Found Footage Friday: MICHAELS~! GOLDUST~! CACTUS~! SABU~! REY~! PSICOSIS~! GALLAGHERS~!

Doc Gallagher/Mike Gallagher vs. Scotty Andrews/Donn Lewin 1950s Buffalo

MD: Wrestling Films has posted a lot of things lately but a lot we already had. This one does seem new to us though. It's a relatively rare look at Donn Lewin (Mark's brother, who we have a 1951 match we're very high on) though they do say he was a twelve year vet here. The Gallaghers are, of course, very good at what they do, and what they do is cheat, goozle, and clubber. Stooge too. Andrews and Lewin control early and Mike really scrambles to try to make it to the corner while in a top wristlock and it's fun stuff. They trade off keeping that wristlock on until the Gallagher's start switching off with illegal chokes themselves. Honestly, for an old tag, it all breaks down sort of quickly, building to Doc holding the rope down so that Scotty crashes and burns to the floor. It all came off quite well and the crowd, even in the studio, was hot for it. Lewin had good fire in the ring while this was going on but he wasn't the legal man so him pinning a Gallagher didn't matter. They got Scotty back in there and made short work of him. Very fun sub-ten minute match here.

Cactus Jack/Psicosis/Sabu vs. Rey Misterio Jr./Super Calo/Winners IWAS 10/21/95

MD: This was an Arezzi show with AAA and ECW talent and was a gem. Of course, with the Vault, we just get the primera, but we'll take it. I do wish sometimes they'd go a little further on some of this. Why just give us Goldust/Michaels if they have the whole card (maybe they don't?). Why give us just Gonzales and Hogan interacting after the finish if they have the whole Money Inc. vs. Megamaniacs lumberjack tag (that they must), etc. But we take what we can get, and this is a very cool thing to have.

It's the primera, so you get some posturing, some ambushing, and a couple of exchanges. Psicosis is great here, tossing a chair in at first, mocking Rey with a little dance from the apron, and then taking all of Rey's stuff like an absolute king, including getting pressed head first into the post in an impossible sort of way that he made seem not just possible but feasible. They teased Jack vs. Rey for a moment there but we ended up with Jack vs. Calo instead, still a fun and weird scenario. That was mostly Jack's forearms in the corner but they were great, so I'm not going to complain. Sabu got to take some of Winners stuff and land on him repeatedly. Winners tends to look super charismatic in this era (it's after the point where he lost his mask). It builds to chaos and Rey hitting the tightest 'rana on Psicosis to pick up the fall. Every indication here is that the rest of the match (even if it ended in a no contest) would have been just as fun, plus they probably would have mixed up the pairings a bit. Ah well. We didn't think we'd ever get even this much so we're glad to have it.

ER: I fully second everything Matt said about the unnecessary tease aspect of the WWE Vault. Here's one scorching hot half of one match from a Chicago AAA show. Let me see the Koji Kitao/Masaaki Mochizuki match. Let me see what 2 Cold Scorpio does on a show with cool luchadors. There's a Superstars taping Dark Match Jarrett/Bulldog ladder match released on the same drop as the incredible Michaels/Goldust match we praise below, but from that same Superstars taping there was a Sid/Kama vs. Michaels/Undertaker dark tag and that's the kind of shit that I would also really want to see. If they have one, they have the other, so just put the shows up man. We don't get shows, we get teases of footage that isn't being released. 

That said, we now have extended sequences of Cactus Jack repeatedly elbowing Super Calo in the face like an early version of Necro Butcher in Chikara. It's amazing how much faster Cactus was in '95 compared to '97. That bump card filled up fast and the Jack/Calo pairing would have been so different just a couple years later. This feels like the best year for it to have happened. Cactus elbows him in the face but good, and he also takes two big bumps to the floor for him, including getting clotheslined over the top and later fully catching his missile of a dive. Winners looked so good, a guy who went on to an iconic gimmick but in '95 made a fascinating "what if" among the guys who could have crossed over to the US mainstream, instead of just being thrown out to die on a couple of WWF shows. His plancha soars far off camera and he had such potent tecnico energy any time he got in the ring. Did he really debut the Abismo Negro gimmick at the Royal Rumble? Anyway, Rey/Psicosis was so amazing in '95. I said Cactus lost a lot of speed just two years later but seeing Rey/Psicosis in '95 after watching all of their '97 work and you see so many things that slowed down and got changed. Rey still had his original knees here and was so much faster, while Psicosis had a smoothness that had vanished by summer of '97. "Clunkiness" sounds like I'm insulting his work, but compare some of his bumps here to the same ones two years later, and those later bumps seem like someone doing clunky versions of Psicosis bumps. His ringpost bump is incredible, getting alley-ooped into the ringpost but doing it in a way that looked so alien, just amazing. His fold on Rey's huracanrana bends physics, like he was a human Popple whose head could easily be folded into his own ass. 

 

Ladder Match: Shawn Michaels vs. Goldust WWF 8/24/96

MD: This is not new, per se, but it's an amazing footage upgrade to a match that I've seen at least a few times. It's one of those matches that we give people new to the community on the way in (like Dump vs. Omori or the Savage vs. Garvin cage match). What we had before, however, was a pretty blurry handheld, and this is crisp and beautiful single camera ringside footage. Early on when Goldust brings the ladder towards the ring, you can hear it scraping against the ground perfectly. It's quite the footage upgrade.

And it's a match worth seeing again. When we handed it to people, we'd say it was one of the best ladder matches ever. So much of that is because they delay the use of the ladder. It shows up early as Dustin goes for it and then once in the heat as he puts it over the guardrail and ring to create a hard surface to drop Shawn on, but other than that, it really doesn't come into play until the back half when they start to try to win thing. 

What you get before that is a rough but generally conventional match between Shawn and Dustin where all of Dustin's stuff, which generally looks great to begin with, looks all the better because of Shawn taking it. Just the drop down punch alone maybe never looked better. A bit of extra zing and extra electricity. It means instead of having a match full of contrived spots around the ladder with a lengthy set up and dashing one's suspension of disbelief, they just get to do their thing, and their thing was as good as almost anyone in the world in 96 and we have so little footage of them doing it together.  

The setting is great, an outdoor show at the Canadian National Exhibition Stadium (the site of The Big Event) with a giant Ferris Wheel lit up in the background. The card was stacked with gimmick matches (casket, strap, street fight, etc.) so it's pretty remarkable that they showed the discipline that they did. You get some big bumps (Shawn over the top, a splash off the ladder), but it's all smartly put together. Early on they tease a Curtain Call and then Superkick. Dustin pulls off the turnbuckle pad to do some more damage. Late in the match, Dustin takes a bump off the ladder into it face first but recovers to try to catch Shawn in the Curtain Call while he's climbing. This time when Shawn goes up and over he actually hits the Superkick and is able to win. It just hits a bunch of marks between thought and execution with just enough discipline to hold it all together, to put it above any number of more spectacular ladder matches. Now we get to see it so much more clearly.

ER: This is some incredible footage. I'm not saying this as any kind of brag, but I stopped watching new WWE matches well over three years ago and I haven't looked back. It wasn't a decision I made where I consciously said, "After today, NO MORE!" Because it wasn't a conscious decision, it was the culmination of something that had been building up for several years. There will always be enough people on the roster who I enjoy watching, but what began majorly turning me away was the entire presentation of the product, of the wrestling. I don't think there has ever been a wrestling fed in history who makes their in-ring product look shittier than modern WWE. What an ugly product, directed by people who seemingly hate wrestling, with garish LED lights and quick camera cuts and identical match structures designed to be ROLLING into commercial breaks. Everything is bright as hell, phony as hell, manufactured as hell, and as inauthentic as possible. This match could have feasibly happened in WWE some time in the last 5 years, but you take this exact match and present it the way WWE now presents pro wrestling, and the whole thing would have been half as effective. 

The ring work in this is undeniable. We hardly have any Dustin/Michaels matches (how many of the other Goldust/Michaels World Title house show matches do we even have? Any?) so that makes this extra special. Dustin Rhodes told me that Shawn Michaels is one of his four favorite wrestlers of ALL TIME. One of the four on his Mount Rushmore (with the others being his father, Terry Funk, and Barry Windham). I can't imagine higher praise for a peer, and you can see that respect - mutual respect - in the brilliant and extremely energetic way this match was worked. 

But you can really see that energy because of the way this match was filmed. One camera, at ringside, now in HD detail so crisp that it feels like you're roving ringside while two greats in their prime worked close up magic in an amazing outdoor carnival setting. 20,000 polite but excited Canadians outdoor with a lit up Ferris Wheel in the background like a nighttime Super Nintendo background. The work in the ring was so clear, the camera so embedded into the action, that you feel the very hard bumps both men take and see just how hard they're hitting each other and, eventually, a ladder. The sound is so good that you're put directly in the middle of this carnival. The sound of Dustin's back hitting the ladder is or Michaels hitting a table engulfs you. You run this exact same match today, only with WWE's modern direction and lighting, and it would play as half effectively. 

All of Dustin's strikes - his great worked punches, his great stiff punches, his hard slaps - would be jumped away from, all of Michaels' big bumps - taking an almost Falcon Arrow on a ringside table, springing away from a Dustin uppercut, recoiling off the ropes after being tipped off the ladder more than once - would have been hit with the ugliest fast zooms and held for reactions. Even the small bits of comedy play better from this live ringside angle. I cannot tell you how hard I laughed at the very beginning of the match at the face Michaels makes, when Goldust - jumpsuit hugging those buns tighter than you could ever imagine - approaches him in a flirtatious manner and Michaels uncomfortably looks off to the side, like he doesn't want to make eye contact for fear of being lured in. 

I wish we had a dozen more Michaels/Dustin matches. We have a Raw match and this excellent ladder match, where you can see their off the charts chemistry. 

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Found Footage Friday: 50s WRESTLING FROM BUFFALO~! HUTTON~! BRAZIL~! SNYDER~! LINDSAY~! CRUSHER~!

MD: My impression is that footage might have been converted and posted years ago but then was lost for a while. The Zabio vs Marino match is out there on YouTube but nothing else is and people in our community have never seen the Hutton match (or any other Hutton match! Or any other Luther Linsday match!), for instance. 

Footage Link

Luther Linsday vs. Fred Atkins Buffalo 10/11/57

MD: I could be wrong about this, but this feels like a historic find. We have no real footage of Lindsay who was a great Thesz opponent and spoken highly of him, one of the biggest African-American wrestlers of the 50s and 60s. We get most of a 20 minute draw here, just one clip in the middle of about a minute, tops, and it's good look at him, I'd say. Atkins spends a lot of the match working a wristlock (with brief trips to hammerlocks and other things), splaying the fingers when the ref can't see it to keep Lindsay down. Lindsay teases punches but eventually gets forearms in to force breaks. He works well from underneath, selling the arm throughout, but forcing Atkins to adapt and getting the fans excited for a potential shot. When it's time for him to fire off, he has big strikes in the corner and a great headbutt that Atkins sells like death. They're wrestling for a draw and it doesn't really boil over in the end but it's well worked up and down hold. You get some sense of how he portrayed his power, both physical and star, here. I'd be interested to see him against a more dynamic opponent, but I'm just glad to see him at all.

Wilber Snyder vs. Wally Greb 4/25/58

MD: You occasionally see this sort of match in the 50s, where an older journeyman who knows all the dirty tricks is put up against there against one of the young stallions of the wrestling world, one of those guys who are still getting established but who have the square jaw and all the skills in the world and will one day be a champion. I think of that mostly with young Verne (though we saw a lesser version of it with Bill Cody vs Honest John Cretoria not that long ago) but we get it here with Snyder. Snyder comes off as an absolute wrestling machine, able to chain holds and escapes beautifully. Greb's underhanded tactics means that he's on top for a good chunk of the match but there's always the sense that Snyder could beat him at any moment and it's just the cheating keeping him afloat. Examples of that are when Snyder does a perfect headstand to escape a headscissors and then jams Greb when he tries to repeat it. That sort of thing. Snyder has this great back of the neck clap shot he uses at times down the stretch once he's had enough with Greb and puts him away with the abdominal stretch once things pick up. Greb more than did his job here and Snyder looked like a future champ.

Bobo Brazil vs. Jim (Brute) Bernard 1/17/58

MD: This was sub-30 seconds, just a big leap frog and bigger dropkick by Brazil. That's how they brought him into the territory. He'd won his two previous matches in 13 and 23 seconds. Bernard and Brazil would have wars later, but not on this night. Post match, he called out Gene Kiniski. I don't think I've ever seen a 50s match quite like this but it was a great way to get Brazil over instantly as a sensation in a new territory.

Dick Hutton vs. Wally Greb 11/1/57

MD: So it was something to get our first Luther Lindsay match, but we get maybe the first Dick Hutton match on tape too? I'll say that ultimately this was almost more of a Greb showcase, as he controlled a lot of the match with holds and dirty tricks while in the holds. Hutton was almost understated working from underneath, coming back with really big shots, with definitive strength, with a sort of physical confidence. It was hard to get too much of a sense of things past that, though. The early holds were hard fought but there were times he seemed to be almost sitting in the later ones. Boxer Joe Muscato was the ref here, as in the Lindsay match and they did do a spot where Hutton kicked out pressing Greb onto him. So not a ton here, as the match goes just over 8 minutes, but you get a sense of Hutton's size and strength and what his comebacks looked like. That's something to go off of at least. Greb continues to look like a competent journeyman for what it's worth.

Roy McClarity vs. Al Korman 10/18/57

MD: This might have been the most purely entertaining match in this footage. So far as I can tell, we never had any Korman footage either though we have a few McClarity matches. Korman was a great stooge, a cheapshot artist, had a fun kneelift and great reactions. McClarity had a lot of stuff, kneelifts and knee crushers and a dropkick, and some nice shots, including a bit of punishment where he paintbrushed the head repeatedly was Korman was sitting in the ropes. A lot of it was Korman trying to take liberties in holds and then McClarity (who was touted for both his height and his speed) escaping and getting some real revenge before they went back into it. Snyder and Hutton had both used versions of the abdominal stretch in their wins, but McClarity took it with the cobra clutch, with Korman wobbling around the ring entertainingly post match.


Gallaghers (Mike & Doc) vs. Lisowskis (Reggie & Stan) 4/17/59

MD: We have matches with the Gallaghers and matches with the Lisowskis but this might be the first we have with both against each other. Reggie, of course, would be Da Crusher. Stan was just his wrestling brother, but they fit each other well. Mike and Doc were the heels here and they really played the part well. Really, this almost felt like an All Japan tag. Mike and Doc cut off the ring, cheated at every opportunity. The Lisowskis just kept on coming in to even the odds. Reggie was an absolute force, a proto-Hansen, just constantly coming at you. The Gallaghers had a way of putting on a front facelock choke for a few seconds and immediately pulling things back to their corner but it was pretty inevitable that this would break down, with the Lisowskis tying up one Gallagher and repeatedly pile-driving the other until they got DQed. Post match they brawled some more and yapped on the mic about how they were the winners anyway and the crowd loved it. Just a good look at both teams.

Fritz Von Erich vs. Great Zabio

MD: Unfortunately, we only have three minutes of this but it's fun while it lasts. Zabio, past being a piano player, was a beatnik gimmick and the announcer lets us know that Fritz says there are no Beatniks in his Germany. He really laid it in but when it was time for Zabio to comeback, he recoiled well and took a good armdrag. That was about it for this one though.

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