Found Footage Friday: OKI IN KOREA~! DUK~! HEEL TITO~! TOR~! IDOL~! PATERA~! BRET~! HAKUSHI~!

Kintaro Oki/Kim Duk vs. Dick Blood (Tito Santana)/Tor Kamata Korea 1978

MD: What an amazing find. Oki and Duk as native heroes. Plus we had that one Andre match where Tito and Chavo are his little buddies from 79 but this is some of the only heel Tito footage ever. It goes 40 with all sorts of pomp before and after the match (check out the robe on Oki) and is a fully fleshed out 2/3 falls match.

Tito isn't fully developed yet, but he's a stooging (lots of early headscissors foolery), big bumping (he must go over the top rope hard five times), dropkicking (the big finishing bit is Oki avoiding one of his dropkicks), heatseeking heel, as fiery as we'd expect. There are a couple of fun strike exchanges or flurries, especially in the third fall when he's kicking at Duk's wound leading to a huge comeback moment.

Duk's actually the standout here. Oki's fun on the mat once or twice and when he unleashes the headbutt (first in the corner as Santana was taking liberties, then against Kamata, driving him back on the outside, and finally to take out Tito to build to the finish) the crowd erupts but this is really much more the Duk show. He's super charismatic here, calling Tor into the ring, gesturing to him when he has control of Tito. After Tito won the first fall with a sunset flip in, Tor spends a chunk of the second, keeping him on the floor by knocking him off the apron again and again to the crowd's delight. You don't usually see a babyface king of the mountain bit but it worked here. He even had a football charge from a three point stance.

In the third fall, Tor pulls the pad back and opens him up with it, working over the wound like you'd want him to. When Oki finally gets in after Duk's big comeback shot on Tito, Tor tries to get Oki's head with the post, but he no sells it and takes out Tor which sets up the finish while Duk and Tor are brawling on the outside. This match was full of a lot of the conventions of the time but the roles were reversed and it made for just an amazing bit of lost footage.

Austin Idol vs. Ken Patera Memphis 9/5/83 

MD: This was on the Savoldi network and it's about as far from those Idol vs. Hansen matches as humanly possible. It's still really good but it's conventional as can be. You can shut your eyes and see this match play out for the most part, but the crowd was up the whole time and the performances were good and sometimes pro wrestling just works the way it's supposed to. 

Idol got the fans riled early which upset Patera. It was a contest between him waving them on and Patera posing. For a chunk of it Idol controlled the arm and teased punches to the fans' delight as Patera tried to cheat to get out by pulling the hair, that sort of thing. Patera got over on him and worked the back with a great bearhug. Idol was perfect in it, lilting sideways and appealing to the crowd to support him, appealing to God to look down and bless him, appealing to you, the viewer, decades later. Just a transcendent over the top selling of it.

He fought out but Patera cut him off with a reverse of a whip and a clothesline out of the corner and got on the full nelson. Idol climbed the turnbuckles for a double pin but apparently he got his shoulder up at the last second. Post match, he took out Hart, dodged Patera's jumping knee into the corner and put his leglock on him. Again, delighted crowd. As straightforward as could be and I wouldn't change a thing.

ER: Patera in '83 was such a feast for the eyes. He's constructed like a freak Rob Leifeld drawing; cut, but with incredible mass. You catch him at certain angles and it doesn't seem possible to be that rock solid and have so much space between your belly button and spine. It's incredible. Perhaps more incredible, is that Patera has that body but Idol is the one posing, and the posing is the best. It all happens when Idol holds the ropes on a whip and breaks out all these excellent little kneeling poses and flexes. And I just kept waiting for Patera to wreck him for it. It's a crime that Patera has that body and that power and mostly wrestles like a guy in a mid tier Russian gimmick, all clubbing and axe handling. I need more bearhugs, more presses, more whips with crazy pull strength. I wanted a Patera/Idol match and this felt more like a match that Idol could have had with Don Bass. I dug the way Idol sold Patera's grounded bearhug - I actually wish we got more bearhugging in this - and was excited to see how Idol would sell the full nelson. We didn't get him selling the full nelson, instead we got him doing one of the messiest, loose ropes versions of the Austin/Bret finish (yeah I know this was well before Austin/Bret but it sounds better than describing what happened). His missed knee into the corner, after the match, looked really cool with his size, wild that he used it in a post-match deal. I don't know enough about Patera to know if he's a guy who usually limits his bumping in a match and saves it for after.  

Cage Match: Bret Hart vs. Hakushi WWF 7/25/95

MD: Dark match from a taping. Honestly, I won't lie, I would have rather had Brad vs. Flair which lost the poll to this one. The best part of this was probably Hakushi's entrance in the cage which was moody and will stick with you. The biggest issue overall is that they went to too much selling too soon, before it was earned. Whenever Bret hit the ropes or the corner, there was a big clunking sound from the cage but he wasn't really selling cage shots from it. I'm not sure if he ever went into the cage. Instead, he got the early advantage but both of them crashed into each other in the first minute or two with a double clothesline and they went right into the labored slow attempts to escape for the next ten minutes. They probably should have led with an extra five minutes of action before that double clothesline spot instead?

There were bits I did like down the stretch. There were certain parallels, like Bret missing his second rope elbow drop and then Hakushi instead of leaving the cage, choosing to hit the diving headbutt and wiping out. Bret snuck in the five moves in interesting ways and yeah, sure, there was always the sense that they were trying to win, even if like I noted, the drama didn't quite feel earned. The finish was a superplex where Bret was able to recover first and scoot out and the fans responded to a lot of the big moments but this all felt just a little underwater to me due to that narrative choice early.

ER: I thought this was both really good, and felt unnecessarily long due to the narrative choice Matt pointed out. It's really strange, how much weight they each decided to give a double clothesline. The entire match can be divided into two, uneven parts, by that double clothesline. The single minute before the clotheslines was absolute fire, both men throwing worked strikes so great that the entire match could have been sustained by them. Hakushi throws a throat thrust (one of many, but one in particular) that sounds insanely loud, the crowd reacts to it like death, and Bret crumples from it like a hardened hand of stone had just smashed his trachea. This was a battle. 

Then there was a double clothesline that carried the weight of a thousand bad decisions. And that double clothesline seemed to double as the missing 6-7 minutes of work that led to both men being tired slow climbers the rest of the match. Here's what's important: I thought all of the slow climbing and tired selling was really good. That ring looked like unmoving concrete, and every bump Hakushi took off the ropes onto it was completely unforgiving. There are three different landings - before the insane match ending superplex - that had no give, no bounce, nothing but a man's skeleton absorbing his landing with no bounce. The speed they worked had actual drama, the crowd bit at the cage escapes, and the final 10 minutes of escalation felt right. It also made a 12 minute match feel like 20, instead of a 20 minute match that was missing an important 8 minutes. It's so weird. All of the elements we have are good, nothing is missing, it just feels incomplete and also too long as is. Bret's bumps into the buckles looked damaging as ever, and the superplex is something that I literally don't understand. I don't see how it's possible to be doing bumps like that when they "don't count". You watch that ring. It does not budge. Hakushi came off the literal top of the cage, suplexed onto a sidewalk, for a match that was never supposed to air, and is still wrestling 30 years later instead of in a chair. And I guess it's bizarre to me that, in a match that went on to have several high end skeleton-eroding bumps that should have naturally led to slow down, they paid so much more lip service to a double clothesline. 

 

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WWF In Your House #1 5/14/95

Sometimes you get in the mood to watch the 1995 King of the Ring, but then you just don't feel right watching the 1995 King of the Ring without seeing all of the qualifying matches. How could I enjoy the PPV without seeing what all of the competitors went through on their respective journeys? I couldn't. The first KOTR Qualifier happened on the very first In Your House, that's where we start, and really I can't think of a better place to start.


1. Bret Hart vs. Hakushi

ER: This is one of the more acclaimed matches from the early In Your House shows, and it makes sense that they'd want to start the show off with a solid memorable match, so sure you send Bret out there. He's the guy who could reliably start a show with a good 15 minutes, so you make him work twice and that's just smart booking on your premier "extra" PPV. Hakushi wasn't a guy who was at PPV status at this point, so him opening up the PPV is an impressive role to be put in. It feels like booking to the internet fans, before most of us had the internet. And the match is a little overrated; there are several moments of varying degrees of miscommunication, and I don't love the layout of the first half (Hakushi takes most of it and then Bret just takes over and takes the rest of it, before the hot extended finish).

But this was a good match, and a match with a ton of smart memorable moments that deserves the attention it gets. Hart takes a classic bump chest first into the buckle that allows Hakushi to take over, and the finishing stretch is admittedly great enough to overlook earlier hitches. It all begins with a fantastic moment where Bret is firing back and taking over, his strikes look really sharp tonight, momentum is building, and then Shinya grabs his foot and generally makes his presence known for a third time. Bret takes a killer theatrical bump off the foot grab, really rolling all the way across the ring as if his shoelaces were tied together and he was forced to jog. And Bret responds by running back across the ring and taking out Shinya with a tope! What an all time great sequence. Hart occupies himself really well later on, when Hakushi hits a swank Asai moonsault and Hart tangles with Shinya until the big moment. Plus we get Hart hitting a vertical suplex from the apron to the floor, sending both of them crashing.  Hakushi had really pretty stuff, a perfectly placed top rope diving headbutt, big missed springboard splash, diving clothesline that fans cheered for, and he bumped big for Bret (including a cool flip bump off a lariat), and threw a bunch of great uppercuts. The finish had a couple good nearfalls, and a couple classic moments, so yeah I guess it's deserving of its status.

2. Jeff Jarrett/The Roadie vs. Razor Ramon

ER: Jarrett is wearing a garish Beetlejuice get-up, his '95 ring gear is truly among the worst. And this was also our WWF in-ring debut of The Roadie, another thing to entice the kids into begging their folks to shell out for another PPV. And they'd be getting their monies worth, because this PPV is an easy 2 for 2. Jarrett is great a getting overwhelmed by Razor, but the Jarrett/Roadie control segment was awesome. Roadie was throwing tons of elbowdrops, a big lariat off the middle buckle to the floor, good kneedrop off the middle rope, a fun debut. And Jarrett is a maestro of getting right into position on accidental cross up spots, colliding a couple times with Roadie to the delight of the crowd. Jarrett's offense never looked prettier, his dropkicks best in the business and his mannerisms making him the most punchable dude. Razor came off like the top guy in the company, Jarrett made the pace exciting, this was good.

They jump Razor after losing, and Aldo Montoya comes out to save Razor buts gets tossed fairly quickly over the top to the floor, and then Savio Vega debuts by coming out as an unknown taking all of that hero spotlight that Aldo Montoya desperately wanted to grab. Aldo Montoya, finally seeing his shot, flying down with a ton of heart and no plan. Tony Garea and Rene Goulet and security guards remove the unknown hero Savio Vega from the ring, and you can even see Montoya rolling back into the ring to check on Razor as Savio is lead out. "Yeah you missed what happened, I ran 'em off while you were recovering in the corner, took out both of 'em..."

And then they cut to a Sid package that prominently shows Sid just icing Aldo from several camera angles. And this is a fantastic video package, really making Sid come off like a total killer. Sid makes some of the best faces into the camera, his Psycho Sid music was a campily perfect take on a Harry Manfredini/Bernard Hermann score, and there were great shots of him blinking like a weirdo and then powerbombing big dudes like Bam Bam. This package would have probably made Sid my favorite wrestler had I seen this when it happened.

3. Mabel vs. Adam Bomb

ER: This was big man perfection. This was barely 2 minutes, all killer no filler, a great Bomb performance in a quick loss. A lot of guys could get pouty knowing they have to lose on PPV in under 2 minutes, but Bomb just took the opportunity to show off all his offense. Mabel is a total giant fat guy superstar, he starts the match squishing Bomb with an avalanche, then missing a full speed avalanche bump that shakes the ring. Adam Bomb goes on his big offense run, hits a big flying shoulderblock to Mabel's back - Mabel taking a super fast forward rolling bump through the ropes to the floor, crazy bump - which leads to a nice Bomb pescado. He is constant motion because he knows he has basically one minute to shine. He climbs to the top and hits a big shoulder tackle that Mabel takes his big back bump for. I mean this whole thing kicks ass. Mabel makes quick work on the comeback, hits his rolling heel kick hard into Bomb's stomach, and drops him with a full weight powerslam and just flattens him on the pin. This is how you do a two minute match.

4. Smoking Gunns vs. Owen Hart/Yokozuna

ER: Hot 5 minute tag, everyone on this show has been really great at making the most of their allotted ring time, it's given the entire show such an exciting pace. Everything feels nicely mapped out to a match's potential effectiveness. Owen tries to one up Bret by taking the same chest first corner bump, but Bret's earlier bump was better. Gunns look good, a couple nice double teams, big dropkicks, hard clothesline, a cool flying elbow; Yokozuna was a great monster, a great brick wall, but also does great vulnerable giant spots like running fast into the ringpost. The finish to this is sudden and violent. Bart misses a crossbody and flies hard into the middle rope and crashes fast to the floor, Cornette causes a distraction, and Yokozuna casually walks over and splats Bart's face with a legdrop. Bart is done.

5. Jerry Lawler vs. Bret Hart

ER: After the Hakushi match, Hart hopped off the apron and tweaked his knee, and ever since that all everyone has talked about on this PPV has been Bret's knee. And then Bret comes out for the match doing this really bad exaggerated limp, and Lawler is laughing and licking his chops, and then it turns out that Bret was just faking the whole thing to make Lawler thing he had an advantage. It's a fun easy story that they kept tending to throughout the evening, and it's far more interesting than just "Bret is having a second match". Lawler was so on point in 1995, maybe only Finlay from this era showed more on selling than him. He was so good at taking and putting over offense, really making Bret's punches snap, doubling over with several different ways of holding his stomach after taking a shot, and takes a really high backdrop. 

Hart drops him with a gorgeous Russian legsweep, nails the elbow, but Hart does basically no sell Lawler's big textbook piledriver, which is a spot I don't like. Hart was only down for 4 seconds or so, and then hit his own piledriver. These two are usually more clever at how to use a spot like that, this felt more like Kurt Angle laying out the match for them. There's a fun BS finish where the ref gets his leg tied up in the ropes because of Shinya, and then Hakushi sneaks in and lays out Hart. Lawler gets this perfect, super obnoxious pinfall on a now knocked out Bret, grabbing his legs and flipping over into a bridge like he was Yoshinari Ogawa. I do wish this one was longer - that we either got more time before the big Hakushi headbutt, or we got a surprise Bret rally after the headbutt - and these two were in a good groove before the interference. We only got 6 minutes and it was the first match on the card that felt like it didn't get the right amount of time.

6. Sid vs. Diesel

ER: Diesel is a guy who I think has aged really great over the past decade. Nash in general was far better in the ring than anyone was giving him credit for 25 years ago. He worked a lot of monster vs. monster matches, and he was really good at creating a King Kong vs. Godzilla feel. Sid had a ton of charisma and presence and that was underrated at the time too. This is what 14 year old me would have wanted from a battle of two giant badasses. Nash was a great babyface and really flew into Sid with big energy: Big elbows, big running lariat, huge leaping corner lariat, really made everything look like buildings falling into each other. Sid is not as exciting on control as he is at letting Nash crash into him, but he has nice simple clubbing forearms and axe handle shots, and holds an okay camel clutch for probably too long. But the big moments play real big, with Sid hitting a big powerbomb that they later say injured Diesel's elbow (featuring a hilarious moment where Vince lead off an episode of Raw shouting in full Vince voice "Tonight we'll check in on Diesel who is recovering from reconstructive elbow surgery!!!"), and Diesel comes back and hits a great one of his own. Tatanka runs in to eventually stomp out Diesel, but it felt like an appropriate finish for what we had been through. This was a real good battle of the monsters, two guys who in the match felt like arguably the biggest babyface vs. the biggest heel.


ER: The first In Your House was a super fun PPV top to bottom, not anything approaching a bad match on the entire card. It's a tight two hours with complementary pairings and everyone feeling like they were trying to put on a big show. There was nothing high level, but one of the highest floors throughout. Super recommended.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

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Jerry Lawler Will Zip You Up and Dress You Down

Jerry Lawler/Hakushi vs. Shawn Michaels/Bret Hart WWF 7/26/95 - FUN

PAS: More of a weird curiosity then a great match, it is really strange to see Michaels and Hart teaming together knowing what is going to happen in a couple of years. Michaels is barely in the match, as the vast majority has Lawler and Hakushi working over Bret. Lawler had a couple of great looking punches in the opening pearl harbor on the faces, and a great post bump during Harts comeback, but the match was pretty minimalist. Heels jump the faces, work over Hart, Michaels tags in and does five or six moves, tags out and Hart makes Hakushi tap. Felt a bit mailed in, and isn't the uncovered gem you are hoping for when it shows up on a WWE DVD out of nowhere.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE JERRY LAWLER

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