Found Footage Friday: Universal Pro Wrestling 1992~!

Bulldog KT (Gedo)/Pat Tanaka/Villano IV vs. Coolie SZ (Jado)/Lightning Kid/Jerry Lynn Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: It's important you know that Lynn and co. come out to Don't Cry by Asia. Also that Pat Tanaka is a huge jerk in this match and I'm all for it. They did a lot in 20+ minutes over three falls. It was fun to see Villano work with Lynn (bounding fast exchanges) and Kid (hitting him really, really hard and then taking all of Waltman's karate bs). The heels worked together well, lots of setting a babyface up for a double team or single shot. There were some nice pushes by Tanaka, on a suplex to give it extra oomph and then to set up the finish by basically shoving a victory rolling Lynn and Villano out of the ring. Gedo and Jado generally worked together but their stuff looked practiced, solid, and usually pretty mean. After coming back from a relatively long, cycled beatdown, Lynn broke up a hold on Kid and they hit a tandem missile dropkick/Northern Lights. Second fall had some funnier stuff from Lynn as he tossed Tanaka into the corner and Tanaka twisted twice on the way and then got down on his hands and knees and dog barked Gedo out of the ring. But it came back together for the fireworks down the stretch. 

ER: I was pretty blown away by this, a frenetically based long three falls match where every guy is working fast and hitting harder. Everyone had standout moments, with Jerry Lynn being the guy who blew me away the most. Lynn looked ready to work any promotion in the world, breezing into Japan and working smoking hot dodging and tumbling sequences with Villano IV, throwing perfect snug execution on everything he attempted. His offense makes extravagant bumps look necessary. When he hits a dropkick to Villano IV, it makes sense that it sends him flying out of the ring; when he blasts Pat Tanaka with a clothesline, he swings it so hard that it makes Tanaka's inside out flip bump seem like the natural way to get eaten by that clothesline. Everything Lynn did was crisp, established the pacing of the match, and followed through to logical match building conclusions. When I say I was blown away, I mean it. Jerry Lynn is a guy who I view as a known quantity. We've all seen many JL matches, we all know he's talented, the industry respects him, he's worked everywhere, etc. But seeing Lynn here is like seeing him for the first time, seeing things he was capable of that never defined his style. Lynn really could do it all...but I don't know how often I've seen him doing It better than he does here. 

The thing is, everyone kind of comes off that way. Jado and Gedo as beefed up Mr. Perfect Singlet Boys is the most interesting version of them in the 90s. I love the wave of T&C Surf Designs inspired Japanese indy wrestlers of the late 80s/early 90s, from the surf punks surrounding the ring in the most violent late 80s FMW Different Style bouts, to these two beefy Malibu boys in their mullets and surf suits. It's unfathomable to me that 1992 Jado and Gedo had great clotheslines, but video doesn't lie. Jado throws a top rope clothesline as hard as Ikeda ever threw, and that's arguably the toughest clothesline to throw well. Gedo blows up Jado with a clothesline that would get Tenryu's attention, and it's a wildly more interesting version of themselves than all their bad juniors wrestling the rest of the decade. 

If Pat Tanaka was a real jerk - he was! - then Villano IV might have been an outright sadist. This man was in his late 20s and a physical danger. If I praised Lynn's execution, then V4 deserves the same praise. Everything he does has such force behind it. He has these cool kneedrops, where he starts from a kneeling position and drives a knee into his opponent's temple, and I'm not sure I've ever seen legdrops thrown with more force. I didn't think you could get such impact from a standing legdrop, but Villano made them look like real finishers. 

But the thing that really stood out in a match filled with standouts, was Villano IV and Lightning Kid starting off the third fall with a literal shoot fight on the floor. I couldn't tell why it escalated, but they clearly start throwing increasingly harder and harder shots during a routine sequence. I don't know the exact moment it turned unprofessional, but Villano knocked Kid to the floor and Kid came up throwing elbows meant to crack jaws, and Villano recognized the intent behind those elbows immediately and landed five straight punches to Kid's face and head. This all happened within 15 seconds, where a hard Villano club to the back turned into a Kid shoot elbow, and suddenly Kid was fleeing while wisely shielding his face as Villano finds every uncovered part and lands every punch he throws. No idea what happened, but there's no mistaking those punches for worked, and whatever might have happened didn't affect Kid's big comeback in the tercera, which played as great retribution. Villano IV stood in for spin kicks and cooperated to make it look like a strong comeback, taking all of his kicks and making the decision to not punch him directly in the face, again. 

Gran Hamada/Panterita del Ring vs. Shu el Guerrero/Scorpio Jr. Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: Shu and Scorpio come out to Simply Irresistible. Good for them. Anyway, I struggle a little with matches like this. There's just not a ton to say. There were 12+ minutes of bits/spots to start, and they were good! A lot of them were really good. But do I just list them? There wasn't a lot of rhyme or reason to them. There was a little bit of progression with early matwork, but after that, it was off into bit-land. Yes, Shu based well. Yes, Scorpio had some moments of stooging, including a great one where Pandrita was able to roll through on something, drive him out, and force him to walk down the ramp hands up in retreat so there was no dive. There was a great bit where Shu swiped away a Panterita dropkick and slapped his chest repeatedly only to end up in the corner for a knee driving headscissors takeover. Hamada in general looked like a million bucks. Then they had a few minutes of beatdown which was, again good (really liked a catapult where Shu choked Hamada down onto Scorpio's knees), and a comeback with a strike exchange and some big dives, before Shu scored a clutch powerbomb and a pretty swank tied up pin. Definitely good action. A lot of character and personality. Super entertaining. I'm sure DEAN would have been able to write the hell out of this. But all I can do is bear witness.

Kendo/Great Sasuke vs. Rocky Santana/Super Delfin Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: This was the main event, 2/3 falls. By the way, the first match on the show, that we don't have, is Black Magic vs Rey Bucanero. Though it's 92 Bucanero so he was like 12. Ah well. Kendo comes out with a soccer type shirt with himself on it. The fans are immediately behind him.

The initial Kendo vs. Santana and Sasuke vs. Delfin exchanges (two times) are a lot of fun. Nice tricked out back and forth with Kendo and Santana where they both hit the mat hard and Sasuke being insanely flexible against Delfin. Some nice comedic bits in there as well, like Santana getting skidded out and Kendo sliding out to invite him back in and Santana faceplanting a few times. It's mostly friendly though Delfin takes (and misses) a swipe at one point. The fall ends with the pairings getting switched up and Sasuke flying off the top on both Santana and Delfin leading to a funny bit where they toss Kendo off and Sasuke tosses him back on until he finally sits on all of them for the pin.

Second fall switches the pairings for real, with Delfin falling for all of Kendo's tricks and Santana feeding for Sasuke. The rudos take over though and run a beatdown on one than the other than the first again. They tease a comeback but Delfin gets a tornado DDT and locks up Kendo for the pin. After that, Kendo gets rolled out of the ring hurt, and I thought this was going to turn into a different sort of match. It lets the de facto rudos control for a bit but Kendo just comes back in pissed a few minutes later and he gets into the most ridiculous kneeling strike exchange with Santana that I've ever seen. They whack each other, then fall over backwards then get counted and pop back up and do it some more. It goes on for quite a while and it is a crowd pleaser. After that, they pop right into dives with Sasuke knocking everyone out with the Space Flying Tiger Drop to get the countout win. Definitely fun. Might have been interesting to see it take a more grisly turn but that's not what they were doing here. 

ER: I love these proto-MPro matches where you can see the style almost fully gestated, the lightheartedness with the stiffness, the innovative movement with the strong lucha inspiration. I love Rocky Santana within this world. He understood the kind of regional lucha comedy that would crossover well to Japanese Indies, while also working stiff enough to capture the attention of the rest of the crowd. They laughed when Santana charged into the ring and tripped on the bottom rope, face planting into the ring and crying to the ref for support. When he did the exact same thing in the second fall, they ate it up, fully understanding his vibe. He bases as well as Hamada and moves the same, but he'll also break down and start punching people. The whole match building to a long stretch where Kendo and Santana kneel in front of each other and do several minutes of stiff punches, comedy punches, and exhausted punches, is brilliant. We've all seen enough "two men throwing strikes with no defense" at this point, but it's crazy how many innovative versions of that exist on small lucha shows and Japanese Indies. This exchange starts normal...until the strikes start becoming unexpected, sometimes silly, sometimes mean, thrown in a totally unpredictable rhythm. It looked like Kendo and Santana were playing some kind of memory game that nobody else knew the rules to, and this memory game involved being punched in the jaw, ear, and neck. I've never seen an exchange like it, one that had multiple goals and just kept going until everyone in the building was on board. That's wrestling, baby. 

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Found Footage Friday: SAD GENIUS~! GRANS HAMADA & GUERRA~! GYPSY JOE~!

La Gran Guerra: Jason the Terrible/Chicky Starr/Iron Sheik/Ron Starr vs. Carlos Colon/Ricky Santana/Rufus R. Jones/TNT WWC 10/29/88

EB: On December 12 and 13 of 1987, Capitol Sports Promotions held for the first time ever the La Gran Guerra match, which pitted members of the heroic El Ejercito de la Justicia against members of the villainous El Club Deportivo. La Gran Guerra is two rings enclosed by a steel cage with all team members starting the match together. Handcuffs are located around the sides of the cage and the objective is to handcuff your opponents in order to neutralize and take them out of the fight. The winners are the team that is able to handcuff all of the opposing team’s members first. And the prize for winning is that you get to uncuff your teammates and then get 5 minutes to attack your neutralized opponents at your own leisure. The two sides have each won one La Gran Guerra match and now, ten and half months after the first two matches were held, a third La Gran Guerra is set to happen.

The date is October 29, 1988 and we are almost two months removed from the big Aniversario show main evented by Carlos Colon vs Hercules Ayala in a fire match. This feud continued beyond Aniversario, with Colon and Ayala engaging in several rematches that escalated to a stretcher match and most recently a Texas Death match on October 8. Colon and Ayala are captaining their respective teams for this third La Gran Guerra, but while Colon is competing in the match for El Ejercito de la Justicia, Ayala will be captaining from ringside for El Club Deportivo. Ayala is unable to compete due to a neck injury suffered when Carlos Colon piledrove him on the arena floor during their Texas Death match. He’ll be here supporting his team, even if he’s there in a neck brace at ringside.

Joining Carlos Colon on the El Ejercito de la Justicia are a veteran of the previous two La Gran Guerra matches in TNT and two first timers in Rufus R Jones and Ricky Santana. For El Club Deportivo it is none other than Chicky Starr leading the charge, joined by his cousin Ron Starr, the Iron Sheik (a key member of the team that won the second La Gran Guerra) and Jason the Terrible (who is making his return to Puerto Rico after a year and half away). Ron and Jason are competing in their first La Gran Guerra match. All combatants are in the ring so let the war begin. 

MD: There has been a lot of talk about modern cage matches and about how the cage is seen as something to climb or something to escape or something to fight on top of. That's in contrast to decades ago where a cage was somewhere where there could be no interference, where there could be no running, where feuds had to end. Gran Guerra takes it a step further even. In these, the goal is not to contain the action, but to constrain it. Instead of one more person entering every few minutes, wrestlers are removed instead. The action becomes tighter and more focused as it goes on and more and more wrestlers are handcuffed. 

Here the blood came quickly as people were tossed into the cage. Santana bled first but he was soon joined by almost everyone, with Jason as the obvious and striking exception. For the first few minutes, they stayed in one ring and ignored the other, just making everything feel all the more claustrophobic. When they did venture out into the second, it was more to allow for the handcuffing to be spaced out geographically than anything else. Colon and Jason were matched up for most of this and they would be the ones to end it.

These days interference happens in almost every cage match, just another way the gimmick has been diminished over time. But matches should serve purposes, not just to entertain and titillate. Dissonance creates heat. The cage is supposed to be a way to end feuds, to allow violence to run its course. In a world where that is true, where the last thing people expect is interference, it can cause amazing heat. In a world where it happens all the time, then there's much more to be gained by NOT having interference, because that's what goes against expectation. Then, one time out of ten, do it. That's how things played out here, with Ayala throwing in salt as Colon was about to win. Not only did it cost the babyfaces match, it also meant that they were beat on mercilessly for the next five minutes as per the stipulation. Here, because it was set up to matter, that meant even hotter rematches between the babyfaces and the heels and more tickets sold. So yes, there was interference here, but it's shown to be the exception that proves the rule.

ER: It can be tough watching such a large scale two ring match in fuzzy video quality, action further obscured by being shot through a chain link cage, but here it feels like we're seeing what anyone sitting in the cheap seats would be seeing at a huge blowoff event. The action can be hard to follow, but when the action is all blood-drawing punches you know you're just seeing the universal pro wrestling language being spoken. Blood flows early and often (Ricky Santana is so bloody that for all I know he hit the blade in the dressing room) and my favorite thing about it was TNT in there throwing all variety of full extension high kicks and spin kicks. In a match where every man is punching and using the cage, it's awesome to be the guy throwing huge kicks that play to the back row. All of his kicks look great, especially the ones to Chicky and Jason. Chicky is a great guy to see sell a kick, but I loved the match long story of Jason just walked through every kick to his mask, no matter how hard or spectacular, and finally fell flat on his face after a high kick to the back of his head. This is fucking Jason! Conventional weapons cannot harm him, conventional kicks cannot move him, and finally TNT finds his weak spot. This doesn't seem like the kind of match they could have done in PR just a decade before, as I've heard of far smaller things causing riots. Ayala throwing salt in Colon's eyes leading to all the babyfaces taking an unprotected 5 minute beatdown should have brought back the glory days of rioting. I don't think it would have been possible for the heels to make it past one minute without the cage being swarmed. 

Sad Genius vs. Gran Hamada 9/5/00

MD: I know Genius has other Texas Death Matches but I haven't seen them. But on some level this is a brilliant exercise in futility and frustration for Gran Hamada. Genius comes in with this amazing level of confidence, belt around his waist, pulling his hand back on the shake, and then he immediately gets rolled up by Hamada. this is a Texas Death Match though (the traditional style that can ONLY end in the ten count after a fall), so no big deal. He just gets up and keeps wrestling. Then he ends up in a cross arm breaker and almost immediately taps out. And he just gets up, selling the arm a bit, but otherwise unperturbed. Why not tap out? You have ten seconds to get back up after that. There's no reason to stay in a hold in a Texas Death Match with these specific rules except for pride, and this guy is somehow perfectly delusional and self-aware at the exact same time. 

In the face of all of this, Hamada is Hamada. He is full of pride. He, even in 2000, can still land on his feet out of a takeover, no problem. And yet he's been tossed into this bizarre world against this bizarre wrestler who was obviously capable and talented, with these rules that drive him increasingly nuts. Yes, Genius would take advantage of the ability to escape any hold he wanted and would come back with a clubbering shot or two, but Hamada just plowed through and kept things coming, escalating his offense and those holds. There was a path where he could eventually get Genius either hurt enough, knocked out enough, or humiliated enough that he'd stay down and that journey might have be compelling, but everything just sort of fizzled out as either Hamada or Genius or the ref or god himself just had enough and this ended without meaningful conclusion.

ER: I'll be honest: I've watched a lot of wrestling in my life, but I can't pretend I knew who Sad Genius was before this week. Maybe I heard about him once, who's to say. I've already forgotten enough names of movies, bands, actors, whatever, to fill books. If I'd heard tale of Sad Genius before a few days ago, they've been forced out by newer but not necessarily more interesting knowledge. Sad Genius is essentially a trust fund kid who keeps trying to buy his way into high society but is never accepted by the peers he seeks. It feels like he's doing a fake title belt Andy Kaufman bit, only if Andy got actually good at pro wrestling fundamentals and wanted to be taken seriously as a wrestler instead of just using wrestling as a medium for chaos. Sad Genius even looks like Andy Kaufman, right down to the exact same grown out at the sides combover Kaufman was sporting in 1982. 

This match is about 10 minutes long, and the entire time it feels like something teetering into a shoot. You get a real sense that there were details Gran Hamada was not told and he is finding them out over the course of the match. Hamada recognizes this man, whose name sounds like a bedroom shoegaze project, is Up to No Good. I am positive that Hamada was not told about the Texas Death rules. I am positive about that, as the only interpretation of what happens in the first 30 seconds of this match, is that Hamada recognizes Sad Genius is Up to No Good and shoot pins him with an inside cradle. Hamada dragged this man into an inside cradle and looked upset to learn that the house style was Texas Death. He wrestled the rest of the match like that and looked constantly perturbed and guarded, like he couldn't wait to lace into Genius for this shit. And that's before Genius kicks Hamada in the stomach a couple times as hard as he can, or hits the most shootstyle rolling kappo kick possible, or drops him on the back of his head with a back suplex. I'm confident nobody has told me about MUGA-trained Andy Kaufman before. I would remember that. 

Hamada still does flying, but he does it in this fascinating untrusting way, knowing he has to force Genius to catch a pescado, he throws dropkicks like he's expecting his target to move, and he keeps taking Genius down with armbars that keep turning more serious...but Genius never does act up. He just looks like he keeps getting shoot taken down and arm barred by a 50 year old legend until somebody in jeans gets on the apron and starts yelling. Sad Genius is either a great salesman or Gran Hamada actually hurt his arm, and there's a feeling that no matter what happens in any of these matches, Sad Genius is getting awarded the title. There's a 10 minute post-match interview with him and it plays like a video deposition of a man hesitant to give up his family. Sad Genius would have made a 500. 

JR:The music swells. You need to hear it for yourself. It starts out like music you’d normally hear through shitty laptop speakers and suddenly it swells, like when something diegetic becomes the needle drop over a montage. It dawns on me at this moment that I’m watching a haunted object. Not something cursed but something possessed and controlled by the spirit of Sad Genius. It dawns on me again when he is pinned almost immediately via a small package that looks uncooperative. Hamada looks confused and part of me wonders if he knows the rules to the match and then the referee starts counting as though it’s a Texas Death Match without weapons or cowboy boots or hatred. You can see in Gran Hamada’s eyes that he is in a wrestler’s stress dream. He is in the ring and he has no idea what the finish is, what the rules are. It’s a dream and he can’t go anywhere. His eyes are narrowed and wet and confused and Sad Genius stares back with the eyes of the man who used to come in to the library and tell me that fractals and zeroes were gateways to other dimensions. Hamada has no alternatives. He fights, applying an arm bar and winning and then hearing a bell and then starting over. The referee got to eight that time. He is stuck chasing a ghost, hearing an invisible audience. Suddenly he leaves. He breaks out. He wakes up. We are left behind. Maybe it was our dream all along. We are the ones trapped. Sad Genius has his arm raised, and we follow him back to the locker room. He’s sitting in a folding chair and speaking, staring into space just beyond the plane of the camera. We can now see the cameraman. We must be in the room, it’s the only explanation. He is staring at us. We can’t understand what he’s saying. The camera man is gone by now. Sad Genius is staring at us when the video ends.

 

Sad Genius vs. Gypsy Joe 1/19/03 

MD: There were not many people in this crowd, which sort of tracks and is not at all a surprise, but it does give this a distinct feeling like it's being wrestled specifically for us almost twenty-three years later. If the Hamada match was a novelty, this was a spectacle and pretty much everything one might have expected. For the first few minutes of this, Genius (who had his music start back up as he disrobed) and Joe (who came out to Dust in the Wind, of course) absolutely kill each other. After a couple of clean breaks, Genius launches just the nastiest kicks and then Joe brutalizes him with chops. There was one little short elbow that Joe hit that I went back and watched ten times because it was the best peppering shot I've seen in ages. Genius finally has enough and hits the floor only to start in on Joe's legs on the posts. If we had another five minutes of this I imagine it would be just as imagined.  

Instead, two masked Karate Guys come running in and it becomes an impromptu tag match with both of them working over Genius until he could get a dragon screw leg whip on one. Joe comes in just mauls them in the best way including taking all their chops like they were nothing. Genius gets in on the act too including Inoki pumphandles, but he gets hit by this hilarious low blow kick. He comes back anyway and hits a belly to back to win it and it's just all wonderfully ridiculous. Post-match Joe is ready to fight anyone in Tokyo and wants more people to show up next time.

ER: Sometime between the Hamada match and this match, Sad Genius added disrobing music. He keeps his robe one right up to the bell, when a 3 second power riff plays, timed to his disrobing and kicking off the match. Joe is 70 and definitely doesn't know who Sad Genius is, and at first I thought he was going to wrestle this in a t-shirt but instead he treats this guy like Fujinami. Genius hits three stiff as hell kicks to Joe's chest and Joe treats him like an asshole, at one point throwing a jab of an elbow point into Genius's eye. The double ninja DQ robbed us of any kind of chaotic finish and means we never get to see Joe try to break this guy's nose. Joe does do a 70 year old kneedrop off the top to one of the ninjas and that feels like one of the most dangerous things a man his age could possibly do. 

JR: Sad Genius disrobes in time with a music cue that hits with the force of a horror movie jump scare or a hammer or a bottle breaking. At this point I think it is not farfetched to assume we are in the presence of a trickster god. The front row here is completely empty this time. I cannot tell if it is the same building. It looks like it. It might not even be a building but a dimension. A domain. Gypsy Joe looks incredible and looks as though he is decomposing. He is wondrous. Sad Genius is beautiful and it is easy to see why so many gave him so many chances. While I’m thinking this, two masked men in karate outfits attack everyone. They do not look like trained pro wrestlers. They are resplendent. Suddenly, Joe and Sad Genius are united. They are on our side. They are on a side together. It feels like a moral impossibility for Sad Genius to understand the idea of comradery. There is someone off camera yelling instructions in English. There are probably voices speaking in languages that do not exist if I dare turn the volume up any louder. 

The bell never ends anything in this match. There is a winner and the fight continues. The sacred space bleeds into something profane that only Sad Genius understands. He lays out wrestling matches like an alien who had wrestling explained to them by a child and then thought about it for a thousand years. He lays out wrestling matches like those chess computers that have only ever played chess against other computers. One of the karate men hits Sad Genius in the groin and he doubles in pain, and something so normal and recognizable and banal feels uncanny. Music plays and there is another winner and the two men with faces are attacked again. The bell never means anything. Eventually the karate men stop returning into the frame. It feels final and I can’t say how. The camera follows Joe and Sad Genius out, back into a locker room. They speak in English. They speak past one another. We are left with a still shot of a grey hallway, like something out of a Tsai Ming Liang film. I can still see it with my eyes closed.
 

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Found Footage Friday: KACE~! CRAMMER~! LOS COWBOYS~! HAMADA~! BABE FACE~! INDOMITO~! M-PRO 8-MAN~!

Johnny Kace vs. George Crammer NWA Chicago 1961

MD: I was doing so well with the Monterrey footage too, but I just can't resist going for the matches that people are showing interest in with this old US footage. People were describing this as a Regal vs Finlay archetype and I can sort of see it but it almost comes off as a proto-UWF match in some ways. These are two guys that get very little discussion overall. We have maybe two or three other Kace matches, for instance. The 60s are just a black hole relatively, unfortunately. He was the NWA Midwest Heavyweight Champion here and the title was on the line. 

And this was just fifteen minutes of mean, dogged, pro wrestling. Kace charged right in to start with a top wristlock and worked the nastiest hammerlock you'd see. That was the thing with both wrestlers. They constantly worked every hold on both ends. That could mean constantly torquing a toehold or driving down and in with a hammerlock or trying to get some sort of leverage to escape only to have the opponent topple your bridge with a tiny movement. It was constant shifting, constant pressure, constant selling. Constant motion in a way that made the match feel competitive and ramped up the stakes and consequence for everything that happened.

There was always the sense that each wrestlers was one well placed punch away from a reversal. Kace controlled early but Crammer would take over with some gut punches and a hammerlock of his own. They'd work up to slugging one another and then back down into a hold and back up again. Kace was obviously a mean bastard with a mean mug and Crammer had the fans behind him through ruthlessly and mercilessly giving Kace everything he deserved, making him choke on a poetic taste of his own medicine. There was no semblance of shine/heat/comeback here, just constant pressure creating implicit storytelling. Crammer would eventually shift to the leg but Kace snuck out and hit a few backbreakers for the win. Even though he came off as entirely credible in victory, it still felt more like he survived the challenge by the skin of his teeth than anything else. That's how hard they were going at one another.

Gran Hamada/Silver King/El Texano vs. Dr. Wagner, Jr./Indomito/Babe Face CMLL 1991

MD: Good and heated.. The central pairing was Texano and Indomito. If you're not familiar with Indomito, he was a Black Power in UWA and a Payaso (Coco Amarillo) in AAA. In the middle he was dressed in a powder blue Zardoz type gear with poofy Ronnie Garvin hair. He had a boxing background but wasn't really going to compare to the punches Babe Face and Hamada (a secondary pairing) were throwing at each other. This started with a rudo ambush and he was good at directing traffic and keeping things laser focused on Texano, who I think, ended up bleeding. The tecnicos did an unusually good job at rushing the ring time and again to try to take back over, only to get beaten back. Usually it's all just beatings and churning until the actual comeback. My favorite bit in the primera was right at the end; Wagner and Babe Face were getting the submissions in the ring and Indomito just slammed Texano's head sideways into the board around the ring again and again and again. Truly the violence we need in this world.

Rushing the ring did work at the start of the segunda and we got a nice bloody bit of revenge. Indomito's bleached blonde hair was made for it. Tercera settled down to exchanges and a lot of Silver King/Texano's usual double teams which were all ahead of their time and smooth and effective. Finish was novel. Instead of clearing the ring for the final pairing, Hamada had Babe Face in a submission in the corner. Indomito redirected a charging Texano into the ref and took advantage with a foul. Nice little twist on the theme to cap off a good one. I have nothing to say about Wagner here except for how striking it is how little he stands out for basically the first third of his career considering what he becomes later. He's in the right place at the right time doing the right thing mostly, but it's sure not ever interesting.

Jinsei Shinzaki/Gran Naniwa/Hideki Nishida/Kazuya Yuasa vs. Kintaro Kanemura/Dick Togo/Tomohiro Ishii/Macho Pump Michinoku Pro-Wrestling 8/14/02

MD: Tough fan cam angle for this one as we miss the early crowd brawling and then have the babyface corner right in the center of the shot for a lot of the rest but these characters are so larger than life you're never at a loss for what was going on. They spent the first six minutes or so (once they got back into the ring) beating up on Macho Pump. Nishida lit him up with chops. Naninwa stomped all over him. Shinzaki walked the ropes. As with these big M-Pro tags, the section maybe wore out its welcome a little but really, who doesn't want to see Macho Pump get mauled? The heels take over on Yuasa and Kanemura, unsurprisingly, stands out. We really haven't covered enough of his stuff on the site but it all seems so self-evident. Just a big scummy, scuzzy, agile, charismatic, guy who comes at things from unique angles and who isn't afraid to crash and burn. Things eventually break down to Kanemura vs Shinzaki before cycling into pairings and finally landing, after the ring gets cleared, on Naniwa vs Pump, with Pump hitting or trying to hit all of his Rock offense and Nanina always a half step ahead. Structurally this was probably the proper balance but I probably would have liked it a little more if they had cycled through pairings to start as opposed to just having the faces beat on Macho Pump. I felt like we didn't get enough Togo in this one, for instance. 

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Found Footage Friday: UNDERCARD MONTERREY~! RAMBO~! SOLAR II~! GRAN HAMADA~! SKELETOR~! LUCHADORAS~!

Rambo/Engendro/Alacran vs. Huracan Jr/Solar II/Gran Hamada (Monterrey 1991)

MD: From the initial promo, I thought this might be a showcase for Huracan, Jr, billed as Ramirez' son but actually his nephew. He was more known as a UWA guy as were Rambo and Engendero, the latter of which was part of Los Desafiantes with Scorpio, Jr. and Shu. I wouldn't say Huracan got any more of the spotlight than Solar II or Hamada though. He was matched with Egendero but was the last pairing to get to go and while Egendero based well for him, they didn't get to do much. In that primera, Solar and Alacran matched up well, but what stood out the most, even with just a few shots, was how Rambo and Hamada were very natural opponents. Rambo just got it and Hamada wasn't afraid to throw a headbutt or a punch to send him sprawling and stooging.

They kept it moving and entertaining, with Alacran bumping from his own partners in the primera. Rambo took over with a fairly blatant foul in the segunda but they had crowd control well-managed and it was a solid beatdown ending with Engendero absolutely squashing Hamada with a somersault senton off the top. The comeback was driven by some rudo miscommunication on an elbow smash and they went into one of the usual high energy celebratory finishing stretches with a big dive by Solar and Hamada crushing Alacran with a belly to back. It only went twenty or so but it covered most of the bases.

Skeletor/Astro Negro vs. Angel del Espacio II/Johnny Curiel (Monterrey 1991)

MD: This was as undercard a match as you could get save for maybe the finish, a pair of dives that led to a count out (though being an undercard match, the escalation to dives was an acceptable finish for a tercera). That's not Angel del Espacio. It's Angel del Espacio II. That said, these guys were constantly moving and put a lot into this, placement on the card be damned. Skeletor (who may or may not have been Bronco - I'm leaning towards not) had the baggy MOTU mask and the big gestures to the crowd and bumped all over the place for armdrags and everything else. Astro Negro and Johnny Curiel were like mirror images of one another, journeymen who could still go through the motions. Angel del Espacio (II) kept coming during the beatdown, forcing the rudos to work and stay on him. This certainly didn't wear out its welcome. 16 minutes was the exact right amount of time for it.

India Azteca/Venus vs. Selene/Guerrera Purpura (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Of note here, Guerrera Purpura would become Lady Metal. This got really good as it went along. The rudas ambushed right from the get go and the tecnicas came back and because they cycled into some dubious exchanges, ruda miscommunication spots, and comedy (including that really fun spot where the tecnica slaps the mat as the rudas are on the outside, causing them to duck; then when their heads are down, she slaps both of them, making them think that they hit each other), I thought things would settle down into a pretty conventional match. That was not the case however. Instead, Guerrera Purpura got bled buckets after getting tossed into a row of chairs as part of a pretty brutal beatdown. After Guerrera Purpura recovered enough to storm the ring, the tecnicas would get their revenge through slamming their opponents into the posts, not a row of chairs. The finishing stretch had a bunch of fun bits until they brawled on the outside leading to a last second roll in by the tecnicas (Which much like the tercera dive count out finish from the last match just isn't something you see every day in lucha; oh and speaking of things you don't always see, make sure to catch the giant swing down the stretch).

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Found Footage Friday: CASAS~! CHARLES~! SIGNO~! DANDY~! HAMADA~! AZTECA~! TERRY~! FELICIANO~! SILVER KING~! BATMAN~?!

Batman/Chuy Escobedo/Ausente vs. Halcon de Oro/Mongol Chino/Astro Negro (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Some great names in the next couple of matches, but we have to see what we have here first. Astro Negro looks like a guy who never had a chance at recovering from losing his mask. Apparently he lost it to Mongol Chino so he's a forgiving sort. He is a mask maker of some renown ("El Pony") too. It's possible that Batman is a young Mr. Niebla but I couldn't say one way or the other (he had the swagger at least). The central story of the match was Batman vs Halcon de Oro.

I do have to admit that watching these six a month, it's nice to see the structure change up a bit. This was about Halcon dodging Batman. They cycled through Chuy vs Astro Negro (which was fine if slight) and Ausente vs Mongol Chino (nice and flowing; Ausente looked pretty good throughout) before teasing that third pairing between the prime combatants. Halcon took a powder, however, and upon reentering the ring, staged an ambush and started the beatdown. I haven't seen that sort of disruptiveness in a primera in a bit with these matches.

I'm not going to say that these were the smoothest guys we've seen in the Monterrey footage, but the segunda and tercera had the sort of wild abandon that's found in the best of these matches. The segunda started with a comeback and a lot of quick exchanges. Here we finally got a taste of Batman vs Halcon and they worked well together but it was just a taste, as Halcon got run off to the back to draw a count out. The tercera had a pretty brutal second beat down and an even more brutal comeback, wrought with mask ripping, before they cycled through submissions and break-ups and went for the ring-clearing dives: Chuy got all caught up on the ropes in a dive so that was brutal in its own way. Still, that left Batman and Halcon and from there it was a clear, crisp and direct tecnico triumph. The talent wasn't a high as it could be here, but the effort was admirable.

Negro Casas/Emilio Charles Jr/El Signo vs. El Dandy/Gran Hamada/Angel Azteca (Monterrey 1991)

MD: We lose some of the beginning, I think (my guess is an initial Signo vs Hamada pairing). We lose a lot of the tercera. It's still 22 minutes of these guys being absolutely amazing. The level of talent, commitment, trust, confidence is just off the charts. You have matches that follow a certain structure, that might be one dimension or two dimensional, moving this way or that on an axis or two. With these guys, there's a new dimension added. At any point they can deviate from what seemed to be going on in the match, take a side journey, but never, ever lose the true north of where they need to return to and their destination for that point of the match.

Look at the primera. We come in on Dandy and Casas doing their thing, sweeping movements, counters and counters to counters, all building to Casas putting his head down and getting kicked backwards and the two brawling out of the ring. Then it's Azteca and Charles, with tighter holds full of struggle. It breaks down after that, with the rudos having an advantage on Dandy, only for him to flip the switch and make a rolling hot tag. That allows Hamada to come in and crush everyone with headbutts. That entire mini beatdown segment was a deviation and they managed it flawlessly before heading back to where they would have been going without it. It adds drama and a sense of organic believability in the match. So much of lucha is ritual and meeting expectations, but these guys were good enough to switch partners and weave in whole bits without ever losing the plot or confusing the crowd. It could be something as simple as a Hamada/Signo strike exchange or Casas rope running with Hamada, eating an enzuigiri and stumbling right into Dandy's fist.

With lesser talents, the match would leave the ground, devolve into chaos or endless spots, and would never come back. These guys, though, could take moon leaps and always move in the right direction and land and sprint before leaping off again. There's talent and then there's mastery and people like Casas, Dandy, and Charles are in that rare, rare group of the latter.

Jose Luis Feliciano/Black Terry/Mr Terror vs. Silver King/Asterisco/Centurion Negro (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Great to see two thirds of the Temerarios here, but man is Mr. Terror ever not Shu El Guerrero. Moreover, the focus on this match was Terror vs Asterisco. There were pros and cons to that. I'm not going to say Terror brought nothing to the table. There was some mask ripping, some decent enough battering during beatdowns (though Feliciano and Terry were kind of edging him out to get shots in), and he took an entirely admirable bump on a back body drop on the floor to set up the finish to the primera, but his big move tends to be a clothesline (in a match where Silver King's was way better) and there's not much else there.

The flip side is that we got to see Terry and Feliciano go up against Centurion Negro and Silver King for a lot of this and all of that was great. Terry started with Centurion with all of the little movements and earnest openings you'd want from lucha matwork. Feliciano and Silver King brought the motion and all of them hit hard when it was time to do so. This one had too much heat on the ref too. That wasn't uncommon for the Monterrey footage but here it played too much into the finish and the ref got his comeuppance instead of Terror. Usually when watching a match with a singular focus like this, you come off annoyed that the apuestas match either never happened or we don't have it. I could probably live without seeing Asterisco vs Mr. Terror mano a mano though.

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Found Footage Friday: CASAS~! PANTHER~! PANTERITA~! HAMADA~! ARANDU~!

Blue Panther vs. Panterita del Ring CMLL 1991

MD: Panterita took on the identity as tribute to Blue Panther and they worked this one with the level of effort and intensity you'd expect accordingly. It was chippy throughout and this was my favorite iteration of Blue Panther, that perfectly balanced rudo, able to work the mask, beg off when the time came, play to the crowd, be absolutely brutal with the outside guardrail, but really to overlay all of that over the things that Panther is known for: crispness, technical soundness, etc. It's the best of both worlds. This is a guy who could tie you in a knot but that's also going to win the second fall here with a foul just because he can, both endlessly credible and a total shitheel all at once.

Panterita was the local hero that you'd expect, meeting Panther halfway with violence in the primera, eating his beating after heel ref Guerrero held him back in the segunda, and then coming back big in the tercera leading to a series of exciting nearfalls from both wrestlers. There were no stakes here. This was a prelude to the title match and that was supposed to be prelude to an apuestas match, but between the hard shots, mask undoing, and nearfalls, they worked it like it was a bigger deal than it was, like it was a feud ender instead of a feud starter. And hey, Guerrero even got his by eating an errant Panterita dropkick which allowed another official to reluctantly come in and count for Panterita. That gave all of this the proper air of disruption and unfinished business to set up the next match. 

ER: Oh the foolish things I would do for the woman in giant hoop earrings and white bike shorts who accompanies Blue Panther to the ring. I really liked the pace of this, how quickly Panterita takes Panther out with a tope, and how fast and violent all of the strikes look. Panther throws short arm fast knife edge chops that really sting like hell, and it's one way he's able to outquick Panterita. Panterita gets a quick primera win and Panther pays him back by kneeing him in the balls in the segunda. I love how Panther is able to switch back and forth from technician to asshole, with some small elements of John Tatum panic. The fought-for sunset flips looked great, with Panterita really looking like he was trying to drag him over and Panther looking like he was constantly adjusting his weight to stop it, but it got even better when Panther was nearly screaming while holding the ropes, freaking out until Panterita got off him. And of course, whenever Panterita was separated from him, Panther would go back to being an asshole with a fresh start, ripping at his mask after Panterita was stopped from doing so before the segunda. Heel ref Guerrero takes the best bump of the match, a dropkick from Panterita sending him crashing fast to the floor with Fuerza-like speed. The nearfalls were all strong and all felt like they could actually end the match, and the Panterita huracanrana win was a legitimate surprise, with Panther throwing a fit on the house mic after. 

Negro Casas/Ponzona/Monje Negro vs. Panterita del Ring/Gran Hamada/Shibata

MD: I was super high on the two Casas vs Panterita trios from last week but this didn't quite rise to the same level. Some of that was the VQ being as rough as we've seen in this footage, but a lot of it was a lack of that single-minded focus. This was trying to have it both ways too much, threatening to boil over again and again only to settle back down to stilted exchanges. There wasn't a long beatdown or big comeback. The finish was a Casas dodging a kick and pretending to be fouled.

There was still a lot to like though. Whenever Casas and Panterita got into it, it was strong scuffling, no question. They had great chemistry. It makes me wonder if there's not some random Negro Casas vs Hombre Sin Nombre or Ephesto exchange worth tracking down. Monje Negro is a guy I want to see more of, just a hefty monk who is like a brick wall out there. We got a tease of Hamada vs Casas but just that; he carries himself with so much confidence and certainty though. And Shibata looked really good too; he's a local known for training people as varied as Hechicero and Latin Lover if I'm not mistaken. Just a competent pro. So this was fine but it I would have liked it to commit a little more either to set exchanges or the chaos of Casas vs Panterita.     

Arandu vs. Panterita del Ring CMLL 1991

MD: Again rough VQ here with some clipping of key moves, but not anything you can't look past. We didn't lose the overfall flow, just seconds here and there. Given that there were less people in the ring, it was easier to follow too. Arandu was quite the journeyman and this had the making of a provincial grudge match. We've seen enough now to know that Panterita could hold his own in the role of local hero. Arandu made a great foil for him.

Here he ambushed him from the get go, dropkicking him off the apron on his way in. He took a lot of this overall, which was good because had plenty of stuff, slams and suplexes, plenty of asserting himself and pressing his size advantage. He had Guerrero the ref to help hold Panterita's hand so he couldn't punch too (tecnicos have to act like tecnicos!), at least until an errant shot knocked the ref back and allowed for the comeback in the segunda. This led to a pretty hot tercera with a lot of dives (hit and missed) and drama, including a pretty spectacular asai moonsault from Panterita and Arundu's flip dive off the apron. Good, complete, satisfying match overall.

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Found Footage Friday: CASAS~! PANTERITA~! EMILIO~! VOLADOR~! HAMADA~! ASTRO~! ... BUT REALLY JUST CASAS~!

Negro Casas vs. Panterita del Ring CMLL 1/3/92

MD: This isn't long and it leads off with Panterita and a bunch of kids who had competed in an art contest in a ring. The winner (and they claim Panterita chose the winner) got a mask.

Of the match itself, we get about ten minutes. It's clipped, but hard to say how heavily as it was artfully done, as in we don't miss momentum shifts. They matched up well, Casas and a local hero. The underlying story that the rudo ref, Guerrero, and Casas had a whisper to start and then a nice hug at the start of the segunda and he let Casas get away with murder. That all built to an errant dropkick in the Tercera where Casas took him out and a bunch of phantom pins by Panterita until a ref finally snuck in and caught Casas sleeping. Along the way, everything was smooth and flowing as you'd expect. Casas had these nice short kicks to the ribs that were almost Kawada-esque and since it's him, that led to comeuppance where his foot got caught and he was swept out as he went back to that well. I do think we lost some of the verve and feeling of this one due to the clipping but not the overall sense. Some of the specialness was almost certainly left on the cutting room floor since Casas is about the big picture and not just individual spots (though him getting kicked up into the ropes and bumping feet over head, for instance, will always be spectacular).

Negro Casas/Emilio Charles Jr/Medico Asesino Jr. vs. Panterita del Ring/Volador/Angel Azteca CMLL 1991

MD: This though? I really enjoyed this. Total sprint but with enough super talented wrestlers to make it work and resonate, with the focal point being on Casas and Panterita. Look, when you're putting Casas up as the top top, as maybe the greatest wrestler ever, one of the criticisms is that he can disappear a bit in trios matches where he's not the focus. I think this notion is kind of crazy because, one, it's endemic of lucha, and two, I don't actually think it's true. It's a case where you have to go a little out of your way to watch him, but if you do, you see amazing reactions and subtle bits where he's still hugely engaging and entertaining without drawing attention off of the main focus.

When he's the main focus, however, it's pure joy, and that was the case here. You barely remember anyone else is in the match for the primera (and one of those guys in the match is Emilio Charles Jr!) as Casas and Panterita just go at it. There's a moment where they exchange big throws and then sell after the fact and it's like the world's best possible "fighting spirit" bit but in Monterrey and in 1991. They're just constant motion in and out of the ring, fists always flying, like a cartoon where you just see a ball of dust as two people are scrapping. In the segunda we get some other exchanges, and Emilio and Volador look great together with some beautiful stooging from Emilio. For the finish in the segunda and the tercera, he's just in absolutely the right place at the right time in a way that I'm not sure that many other people in wrestling history could have done as well. But really, this was the Casas and Panterita show and what a show it was.

Negro Casas/Comando Ruso/Corsario vs. Panterita del Ring/Gran Hamada/Super Astro (Monterrey 1991)

MD: I was going to lead off by saying this was more of the same but that really underplays just how awesome this one was. On paper, it was more of the same, but it never really settles down to exchanges. There are a couple times both in the primera and the segunda where it looks like it's going to settle down and we'll get Comando Ruso vs Super Astro or something, but it goes quickly from the threat of violence bubbling up to things getting absolutely out of hand. They replay some of the spots from the last match early on but with slight differences. Really, though it's more just constant swiping and striking from Casas and Panterita. There's a little more of Casas withdrawing and then rushing back in, but overall, it's just consistent chaos.

Every time they headed outside, things really opened up in the best way. Panterita would just grind Casas' head into a chair and then Casas would return the favor by lawn darting Panterita into the fourth rope and then following that up by a slam onto the chairs that almost looked like he was about to drop him with a martinete and end his career. The end of the primera actually had the tecnicos get an advantage because Panterita (having caught Casas with a great sweeping kick as he was getting dragged out of the ring after a trip) hit the seated senton off the apron Casas would later be known for on Casas.

Anyway, by the time things did settle down in the ring after the segunda beatdown and said slam onto the chairs, when they did make it back into the ring, Panterita's mask was torn open and given the VQ I had no idea if Casas was gushing or just drenched in sweat. Much of the end of this was Panterita trying to take Casas' head off with a submission before everything just devolved into fouls and some crazy brawling towards the back. A wild scene over all and a definite escalation from the previous trios. The other tecnicos had tried to assert themselves at one point (including Super Astro's little hop and Hamada dropkicking someone between the eyes) but there wasn't much they could do to stand out through the whirlwind of Casas and Panterita's chaos.

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Found Footage Friday: RYUMA GO~! BARR~! BRUISE~! HAMADA~! SCORPIOs~! ESTRADA~! ARANDU~! SUPER PUNK~! DIFUNTO~!

Super Punk/Kendo Star/Milo Caballero vs Sultan Gargola/Ulises/Difunto CMLL 1992

MD: I thought this would be uneventful since we only get ten minutes of in, but we come in during the segunda right at the comeback with Difunto's masked ripped to shreds by Super Punk (Luciferno?) and the tecnicos getting some serious justice on the rudos. Super Punk's mask had been ripped as well and between the segunda and tercera they continued to really go at it.This got a little silly with the tercera exchanges (though I ended up kind of wanting to see more Caballero and his unnecessary flipping) before settling down to Punk and Difunto smacking each other in the face again. The finish was great though. In the midst of the brawling, Difunto ended up on one of the refs. Super Punk tried to leap off the top on him and landed on the ref. That let Difunto get in a foul. Pretty creative stuff. Just at a glance, I don't think we get the undercard apuestas match that this hopefully led to. That's a shame. As for the match itself, who doesn't want to watch ten minutes of goofy chaos, right?

Gigante Warrior/Scorpio Jr y Sr vs Solomon Grundy/Gran Hamada/Centurion CMLL 1992

MD: Pretty out there attraction match. I think that Gigante Warrior is Butch Masters who I've spent a bit too much time with in late 90 AJPW. He'd been around a bit by this point and could contribute in a match like this, even if he'd never be your first choice. Scorpio, Sr. always comes off like the world's best possible Rey Mysterio, Sr. opponent in size, shape, and temperment, so take that as you will. Hamada is there to give this a weird WAR feel. Honestly, I almost had the vibe of one of those matches with Porky and Marco Corleone in them, just with less charisma. Hamada, even in 92, still had bursts of explosiveness and some solid strikes. Scorpio, Jr. could match up with anyone on the other side, which says something, I suppose. Centurion didn't exactly impress, however. Grundy was there to get hit by Warrior and splash people in the corner. I'm never not going to have at least some fun with a matchup like this, but your mileage, gentle reader, may vary.

Jerry Estrada/Arandu/Angel Blanco Jr vs Blue Demon Jr/Panterita del Ring/Transformer CMLL 1992

MD: Pretty straightforward match here. Up front, the biggest things to note are how well Estrada and Arandu fit together visually  and that Panterita continued to feel like a big deal locally. Demon did not impress for the most part, but I'm not surprised there. It did surprise me a little how he let Angel Blanco kind of eat him up on the mat (even with simple things) in their initial exchange and had to goad him back for another go around so that they could at least feign evenness before tagging out. Transformer is Super Kendo, I think, and he's got fun gear but didn't stand out a ton otherwise. Estrada's stooging and selling had the announcers proclaim he was out to get the Oscar for Best Actor. Arandu still wasn't afraid to bump out of the ring.

They went around a couple of times in the primera with Demon looking a little better on his second exchange with Angel Blanco. He did have his timing down on the punches on the outside at least. The beatdown in the segunda was solid but probably not long enough in the grand scheme of things and then the comeback and finishing stretch in the tercera was blink and you'd miss it though Demon did hit a tope to set up the finish at least. Nothing egregious but not super interesting either.

Bruise Brothers (Ron and Don Harris) vs Ryuma Go/Jesse Barr Orienal Pro-Wrestling 12/3/92

MD: As best as I can tell, they'd been feuding both in general and over the tag belts and otherwise off and on since July. This was the big blowoff, a Texas deathmatch in a cage, but one that otherwise followed tag rules for the most part, and Ryuma Go's last match in the promotion.

There was a lot going on here but most of it really worked for me. Bruise Brothers were more apt to break the rules and double team while the faces tended to wait for tags though there were a lot of transitions based around the partner having enough and intervening. The Texas Deathmatch rules allowed for any number of big impressive bombs from Ron and Don (assisted powerbomb, double suplex, Slaughter Cannon with a double axe-handle, top rope power slam, etc.) which would lead to the three count and then the drama of whether Go, or for a huge chunk of the match, Barr (who took the broader heat), would be able to beat the count. Mostly everything else would lead to a somehow still dramatic two count.

The Harris Brothers were good at imposing themselves and solid at clubbering even if they were never quite as wild as you'd want. Maybe they made up for it with the big power moves. Early on the cage was the equalizer for Go and Barr (that and Go's headbutts and Barr's fire) but between it and the Deathmatch rules, it never became quite the force I would have wanted. It wasn't a huge part of the beatdown on Barr for instance, just there as part of the connective tissue at times. That's not to say the beatdown and the instances of just barely making the count after some big bomb wasn't compelling, because it was (gushing blood or no; here it was no). I thought it was so well done that my biggest criticism of the match is that he recovered way too soon after the hot tag to set up the finishing stretch (wherein they did this neat belly to back/high angle side slam combo). It also ended on an Octopus Hold, and I get the idea that surrender is probably valid in a Texas Deathmatch but you want to see the count come into play at the end, just like you do the cage; that said, it was really novel to see it used as it was, to ramp up the drama during a face-in-peril segment of a tag match. I can't think of many other tag team Texas Deathmatches and I can say pretty safely that as a proof of concept, there's more there to mine.

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I Miss Super Porky

Brazo de Plata/Brazo de Oro vs. Gran Hamada/Perro Aguayo UWA 3/10/91

ER: What a great tag, the kind of match where you'd consider yourself lucky if you got to see a variation of it live, and a real tour de force Porky performance. The fans are way into everything Porky brings, and he keeps surprising them. Before the match even starts he does a hilarious pratfall to the floor, falling flat on his face just getting from the ring to the apron. The fans eat it up and want only more Porky, and they get it. This starts nice and ramps up the entire match, and gives us a full feeling match in 11 minutes. There's some simple almost US style matwork from Oro and Aguayo to start, and I like how that played into the gradual ramping up of the match. The 11 minutes felt so complete because of the way they kept building speed throughout and kept working to bigger and bigger things. Hamada got to flash his speed and work blazing fast exchanges with both Brazos, the kind of speed that still stands out as special 30 years later when the foundation modern style of wrestling is based around speed, and his huracanrana roll up still stands as the best of all time. But, that pre-match faceplant pratfall set things in stone, and this was always going to be Porky's match. He gets into slap fights, does muscle pose downs with Perro, hits an awesome big boy tope, hits his crushing Porky splash, and does all the little things like whipping over fast on armdrags and showing his always shocking agility. This match feels like the kind of thing that should have lead to Porky being one of the most popular foreigners in Japan for the next decade, and I'm sure that Hamada recognized that. I imagine Porky wanted to remain in Mexico for good reasons (such as several young children at home), but I love thinking of this alternate timeline where Porky spends his 90s working a bunch of M-Pro and Toryumon tours. 

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New Footage Friday: Kaientai DX! MX! Sabu! Sasuke! Armstrong! Hamada! Candido!

Midnight Express vs. Brad Armstrong/Terry Taylor WCCW 1/14/85

MD: This match has been out there if you were paying attention to season sets of Ft. Worth TV but no one in our usual circles seems to have seen it or written about it. It's a long 2/3 falls MX in Texas match which seems at the very least underlooked and against a couple of fairly unique opponents. Taylor wasn't quite there yet but he had the crowd and you'd like to see him get pounded. The MX were still getting established in the territory and a good chunk of the match was meant to showcase them but they had game opponents. The 2/3rds structure made this a little weird in as you had four hot tags and only the first was really hot. Armstrong and Eaton worked really well to begin. They did the spot later on where Eaton was checking his nails on the apron and Taylor clobbered him. Eaton just had absolutely perfect timing throughout. He'd get his foot up on a corner charge at the last possible second that sort of thing. They filled a lot of time here and it may not have made things as clean as possible. You ended up with unsteady heat but it ultimately did its job in getting the Express over as a threat.

Dick Togo/Terry Boy/TAKA Michinoku vs. Gran Hamada/Gran Naniwa/Great Sasuke CWA 2/16/97 - GREAT

PAS: This was a greatest hits MPRO match, but MPRO playing their greatest hits is like the Rolling Stones playing their greatest hits, they are some amazing hits. This is in a Boston Indy show underneath a Jimmy Snuka vs Kevin Sullivan main event, and you can tell the crowd and the announcers had never seen anything approaching this (although the amazing Boston Sport Radioesque announcers do suggest Devon Storm and Ace Darling as possible future opponents, which I actually wouldn't mind seeing). TAKA and Sasuke were the standouts, both getting big dives (TAKA's spaceman plancha is a contender for best dive ever) and even brawling into the parking lots. Also Gran Hamada running through his signature spots is a reminder how amazing Hamada's signature spots were. As usual I loved all of the KDX triple teams, and wild Sasuke rope running. This is a match I didn't know existed and you love to see it.

MD: Around this time, there was some benefit at being geographically close to a Sheldon Goldberg associated promotion. I caught a Sumie Sakai vs Mercedes Martinez match in NECW a couple of years after this on the same card that had Doug Williams or Fleisch and Storm or something. I think I would have rather had this match though. It was pretty much what you'd expect as they all came to work and didn't hold back even with an unfamiliar audience and a hard floor on the outside. They hit the usual triple teams and the big spots and built to a big comeback and by the end, the crowd was pretty into it. Where the real joy comes from is seeing it in this setting, hearing it with these announcers, who couldn't get over how it was the best match they'd ever seen in the promotion (not a thing to say out loud, maybe?). Very lucky crowd to get to see this and I'm kind of annoyed I wasn't part of it.

Sabu vs. Chris Candido vs. Crowbar NWA-New Jersey 8/17/00

MD: This was glorious noise. I don't think a single person in the building understood the rules of a triple threat last man standing casket match and that's before Sabu flew into it and broke it into a bunch of pieces. Everyone was the most of themselves that they could be. Candido stooged and hit cheapshots. Sabu flew all over the place. Crowbar took a bunch of bumps (but so did everyone else). The fans chanted for tables while a guy was actually in the casket since they didn't get how the rules were supposed to work either. Some of the bumps and chairshots were nasty and not the things you'd want to see today but this is a historical relic and we can't change it by clicking play. Everyone called spots in a way that the mic picked up which was sort of fascinating in its own right because it peeled back a layer or two of thought in a match where they basically just did a ton of entertaining stuff.

PAS: This was dumb shit, but in the best way. Devon Storm is a guy who was basically doing Sabu's shit on Northeast indies which couldn't afford Sabu, so it is fun to watch him hurl chairs and get stiffed by his idol. Candido takes some sick bumps in this, big flip to the floor, a totally unnecessary Misawa german suplex bump and a bunch of wild chairshots. Sabu in a casket match is as great as you want it to be, it ends up splinters by the end of the match, and I loved him propping it up in the corner putting Candido in it and doing a diving springboard kick and smashing the shit out of it. Couldn't have been fun to be in that casket and knowing that Sabu was going to do something dumb.  

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Blowbama Togo They Call Him Living Legend

Dick Togo/Sho Funaki/TAKA Michinoku vs. Gran Naniwa/Gran Hamada/Jushin Liger MPRO 8/18/96 - EPIC

PAS: This match was the speedball that killed John Belushi, just a non-stop lighting bolt. Liger fits right into the MPRO house style and is awesome interacting with all of KDX. He was especially fun against Togo coming off their singles match a couple months earlier, it is a shame those two didn't have a long series of matches against each other. The level of speed and precision on the KDX triple teams is really breathtaking, they just whip that stuff off so fast, it is like watching the Spurs team that won the 2014 finals. We got a great dive train too, TAKA's spaceman quebrada is still one of the great dives in wrestling history. I also loved the big run of Naniwa offense to finish the match off, I remember us thinking Naniwa would ended being a huge start around this time, he was a guy who's career really ended too soon.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DICK TOGO

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New Japan HandHeld Bonanza: Lucha Cherry Picking

Pete over at PWO has gotten his hands on a ton of New Japan HHs from the 80s. I am posting the Fujiwara matches in C+A posts, but I figured I would do some reviews of the lucha guys showing up and my buddy MattD showed up as well!


Tiger Mask/George Takano v. Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Plata 9/6/81

PAS: Slim and trim Brazos looking great. We have a couple of other 1981 Brazos New Japan matches and we don't have any lucha Brazos this early. They are here to serve as foils for the technicos and they do a great job eating fancy arm drags. We get a nasty Plata top rope senton which is less lung collapsing in 1981 then it was later. Takano is a big dude and he flies around quite a bit with some nice arm drags. Mask is at his best when he comes in, hits his stuff and leaves and he had some cool flipping sentons. Nothing mindblowing, but a great chance to see a couple of lucha greats early in their career.

MD: I'm going at this in a more comprehensive way than Phil, watching everything (including Tiger Jeet Singh handheld matches). He is a wiser man than I. For 81 Brazos, I jumped the line though. The setting on this is amazing. It's some sort of outdoor bathhouse with steam rising up in the foreground and a crowd that seems eager for all of the Brazos' relatively outlandish stuff. Tanako competently takes most of the match with Tiger Mask hitting just enough of his signature stuff at the beginning and end to leave you satisfied. Oro and Plata, despite being very young here, base perfectly both on offense in taking stuff (goofus and gallant) and fit in just as well as they would in Japan ten years later.

Tiger Mask/Gran Hamada/Kengo Kimura vs. Steve Wright/Coloso Colosetti/Black Man 3/5/82

Totally fun trios match, that was a better finishing run away from being a real lost classic. Black Man had a couple of fun lucha exchanges with Hamada, which included Hamada taking a couple of his legendarily high backdrops. Colosetti wasn't in a ton, but I liked his exchanges with Tiger Mask where he kept trying to brawl like a rudo, and kept getting caught with spin kicks, I loved how he finally got frustrated and just palm thrusted TM in the eye. The rudo star of this match was Wright, totally awesome performance, he may look like an accounts payable manager, but he is remarkable agile, at points looking more agile then Tiger Mask. He has really great looking cartwheels out of arm bars and a cool kipup, and when it got time to get nasty, he through some really nice uppercuts and some vicious bodyslams and an awesome looking judo throw. Match kind of ended abruptly, which is a problem for a lot of Tiger Mask matches, but it was a real treat to watch.

Junji Hirata v. Luis Mariscal 8/29/82

Mariscal is a 70s and 80s luchadore who worked as a Baby Face and Scorpio trios partner and lost his hair to Villano IV and Perro Aguayo, I don't remember seeing him before, but he was a fun discovery. Young Hirata was svelte but hit hard, and these two had a nice scrap. It started with some basic but solid grappling, and then Hirata actually got snippy and they had a bunch of nice punch and chop exchanges. This was an undercard match with little heat, but I could visualize Mariscal having similar exchanges with Enirique Vera and tearing the house down. Really liked the multiple in ring topes by Mariscal to set up the pin

Kantaro Hoshino v. Villano III 8/29/82

PAS: Pretty strange match, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. V3 jumps Hoshino at the bell throws him to the floor, posts him, and hits a plancha. The match never felt in control, with Hoshino ripping at Villanos mask and Villano constantly biting Hoshino's head. It really felt like someone should be bleeding, and I enjoyed seeing a real lucha brawl in New Japan. Finish had Hoshino DQed for trying to rip off Villano's mask, and he goes nuts and beats up the ref. Then he ties up V3 in the ropes and tries to tear off the mask again. Really felt like a match setting up an apuestas, and I guess we need another batch of handhelds for that.

MD: Yeah, this was enjoyable. V3 rushes Hoshino and just doesn't let up for a few minutes. Pure rudo beatdown to start a match. I love how he keeps things moving, using the ring as a weapon, leaping off the ropes inside and out for extra leverage, pulling Hoshino half out to hit a knee on the apron, bulldogging him into the turnbuckle, etc. If Villano was doing this here against a guy working a different style, what the heck was he doing in Mexico at this time, right? When it's Hoshino's time to fight back, he goes straight to the mask and then follows it up with some revenge usage of the ring as well. The finish is where the weirdness sets in as they move on to rope running and submissions, like the end of a title match primera. Thankfully, it cycles back to hate with the mask ripping finish and the never-ending post match with the two trying to get their hands on each other. This left me wanting to see about three dozen more 1982 V3 matches. Then I made the mistake of looking at what else he did in 82. Not much, just, you know, feuding with Los Misioneros, including apuestas matches with Signo and Texano. This was definitely better than nothing though.

Black Cat/Isamu Teranishi/Kuniaki Kobayashi v. El Signo/Negro Navarro/El Texano 1/1/83

PAS: This was one of the most exciting matches to show up on this batch of footage. We have so little prime Missonaires de la Muerte, we know how awesome all these guys were as oldsters, and their rep is so great, that any time 80s MDM shows up it is a lucha fan holiday. This was more like an awesome first fall of a great trios match, then a great match on its own, but it was a awesome demonstration of what made this team so special. They were just relentless, attacking at the bell and always moving forward. Their pace was really something to watch, never not moving, never not attacking. They didn't take many bumps but every bump was athletic and crazy. We don't get a ton of offense from the Japan team, Kobayashi has a couple of cool armdrags, which Texano bumps huge for. For some reason Kobayashi and Teranishi start brawling post match, as the MDM just strut out victorious.

MD: Los Missionaries were the prototype for a rudo trios side for a reason and here you can so clearly see why. Relentless is exactly the word I'd use, too. This was just the perfect combination of complex spots and improvisational bridging. They kept working back into their corner, kept switching up, kept helping each other whenever possible while their opponents weren't on the same page at all. This would have played well as a Guerreros primera twenty years later (give or take a powerbomb), maybe even thirty. You saw hints of the stooging and miscommunication that would have, in another match, been part of a tecnico shine or comeback. You saw hints of them basing and bumping. At times they were moving so fast that you'd think that there was no way they'd feed an armdrag in time, but they do. Primarily, though, this was their showcase and they brought it, from the initial ambush to the triple team hanging seated senton on the floor and the nasty, nasty tombstone that finished things. Again, it just leads you to imagine all the things we don't have.

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Dick Togo is O-Dog in the Courtyard

Dick Togo/Hanzo Nakajima/Koji Kanemoto/MEN's Teiho/Shinjiro Ohtani vs. Norio Honaga/El Samurai/Great Sasuke/Super Delfin/Gran Hamada NJPW 3/5/97 - GREAT

This is a fun MPRO ten man which nicely mixes in a bunch of NJ guys. KDX adding peak dickishness Kanemoto and Ohtani is a wonderful fit, they were running around slapping people, face washing folks, sneering looked like that is where they always belonged. Togo and MEN's run through there stuff, with Togo breaking out some super fast exchanges with Delfin that really stood out.  On the face side, we got some fun crazy Sasuke, and Hamada and Delfin did what they do in these matches. I did think Samurai and Honaga didn't add much, this could have used Yakashiji throwing crazy arm drags. That and the two straight falls is what kept this a little below the classic ten man matches of this period. Still the MPRO KDX ten man is one of the great things in wrestling history, they didn't run that many of them, so even a slightly less awesome one is still a treat.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DICK TOGO

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Dick Togo Get it Cross State With the Grace of Maria

Dick Togo/Men's Teioh/Shoichi Funaki/Shiryu/TAKA Michinoku vs. Gran Hamada/Masato Yakushiji/Super Delfin/Gran Naniwa/Tiger Mask 4 MPRO 10/10/96 - EPIC

This is the most legendary Michinoku Pro match, and it was interesting to watch it with new eyes. It goes almost without saying that it is a great match. All three sections of the match were just classic. The early section with everyone matching up was special, everyone looked good, but I always love watching Togo flying around with Yakushiji, they are special dance partners, the Rogers and Astaire of lucha. When we moved into the KDX beatdown section, it was great to watch timing those five had on their combo moves, and the slambam finish was the kind of fired up cocaine bender you want, TAKA'S spaceman moonsault went into the sixth row, and Togo floated on his senton like a dirigible of fat ending in a Hindenburg style explosion. However, I think the fact that it went 40 minutes I initially saw as a benefit, I think it is a bit of hindrance here, it felt a bit flabby, and I think I prefer the tighter 20 minute version of this match. Also because this was a showcase, it had a little less specific story then some of the other matches, when you focus on everyone, you kind of focus on no one. Still minor quibbles to an epic match.

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MLJ: Hijo del Santo Vs Blue Panther 1: Negro Casas, Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera vs El Hijo del Santo, Yoshihiro Asai, Gran Hamada

WWA, 1990
Negro Casas, Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera vs El Hijo del Santo, Yoshihiro Asai, Gran Hamada

I think there's a slight danger in me just watching random matches without purpose or point. Lucha's a giant ocean of decades and what seems like a near infinite number of matches. I've been trying to jump off from one point to the next. It means maybe I watch ten Marco Corleone matches, but if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have necessarily ended up where I did in 2006 enjoying the stuff I'm enjoying now. I'm also trying to build to more classic feuds and matches as I go, so that I develop some sort of context and theoretical underpinning.

I do want to watch more Hijo del Santo but I wanted to find some sort of structure in my watching. What I came up with, sort of on the fly, was to find the matches online where he was pitted against another person I want to see more of, Blue Panther. For now Santo One-Shots has become Hijo del Santo vs Blue Panther. This means three or four singles matches and a bunch of tags and trios over a span of fifteen years or so. I've been warned that they don't actually face off too many times in the tags I have in front of me, but they're both so good and they're in there with such good partners for the most part, that I think I'll be perfectly okay with that.

Case in point is the first match here. It's true: there really wasn't much Panther vs Santo interaction. That's okay when the others guys in the match were Fuerza, Casas, Hamada and a young Asai. There were some great exchanges and sequences in this match and even though the key match up didn't take place at any length, everyone else paired off, sometimes multiple times, and it was all great, compelling action.

That said, it wasn't the most satisfying match I've seen in this project, even if the work itself was all very crisp and sharp and high-end. The big problem is that the tecnicos took so much of the match. There wasn't any sort of prolonged heat segment and past a blip where the rudos snatched a fall in the segunda, it was all quite one-sided and a little "samey." It especially stood out since Asai was staged almost perfectly in his role in the match to have been the victim of a few satisfying minutes of rudo dominance to build to a comeback.

Here, my lack of context hurts. One thing I've noticed from watching so many matches from 2006 on an almost weekly basis is that they did change things up from show to show. You'd get a differently structured match each week. Things would be balanced. There's a lot about this match I just don't know. It's from WWA, which was a promotion I haven't seen much of. It's from 1990, which was a year (and even a decade) I've seen little of. It's in a geographic setting I'm not as used to. They presented trophies to the tecnicos at the end.

So basically, I'm not sure if they worked this was worked a bit more like a title match or if it was part of a tournament with these two teams working a number of matches against different opponents or if they had just worked a match the week before with a long beatdown on Asai, or even if there was another match on the same show with that sort of structure. Maybe the purpose of the match WAS to get over the tecnicos strong for some future encounter with other opponents or because they had just debuted or maybe the rudos were on the way out. Maybe it was just meant to be a celebratory match to end a big show, etc. I just don't know, so therefore, it becomes a bit harder to hold it against the match. I say this because I know these guys know what they're doing. For instance, I've seen Hamada paired with Sayama in the Asai role and in that match, Sayama took a lot of offense the way that I kind of wanted Asai to here.

Now, then, all that said, there was a lot to love here. Past Panther vs Santo (ironically enough), everyone got paired with everyone else. I love the rudo side as they all brought something slightly different to the table, but all of them served exceptionally well as bases for the tecnico offense. Panther really got to shine on the mat in the opening segment with Asai, who held his own as they played up his agility as a way to counter Panther's skill. Fuerza had the most personality though he never went too deep into shtick at the expense of the competitive mood they managed to create. He's someone I badly want to see more of. Casas fell somewhere in the middle and was also the most frenetic of the bunch. He also had a pretty awesome punch exchange with Hamada.

This was a showcase for the tecnicos, in that the rudos mainly got to show off by eating their offense and stooging well. Santo looked great, hitting all sorts of elaborate stuff in his exchanges, especially with Casas. The end of both the primera and tercera were pretty with Santo hitting big spots while action went on around him. I wish we had multiple camera angles and replays. Hamada was gutsy. My favorite spot of the match with him was when he fought off all three rudos in the primera, which culminated with him kicking Fuerza in the butt so that he would dropkick Panther through the ropes by accident. Asai served his purpose, showed a lot of promise and felt like he belonged in the ring with them, though again, I don't think they used him well enough as a foil. There were little moments like when Fuerza goes for a handshake and then a hug and he's left bewildered in the face of the mindgames.

It was just too much in the way of tecnico control. In the primera, that felt intentional, like a shine, with the tecnicos getting the best of the exchanges due to their skill and agility. As the match went on though, it became an issue. The rudos momentarily caught them to end the segunda, yes, but they went right to a reset after the fall ended. Then there was a moment late in the match where Hamada had an armbar on and the rudos all sort of looked at each other and decided they had enough and that they were going to rush him, but after a moment of swarming advantage it went back to another reset and they started on towards the finish. A little bit of heat would have gone a long way. Good action, fun start to Santo vs Panther, but not ultimately what I'd consider a great match.

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It's Been a Minute So They Ask Dick Togo Where The Fire Went, Kitchen Clean But He Still Got The Pilot Lit

Dick Togo/Men's Teioh/ Shoichi Funaki/Shiryu vs. Great Sasuke/Gran Hamada/Gran Naniwa/ Masato Yakushiji MPRO 12/20/96 - GREAT 

PAS: One of the odder structured of this killer run of matches. Funaki comes in with a wrapped knee and the technicos go after it violently, making him a non entity early, eventually he gets taken to the back by his team mates. You don't usually see the rudo team gutting out a man down advantage, and the match isn't really worked any different because of that. The structural weirdness is the only thing keeping this out of the epic camp, as the actual work was amazing. We get big gobs of Togo v. Yakushiji and Togo v. Hamada which are two of the greatest match ups in history. Hamada hits the single greatest spinning DDT I have ever seen, and Yakushiji almost trumps him with an awesome swan dive Mysterio rana, of course Dick Togo is on the receiving end of both. Men't Teiho is throwing bombs too, splattering Naniwa with a rolling elbow and a Saito suplex, and Sasuke delivers another reckless Sabuish "dead by 30" performance. Finish is the traditional wild adrenaline ride, everyone of these matches is the car chase scene from To Live and Die In LA if it was in a ring in a high school gym in Northeast Japan. 

Dick Togo/Yoji Anjo vs. Tomohiro Ishii/Koichiro Kimura WJ 6/29/03 - FUN 

PAS: Really awesome looking match on paper, as the team of Togo and Anjo is a dream I didn't know I had. It didn't really live up to it's promise as it was more of an undercard tag with some nice moments, then a legendary match. Togo was wrestling more of a heavyweight style as the match was lots of clubbering elbows and such. Yoji was the standout as he was kicking folks in the throat and ended the match with an awesome running european uppercut. I might have to seek out more World Japan Togo/Anjo, I could see them against the SAT's being perversely entertaining. 

Dick Togo vs. Billy Ken Kid 2/11/10 - EPIC 

PAS: One of the best individual performances of Togo's career. I don't get much of a sense of BKK at all, he takes a beating, has a couple of nice highspots, but I get the sense you could grab a guy out of a CZW undercard juniors scramble, slot him in this match and it would have been as good. This was Togo's show, he violently demolishes his opponent early, strutting and smirking as he beats the piss out of the kid. It really reminded of the best of 2010 LA PARK, the way he made an extended one sided beating compelling. He takes a crazy modified Slaughter ringpost bump to put Ken on offense and takes about three other lunatic bumps at other points to transfer momentum. They build the interference spots nicely, so when BKK clears Togo's gang out you really get a sense of catharsis. Normally juniors matches with this many nearfalls lose me, but they built enough goodwill and drama with the first 20 minutes, that they earned the ending they had. Excellent match, one folks should check out if they haven't seen. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DICK TOGO

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Dick Togo's Birds Eye View Got Him Channeling His Vision, Turns One to Two Now the Kilo Has A Sibling

Dick Togo/Men's Teioh/Shiryu vs. Gran Hamada/Super Delfin/Great Sasuke MPRO 1/14/97 - EPIC 

PAS: This is it right here. We start out with a more violent vibe then the traditional six man. Sasuke starts the fun by spin kicking Shiryu right in the sternum really fucking hard. KDX responds by taking it to the streets, and folks are getting hung off balconies and chucked into concrete walls. They get back into the ring and we get some truly breathtaking lucha. One beautiful exchange after another, I think Hamada v. Togo stood out for for me (man the arm drag Hamda pulls out was life changing), but all of the matchups were great. It ebbed and flowed, as multiple times they went to the floor and threw each other into chairs, and then went back to flying and flipping. Finish run was great as KDX did their thing, just decimating Sasuke with multiple big moves, ending of course with the portly man with goatee floating through the air 

Dick Togo/Ikuto Hidaka vs. Christopher Daniels/Donovan Morgan ROH 9/21/02 - FUN 

PAS: This is from the ROH tag tournament, in one of the earliest ROH shows. Match started out slowish, with a long heel control section with Daniels and Morgan (who should have been Team Receding Hairline). This was a little dull, although solid, but there was a reason that Morgan didn't have a long ROH run. Pretty much everything after the Togo hot tag was pretty great stuff, as they built a really hot finish. Hidaka looked especially good here, as I loved his spinning DDT into the rope choke. Togo pretty much stuck to his signature stuff, it all looked good, but watching all of this Togo I can tell when he is mixing it up, and he wasn't here. Still good stuff, and definitely got the crowd amped up. 

Dick Togo/Jado/Gedo/Katsushi Takemura vs. Jushin Thunder Liger/El Samurai/Wataru Inoue/American Dragon NJPW 11/30/03 - GREAT 

PAS: This is an elimination match worked with the same rules as all of the awesome elimination tags on the NJ 80's set. This match was cruising along at a mid range level for the first half or so. We got to see a little of Danielson v. Togo which is the most on paper intriguing match up. Danielson was pretty much doing his 3rd generation Dynamite Kid shtick, which really isn't the most interesting use of him. I did really like the Gedo v. Dragon stuff, they had really good chemistry. Still the match didn't pick up until we get some eliminations, and Jushin Liger decides he wants to be Abdullah the Butcher. The heel team removes the ringpad, but predictably it backfires and Gedo gets cut open on the ring bolt. Liger just goes nuts at this point, biting Gedo's bloody head, jabbing him with a spike, all of a sudden this pleasant little juniors match has gotten NSFW. After those two get eliminated we get to see Togo run throw his cool shit with Inoue, although the finish felt a little hackneyed. Still Liger as the Sheik is never going to get too big a complaint out of me. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DICK TOGO

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Since Yeah Tall, Dick Togo was MJG With That 8-Ball

Dick Togo/Men's Teioh/Shiryu v.s Great Sasuke/Masato Yakushiji/Gran Hamada MRPO 10/19/96 - EPIC

Fuck it, Masato Yakushiji is the lost great junior of the 1990's. He is so great in this match as the whipping boy for the dastardly heels, taking a big beating and firing back with cool looking slickly executed offense. He and Togo are probably the best married opponents in MPRO, with Togo and Hamada right behind them, and we get big chunks of both here. Hamada's sky high rana eaten by Dick Togo is maybe the best looking paired offensive move in wrestling history, Hamada looks like a cartoon character getting shot out of a rocket and when he lands he whips Togo around like a tilt a whirl. Finish run was really exciting with the really cool MPRO thing of offensive moves coming out of weird corners. We even got a little crowd brawling to start the match with Sasuke taking awkward bumps through swinging doors. Though Shiryu was a little subdued, but otherwise this was as good as it gets.

Dick Togo/Ikuto Hidaka vs. Low-Ki/Spanky Z-1 2/19/04 - GREAT

Four guys with really cool spots, doing a bunch of really cool spots. For a guy who was so inspired by Japan, Ki never had a Puro match anywhere near the level of his best US Indy stuff, this didn't have much substance but was a pretty sweet junior sprint. Ki and Togo have a couple of early standoffs which were really great looking, I especially dug how Ki worked in the Santo headscissors. That felt like a singles match ROH should have run in 2004. Ki was a little over the top with his mugging and posing, which is something that he a did in Japan. Spanky is a guy who does everything well, nothing spectacularly. The big run finish was a big run finish, with everyone hitting their signature big spots, and finishing with a sweet firebird splash/frog splash one two punch.

Dick Togo vs. Hideyoshi Osaka Pro 6/28/09 - EPIC

This is the first real out of nowhere hidden gem I have unearthed for this project. I don't know much about Osaka Pro, and have never seen Hideyoshi before and really know nothing about him, but this was a damn good singles match. Hideyoshi is a bigger dude (for Japanese indy wrestling, he is probably 5'9 180) and he takes large parts of this match with nice power moves including a sweet looking powerslam, and nice jackhammer. Togo is great as a guy fighting from below. There is a part where he does these awesome wild missed swings, while Hideyoshi cockishly moves out of the way of. Finish run was pretty crazy with lots of interference from seconds, Hideyoshi's finisher is a crossface cobra clutch, and he gets some big near falls with it, especially after lifting his knees on a senton which was brutal. Togo uses a Billy Ken Kid chairshot to hit a tornado pedigree and the senton for the big win. which really felt like he came through a war.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DICK TOGO

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