Super Dragon and the Greatest Match Ever to Happen in Pacifica, CA

Super Dragon/Spanky vs. Jardi Frantz/Bobby Quance APW 5/11/02 - EPIC

ER: I was at this show. Terra Nova Hight School in Pacifica. It was top to bottom one of the best wrestling shows I've been to, and I've been to a ton of great wrestling shows in my life. I was 21, there with friends, and the show was loaded. A small four man title tournament meant we got two good Robert Thompson matches and two good American Dragon matches, the latter being their arm work main event. Three great singles matches, a strong undercard, but this tag was the match we were talking about on the drive home. This tag match is the best match of the dozen or so shows APW ran in Pacifica in the late 90s/early 00s, many of which I attended. I wish I remember the Excalibur vs. James Watkins match. I'm sure it had a great clothesline. Cheerleader Melissa and Sara Del Rey in a trios? That was probably good too. Chad Collyer worked American Dragon in the first or second match of the night, and after his match I saw him sitting up in the bleachers watching the show. I went up and sat with him, asking him a bunch of annoying questions, so I don't remember much about those two matches. 

I doesn't matter, nothing on this card can compare to this tag. Only one match in Pacifica APW history comes close and that is the Westside Playaz (Robert Thompson/Boyce LeGrande) vs. Jardi Frantz/Vinny Massaro match from 5/6/00. That one is not far off, but this match clears it. Two of the greatest all time APW tag matches. APW even ran a tag team tournament show in Pacifica now that I think about it. The people of Pacifica demanded to be treated as a Tag Team Territory. You need to run a strong tag match at your Pacifica show in 2002 if you run one at all, and you don't even need to make the rest of the card good. This card was good, but had it been garbage we would have still spent the drive home talking exclusively about this match. On paper, it was exactly what my friends and I wanted to see in wrestling. It was a dream. Our special West Coast version of the burgeoning super indy dream match. That it actually delivered on the on-paper promise was what made us true believers. 

Every man enters separately. The first sounds we hear are "Down With the Sickness" because Bobby Quance is inspired by no other man. It feels impossible that nobody else in indy wrestling history would have used Disturbed's nu metal classic as an entrance theme, but Bobby Quance was somehow the only wrestler who had the vision. Jardi comes out in a kimono to Hayabusa's theme, which is some tremendous weeb cosplay after going one on NOAH tour a year earlier.  Spanky continues the rib of coming out to songs with long or constant instrumental intros, coming out to the Proclaimers' "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" with an intro long enough to make more than one adult man yell "get to the fucking ring already." These guys were all about their bullshit and nothing was going to stop them. 

While I was there in attendance, I have no memory of chanting SUPER HOMO at Super Dragon and don't believe it's a chant I would have participated in. However, I recognize that it was a very loud chant, and with only 200-300 people in attendance any loud chant would require many participants. There is no video footage that confirms me doing or not doing the chant, but this was 25 years ago and we were all still collectively processing 9/11, so who's to say who did what at Terra Nova that night. I also don't remember Spanky working shtick around throwing his pubes at Jardi so some things just get lost to time and memory.

Jardi Frantz is now a well kept secret; a mostly forgotten wrestler only thought of by those who were there or those who memorized DVDVR 500s. I was there for basically his entire west coast APW run. He had evolved into a pretty great wrestler by 2002, a real slimeball who was surprisingly tough. A babyface only be default. His matwork was really strong and he got a lot of quick leverage over Spanky. This was during an era where APW was pushing all of their graduates to do real wrestling training and all matches had focused matwork. It was a great era. It's an era that should exist in full on tape and yet is the most unreleased great indy wrestling of the era. The Dragon/Quance matwork was an excellent example of their matwork ethos, worked like snug World of Sport, less flash more weight. Quance used his speed for leverage and rolled Dragon into a crucifix that had strong physics. Dragon had a stunning camel clutch application where he forced Quance into a full nelson and maneuvered that painfully into a heavy weight camel clutch. I wish he held it instead of quickly moving to a Gedo Clutch, I wanted to see him twist Bobby. All the matwork was tough.  

Things really took off when Spanky and Super Dragon fully cut Quance off. That was when they got everyone's attention. A lot of people in 2026 probably don't know the name Bobby Quance, but he was a super fast learner who looked like the next West Coast super worker from go. This was less than 10 matches into his career and he hung impressively with the rest of the very advanced guys in the match, and he was a good and right fit getting cut off. He played great from under and Dragon is best when he's sadistically going after someone. Dragon had an amazing back elbow cut off that started it all. A back elbow that would have played in 1983 Georgia. Spanky slid a fast loud kick into Quance's face and catapulted him into one of those Super Dragon chops that sends an echoing snap through a building. Spanky's pinfall attempts are as painful as his offense, every pin a stump puller, stretching this boy's ligaments. When Dragon did a springboard kneedrop onto Quance's stretched out torso and cleanly rolled through to the far side ropes to talk shit, everyone in Pacifica knew they were seeing greatness. Imagine Hayabusa with the attitude of Deranged. Sounds like the best wrestler ever. 

Jardi was great as the veteran Kings Road partner teaming with the guy who was 100% taking the pin. He gets a lot of impact on his basics, even if he doesn't look like a guy who would have hard bodyslams or heavyweight biels, a legdrop with unexpected impact from long slender legs. Spanky and Dragon bump big for Jardi's shine, Spanky going over the top to the floor on a missed charge while Dragon wraps himself around the ringpost. Jardi's running senton over the ringpost into them had the same energy as 1997 Juvy. Quance's shooting star press over the ringpost into them had energy that wasn't even imagined five years before. I remember being blown away the first time I saw someone do a standing shooting star, or Kidman doing his shooting star press off the ring apron. Quance, pro for a few months, shoots himself into brave new pro wrestling possibilities. It's as if several dozen people saw Blitzkrieg and decided to become wrestlers so they could invent more dangerous versions of flipping onto someone, acolytes forming over three years. 

Super Dragon was the best at taking Bobby Quance's offense. Quance wasn't around long, but he fought Super Dragon a lot during his run. Dragon was the SUWA to Quance's Dragon Kid. They're doing 1997 Rey vs. Juvy with their own spin and they're really great at it. Dragon is Juvy, decapitating Quance's Rey with a downward angled springboard spinning heel kick to the back of the head, catching and folding on Quance's springboard huracanrana. What takes it beyond, is neither Rey nor Juvy were as vicious as Super Dragon, and that viciousness ramps up to a big finish involving Dragon ragdolling Quance multiple times. There's a wild sequence where Quance is murdered by a cradled brainbuster, Jardi hits a 450 splash on Spanky that Dragon breaks up with a top rope double stomp, Quance gets whipped into a pair of brutal Burning Lariats, it's all just monstrous. 

I wonder how many other people went to the Taco Bell near the beach that is designed like a surf shack. That's a thing you used to do in Pacifica after seeing some of the best wrestling of your life. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SUPER DRAGON

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Super Dragon is the Original Subliminal Subterranean Titanium Criminal Minded Swift SD

Super Dragon vs. Mike Quackenbush Rev Pro 9/28/02 - FUN

ER: I had higher hopes for this one, as it never really felt like a match, much more like a fun exhibition of moves and submissions. Now, I was kind of expecting a fun exhibition of moves and submissions - these are two guys with plenty of both - but this literally felt like an exhibition as there wasn't much happening between the moves. There was a lot of move, stand up, new move, stand up, submission, stand up, other guy's move. It wasn't bad, but Quack is someone who can string together a match really well and none of that happened here. Neither guy did their wildest spots (no big crash and burns to the floor), with the biggest miss being a Dragon corkscrew senton that would have missed Quack by a couple feet even if Quack hadn't moved. But the few subs looked good, Dragon hit a hard clothesline right into Quack's chest, Dragon got nicely spiked on a DDT for a nearfall. And Dragon's finishing run combo of a German suplex, rolled into a Blue Thunder Bomb, turned over into a piledriver? Well, that's a brilliant looked finishing package. However, that finishing package came literally after that spike DDT that got Quack a 2 count, and Dragon literally just stood up and hit all of those moves. So nearly everything looked good, but it had the psychology of a Smackdown vs. Raw video game match.

PAS: I agree, this didn't feel like it had much of a structure or process. I liked the early matwork, but when the got up off the mat they just did some stuff without any of it really stringing together in a sensible way. This was a tourney match, and maybe it would have been better if it had been a PWG or Chikara main event, just didn't feel like they put much thought into this match. 

Super Dragon/B-Boy vs. Bobby Quance/Jardi Frantz GSCW 3/29/03 - EPIC

ER: Big spot tag with some fun location specific structure, with Jardi and Quance are heels opposite hometown boys Dragon and B-Boy, leading to some heel in peril sections and our faces working like the bigger jerks. It's a fun tone for a stiff spotfest tag to take on, and I like all of these guys together. I miss this era of wrestling as these were all guys I got to see live a bunch so I have lots of memories associated with these lunatics. Heel Jardi was an awesome part of 2003, a heel proto-Matt Riddle with more of the stoner vibe and none of the MMA vibe, but all of the violent bump vibe. Quance was barely 30 matches into pro wrestling at this point, but it adds to his ring work. He doesn't hold back on hits or misses, and has that same kind of excitement that Blitzkrieg had. And since he's so new to all of this, there's a rawness to his misses and a desire to impress on things that don't quite work. When a move is supposed to miss, he goes through with it like he expects it to hit, which leads to several of his exchanges with Dragon look like something out of early Zero-1. Quance would throw an elbow that Dragon would kind of duck, and the off balance positions Quance winds up in make it look like he was never expecting anything to miss. It looks so much better than moves today that are thrown specifically to be reversed. Quance seems confused by the heel reaction from the crowd, but Jardi leans right into his role as deadbeat stoner heel who was getting high with his friends in the drive-thru before accidentally driving directly into a girl on a bike.

Dragon and B-Boy throw nothing but stiff shots, everyone gets kicked in the back at least twice throughout this match, Dragon comes up throwing hard slaps a couple times against Jardi, and both of them really start teeing off on Jardi in the corner. Frantz is a great punching bag and rag doll, and it's crazy he is the heel here as B-Boy drops him to his butt with a high left kick, plasters him with his running corner dropkick, and really gets folded in half several times. His comeback offense is cool, like his leaping top rope tornado DDT on B-Boy or his super impressive springboard rana on Dragon. There isn't too much selling in this one, but it doesn't really matter once they all start stringing together big spots. The match could have been different as there's some fairly engaging submission work earlier once B-Boy/Quance started against each other, but I like the big spots breakdown. Quance and Frantz hit stereo shooting star/450, there are some nice pinfall saves, Dragon hits an awesome top con hilo past the ringpost into Jardi, and the finish itself is really great: Dragon goes for a Psycho Driver on Quance, Quance lands on his feet and tries a low dropkick which Dragon leans out of, leaving Quance prone to an awesome B-Boy shining wizard. Dragon even dives onto the pin just to prevent Jardi from breaking it up. The match was a little scattered at times, but I loved the way it played against dynamics, and everyone involved did too much cool stuff.

PAS: Crazy spotfest tag matches aren't my favorite style, but I think this is about as cool of match you can have within that parameter. You have a ton of big spots hit pretty perfectly (the Frantz single jump springboard rana would be an all time legendary spot if hit on a bigger stage), counters and reversals that actually looked good rather then just dance moves, some actual drawn heel heat by Frantz and a whole ton of sick violence. B-Boy and Super Dragon are a tremendous team of violent asskickers, and they find lots of ways to kick people really hard in the face, and I loved Jardi winding up Super Dragon and then taking a Super Dragon sized asskicking. Jardi really got the crowd worked up, so they went nuts when Dragon started pushing his shit in. Quance was a little dry, but he had tremendous physical body control and looked really good mat wrestling with B-Boy. These matches can often go on too long, but I thought this ended right when it should have with the three count coming right at the apex of the crowd engagement.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SUPER DRAGON

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