New Footage Friday: Mando, Chic, Flair, Race, Youngblood, Briscos, Steamboat

Mando Guerrero vs. Golden Boy Olympic Wrestling 5/80

PAS: Roy Lucier is uploading some dying days Olympic Wrestling from LA, and this was corker of a match. Its a Mexican death match which basically is a street fight, Golden Boy is Chick Donovan working a Nature Boy gimmick. Mando jumps him at the bell and wrecks him. Throwing him around the ringside, including using the empty front row seats to run and dive off of (cool use of the seats, not good that the whole side of the front row is empty.) He grabs two straps and laces Chick with them and just rips apart his arm including chair shots and nasty crossarmbreakers. Mando is a force of nature in this match, coming at him with such intensity. Donovan rakes the eyes to take over and opens Mando up by smashing his head into the turnbuckle bolts. He works the cut and gets the pin after a thrust to the throat. Golden Boy comes off like a total badass for surviving that onslaught. Kind of an odd structure with Mando taking 85% of the match before losing, but the work in it was great.

MD: Mando is my least favorite Guerrero. I totally get why someone would like him, and I respect certain things he does. He's the most over-the-top, theatrical Guerrero. He understood how they were viewed by most audiences and most promotions and leaned into that the most. I think he ought to get credit for that with all of his tumbling and flash. It makes for something that really stands out. It just doesn't usually make for good matches.

Here, I had some hope, because some of that mentality, distilled to a straight up brawl, could create something fairly bombastic and memorable. In the first couple of moments, we start to get signs of that too. Unfortunately, it doesn't last. Mando was losing this one and fairly definitively as well. His response? He takes most of the match with holds and containment. Chic barely gets anything. I'd say that this was a context issue in as we don't know what led to a match with such severe stips, but Chic was presented as the next Gorgeous George and the fans didn't seem to care at all that he was getting early and frequent comeuppance. They sat on their hands. By the time the heat and the blood came into play, it was too late. I think these two probably had a really great brawl in them, but that's not what we got here.

TKG: Holy fuck that was great. Have we seen a lot of brawling Chic Donovan before? I’ve seen Donovan live on the indy scene as technical heel doing more Austin Idol mannerisms. But this is full on brawling Donovan and I’m not even sure if you can compare what he was doing to Austin Idol. The announcer compares him to Gorgeous George and he brings a man purse to the ring but not mincing. Donovan’s punch bitchslap/chop combo was like Tenryu if Tenryu looked like a Long Island Jewish Helen Reddy. Mando who were also kind of used to working AWA midcard technical doing carnyish spots also great in brawling showcase. Cool seeing him really attack a bodypart like an illegitimate Anderson brother in match where you expect to be going for KO. Left this wanting to see every match in their feud.

ER: This was great, loved it all. The structure was maybe a little weird, with Mando taking the first 70% entirely and Chic taking up most of the last 30% before winning, kind of a weird almost babyface comeback for Donovan, who really had taken an absolute shit kicking up to that point. Mando punches Chic around ringside, absolute dynamite right hands. Chic takes bumps into the ringpost, into empty front row seats (the crowd didn't feel small, but for whatever reason an entire front row was empty), Mando doing this great downward punch to the forehead while standing on the seats, then running across the row to do a kind of by the hair bulldog onto the seats. He even whips him hard back in the ring with TWO straps, and yanks on his arm a bunch with a big armbar spot. Donovan's comeback was suitably violent too, I agree with Phil that he looked like a total badass taking that beating and then really firing back. It's so weird because he's clearly a smug prick, but here he is getting all this fabulous babyface build and comeback. Mando gets busted open and Chic bites at the cut, and really has cool theatrical punch combos, looks like Sid Caesar doing a Buddy Landel character. This was two guys who I rarely take a look at, and this made me want to see anything they've done that's like this.

Jack/Jerry Brisco vs. Jay Youngblood/Ricky Steamboat NWA 7/9/83

MD: I got a little worried at first since out of twenty minutes of footage, the first few were taken up by the fans pelting Jack and Jerry with trash. I'm always up for that sort of heat, but I still wanted a match too. (I didn't know that the last few were full of the faces stealing the belts and the Briscos complaining about it too). I should have known better. The fifteen minutes or so we got were downright sublime.

It starts with posturing, with Ricky pointing and pointing, a Brisco swiping, a duck, and an atomic drop and it never stops all the way to the finish. I haven't gone back and revisited these matches so I'm not sure entirely how much of this was done down around the horn but it felt both fresh and organic and completely seamless with absolutely no wasted space. Everything didn't just mean something. Everything meant everything.

Steamboat was the king at this. He's already got the biggest armdrag in the world, but here everything was big: every bit of clapping on the apron, every tag, every swipe from the outside. The beatdown on Jay is great, with them targeted the theoretically damaged back with everything in short order: gnarly holds, a Billy Robinson backbreaker, this amazing suplex right onto middle the top rope, back first. The hot tag doesn't feel entirely earned, but the fans buy it and it leads to a little loop that allows Jay back into make an even better hot tag. The finishing segment is great with the faces demolishing a leg (with both these great Dibiase fistdrops onto it and the most beautiful Indian Deathlock you'll ever see) before shenanigans allow the the Briscos to take the win. Just a great match from a great series.

PAS: This was excellent, one of the best new matches we have seen from the Network. Classic tag wrestling set up, with all four guys working at a high level. The Briscos beat down on Jay was an all timer, they are both such asskickers, I have found title match Jack Brisco a bit dry, but heel tag wrestler Jack Briscoe is great. That suplex on the tope rope, looked like it might have put Youngblood in traction. Steamboat is a dynamic hot tag too, just so good at portraying hyped up energy, and the Briscoes fly around for him like champs, I love all of his goofy karate chops, totally what you thought martial arts looked like before anyone actually saw it. You don't see a ton of face tag team limbwork, but man do Steamboat and Youngblood go after the knee, the Indian deathlock by Jay is maybe the best I have ever seen, he is floating off the mat with a perfect bridge. We get a solid BS finish and an irate crowd ready to murder the Briscos. Thought this was way better then the Starcade match, and was up there with the top 80s tags.

TKG: Early 80s Race and Flair are guys you think of as having pretty big movesets but really they get eclipsed by Briscoes and Youngblood/Steamboat. These guys are just whipping out moves. All the cool stuff working over Youngblood’s back: the first back backbreaker etc. People talk about Steamboat’s moveset shrinking in WWF mostly in terms of him dropping the superplex but there is so much stuff he shelved. Also you think of Flair and Race as big bumping guys and while they have their more elaborate bumps, the heel Briscoes flying around are really slapstick amusing. I wish Roughhouse reffed this match too

ER: This was incredible. What a all time great tag match. This honestly made me rethink the standing of the Kobashi/Kikuchi vs. Can Ams match. This was the first time I think I've ever thought the Briscos looked more kickass than the Briscoes. Jack Brisco in this match would be one of my all time favorite wrestlers. Brisco is a hyped guy I usually don't get excited for, but here my god. What a colossal dickhead, and a dominant one; he beats Youngblood around the ring, great punches, big knees, drops two vicious kneedrops to Youngblood's chest, hits this almost press slam bodyslam, just major strength. Gerry was an absolute savage here as well, in ways I've never seen. He looks like he's going to snap Youngblood in two places when he stands way too far away on a slingshot suplex, just bending Youngblood over that top rope and muscling him over. He even saves the match and wins it in one fell swoop by diving in with a huge outstretched splash as Steamboat is pinning Jack. And that babyface team my god! Youngblood took a furious asskicking and by the 15:30 mark of this match you start noticing that Youngblood has garnered so much damn sympathy through his beating that this building is rabid. Men and women, old and young alike are just screaming there heads off for Jay and Ricky. It's beautiful pro wrestling. Steamboat has a magnificent hot tag, heavy as hell chops, big haymakers, big mannerisms, everything explosive. He's making up fistdrop variations on the fly, drops two great ones onto the screaming Gerry's inner thigh. What?? This was smoking hot, screaming loud, hard hitting, worth the ticket price professional wrestling. What a find.

Ric Flair vs. Harley Race NWA 7/9/83
PAS: New Flair matches aren't really that interesting to me at this point, but this was a new babyface Flair match, and he works pretty different as a face. These are a pair of really dynamic offensive wrestlers, and I really enjoyed watching them tee off on each other. Race has some shtick I don't love, but man does his stuff look great, he just crushes Flair with knee drops and punches. Flair breaks out some offense we don't normally see from him too, a flying forearm, some cool looking uppercuts and he actually hits his top rope elbow instead of getting punched in the stomach. Flair actually press slamming Race off the top rope is a nice bit of role reversal. We get a version of my least favorite Race spot, where he does a brainbuster on the floor, instead of a piledriver, but it is as dumb that Flair has to go back on offense so soon. This wasn't a match with a ton of substance to it, but it was a real go go offensive match which totally got the crowd into it, and any chance to see different shades of these great wrestlers in appreciated.

MD: This was a pretty standard 20 minute title match. Unfortunately, they worked the first part like it was more of a 60 minute one. Watching Flair-as-champ matches, almost always the most enjoyable part is how he works both on top and from underneath during the initial holds, the struggle, the abandon, how they work in and out with spots. Here, Flair was the face and there was very little of that. It was pretty boring and it was almost a relief when they cut to the crowd doing something interesting instead.

Thankfully, it picked up from there, mimicking some of the other Flair-Race matches we have from that summer. I liked seeing the wrinkles. There are a few matches where Race suplexes Flair on the floor, but here, instead of reversing a pile driver to recover, Flair dodges a diving headbutt. The suplex itself was super nasty because Flair's foot got caught on the rope barricade. (There was also the fake out elbow drop as Race rolls, which is a great spot in any match) The back half is heated and exciting, building to amusing sequence where they almost couldn't decide on which bs finish would actually end the match. The real star of the show was the little girl they kept cutting to who was increasingly annoyed by everything Race did. I'm glad we got this one, as it's always notable to see another pure babyface Flair performance, but the worst parts of it didn't live up to the best parts.

TKG: Camera person spends a lot of time on a girl who you expect to be picking a daisy in an anti-Goldwater commercial and she really is into this match and you get why it would work for her. I love some babyface Flair. Love the babyface Flair bumps, the offense etc. This is more Flair from above babyface Flair then you get in say 89 or so and early parts of this are Race begging off till he headbutts Flair in the dick. I’ve complained in the past about Race’s suplex on the floor spot where it demands that opponent get back in ring before 10 count and often is next guy on offense. But it’s perfect here as the missed diving headbutt to floor set up Flair’s transition to offense and Flair knows how to continue selling while transitioning. The match is reffed by Sonny Fargo who is fantastic, does a great job eating his first bump and just all his timing and interactions to set up finish really make sense and are believable. He knows Flair doesn’t want to win by DQ and is willing to let things slide for a while but…

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The Bad News Berzerker Goes to Japan: Part 3

66. Stan Hansen/John Nord vs. Mark & Chris Youngblood (AJPW 1/7/94)

Oh man was this ever good. THIS was the Nord I wanted in Japan. He looked a little rusty in the trios match opening night, and here we are a few days later and he looks as good as his best Berzerker matches. I love all the big boots, the big knee, works a killer grounded headlock (pushing up off his heels to wrench it in), really makes Chris think about it before hitting that gnarly falling slam, drops a great legdrop for the win, and obviously knows who he's teaming with as he misses with this enormous lariat in a way that I've never seen him swing before. Chris would have Hoshikawa'd if he didn't duck. And the Youngbloods were super fun. Neither of them have tons of offense, but they make it work, and Hansen/Nord didn't treat them like total jokes, and that makes it way better. Mark throws really great short Mongolian chops, Chris throws a bunch of weird chops, and Hansen/Nord appropriately sell all of them like their BBQ is getting invaded by a bunch of pesky flies. Hansen sells them with confusion and anger, like a dog not understand why biting this porcupine keeps hurting him. Nord takes his first classic backwards bump over the top in over a year here, flying out of the ring off a double dropkick. Chris' hot tag chops are great pro wrestling, keeping both big men off balance until it eventually catches up to him, and Mark had a nice style of painful looking bumps. This whole thing was a blast, far better than the mugging I expected. Hansen/Nord took 80% of the match, but never looked like they were steamrolling the Youngbloods.


COMPLETE & ACCURATE BERZERKER

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DVDVR Puerto Rico 80s Set: Disc 1: Los Pastores vs. Jay & Mark Youngblood (Spring 1985)

Disc 1, Match 10: Los Pastores vs. Jay & Mark Youngblood (Spring 1985)

Well, this was a huge, disjointed mess. Let's break it into its composite parts. First, there was stalling, so much stalling, even too much stalling for me, namely based around the Sheepherders showing off their flag and the Youngbloods showing off a Puerto Rican flag. There was effort put in, with the Sheepherders stomping about, and it was fairly effective, as the fans were stomping and ready for the action to start, but it just went on way too long.

Then there was a shine, arm-based, on Luke. One thing that really surprised me when watching the Sheepherders in Portland was how different Luke and Butch were. That's something that I never had an impression of as a kid watching them in the WWF. Luke was maybe a bit quicker, a bit more of a bumper, but Butch was constant motion and reaction. In the early parts here, he sold for his own punches, marching about after everything he did, sold on the apron for Luke, just reacted to everything. Meanwhile, Luke, when the Youngbloods had his arm in the corner, didn't even pretend to get away. He didn't make them earn a single thing in the shine. Maybe that wouldn't have been so bad if Mark wasn't more or less the same. At one point, during a pin attempt in the shine, Butch walked over on the outside and pulled Mark's hair to break things up. Mark didn't even look at Butch. He just sleepwalked his way into the next move.

The transition was rough. The Youngbloods decided to stop tagging for no reason and set up a full nelson/punch combo. The ref stopped it because they didn't tag (again for no reason; nothing story driven led to this. They just went from tagging on the armwork to stopping for this because it was the transition), and as the ref was breaking things up, Butch came in to attack from behind. Not good.

The rest of the match was formless chaos and violence, engrossing at times, but ultimately meaningless. I liked Jay quite a bit as the emotional, overprotective brother, fighting back with a chair as the Sheepherders picked away at Mark however they could. It just went around in circles a few too many times until the finishing stretch (if you can call it that), which involved the ref leaving the ring in pointless distraction when the Youngbloods should have had the match won. This wasn't good but it was, at times, fun. I think we all deeply underrate Butch.

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Saturday Night's Alright for SLL's All-Request

Domingo Robles vs. Jay Youngblood (WWC, early 80's)
Requested by Tim Evans

This was a fun four-minute aside. Domingo Robles' gimmick is that he's what every clueless dope who read the WKO 100 without actually knowing what they were talking about thinks Black Terry is. He's this aged, broken down, clumsy, ambiguously drunken rudo who feebly attempts to brawl with Youngblood, but inevitably ends up getting knocked on his ass and begging off. And it rules. Robles' shtick is great. He has a million different ways to comically oversell Jay's offense. I think my favorite was when Youngblood hit him so hard that he got "stuck". This is compounded by Rip Rogers' solo commentary, as he is in awe at Robles' ludicrousness, and is actively cracking up at several points. "If at first you don't succeed...give up, Domingo."

Chris Jericho vs. Mike Enos (WCW, 9/23/1996)
Requested by DylanWaco

Enos' theme music epicness-to-push ratio is one of the mostly weirdly disproportionate I've ever seen. Dylan said this was his favorite Nitro match ever, and it's not hard to see the appeal. They do a really fun big man vs. little man match, and communicate the idea really well considering the size difference isn't that big and Enos has a lot of athletic offense for a biggish guy. Enos also comes across as a real challenge for Jericho despite the fact that I don't remember him getting one meaningful win in this entire run with the company and I'm watching from an age where Jericho is a multiple-time world champion (though he had only actually been in WCW a month at this point). Again, not hard to see why. Having not watched his stuff for a while, I had forgotten what a brute Enos could be. He opens this match by slapping Jericho hard across the mouth - seemingly because Jericho had an insufficiently firm handshake - and then cracks him with a headbutt. Jericho fires back with a nice spinwheel kick, but Enos hangs tight and catches Jericho with a slingshot shoulderblock and pins him down with the topes de Jalisco of all things. He spends the next little while beating Jericho up and powering him around. There's a particularly cool run outside the ring where Enos hits an apron dive clothesline and then turns the ringsteps on their side and suplexes Jericho onto them. After that, he turns his focus to Jericho's back. At one point, he breaks out a Boston crab that Larry Zbyszko completely shits on on commentary. Admittedly, it's not a very good Boston crab, but that's not the kind of thing you draw attention to in the booth. God, I hated Larry's commentary. Jericho escapes an Argentine backbreaker and hits a Michaels-style superkick followed by an Adams-style superkick to make a comeback, but it gets cut short in spectacular fashion when Enos turns a top-rope hurricanrana into a superbomb for a nearfall. When that doesn't work, he makes one last run at putting Jericho away, but Jericho over-rotates him on a powerslam attempt and lands on top for the pin. Offhand, I don't know what my favorite Nitro match ever is (Eddy/Malenko from the Saturday Nitro? I haven't watched it in a while. Hmmmm....). It's probably not this, but this was definitely one of the good ones, and a fine example of what used to make that show fun.

Kengo Mashimo & Madoka vs. Daisuke Sekimoto & Yoshihito Sasaki (Z-1, 3/2/2008)
Requested by Brandon-E

BJW guys vs. K-Dojo guys in Zero-One? OK. It's not like Zero-One has an identity of it's own anymore. These are three guys who I currently like, plus Madoka, who I don't really have anything against, back in a time when I either didn't like them or didn't care about them. Actually, weren't those fun MEN's Club multi-mans happening around this time? I probably liked Madoka the most when this happened. Either way, a lot has changed since then, but I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same, because these guys' performances in this match ranks roughly the same as how much I like them currently: Mashimo gives the best showing, then Sasaki, then Sekimoto, then Madoka. And that's not good, because Sekimoto vs. Madoka seems to be the main focus of much of the match, and Mashimo doesn't really even show up until the half-way point. The result is that we have the tale of two matches. The first half, dominated by Sekimoto/Madoka exchanges, is really listless and sloppy. At one point, in rapid succession, Sekimoto backdrops Madoka over the top rope onto the apron (which is blown completely), Madoka Rocker Drops him when he tries a shoulderblock through the ropes (which Sekimoto didn't even seem to be trying to connect), and then takes him out on the outside with an Asai moonsault (which takes too long to set up and leaves Sekimoto standing there like a dope waiting to catch it). It's not good, but at least it was bad in an active way. Most of the rest of their stuff was dull and generic in the way you kind of expect a match like this to be dull and generic. Please, bring on the suck. At least that's interesting. But all of a sudden, Mashimo finally gets in the match, and he gets paired up with Sasaki, and it's like night and day. Structurally, they're not mixing it up too much, but there's just so much more life behind their exchanges. Mashimo looks especially dynamic, having a lot of really crisp offense, and shows some hints of things to come. FUTEN was definitely good for this guy, but honestly, he looked like he was already most of the way there in this match. Their enthusiasm seems to rub off on the others, too, and overall, the second half of the match is a lot more fun than the first, including Sekimoto pulling Madoka off the apron and over the top rope for one of the best German suplexes of his very German suplex-heavy career. The finish is also really great, with Mashimo grabbing a crucifix on Sasaki and rolling it over into the Rings of Saturn, cranking Sasaki's arm over his shoulder to make him tap. The bad first really drags down the good second half of this, but it did make me want to see a Mashimo/Sasaki singles match, so that probably counts for something.

Toshiaki Kawada vs. Minoru Suzuki (NJPW, 8/11/2005)
Requested by Curt McGirt

I have mixed feelings about this. Overall, if I had to call it one way or the other, I'd say this was a good match. Both guys brought enough fire to the proceedings to keep my interest throughout, and that's pretty much the minimum of what I could ask for from a match. They hit each other hard and Suzuki made his funny faces and it was generally structured well. That said, I wanted to like this way more than I did, and while I did like it, I'm not really that enthusiastic about it. Kawada was all over the map here. He was pretty deep into his HUSTLE "not giving a shit" phase, and while there were glimmers of his past greatness (he will still chop and kick the shit out of you, if nothing else), he honestly looked bored a lot of the time. At one point, Suzuki locks him in the sleeper, and I could've sworn I saw Kawada roll his eyes. I mean, we are talking Samoa Joe in TNA "great wrestler just not caring at all anymore" levels of boredom here. OK, maybe that's excessive, but there are some low moments here. Meanwhile, we've got Suzuki. He's kind of a divisive figure in wrestling fandom: either you think he's a really fun superdick heel, or you think he's an irritating Villain Sue. I understand both views, but personally, I've always leaned towards the former. I think the main tipping point is that his no-selling tendencies have always struck me as a bit like Kevin Von Erich's no-selling tendencies. When a guy wails on them, I don't believe either guy isn't in pain (usually), I just get the sense that they respond to pain differently than most wrestlers. He's not the Ultimate Warrior is what I'm saying. But I'm not dumb. I do recognize he's a guy with limitations. He works better in tags than in singles, he works better against lower-ranked opponents than equal or higher-ranked ones, and he works better in short sprints than longer, slower-paced matches. This is a singles match where he's wrestling a higher-ranked opponent, and it goes 17 minutes, which isn't an epic or anything, but is about 7 minutes longer than a Suzuki singles match should go. It's not a sprint, which really hurts the matches main appeal: watching two tough bomb-throwing bastards lay waste to each other. I mean, I guess you can do that for 17 minutes, but they really don't. When they're throwing bombs, it's great, and they throw enough of them to keep the match fun overall, but the match as a whole is still worked at a surprisingly and frustratingly deliberate pace. I don't know. Maybe I just set the bar too high for this one.

The Road Warriors & Paul Ellering vs. The Varsity Club (NWA, 2/11/1989)
Requested by Victator

By contrast, I didn't know what to expect from this. The Varsity Club has been revisited a bit lately, and people with opinions I take seriously are saying that they were a really fun act around this time. Watching this match definitely bore that out. This is worked as a brawlers vs. technicians style clash, and the Varsity Club hold up their end of the bargain, with really aggressive looking amateur takedowns early on, and some great work over Animal's arm later. But the real surprise was the Roadies. I never thought much of them in the ring, but they hold nothing back in this match, clobbering the hell out of the Varisty Club every chance they get. Hawk looks extra vicious, laying in his shots really hard, but Animal really proves his worth as the face in peril. Yes, this is a match where the Warriors are actually fighting from underneath, and they look really comfortable doing it. I mean, I think I vaguely remember Animal and Heidenreich being shockingly good working that style, but couldn't think of the Roadies at the peak of their popularity ever doing it. Well, here they are, and it's fantastic. Hell, even Ellering looks good the brief time he's in, hitting a nice dropkick, and Sullivan doesn't hold this back at all. The finish does, unfortunately. After completely dominating the body of the match, Hawk gets chucked over the top rope after only the slightest of comebacks for the DQ. He takes a nice bump there, but I was hoping for an actual third act to this, so I'm let down. Still, what's there was great fun while it lasted.

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