's a lot to cover here and I'm not outright skipping anything but Abby vs Ric Link (bloody but not much to it, no great Abby cutoffs and there's a better brawl on the card) and Iron Sheik vs Jimmy Snuka (coolest part was to see Sheik with his giant belly still able to do the club gimmick). Nelson could get great heat. Steel had some good looking takedowns and knees. They were working a gimmick where they were rivals that were teaming for the belt. Ring Masters came in on motorcycles and both kind of looked like Jimmy Jam. Crowd didn't want to back them but they were de facto faces and willing to bump. Colt and Steel were the sort of guys who could carry an indy when the big stars weren't there and this was pretty good accordingly but no one's reading for this one.

Ricky Morton vs. Manny Fernandez

MD: At one point this was supposed to be Manny vs Willy Clay and Ricky vs Sheik, because Snuka got there late, but they shifted things back when he arrived. That would have been morbidly interesting but this was far better. Manny based well and gave a lot early (he was going over). The heat was mostly a chinlock with cut offs but if you're going to do that to anyone in the world, Ricky Morton's the guy. Finish had shenanigans. Manny could have a pretty good ten minute match in 98 but I would have liked a bit more imagination when he was leaning on Morton.

Willow the Whisp vs. Surge

MD: The young guys match where they did everything under the sun. Cruise said that they'd be still watching these guys in twenty years so we weren't quite at the "Matt will be world champion and Jeff will be in a wheelchair" mindset yet. What's funny is that you can absolutely see who Jeff would be in Willow, just in the way he moved and in the dives and bumps, but Matt wasn't close to being who he would be yet. He instead did every move he knew, a bunch of stuff he wouldn't be doing in a couple of years, while Jeff's stuff (like the whisper in the wind) was more unique and would stay with him forever. This served its purpose, being spot after spot that let the announcers say that they weren't just a nostalgia act but on the cutting edge as well.

ER: This was so awesome. This was basically the exact kind of match all of us were hoping to see in 1998 when we traded tapes. When I traded for my first FMW tape around this same time, I was blown away by Hayabusa doing things no more crazy than what Jeff Hardy was doing here, only one guy was doing it in the middle of a literal Olympic swimming pool and the other guy was doing it in the pit area of a southern race track. I love these kind of brother vs. brother showcase matches, two guys who learned together and honed their impressively different styles, unleashing everything they know. Just a few years later we got a match with two under 18 year old Briscoes doing 2 count kickouts after top rope sitout powerbombs and that circle of life continued. I think this kind of match showed good reason why both Hardys sat so high up on DVDVR rankings, that for the time were based on matches that some people had seen live. Had I been seeing this kind of thing in rectory basements or bar backyards in 1998 I would have thought it was the best wrestling in the world, too. I think it was more than just big moves and moving from one spot to the next, as you can see the build and escalation throughout, the big guns coming out the longer the match went on. 

The Hardys were just a month or two away from actually getting wins on WWF TV, and now it's 25 years later and both are still in great matches (Their tag against Private Party earlier this year was one of my favorite TV tags of the year so far) but there's an undeniable melancholy to them still wrecking their bodies, no matter how much I love these two for doing so. Jeff was on the cusp of stardom, and here he is stumble walking his way down the bleacher seats looking no different than any VHS video you've ever seen of a teenage backyarder making a dramatic appearance around the corner of his friend's side yard while Mudvayne blared through someone's JVC Kaboom Box. Jeff brought yarder tendencies to the mainstream and became one of the biggest wrestling stars of the 21st century, 100% deserved. I also like how he still throws stomach kicks the exact same way as he did back then, and how Matt knew how to throw several great punches just as well in 1998. Matt had the kind of punches that made a bunch of us fall in love with worked punches. He has a tornado punch that catches Jeff under the chin, two perfect - and I mean perfect - fistdrops, and the longer this goes the more he starts unwinding his excellent overhand rights. 

This has some fantastic spots and some pro wrestling culture that only those of us who were up to our eyeballs in green board would ever understand. Matt is just tossing off moves like he's flipping through a CAW list, and damn does he make it work. He's just casually tossing out a high lift hotshot, Michinoku driver, middle rope legdrop, and missing a top rope springboard moonsault while Chris Cruise is talking about what a great wrestling fan Mike Lano is. Let me tell you, as a Bay Area wrestling fan who had Mike Lano's gigantic sweatpants-covered ass bent over in my direction far too many times as he took intrusive photos at an indy show, I miss those days of making fun of that dude and his huge ass. Jeff is a total lunatic, breaking out things that most of us just weren't seeing in 1998. He lands a superfly splash right on Matt's head and it was 100% on fucking purpose. This man didn't slip and land on his brother's head, he intentionally leapt onto his face. They duplicate a Rey Mysterio spot and make it look as good or better than Rey, when Jeff gets alley-ooped onto the top rope, sticks the landing with no hands, and flips back into a corkscrew moonsault. Some goober on commentary actually drops a JUSTIN Thunder Liger when making a comp to Japanese wrestling. I had to skip back multiple times to hear a Justin Thunder Liger reference in the wild. I remember my friend dying when he was showing his now ex-wife some Liger matches 20 odd year ago, and her asking where the other guy was. "The other guy?" "Yeah. If this guy is Juice, where's Thunder Liger?" Jeff does a big Sabu flip over the top off a chair, crashing them both onto grass, and Matt hits a gorgeous Asai moonsault, landing perfectly vertical with Jeff's chest. After Matt wins, he turns to the camera and says "I'm getting way too old for this," and it plays with the same wistfulness and past begets present wisdom as Johnny Knoxville hopping and limping and laughing through crash footage from 20 years ago.

Fantastics vs. Bushwhackers

MD: An inversion of the classic feud, though this was Jackie and Bobby with no Tommy. I don't know if I've ever quite seen this version of Bobby, in a red full body suit with dark hair and a complete stooge. He came down to the ring with a huge Buff Bagwell style hat and cut a promo about how they were northerners from Ohio and so on. Then the Bushwhackers came out and talked about southern pride, so that was an aesthetic choice. It did draw "Yankee Scum" chants. First third of this was them running a spot and the Fultons running out to get heat, including apparently taking Bruce Mitchell's chair. Then they did the longest "pumphandle my own partner's arm" spot I've ever seen. I was curious if the Bushwhackers would throw back at all to previous iterations of this match up but if anything, they went the other way with the Fantastics stooging to the utmost. It was still a lot of fun to see once but I'm not sure I'd ever have to see it again. 

Craig Pittman vs. One Man Gang

MD: If this was a no DQ and they let it go, it could have been pretty great actually. Pittman was a replacement for Tony Atlas who was the only no show on the entire card. Probably a big step up in 98 too. After the entrances and the push-ups there wasn't much to this in the ring, with the best part being Pittman taking Gang down. Once it spilled out though, it became a pretty great brawl, with tables flying and a brief time in an enclosed cage-like area by the racetrack. they were just laying in chair shots one after the next at one point. It kind of made me wish that Pittman had gotten a 98 ECW run.

ER: After seeing the mildly amusing ways that OMG stalls for time in the first two minutes of this match, I was not expecting this to devolve into such a spirited ringside brawl. I know how much of a fan Matt is of stalling bullshit era John Studd, so I would have expected more love for Gang demanding Pittman remove his belt before starting the match, lest it be used as a weapon. Gang himself devolving things into a weapons brawl a couple minutes later is the kind of dumb heel stuff I love. Just the visual of Gang - the largest man in Concord, NC at the time of this match - demanding an even playing field is great. Pittman hit his peak as a pro wrestler in 1997, when he returned to WCW TV working a much more overt heel style. Due to his military background he spent most of his career with that hanging over him as a babyface, but his punishing style fit so much better as a heel. I can only imagine how well he could have integrated that into Inoki's early 2000s New Japan. 

When this spilled to the floor we got some fun bits of magic, including both Pittman and Gang taking bigger than expected bumps on grass, Pittman spilling painfully over the announce table (Chris Cruise getting upset about his spilled drink in the process), Gang bumping painfully over a chain link fence, and both delivering some hard and some not hard chair shots that still looked painful. Gang even hit Pittman with the metal bar of a camping chair, which I don't think I've seen. I particularly liked when the referee tried to get Gang's chair away from him, and Gang held it up for him to take, then just punched him in the stomach. They punch their way to the exit, Pittman torpedo headbutts Gang in the back, and a shirtless fan holds Pittman back from attacking further. 

Buddy Landel vs. Tully Blanchard

MD: This went 30 and I think there was a high spot at the 20 minute mark and another around the 25 minute mark, but it was still pretty great. They spent a huge chunk of this just trading toeholds with each other, one guy taking down the other, jockeying for positioning, working the escape and then turning it around, up and then down, but never really shifting to rope running. Instead, there were little flourishes like leaving the ring or the head games of a clean handshake or jawing with one another. All of the takedowns looked smooth but competitive and it had a title match feel, leaning even further into that mat-based style than usual. I'm honestly surprised that Landel wasn't stooging more because he was more than capable but maybe Blanchard, who was more of a de facto babyface than anything else, didn't want to play into it much. He did one strut at the beginning but that was about it.

When they did pick up the pace, it was just for one spot that would clearly gave Landel the advantage for the last third. Tully taking out his own leg in the corner looked great, and his selling was spot on as he tried to punch his way back on one leg at times, and otherwise survive the figure-four and continued toeholds. It led to a moment where Tully's leg gave out and he dropped Landel on his own head and on Landel's all at once and both guys sold the impact all the way to the roll up out of nowhere finish. It wasn't the match I was expecting, but in a lot of ways it was just as good if not better.

ER: I thought this was excellent. Tully barely worked post-WWF and any time he would show up anywhere he would look like he's barely lost a step. The only weird thing about retirement Tully is that seeing him was such a rarity that his appearance would always turn him babyface, so we had these weird glimpses of a natural heel working babyface-by-default matches once a year in front of 100 fans and occasionally 3,000 fans every 10 years. It's a weird career and I've yet to be anything but impressed by retirement Tully. This match has to be the peak of what I've seen. This goes an actual 30 minutes and I loved it. It's as minimalist as you can get, but the up close camera work really benefits two guys who are great close-up workers, making a match with hardly any "moves" into something special. Also, we should take a second to appreciate how great Buddy Landel's hair looks here. Usually you don't see such healthy well-conditioned bleached hair, which only lends credence to Buddy really being all natural. 

This was a mat-based match and would have fit right in on the Muga card Tully worked a couple years prior. The stooging was kept shockingly sparse. I say "shockingly" because when you go into a 30 minute main event on a card utilizing a 1/2 mile stock-car track as a backdrop, you'd be right to expect a lot of bullshit. The bullshit was quick and always built the match a bit more, usually it was something as simple as a long hold finally broken up in the ropes, and Buddy rolling to the grass to throw a chair down in a little micro-tantrum. There wasn't a ton of crowd work although both guys were in tune with the crowd. No, the bulk of this was leg work and it was tight, focused and entertaining leg work with interesting interludes. It was a match filled with great small moments, like Buddy Landel's punches or Tully running right at Buddy's leg with a straight kick. Both sold the work well and never skipped steps. Tully was a bastard about how he attacked the leg - kicking it in the ropes, even swinging at it with a clothesline from his knees - that when Buddy turned the tables he dialed it up even more. 

I loved Buddy working a toehold and egging Tully on, getting Tully to throw punches from his back while Buddy kept asking for it right in the chin and pulling his head back. Tully's missed running knee into the buckles looked really nasty, and his staggered selling and unreliable base was really compelling, still swinging at Landel but a step slower. Landel had some classic asshole stuff when he he knew Tully was wounded, even doing a hilarious bit where he held an Indian deathlock while smoking an invisible cigarette. For a match that had basically a couple physics-based Tully armdrags as the major highspots, Tully's knee buckling on a suplex and turning into a spike brainbuster was a helluva a thing to happen. The spot was so crazy that whoever edited this tape showed the brainbuster in slow motion three straight times right after it happened. And yet, Tully and Buddy sold it so perfectly that these dudes might have just meant to do that crazy damn spot. I can sometimes be a high voter on heavyweight minimalist wrestling, but I watch a match like this and can't help but think of all those Ric Flair/Terry Taylor matches that so many people loved on the 80s Watts set, and I know that those matches felt like a weak version of Blanchard/Landel. 

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New Footage Friday: SATS~! RED~! BRIAN XL~! QUIET STORM~! FAKE CHRIS DEVINE~! FANTASTICS~! SATANIC WARRIORS~! GREEK CATCH~!

Apoostolos Souglakos vs Giorgos Pefanis/Masked Man 1980s

MD: Phil Lions has done it again with some great research into what Greek wrestling footage is out there. This is from a comp tape highlighting Souglakos and it's pretty fascinating footage. This particular match is a two on one based on a gym mat, in a gym, but with a big, hot crowd. There was some loose set of rules that kept them from double teaming Souglakos constantly, but I couldn't tell you what they were. The mat had a line drawn on it to keep one guy in place for a lot of this but it wasn't like they didn't leave the mat to walk over to the rail to use it as a weapon too. Despite the strange setting, there were a lot of familiar pro wrestling trappings, be it the moves (mares, headbutts, armdrags, etc.), the bs (Souglakos getting the masked man's mask off only for another mask to be underneath!) or the drama of Souglakos having to completely bloody Pefanis to the point where he was out of the match so that the two heels wouldn't interrupt a pin; what he won with was a pretty nasty crab where he grabbed the toes to yank. The fans were into everything Souglakos did, more so than they gave the heels much heat. Souglakos did come off as a superman, if not invulnerable, as he fought off two men at once. I'd love to see some lost match with him and someone like Flair, something like the Jack Veneno one. He was obviously good at being a local hero in a pro wrestling sense. Someone filmed this so maybe there's a lost footage vault somewhere in Greece too.

Fantastics vs. Satanic Warriors NWL 6/22/90

MD: Yeah sure, this was fun. It was a game crowd. The Satanic Warriors were your sort of D-Level Texas Hangmen, but they were goofy and liked to pose and stooge more than the average masked bruiser gimmick. The Fantastics here were Bobby and Jackie and there was a pretty solid FIP. Part of the strength of a southern tag is that you really only need one guy out of the four who knows what he's doing and a crowd that'll play along and it'll almost always work and this had more than that going for it. They were following up from the night before with powder-to-the-face from their manager Rustee Foxx that let the Warriors win, but this time the Fantastics had Bambi to even the odds. The pre-match Satanic Warriors promo was great as you had a guy who obviously wasn't well-suited for this, in English at least, mumble to them "I heard you cheat," and they ran with it from there talking about satanic power. This is definitely something that pro wrestling can be and that it should be now and again. There's always going to be a place for this sort of match on any card in the world.

ER: I'm always going to be a sucker for one of those teams with an incredible name like SATANIC WARRIORS who are just a team wearing black masks who wrestle like twin Barry Darsows. Satanic Warriors are both big guys, one of them worked as Super Destroyer #2 in pre-Extreme ECW, the type of wrestling team that made up a lot of the independents in this era. You know, one of those teams where the guys were trained by either Afa or Johnny Rodz and so they all work like Los Conquistadors. And that's really all you need to be to work the Fantastics in Guam. Warriors used a ton of good looking axe handle smashes on Bobby and Jackie, and had the good timing necessary to bump for dropkicks in quick succession. Jackie was pretty raw here but had that nice high dropkick that gets full extension off the chest of Satanic Warriors, and Bobby was the kind of pro you want to have on a tour like this. His strikes look the best of anyone in the match (so good that sometimes the Warriors do quick back bumps for him, even with the size difference) and there's a great spot where he gets thrown quickly through the ropes and bumps hard to the floor. As Matt said, a match like this really plays anywhere, anytime. You could run this same note for note match in any high school gym this weekend and get a great reaction with it. There's great chaos with Bambi and Rustee Fox at ringside (loved Bambi telling her she was going to yank out her stringy hair) and we got a huge powder finish from Jackie (with the ref counting his pin in the midst of a massive powder tornado), and I will never tire of formula pro wrestling being played in front of crowds who might not know the formula. 

Amazing Red/The SAT vs. Brian XL/Quiet Storm/Boogalou PCW 7/8/01

PAS: This is listed on the video as Divine Storm/XL vs. SATs/Red, and that is also what the commentator says, but that is Boogalou (Homicide's Natural Born Sinners tag partner) in there instead of Devine. This match up was a revelation when it first got run in CZW, and it is fun to see a new touring version of it show up. Boogalou adds a fun twist, as he does some big suplexes, including belly to belly throwing Red over the top onto a crowd on the floor, there also was some crowd brawling which may have been his contribution. You come for the wacky SAT triple teams and highspots, and while a couple of ranas didn't get caught cleanly, you get a bunch of both. XL hits a crazy springboard tornillo to the floor, and the SATs set up a bunch of cool ways for Red to spin kick someone. It has been 25 years and a million variations, but the Spanish Fly is sill a cool finisher, and totally blew my mind back in the day. 

MD: I'll do my best not to wax poetic about this and, of course, the June match which it follows (albeit with some deviation not just because Boogalou is in for Chris Divine). I don't know who reads the blog; sometimes I think it's all just the same people we've been talking to about wrestling for twenty years but that's probably not the case. The June CZW match between these six is something that feels a little bit lost in the annals of time, but it felt entirely transformative to me at 19, watching it in Real Player in a tiny screen because of the heavy compression, back when it dropped and the entire DVDVR board was going nuts about it. There were obviously predecessors to this in 00 and 01 (and even earlier) but that was the one where it felt like everything came together and nothing would be the same, the switch from indy wrestling being Rik Ratchett vs Billy Reil to being something that would take your breath away. I'm not a big proponent of Meltzer's thought that you have to give matches a lot of passes due to their era, as there's good and bad stuff, stuff that builds narratives and stuff that breaks narratives, in every era, but this is one of those spotfests that gets a pass for me. It was just that symbolically important in the switch from indy wrestling to superindy wrestling.

And, of course, the Woburn crowd is full of a bunch of jokers that spend most of the match laughing at one smartass heckler comparing everyone's ring gear to the Bad video. Honestly, there's no reason that I wasn't at this show. It was probably a 20 minute drive from where I was going to college at the time. I have no idea why this wasn't on my radar. Obviously, I must have felt like it was a better use of my time to watch Arch Kincaid against Dukes Dalton or whatever I was watching at Chaotic Wrestling that month.

A lot of words to get to me saying that this was very similar to the other matches of theirs we have (CZW, PR). I don't think they missed a step with Boogalou in there, and if they did, they rushed right to the next step so quickly that no one was going to notice. Lots of tandem spots. Lots of quick exchanges. Nothing overly blown. Oohs and Ahhs from the crowd, even despite itself. Buzz for red especially. Everyone blown away by the tapitia double stomp and the Spanish fly. This had some more crowd brawling, which was an interesting wrinkle. While it seemed obvious that only a few people in the crowd knew what they were about to see (though those people were trying to sell the others on Red at least), it was still good on them for not just working the same rote match but twisting it up a bit. Everything was moving and changing so quickly in 2001 that this might not have had the same impact on people's minds as the version a few months earlier but I know I'm kicking myself now, twenty years later, for having missed it at the time.

ER: This match is from an era that I will always feel nostalgic for, even though it was happening at the farthest geographic part of the country from me. Indy wrestling was still territorial at this point, and my age and increase in tape trading was a perfect time for me to be seeing all the hottest juniors from the east coast while getting to see guys like Mike Modest and Christopher Daniels live (and in 2000/2001 I'm not sure there was any other wrestlers I wanted to see live more than those two). The All Japan/NOAH exodus and the shakeup that caused plus the burgeoning east coast indy scene made me quickly make more wrestling message board fans to trade wrestling with, using my access to TV lucha libre as my in. We're 20 years past the era where this was revolutionary, but I will always be impressed by the ways these guys moved off of and around each other, and can't imagine what the (match-long) heckler in the crowd would have rather wanted to see (maybe there was a Rapid Fire Maldonado/Axl Rotten match he was waiting for?), but I love it. Gimme Red doing crazy spin kicks after being vaulted off another man, Brian XL doing a gorgeous springboard tornillo, lucha armdrags done well by New Jersey youth. It's kind of amazing how good everyone was at catching ranas (sure some didn't land as smoothly, but you can watch literally any given week of CMLL TV and see several ranas that look worse), and it gives their matches an almost Crosswalk Lucha vibe that really tapped into something special. This match also had a fun crowd brawling section that I'm not sure I remember seeing in any of their other matches, plus Boogalou working as a little Taz. I watched so much of these guys in 2001 and 2002, but I don't see ever not getting excited to take that trip back. 

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New Footage Friday: All Japan 1/8/90

FULL SHOW

Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Mitsuo Momota

MD: For a first match young guy, Kikuchi looked to have a ton of promise here. The dropkick stands out but he sold well and just looked like he belonged in there for the most part. Momota is a guy you want to see as an underdog, so watching him tear apart an arm in interesting ways is compelling but not what I enjoy the most out of him. They dropped the arm stuff in the last third which didn't necessarily do the match justice but you could see hints of the wrestler Kikuchi would become here.

ER: This felt more like a 1990 WWF house show match than a 1990 All Japan match, which still has some pluses. Much of the match is Momota grinding at Kikuchi's left arm, and Kikuchi's screaming during the arm work really made a lot of it resonate. But once you know that the left arm is never going to come up in any way once they go into the home stretch, it kind of renders the bulk of the match as "lets see if these front rows fill up a little more before the bigger matches". So you lop out the long arm section, and you're still left with a couple of cool things. Kikuchi's dropkick is fantastic and the way Momota sells it makes it seem like it hits with as much force as it looks like it's hitting. Later in the match Momota merely tosses Kikuchi to the floor and Kikuchi flies through the ropes as if he's hitting a tope on an invisible man, just a nutty bump to be taking in a "work the arm" match. I really loved how Momota blocked a Kikuchi hip toss by holding the ropes in the corner, then violently shoved Kikuchi to the mat. But I just can't by a single DDT finishing off Kikuchi, not after I seeing the decades of coconut clonks his head would end up enduring. 

Goro Tsurumi vs. Steve Gatorwolf

MD: Man, Gatorwolf's chops suck. I'll just lay that out there. He's big, has some presence, but Wahoo he is not. You know who could have had a good match against Tsurumi? Wahoo. Tsurumi's stuff is all good though. Good knees, took up space well, etc., but this was too long and Gatorwolf disappoints. We go deep on these cards, look under the overturned rock, but there maybe should be some limits? This feels like a match that no one's ever seen certainly, including the people that were actually in the crowd that night.

ER: I liked this more than Matt, and disagree about Gatorwolf's chops. Bad kneedrop? Sure Gatorwolf had a bad kneedrop. But All Japan fans had different ideas of what overhand chops to someone's forehead were supposed to look like and I think Gatorwolf's chops worked really well within the context of All Japan. What is kind of odd about Gatorwolf, is that his overhand chops are easily his weakest strike, but also the strike he uses 75% of the time. It would be like a pitcher with a terrible curveball who still used his curveball almost every pitch. There's a traditional chop exchange out of the corner, and Gatorwolf really blisters Goro's chest with a couple. He also threw this short right hand to the jaw a couple times that looked really good, but mostly it was the tomahawk chops. Goro Tsurumi is always an entertaining low card guy for me, but I think of him as a mid 80s AJ guy, not a 1990 AJ guy, and his offense that is primarily eye rakes and punches doesn't seem like anything that would fit into AJ (outside of Rusher Kimura). 

Tsurumi essentially works like Tarzan Goto working as Rusher Kimura, and that is a thing that I like. His punches look really great (and I love how he shook out his hand occasionally), he has a nice jawbreaker (which Gatorwolf bumped nicely), a couple of fun kneedrops where he just dropped both knees down into Gatorwolf's stomach, and a few eye rake variants. I couldn't believe Gatorwolf got the win here. Early 90s AJ had this weird habit of bringing in WWF job guys for tours, but it's not like they were giving those guys wins! Gatorwolf worked Tsurumi far more than any opponent on his tour, and was 8-2 against him! He lost to everyone else, so this might have been Baba really blatantly saying "You do not belong in All Japan any longer, Goro. Also you will be losing to David Sammartino and Joel Deaton in a couple months."  

Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Rip Rogers

MD: Rogers was just infinitely entertaining. If I was Baba, I'd have put him right in the comedy six mans (That weren't quite comedy six mans yet, but we'll get to that). He's a super over the top parody babyface here with lots of clapping and oh yeahs! He carried a kid around the ring on his shoulders before the match, which felt unique but was something he did multiple times on the tour. And if this was 1997 Ogawa or 2002 Ogawa or whatever, he would have been able to react and respond to it and it would have been amazing. 1990 Ogawa? He played grumpy with a chip on his shoulder as Rogers is just having a good time. I liked this a lot better than his Kobashi match a couple of days later, because Kobashi, in the midst of a big 7 match series against various opponents (including allies like Kabuki and Yatsu) just took it all way too seriously with the ability to take it to Rip, forcing Rogers into more of a heel role, where here he felt like a bizarre attraction. 

ER: I love the Rip Rogers All Japan tours, and Rip really should have been a regular undercard gaijin for the rest of the decade. Mike Modest basically secured a long term NOAH gig by getting a simple thumbs up gesture over, and Rogers has 5 or 6 different bits that are a definite hit with the AJ crowds. I've looked at some of his other matches from his two tours (here are matches against Fuchi and Sato, and here are matches against Kobashi and Eigen), and the act is a hit. Clapping, toting around kids, taking an eternity to hand off his robe, checking out his hair in his hand mirror, it gets a reaction every time and I have no doubt that he would have added to the routines with a longer stay. Rip has the shtick (which Ogawa plays into a little, mussing up Rip's hair), but he also works stiff, and this was when Ogawa was more of a stiff younger worker too, so we get a great mix of goof off yelping from Rip and then some stiff arm lariats from both. Rip has great punches (and he shakes his fist out too! A bunch of guys after my heart on this show...) and both bumped convincingly for the other. I loved Rip finishing with a superplex, too, but I just couldn't shake the idea that this guy should have been a gaijin undercard star.  

Mighty Inoue/Isamu Teranishi vs. The Fantastics

MD: Inoue was really good. I don't think he gets enough credit. Huge energy. Everything's crisp. Everything's mean. He has something special in how he moves and hits stuff. Teranishi, on the other had, does not. He was in there to lose offense and get beaten on. Fantastics kept taking advantage on him with teamwork and then Inoue had to come in and fix things. Fulton and Rogers had good stuff, like always, and fed well for Inoue, but I like them more when they get to lean into either face or heel roles generally.

ER: The Fantastics are so great during their 90s All Japan run that I have to imagine a ton of people just weren't seeing their matches, or else they would have been talked about as one of the greater 90s tag teams. The are total asskickers in All Japan, small, but packing a wallop. Matching them up against the still very fast and hard hitting Mighty Inoue and the super tough sumo Teranishi is just a super fun pairing. Fulton kept cutting off Inoue and Teranishi with his great right hand, Rogers had a lot of force behind everything he did (he hit a legdrop on a hot tag at one point and it felt like he was trying his hardest to destroy his tailbone), but perhaps his greatest strength is in taking all of Inoue's nastiest shots. Inoue sticks Rogers with a disgusting gutbuster/senton combo and looks like a truck tire rolling over Tommy. Teranishi hits a great kneedrop off the top and it felt like a possible finish. But the Fantastics were too good with cutoff spots and watching them peel Teranishi far enough away from Inoue was great, loved their Drive-By finish, and Fulton's running punch to keep Inoue from breaking up the pin was the sweetest icing.

 

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura/The Great Kabuki vs. Masanobu Fuchi/Motoshi Okuma/Haruka Eigen

MD: You can't say that they didn't make good use out of Fuchi in these matches. He was able to switch on a dime between hanging with his legendary opponents and stooging all over the place for them. Due to the HH, I had a hard time telling Fuchi's side apart at times, but that's more on me. Baba's more mobile here and Rusher hasn't shifted over completely to the bit where he just stands around stoically as people hit him, but I'm not sure that's even a good thing. The matches get a lot funnier a few years later even if they're probably more technically sound at this point.

ER: I thought this was great, and maybe the best fusion of comedy and the guys still being able to work. Everyone in a trios having the average age of 45 just feels like a modern WWE match, and most of these guys could still go in the ring. It's much more wrestling with some comedy, as opposed to comedy with a little bit of wrestling like this style of trios would become. A lot of these guys (Eigen, Fuchi, Kabuki, Okuma) are still real ass kickers, Baba was still able to hit with a surprising amount of force and was still quite spry, and Rusher was inflexible but still had several cool tricks. 

Baba and Fuchi were a great match, with Baba hitting him with some really impressive stuff for a 52 year old giant. His Russian legsweep makes him look like an actual powerful giant, he hits one of the loudest Baba chops I've ever heard to the side of Fuchi's neck, Fuchi runs super fast directly into Baba's big boot, it honestly looked like they could have had a great singles match in 1990. But for some reason Fuchi hardly worked singles matches in 1990, not defending his World Junior title for a six month stretch. It's not just those two with chemistry, everyone works really well with everyone else, all get nice moments to shine. Kabuki looked as violent as ever, starting a match long trend of Eigen and Fuchi getting kicked in the shoulder blades. Kabuki makes kicking guys in the back and look so fun that Baba throws several great ones of his own. Eigen is really spirited and mean here, throwing stiff chops, slapping the taste out of Rusher's mouth with a hard fast combo, taking a quick flipping bump to the floor; he didn't look too old to be out to pasture, but he was working 90% tags and trios as one of the lowest totem pole guys on the roster. It's a real testament to how deep the native roster was. 

Okuma is a guy I always forget about, but contributed nasty headbutts (including a big standing splash variation) and has some great battles with Rusher and Baba. Even Rusher has his vicious moments, taking a ton of headbutts and throwing heavy chops, choking Eigen hard in the ropes. The comedy is well integrated and smartly played, not nearly so much a focal point of the match style, but a fun added feature of a quicker paced match than you'd expect. There was a lot of movement for a match that would become the old man style, and the few comedy spots provide nice breaks in the action. We get the Eigen spitting spot, except nobody has newspapers and he makes it to the 3rd row. And we get a great comedy callback spot to play off an earlier Baba moment. Kabuki had hit a hard bodyslam on Fuchi and Baba stepped firmly down onto Fuchi's stomach with his gigantic foot, then firmly walking on and over him. Fuchi later tries to do the same, only to get his foot grabbed, tripping him on his way over. The finish is a bit abrupt, which is a funny thing to say about one of the longest matches on the show. But I thought this was really one of the best matches from a style not known for it's high end in-ring. 

Shinichi Nakano vs. Randy Rose

MD: You feel a little bad for Rose to have to follow Rip on the card. He tried hard, though, including hitting an axe-handle off the apron, but his stooge stuff (like getting pulled off the ropes in a double leg or teeter-tottering like Funk in the ropes while getting chopped or getting atomic dropped onto a chair) wasn't going to play post-Rip. Nakano, like usual, was just there. This was fine but the crowd didn't come along.


Shunji Takano/Akira Taue vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Ivan Koloff

MD: A nothing match. This was a good tour for Koloff, but you don't really get to see that here so just take my word for it. Taue wasn't even close to being The Taue at this point, and watching him here, you couldn't be blamed for thinking he'd be another sumo guy who didn't make it. Takano (who was a couple of years younger actually), on the other hand, seemed like he would have been a player.

Yoshiaki Yatsu/Kenta Kobashi vs. The British Bulldogs

MD: This was mostly Davey Boy putting young Kobashi through his paces, but that was a lot of fun to see. Davey looked great and like he could have been feuding with Jumbo or Tenryu for the Triple Crown if he didn't go to the WWF towards the end of 90. I'm iffy on late Bulldogs matches because it's not very enjoyable to watch broken-down Dynamite, but he wasn't in much and mostly threw headbutts or did a little bit of grinding on Kobashi when he was in. Yatsu got to clean house towards the end but this felt about getting some more miles on Kobashi.

Jumbo Tsuruta/Tiger Mask II/Isao Takagi vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Toshiaki Kawada/Samson Fuyuki

MD: This came just a few days after Takagi brutally ambushed Tenryu before a singles TV match with Koloff. It's also one of Tiger Mask Misawa's first matches back after missing most of 89 with an injury. Tenryu had faced Jumbo dozens of times over the last year, but generally, Tenryi had the younger guys (in Footloose) on his side and Jumbo would have older warriors like Kabuki or Yatsu on his. There wasn't a lot of opportunity to see Tenryu be a grumpy bastard against the youth. He made up for lost time here. Every time he got into the ring and got his hands on Takagi, it's great. He just brutalizes him for a few seconds and then dismissively tags out to one of his partners. He's equally a jerk to Tiger Mask (chopping him for no reason whenever he gets too close to the corner while he's on the apron) and, of course, Jumbo (just leaping into the ring, running across and tagging him). 

My single favorite bit was him wrecking Takagi after Isao had the impudence to pull Tiger Mask out of the way of the Tenryu top rope elbow drop. It was obvious that he took it personally and no one was better at taking things personally than Tenryu. Even though that was my favorite, the match was just full of great Tenryu moments: dropping a table on Takagi from the outside, eating some Tiger Mask kicks only to yank him down to the mat by his mask, smugly dodging a double knee by Takagi and Jumbo. All the while, he's incredibly giving, letting Tiger Mask and Takagi both have big moments against him. Jumbo and Footloose play their parts well and this ends up being as a really nice piece of business and a great lost match.

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New Footage Friday: Great American Bash 7/16/88

Larry Zbyszko/Rip Morgan vs. Tim Horner/Bugsy McGraw

ER: Really dug Zbyszko in this one. With these raw footage shows it's always great to here more ring noises, and here we got Zbyszko shit talking Horner and yelling at Morgan to pull McGraw's hair. My favorite part of the match was when Larry tagged in and kicks Bugsy in the stomach, and then punches him three times right in the side of the head. I am becoming so much of a Larry guy. Rip Morgan works this like Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds, and it's pretty great. His heel crazy was a nice counterpoint to babyface Bugsy. And Morgan is good at being that stumbling type of bully who Horner can do all his graceful armdrags to. Horner is always a treat to watch, a real underrated babyface who should have been bigger. He just seems like a nice guy. I liked the fun simplicity of this.

MD: This never really had the depth for anything to set in. It felt like the cliff notes version of a match. I wonder if that was frustrating for them since there was so much repetition on this tour. I imagine they were just glad to get paid. Horner and Larry looked solid. McGraw was a poor man's Valiant by this point, but the shtick of him reacting to the Haka was obviously well worked out by this point. None of the hope spots or transitions or finished felt earned. Larry worked hard, bumping around the ring.

Ronnie Garvin vs. Itallion Stallion

ER: This was great. It goes about a minute, and heel Ronnie Garvin is now my favorite wrestler. I need to see all of the post NWA champ Garvin, because he was the smuggest asshole here and it was the best. Garvin does a fake towel toss to the crowd, and the crowd HATES him and it makes Italian Stallion a big babyface. Garvin sure doesn't let him do much with that though. This whole thing is Garvin faking an ankle injury off a leapfrog, really well, and the entire crowd getting louder and louder the longer he fakes it. It's classic, simple stuff, but Garvin is a much better actor than he's ever gotten credit for. The crowd knows exactly what's happening and they are desperately trying to warn this goof Italian Stallion that they've been forced into cheering by default. And of course, Garvin, after begging off and holding his ankle in agony, hops off and finishes off Stallion with one shot, sitting on his chest for the pinfall with the greatest grin. 1988 Ronnie Garvin is the best.

MD: One of my favorite sub 1-minute matches in forever. I'm not sure I've ever seen much of this short heel run and we were robbed of something long and meaningful. He was such a glorious dick, demanding to wrestle in one ring instead of the other, having Hart force Tony to announce him as the former world champion, almost immediately faking a knee injury, popping up for the fist of stone and then sitting on Stallion for the win. What a glorious jerk. Can you imagine him riding into 89 with this gimmick as a foil for guys like Sting and Steamboat?

PAS: Matt and Eric pretty much cover it, but man I want to third the greatness of Ronnie Garvin. His career is basically over four years after this match, but this version of Ronnie Garvin should have had another decade of just being a heel dipshit.

Dick Murdoch vs. Gary Royal

ER: The raw footage is a blessing for Dick Murdoch matches, as the way this match is shot is almost cinematic. This is Dick Murdoch in a John Cassavetes movie. He even looks like David Rowlands. The camera is in so tight on everything, and this honestly feels like the greatest footage ever filmed of Murdoch. And Murdoch is perfection. He holds headlocks, ignores Teddy Long, throws hard elbows across Royal's throat, throws punishing stomps from the apron, and the camera zooms in extra close every time Murdoch locks in a headlock and throws his greatest ever headlock punch. This cameraman knew what people wanted to see. Murdoch struts around the ring and ringside area so cockily, really taking his time to lay down a beating on Royal. I especially like him throwing Royal into the scaffolding that was set up at ringside; Royal took a couple great hard chest bumps right into it. Murdoch hits a gorgeous brainbuster, really holding that vertical suplex for a long time before dropping him, and that toothless grin he flashes during the pinfall is right up there with the greatest things I've ever seen in wresting. I would watch a match like this every time over a "great match".

MD: A great lost Murdoch squash. His interactions with Teddy Long here were just off the chart. We're blessed here by the lack of commentary, since you can hear all the jawing perfectly. He was a bit like a poked bear as Royal kept trying to take advantage early, and then when he came unleashed after Long admonishes him, he just used the entirety of the ring, including the scaffold and the apron to demolish the poor jerk. The delay before the brainbuster was the icing on the cake.

Rick Steiner vs. Jimmy Garvin

ER: What a fun 90 seconds of pro wrestling. The fans are louder for Jimmy Garvin than they are for maybe anyone so far on this card. Rick Steiner looks super formidable, really crashing into Garvin with a hard lariat and big punches to the head. When Garvin starts firing back the crowd really loses it. Kevin Sullivan gets involved, Steiner grabs Garvin for a powerslam, and Garvin gets the great small package surprise win. This was 90 seconds, but was a great use of 90 seconds.

MD: Good aggression from Steiner. Great punches from Garvin. This was ultimately nothing, but the way the crowd rallied behind Garvin and Precious was one of those things you wouldn't believe on paper. Garvin felt like the biggest babyface in the world here when he went to save Precious from Sullivan. You have to love this crowd.

The Rock n Roll Express vs. The Sheepherders

MD: This never quite settled down, but in a good way. Once they got past the initial goofiness with the flag things were pretty loose and chaotic. Morgan was a near constant presence and they weaved him in and out of the match believably enough. The Sheepherders had some memorable driving kneedrops and their usual ability to create an atmosphere of violence. The finish matched things well, coming out nowhere but feeling believable and triumphant.

ER: This ruled. I love how the Sheepherders match up against a team like the Rock n Rolls; Butch Miller especially always bumps around big for babyface offense (he had a fantastic bump from the ring to the apron to the floor here) and the Sheepherders work viciously enough that they come off like a threat. I love when the Rock n Rolls match the savagery of their opponents, and Ricky always comes off so tough against roughneck types. This felt like a real chaotic brawl, Rock n Rolls hitting crossbodies on both Sheepherders, Ricky taking a super fast bump to through the ropes to the hard floor, Butch hitting a great leaping fistdrop, everyone throwing punches. This is the kind of constant motion wrestling that I want.

Brad Armstrong vs. Al Perez

MD: I liked this but didn't love it. A lot of it was by the numbers, with the heel getting more and more frustrated at getting outwrestled until he took over by roughhousing, etc. Hope spots, comeback, the good type of heel manager finish with a leg grab. Like I said, a lot to like. For a cold match, the crowd was into it. Perez could be pretty emotive when he was getting clowned. He had some fun offense. Hart was very effective on the outside. The hope spots were really spirited, with Brad just flying across the ring at one point, and the comeback had a great revenge spot with a slam to the floor. There was just a disconnect when Perez was on offense. His stuff looked good but it didn't flow. There was a story they could have told following up on Brad's back and building to the hope spots and cut offs better and it just didn't happen. This would have been a great opening match on a more balanced card but without an underlying reason for the fans to care and even with the effort put in, it was more of a testament to the crowd than the match that this was still fairly over.

ER: This is the first match of the card that I wasn't super into. It just felt a little long, Al Perez threw on a chinlock for awhile, felt pretty time filler. There were some inspired moments, like Armstrong interacting with Hart on the floor and getting slammed into the scaffolding, or Armstrong's brief but fiery comeback down the stretch. But this match was a little too dry in the middle of a card that's been checking off all my boxes.

Midnight Express/Jim Cornette vs. The Fantastics

ER: The Midnights' gear is the stuff of wrestling miracles. Eaton is an Alabama crop top, kneepads over beat up jeans, a flat out gorgeous outfit for a bunkhouse match. Stan is dressed like a front row Malibu aerobics boy toy, tank top and pink/turquoise bike shorts and shag. Fantastics are both wearing tank tops, jeans, kneepads over jeans. It's the fucking code and everybody looks like the encyclopedia image for "What to Wear to a Fucking Bunkhouse Match". It's incredible. And this whole entire match is as great as it looks on paper. Bobby Eaton was god level here, it was the best in ring performance I've ever seen from Cornette, Stan Lane had meathead frustration bumping down to a science, and The Fantastics were throwing punches like the best fired up babyfaces. I think Bobby Fulton is underrated as hell, and his exchanges with Bobby were flat out pro wrestling punch master classes. You wanna punch? You watch the Bobby's. Throw Bobby Heenan and Bobby Blaze into that mix. Eaton vs. Fulton was awesome the whole match through, Eaton going from vicious puncher to man taking highest backdrop. When the match broke down they had a fantastic chairshot sequence, with Fulton bashing Bobby with a metal folding chair. As someone who great up with the weird wooden folding chairs of WWF, it's always shocking for me when I see metal chairshots to the head in the 80s. Fulton's shots to Eaton's head looked great, and Eaton would get his hand up while looking like he was getting totally obliterated by these shots. He take ones in the aisleway that the super hot crowd flips out for.

Now, James E. Cornette may have been the superstar of the match. As great as Nick Patrick looked in my absolute dream of a match against Jericho, Cornette looked here. This was the best in ring Cornette I have ever seen. He dropped an elbow on the floor, two picture perfect fistdrops, a great leaping elbowdrop, and some genuine top 20 all time punches. His punches were hot fire, and when it came time for him to bump for the Fantastics you know he flew into offense like he was Heenan. This was the kind of 15 minutes of wrestling that makes me love all of this so much.

The Road Warriors vs. Ivan Koloff/Russian Assassin #1

PAS: I am a scaffold match fan. I can just imagine how insane it must be to watch live, knowing you might see a murder. Ivan was especially great at teasing death, and Animal even tried a dropkick. Hawk and Russian Assassin spent most of the match brawling near the ends of the scaffold which had guardrails, which is kind of pussy. I don't need you to die, but at least tease me a bit.

MD: Not a ton to say here. As scaffold matches go, this was ok. The falls were bs, but are we really going to complain about that in 2019, especially knowing they had to work this match around the loop? In general, I was impressed with how well they moved around up there. A little can go a long way in a setting like this. The fans, again, were generous, happy with all of this, especially the half-baked falls. Great crowd.

ER: Yeah Scaffold matches are a gimmick match I absolutely adore. I couldn't imagine how much I'd be flipping out if I saw a scaffold match live. I would be standing the whole time with my mouth wide open. The Dundee/Koko 2/3 falls scaffold match was my #1 match of the 80s Memphis project. They come off so scary to me! Look at how narrow this damn thing is! Look at how HIGH this thing is! It is one of my all time favorite gimmicks and too many people undersell what a damn attraction a scaffold match can be. THIS crowd knew exactly how big a treat they were getting, and I was right there with them. It turns out Ivan Koloff is a master of scaffold matches. I need to know what other Koloff scaffold matches exist on tape, because I want to write about them. Koloff is the guy running around up there, he's the guy taking big bumps for Animal, he's the guy who takes a ridiculously high fall while swinging from the bottom of the scaffold, he's the one falling dangerously close to the edge; Koloff was 45 years old here. He's the oldest non-JJ Dillon guy on the card and he's in the running for craziest guy on the card. Animal tries throwing a dropkick and it doesn't totally hurt, but Koloff makes it special by getting bounced dangerously close to the edge butt first, and later Animal and Koloff both hang off the edges and the bottom in fun ways. Hawk and Assassin (who was Angel of Death) play it safer on the edge with a guardrail, but even that railing was rickety as hell so I was still feeling the danger. Scaffold matches are the ultimate gimmick attraction for me, and this didn't let me down at all.

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Richard Charland: Most Nondescript Wrestler Ever!?

I saw a post on Twitter a couple of months ago from Rob Naylor, calling Richard Charland "the most nondescript wrestler", and I was intrigued because I had never heard of Richard Charland. Or, it's possible that I had heard of him, and had seen him multiple times, because perhaps he was so nondescript that I had forgotten about him multiple times over. Well, no more. I'm going to increase the digital footprint of one Richard Charland, who has also gone by the name Garth Vader, which is such an incontestably great and stupid gimmick name that it may disprove Naylor's claim before any footage is even watched. Imagine Big Van Vader dressed up like Garth from Wayne's World! Before now, I never have, and never would have. But because of Richard Charland I can't stop thinking of Vader in a huge Aerosmith shirt, flannel, and big black glasses. Richard Charland has already brought untold joy into my life before ever seeing one second of his wrestling footage, so I am now afraid I am so biased and in the "I will die for Garth Vader" camp that I won't fairly and accurately judge these cherry picked Charland matches. But I will try. 

Richard Charland/King Tonga vs. Jacques & Raymond Rougeau Montreal 6/13/85

ER: This was more angle than match, as Tonga is eventually jumped by Butch Reed and Charland aids Reed in the attack! But he looks fine up until the attack. His tandem dropkick with Tonga looks good, he takes a great backdrop bump, I loved him committing to his missed standing splash that allows Jacques to hot tag Raymond, and I loved him desperately leaping for Jacques a split second too late to stop the tag. There were only a couple minutes to judge, but he seemed like an interesting wrestler in those couple minutes. I'm giving Charland the point in this one.

Richard Charland/Eric Embry vs. The Fantastics AJPW 8/18/90

ER: I really love All Japan matches from the 80s and 90s featuring gaijin who went on only one or two All Japan tours. You get a fun mix of WWF job guys, or guys who just knew guys, and it adds another dimension to their work. And Charland is more interesting than many of them for the fact that he was not on the winning side of ANY of his All Japan matches. It is fairly common practice to give a gaijin a win on their first night of the tour, even if they're only going to be the guy taking a fall in six mans the rest of the tour. Richard Charland took the pin in every All Japan match he worked, and got pinned in a singles match by Haruka Eigen to end the tour. Eigen was not a guy who was winning a ton of singles matches in 1990. He traded wins with Mark Scarpa and Goro Tsurumi, and beat Richard Charland. He lost 3 times to Rusher Kimura. Richard Charland may have had the losingest All Japan tour of the 90s. And this feels important. Richard Charland was Christian Laettner at every Dream Team practice. Charland's squad was going to lose just by virtue of having Richard Charland on it. Now, it should be noted that this is also Eric Embry's only All Japan tour, and while he was also on the losing side of almost all of his matches, he did pull a draw with Isamu Teranishi, and I assume he would have had the opportunity for other tours if it weren't for his accident.

This is joined way in progress, and we only get the final 4 minute stretch, but it is a great final 4 minute stretch. The Fantastics came off like a tiny Kroffat/Furnas, with both impressing the hell out of me with their stiffness and aggression. It's a tight 4 minutes, starting with a cool rope running section where Charland ducks out of the way of a flying Fulton, and Fulton immediately returns the favor ducking away from Charland, leaving him uncomfortably on the top rope. Fulton and Rogers came off almost mean here, and were seriously working like a tiny muscled up Can Ams, which is great! Rogers hits a heavy Samoan drop and a really great powerslam that made him look like a mini Dr. Death. Embry is awesome here, giving us a glimpse of exactly what it would have looked like had Dutch Mantel did some early 90s AJ tours, bringing that brawling element and just planting Fulton with a sick piledriver. Fulton was mad in this one though. I'm not always a Fantastics guy, but now I want to see all of the Fantastics in AJ. Fulton is throwing great punches and even flies off the apron with a knee. The Fans' short legs work to their advantage, as they get no hang time so every time they leave their feet for a move it feels like it's landing faster and heavier, like Fulton cannonballing Rogers with on arc, just flipping him straight down. Fulton's kneedrop/Roger's splash is a cool combo hit well. The Fantastics kind of owned this 4 minute stretch, and Embry outclassed Charland, but Charland looked like a guy who belonged and could have managed just fine in All Japan. I wish we had the full match. 

Richard Charland/Eric Embry vs. Dan Kroffat/Doug Furnas AJPW 8/21/90

ER: This was JIP just like the Fantastics match, but had some great moments, including an absolute holy shit spot. The Fantastics match was hotly sequenced and made the Fans look like mini Steiners; this doesn't seem as tight, and the layout was a little more "guys doing things until the end happens" without the same build. That's not an uncommon early 90s All Japan tag structure. And I liked watching these guys do stuff, so I liked this match. Furnas hit two really big "couldn't stop them if you tried" suplexes including an Albrightesque belly to belly, and the Can Ams don't seem to be treating these two as very credible threats, even though Embry has a singlet that perfectly matches the red/blue AJ ring, and Embry brings the south to Japan by lowering BOTH STRAPS. But this JIP tag was all about one spot, and my god what a spot it was. I have no idea why Kroffat even agreed to take it. Charland plants Kroffat on the top rope and tags in Embry, and Embry climbs up to the middle buckle, his back to the ring. He's fiddling around with positioning, Charland is holding him steady...and Embry jumps backwards into the ring with a classic piledriver, off the middle rope. We've seen more flipping piledrivers than we ever needed to, but I honestly don't know if I've seen a classic piledriver delivered this way. It looked insane. Picture how great Lawler's standing piledriver looks, the way he kicks his legs forward to land in a perfect seated position...and now picture him doing the same thing off the middle rope. But it does not win the match. Obviously. It was performed by a man teaming with Richard Charland. But at least Furnas broke up the pin instead of Kroffat kicking out of THAT piledriver. Charland eventually takes the L by eating a big Doug Furnas powerslam off the middle rope, but I would have taken that powerslam 10 times out of 10 over that piledriver. 

Richard Charland vs. Demolition Ax NEWF 9/27/91

ER: Now this will be a true test of Charland. Teaming with a cool wrestler against other cool wrestlers in the coolest fed of the 90s is going to produce some fun matches. But this is Charland working a newly mostly retired star on a Vermont indy show. And there are a few things that you could say certainly prove the thesis we set out to determine, and one is that the commentator for this match doesn't know who Richard Charland is, and he even says "I don't know who this guy is". That's bad. The screen graphic then states it is Demolition Ax vs. Richard "The Magnificent" Sharlan. The commentator misses the (misspelled) name and from that point on refers to him as "Richard the Magnificent One". And look, I've enjoyed my little dip into Richard Charland, but he's not a guy who is magnificent, at least not how the term is commonly used in wrestling to describe pretty and/or egotistical heels. But he is now Richard the Magnificent One. And to add to Richard Charland's problems, he's literally chased into the ring by a giant lumberjack holding a giant axe. It's Paul Bunyan, who was a legitimate giant that worked one New Japan tour (teaming mostly with Ax) as "Canadian Giant". 

But I dug Charland here. He was a stalling stooge, a guy who got clubbed in the neck every time he got close to Ax, so he would bail to the floor, beg off, toss a microphone, and then get in close and get clubbed all over again. When he took over he did it by cheating, a lot of choking Ax with a ring mic cord, and Ax was always a guy who put over a choking really well because everything about him read like a guy who wasn't getting proper blood flow to his heart. Charland even blasts him with a great kick from the apron, and the pan back reveals this to be a very well attended Vermont indy show. When Ax fires back Charland gets thrown nicely several times into a ringside table, and eats a great clothesline. I love how quickly Charland went down, and I love how low swinging and blunt Ax's clothesline was. Ax even goes to the middle rope for a crossbody. After losing, Charland refuses to leave the ring, claiming it was only a two count. He starts appealing to individual fans and it's hilarious. He points out people, holds up two fingers, points to another guy, nods and points at him like "yeah this guy is with me!", gets down on the mat and does a slow 2 count followed by a slow "safe" sign like it was a play at the plate, and call me crazy but all this reads even better because of his full motorcycle cop mustache.


ER: So what did any of this prove? Is Richard Charland the Most Nondescript Wrestler EVER? He's got a mustache that makes him look like Liam O'Brien opted to get into wrestling instead of forming a bowling team with Jesus Quintana, and he was a non-zero part of these four very fun and different matches. He worked a fun 10 minute match around punches kicks and chokes with an aging star, and it ruled.

So...if Richard Charland ISN'T the most nondescript wrestler ever...who is?


It's Ted Dibiase Jr.


Obviously.

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New Footage Friday: 1986 Crockett Cup!!

MD: Anyone reading this site will know the backstory here and how we thought it was always possible we were going to get this but never entirely sure. I know second-hand that people like Cornette had doubts as late as this year whether or not it existed. We lose five matches here, including Dundee/Landell vs Doc and Taylor and the Sheepherders vs the Guerreros, but what we got was great. Obviously we dropped everything to review it.

Fantastics vs. Fabulous Ones

PAS: This is a cool concept with heel Fabs facing the team that ripped off their entire gimmick. I didn't think there were any particularly excellent performances in this match, but the Southern tag formula is so solid, that even a baseline match in that style is going to be entertaining. I did like how vicious the Fabs were, gouging at eyes and spitting. I would be pissed if some LSAT tutor named himself Bill Schriber and stole all of my test tricks. Tommy Rogers had this weird open eyed smile on his face for much of the match like Forrest Gump, and Bobby Fulton sold pain with this over emotional cry face, I have a feeling the close up filming of these matches will do the Fantastics no favors. I really liked the finish, with Rogers doing a blind hot tag blocking a backdrop and rolling up Keirn

MD: Quick spoiler. This was the Fantastics' night. I can imagine other people are going to disagree, but out of their three great matches, this might have been my favorite. It was the most traditional of the three. There was such a novelty to see them against the Fabs, and picture perfect, totally on point, scraggly heel Fabs. I write this at the back end of four hours of wrestling, most of which being tags, so my memories aren't great, but this was just solid, solid tag work with two teams that were, on paper, mirror images of one another.

The shine was beautiful. The transition with a Lane superkick over the top rope while the ref was distracted was great. This was a show where every limb in the world was going to be worked over. Here it was the neck including the first of ten neck-clotheslines-over-the-top rope. This was the only one that ended with Keirn mocking the Fargo Strut though. Fulton, as much as almost anyone I've ever seen, was the distilled embodiment of (endearingly folksy yet somehow still emotionally true) Southern Pro Wrestling. Sometimes it's almost too much, almost too engaging. The look on his face after a hope spot when he realizes Keirn still has his leg so he can't make it to the corner is perfect Pro Wrestling. The finish was one of the freshest and most interesting on the whole show, with a blind tag and complex body positioning for the roll up.

Buzz Sawyer/Rick Steiner vs. Koko B. Ware/Italian Stallion

PAS: This was an awesome bit of business. I love that the WWE Network has become a Buzz Sawyer delivery system. Sawyer was incredible in this, just so many cool moments. He takes an insane bump into the ropes from a Koko dropkick, does this great amateur drop down instead of leapfrogging Stallion, suplexes Koko on the floor, misses his huge superfly splash, and does this awesome catch of Stallion leapfrog into a power over powerslam. Just an awesome show, everyone else was fine, and Koko takes a great bump to the floor, but man was Sawyer electric.

MD: This was really good. For some reason, it always amazes me just how giving Buzz Sawyer was considering all the stories about him. The way he bumped for Koko here was out of this world, or at least the normal physics for this world. He was an incredible stooge too, and not just with the big motions. There's a shit-eating grin on his face after a leapfrog but before he takes a body press by Koko that's top notch.

Here I thought at first that the shine might have been a bit too long, but ultimately, it just made the transition, a brutal suplex on the floor, one of the worst you'd ever see, all the more weighty. Koko's selling of the back was completely engaging and Buzz targeted it enthusiastically. Steiner and Stallion were fine in their roles, but this was the Buzz and Koko show.

Brett Sawyer/Danny Peterson vs. Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin/Black Bart

PAS: Shortish semi-squash, Sawyer and Peterson get in a little offense early, but basically go down pretty quickly. Bart had a nice clothesline, and Garvin's short brainbuster was super nasty looking, neck trauma for Peterson.

MD: I have a soft spot for Bart, having started watching wrestling in 1990 and watching as much as I could. He was all over WCW, WWF, and GWF if you watched everything in the year or two that followed. That said, I was not a fan of him on this night. Sawyer gave everything he had and frankly, for this part of the tournament, it was too much. He hit both an Alabama Jam and a top rope kneedrop onto Bart's arm, two of the biggest moves of the whole show, and they meant nothing. I thought it was too much even before Bart decided not to sell any of it. The most over thing in the match wasn't any of Sawyer's big offense but when he spat towards Garvin. That tells you something. Anyway, Garvin's brainbuster was great though.

Midnight Express (Bobby Eaton/Dennis Condrey) vs. Nelson Royal/Sam Houston

PAS: Really short match with Houston really getting fed to wood chipper. MX really moved through their stuff fast and violently. Houston does get a tag in, but Royal puts on a abdominal stretch and gets hit with a axehandle and pinned. Maybe 2 minutes.

MD: This was a whole lot of nothing, just a minute or two, but that whole lot was the Midnights looking amazing. They were the team you wish that you saw more of on this night. Eaton had the best punch of the night and that was saying something.

Magnum TA/Ronnie Garvin vs. Buzz Sawyer/Rick Steiner

PAS: This was only about 5 minutes, and I really wish it went longer. Just love both of these teams. Garvin is pasting people as usual, and it is really fun to watch him treat Rick Steiner the way Rick Steiner would treat everyone else he wrestles. The Maddogs beat on TA for a bit, including some punches to the forehead which seem to bruise him up good, then we get a great hot tag to Garvin who is throwing taters, and a quick belly to belly pin. These teams had great chemistry, and I wish we got a longer run from Sawyer and Steiner, what a pair of asskickers.

MD: The most interesting part of Magnum's game to me is always his selling. This is a guy who is supposed to portray a double-tough leather jacket Americana mustache biker ideal and he's not afraid to give and give and give. I think some of it is the explosiveness of the belly-to-belly which he can hit sort of out of anywhere, but I wonder if it's something he got from tagging with Wrestling II and being groomed by Dusty. The fans went along with him for the ride here. My favorite thing in all of this was probably Garvin slapping Steiner in the face after he wouldn't budge on the shoulder blocks. His peppering in of punches after the hot tag was good too. Steiner seemed a little lost at the end and that Belly to Belly sure was close to the ropes. This was perfectly fine and perfectly fun.

Road Warriors vs. Wahoo McDaniel/Mark Youngblood

MD: Not a lot to say here. You get the sense that Wahoo just wanted to get out of there before the crowd booed him too much. The best part of this was Tony and Ross trading off on the mic to open the evening session. I did like when Ross started to mention piledrivers and off the top rope moves and everyone booed until they realized he was saying they were legal on this night.

Ivan Koloff/Nikita Koloff vs. Jimmy Valiant/Manny Fernandez

MD: All of the pre-match stuff was fun. For a totally unnecessary moment on a packed show, Shaska cut a good promo on Valiant. I liked the Russian solidarity trying to get Gorchenko over. The Russians' formula was a bit bonkers by this point, with Ivan 1970s stooging and Nikita coming in to dominate. Obviously the fans loved every time he ran into Valiant's fist, but it's pretty dissonant. More about that the next time they show up.

Sheepherders vs. Rock and Roll Express

MD: Ah, our hated enemy, New Zealand. The Rock'n'Roll stuff with the flag at the beginning was great. They felt like such a big deal even though this was only sort of a cameo appearance for them. I caught this one on the bus, sans notes. Robert was FIP (body part of choice: shoulder/arm after a missed corner charge). Lots of interesting varied, relentless offense by the Sheepherders, including a bit second rope hammer to a prone Robert. The hot tag was super hot but the finish was BS as they hit an interfering Victory with the flag, not even one of the Sheepherders. They start a solid bullshit chant, complete with a "Blind Ref" sign in the crowd, after the fact though.

PAS:  Pretty by the numbers R+Rs match which is a great number to listen to. Sheepherders are pretty basic, but their basic stuff looks good, if you are going to stomp a shoulder,  stomp that shit. Gibson is as good an FIP as Morton and Morton is an all time great hot tag. That was an awful finish though, lots of ways to have the R+Rs lose and look strong without that fart.

Fantastics vs. Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard

MD: This was excellent. They were laying it in to one another, especially Tully. I liked the comfort food and novelty elements of the Fabs match, but this was worked as hard as possible, with everything basically hitting. What really took it over the top, though, was just how committed everyone was in their reactions. If it comes off like it matters to the wrestlers, it's going to matter to the crowd, and no one could make it feel like it mattered quite like Arn and Tully. When Arn really gets to come in against Rogers, we hear him say "I'm gonna enjoy this" while rubbing his hands together. The sheer offense he manages to express a moment later when Rogers tells him to kiss his ass popped the crowd huge.

I loved the comeback here. They just couldn't put Fulton away, so everything finally escalates to another suplex attempt on the floor. Fulton's able to escape by the skin of his teeth and after some real hard work, a minute later he's rolling for the hot tag. They went around the loop one or two times more before the finish (with the heels reacting again, JJ flying into the ring, Arn slamming his own head repeatedly onto the turnbuckle in frustration. These guys made you care).

PAS: This was really good, you don't think of Tully and Fulton as all time great punchers, but they looked like Dundee and Lawler here. Tully and Arn are great vicious pricks, and we have J.J. wandering around outside being a sleazy fuck. God is JJ great, he feels like a Southern Preacher who preaches about Jesus while owning 50 percent of a Miami youth hostel with a pool boy he met on vacation. Arn's two big spots, the spinebuster and gordbuster are both huge spots that always feel like finishes, and I love how sure he is of himself when he hits them.

Giant Baba/Tiger Mask vs. Jimmy Garvin/Black Bart

MD: This felt surreal, though not as surreal as the next Baba/Misawa match. The biggest thing to point out here was how the fans more or less booed or were indifferent two the Japanese wrestlers to start and how thoroughly Misawa won them over with his big spots. Bart probably didn't earn a trip to Japan with his selling. If Precious had swung at Baba post match like it looked like she was going to, she might have though?

PAS: It is weird how Jimmy Garvin worked both Misawa and Hashimoto in tag tournaments. He actually was a pretty good foil for Misawa's fast stuff, and Baba worked hard for mid 80s Baba. Not a great match but a pretty fun one.

The Road Warriors vs. The Midnight Express

MD: I sort of liked the story here where the Midnights were good enough to keep getting opportunities but just couldn't hold the offensive against the Road Warriors, which led to Cornette trying to escalate things with the tennis racket and getting caught. There's not much else to say here except for how good the Press-into-the-Ring spot with Eaton was.

Steve Williams/Terry Taylor vs. Nikita Koloff/Ivan Koloff

MD: First of all, it's a real shame we didn't get Bravo/Martel vs Williams/Taylor. Ah well. This was ok, but definitely worked towards a draw. It's also a shame, because in another setting, it could have been built to Doc and Nikita matching up with the crowd wildly behind Doc. As it was, the heel-in-peril on Ivan lasted forever and when they finally got to Doc vs Nikita, they defused it too much with stalling. I thought they could have worked the last minute of the draw a little more excitingly too. The post match carnage was something else though, just a total heel mauling in the Bill Watts style.

The Fantastics vs. The Sheepherders

MD: This became a bloodbath and an outright brawl towards the end. It's a heck of a spectacle and a testament to both the Fantastics (who wrestled three very different matches in one night) and the Sheepherders (who we only have a few minutes of vs the Guerreros). Phil will probably disagree with me, but I'm not sure it quite had the narrative meat it needed to stand up to the other two Fantastics matches on the show, no matter it's rep over time. They got some solid heat on Fulton on the outside but the comeback turned into a big blur. Blood's an awesome tool and it was used well here (as was the king of the mountain stuff we didn't see in the other tags), but all anyone's going to really remember is the pledge at the beginning and the flag shots and bleeding at the end (especially the blood on the bottom of Fulton's heels on that last dropkick. Wow). Near the end of an exhausting day of wrestling, I think this shut down the crowd for the next couple of matches.

PAS: I was surprised at how much of this was a standard tag until the blood started flowing. Once Fulton is cut the match skips a gear and we get a pretty exciting bloody brawl. Fulton's OTT selling work better here, as I bought his seizure selling as  guy bleeding to death more then I bought it when he breaks in out in random tag matches. By the end it got pretty out of control, but I wouldn't call this match legendary, the juice was a nice touch, and I like the match being thrown out, but for a match with the big rep it was more unique in context then in execution.

Magnum TA/Ronnie Garvin vs. Giant Baba/Tiger Mask

MD: Totally surreal. Some of the biggest stars of decades and this felt like a piss break match that had to take the crowd back after what they had just witnessed. You got just the tiniest hint of Garvin and Baba firing back and forth on one another and an amazingly cool finish with Magnum just barely catching Misawa off the top with the belly-to-belly, but this was mostly dead, and I'm pretty sure I was too by this point.

Hacksaw Jim Duggan vs. Dick Slater

MD: We had this before, I think. Duggan was really over at this point. Slater had real heat at this point. The crowd remained dead for most of this. I liked the transition cementer with Duggan going through the rail. I liked the hope spot with Duggan chasing Slater around the ring. They started to wake up a bit for his big comeback and did light up for the finish.

Dusty Rhodes vs. Ric Flair

MD: Paul Boesch is the best. This we only had 15 minutes of before. Back in late 92, WWF did these "Manager Cam" segments for CV, including one of the only Dibiase vs Santana matches we have in WWF on tape, where it's entirely focused on the manager. I love that we got this show without commentating, but there's a chunk of this that felt like the Baby Doll show. To their credit, the fans were back up for this. Dusty bled. Flair missed the knee drop to cause a transition and then missed the butt down on the leg in the ropes for another, which were both good inversions that you didn't see ALL that much. Flair bled. Dusty was smart enough to not lose on the boot shot, but to lose on the DQ and get to take out the ref as well. It's Dusty vs Flair. You've seen it.

The Road Warriors vs. Magnum TA/Ronnie Garvin

MD: We had this before as well. I don't have a lot to say about it. It didn't feel like a dream match but it did feel like a culmination to a degree. I think nothing wore out its welcome (they could have spent too much time with the arm control work early, for instance, and they didn't). Magnum gave up a ton and the back focus was good. For the most part, until Animal's late chinlock, they kept it varied and interesting. I'm not sure this was the right match up to end the night. The fans seemed split. They popped somewhat for the belly to belly, but less for the hot tag that followed. Then they popped huge for the finish. Mrs. Crockett calling them the "Road Runners" at the end made the entire night worth it.

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WCW A-Sides? WCW Nitro 10/21/96

Bobby Eaton vs. Chris Jericho

ER: This match unexpectedly got a lot of time (nearly 8 minutes) and it really built into something fun after a slow, distracting start. You see, Syxx and nWo Sting came out under a big nWo banner and we would get occasional cutaways to those two in the crowd sucking away a lot of the attention. So there was a longish moment in the first half of this where Jericho held a hammerlock waiting for the crowd to come around. It was feeling like this was going to be a disappointment, but the whole thing snapped to life with a strike exchange. Jericho threw some nice slaps to Eaton's chest, then when they started throwing right hands I was in. Jericho would throw 2 or 3 for every 1 of Eaton's, with Eaton landing a couple doozies. Crowd didn't care about nWo members after this. Eaton fed Jericho some nice stuff, took his big springing dropkick that he bumped off the apron to the floor, Eaton takes a nice post shot then ducks so Jericho throws a back elbow to the post, shoot Eaton even takes a backdrop into the entrance way, far past the point the mats end. Eaton still gets a lot in this one even it's supposed to be building Jericho up for a match with Syxx, and we get a great Eaton kneedrop off the top right to Jericho's chest, and a cool reversal where he snaps a swinging neckbreaker to reverse a Jericho backdrop attempt, and I'm really glad this recovered and then some. It feels like nWo sucked the interest out of a lot of matches from this era, glad these two persevered.

We get a great Rey Misterio Jr. highlight package, him hitting a bunch of fast ranas while we get a lot of experimental 1996 digital video editing color washes and graphics, while some mournful instrumental guitar plays over it. Not mournful guitar like "Maggot Brain", but more like the mournful guitar in one of those scenes in Renegade where Lorenzo Lamas comes into contact with an old flame, and they reconnect somewhere at sunset, which is when he finds out she's now involved with the cartel.

Jimmy Graffiti vs. Dean Malenko

ER: This is the debut of Jimmy Graffiti, which is all kinds of weird 1996 wrestling. Graffiti is known better as Jimmy Del Ray, one half of the Heavenly Bodies, and it's shocking how much younger he looks without his Rod Beck fluffy mullet/handlebar mustache combo. A smooth face, sensible haircut, and his trademark pale complexion makes him look like the cruiserweight version of The Undertaker, if Undertaker was dressed like a 90s John Cena. I have no idea what the plan was, putting Jimmy Del Ray in baggy jorts and a hockey jersey with subway tagged wrestling boots, but he's out there and this weirdo must be face as Malenko was working heel opposite Rey during this time. And these two have a fun back and forth cruiser match, Graffiti getting a lot of nearfalls and taking some big bumps in exchange. Graffiti takes the Harley Race bump to the floor, getting his feet hooked on the bottom rope and dropping onto his head (and it's weird seeing Schiavone and Zbyszko doing commentary from a folding table right against the ring), and later Dean takes them both to the floor with a crossbody (potentially dangerous bump as it sends both to the floor faster than normal, Graffiti sprawling into the guardrail); Graffiti even takes a pretty mean backdrop suplex and eats some boots to the head from Dean. Malenko is overly generous with Graffiti, giving him several roll-ups nearfalls, Graffiti hits a big sitout powerbomb and a missile dropkick, gets to push out of the Cloverleaf a couple times, really he gets way more of the match than I would have guessed going in.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Sgt. Craig Pittman

ER: Fun little match that adds a nice twist into it's sub-3 minute runtime. It looks like it's going to be a Page squash, and we get a cool moment of DDP hitting his great piledriver slam (really looks like he's bouncing foreheads off mat), and when Pittman kicks out it lands DDP on top of ref Nick Patrick (who has worn a neck brace all night) and as he sells back pain from DDP landing on him you wouldn't believe how loudly the crowd cheers his pain. I didn't remember nWo heel ref Nick Patrick being so reviled. DDP does a real clever bit of business here as he is on the floor and starts soaking up Nick Patrick's cheers as his own, allowing Pittman to reach through the ropes and grab DDP's arm, yanking him into the ringpost. Pittman is really vicious going after an arm, and I especially like when he throws uppercuts and short arm shoulderblocks to someone, here he also gets to stretch DDP's arm all around the ropes and even gets a visual tap to the Code Red armbar. Alas, Nick Patrick saw nothing, and Pittman eats a Diamondcutter nicely.

Ron Studd vs. Jeff Jarrett

ER: I like the concept of matching Jarrett up against a giant right before he is facing the Giant at Havoc, but they don't do much interesting with it. Studd lifts Jarrett up by the neck a few times, but then they have Jarrett actually hit a vertical suplex with no struggle at all, just gets on his tiptoes, tosses an arm over Studd, and lifts him right over. Then takes an eternity to lock on a figure 4.

Road Block vs. Lex Luger

ER: This episode is clearly booked around my sensibilities, as not only did we get the Jimmy Graffiti debut, but Road Block debuts on the same episode?! And I love how WCW used to handle the debuts of guys like this: Basically pretend you have no idea who they are. Road Block isn't going to beat Luger, but they're at least saying things like "who is this guy? He's huge!" There's a lot of Irish whipping in this match, both guys setting up nearly every attack by first whipping the other into the ropes or buckles, with Road Block standing up to lariats and throwing a few mean ones of his own. Big moment is Luger clotheslining Road Block to the floor, big bump for Block. Road Block is dressed like the world's largest swashbuckling pirate, with his two lane highway capris and a striped tank top that looks like something a lifeguard would wear, but the guy is huge, throws a nice lariat, and does an impossibly cool kneedrop right to Luger's face. The finish could have been really awkward, but Luger is so damn over and knows how to milk reaction that it totally works: Luger tries to get Road Block up for the torture rack, but can't. He tries twice and drops him. It doesn't appear that he is intentionally dropping him, just feels like he can't actually rack Road Block. Block just keeps standing back up after falling and getting back in position to be racked. After the second failed attempt Luger even looks to the hard cam and shrugs. But the fans never turn on him and nobody knew about the You Fucked Up chants, and since these are wrestling fans they just actually want to see him rack Road Block. So Luger tries it a third time, succeeds, the crowd flips out, Bischoff and Heenan flip out on commentary, and it turns out some actual human error made the moment a FAR bigger deal than if Luger had just got him up for the rack on the first attempt.

American Males vs. Harlem Heat

ER: Dear WCW, could you please show me the two teams from this era that I would LEAST like to see against each other? Great. Thank you. Also, WCW, could you give it more time than any match on this episode? Just let it go 10, see what these two teams have to offer? Cool. The match starts with Stevie Ray missing a stomach kick by 18", but does get better (although not enough to justify the runtime). Best moment came from Riggs hiptossing Booker T over the top to the floor and Booker bumping big for it (with Heenan rightly wondering why that wasn't a DQ). The rest was filled with a ton of AM dropkicks, a nice Stevie Ray lariat, Col. Parker taking his banana peel bump on the apron when Riggs hits him first, and one of those finishes that always seem to happen in matches with Buff Bagwell, where a pinfall gets broken up slightly too early or slightly too late, so the finish is really confusing and everyone stands around waiting for what to do. It feels like it happened too often in Bagwell matches to be a coincidence. Also, I gotta say I am loving Nick Patrick in his neck brace, holding his neck every single time he counts a pinfall.

The Fantastics vs. Faces of Fear

ER: 1996 Fantastics on my TV screen? What kind of magic episode is this!? But also, it's really weird that they went well over an hour into this episode without a tag match, and then ran back to back tag matches with two blowjob teams working the exact same match back to back. If you have the Fantastics making a weird one off 1996 TV appearance, maybe don't have your lame in house version of the Fantastics wrestle immediately before them. Also, as much as I like FoF, there's this expectation for Meng matches that rarely actually lives up to reality. Meng is regarded as one of the toughest dudes in pro wrestling history, so everybody always assumes that he has a laundry list of matches where he just takes mean liberties with opponents. But really, he doesn't. I have seen hardly any instances of Meng looking even slightly unprofessional - or even working slightly more stiff than normal - in any match. Look at any heel tag team squash match from 90s WWF and you will likely find a team that treats opponents worse than Meng does. That doesn't mean the matches aren't still fun though. This is mostly the FoF show, and honestly until the final 30 seconds of the match I wasn't sure that any of Bischoff/Heenan/Tenay even knew which Fantastic was which, or even knew their names. After hearing all of them repeatedly refer to each member of the team as "The Fantastics" the entire match (as in "The Fantastics really need to tag out here!"), it wasn't until Tenay actually mentioned Tommy Rogers during his hot tag that I figured at least Tenay knew. But then he *does* just call Bobby Fulton "Fulton", so it's possible he wasn't confident he could identify him as Jackie or Bobby. But just like with the American Males, we get mostly dropkicks from the Fantastics, with most of this worked as an extended FoF squash. We get one really great moment of Bobby taking a backdrop from Meng, but getting caught and powerbombed by Barbarian. Tommy takes a nice bump getting knocked off the apron by Meng, and even kicks Meng in the head a couple times to break up pinfalls (and again, someone knowing Meng's rep would then think that Meng was going to serve up a cruel receipt to Tommy, but that doesn't happen, because Meng only bites off noses outside of the ring), Fantastics throw a tandem dropkick off the middle and Tommy hits one off the top, but FoF amusingly win when Barbarian picks up Tommy for a front slam and Meng just kicks him in the head.

J.L. vs. nWo Sting

ER: I never understood why Jerry Lynn just went by "JL" in WCW. He was under a mask, he could have literally been any name, and it's not like the majority of fans knew who Jerry Lynn was in 1996 anyway. "Gotta keep these initials to stay true to my fans." This show was IN Minnesota. These are his people right here, and nobody knew he was a Minnesota boy. Had he been something 1996-cool like Laser Swarm or if the JL stood for something weird like Jett Lust, then he would have at least gotten a reaction for that. It doesn't get more non-starter than the name JL. nWo Sting gets a great reaction until people realize it's not actually Sting, and I love how he plays up all the mannerisms. The match is more angle than match, but I liked Sting's nice falling powerslam.

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