Found Footage Friday: BRAZOS~! CASAS~! LOVE MACHINE~ BEYER~! LUBICH~!

Dick Beyer vs. Bronco Lubich NWA Upstate 1962

MD: Just watching them get introduced, I half wondered if this really was Beyer. We couldn't get close enough to see the nose and the frame from a distance seemed a bit off even for the youngest Beyer I would have seen, but no, within the first few seconds, he gets Lubich in a full nelson and repeatedly slams his head in the top rope and that was enough to convince me. I'd continued to be convinced as the match went on. He wrestled with incredible confidence and presence and ingenuity and imagination. That's Dick Beyer.

He was given the Destroyer gimmick this year so this was towards the end of him wrestling unmasked. Lubich was longer in the tooth and may have even been more managerial. They mention a birthday cake at the start (a birthday cake angle in 1962!) and Poffo (presumably Angelo) as allied with Lubich but hard to say exactly what was going on there. If it's documented somewhere I'd love to hear about it. This was all about Beyer having his way with Lubich though, with Bronco finding ways to get some shots in at the margins. For instance, Beyer dropped him into the leg nelson (with quickfire legwhacks) but right on the rope break, Bronco was on him. Or Beyer got him with an airplane spin but when he went for the second, Lubich grabbed the rope and landed on him. Or after a Giant Swing, Lubich rolled out and was able to ambush Beyer and drive his head into the side of the ring.

Lubich was credibly tough but Beyer looked like the best wrestler in the world and kept on him, finally beating him with a rolling bodyscissors sort of deal and a dropkick. Just a great look at Beyer in 62 right before he'd become the Destroyer.

ER: I wonder if there were any Sell The Arm fans in 1962 Buffalo who were upset at the ways Lubich never paid much mind to Dick Beyer standing and stomping and dropping knees onto his arm and shoulder. Some smart guy in Buffalo rolling his eyes after Dick Beyer gets run the length of the ring apron and flies off into the ringpost, because Bronco was in the ring holding up both arms instead of rubbing his shoulder. Maybe that man existed, because if Dick Beyer was moving like this in 1962 Buffalo then I'd believe anything. Beyer was so far ahead of his time and moved like no other American wrestler, so quick and crafty while built like a spark plug, an acrobat with thump. I love the desperate little ways Lubich tries to stop the onslaught, with his only chance briefly shifting his weight by grabbing for the ropes. If he wasn't a manager, it was a great "wrestling like a manager" performance against one of the coolest to do it. 

Los Brazos vs. Jaque Mate/Dusty Wolfe/The Viking Monterrey 1992

MD: I have no idea who the Viking is. I know it's our job to figure this stuff out for you but no idea. Past one fun staggering bump into the corner off a Porky headbutt, we don't really care about him anyway. Dusty Wolfe is doing his best Jimmy Jack Funk impression with a silly mask but we don't really care about him either in this one. We're laser focused on El Brazo and Jaque Mate, because right from the get go, Mate opens Brazo up and never, ever looks back.

Brazo spends a chunk of this out on the floor bleeding buckets. They seem almost reluctant to put the camera on him before he towels off which is something I'm not sure I've ever really seen in lucha from this era. That's how much blood we're talking about. And while Mate's happy to beatdown the other Brazos with his compatriots, he makes sure to come back out to do more damage. At one point he goes for a chairshot and a fan puts a chair up to try to block it. They even play music to try to rouse the Brazos.

Eventually, Viking tosses El Brazo back in and he goes wild, crashing across the ring, rubbing his own blood on his fist to use it as a weapon, tearing at Mate's mask and then opening him up on the outside. It's a great Brazos comeback but ends abruptly with a Mate foul that the refs miss and the rudos taking it. Great bloody mayhem here.

ER: What a world. Exhausted on a Friday night, I throw this on and am taken away to another world where somebody's 1992 Monterrey tape survived and we get a perfect color distorted tracking lined masterpiece that may as well have been from another dimension. This is a bloody match even within the annals of bloody lucha matches, with Brazo's entire face and torso covered in blood maybe two minutes in, and a long primera beatdown where Porky and Oro also get busted open. It's an all time bizarre rudo team as Jaque Mate recruits two real American goobers - longtime WWF job guy Dusty/Dale Wolfe and another guy doing a truly great job Bad Brody impression - and they all punch the shit out of Los Brazos. I actually liked The Viking as a poor man's Sylvester Terkay, and I thought Wolfe did a real good job punching and scraping away at Porky. Wolfe's punches to bust Porky open were on point and he kept doing a bunch of cool things to work over a cut, like scraping his boot eyelets across Porky's face. 

But yes, the real show is the brutal beating El Brazo takes at the hands of Mate, and the way the crowd physically rallied behind a man completely covered in blood. Men in white dominant polo shirts are coming to Brazo's aid as he's trying to catch his breath and maintain his balance, and then things get surreal when they start playing music mid-match. With the hazy video and choppy tracking, it feels like another channel is bleeding over into ours. Brazo is bleeding out and suddenly an angelic choir is playing over the top of it and it elevates everything to high art. Porky and Oro were great at taking secondary beatings throughout, knowing their brother was the show but not content with hanging back and out of the way. Porky was still in there taking backdrops and getting worked over by both Americans. The Brazos comeback in the Segunda, with a primera dragged out long enough to build that anticipation, was shockingly brief and even more shockingly ended in a Brazos loss. We never get the full satisfaction of Wolfe or Viking getting busted open, even if we get Porky and Oro throwing headbutts that look like they should open cuts. As we eagerly await these American goons getting squashed in various ways by Porky, Jaque knees Brazo in the balls for an undignified loss, music still playing, his brothers confused. Now we need another 30+ year old Monterrey tape to surface that has Los Brazos' bloody revanche.   

Love Machine/Apolo Dantes/La Fiera vs. Negro Casas/Hijo del Solitario/Stuka Monterrey 

MD: Stuka was a replacement for Black Magic. Everyone else was fine in this one, but this was the Casas vs Love Machine show. Two dynamic, imaginative wrestlers, who knew how to mug and make the most of things. You always see something new with both of them and they were matched up here. We start with Casas beating down Love Machine with a table, including jumping on it repeatedly from the apron with it on top of him. Later on, Love Machine gets some great revenge, taking Casas's head and driving it down into the ground from the apron before chasing him into the crowd. And then towards the end, we get the spot that closes the circle, with Love Machine basically punching the table towards Casas. It's just a joy to watch these guys do their thing. Completely iconic stuff.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Santo! Rey Jr.! Villiano 4! Scorpio Jr.! Shamu!

WWA 9/2/91

Rey Mysterio Jr. /??? vs Shamu/Peligro Mortal 

MD: This had a nice bit of pomp to start as Rey Sr gives his nephew (though not billed that way) the Rey Jr mantle. The rudos here worked ok as bases. Everything was fine, but unsurprisingly, Rey's the guy you can't take your eyes off of. Not everything was smooth but even the things that weren't smooth still worked. He might have to bounce twice on the ropes before launching himself off, but there's still such agility and talent to the fact he even could get that second bounce that it somehow added to it instead of taking away from it. Somehow that seemed as impressive as the things he hit clearly, cleanly, and brilliantly.

PAS: This was a mini's match, and it is crazy how much more agile and wild Rey was then other mini's. The rudos were nice bases for all of Rey's spots, I think the thing that stood out the most wasn't the spots themselves but how much more height and speed Rey would get on typical spots. A springboard headscissors isn't that rare, but Rey just floats in the air like a flying squirrel before he hit anything. 

ER: I gotta write about a new Shamu match, I love that guy. He's the Tijuana undercarder my friends and I always got most excited for any time we did a wrestling road trip down south (except for my friend Jason who pretended he liked Xstasis). He was the best base on a lot of the shows we saw and when your gimmick is also that you're a fat guy whale then of course I will love you. This was probably the earliest Shamu I've seen and he takes the same great fast bumps to the floor and can catch ranas and armdrags better than anyone in the match. Peligro Mortal isn't bad himself, and Rey is spectacular. I don't think you would have predicted he would take over the world and become one of the biggest stars of all time, but he is the guy in the opening match that people talk about after the show. He really soars on his springboard offense, and at one point Shamu bumps him into the ropes to create space and Rey flies back into the ropes  like Shamu was an explosion. 

Los Mercenarios vs Rey Misterio/Kiss/Halcon 78 

 

MD: Pretty fun midcard trios match here. Mercenarios were Bill Anderson, a young Louie Spicolli, and some guy under a mask, who was pretty definitely not Tim Patterson, who had the gimmick off and on in the years prior. Anderson and Spiecolli worked well together (though I kind of wish Anderson worked up to his size a little more), but it was the masked guy who really stood out. He was a crazy bump machine and pinballed all over the ring and the floor for all of the tecnicos. He made Kiss, who I'm not particularly familiar with, look like a million bucks in their exchange. This was all-around enjoyable with sufficient chaos in the tercera that the handheld cam had no idea what to focus on.

Villano IV vs Scorpio Jr. 

MD: This was a solid title match. Scorpio was maybe half a step behind in the opening matwork but that was the only thing he felt behind on. When the pace picked up, his quick dropkicks were great. When he was in control, he had presence. His submissions in the tercera were all good. Villano was more or less flawless throughout. Even though the crowd was definitely behind him, I could have used a slightly better transition in the segunda. He just sort of fell out of an abdominal stretch (that Scorpio was cheating on) and then took over. The crowd deserved something better there. They got a pretty good tercera though with a lot of drama.

PAS: I thought this was pretty great. We don't have many (if any) long Villano IV singles matches and this was a treat. I thought the early matwork was really cool, including a long section working in and out of a calf stretch. I actually liked the second fall fine, with Villano IV hitting this really nasty short knee drop, and Scorpio doing sort of a Oklahoma stampede with a spinebuster. Final fall had a heavy V4 tope and a great looking reversal of superplex where Scorpio looked like he was going to get sheer dropped on the top of his head, before he reversed it into a pin. V4 clearly was holding a belt of some kind, and I want to see all of those defenses. 

Hijo del Santo/Hijo de Solitario vs Kahoz/Fishman

MD: Unfortunately, we only get the first two falls before the tape cuts off. Not a ton to say with just that. Solitario held up his end so what we got were good. I always look for a Fishman performance that'll make him stand out to me and I rarely get it but I thought he asserted himself well here. He's never comes off as particular quick or agile but there was a real heft and weight to all of his offense here as he leaned on the tecnicos. That I appreciated at least.

[The video got taken down very quickly due to WWE complaints about Rey footage. We will find some way to get the footage uploaded. As you can see, it got pulled before either Phil or Eric could watch any of it.]

Read more!