Found Footage Friday: 1989 AJPW~! MALENKO~! FUCHI~! ABBY~! BABA~! KAMALA~! MIGHTY~! RUSHER~!

Mighty Inoue vs. Shinichi Nakano AJPW 2/23/89

MD: Another set of Classics drops as we go down the list of new footage. This one is probably one I wouldn't have gone out of my way for in general, but it was good overall. A Jr. Heavyweight Title match. We've gotten pieces filled in for this lineage and defenses and the matches hold up quite well against late 80s NJPW title matches really. You have guys like Fuchi, Inoue, and Momota carrying the division with people like Joe Malenko popping in.

I don't have a lot of time for Nakano in general, but this was set up to be almost impossible to fail. For one, he ambushed right from the start, giving things early direction and not forcing them into feeling out matwork he might not excel at. He slapped Inoue out of nowhere and then hit his signature power slam before tossing him to the floor and destroying him on the rails. Back in the ring, it was a seated chinlock. He at times had a sense that he wasn't sure how to best capitalize on the moment. 

None of that from Inoue. First chance he got (grabbing the head out of a Nakano toehold) he focused right in and chained three or four things together perfectly. As the match went on and they went back and forth, he wouldn't let things meander much either. At one point, Nakano was hitting shoulder thrusts in the corner with not enough pepper behind them, so Inoue asserted himself and started shin kicking him in the face. 

They had an exciting finishing stretch where Inoue got him down for the flipping sentons but missed the second. That allowed Nakano to hit his fisherman's suplex but Inoue got out to win with a very cool headscissors roll up out of a side slam. This overachieved, but it was entirely because Inoue is so good.

ER: I love Matt's specific, targeted dislike of Nakano, but I'm not sure I agree. I thought this match was great, but because of both men, and how easy they made it to buy in to an All Japan juniors match based around stiff work and snug holds. When I first started trading tapes, traders were not fans of the All Japan juniors division. If you wanted "Juniors Wrestling" there were so many other options: Michinoku Pro, New Japan, WAR, lucha, all filled with small guys working fast and flying, building to big highspots. All Japan's juniors division had none of that. It was permanently understocked with talent, AJPW never used it to showcase a future star, gaijin imports mostly focused on heavyweights (meaning you might get at best Rex King in a juniors match), and the matches were mostly worked like Kings Road undercard matches. It was not the style people associated with juniors wrestling, and now I'm far enough removed from that, that I can see the style for what it is and love it. 

Nakano tried to get the drop on Inoue and wear him down with holds, but since he is just a lesser version of Inoue it only worked until Inoue got fired enough to put him back in his place. Nakano came out hot, staggering Inoue good with a slap across the face and trying to secure a quick surprise title win with an awesome powerslam, knowing Inoue would be favored the longer the match went. When he moved into wearing down Inoue with holds, I bought all of them, because every submission felt like Nakano was working it to specifically finish the match. He believed in this firmly held submissions, and it made each one matter. His camel clutch, late match Boston crab, his single leg crab, all felt like something he was locking in to force a submission, never just to kill time. I bought into the struggle on every hold, and especially got into Inoue's long escape pulling a chinlock out of a deathlock, stretching Nakano until breaking. It all led to organic advances. Inoue's grounded headlock was snugly pulled into a swinging neckbreaker, the way he fanned Nakano's legs while locking in a butterfly stretch looked punishing, and when he locked in the tightest headscissors possible it was nice foreshadowing for the headscissor cradle he used to retain his title. 

If I'm talking about guys pulling snug submissions that look like they could get a tap, none looks better than Nakano pulling Inoue into a bow and arrow and holding it firm. How many bow and arrows subs have you seen fall apart at the seams? The legs come uncrossed, the knees aren't pressed firmly into the back to hold the sub taut, it's almost as common to see someone inadvertently slip out of the hold while rolling onto their back than it is to see a firm successfully applied lock, and Nakano puts the work in on every part of the sub. He put in the visual work of digging his knee into Inoue's back while securing the deathlock, worked through every bit of securing the hold at both ends of Inoue's body, leaving no wriggle room when he rolls to his back with Inoue stretched. 

Does Inoue "look better" as a wrestler? Yes, probably. His fast and weighty crucifix pin was so good I thought it was the finish for sure, and the way he makes cradles and backslide attempts feel threatening in general means there's always a sense he can surprise with a finish, which made his cradled headscissors work so well. He gives weight to opponents' with good selling in holds and fast bumps. His flipping bump through the ropes to the floor is one of my favorite signature bumps. I love how this man exits a ring. But, All Japan Juniors matches were never about crazy bumps or building to big highspots, which was why the division never got acclaim 30 years ago. I'm not even sure what the biggest highspot of this match was - the crucifix pin? Inoue's somersault senton? - and that's why people weren't seeking out this work. Viewing it outside of its Juniors framing you can see how tight the work was. 

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala AJPW 3/8/89

MD: It would be easy to dismiss this, to just say some fun things about Baba's cool trip on Kamala, how Kamala fought out of the corner, or how great Rusher's strikes against Abby looked. Or we could play into the amusing bits here, the amazing look on Baba's face when Abby got a cheapshot on him on a rope break and then did the whole martial arts hand waving shtick. We could go on about how they were like a married couple having a spat and how delightful that was. And that'd be valid. We could talk about how into this the crowd was, how they buzzed for Kamala's big moments or Abby asserting himself or Rusher making a comeback or whenever Baba came into the ring. 

And on some level, I am going to talk briefly about the sum of all of that. But I just don't think I can do this justice. I'm not even sure I want to do this justice. This match, ten minutes or so until the countout, is its own sort of magic. It's delightful. I was smiling the whole way through, out of delight, and I rode the same wave as the crowd, decades later. I could argue that we were taught and trained and conditioned not to enjoy matches like this and then I'd feel dumb, because of how stupid that sounds, but also because how stupid it makes me feel that at one point in my life many years ago, I would have denied myself this sort of joy, would have tried to hide behind a sort of self-important sense that wrestling had to be something else. 

Sometimes wrestling should be this. Hell, most wrestling should be begging to be this, because this clash of characters, of timing, of conducting a crowd, of heart and humor and misfit, monster, mythic heroism and villainy... it's just so different than we can hope to find out of most other forms of entertainment. There's nothing in the world quite like this. Watch this. It's ten minutes plus some before and after. Let yourself feel what that crowd was feeling. Smile along. Be delighted. It's okay. The world is a dark place, but there's light to be found in the least likely of places.

ER: I get so excited whenever Matt and I get to write about Abdullah the Butcher and Kimala 2 teaming in All Japan, that I went into this having no idea it was actually Abby teaming with the real Kamala. I've seen so many Abby/Kimala 2 matches, several matches where both Kamala's team with Abby in a trios, but I've seen little of Abdullah and original Kamala as a team. I think it only happened on this one tour. Also, it's important to note that I don't think Real Kamala is an upgrade overall, but it does make the team more threatening and less beatable. Kamala in Japan is weird. He looks like he'd be a natural fit, because his size and appearance makes him stand out more than at any time he was in WWF, it's just that his work does not fit in with Kings Road style at all, and at times he comes off like a total first year fat guy who isn't sure how to work with any of the old pros he's in with. He throws his overhand chops somehow worse than he threw them in 1993 WWF, but at least he tried throwing spin kicks like 1986 Kamala. His early match spin kick into Rusher's chest was easily his highlight of the match. 

So, with no Kimala 2 to work the heel in peril role, it is down entirely to Abdullah to create all the match's intrigue, which he is great at doing. His work against Baba and Rusher is always worth seeing, regardless of what current freak is teaming with him. Abby's aura lifts other, differently fat ships, because there is no other situation where Kamala would have grabbed Rusher to headbutt him if he wasn't headbutting him with Abby. I was impressed by Baba's work with Kamala, how all his chops looked like they were moving the large savage, knocking him down to build to the big Abby/Baba showdown that everyone was dying to see. Abdullah looked like he had so much fun working with Baba, just try not to smile as Abby is doing his karate posing. He looks like he's having a ball, and while I think it is very silly that Abby gets busted open by Kamala's tribal mask, it leads to Baba straight kicking Abby in his forehead grooves several times and Rusher opening those cuts with headbutts, so the silliness leads directly to violence. The karate chops and backhands Abby throws at Baba's neck to stop the onslaught are one of the things that make their showdowns worth watching no matter the year. 

I take it back, maybe Kamala's best contribution to this was when Rusher swarmed him with chops and punches, Kamala selling the swarm by backpedaling in fear while flailing his arms to keep hornets away from his face. Kamala feels so out of place in Japan, that there can be awkward moments...but when a moment like that plays into his fish out of water placement, suddenly it all makes sense. 

Joe Malenko vs. Masa Fuchi AJPW 10/20/89

MD: I can't help but think about this match in context. 1989 All Japan is defined by the war between Tenryu and Jumbo, between Hansen teaming with Tenryu and tearing through people, by Footloose having spotfests, Rusher and Eigen and Okuma doing comedy, guys like Shunji Takano and Kabuki scrapping and holding down the midcard against both Revolution and foreign monsters. And yet, here is a an absolute throwback to both the sort of 70s hold-driven matches Jumbo had made his name on and the sort of Junior Heavyweight technical battles we'd expect out of Fujinami at the turn of the 80s before Tiger Mask changed the paradigm in New Japan. It feels like the pinnacle of the Denny Brown/Nelson Royal style of NWA Junior Heavyweight Title matches that riddled the undercards of certain territories for years. 

I also can't help but think of Newborn UWF, a native monster that was threatening all traditional ways of doing business in Japan. To watch Maeda, Takada, Yamazaki, Anjo, and all the others is to feel a constant sense of danger. One mistake could bring a fight to an end or allow for severe punishment. There's a tension that leaves viewers on edge the whole time through. It's exciting but it's also exhausting. There can be narratives. There were always narratives. But they were based on an incessant pressure. This is different. It's a slow unlocking, a game of chess instead of a perilous tug of war. Damage had to be done, joints had to be weakened, effort had to be put in. It required a different sort of investment, both for the wrestlers and for the crowd. The struggle is somehow more simulated but also richer and broader for that simulation. It may not feel quite as real but it feels just as true. The wrestlers struggle for every inch, sell every twist of a joint, and react emotionally to consequences (such as Fuchi retreating from the ring, arm damaged, after it seemed like Malenko had an answer for everything he tried). If UWF was constant sudden death, this was regulation soccer, where the ebb and flow of shots on goal and ball possession would add up over time.

And of course, I couldn't help but think about Fuchi. He's the most versatile wrestler I've ever seen. He could go from comedy, to a title match like this, to mauling younger wrestlers. You see wrestlers manage that over their career, but for him that might all be within the same week. I think about him destroying the knees of the Super Generation Army on tables, brutality on top of brutality. Here though, it was a chess  move. It opened the match up, turned everything on its head, gave him a lever to pry on for the rest of the match, and pry he did. Malenko was constantly off balance and every subsequent move he hit was full of desperation. Fuchi could, would, and did throw little pokey kicks to the knee to take back over whenever the opportunity arose. It was the same move, even the same brutality, but it was used in an entirely different way than those Tsuruta-gun trio matches of a year or two later. 

It all built to a spectacular finishing stretch. Malenko's desperation paid off for him as he caught Fuchi in a bridging blockbuster fallaway slam. He followed it up with a northern lights suplex and then a clutch armbar. With leg damaged, he couldn't put Fuchi away. Fuchi, arm possibly still hurt, went with leaping enziguiris instead, and then was able to jam Malenko's final attempt to slip around him for a bridging butterfly suplex and the title win. So while I thought back, forward, and laterally to 70s Jumbo, to Denny Brown, to 1989 AJPW, to UWF, and to 1991 six-mans, what I thought about most of all was how this match stood on its own, and just how good it all was. History might show these late 80s AJPW Juniors matches to be a last gasp of an older tradition in some ways, but it was a gasp that showed how much vital, vibrant, and worthwhile life might have still been left to be found in the style.

ER: I wrote about the maligned/unregarded All Japan juniors style up above as we were breaking down Mighty Inoue/Shinichi Nakano without realizing that Matt went into different detail on the style in this review down below. Denny Brown is an interesting style comparison for this type of match, and it's interesting because at one point that would have been considered a pejorative and now it's clearly being used as a positive comp to something that we both miss from modern wrestling. This match is nothing but excellent, honest work, both guys gluing themselves together to craft something tough and true while making my own joints and ligaments scream out in pain. 

They build this around increasingly torqued holds, no traditional "highspots", no strike exchanges of any kind, just one blunt attack that leads to a long full match of superglue. The blunt attack comes when Fuchi begins smiling and taunting Joe with a couple of head fakes, a couple of lunges that weren't ever leading to anything, but Joe sees the evil behind Fuchi's smile and just headbutts him in the face when he gets his hands on him, wrestling him to the ground and beginning the always satisfying wrenching. Joe's holds all look like the finish: his cradle, grapevining one leg while concurrently forcing Fuchi into a painful half nelson, using all his limbs to manipulate Fuchi's body, not going for a pin just going for pain; a camel clutch with no pullback on the chin, all focus instead on hooking both arms and pulling back on them as he sinks into the hold, leaving Fuchi wincing and rubbing out his shoulders after he escapes to the floor.

Joe Malenko is someone who can make a Fujiwara armbar takedown look like a hold that damages the entire body. The way he takes Fuchi's arm and drives him down with his full weight sends Fuchi's head, face, and shoulder into the mat, like he was using the arm as leverage to do something more sinister. He uses that same leveraged arm to do a Russian legsweep when Fuchi eventually fights to his feet, holding the arm the whole time and using that as the point to pivot into attacks that folded in other limbs. 

Fuchi makes no inroads working the mat with Joe so eventually involves his tried and true friend Ringside Table to smash Joe's knee into. Joe's knee selling is real and escalates the match instantly. I love an injury coming into play late in a match, rather than give someone a memory exercise in the first couple minutes that makes it near impossible to do an actual match without conveniently forgetting your injury. Once Fuchi smashes Joe in the knee, Joe's strategy changes entirely and you can see in his eyes that this was the worst thing to happen to him. Fuchi is now in kill mode and Malenko is bringing out the big guns. The way Joe swings his leg away from Fuchi's single leg attempt before swinging him over with a front face lock takeover, catching a high crossbody and floating over with Fuchi's momentum into a bridging pin, and a clean northern lights that I'm sure he wished he had pulled off earlier with a sturdier knee. Fuchi doesn't so much as wear Joe down as he does hold him down long enough to win, the same thing Joe had been doing all match long. Excellent work all around, showcasing a style that really wouldn't be hard to integrate into any modern work, you just have to be honest and actually put in the work. That's the thing I don't see happening.  

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FOUND FOOTAGE FRIDAY: BABA vs. RUSHER~! BRET vs. SID~! PANTHER~! CASAS~! UG~! ATLANTIS~!

 
Giant Baba/Hiroshi Wajima vs. Goro Tsurumi/Rusher Kimura AJPW 3/27/88

MD: Classics drop from a while ago but no one else is going to cover this stuff at length. It was a lot of fun too. Tsurumi got in Wajima's face early and they honestly really went at it. I don't know if Wajima was just a bit further along in his development by this point or if Tsurumi brought the best out of him but they were slugging. Eventually Rusher got in and Wajima walked him to the corner and the crowd went nuts at the idea of Baba and Rusher (even in 88) facing off. Baba was so slick and self-aware too. He just dropped on his back and picked an ankle. Then he did the headlock > hammerlock > go behind and dropped on his back and did it again. Awesome stuff. After that, Rusher didn't break clean and just blistered him.That just pissed Baba off and he soon blocked a chop, hit the head chop, and was on the mat choking the life out of Rusher.

It wasn't until later on, a few exchanges and tags later (and after he hit the Bulldog on Wajima), that Rusher was finally able to chip away at him and knock him down. Baba mounted a big comeback though, turning a whip around into a neckbreaker drop. Tsurumi tried his luck and got headbutted for his trouble, and then Rusher made saves for him until Wajima was finally able to put him away. I had a lot of fun with it certainly. 

ER: We've been working our way through the entirety of All Japan's 3/27/88 show the last several months, like we're reviewing one song at a time from a Grateful Dead Hampton Coliseum show. We reviewed Big Bubba vs. Shunji Takano last month, we reviewed Isao Takagi vs. Tom Magee and Tommy Rich/Austin Idol vs. Great Kabuki/Tiger Mask II around Thanksgiving. Maybe we'll do Masa Fuchi vs. George Skaaland this summer. 

This is most exciting to me because it's Baba and Rusher Kimura on opposite sides of a tag. I've seen so many Baba/Rusher tags, so many visions of brotherhood, two men who always showed how much they cared for each other during their tags. Once they started teaming they never stopped. Rusher was always on Baba's side during their old man trios, so 1988 would be the last era to see any kind of Baba/Rusher interaction opposite each other. They love each other and don't want to hurt each other, and Rusher shows this by wearing a Giant Baba shirt to the ring!!! The looks they exchanged all match made this so special, and every look and exchange between them is special. On top of this dynamic, you have Goro Tsurumi shit talking Wajima during the ring intros, firing up Wajima to such temperature that he attacked Goro before Baba had even been announced. You could see faces of fans disappointed they wouldn't get to use their Baba-colored streamers. 

Rusher being the one to throw chops at Baba was inevitable, loud open slaps that Baba sold by folding cross-armed at the waist after finally blocking one and chopping Rusher. Baba vs. Rusher was more about gamesmanship, Goro vs. Wajima was hubris and irritability. Goro distracts the ref before mule kicking Wajima in the balls, pulling an inside cradle that Baba breaks up with a disdainful shoving boot from the apron, a real "knock it off, goofball" demeanor. When Rusher breaks up a pin by lightly pulling on Baba's leg, Baba rolls to his back and just looks at Rusher like his boyfriend just playfully pretended to trip over him while he was doing yoga. Wajima palms Goro's face and face slams him to the mat, and when Rusher comes in to save him, he turns right around and leaps through the ropes to the floor when he sees Baba is in position to stop him. I love them. I love what they had. 

Sycho Sid vs. Bret Hart [Cage] WWF MSG 3/16/97

MD: Great Sid bit coming out as he was startled by his own pyro, not afraid of it, but looking like he might lash out at it. Say what you will about thigh slapping, but Bret was the best damn strike stomper that ever struck. He stomped on his punches. He stomped on his kicks. He stomped on his headbutts. There's a sort of purity to it, a beauty, that wrestling can be this too, and it would not just be accepted, but seen as an immersive ideal. Almost instantly, it means that Sid's shots, though bigger arcs, don't feel quite as punchy because he's not stomping on every shot, just some. And of course, when Bret gets whipped into the corner (even back first), he's somehow able to hit in a way that makes the post crash into the cage to make a satisfying noise. Someone could write even more about the SOUND of Bret matches. But it's notable in passing for a paragraph here.

What Sid did do amazingly, however, was frame his action. At one point, after pulling Bret off the cage after he'd been trying to climb out, Sid lifted him up like he'd hit a fall away slam or backbreaker. He looked to the left abruptly, then to the right, these little stilted motions that brought you into the moment by taking you out of it. Then he ran Bret into the cage. He was so big and so strong he didn't have to do anything like that, but that's what made him not just a giant but a star. 

Finish of this was clever enough (if still bullshit like most escape the cage matches that involve the door). Bret had the Sharpshooter on, but that doesn't get him the win in a WWF escape the cage match. Sid was still able to get up and cut him off while climbing, but Sid sold the leg well when he tried to climb. That let Bret hit the huge superplex but Sid, despite being unable to climb, was able to crawl out the door just before Bret could drop.

ER: Cool blue bars MSG cage match just a week before WrestleMania, with something of note happening at all times. Bret gently stumbles during his entrance in a way you can tell really pissed him off, throwing off his entire walk to the ring. He tried to slap hands with a security guard and then ran into a guard on the other side of the aisle, completely rattled. Sid, meanwhile, is in control. Wet as hell, fist bumping everyone, entrance theme perfection. He reacts to his own pyro not like someone startled, but like someone who wasn't expecting pyro and had also never seen pyro before. Mystified, not rattled; curious, but upset. Sid wrestles like Cool Iron Mike Sharpe. Their movement and offense is identical. Body Glove elbow sleeve instead of forearm cast. The more you watch both the more undeniable it becomes. Their offense is thrown the exact same way. Sharpe was Vocal Sid with brown curls, Sid is wide eyed stoic Sharpe with blond curls.  

I've talked before about the audio on these Vault releases, and it really is like seeing wrestling from this era presented in a totally new way. Not having to mic down the crowd to hear any announcers is a marvel in itself, getting to hear individual fans through a full match, hearing how loud and heavy Sid is breathing after they did the first stretch of climbing, how LOUD the turnbuckles sound the three different times Bret gets run into them (two back first, the third his classic chest first), how the ring barely moves but explodes in sound when Bret is pressed off or Sid is superplexed. All the new revelations in sound leap out the entire match. When we wrote about a Goldust/Shawn Michaels ladder match last year, the sound of the ring was so incredible that it added to every bump and strike they did, and that was just as magnified here. A lot of this was arm strikes, Bret throwing his worked punches and Sid throwing his Iron Mike Sharpe arm swings. After Sid's first escape attempt, while Bret is fighting with him on the top rope, Bret's punches to Sid's body look outstanding. As Matt said, Bret is a stomper, a striker totally unseen in modern wrestling, but there's no stomping up top. 

After the match, after the big superplex, after Bret's sharpshooter failed and Sid was still able to crawl to the door that Bret must have forgot about (that stupid psychology wrinkle in every single WWF escape the cage match), there's an immaculate bridge and tunnel girl with her hair done up, trying to take a picture of Bret. He walks right past her on the aisle, and she reaches out to touch his shoulder. As he passes her and her hand makes full contact with him, all she can do in the aftermath is stare at her hand, no expression on her face. In her first physical brush with fame, she got to experience how oiled up and slimy pro wrestlers are, and her brain had no idea how to process this new information. 

Ultimo Guerrero/Atlantis vs. Negro Casas/Blue Panther CMLL 12/4/07 (?)

MD: This was a title match, worked like a title match, and it was refreshing to see in 2026. Primera had Casas vs Guerrero and they did fine, but the pairing of Blue Panther vs Atlantis was just great. Atlantis looked like a million bucks and some of that was on him and some of it was on Panther. Things built to everything breaking down and the tecnicos (Casas/Panther) won with simultaneous submissions (Scorpion by Casas, and a sort of Navarro inverted leglock by Panther). Segunda opened up when Panther went for it again on Guerrero only to get cut off. UG hit the senton de la muerte in the corner on both at once and after tossing them around a bit, Guerrero and Atlantis locked on a tandem submission on both at once (a sort of camel clutch on one while tied to the other and into an Octopus) that looked like a lot of fun.

Tercera had all the bombs you'd expect. There was a slight sense that the refs weren't allowing Casas to punch them because it was a title match and they were the tecnicos but once things went to the floor Casas unloaded. There was another great comeback moment where Guerrero missed in the corner and did his big knee bump over. Panther hit a tope on Atlantis while Casas hit his seated senton off the apron. Then he went and rubbed the head of some kid at ringside with a poncho, which is pure Casas. They followed it with nearfalls (including tandem power bombs) until GdA locked in tandem Atlantidas for the win. They celebrated big afterwards and it did feel like a big deal. Very good tag title match.

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Matches from AJPW 11/25/90: WALKING TALL DORY~! NO RESPECT DYNAMITE~! KIDNEY PUNISHING HANSEN/KAWADA~!

The Funks vs. Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith AJPW 11/25/90

ER:  A pretty amazing match that I had never seen, with four standout performances. It's so hard hitting, and these new All Japan Classics episodes showcase that in the best way. The sound on these episodes is incredible, and it puts you right in the middle of this high impact style. I can't imagine what it was like sitting front row for such a physical style as All Japan - let alone be a participant in it! -  but this video makes it feel like I was there 35 years ago. It's one of five Tag League matches smack in the middle of the show, and they kill each other and treat it like a match with actual stakes. It's an awesome Dory match and more evidence that Dynamite Kid's Winter 1990 is him at one of his highest levels. Dory comes off like the tougher, harder hitting Funk, an actual Cool Dory match. The match peaks with the Bulldogs working over Terry's Not As Damaged 46 year old legs in ways that contributed to Terry's Old Knees while Terry scrambles in half a dozen of the greatest attempts at making a hot tag, a face in peril to his big brother's ass kicking tough guy. 

Johnny Smith is at his absolute beefiest; Dynamite is at his most bitter and dangerous, a little guy starting the most violent fights at the bar. It's a great team. Dynamite looks angry the entire match, on the apron, in the ring, and treats Terry like an old man to be put to pasture. Terry works lighter to come off as vulnerable to loss as possible, and is at perhaps his most sexy. Sexy Terry working as Pretty Ricky. Ponytail Terry with his little mustache and the best body of his career. I love Hot Ponytail Terry in his Body Glove tights, and here's Dory in his blue trunks working stiffer than anyone in the match,  maybe anyone on the show (Eric's Note: Kawada and Hansen kick each other so hard in the kidneys later on the card that Dory Funk would have died so let's leave it to saying he worked stiffer than anyone in this match). It adds up to a middle of the card tag match that was worked as a small show main event. 

Listen to how hard they're all smacking each other! Dory's contact on his collar and elbow tie-ups with Johnny were the sound of bodies used to taking hits. When Dory is in against Dynamite, he hits him with uppercuts that are so hard that I don't think Kid had to sell his limbs all going numb. He looked shocked that Dory was hitting him so hard. He tees off hard on Smith and really looks like a mat expert going after Smith's knee and ankle. Everyone worked this super honestly, but Dory's work was the most honest and well executed of all. And here's Dynamite, the by far smallest man in the match and the guy who I'd least want to confront about anything. He goes after Terry with no respect. Maybe my favorite spot in the match, is when Terry is hitting Johnny with headbutt after headbutt before they both go down. Johnny goes down, Terry spirals down after, and the second Terry hits the mat Dynamite's eyes go wide and he scrambles up to the top rope to hit a headbutt to Terry's stomach. He pulls it off so hastily, making it look like a snap impulse, and his knees land full weight one inch from Terry's face. It looked so dangerous and was only one of the things that made this match play so tough. Dynamite is so geared up when he's in against Terry, that they even do a spot where Dynamite presses Terry off him on a kickout and Terry flies several feet from it, like Dynamite was Yokozuna. Dynamite kills Terry with clotheslines to the back of the head, throws him to the floor with a back body drop, and - most incredibly - drags him into a standing stretch muffler that blew me away. Dynamite's body had to be in constant agony and as he locked in the muffler and stood to his feet, clasping his hands while the much larger Terry was hanging upside down in a headstand, his pain was as palpable as any I've seen.  

The Bulldogs working over Terry's knee was some excellent third act cutting off the ring. Dynamite wanted that knee all match, and when he got it he was like a dog with a chew toy. He was slamming Terry's calf over his knee and it looked like one of the most violent pieces of work I've seen. Terry's selling was incredible, crawling and leaping towards Dory while Smith and Dynamite had to keep tackling and blocking. There were some nearfalls that got the big crowd to bite, like one of the most well-used and well-executed rolling inside cradles. Dory pulled the cradle and Smith rolled it over and the movement was so good that Yokohama bought in. Terry's win over Smith was so well done, as Dynamite had totally drained Terry and suddenly one of the biggest stars in wrestling history looked like he could be beaten by Johnny Smith. He has to resort to scrambling on top of Smith during a pinfall exchange and just weigh his body down. The Bulldogs looked like a tough vital team against two legends, and The Funks looked legitimately at the top of their abilities. 

Andre the Giant/Giant Baba vs. The Land of Giants AJPW 11/25/90

ER: Phil and I wrote about this match 7 years ago and I don't think I appreciated it enough then. It seems funny to say that I didn't appreciate an Old Andre match enough, as I think every single review of any Old Andre match I've ever written is me appreciating and analyzing every step he takes. I love the 1990 Tag League old broken but still proud Giants, and we should all be thankful that we got to see them against the worst Fake Road Warriors team ever assembled in a respected promotion. I cannot and will not say it is a great match, because it is not. The Land of Giants - Skywalker Nitron especially, specifically - are total cornballs. Nitron is the goofiest of all, almost surely the goofiest wrestler All Japan used in 1990. You're off the hook Richard Charland and David Sammartino. But part of what makes the match great, is that Andre and Baba know that these two are cornballs, and the gift that brings us is a very active Andre match. 

Andre is old but not nearly as old as he'd look in 1992. He was in the ring a lot against both cornballs and had a bunch of great ideas and ways to attack both of them. He looked really strong, even if Nitron sold some of his offense with the goofy acting only seen from people reading stories to small children in libraries. Andre looked like he had a lot of fun beating these two goofs up. He had two different cantaloupe fist punches, one while holding Nitron in a headlock and the other just thrown to the face and followed up with a NOAH worthy headbutt. He grabbed Masters in a knuckle lock and made it look like he was crushing his hand. The camera had a zoom in on Andre interlacing his fingers with Butch and his fingers were so big they looked like they were forcing Masters' fingers to break apart. It looks like something that would and did drop Masters to a knee. The best part is when he broke the knuckle lock by rearing back and punching Masters in the fingers. 

This match has Andre the fucking Giant holding Rob Zombie's Michael Myers in a bearhug. Freddy vs. Jason is my least favorite Nightmare on Elm Street movie and my least favorite Friday the 13th movie, but Andre the Giant vs. Michael Myers is a horror movie showdown we needed to see and I would have paid money to. There's no way I would have gone into that movie and gotten Andre keeping his bearhug locked in by pulling on The Shape's rattail. Moustapha Akkad wouldn't have had the guts. 

Stan Hansen/Danny Spivey vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Mitsuharu Misawa AJPW 11/25/90

ER: The Funks vs. New Bulldogs was a hard hitting match. Every open hand on chest and back landed with a loud crack and Dory Funk threw in a last hurrah before his 50s with a great Walking Tall badass role. It's great. But then two matches later Kawada and Hansen took such righteous anger out of each other's kidneys that it made me think *I* was going to piss blood. This is some of the toughest wrestling you'll ever see. Hansen is in full force of nature mode and he hits Kawada like a kid in training camp. Every chair, every shoulder, every godforsaken kick, was felt thoroughly. Hansen is such a force of nature, that you're not expecting Kawada to take such a force so head on. Kawada kicks Hansen back even harder and cracks baseball bat shots off the old cowboy's torso. Kawada makes such wicked contact that Hansen's pancreas selling looks like the man is learning how to sell a bruised pancreas in real time. Hansen is the best Train Running Off the Rails impacter in wrestling and it was amazing to see Kawada throw his whole body at a moving train. The finish is incredible and features one of the greatest low bridges I've ever seen. Misawa flies over the top rope with such speed that I jumped in the same way I do in the movies when a car gets unexpectedly T-boned. Spivey's team with Hansen took his timing to a really high level. Misawa is there one second and gone the next and as he's flying one direction, Hansen runs the other and knocks Kawada into the sky with a western lariat. Later, Doc and Gordy try to hit harder clotheslines on Taue in the main event and make fine cases. Later still, Jumbo and Taue outdo them all with their clotheslines to Gordy. It's show-long clothesline oneupmanship I can support. And then Jumbo gives Gordy another. 

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Found Footage Friday: CROCKET CUP 87 NIGHT 2~!

Crockett Cup 87 Night 2 JCP 4/10/87

MD: We had a lot more of Night 2 than Night 1 but some of that was still handhelds or pieced together and this is a big VQ upgrade regardless, so we're just going to go through this as much as possible on the idea that a lot of this is very much Found even if not entirely New.

Round 3

Bob & Brad Armstrong vs. Tully Blanchard/Lex Luger

MD: Really great stuff here. That's not a surprise. There's an extended (almost ten minute) heel-in-peril shine to begin where Tully gets a few moments but mostly gets clowned over and over. What makes this work is how he constantly tries to drive to the corner and everytime things go really wrong for him is when he tries to stretch the rules, like using his foot to make a tag. JJ complains and the Armstrongs do a phantom tag while the ref is dealing with that. I love the wrist control by Bob here. You get such a great look at how he's holding Tully's hand and the torque involved. So simple but so good. Eventually Luger does get in but the Armstrongs come back only for JJ to pull down the rope and send Brad flying.

The FIP isn't as long but they get a lot done quickly, using the guardrail and working over the back. Brutal stuff with Brad on the floor reaching not for the fans, but for his dad even though there's no way to make a tag, just trying to drag strength and power from his love. The hot tag is great too with Bob coming in fiery as can be, laying into the Horsemen with basically machine gun chops in the corner. I got a kick out of the finish which had the ref miss a pinfall due to the chaos and JJ and Tully do a double clothesline with JJ on the apron to pick up the win. It's funny to think that would add so much but it had symbolic value so it totally worked. Good tag and great to see it in this level of video quality.

ER: I thought this was tremendous, 8 perfect minutes of tag team wrestling. Also, 8 minutes reminding us of what a perfect wrestler Tully Blanchard was. Tully was the primary highlight of this, but I think the whole thing was highlights. Every single second of Bullet preventing Tully from tagging out is pro wrestling perfection. Every second. The cameras catching the perfect angles of the inches Bullet was letting Tully get from Luger, the cut to the hand-on-brow disappointment and disgust from JJ Dillon looking like Robert Prosky in Thief, Luger's teenage quarterback hands on hips frustration when the tags keep being prevented, the way Tully's legs dragged and floated when Brad held onto a side headlock, it was all perfect. Luger was a great partner for Tully. This was Luger's best hair era, by fair. It never came close to looking this good again. His fringe, his gentle approach to being a jacked Ramones superfan. I loved how all of Tully's long build to the hot tag was more about Bullet tagging in his son to square up to Luger, who looks like Asshole He-Man. 

Tully Blanchard has the same kind of physical bumping style as Bobby Heenan. Heenan's bumping gets talked about more because it's flashier and one of the greatest bumping styles anyone has ever attempted. Tully doesn't use the same physical movement as Heenan, but he bumps with the same physicality. Tully has the ability to work these inches and near misses as well as he works big looping O-face back bumps when tugged and pulled and thrown by the Armstrongs, in a way that only makes the Armstrong Family Biceps look like main event power. I don't think there's a more perfect bump than Tully ping ponging perfectly onto his belly into the corner right on his mark, after leaning into Brad's missile dropkick. It's that kind of precision that people see in Chris Candido, the things is that Candido is just 0.7 Tully. Candido was tan, shaped, modeled. Tully looked like your friend's dad who was the asshole orthodontist accused of touching a girl under the gas. The guy in your church denomination you don't want to talk to in the lobby after service.

Road Warriors vs. Midnight Express

MD: The feeding early on, especially by Bobby Eaton, is all time great. The way he's able to rush in and take things and contort pro wrestling physics and make it all look good is up there with the very best ever. He somehow hits the guardrail after getting tossed out and you buy it. He makes a press slam into a snake eyes look like a move that people should be doing weekly now but it's something I've barely seen this century and that if anyone else took wouldn't look nearly as good. Likewise, he took a chop (looked like to the chest to me) and then sold his face, pointing to his jaw repeatedly like he just lost three teeth. Lane does okay too, going head over heels just bouncing off a Warrior, but it's not quite the same as Bobby.

When the Express take over on Hawk, it's from going to the eyes again and again and again and double teaming at every point. They just have a few frenetic minutes in charge, but the sheer amount of varied and interesting cheating they're able to do in believable ways is just remarkable. You buy that the ref just didn't see it because they were so good and Animal was so frustrated. Eyerakes, tossing Hawk over the top illegally, using the racket, again and again. When the hot tag comes, everything becomes chaos and the ref goes down. Cornette threw a fireball at Animal and I thought Animal no sold it but on the replay you see that Ellering pulled Cornette's arm so he plausibly just missed. It's a dangerous thing to devalue though so I'm not sure I loved that. To the crowd, it must have looked like Animal just no sold it. Still that infuriated the Roadies and they took the racket and got themselves DQed the ref came to. This was another really good one as they matched up well and everything had the perfect weight to it, save maybe for that fireball at the end.

ER: This is a famously great tag that has never looked or sounded better. The sound on these new uploads is so key, it makes every bump seem like an impossible physical feat to maintain. There's so much good about this, including Bubba, Cornette, and Ellering at ringside. They all got reactions and none of the reactions took away from the others, just an insanely hot match where everything clicked. Bobby Eaton in 4K is truly something to marvel. He and Hawk are a perfect combination of wrestling physicality. Eaton was so gifted, another guy who moved all in his own way...and Hawk wrestles like the ideal jacked cool guy to be knocking Bobby Eaton around. Bobby was such a ham here, in a way that totally works when selling for the Roadies. Hawk hit a short hard chop that was so loud, Bobby improvised on the spot that it him right in the mouth, backpedaling all the way across the ring to tag in Stan. Sell it to the 18,000 people who couldn't see that it hit chest. Lane took some big shots too, getting whipped upside down into the buckles by Hawk and then calmly begging off as Hawk approached, like hey easy man we got other towns to make. Lane getting yanked by the arm from the apron into the ring was such a great bump, the athletic grace of the Midnights combined with the power of the Roadies. Bobby and Stan get great reactions for their bumps, but probably not as big as the reaction Bubba gets when he steps to the apron and removes his coat and hat. Huge. 

The finish is incredible, one of the great chained together bullshit finishes I've seen. The Midnights throw Hawk over the top to the concrete with full distraction, then Bobby hits Hawk in the ribs with the loudest racket shot and kicks him straight in the guts. It completely breaks down into chaos and pandemonium after the bell and it's fucking pro wrestling baby. That's chaining it all together. That's what we used to do. We used to cut off the ring and drink a case of beer and we used to chain bullshit together without reversals of reversals of reversals. A Cornette fireball to endless racket shots to bodies going every direction in perfect chaotic order. The Roadies murder Bobby with a Hart Attack to cap it off. Bubba takes a hit through the ropes that sends him crashing to the apron and down to the guardrail. He looked humongous and the fall was grand. Incredible pro wrestling. 

Rick Rude/Manny Fernandez vs. Superpowers (Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff)

MD: The #1 seed vs. the biggest babyfaces in this. While the first round had its share of fairly lame teams (especially compared to the year before), now in the quarterfinals you see the breadth of the talent here. This was a huge match. They'd only run it once before at a show at the Great Western Forum. It was a way to put the tag champs up against these guys with the belts not on the line. Rude vs. Nikita was such a natural pairing too and they leaned into that early with some fun strength stuff including Nikita breaking out of a full nelson.

Dusty played FIP after taking a post shot on the outside, with him gradually working back towards a comeback and these guys all knew how to milk it of course. Things broke down after Dusty hit a leaping clothesline off the ropes. Rude came in and then Nikita. Manny went for a flying body press but Dusty rolled through for the wins as the fans went nuts. 

ER: This was short but hot the entire way. I love the Raging & Ravishing team. Everyone in Crockett is so physical. I keep using various forms of that word because everyone is so physical in a totally different way. Manny Fernandez doesn't even look like someone who exercises, he looks like the most dangerous man in a bowling alley, but then he's throwing these impressively controlled kneedrops and holding back his body to keep his shots worked, and it's crazy how dangerous he can make himself look while being this safe. Rude is so good at working with Nikita and Manny knew exactly how to work as Rude's partner, I just love how these men fell around the ring. 

Round 4

Giant Baba/Isao Takagi vs. Tully Blanchard/Lex Luger

MD: Baba/Takagi had a draw as Ricky Morton was out (what a shame to lose that weird match). This was a kind of weird one too. Lots of leglocks early. It looked like things would open up when Luger slammed Baba but then he missed an elbow drop and Baba just beat up Luger and Tully. Novel pairings at least and fun to see them take his stuff (chop, big boot, Russian leg sweep). Takagi looked strong in there, good strikes and the fans really got up when he mowed through both Tully and especially Luger. Takagi missed a corner charge and weirdly Luger couldn't get him up for the rack. He hit an elbow drop for the pin instead. Up until the finish I could see there being interest in a Takagi vs Luger match back in Japan but after that, nah.

Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff vs. Midnight Express

MD: This was a blast really, the whole shine especially. There was an early bit where Koloff broke clean on Eaton, Eaton refused to break clean on Koloff, punching him in the face, Koloff gave chase, Eaton dodged a shot back in the ring and pointed to his brain, Koloff slingshotted him back into the ring and then dropkicked him, which was absolutely perfect pro wrestling. Beautiful stuff. Then Lane got thrashed about and claimed it was a tights pull and Eaton got caught in the ropes as Dusty pinballed him again and again in a teeter totter only to fall outside and immediately get hiptossed onto the floor. Pure Eaton right there. He does the silly painless bit to pop the crowd and decides to take the huge bump anyway. Dusty finished it by giving all of the Express and Bubba elbows and basking in the glory of it all.

Heat was on Nikita and they did what the Express did best, fit a ton of egregious offense into a very small amount of time. They focused on the neck cheated in both large ways and small, and made use of numbers and ring-positioning. They pushed it just a little too hard, had just a bit of miscommunication and Nikita used that to hit the Sickle, no hot tag needed. Given all the different finishes at play, it worked. It also felt a bit like a banana peel, definitive as it was, because of the lack of the hot tag, so that almost protected the Express in loss in a weird sort of way.

Ric Flair vs. Barry Windham

MD:A lot to cover in a paragraph or two. This match, given how it was preserved/presented over the years and that it was going back to a relatively dry well, has traditionally not been thought highly of. But I do think it was very good. There are individual bits that I love, and I honestly do think they come together. 

Some of those bits:

• After the initial feeling out, Flair chops Barry in the corner. Barry puts on a grin and storms out. Flair backs off but struts it off. They repeat the process and this time Flair falls down before strutting. Then Flair gets in a knee and does it one more time. This time Barry sells it big but still storms out and threatens to do a ten punch on Flair. He backs down. Flair goes for a cheapshot and Barry fires off on him. It was such a great exchange in part because how it escalates.
• Late in the match, Flair, who has been knocked around both inside and outside the ring, gets an advantage and scales the top. We all know what's coming, but the execution is so different than what we'd see in the years that would follow. Flair slows himself down to jaw with the fans. Once he reaches the top, he does it again. Barry gets up and waits for him to turn. When Flair does, he's shocked and begs off. Barry shoots a punch to his gut before grabbing him. Flair shakes his head repeatedly. Barry goes to throw him. They struggle over it. Flair grabs his hair. Barry finally gets him over.
• The biggest tease of the match is Barry hitting a one legged missile dropkick which looked so out of the norm for 87 that it felt like a big deal. He pins Flair for 3 but flair had his foot on the rope and got his hand there too at the last second. The hand drew the ref's eye to the foot and after he made the count, he had to restart the match. He was beside himself over it.  Barry immediately gets his finisher, being the leaping clothesline off, only for Flair to get his foot on again. The moment had passed.

Structurally, they go from Flair getting a hotshot and taking over and working the arm to Barry coming back and Flair taking back over to work the leg and getting the figure-four. They got in and out with advantages switching, throwing in plenty of high spots and building to some of the big moments above. When Flair wins it after a series of back and forth pin attempts and holding the tights, it's acceptable but not exactly satisfying, but it didn't need to be given the victory that would follow.

Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff vs. Tully Blanchard/Lex Luger

 

MD: Ok, so I'm running out of time on this one and it's definitely been out for years. One thing I do want to point out that you get watching the show in context is how people controlled Nikita and had a chance by targeting the next throughout the show but the whole show builds to this one where they tear the brace off of his neck. So I really did appreciate that in context. 

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Andre the Giant Didn't Have to Treat Joel Deaton Seriously

Andre the Giant/Giant Baba vs. Dick Slater/Joel Deaton AJPW 11/15/90 - GREAT

ER: Just another 90s Andre gem, the kind of playful menace performance he never would been given credit for having against mustache Joel Deaton. Andre didn't need to have a fun match against Joel Deaton, ever. 1990 Joel Deaton looked like Eric Roberts in Star 80 with less success and was above maybe only Ricky Santana on the All Japan gaijin hierarchy. Andre didn't need to do a single thing with Joel Deaton in 1990. Instead he puts on a little show, playing the menace who cartoonishly thirsts after beating up Joel Deaton. He is security getting enjoyment from throwing Eric Roberts from the Playboy Mansion. 

Andre still had incredible presence in his first several 1990 tours with All Japan. The increasingly vulnerable and broken down Andre of 91-92 came fast and his work and acting changed with it. 1992 Andre was still unique and special to me. There was still major aura, but it wasn't a Powerful Giant aura, and he couldn't have worked this match this way against Joel Deaton in 1992. In 1990 Andre still had powerful confidence and aura; a man who could walk through attacks and grab you with unmatched strength. Every second Andre is on camera, he is picturing Joel Deaton as a steaming turkey dinner. 1990 Andre was special. His November 1990 All Japan tour is in all likelihood his Last Truly Great tour, the way March/April 1990 was the last Truly Great Grateful Dead tour. Touring Legends lumbering through Nagano and The Omni with playful menace before the fall. The only difference is that I love 91-92 Andre and I never listen to 92-95 Dead.  

Everybody is good in this match. Baba's worked fun stretches with Deaton and Slater and each came with little surprises. Baba works Deaton like he's a white trash rookie Taue. I am a big 1990 Baba fan. He's playful and adds in visual winks whenever he does a move that he knows looks more spry than any fan was expecting from him. He takes an incredible, layered bump in the corner late in this match after Jowl Fucking Deaton hits him with the best clothesline of the match. I'd have bet $20 on Deaton running into a size 15, and Baba sold it like he had already taken that bet. Baba in 1990 was still leaning into real clotheslines with his weird chest and taking big bumps into the corner. A guy surprising you with a big bump is always more interesting than a guy who bumps a lot. 

Dick Slater is a great opponent for 1990 Baba because Baba can still work stiff enough to justify gaijin over-bumping for him and gaijin bumping for Baba and his reactions to the bumps are one of my favorite little things in wrestling. Slater's 90s is extremely under-discussed for something so great. I need to start writing about Dick Slater's work when he was My Current Age and how great he was right up until his unfortunate back injury. The more we cover IWA-Japan Dick Slater, Puerto Rico, SMW, any year of 90s WCW, All Japan tour Dirty Dick Slater, all of them, the more he might seriously look like a top 50 worker of the 90s, maybe higher. He had Tully Blanchard Energy just when we needed it most. Rough 'n' Ready would be much more appreciated now than they were in 1996. We would have gotten a memorable late 90s ECW run. Anyway,

this is an Andre match. As great as 90s Dick Slater was, nobody was ever Andre. This is the beautiful kind of Andre gem where he has a competitive match against someone who shouldn't be competitive with Andre In His Current State. I love that Andre match. I love how Andre works every person. I want to see matches where he is old but unstoppable but letting Joel Deaton survive. His confidence and presence are unmatched. He is sporting incredible and absurd Capital J muttonchops, that I would make fun of on any ska gimmicked Chikara wrestler who had the same but here you're left with something so much deeper. It's weird to think about Andre styling one of his sideburns into a perfect capital J, so do you think it was just a weird accident? If it was, why would he leave it and not clean it up? Are we to think he has enough energy to shave at all but not enough to fix a coded message on one of his cheeks? The world's largest Prince in a dispute with his record label, signaling to the press with a coy wink that he's going back to his roots as Jean Ferre. That can't be an accident. 

Andre stands on the apron, visibly salivating. Fantasizing about how much he's going to mess Joel Deaton up. Deaton had tried to sneak a chop in on Andre after tagging in and Andre saw it coming a mile away. He doesn't take his eyes off Deaton again. Deaton is in the ring, tied up on his back by Baba's weight, and you can see Deaton staring not up at Baba, but staring wide-eyed directly into Andre's eyes on the apron. Staring right through his mustache. I can't imagine how scary that would have been in 1990. Andre has such a visible craving for Deaton that his entire body drifts down the apron toward him; a man not realizing he's going 85 as he subconsciously keeps up with a hotshot in another car. You've never seen his eyes more excited when he tags in and grabs Deaton by the throat the second Deaton throws a punch. He palms Deaton by the mustache and throws a hand across the bridge of his nose, holds him in a sleeper that looked like it would have strangled Deaton to death in seconds flat had that strike to the nose hadn't happened. This is not a physically broken man, this is a Strongman Giant. When he holds Slater and Deaton prone for Baba, it is clear that neither could have wriggled out of his clutches if they tried. Andre could project his unreal strength and physically overwhelm large men. He allows Deaton to catch a break on the elbowdrop. It looks worse when Old But Powerful Andre eases up on the elbow, but the man had already had his feast, no need to pick the bones. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE 

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Found Footage Friday: TAJIRI~! HHH~! BABA~! EIGEN~! FURNAS~! MVC~! SPIVEY~!

Dr. Death Steve Williams/Terry Gordy vs. Dan Spivey/Doug Furnas AJPW 10/19/90

MD: I like Kroffat as much as the next guy, move even, but Spivey being in there instead increased the hoss level considerably. This was heated from the start too. Doc had it out for Furnas for some reason. He gave him the middle finger before the match. Furnas returned the favor by swinging a kick at him as he was squaring up with Spivey. Doc wiped his sweat in Furnas' direction. Furnas gave him the finger. Doc told him to kiss his butt. You get the idea. It's a good way to start a match. 

It doesn't let up from there. Furnas uses the three point stance to knock Gordy down, but Doc's able to grind Furnas down well enough that he makes sure to rush over and smack Spivey around a bit too, before mouthing off and maybe even spitting at him drawing Spivey in and it's just an absolutely chaotic feel early on.

What follows is about five minutes of the best wrestling you'll ever see. Doc catching Furnas in mid air and bringing him to the top rope, the two of them trading slaps and Furnas leaping over him to hit a belly to belly. Doc and Spivey smacking each other all the way out of the ring. Spivey hitting a bossman slam on Doc and boos ringing through the air as Gordy breaks it up. The place absolutely exploding as Furnas press slams Gordy only to eat a lariat. It's a hell of a five minutes before everything settles down to holds.

They take it down before building it back up and the overall effect is a hell of a thing. Gordy and especially Doc get a ton of heat. Furnas is able to clap up Spivey. There are a bunch of great nearfalls down the stretch before an extremely definitive ending but one that took that bit of extra effort. These are the sort of lost matches we hope to find.

ER: I love All Gaijin matches in All Japan because it's interesting to see how they can organically draw heat and interest without any kind of Nativism at play. No side is necessarily more loved or hated, only more established. Dr. Death understands that and leans into the MVC's established rep and for seemingly no reason goes hard on Doug Furnas. I have zero reason to believe there is any kind of animosity between Dr. Death and Doug Furnas, but everyone in this match made me believe there was. Doug Furnas was fairly established at this point. Not at the level of beating teams like Doc and Gordy, but already a two time All Asia tag champ who had beaten big teams. Doc quickly turns him into an underdog babyface which leads to a more spirited wild eyed performance from Spivey and some incredible payoff when Furnas finally starts throwing them around. 

Everyone was so good in this match that I fully bought into Doc and Gordy as two guys who actually hated Furnas (they didn't), Furnas as a guy out of his depth (he wasn't) and Spivey as a guy fearlessly telling MVC to back the fuck off and stop taking liberties with Furnas (they weren't, but at times it didn't seem like Spivey realized that). Doc was doing some performative middle fingers and phony baloney heat drawing across the ring while Furnas looked like a guy making the universal face of "Hey man I didn't do anything to you do you have the right guy?" You could tell Doc had the right guy when he sat Furnas on the top rope and slapped Furnas so hard to break. Furnas looked like Allen Covert and sold the slap by making the face that Allen Covert makes when his girlfriend leaves him in one of the few Sandler movies where that happens. Doc is great at bullying Furnas to rile up Spivey, and Spivey is that great combination of large and reckless and Just Getting Real Good so that he always gets too amped up on his first punch of an exchange and throws some potatoes before dialing back a little. He always looks ready to pop off, and it's a killer distraction from Furnas finally popping off. 

Doug Furnas gorilla press slamming Terry freaking Gordy - and the scared face Gordy makes while being held up high in that press - is an incredible spot. It would have been an amazing press slam anyway, but once Furnas added a pump it became an all timer. The crowd lost their minds at that press slam and that hyped Doug up so much he did a backflip and then ran as fast as he could into Gordy's biggest clothesline of the match. Doug finally suplexing Death was so cool. I love the way Doc bumps when he's reeling, just as I love when he decides one turnbuckle isn't enough for a stampede. MVC made damn certain that they were the bad guys here and were so convincing that the fans bought them as bullies against two of the toughest dudes. Terry Gordy out here getting booed over and over for breaking up pins and picking on Mega Athlete Doug Furnas.   

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura/Akira Taue vs. Harkua Eigen/Motoshi Okuma/Masa Fuchi AJPW 10/27/90

MD: This is a recent Classics drop and a Baba 30th Anniversary match. Jumbo gives him a plaque before the match and everything. This gets a ton of time, 20+ it feels like and it's just packed full of character and comedy. It's hard to do justice to it all or even half of it but I'll point out a few things.

First, Eigen, amazing as always, really shines at the start. He faces off against young Taue to start but then darts to the corner and slaps Baba before running out. They reset, he does the same thing but this time teases Baba and slaps Rusher. Then when facing off against Rusher, he ducks and slaps him twice before leading him to the corner for a long heat segment. They kick away at him forever before we ultimately get some goofy stuff with Okuma and headbutts. There are a ton of headbutts in this match and while Rusher gets some in, a lot of them are eaten by Taue.

Taue's a lot of fun here. I've seen every bit of 1990 footage we have of him and he wasn't there yet, but here he's got this sense of wild abandon, limbs flying and flopping about, that would soon be gone from him. He looks like he's going to become an entirely different wrestler here between his selling of the headbutts and a sort of physical recklessness.

This refuses to end, a lot of the normal things you think might end it getting broken up. They run some of the best Eigen spit spot stuff ever, as both Taue and Baba get to do it, with Baba getting it on his hand and everyone almost cracking up (and Kobashi cracking up decades later on commentary). Then Rusher goes for it, but he's blocked, and Baba comes in from the other side with a chop and it's pretty hilarious let me tell you. The finish is a fun combo of Taue hitting an atomic drop sending Okuma into Baba's foot and then right back into Taue's belly to back. My only regret is that they didn't repeat the atomic drop/boot sequence a couple of times first. Great fun that no dirtsheet would have appreciated at the time but that we can absolutely appreciate now.

ER: This is one of those Wrestling Heaven situations for me. I love my King's Road, and I love my boys. Give me 20 minutes of VILLAIN SHOKAI up to their old bullshit and the nuanced twists that come with every new 20 minutes. It's crazy how many ways they found to do their same bullshit slightly different over the years. You recognize the behaviors but there are always things they do different, things I've never seen, or realistically perhaps things I've seen a million times but don't care because they all work so well together that I don't ever get tired of them. All of these old men matches (Masa Fuchi was 36 lol) were written off unfairly by morose tape traders, so now everything in them is ripe for discovery. Nobody was talking about how great Haruka Eigen was when I got into trading, none of these guys were getting any kind of acclaim. We're long past that now.

Now, before this even starts, you just know Eigen is going to get up to shenanigans before Villain Shokai starts bringing headbutts and hamstring kicks. Eigen starting the match with a slap and run routine on Baba and Rusher is so classic, celebrating in the aisles with young boys you barely recognize, knowing he was going to get paid back down the stretch. A lot of these start with long heat on Kimura, eating boots and headbutts and selling the headbutts so believably (that happens here), but that's not where the match stays. I thought they did a great job integrating everybody and keeping Baba's involvement short and exciting. Villain Shokai made quick tags and this settled into me being excited watching an Akira Taue who didn't wrestle a single thing like my favorite wrestler Akira Taue. 1990 Taue is so cool as can see hints of the Taue that would be there just a couple years later but you'd only notice them if you were familiar with them. For the most part, he's a totally different guy with totally different offense and movement. 

His most important characteristic that he apparently always had, was his realistic approach to bumping. Watch how he sells an Okuma headbutt to the mouth, watch the way he falls with limbs flopping around and not in a controlled wrestling school back bump. The realistic bumps and selling were the things that instantly drew me to Taue at the end of the 90s, and with all the '90 Taue we have as evidence we can see that it's just who he is, a thing that would be near impossible to teach someone. He also has completely different offense and I love "elbowdrop Taue who doesn't use his giant feet in any way" but maybe I only love it because I know we're not far away from "big feet to face and the best chokeslams ever" Taue. 

You get so much tough guy sneaky prankster Eigen that you forget they had already started honing the Spit Spot this early. It's still early, as the front row all knows what's happening when it's happening, but nobody is holding up newspapers. People are fleeing, which only draws attention to one woman who is not moving at all while every other woman around her scurries to safety. Baba getting involved in Eigen's Spit is a thing that does not happen in most of these, and his involvement here brings two incredible moments: Baba clutching Eigen under the chin and clubbing his chest, only for Eigen to spit all over Baba's hand, leading to Baba wiping off his hand all over Eigen's head; then when Rusher is winding up to club Eigen, Fuchi intercepts his arm. While the two are locked in struggle, Baba creeps in from the other side and just knife edges Eigen. Taue's back suplex drops like a damn anchor. These 20 minutes always feel like 5 to me, something I never say about Modern Epic Wrestling. 

HHH vs. Tajiri WWE 1/25/03

MD: This is the sort of Vault drop that we're looking for, Hunter reign of terror match or no. Previously we only had a few minutes of this. With the introductions and post-match this is 30+ minutes. The biggest takeaway, past maybe how good Tajiri is here and how it's a shame we don't have a bunch of other 20+ minute matches with him from this era, is that Hunter consciously worked it differently than almost any other match of the period. Maybe even almost any other match of his career.

There's the whole bit about Hogan doing two extra bits of chain wrestling in his Japanese appearances (when it's more the reckless energy and Axe Bomber people should be looking at). To me, this was more about Hunter getting to work the sort of classic NWA Title match style that he didn't think the current WWE audience would appreciate. The problem was that he just didn't have the reps with it (which isn't really his fault). It meant he did the sort of stuff you'd expect him to be good at (feeding into headlocks and other holds) well, but when he tried some fancier escapes, it didn't quite click. The headstand escape to the headscissors was cute and all but people haven't clipped him basically comedically putting himself back into the hold to set up the positioning for it.

What did work were the transitions, the hope spots, the cutoffs. Hunter took over by clipping Tajiri with a clothesline on the handspring and that looked great. They worked a lot of hope spots given the time the match had to breathe and it meant when Tajiri did comeback, it felt momentous. Lots of moving parts and hoohah on the finishing stretch but the fans certainly got their money out of all of it. I loved hearing Earl talking up close too. That's something you'd rarely get in the heavily produced WWE, even in the early 00s. This just felt very different and refreshing in a sea of 2002-2003 Hunter matches I have memories of but really don't want to revisit.  

ER: I remember being 21 and reading about this match in the Observer and DVDVR but now I'm twice as old as I was then and my wants and priorities have changed. How far away, the post college years where my friends and I split an Observer subscription for several years and my friend Jason would use his work photocopier to copy even double issues for all of us. If this match had been taped, I would have traded for a tape to see this match. The 2025 version of doing that is me making 30 minutes of time to watch a HHH match. I'm glad I did. It closed a loop and lived up to its release. I love that it's shot handheld, I love the format, and I loved the story.  I always love the story of a guy who isn't World Title level getting a lengthy main event title match. If it exists, I'd be equally excited to see Brooklyn Brawler getting a long Shawn Michaels title match on a house show after winning a battle royal. 

HHH works this much more like a heel Bret Hart match and shows that he's better at that than when he's working his touring champion Flair match. Thank god this isn't his touring Flair match only in Japan. He's more execution focused than when he's in his Flair Entertainer mode and while I don't think he's anywhere near Bret as an execution guy there were several moments that I thought he looked a lot tighter than expected. He's better at bump as Bret than he is bumping as Flair and it made the match come off harder hitting than theatrical. Tajiri's kicks were great ways for him to storm back into the match and I liked how he would use them as unpredictable combos thrown at different body targets. HHH is bad at standing still making an "I'm waiting to be hit face" but much better at taking strikes that are less expected. We didn't have to see him hold his head a certain way as he waits to hair whip react to a punch, instead we just got Tajiri throwing kicks up and down his body. 

HHH as a guy working over shoulder back breakers is one of the coolest versions of HHH. Do more of that. Less Irish whips and more backbreakers! When Tajiri finally slips out the back of one of the backbreakers it's this great spot that looks like it's going to fall apart entirely and end in an awkward tangle but it somehow bumbles expertly into a clean sunset flip pin away from ropes. I thought for sure both men were falling and going to wind up in an ugly heap of blown spot but instead it made it all look like HHH was struggling to stop Tajiri's momentum. Tajiri using the Tarantula while the referee was out seemed like the one time where it would have been acceptable to let HHH Act. Just let him scream and NXT sell for a full minute while completely stuck, no ref to save him. I was disappointed that Tajiri maintained the 5 second rule. We didn't get enough of Tajiri maniacally refusing to break Tarantula. 

Tajiri kicking out of the Pedigree was something we all read about in 2003, but it plays far crazier than it reads. This is a detail I remember reading about. It was shocking to hear that Tajiri had kicked out of a Pedigree, but the details at the time actually downplayed what really happened. When it was reported, the reporting made it sound like the Pedigree was hit and Hebner - blinded by mist - took an eternity to make the count. That makes sense and it still sounded surprising that Tajiri kicked out. In actuality, the whole thing happened in under 10 seconds. Tajiri kicked out of the Pedigree less than 10 seconds after it was hit, which nobody else was doing in 2003. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Celebrating All Japan Veterans on Veterans Day

Haruka Eigen/Masa Fuchi/Motoshi Okuma vs. Giant Baba/Mitsuo Momota/Rusher Kimura AJPW 2/26/90

ER: We don't always appreciate every blessing that life hands us, but it is a real gift that someone used nearly 30 minutes of camcorder battery to film an old man match curtain to curtain, entrances and exits. If the man recording this had children then you can guarantee he never accidentally missed a recital. He almost surely did not have children because he wouldn't be filming entire All Japan house shows if he knew the touch of a woman, but we thank his life choices for giving the Battery Life knowledge to get this gem. We've been going through a big batch of All Japan handhelds - which are my favorite thing - and when Matt saw there was a 20+ minute old man match he let me know that it was "an Eric kind of match". Not something that we would do for Found Footage Friday, but an Eric match. And so, I oblige.  

Because the thing is, 1990 was an incredible year for old man All Japan matches, mostly because they weren't all that old yet. Being an old man in these matches was more of a vibe than an actual number, because everyone except Baba was still in their 40s. Masa Fuchi was only 36, but he was someone who was always facially a 60 year old Salary Man with the crotchetiness of an 80 year old. Momota was my age, Eigen a bit older, and Rusher Kimura only 48. These men are my peers at this stage of the Old Man Match, but I don't think anyone would ever mistake Rusher Kimura for my peer as he was already spiritually an old man. 

Everyone in this match could still go. All of them were actual workers and the comedy was a bonus that was perfectly integrated into the stiffness instead of leaned on as a crutch to avoid taking too many bumps.  Their bodies may have been more stiff, but they could all still kick ass and lean into strikes. And this match had a lot of stiff strikes. 

Okuma, Fuchi, and Eigen come out in matching black tank tops, and the black tank crew starts the match by putting the damn boots to Rusher. Fuchi chokes Rusher over the ropes and goes after his ribs with a Bob Barker-like run of 20 straight hard kicks. Okuma comes in for some kicks, then Eigen comes in and adds 15 or so, then Fuchi comes back and starts it all over. Kimura does this amazing bit the entire time he's getting beaten to death, as he keeps slumping slightly farther and farther over with each kick until he was completely slouched in the ropes. That's the key to a lot of the comedy in this era of Old Men, where the joke is the result of actual stiffness and violence, their old man reaction to a real ass kicking. It's the way Baba would break up pins or submissions by walking slowly across the ring to throw a hard kick into someone's spine. It plays as physical comedy the entire time while also delivering a size 34 boot into Fuchi or Okuma's shoulder blades. Baba gets laughs by selling Okuma and Eigen's headbutts with exaggerated grimaces, rubbing his head like a bear who ran into a tree branch. His physical selling is very funny, but also very accurate, and also he is taking real headbutts from two guys who can throw headbutts. 

There is a headbutt exchange between Rusher and Okuma that starts out getting laughs, with Kimura doing silly little bunny hops into hands-free headbutts, but keeps progressing until it ends with Okuma headbutting him in the teeth three straight times. Eigen and Rusher might make funny faces while chopping each other, but Eigen is chopping the hell out of Rusher. You can see how hard Eigen's chops are landing thanks to the nice framing by our childless bachelor cameraman. Eigen isn't swinging through Rusher, he is swinging into Rusher, and since Rusher never moves at all while taking strikes he is just absorbing all of the impact. 

Speaking of good camera angles, we get a head-on view of Eigen when he inevitably spits onto the fine people and derelicts of Kashihara, right towards our lonely but fulfilled cameraman. Isn't it interesting that almost all the handhelds we have show the side view of Haruka Eigen spitting into the 2nd row. We don't get one head on nearly as often, and we almost never get one facing away from the camera. This gives us a new data point to add to our Eigen Spit pie chart, which is heavily dominated by stage left spitting. 

Momota and Okuma really up the speed, going at an unexpected juniors pace through some spirited quick exchanges, kind of quickly running through some bigger offense that you don't get in Old Man matches even just two years later. We're talking an Okuma piledriver leading into Momota doing a back suplex just a moment later, and all of that coming in the middle of other hard quick bumps. Momota was still a spry 42 - a young guy exactly the same age as me, a very young guy in his prime - but even I was surprised by some of his agility. He had a really smooth sunset flip out of the corner, and then an incredibly slick backslide to reverse a hiptoss. Wrestling in 2023 is all about athletic guys doing the same offense in athletic ways, but I don't think even the best of the modern quick Athletic Guy wrestlers (Ricochet, Mustafa Ali, any of the 40 AEW guys who work that style) could have made this backslide look as good as Momota did. Mitsuo Momota had a finisher worthy backslide that looked cool enough that I watched it back several times just to see his body physics. 

Everybody bumps big for Baba, of course. You're an incurable idiot if you do not run as fast as you can into Baba's giant boot and every member of the black tank crew knows this. We get some great moments around that boot, like Fuchi dramatically holding onto the ropes to avoid running into one, or Eigen doing the exact opposite and getting a full head of steam to run directly into it with seemingly no other plan. But nobody bumps bigger than Rusher Kimura, who absorbs a real impressive beating over the course of a long match which saw him involved more than anyone. Okuma and Fuchi and Eigen all hit him hard the whole match, but Okuma takes it up a level when he throws him through the ropes to the floor - a big bump for anyone but a bump Rusher shouldn't have been taking - and then throws him into and over the guardrail and beats his ass in the crowd. My boy Rusher eventually hobbles back to the ring holding his shoulder, and his body had to have been bruised up like a running back's. 

This was the best era of Old Men: the perfect mix of actual funny comedy and actual good wrestling, and when we get over 20 minutes of that it needs to be celebrated. These veterans are the true heroes. 

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Found Footage Friday: BABA~! LADD~! LAWLER~! NJPW BATTLE ROYAL~!

Giant Baba vs. Ernie Ladd AJPW 8/7/80

MD: This is slightly more Found than New. It was probably part of the big 1980 season set drop from 2019, but it was hard to figure out exactly what was new and what wasn't from that. Now that someone posted it to YouTube though, it's nice and easily accessible for everyone. This is more or less a spring between two brilliant, giant, lanky wrestlers. I think this was building to a bigger match later in the month at Korakuen. It hits all the marks you'd want for an eight minute match between these two. There aren't a ton of bumps, but when they come, they're giant and awkward. Given the size involved, Ladd makes taking a mare look like a car crash and obviously him eating a back body drop is all that and more. Likewise, the holds. Baba locking in a side headlock is like King Kong doing it to Godzilla. Ladd mostly stays in this with shots to the throat but Baba's quick to fire back and they brawl on the floor a couple of times, once with Ladd ending up tied up in chairs. The finish was pretty amazing as Ladd can take things from Baba that others can't, in this case, an actual Thesz press where Baba somehow landed on him like he was Earthquake. Of course, Ladd got his heat back after to set up the next match. Fun battle of the titans here.

Battle Royal NJPW 11/19/81

MD: This followed the opening ceremony to the tour and cagematch has it with a few extra guys that aren't actually there for the battle royal. Normally not a big deal but when those guys are Andre, Murdoch, and Hansen, it's a bit of let down. It means that the most interesting guys in the ring end up being Killer Khan and Pat Patterson, often paired up with one another. That's not too bad in and of itself, at least until Pat gets eliminated. It more or less settles down to some of the Japanese (maybe Sakaguchi, Choshu, Kimura, Yatsu, Fujinami?) on one side and a Samoan, Khan, and Tiger Toguchi (Kim Duk) on the other. Not bad but still not Andre, Hansen, and Murdoch. Even then, it was weird lopsided as the Japanese side (who had the numbers advantage to begin with) worked together and the other side didn't (Patterson did more for the other side from the outside than they did for one another). And then when Sakaguchi was put into positions to make saves, he had to force himself to be a few seconds slow and it was all very labored. Anyway, this wasn't nearly as fun as the Battle Royal we covered a few months ago from the middle of the decade.

Jerry Lawler vs. Big Bully Douglas USA Championship Wrestling 4/13/02

MD: Lots of new stuff from Bryan Turner's channel. I was going to write up a Tracy Smothers vs. Kory Williams brawl, but the merrily accepted "string him up" chants by the 1997 Cooksville audience made it a bit much to cover, so it's back to the paragon of virtue that is Jerry Lawler instead. And this was a pretty perfect bullshit 2002 babyface Lawler match. Douglas was a bald bruiser sort, a lifer in these Nashville indies. With Ernest T at ringside, he could play a proper foil for Lawler, having just enough credible power offense and able to stooge and feed enough to make it all work with Lawler doing the heavy lifting with his selling, strikes, and overall timing.

The opening of this was wonderful gaga, as Ernest kept slipping Douglas an object (horseshoe, knucks, chain) and Lawler dodged the corner shot, stole the weapon, distracted the ref by blaming Ernest, nailing Douglas, and then after the fact showing the ref the object that Ernest had slipped in. It got funnier each time he pulled it off and as Ernest and Dougls were getting more apoplectic. Eventually, he missed the fistdrop, though, and ate that power offense (suplex, side slam, etc) with a bit of help from Ernest on the outside and with Douglas pulling him up a couple of times at 2. The comeback was preceeded by Stacy slapping Ernest. The strap went down, the punches rained down, a stunner that we all want to forget about occurred, and Lawler lifted Douglas up after one pile driver to tease a second when Rapada ran in for the DQ. That opening sequence was pure distilled Memphis and the rest went down smooth.

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