Found Footage Friday: GIANT GONZALEZ SPEAKS~! LAWLER'S FANS SHRIEK~! HURACAN RAMIREZ RETREATS~!

Huracan Ramirez/Huracan Ramirez Jr./Kung Fu vs. Bestia Salvaje/Indomito/Killer Arena Naucalpan 1/10/88

MD: A farewell match for Huracan Ramirez and the oldest footage of Arena Naucalpan we have. We come in with a media discussion of Ramirez, but quickly get to the match. This is handcam and as blurry as can be but we can tell who everyone is (the hardest being between Ramirez and Ramirez, Jr. but there are clear differences to their bodies). 

And footage like this is a gift. Who knew that we'd ever get it, right? Yes, it's a little hard to watch but we're pros and it's worth it every time. The Ramirez' did well on early exchanges and then Kung Fu got to play into some very fun rudo communication including some scrambling and tripping that felt novel and interesting. Everything took a turn once Killer was able to get his hands on him, however, all the way to hitting a tombstone on the floor in the midst of the chaos.

That wasn't quite the match ender that you'd think it'd be but it let the rudos really take over. Ramirez got a big moment of shine here where he stood tall against all of them and did well for a while, but it was down to Kung Fu recovering and coming back in with nunchucks to turn things around. That was basically the end of the match but not the end of the beating as Indomito, bloody face contrasting with blonde hair, took an absolute thrashing from Ramirez around ringside. The match was thrown out or the rudos won by DQ but it hardly mattered as the crowd burst in the ring to celebrate with Ramirez. It's clear how much this mattered to them and to the wrestlers and shaky cam or no, it's a joy to get to be a fly on the wall to history like this. 

Jerry Lawler vs. Doink the Clown Pro Wrestling Shenandoah 3/19/94

MD: Indie match between Lawler and a Doink that the internet thinks is Steve Keirn and I believe it. We get maybe the first two thirds of this, as clearly the person filming was running out of tape from capturing the entire Damian Demento match that preceded it. But what we get is pretty great. All minimalist shtick in front of a crowd that was made up of kids happy to chant Burger King for twenty minutes. Basically the best crowd you could get for a thing like this.

When Lawler finally did engage, he got clowned (literally) again and again. He'd miss a punch in the corner and get tagged. He'd miss a punch, duck Doink's punch, miss another punch, and get tagged. The building, timing, and payoff were all wonderful. Exactly what you'd want. Eventually he started to play hide the object, never actually using it but hiding it over and over as the ref checked the hand then the singlet again and again. Finally, Doink got fed up, took the ring bell, and put it under his own singlet and it was a beautiful piece of pro wrestling hilarity I'd never seen before. The match cuts out shortly thereafter but that was well worth the YouTube click.

ER: 15 minutes of 90s indy wrestling Metal Machine Music in the form of shrill children tirelessly screaming maniacally at Jerry Lawler. Lawler doesn't land any offense for those 15 minutes. He takes one great back body drop, and takes two punches. It's what he fills in the spaces between those moments of impact with that draw enough heat to keep waves of high pitched ambient sound ricocheting off the walls of a packed to the rafters gymnasium. Shenandoah is a town with less than 5,000 people and it looked and sounded like every resident was there. Lawler could have worked this match with anyone - no offense to Keirn - such were his powers in 1994. I love the way he throws his over-confident missed punches. The two he throws to miss here are a comic book version of Lawler's normal punch style, reared back and thrown straight as an arrow to exaggerate his full body lunge when fist finds no face. I wish we could have watched 15 full minutes of him pretending to have a weapon. I wish we could have had 15 full minutes of him selling his balls after Doink pulled the middle rope into them. I wish we could have seen the Johnny Gunn/Damien DeMento semi-main that used up the rest of our cameraman's battery. The ending is lost forever, but Lawler made small town ears ring on a Saturday night, same as it ever was. 

Mr. Perfect/Randy Savage vs. Mr. Hughes/Giant Gonzalez WWF Dark Match 8/17/93

ER: I've wanted to see this match for so long. There were not actually that many Giant Gonzalez matches in WWF. 60 matches across 1993, 85% of them happening on house shows or TV taping dark matches. We've seen all of the other possible Giant Gonzalez combinations, of which there are far too few. He was mostly married to Undertaker and Randy Savage on house shows during his run, kept him away from most of the roster, offering no opportunities for him to break out of his comfort zone. I would have loved to see what Bret could have done with him in a singles match, hell in half a dozen singles matches. I'm confident we would have gotten Giant's best matches, until we get the Lawler match footage from USWA. But there's a roster of people I'd love to see interacting with him. Let's see what Tito could have done, or Mr. Perfect. Let's turn him on other heels so we can see freak show dreams like Gonzalez vs. Yokozuna. No, we got mostly Undertaker or Savage, meaning there weren't any unique one off matches that could potentially show up on handhelds. 

This match is the most unique of the 60 Giant Gonzalez WWF matches. It's one of his only tag matches, and it's an intriguing on paper pairing. I'm a big fan of Mr. Hughes and his 60-something match WWF run. He and Gonzalez are a cool team of freakshow giants, and while the match itself isn't some kind of hidden gem, there are moments featured that we don't see ever again and I always love that. The Mr. Hughes/Mr. Perfect sections are genuinely good. Perfect was on a strong run in '93 and I love the way his body reacted to Hughes. There's a Hughes back elbow and big boot that Perfect sets up and leans into so well, his bumping style more reactive than athletic, and it's one of the things that made his later work so good. Hughes was a real physical specimen that should have been a bigger deal. His size and look are awesome, and he takes an incredible Jerry Estrada style back body drop during Perfect's comeback, leaping his knees into Perfect's shoulder so he's several feet higher in the air when Perfect flips him. It's an impressive visual and you can probably count on one hand the men that size who could have done the same. 

But, while it's not a very adventurous offensive performance from Gonzalez - he limits himself exclusively to some of his worst overhand clubbing shots to the back - it gives us what is our only glimpse of something different. This match gives us Giant Gonzalez: Vocal Showboat, a completely different look at the largest man in wrestling. I've never seen him more vocal during a match. He trash talks the crowd, trash talks his opponent - both in the ring and actively from the apron - and he shows personality that was lacking in his TV footage. The camera catches him doing something so funny, and it more than anything makes me wonder what might have been, had they kept him around and used him as a tag partner of other monsters. The moment comes when he tags out, as he makes eye contact with a ringside fan. As he's walking to grab the tag rope, he waves a large hand down over his airbrushed ab muscles, smirk on his face like he's displaying his body for some taken girl, confidently showing off his muscles that are just as fake as his airbrushed pubes. It's such an amusing piece of heel comedy, something we otherwise didn't see him attempt. That's why I find these matches so valuable. All it takes is one quick gesture, otherwise unseen, giving us a glimpse of a different past.   

MD: I watched this before reading Eric's comments (usually I get places before he does so I can't cheat off of him but this time he got there first), and was thinking to myself that I was going to have to come down real hard on Gonzalez' offense. Real hard. You don't want to compare him to Andre but you do have to sort of compare a giant to a giant and late era Andre was immobile but he made every shot seem credible, while you got the sense Gonzalez, who was more mobile, was just afraid to hurt the people he was in the ring with. His kicks barely extended. His shots were just so so soft, and that's ok on some level, but there was no way to sell them as anything but. He didn't have any idea how to use his size to inspire imagination. Thankfully, the one shot that did look great was the one that counted, towards the end when he caught Perfect coming off the ropes while on the outside, which distracted the ref and allowed Savage to get his illegal shot in to set up the finish. That one looked quite good.

BUT that said, I am totally aligned with Eric on the idea that trash talking Gonzalez is something special. With no commentary, you heard everything, and he'd just bellow in from off screen and you'd more or less make it out, would make it out enough, and that guy was alive and feeling the moment. It made me think that he probably did have some pretty entertaining house show performances towards the end, especially if you shut your eyes.

Otherwise, the moments that stood out to me were right at the start, Hughes taking Harvey's hand in a sort of sensitive gesture of friendship as the match started. And the crowd going up for Perfect and chanting for him and Hennig letting it sink in and basking. Otherwise, he and Savage really got almost nothing, a couple of chops at the start. Even when Perfect went through the legs for a tag, Savage got swept right under almost instantly. Interesting match along those lines, one that really protected the heels even in a loss, but that still gave the fans that moment of basking at the beginning and moment of triumph at the end.

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Found Footage Friday: SAVAGE~! LAWLER~! MABEL~! PCO~! TAKER~! MANKIND~! JARRETT~! RAZOR~!

Jerry Lawler vs. Randy Savage Memphis 3/23/85 (Jonesboro)

MD: I'm not going to wax poetic on the WWE Vault finding this. You know. We live in amazing times.

The match itself was very interesting. Savage had turned a couple of times during his primary Memphis run and he was a familiar face and he was over. He had Newman with him. He was clearly the heel. The fans were still split. So they did everything they could to present Lawler as worth cheering and Savage as worth booing. To start, they had Lawler break clean at every point and get the best of Savage on rope running exchanges. 

After Lawler got a knee up in the corner, and raised his hands to show he meant for it to be a legal attack, Savage went out, got on the mic. Then Lawler did the same complaining about Tux, then Tux got to talk, and Savage again, and they went around with it, really laying out the case that you should cheer Lawler and boo Savage, even if it didn't look like that at face value. And then, when they got back into the ring, Lawler nailed Savage on the break, but by now, it was fully established how much he deserved it and how Lawler had tried to play nice first. On the next break, Lawler stepped on Newman's hand on the apron instead. The fans want to see the babyface hit hard and clown the heel and they built to it coming off as a pure babyface move and nothing petty or spiteful. 

Then of course, they inverted it by having Savage freak out about Newman getting stomped, run around with a chair, and get a cheapshot in on the next break. Unlike Lawler, though, Savage celebrated as if he'd accomplished something monumental. Suddenly, the crowd wasn't split anymore. They were booing Savage. Pretty masterful stuff. 

Because they had to tear things down and then build it all back up, Savage didn't really take over until around twenty minutes in and he did with a clever bit of misdirection with Tux and his cane. From there, things were pretty wild with Lawler coming back a couple of times and the fight spilling out to the audience. Incredibly crowd pleasing stuff with rapid fire slamming of heads into turnbuckles and grounded punches. Lawler turned Tux interference back on Savage one last time and hit the fist drop for a definitive win. Post match, he ALMOST got his hands on Tux but had to fight off three other heels instead (and he did to the crowd's delight). Really brilliant stuff overall in how they ensured that the crowd was exactly where they wanted them.

ER: To think there was a time in my fandom that I would have been bored by something like this. Savage, avoiding contact to rile up the half of the crowd who hates him while simultaneously appealing to the half who adores him, an incredible cross section of fans that not only allows this match its beautiful slow burn, but encourages it. This was 20 minutes of slow burn and shifting allegiances with men actually pleading their case on the house mic far more than hitting each other. They get so much mileage out of Savage just going out to the floor and getting upset, with little bits of in-ring character like Lawler popping his head up and down for four straight dropdowns while Savage sprinted back and forth over him. 

All the bullshit started breaking down when Savage finally started hitting Lawler and Lawler caught a Savage kick, hopping him out to the center of the ring, holding Savage's leg high up on his chest and drawing it out before finally tipping and fistdropping him in one move. Savage then catches Lawler's leg the same exact way and goes  through the same routine, only this ends with a Lawler enziguiri (a great one!). The misdirection around Tux Newman getting his cane to Savage and everything that happened after that was the kind of fire you want to see from a Lawler/Savage match. The way Savage punched Lawler all around ringside was filmed so perfectly it's as if they purposely took the brawl in front of the cameras, without actually doing that. It was just Savage giving everyone some close up magic and popping Lawler in the forehead around each side of the ring, these individual reared back shots every 10 feet, then hitting a big axe handle to the floor, then another. It's an honest to god miracle that he didn't blow out his knee until his mid-40s because he was just jumping onto concrete on every show for 15 years with or without cameras present. 

Savage is battering Lawler, and it all turns into one of the great turnbuckle smashing comebacks. Savage is bashing Lawler's head into the buckles, and they start coming a little slower with a little more resistance. The sixth time Savage is actively working to get Lawler's face to the buckle, and by the seventh Lawler has fully blocked it, and the crowd is here for it. When the strap comes down, Lawler's back is to the camera so we get to see Savage react to it, and Savage's eyes are the perfect eyes to be reacting to the strap coming down. We get them in shocking HD and it plays like such a famous clip that you'd think we'd have been seeing it in highlight videos for 40 years. Lawler's fistdrop off the middle buckle is as good as you can actually do a fistdrop...but his earlier missed fistdrop into the mat and subsequent sell might have been even better. Just another classic match we didn't realize existed until the last week. 

WWF House Show Footage

Mabel vs. Pierre MSG 11/26/94

MD: Really enjoyed this one. Pierre looked as good as anyone in the company at this point. He flew all over the place for Mabel early, timing all of his stooging perfectly and just bumping big given his size. One bit of punishment after the next. The transition was great. Mabel tried to suplex him back into the ring (and this didn't seem like a huge effort considering what he'd already done to him) and Pierre dropped straight down to the floor from the apron, causing Mabel to get hotshotted onto the top rope.

Then all of Pierre's offense was equally good, maybe too good, because the crowd was starting to go for him despite him working them a bit. Thankfully, they still went for Mabel on the comeback (reversing things on the floor to post Pierre) and Mabel hit two or three big things on the way out. Just a strong, larger than life undercard house show match.

ER: I love Mabel, ADORE Mabel, I will always back the big man...but HERE is a damn Quebecer Pierre performances if ever there was. It's no secret PCO is insane - it's been his main brand for a decade now - but I don't remember him going this hard in New Generation Raw matches, let alone on house shows. This was a man working UP to MSG, taking bumps that put 1-2-3 Kid to shame and hitting offense like a truck. I loved the layout of this, where it looked like the whole thing was going to be Pierre getting tossed repeatedly. He gets thrown so violently to the floor on the first lock up that there is no way he was able to work like this night in and night out....a thing one could have said before we found out how much he loves falling from great heights. Mabel suplexes him like it's nothing, throws him into the air with a high back body drop, really slamming him at will. 

Pierre turns the tide by stopping a suplex into the ring by throwing his body weight back and stunning Mabel on the top rope as he drops to the floor yet again. Then we get this great mix of Pierre trying to tame this sea beast by jumping all over Mabel's back, and taking big bumps as he's swatted away. He takes a back drop to the floor and responds by running up the nearest turnbuckle and hitting a real heat seeking missile of a dropkick. It always feels unsustainable, only a matter of time before Mabel would catch him again, and when he does it's just as great as before. Pierre takes an even higher backdrop than before, kicks out of the spinning heel kick but gets crushed by an avalanche, than takes his well earned time wobbling to the center of the ring and back, turning around to get flattened by a Mabel crossbody. 

Undertaker vs. Mankind Meadowlands 7/5/96

MD: I haven't seen any of the Taker vs. Mankind  stuff in a while and I wasn't quite prepared for where they were at this point in the feud. I don't remember Taker's shots ever looking quite this good for one thing. I don't know if that was Mankind leaning into them or Taker just laying them in because he was used to working him. 

This kept moving quite steadily, with Taker controlling for the first half but never in a straight line. Mankind would take over for a few shots and get cut off. He'd lose focus and start chasing Bearer. He'd go for a chair only for Taker to get it instead. He'd knock him over the rail only for him to come flying back with a clothesline. 

When he did really start to lean on Taker, he couldn't put him away. Taker punched out of the Mandible Claw in a great bit. He'd kick out of everything else and eventually Mankind lost focus again and started to hit himself and slam his head against the turnbuckle. Even then, even as he shot a choke up to stop the second Claw, Taker had to really fight for the comeback and it ended up as a pretty complete experience for everyone watching. A good entry into their series. 

ER: I shouldn't be surprised by Foley going this hard on a house show, but seeing it in HD it's shocking how much damage he took in front of a bunch of New Jersey sickos who knew how much of a sicko he was. If you ever look at Foley's schedule over '95-'98 and see a house show match like this, you'll wonder how his body didn't give out the first few months of his WWF schedule. When Foley started in WWF he was still making trips back and forth to Japan, going back and forth to take sick beatings on opposite sides of the globe. I guess his body was just conditioned to it by that point but I was still surprised how hard Taker was laying it in and how bad Foley's bumps got. It's obvious Taker is hitting him hard from the bell, clubbing him hard on the back of the neck and throwing tighter strikes than I associate with 1996 Undertaker. 

But then the chairshots start, which are much harder than 1996 WWF chair shots, and it all peaks with Foley taking his backwards bump off the apron to the guardrail...but this lunatic lands back-of-head first into the thickest bottom rail of the guardrail, and the leap back was FAR. The leap backward being so far is probably what led to his body not flying into the railing itself, but flying backward just to whip the most tender part of your head into the thickest steel...that's a guy who should be working 180 matches a year right there. That bump would concuss and give brain damage to most men, but it doesn't even slow Foley down. He still takes more crazy bumps on the floor, including a great one over the railing, off a chair and onto the concrete, which seemed to signal to the Meadowlands crowd that he really was doing this for them, as the chants for Foley started to have a One Of Us feel to them the more damage he took. Awesome fight. Foley really did himself a minor disservice by focusing on his goofy "having fun with Owen" house show matches in his first book, because I had no idea there were hard performances like this out there. I, of course, should have known. 

Jeff Jarrett vs. Razor Ramon Montreal 10/21/94

MD: Most of the Hall I've seen lately has either been 90-91 Puerto Rico or 88 NJPW so it's weird to see him as Razor. This went a few directions I wasn't quite expecting and I think, as much as anything else, it was them trying things. They had wrestled a few times earlier in the year but this was fairly early in their 'marriage' that would last a while.

It's funny because I buy it out of 2025 Jarrett, but I'm not sure I was feeling the strut here. Much more gripping and organic was the way that he paintbrushed Ramon's head after taking him down a few times. All of that paid off so well with him running right into Ramon's open handed slam and bumping huge. Beautiful stooging and feeding. He'd subsequently get knocked out, come back strong, and run right into the fall away slam and Ramon paintbrushing him a bit in return.

Once he took over, he controlled primarily through some nice cutoffs (an enziguiri, dropkicks, corner whips, a nice punch, etc). They really did a great job of building the hope spots, getting bigger and more elaborate each time until Ramon finally punched his way through it all only to get redirected over the top. Ramon controlled out there but Jarrett reversed a whip for a cheap (but effective count out). 

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Found Footage Friday on Saturday: LAWLER~! IDOL~! RICH~! BAM BAM~! ROSE~! HENNIG~! SHEEPHERDERS~! NIGHTMARES~!

Sheepherders vs. Nightmares CCW 1/17/87

MD: Charles has received a new set of DVDs in the mail. He's going through it and has already identified some very interesting sounding lost matches. Be sure to follow his work in general. Here's one of the matches and it's a very straightforward, very solid tag. Got to love Solie here, first calling the Sheepherders "twisted steel" which made me wonder where he was about to go with that, and then refusing to differentiate Butch or Luke or Davis or Wayne for the entirety of the match, just calling them "A Nightmare" etc. Thanks Gordo.

This hit all the right notes balancing being grounded and maintaining a slightly chaotic feel throughout. During the shine, the Sheepherders kept rushing out of the ring every time the Nightmares got the better of them. It put a certain sort of punctuation on everything and really got across the slickness of the Nightmares. I'm pretty sure it's Wayne that works FIP here, and the transition was this great over the top bump due to the rope being pulled down. He got color as time went on and had some really well timed hope spots. When the fans started to chant USA, he'd reward them by giving them hope. That's exactly how these things should work. Always be struggling to get back into it but struggle the most when the fans are getting behind you. Some nice cutoffs too, including him going to the wrong corner. Plus a missed tag due to drawing the ref. They did a bit where the Sheepherders chair use backfired to set up the hot tag and had everything thrown out on the comeback as they used a chair successfully this time. The Nightmares got the best of them on a subsequent attempt and everyone brawled to the back. A good use of thirteen minutes of your time.

ER: Love this kind of 10 minute forward moving simplicity. When I think of Nightmares tags I think of minimum three great Danny Davis bumps. This had no Danny Davis bumps and instead had one great Ken Wayne bump that built to a great Davis hot tag. In between that bump and that tag we got the Sheepherders clubbing and kicking ass. Aggressive Sheepherders were a thing man. What a cool team. I would have loved to see heel Bushwhackers in WWF. Heel Bushwhackers during that couple month of '93 when Rock n Roll Express was in. Do we have any of the Well Dunn house show tags? They have such a great asskicking look here. I've always appreciated how clean Butch Miller's bald spot was. He had that young Bob Hoskins cut. Luke Williams had great pop and execution that you'd never expect even if you were familiar with some of their best brawls. He had this nice missed Hitman elbow off the middle buckle (more like a diving forearm smash) and paid it off later as they're cutting off Wayne when he hits a truly excellent falling elbow on him. You don't think of "precisely worked offense" when you think of the Sheepherders or Bushwhackers. Ken Wayne's backwards bump over the ropes to the floor was a cool Big Bump of a match to set up the nice long heat, which had one of those really well done moments when a ref cuts off a freshly tagged babyface with a near spear, making for a waist tackle and actually holding Davis in the air for a moment as Davis is reaching past his shoulders to join the fray. The eventual hot tag was hot, Luke bumping these nice careening pratfall bumps while getting punched around by both Nightmares. As they fight to the floor, Butch monkey flips the ringside commentary table onto himself in the chaos after getting smashed into it. It's all hot. 

Jerry Lawler/Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Austin Idol/Tommy Rich Memphis 3/9/87

PAS: Lance Russell saying "Tommy Rich is split wide open" is my love language. Incredible stuff, one of the best matches we have unearthed in the history of this project. Wild bloody Memphis brawling with three of the greatest ever to do it in Rich, Idol and the King. Add in a green but game Bam Bam Bigelow, who came off as such a force of nature. 9 minutes bell to bell with the wild pushed pace of a bar brawl. So much of this feud was built around nasty ball shots, and I loved how they teased the posting on Lawler, and then had Lawler finish Idol with a top rope fistdrop to the nuts, an awesome NO DQ finish. Bam Bam flying through the hard ringside wood table was wild and unexpected and the post match beatdown and bloodying of Lawler was tremendous, especially considering how rarely Lawler bled. Pure joy, the platonic ideal of what I want from wrestling and a hell of thing to wake up to. 

MD:  I feel like you could watch this a dozen times and see something remarkable that you hadn't noticed yet each time. It's great that Russell is not looking on some sort of monitor but calling what he's seeing, so we hear different tastes of chaos than what's right in front of us. I've seen this a couple of times now but on my last watch the things that stood out the most were the way the heels just charged into every bit of offense, Lawler's ability to create organic and interesting violence from all sorts of obtuse angles at any point, and how well a guy as relatively early into career as Bigelow knew when to give and when not to give. There was a sense that Rich and Idol really needed to get either Lawler or Bigelow (the latter being more of a challenge) down and out of the match to control 2-on-1, but they simply couldn't. Lawler was too savvy and Bigelow was just too much. The big moment in that case was when Lawler more or less blocked the chair shot and came back to even the odds. Maybe my favorite bit of all of this from bell to bell is when Lawler scoots up from the second rope to the top to hit the very low fist drop as Solie notes it's legal in this match. The way the table bounces and contracts as Bigelow hits it post match is a wild bit of physics to really cap everything off. You can read about this one but it's really best experienced yourself.

ER: Our 1980s DVDVR sets were so comprehensive. The first time Phil and I met, we hung out in his parent's apartment watching 4 hours of handheld 1989 Memphis footage and made the historic decision to each vote YES to include the match that would go on to place 125th out of 125 matches on that set. The Memphis set was better for having Jerry Lawler, Jeff Jarrett, and Freddy Krueger vs. Dutch Mantel, Master of Pain, and Ronnie P. Gossett. Just like it was better for including Buddy Landel vs. Freddy Krueger. Also, what kind of idiots were voting on that thing who thought there were 121 matches better than Jackie Fargo vs. Jimmy Hart? Anyway, if that Ronnie Gossett trios match had been unearthed in 2024, you would be reading about it on Segunda Caida. Instead, we're talking about a match that could have placed in the Top 10 of that Memphis set if we had it then. If we had it then, one of the Freddy matches wouldn't have made the cut, so this is for the best. It's incredible we're still getting new matches of this caliber. What a powerhouse, even better than it sounds on paper. 

I've watched this thing three times now and I've come away with a new favorite thing each time. Well, that's not true. My favorite thing ever single time is Lawler piledriving Austin Idol and dragging him spread eagle to the turnbuckles, climbing to the middle buckle, doing that perfect pause that Lawler does to build suspense on whether or not he thinks he needs to come off the top rope, then doing that perfect no look step to the top rope he does (that is one of my favorite signature movements of any wrestler in history), before flying off with the greatest fistdrop ever committed to tape. If there was one man in the world I trusted to safely fistdrop me in the balls from the top rope, it would be Lawler, but it's still a real Wheelbarrow on a Tightrope situation and I don't know if I can name a wrestling finish I've ever loved more. Look at the way Idol straightens and kicks his legs! Look at the way Idol holds and rubs his balls with his left hand during every second of his post-match spike attack on Lawler! I might have been too bearish in thinking this was only a Top 10 Memphis set match. 

So my favorite thing is locked in. But Matt's right about seeing something remarkable each time you watch. By the third viewing I was wondering if I had ever seen a babyface physically chasing a heel through the crowd during a brawl. I've seen a hundred ECW matches where guys walked together in the crowd while holding each other's hair, but I don't think I ever saw anyone getting punched in the face and running from the back of the arena for the safety of the ring only to run directly a Bam Bam Bigelow punch. God I wish I could have seen Chris Candido do just that, even if Candido was no Tommy Rich or Austin Idol. Rich and Idol took offense, ran into offense, and turned violent as great as any heel team of the 80s. Lawler and Bigelow were great at surprising them with a punch or a knee, and it's incredible how well everyone in this match had a constant innate sense of where everyone else was at all times. I've never seen such precise, out of control chaos. 

Everyone in this match was constantly turning around into a punch or turning around to punch someone, and there was more struggle in these 10 minutes than I see on entire wrestling cards now. Not every punch came easy, a face didn't get smashed into a guardrail every time someone tried. Lawler held onto the ropes to prevent Idol from pulling his balls into the ringpost like he was fighting against being pulled into hot lava. Bam Bam shoved Idol's head back by the chin before punching him and it looked like violent mafia shit. I couldn't believe Bigelow's bump through the ringside table, and was astounded that a match that ended with The Greatest Finish Ever wasted no time moving into the biggest bump of the match and some of the most violent sharp stake work we've seen. If Lawler punched one ball of Idol's he was going to take it out on his face with a broken piece of wood, and Lawler's gusher after being run face first into Idol running at him with a stake tells me that fistdrop crushed nuts. Tommy Rich is like Bobby Eaton for me, a guy who I love more with literally every new match I see. If there was a wrestler today who moved in and around and through a brawl the way Tommy Rich does here, I'd show you my favorite wrestler in the world. I watched this match a fourth time while writing about it. 

Buddy Rose vs. Curt Hennig Portland 7/2/88

MD: This was a special "Curt Hennig returns" episode of TV. He commentated on a match, cut a promo with the babyfaces, wrestled Buddy, and then came out at the end to explain to the ref how the heels cheated to have a result overturned. The appearance was setting up a match against DeBeers who he said was part of why he lost the World Title two months earlier. My memory is a little iffy on that one though. Rose was primed for a loser leave town match with the Assassin. The stakes on this particular TV match, however, was that the loser would end up a dunk tank later that weekend. Curt would be in WWF by the end of the month after a few more AWA shots, but here, he felt like a very big deal. In some ways it reminds me a little, thematically, of that post-world title match between Martel and Race right before Martel goes to WWF. Just a last burst of someone being a certain sort of star before they ended up stamped by the WWF machine for the rest of their career.

The match was very fun but obviously, coming in at just ten minutes, wasn't going to live up to the previous Hennig vs Rose feud. Some of the usual brilliance though. Buddy started by turning a rear bearhug into a dropping body scissors. Then after Curt escaped, Buddy dodged something with a cartwheel only for Hennig to get him in that self same drop down body scissors. They did a tit-for-tat bit with Buddy bumping off the top with a press, only for Curt to turn it into a great small package when Buddy tried to get him the same way. Cute finish where Hennig was able to eat a Superplex but hook the legs at the last second and get a shoulder up. That meant Buddy thought he won and started to gloat only to realize what had happened and that he had a dunk tape in his future. Just a fun glimpse of something that had been out of our reach for a long time.

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Found Footage Friday: ALOHA MR. LAWLER~! RICKARD~! ST. CLAIR~! THOMPSON~! PESAK~! VON SCHACHT~!

Jack Pesek vs. Fritz/Friedrich von Schacht Chicago 6/27/52

MD: This goes about twenty before Von Schacht gets himself disqualified for not breaking a hold and continuing to pepper Pesak's elbow with knees. They alternated between solid slugfests and maybe less than dynamic (for the point of the match) holds in the back third but the first two thirds was full of rousing stuff. Von Schacht was an early adopter of the bald, evil German gimmick and he was full of a wild physical charisma. A lot of the early parts of the match was Pesak tossing him out and von Schacht had a great way of landing in the least comfortable looking ways caught up in the rope often head over heels or in a ungainly heap.

He was able to get revenge and discus throw Pesek out once, but primarily he took back over with inside shots, hairpulls, and a dogged sort of aggression. More often than not, Pesek was able to outdo him on the mat though. We do have a few more von Schacht matches and I should double back for those too as he was pretty entertaining here. Some of the slugging towards the end reminded me of when things boiled over in 50s French matches, though it all sort of ended anticlimactically instead. 

Tony St. Clair vs. Clay Thompson Joint Promotions 8/19/67

MD: Occasionally, a member of the community goes above and beyond. Here, fxnj purchased an old film reel off an auction site, had it sent, converted, and then posted it. What we have now is the very likely the oldest full British match online (according to John Lister at least) and a look at what a catchweight match from 1967 looked like, as well as a rare look at Clay Thompson.

Yes, St. Clair, very young and known here primarily as the younger brother of Roy, spent the entire match with his mouth gaping wide open, but all in all, this was good pro wrestling, very good wrestling as sport in the British style. St. Clair had the weight (class) advantage, and used that to press forward for much of the match but Thompson had a clear skill and experience advantage and was able to use that to escape every hold. As evidenced by the finish, there was always a sense that Thompson was just one move away from victory and St. Clair, while being the aggressor, was really just trying to hang on.

This never boiled over, never even came close, though it was grittier on the back half, but there were so many little tricks and escapes by Thompson, and even some holds like an inverted short arm scissors that felt unique or rare. He'd escape again and again and St. Clair would just barely hold on to a wristlock. St. Clair was agile, cartwheeling here and there at times. That made the finish, where he succumbed to a figure-four and came into the next round limping heavily, all the more striking. I could watch a hundred matches like this and they're probably in a vault somewhere in England, gated behind an expensive and elite process. But at least they may exist, right?

Jerry Lawler vs. Steve Rickard Polynesian Pro Wrestling 8/9/86

MD: I'd heard about this match but never watched it before (more Found than New), as best as I can tell. Rickard was well into his 50s at this point. He's the father of New Zealand pro wrestling and created the On the Mat show. We have some episodes of that in the early 80s and I just never got around to checking them out. I'm not sure anyone in our circles really have. Should probably do that some day.

This was pretty straightforward. Lawler had a blonde valet with him for the trip to Hawaii. They cut midway through to Pedicino and some weightlifters. Rickard's age was noted and they talked about his Commonwealth title on commentary. They kept it on the mat for the first half, with a lot of Lawler complaining and Rickard showing him up on holds. Simple, effective stuff. The back half was full of punches, with Rickard meeting Lawler halfway with some pretty good ones, especially uppercuts. Lawler eventually crotched him and got DQed. Probably more on the FUN side of things, given the pace and the attraction feel but I'm not going to say no to a 80s Lawler match against a unique opponent that's new to me.

ER: It's been 40 years and we're still uncovering more evidence of Jerry Lawler being the greatest wrestler in history at working around any opponent's limitations. Jerry Lawler gets great matches out of green giants, TV comics, high school defensive coordinators, fundraising pediatrcicians, diabetic African savages, and various regional elderly men. Lawler is the best possible choice of wrestler to work Aloha Stadium against the biggest star of the Polynesia and presumably Micronesia territory, now in his mid-50s, and get the best match out of him. I enjoyed old Steve Rickard, thought he knew exactly where to place his two best punches and had an armbar takedown that looked like he was trying to post Lawler's arm, but this was just another Lawler masterclass in knowing the exact right match to work for an audience he had barely worked before. 

The video quality is such that it is easier to hear everything Lawler is saying than it is to hear almost anything commentary is saying. Sometimes I have no idea how Matt is able to pick up on certain things commentary is discussing - especially in old lucha - but it also makes me wonder how much the last 25 years of WWE television has made me consciously tune out most commentary. Anyway, this is the kind of super vocal Lawler performance that he usually reserved for much smaller crowds, not a stadium show. I don't know if I've heard Lawler be this vocal during a match, working a Best Possible Barry Darsow match against a territory star who couldn't hack it on the mainland. 

What takes it to the next level is the three minute run to the abrupt DQ finish, after Lawler has made it look like he was going to work a full match of satisfying stooging and loud hair pull complaints and subtle being the back cheating, before pulling out a run of four different ways of landing increasingly damaging punches. Lawler is out here looking like Smug Asshole #1 in his ugly fucking ketchup and mustard tights, the arguable worse color combo of his entire career, worse than any of the 1992 splatter paint tights which actually are great. He's a goof with a dumb goatee and ugly tights who suddenly lands the best punches on the 27 match show, before getting clocked with a Rickard punch that may as well have been him punching Lawler in the side of the head as hard as he could. 

I am consistently blown away by Lawler's innate timing and the way he sells offense as if he knows exactly how his opponent is going to throw it. His bumps and the way he sells every single strike always looks like he knows exactly how devastating or light the move looks. I have no idea how he is able to remove himself for the situation and understand that a shoulderblock landed soft enough that he shouldn't do a flip over bump but instead bump to his tailbone. You can't plan ahead for a Jim Powers punch to land, so how the hell is he able to anticipate how each individual punch is going to look? It's an incredible strength that I think only Stan Hansen, Finlay, Tenryu, and Yuki Ishikawa possess on the same level. 

I can't see Lawler ever dropping outside of my three favorite wrestlers ever, because we are still getting matches from my entire lifetime ago that add to his legacy. Nobody has gotten wrestling in the specific way that Jerry Lawler got wrestling. 

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Found Footage Friday: LA PARKA~! PIERROTH~! DOUGIE~! LAWLER~! RUFFY~! MOTO~!

Ruffy Silverstein vs. Mr Moto (Jiu Jitsu) NWA Chicago 1950s

MD: This was a judo jacket match where it was supposed to be no strikes, no pins, submission only, and with both wrestlers wearing judo jackets. Here they called it a Jiu Jitsu match and to make things more confusing, called Moto's illegal chops that drove a lot of the narrative of the match "judo". There were a number of gi assisted takedowns and submissions that were sort of interesting, but the match was really about things boiling over again and again as Moto took liberties, Silverstein fired back, and they built towards the end, to Silverstein hitting a couple of body slams. In that regard, the gimmick was more a means to an end, an environment to create contrast for them to do some more conventional things. There were a couple of interesting moments with the gis, but nothing more interesting than Silverstein going outside of them to lock in a cross-armbreaker. In general, not enough working joints or trying to get submissions as it always came back to the cheapshots and retaliation. Finish had Silverstein get a visual pin after the slams in a match where pins don't count and then Moto locking in a quasi-gi choke as the time limit wore off. Overall unsatisfying. My favorite bit at the end was when Davis called out a fan for just reading his newspaper during the match. 

Pierroth Jr. vs. La Parka Monterrey 7/16/00

MD: Park can be hit or miss in the 2000s for me, primarily because you get so much bullshit in his indy matches. Heel ref. Interference. Hamming about. When it hits though, it really hits, and here, I think it hit because the crowd wasn't as desensitized to it as they would be years later. That was combined with what makes it work as much as it does in the first place, Park's physical charisma, and, in this case, a very easy to understand and very clear and distinct injustice that was layered on top of the usual heel ref bullshit, a matter of seconds. La Bruja was supposed to be Pierroth's second. Parka was going to have another female to counter. She didn't show. In the pre-match when Parka was screwing around with La Bruja's gear to taunt her, and Wagner, Jr. came in with a weapon to whack Parka in the back, with the claim that he was Pierroth's second second. So they went right into a very uneven beatdown, with immediate mask ripping, subsequent blood, and Pierroth winning the first fall entirely one-sided with a power bomb.

It was the perfect alchemy of unfairness, blood, attitude, selling, animosity towards Pierroth and affection towards Parka and the fans were pissed. Early into the segunda, as the beatdown continued, the bottles started to fly. They went into a comeback (which stopped the bottles) where Parka had to work against basically four people, including the ref, only to get cut off by La Bruja crotching him on the top. He'd steal the fall by turning another powerbomb attempt into a 'rana but this second beatdown would continue, though maybe with a few less things thrown in thanks to the evening out of the falls. The tercera built to a ref bump and more overt interference until Parka's second finally ran out to turn the tide. That distracted the recovered ref, however, and led to Wagner coming in to set up a big foul kick while Pierroth held Parka. You can guess what happened next, though I'm not sure I've ever seen it executed with such gusto. Parka jumped straight up to dodge the kick. Pierroth got nailed instead and an elated crowd got to see a tecnico win and a title change. It was chaotic and messy and wild in the right ways, playing on heartstrings and building to big moments. 

ER: Remember when Monterey tapes started getting more widely circulated in the early 2000s, and we all realized all these great sounding on paper matches were all taking a back seat to some referee the entire match. I've watch so many La Parka matches over the last decade that even baseline shit entertains me in a big warm way. But seeing how incredibly a year 2000 baseline Big La Parka match played in Arena Coliseo Monterey made me nostalgic for buying $5 lucha tapes at Frank's and Sons. When all the bottles and trash starts flying in during the segunda? Forget it man, nothing beats that shit. I don't care how bad the ref's timing was or that he just flat out refused to take a La Parka headscissors, or maybe how long it took to get to certain places, once garbage starts hitting a ring it crosses over into Great Pro Wrestling. I wanted more stiffness from Park's eventual comeback but this crowd and this atmosphere meant that didn't matter. La Parka hitting a tope into Dr. Wagner, his second finally coming out and punching El Bruja around, and tons of fans rushing ringside to throw more water bottles when La Parka wins is some incredibly comfortable lucha to spend time in. All I need is thrown garbage, Pierroth's 60s western villain eyes and slacks, and a quarter of La Parka's face peeking out from behind his torn mask

Jerry Lawler vs. Doug Gilbert PWE Strawberry Slam 2018

MD: As minimalist as can be. You watch this and you see the breadth of what is possible with pro wrestling, or at least one far pole of it. It's vaudeville, Abbot and Costello, a constant build to the (very literal) punchline, again and again. It shouldn't work in the confines of wrestling, because you have to suspend disbelief and everything is so thoroughly telegraphed here but it does because of the wrestlers, their emotional connection to the crowd, and the expertise of their performance. The match starts with Gilbert pressing Lawler into the corner and punching him. It happens three times, with three corners, with gaps in between to let it resonate, with three great punches. After the third, he gloats and Lawler walks up, taps his shoulder and nails him with a punch of his own. It doesn't work without those punches looking as good as they do. It doesn't work without Gilbert being such a jerk about it. It doesn't work without Lawler being so matter-of-fact in retaliating, in letting the emotion build up until he unloads. It's not about what but instead about when and how. 

Eventually, Gilbert plays hide the object, with the audience getting to interject and be part of the show by calling it out and delaying its use and delaying its use until it has a certain payoff of its own, letting him take over. Things build into a Lawler comeback, a ref bump, a chain getting tossed in, and the eventual finish, with a last second foot on the rope and a roll up out of nowhere. Other than punches and a side headlock to set up the ref bump and the schoolboy for the finish, the only other "move" in the match is Lawler slamming Gilbert's head into the turnbuckle one time as part of his comeback. But they filled sixteen minutes (and without late-era Lawler's usual house mic work) and accomplished what they set out to do.

ER: When you see a modern 70 year old Jerry Lawler match with a near 20 minute YouTube file, you assume it's 10 minutes of Lawler on the mic and not a file full of punching and wandering. Matt called it vaudeville and it's exactly what it is. It's notable for being evidence of Dougie passing Lawler as a worker. It took several decades, but 50 year old Doug Gilbert is now a better worker than a 70 year old Lawler. Lawler is a fun old man with a huge belly who works like Mama Harper in that episode of Mama's Family where Mama has to wrestle Mt. Fuji and Matilda the Hun. Doug Gilbert now might have the best worked punch in pro wrestling. Lawler was throwing Looney Tunes punches while little kids jumped up and down with each one, Doug was throwing one off bombshells in every corner, and there's a woman sitting in the bleachers opposite hard cam who you think has to just be wearing short shorts with a camisole top but the full length of the video reveals that it's just a very short dress and we wonder if the man/tripod operating the hard cam was building this story reveal into out main story. I didn't know there was a Portland, TN. It's basically Kentucky, but 45 minutes north of Nashville. I grew up in a town with a population under 10,000, which is around 11,000 now. I attended the one wrestling show that ever happened there (in 2000) and saw Mike Modest, Christopher Daniels, Bison Smith, Moondog Moretti, and others with my dad and friends. It was the day after I turned 19. Portland, TN is about the same size as the town I grew up in and where my parents still live, and I obviously would have gone to this show had I lived there, and I would have loved to watch two old men do nothing but throw fake punches at each other's face and bodies.  

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Michinoku Pro Jerry Lawler

Jerry Lawler vs. Taka Michinoku WWF Raw 12/15/97 - GREAT

ER: Since Lawler was an absolute nobody in Japan, we missed out on a ton of potential Lawler in Japan. If Thailand had any kind of wrestling scene I'm sure we'd have a bounty of Thai Lawler matches. When I think of cool matches Lawler could have had with Japanese wrestlers, my mind automatically thinks of heavyweight opponents or ass kicking juniors like Fuchi or Otani. But thinking about Lawler versus the 90s Michinoku Pro roster is something different entirely, and this very cool almost anachronistic 5 minute match shows us what that might have looked like. Lawler bullying his way through the M-Pro roster is the stuff of dreams, taking a cocky and dominant stance as he punches out Masato Yakushiji or gets flustered by Gran Hamada. Think about Lawler vs. Dick Togo! Think about Lawler vs. Super Delfin! Think about Lawler vs. Gran Naniwa!! 

There just aren't many matches where Lawler has to take juniors offense of any kind, and it's a special thing when you can find a Jerry Lawler match - a man with no shortage of taped matches - that gives you something completely different. One thing this does, is remind you how cool it looks when Lawler bullies someone. He lifts and throws Taka to break a headlock like he was Nikita Koloff throwing Tully. When Taka backs him into the corner and throws a knife edge chop, Lawler gives him a 555 Come-On-Now look after a knife edge chop and holds the ropes on an Irish whip, then grins as he shows Taka how to throw a proper knife edge. Since Lawler has at least 8 different elite level punches, it's easy to forget how strong his chops are. He hardly ever uses them. You probably could have guessed that you would get Lawler doing fake karate against Literally Any Asian Opponent (even though that feels like more of a Brian Christopher thing as I type it out) and of course he works a karate exchange as good as any Tracy Smothers routine. He rakes Taka's eyes and does not entirely ridiculous karate poses before hitting a Great Kabuki-like sidekick to the stomach (something he never does), but gets instantly surprised by Taka getting up throwing leg kicks and a spinning heel kick.

Lawler is in his late 40s and is tasked with basing for Taka's springboard plancha, which still looks like one of the most spectacular pieces of pro wrestling flying. I thought Roddy Piper and Ric Flair were still great wrestlers in 1997, but could you imagine either of them catching another man flying at them on a leaping run from the top rope to beyond the ringside mats? I can't. Well, Lawler leans into the whole thing while also making it one of the greatest catches of all time by screaming in terror when he knows he won't be able to avoid it. When Lawler comes back with a running dropkick, Taka hits one of his own - thrown similarly to Lawler's - and when they both hit the ropes and throw them at each other...well, let me tell you just how much I love a mirror dropkick spot in this match, directly after the running plancha no less.  

There's one weird moment where Lawler doesn't really roll out of the way of a moonsault but acts like absorbing it with his back instead of his ribcage is something that would hurt Taka more than it would hurt him. That really doesn't seem like a Lawler thing to do. He's a master at selling offense that hits or misses in a way it's not supposed to, but the only way I could see this spot working is if Lawler visibly sold that it didn't hurt due to Taka's smaller size. I don't think that's a great idea if the idea is to get over your opponent as effective, but I could see that drawing real heat in Japan. Lawler as a guy who just doesn't sell flyer offense but could get flustered by Mochizuki or Hoshikawa. But this is Bully Lawler, so he shows off how easy it is to toss this little guy with a vertical suplex, and for once it's not Lawler, but his opponent, who is being thrown with a backdrop. 

I can't stop thinking about Lawler twisting Gran Naniwa's head with a cravat, introducing the fistdrop to Sasuke's boys. Here he measures up a beauty of a fistdrop into Taka's throat that Taka's sells by holding his head like he's in an Excedrin commercial. He sells the piledriver the exact same way, but it's an appropriate way to sell a piledriver. The finish is far too abrupt and doesn't pay off anything done in the match, as a missed kissed fistdrop off the middle rope leads directly to the Michinoku Driver. Great timing from Brian Cristopher running down to the ring in time to pull Taka off before the 3 count though. Lawler needed to be kept strong for his Kaientai DX run, so this makes sense. Find me another match where Lawler takes a Michinoku Driver. Lie to me and tell me Lawler worked Super Boy. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LAWLER

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Found Footage Friday: ABBY~! KIMALA II~! MVC~! PUTSKI~! REX~! LAWLER~! DEAN(SIMON)~!

Ivan Putski vs. Moondog Rex WWF in Kuwait 1984

MD: We sort of have to watch all of this Kuwait stuff, just for the novelty. Thankfully q8wrestling reposted the Piper/Orton tag from Kuwait that's been offline for a few years and that we covered all the way back on October 26, 2018. Yes, 2018. We're a couple of weeks away from 5 straight years of doing this weekly, without missing a single week. More on that at the end of the month. 

Here, it's Putski and Rex, which is admittedly not as exciting, but did the Kuwait crowd ever love Putski. It made for some really beautiful minimalist stuff to start. A lock up and push off by Putski would pop the crowd huge. Putski slowly powering his arms down out of a full nelson as Rex's expression goes from confidence to terror to agony (as somehow Putski has was trapping and squeezing his hands under his armpits) made them elated, with the Putski chant starting after Rex made it to the ropes. The rest of the match goes how you'd think. Whenever Rex tries for a hold, Putski powers out. The most motion in the match is him scurrying out of the ring to regroup. He gets over with a cheapshot but never for long. If Rex gets a pin attempt, Putski pushes him off so that he goes flying (to a pop, of course). Putski comes back quickly to the crowd's delight and plants Rex in the end with the Hammer. It's simple and straightforward stuff, but with the body language of guys who really knew how to connect with a crowd, and when they have an appreciative crowd, it's an enjoyable way to spend ten minutes. 

ER: This is so great. This is why we write about this dumb shit. Ivan Putski getting a superstar reaction in Kuwait, every single man in attendance (there are only men allowed to attend WWF Kuwait tour wrestling, sooo...) reacting to Putski like he was Hogan, and every one of them fully bought into Putski's strength. This man was treated like a mythological character and Moondog Rex knew how to play into all of it perfectly. I loved all of this. I have zero clue what the Kuwaiti peoples' relationship with WWF or pro wrestling would have been in 1982. I don't know if they were getting WWF TV, I don't know what kind of pro wrestling they were consuming, I don't know their relationship with combat sports, I know nothing. But they had a special connection to Ivan Putski, and I thought it made this match incredible. 

As importantly, Randy Colley made this match incredible. The Moondogs' WWF run is one of the more neglected runs in WWF history, based on what's been written about it after the fact. The WWF DVDVR 80s set was the first one of those 80s sets that we did, and every subsequent version of those sets (Memphis, Mid-South, New Japan, WCCW, AWA, etc.) had a much more vast and comprehensive selection process for what was included as the true best of their respective territories. The WWF set was the only one that was not comprehensive. There was no Terry Funk, not enough Andre, not enough Valentine, etc. There were zero Moondogs matches and since those sets, every time I've seen Larry Latham and Randy Colley I thought they were both among the best workers on the roster of their specific era. This match is a great illustration of that. As Moondog Rex, Colley sells Putski's strength so realistically and so believably that he perfectly feeds into the Kuwaiti frenzy surrounding this short and absolutely JACKED Polish man. It goes beyond Rex getting thrown far across the ring on every lock-up, and goes all the way into Rex selling everything Putski did as if he was facing the strongest man in pro wrestling history. 

We got an incredible full nelson escape, where Putski slowly broke the hold while the crowd swelled, ending when Putski clamped Rex's arms down to his sides, trapping the poor panicking Moondog in a dick to ass position, Rex running in place because of his hurt arms pinned to Putski's side by his World's Strongest Arms, causing only more friction between his dick and Putski's ass. Every single man in Kuwait BELIEVES in Polish Power and so every single slow squeeze knucklelock gets a huge slow burn reaction until people are losing their minds when Putski is squeezing Rex's shoulder. Rex sells his shoulder like it got run over by a truck tire, and if this was broadcast across the country in any way, every child watching would fully buy into Putski as the strongest God, all due to Rex's impeccable selling of every single show of strength.  

When Rex is in control, he has to believably muscle around the World's Strongest Man, who is also the World's Most Inflexible Man. He throws great full arm extension punches with his good arm, incredible aim for such a long release point, knocking Putski down to a knee in the corner. Ivan Putski takes a snapmare even worse than Scott Putski, and until know I thought Scott Putski took a snapmare worse than any man I'd seen. Ivan Putski's body is so rigid taking a snapmare, that it looked like Rex accidentally knocked down an expensive vase at a museum and was trying to slow its landing. Rex has to do all the lifting on a back breaker, and just the act of maneuvering Putski into a neckbreaker looked like Rex had to move an extremely large, cumbersome rolled up rug all by himself, up stairs. Moondog Rex went to Kuwait and moved mountains. For the finish, he made Putski's punches look actually good, better than they really were, bouncing and recoiling off the ropes into them. He runs into the Polish Hammer and gets stopped dead by it, making it really look like a guy getting hit in the chest with a big hammer. As Matt said, we've been finding and writing about unseen matches for 5 years now, and 5 years in we're still getting surprised by everything that exists. Randy Colley went to Kuwait and helped a man become a local legend. That's a sentence we get to write now. 

Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala II vs. Steve Williams/Terry Gordy AJPW RWTL 11/20/90

MD: You never knew that you wanted face-in-peril Abby having the ring cut off on him, with these amazing king-sized hope spots (neckbreaker drop, all time block and throat shot, etc.), and the fans chanting "Butch-ahh." That's what we get, followed up by hot tag Richard Morton Giant Kimala II hitting a World's Strongest Slam. When you look at how Baba dealt with the loss of Tenryu (and Yatsu and Kabuki and Takano and Fuyuki and), everyone thinks about the pillars, and yeah, they got there. Before that, however, we had the 1990 superheavyweight division around the Triple Crown and the Tag Titles. Doc, Gordy, and Hansen ruled the roost during the back half of 1990 and you got your share of larger than life matches. That was true with this RWTL too, where you had teams of Baba/Andre, Hansen/Spivey, and Jumbo/Taue on top of these two. 

The first few minutes of this were exactly that, with Gordy and Doc being super giving and stooging big for Abby. That meant Gordy falling all over the place for repeated throat shots or Doc selling his own head after headbutting Abby. It all lead to a huge Doc no-sell of one of Abby's headbutts to a huge Road Warrior Hawk style pop as he just stared him down. All great stuff. until Doc leaned into the illegal double-teaming and they were able to isolate Abby on the outside and clobber him. That's when the full on southern style face-in-peril stuff started. After a lot of clobbering, some woundwork, and a couple of unlikely hope spots, cutoffs, and a beautiful almost-tag, they veered towards the finishing stretch. Even though Kimala came in strong, Abby was hurt and MVC knew how to press the numbers advantage. While we didn't get the stampede, we did get a huge power slam and Doc and Gordy racking up a few more points on their way to topping the rankings. Post match? An awesome brawl as fans run around in a panic and I Love It Loud plays over the speakers. Wrestling perfection right there.

ER: We wrote about an incredible match from this same show, and Andre/Baba vs. JumboTaue tag that was one of the truly wondrous 1990s Andre performances. It's the biggest bumping 90s Andre match I have seen and we would have no idea had some man not gone to Nagoya that day and made sure he had enough camcorder battery. This match is not as great as the Andre/Baba match, but it's its own very important documentation of something else entirely, which is the absolute longest face in peril Abdullah performance I've ever seen. Now, before the match began I could have told you Kimala II would be the one getting pinned. That doesn't take an All Japan expert to figure out. But I would have never guessed how they actually got to that pinfall, because I don't think "Doc and Gordy getting 6 minutes of heat on Abby" would have made a lot of sense as an answer. 

It took a bit to get there, as Abby got to wreck Doc and Gordy with throat thrusts. Terry Gordy sold those hits to the throat as well as any selling I've seen, and Abby made them look really easy to sell (because they all looked violent). Every shot to the throat would send Gordy into a big hair whip recoil, and he's got that virgin never-been-dyed-in-his-life hair that just flows differently when whipped. Terry Gordy - somehow not yet 30 - has the hair of a 16 year old, and his full arm swing into Abdullah's neck is just a wicked clothesline. Doc staggering himself with his own headbutt was beautiful, and the no sell that followed was even better. I loved their face off, their stare down, revealing that Abdullah the Butcher and Dr. Death are the literal exact same height without a centimeter of difference, and when Doc decides to run off the ropes to collide, Abby throws a railroad spike of a thrust into his throat that bumps Doc like Psicosis. The heat on Abby comes when they drag him to the floor and start wailing on him, and Terry Gordy throws a dozen of the most perfectly aimed boot soles directly into Abby's bleeding forehead. I loved hearing the crowd chant for Kee-Ma-La to make the save, and I love the way they built this heat around Abby. 

Abby took a bump in such a weird Specifically Abdullah way that I am positive I've never seen anyone take it. It starts off super silly but then gets super cool, with Doc doing a low dropkick to roll Abby out of the ring. Well, the dropkick doesn't totally hit and Abby is positioned over halfway across the ring from where he's actually rolling out, so Doc kinda hits him and then Abby steamrolls his way all the way out to the floor. Silly. But when he gets to the floor, he does this trust fall bump backwards into the guardrail, his body rigid, and it ends with him falling into the rail like someone tipped a table on its end. Abby looked like Homer getting punched over the fire hydrant, just falling back diagonally into the railing. Abdullah's flash nearfall on his diving clothesline was excellent, like a real version of a Fast & Furious spot where Vin Diesel flies through the air to catch someone into a windshield. His Almost Tag out is legendary, perfectly timed and perfectly executed, with Doc baaaaarely grabbing Abby by the hooked boot, just in time to swing him around inches away from the reaching tag of Kimala. I wish we got more from Kimala's hot tag. It felt like he went down really easily, and it didn't need to go down that way. However, Doc's powerslam on Kimala was incredible. No cheapie in any way whatsoever, getting him up overhead really really high and actually controlling his weight on the way down! Who has the strength to control Kimala II's weight on a full rotation powerslam!?

Jerry Lawler vs. Simon Dean NEW 3/25/2006

MD:  Pre-match promos (sort of a necessity for a Lawler indy match) are here. I sort of wish there had been a throwaway Lawler vs Nova match in the late 90s. That would have been more conceptually interesting with Lawler having to constrain a guy who thought his path to the top was having a section on his website about all of the moves he created. By this point, Dean had already gone through the phase of deciding his path to the big time was by working on his body instead, followed by realizing that his limit was going to be as a stooging heel. Of course Lawler can work with a stooging heel and Dean wasn't afraid to stooge here, throwing his head back for punches, running out of the ring, slamming his hands on the apron, kicking the steps and then selling it, etc. In 2023, it'd probably be pretty refreshing. In 2006, it felt a little rote and by the books maybe. On second thought, even though Dean was committed to the act, it came off as a guy playing a character as opposed to something more natural and organic. They went through the right steps (wrestling as a balanced equation; Dean armdragging Lawler and slamming him leads to Lawler one upping him by doing the same, etc), but the immersion wasn't quite there. I'd love to know what the best Lawler stunner ever was, because it always ends up looking terrible, an amazing fact for a move almost entirely dependent on the guy taking it. The finish (a missed fistdrop but Dean walking right into the pile driver) worked for me, but the rest topped out at fun.

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Found Footage Friday: NEW BULLDOGS~! OLD FUNKS~! IWRG RETRO~! LA CORPORACION~! TEAM CASAS~! LAWLER~! MERCURY~! COACH~!

New Bulldogs (Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith) vs. Terry Funk/Dory Funk Jr. AJPW 11/20/90

MD: I don't think this is an all time classic, but I do think it's a bit of a "for want of a nail" scenario. Let me put it this way: if this match had existed on tape in the mid-90s, I think it would have been put on a lot of comp tapes and traded around. I think it would have ended up as a match with a "rep." We look at things with different eyes in 2023 than in even 2003 though, and that means maybe not being quite so amazed by the most novel thing in the match and instead really appreciating certain other elements. 

As such, it was a tale of three or so matches. There was a lot of Dory being down on the mat with Johnny Smith and less of hm down with Dynamite. Smith, against Dory, felt smooth, credible, like he belonged. They kept things moving. The matwork was more explosive with Dynamite and that's actually impressive in its own right, just the notion that matwork can be explosive. Then there was Terry feeding, primarily for Dynamite, though with a bit of being stuck in Smith's headlock too. That style of chain wrestling is just so different from what we see today, less set spots and exchanges and more of Terry just grasping at anything he can to try to escape. When in there with Dynamite, Terry bounced around the ring as they crashed into each other at high speed.

The match shifted gears when Terry got Dynamite out and started to beat on him on the floor. My favorite version of the Funks is the bloody, scrappy one where they're fighting monsters, but my second favorite is when they're outright bullies, like that really fun Martel/Zenk match from 86 where they treat Martel with respect but wipe the mat with Zenk. That's what we get here, first on Dynamite and then, after he rolls limply over to Smith, onto him. Tag. Pile driver. Tag. Pile driver. Seven times on Smith in a row. It's just a remarkable two minutes. He kicks out (too much) and is saved in the end and it has some reaction from the crowd, but maybe not as much if they really milked it instead of doing it so matter-of-factly. Moreover, after Dynamite makes it back in, Smith is back on his feet and rolling just a minute later. Still, definitely 1998 comp tape material and certainly a worthwhile match for anyone with even a vague interest in either of these teams, something that should definitely see the light of day and now it has.

IWRG Retro 4/6/23

La Corporacion (Black Tiger/Pentagon Black, Dr. Cerebro/Cerebro Negro/Veneno/Scorpio Jr.) vs. Negro Casas/Felino/Heavy Metal/Matrix/Black Dragon/Mike Segura/Fantasma, Jr. IWRG 7/4/2005

MD: The     other half of the IWRG show and it got a ton of time (35 mins or so). It was good too, constantly moving with a lot of solid exchanges. I wouldn't say anyone stood out more than anyone else, really and no one looked terrible, though maybe Matrix or Fantasma, Jr. and Veneno were the weakest on either side. Maybe. There weren't any long bits of momentum from one side or another, just a lot of resets and into the next exchange. There was more of a sense that if you got into the wrong corner, you might get swarmed, in that sort of big NJPW multi-man tag style that you don't see in lucha as much.

Big indy moves had definitely reached lucha indy matches. Mike Segura managed to land on his head with some pretty crazy stuff from Cerebro Negro, for instance. And Pentagon Black was doing an Argentinian backbreaker into a cutter/facebuster sort of finisher. There was only one real dive but it was a huge one, with Black Dragon pressing up against the corner and going head first over it out of a running start. Despite a lack of major momentum shifts, there were patterns; Heavy Metal took out three guys with his bridging fisherman's suplex. Black Tiger got a couple of lucky fouls in. It ended with La Familia Casas vs Pentagon Black, Black Tiger, and Scorpio, Jr. with Metal outfoxing the rudos' interference for a deep roll up win on Scorpio, Jr. who had done a pretty good job asserting his physicality up until there. There was always something happening with characters that jumped off the screen just enough to keep you eternally engaged. Not at all a bad use of 35 minutes.

Jerry Lawler vs. Jonathan Coachman/Joey Mercury NEW 4/28/07

There was a similar handicap match vs. Romeo Roselli the night before and I'm glad we have this one instead. I loved the ebb and flow of it. They started off on the mic with Coachman bringing out Mercury as a surprise partner and teased a bit of Coach getting into it before starting with a big chunk of Mercury vs Lawler. It was all based around punches and it was all very, very good. King snapped his head back for Mercury's, of course, and he had a great tease high, go low that played off of Mercury's reconstructive face surgery.

When it was time for Mercury to take over, it was with a bunch of standard stuff like slams and back body drops but they all looked big and impactful and lived up to the moment. King got a comeback in when Mercury got distracted by the valet but he was able to take back over. Likewise, the first time Coach came in to pick at the bones, he got distracted as well, but they held off him getting his comeuppance. Eventually, Mercury went to the top rope double axehandle well once too often and ate the shot to the gut, the fistdrop, the pile driver. I would have liked them to find a better way to get Coach into the ring after that. He sort of just asserted himself to try to break things up and was pinned anyway. I would have preferred Mercury stumbling back into him or something along those lines. Regardless, he took two of the worst stunners imaginable, so bad that they were comically good, before Lawler pinned him for the feel good moment. There's a really good match with Mercury and Lawler from later in the year that felt more like a Memphis classic, but this was just straight up well executed and laid out and a lot of fun.

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Found Footage Friday: IWRG RETRO~! LAWLER VS DUNDEE~! INOUE~! RUSHER~! EIGEN~! OKUMA~!

Mighty Inoue/Rusher Kimura vs. Haruka Eigen/Motoshi Okuma AJPW 11/20/90

MD: We've covered the Andre match from this show but it's pretty overlooked otherwise. I'll go through most of it in the weeks to come. It was right during the RWTL and weirdly we have a chunk of HHs from this month so we get to see a lot of the different pairings. This match was not actually part of it, I think, as Inoue and Kimura were in it but Okuma an Eigen weren't. One fun thing about this, however, is because Baba was in the RWTL with Andre, these aren't the usual six mans. That means that all other non-Baba parties get more chance to shine and show individual personality. 

For instance, this match is all about Eigen and Eigen's pretty great in it. It starts with handshakes, and Eigen goes so far to bow to Rusher (drawing light applause) before smacking him in the face (popping the crowd big). He then dashes out of the ring and raises his hands in victory. Then, right as he was about to lock up with Inoue, Eigen turns and smacks Rusher off the apron before running away and raising his hand in victory once more. Then, once they've isolated Inoue and Okuma has him in an armbar, Eigen runs across the apron to stand on the top and taunt Rusher and after a tag and a double chop, he dashes across the ring to smack him again, drawing him in so they can double team Inoue some more. Just great heatseeking from a place not known for it. 

The initial comeback is Inoue slipping around to hit a belly to back on Okuma, so when Rusher comes in, he can't get his hands on Eigen. Then, they take over on Rusher so the gratification of it all is even more delayed. Okuma's fun in here, running all the headbutt spots with Rusher, even as they're beating him down, but this is Eigen's show, right up to the point where Inoue holds his leg as he's trying to come off the top on Rusher and he gets everything that was coming to him (which means he does his big trademark spit spot on the apron as Inoue and then Rusher and then Inoue smacks him in the chest). What an underrated jerk. 

Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee Memphis Power Hour 2/25/06

MD: This is a four and a half minute segment but we're contractually obligated to watch all Lawler vs Dundee matches and this was a fun three minutes which could have been an uproarious ten if they gave it the time. It's 62 year old Dundee vs 56 year old Lawler, who happens to be wearing these triple high Stacks boots. They work about two minutes based around the boot, Dundee having the fans mock him, Lawler mocking the even more severe height difference, Dundee selling a kick like death, Lawler falling on his ass with an over the top trip by Dundee. They could have milked this forever and it would have been endlessly funny, but after a few minutes they play to the interference and the match gets thrown out. At least Dundee got to punch Lawler a lot and trip him again though. Very much 1990 heel Lawler with a different gimmick every week but that probably felt refreshing in 2006. It's just a shame there was only a couple of minutes of this.

Freelance/Tortuguillos I y II vs. Los Oficiales (AK47, Fierro y 911) IWRG (Retro) 11/10/2007

MD: This is from the 4/6 IWRG Retro, which fell through the cracks due to being around Mania, I think. There's another match on there we'll cover later. This was one fall by design but also by necessity. We start out with Tortuguillo Azul and 911 and they have some loose but flowing matwork. There's some of that anticipation where they end up where they should be a half second too early (especially 911), but it all comes off like baiting our turtle friend in by the end with the next counter, so it's ine. We get just a bit from Fierro and Tortuguillo Rojo and that's quite a bit more struggle laden. Before we can even get to Freelance and AK47 though, it all breaks down with the rudo swarm. AK47 decides it's a good idea to do the Sid style leaping kick off the apron to the floor. This is pretty horrific mistake as it was for Sid a few years earlier and that's the last we see him for the match.

Los Oficiales are good at pressing their advantage, however, and Freelance is very good at reaching for the ceiling while eating a double back body drop. They make short work of the the Turtles without much incident even being down one partner. Maybe if that hadn't been the case there would have been a spirited tecnico comeback, but as it was, this was a pretty satisfying mauling. 911's crane kick stylings and clumsy fall off the top splash weren't nearly as good as Fierro's way of asserting himself with his size and power but combined they were better than the sum of their parts. Hopefully AK47 was ok.

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Found Footage Friday: LAWLER~! KAMALA~! LAWLER AND KAMALA~?! SHOCK~! AWE~! SMOTHERS~! STORM~!

Tracy Smothers vs. James Storm NWA Worldwide 5/13/00

MD: This felt like a big moment for Storm, in his early 20s, clean-cut, wearing black trunks with STORM on them. Apparently the heels (including Chris Champion) had won a stip where they got to decide when and where they wrestled, so even though they'd been booked to face Storm, they were able to send Smothers (being another heel himself) out there.

For the most part, it was by the numbers, but they're numbers I'm pretty fond of. Smothers got on the mic and said that if they chant Tracy Sucks, he'd leave, which he was probably doing in 4th grade math class to taunt the teacher, but it always worked. It was pretty obvious Smothers was leading him around, including all but throwing himself into a headscissors takeover and a 'rana on the comeback (the sort of basing which not only meant taking offense, but overcompensating to make it work) and bumping headfirst on a wheelbarrow reversal into a bulldog. There were a million plucky, athletic, flying babyfaces in the early 00s, and Storm was definitely one of them, but between Smothers' showmanship and a few well placed and unlikely kickouts, they crowd were entirely with him. The finish had Smothers slip on a banana peel and Storm able to turn an attempt at cheating to his own advantage for the big upset win. Post match, he got destroyed by a bevy of heels, but ultimately, primarily thanks to Tracy, he came out of this looking like a real prospect.

Jerry Lawler vs. Kamala Memphis Wrestling Power Hour 5/17/03

MD: Turner had posted a bunch of 00s Memphis a month or two ago but most of those were things that were already out there. This might have been as well but it's not anything we've ever covered. There's a really great match from JAPW in January of 03 between these two. This though, was just great studio TV.

This was nominally set up to be a 2/3 falls (or TV time remaining) match and it's amazing how much they accomplished in so little time. The first fall, if a standalone match, might be one of the best two-minute studio matches ever. Kamala moved around the ring with a variety of strikes and smashes and Lawler propelled himself back after taking each one. Kamala had big energy and presence but Lawler made it work by picking a different part of the ring to retreat to each time. It literally kept things moving. The strap went down after about a minute of it and Lawler was able to fire off shots (including one amazing punch against the huge canvas of Kamala that the camera caught perfectly), staggering Kamala and finally driving him back with a dropkick into the corner, but not able to take him down. When Kamala pushed forawrd despite it, it was a shocking moment as the strap had already come down, but he quickly lost control when he was firing back on Lawler and hit the ref to draw the DQ. Lance was great here, both referencing Lawler's traditional slow starts in how Kamala was destroying him early and then, at the start of the second fall, noting how sprly Lawler had jumped up after the DQ, even despite the strap-dropping not paying off.

Between falls, they had a lady in from a radio show to talk to Corey and a backstage bit with Jimmy Hart trying to pay off Kamala (and Kamala eating the money). The second fall was brisk, with Lawler stepping on Kamala's toes to make an inroad but Hart's people rushing in to cause the DQ. Kamala took offense to this and came to Lawler's aid for a huge pop. This set up a tag match the next week just in the studio, and that almost felt like a shame because this angle should have been able to draw for real. That first fall was masterful. Best two minutes of wrestling you'll see this month.

Jerry Lawler/Kamala vs. Shock/Awe Memphis Wrestling Power Hour 5/24/03

MD: I had to see this play out. Even ten years earlier, it would have led to a big show at the Coliseum. That's not this. It's just another four minute TV match, unfortunately, but they were just building up Shock and Awe. One was Del Rios. The other was a pretty green British monster, the sort that could accidentally do a nice leg drop and an amazing kneeling body slam to Lawler and then immediately get out of the ring because he was blown up and that wasn't exactly sure where to put his body for the double noggin knocker with Jimmy Hart as the ref was throwing things out.

But you're watching this for Lawler and Kamala and they were both individually good but I wish they would have interacted a little more. There was a bit of subdued smugness for Lawler on the idea that no matter how much Shock and Awe might toss him around, he always had Kamala ready to tag in. Eventually, he missed a fist drop and got slammed around a bit more until Rios missed a quizzical flipping senton off the ropes and Lawler kind of waltzed over (respecting the fact he had only gotten beaten up for two minutes or so) for a not-so-hot tag and Hart hit the apron to set up the match getting thrown out. Honestly, if this had another couple of minutes tacked on to each section, there was probably something worthwhile here. As it was, it was fun but not the magical couple of minutes that the singles TV match was.

ER: I know it's just the format we chose for our personal type spacing aesthetics a decade and a half ago, but I really love how we have the match typed out as Shock slash Awe instead of Shock & Awe. It's like the funniest wrong way the local news could get their name. 

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Found Footage Friday: BABA~! LADD~! LAWLER~! NJPW BATTLE ROYAL~!

Giant Baba vs. Ernie Ladd AJPW 8/7/80

MD: This is slightly more Found than New. It was probably part of the big 1980 season set drop from 2019, but it was hard to figure out exactly what was new and what wasn't from that. Now that someone posted it to YouTube though, it's nice and easily accessible for everyone. This is more or less a spring between two brilliant, giant, lanky wrestlers. I think this was building to a bigger match later in the month at Korakuen. It hits all the marks you'd want for an eight minute match between these two. There aren't a ton of bumps, but when they come, they're giant and awkward. Given the size involved, Ladd makes taking a mare look like a car crash and obviously him eating a back body drop is all that and more. Likewise, the holds. Baba locking in a side headlock is like King Kong doing it to Godzilla. Ladd mostly stays in this with shots to the throat but Baba's quick to fire back and they brawl on the floor a couple of times, once with Ladd ending up tied up in chairs. The finish was pretty amazing as Ladd can take things from Baba that others can't, in this case, an actual Thesz press where Baba somehow landed on him like he was Earthquake. Of course, Ladd got his heat back after to set up the next match. Fun battle of the titans here.

Battle Royal NJPW 11/19/81

MD: This followed the opening ceremony to the tour and cagematch has it with a few extra guys that aren't actually there for the battle royal. Normally not a big deal but when those guys are Andre, Murdoch, and Hansen, it's a bit of let down. It means that the most interesting guys in the ring end up being Killer Khan and Pat Patterson, often paired up with one another. That's not too bad in and of itself, at least until Pat gets eliminated. It more or less settles down to some of the Japanese (maybe Sakaguchi, Choshu, Kimura, Yatsu, Fujinami?) on one side and a Samoan, Khan, and Tiger Toguchi (Kim Duk) on the other. Not bad but still not Andre, Hansen, and Murdoch. Even then, it was weird lopsided as the Japanese side (who had the numbers advantage to begin with) worked together and the other side didn't (Patterson did more for the other side from the outside than they did for one another). And then when Sakaguchi was put into positions to make saves, he had to force himself to be a few seconds slow and it was all very labored. Anyway, this wasn't nearly as fun as the Battle Royal we covered a few months ago from the middle of the decade.

Jerry Lawler vs. Big Bully Douglas USA Championship Wrestling 4/13/02

MD: Lots of new stuff from Bryan Turner's channel. I was going to write up a Tracy Smothers vs. Kory Williams brawl, but the merrily accepted "string him up" chants by the 1997 Cooksville audience made it a bit much to cover, so it's back to the paragon of virtue that is Jerry Lawler instead. And this was a pretty perfect bullshit 2002 babyface Lawler match. Douglas was a bald bruiser sort, a lifer in these Nashville indies. With Ernest T at ringside, he could play a proper foil for Lawler, having just enough credible power offense and able to stooge and feed enough to make it all work with Lawler doing the heavy lifting with his selling, strikes, and overall timing.

The opening of this was wonderful gaga, as Ernest kept slipping Douglas an object (horseshoe, knucks, chain) and Lawler dodged the corner shot, stole the weapon, distracted the ref by blaming Ernest, nailing Douglas, and then after the fact showing the ref the object that Ernest had slipped in. It got funnier each time he pulled it off and as Ernest and Dougls were getting more apoplectic. Eventually, he missed the fistdrop, though, and ate that power offense (suplex, side slam, etc) with a bit of help from Ernest on the outside and with Douglas pulling him up a couple of times at 2. The comeback was preceeded by Stacy slapping Ernest. The strap went down, the punches rained down, a stunner that we all want to forget about occurred, and Lawler lifted Douglas up after one pile driver to tease a second when Rapada ran in for the DQ. That opening sequence was pure distilled Memphis and the rest went down smooth.

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Found Footage Friday: FINLAY RETIREMENT TOUR~! GRIZZLY!~! BROOKSIDE~! FINLAY, JR~! LAWLER~! SID~!

Fit Finlay vs. Cannonball Grizzly 10/6/12

MD: This was Finlay's last singles match. I hadn't realized that Grizzly was still active this late into the 21st century. He more or less cracked the code by the mid 90s and while you weren't going to get a ton of movement out of these two at this point necessarily, this was buoyed by the advantages of the rounds system, Grizzly's presence and size, and Finlay's selling and ability to strike from underneath.

Watching a rounds match now and again feels like good medicine for your pro wrestling viewing brain. I don't know if it's a sign of getting older myself but I gravitate more towards entry points than finishing stretches and with a rounds match, you get a number of different entry points, which when used smartly and organically, can create different narrative beats. Likewise with the bell at the end of each round. This started with Finlay locking in a few holds and transitioning between one and the next with his usual moments of violence. Grizzly had the size and the strength however, so he took over pretty quickly. The first two rounds had the bell ring with Finlay finally punching out of a hold.

For a meaningful momentum shift to occur, one of two things were necessary: either Finlay would have to turn things around earlier in the round or Grizzly would have to control deeper into the round. The latter occurred as the third round had a long bearhug and when Finlay tried to get out, Grizzly stayed on the back. That meant he could control starting in the fourth as well, but Finlay fought his way out and started to chip away at Grizzly. He pressed forward with that chipping in the fifth, charging right in and working on the arm, with the sixth having Grizzly desperate and charging right in only to have it turned around on him after he made a mistake. So there's a clear narrative through the rounds created by each round playing off of what happened before. It was building to Finlay pressing his advantage and overcoming (which included Grizzly missing a big flip off the turnbuckles) until his second, Brookside, pulled the ropes down and then started unloading on him. That said up the match to come. They still filled a lot of time with the actual match here and they managed it, broken up by the round breaks, primarily with simple holds and hard shots. It's more of what I might expected from 1982 than 2012, but it worked for the crowd due to the skills at play.

ER: I thought this was excellent. I imagine most people will be surprised to learn that PN News was involved in something this good over 13 years after his ECW run. It turns out that Finlay in his mid-50s vs. Cannonball Grizzly in his mid-40s is one of the best Finlay Retirement Tour matches we have. We don't have enough Finlay matches against big fat guys. One of Jerry Lawler's best match types is against big fat guys, and after seeing this it's easy to see Finlay having 4 star matches with Plowboy Frazier. You think of all the big fat men who we never got to see get roughed up by Finlay before flattening him, and it just breaks your heart. Finlay vs. Mabel, Finlay vs. Tenta, Finlay vs. Vader; these are the images that flash like stars behind my eyelids as I pass into slumber. Cannonball Grizzly makes his entrance to the 1992 sounds of Ugly Kid Joe, in 2012, and I easily picture a world where Ugly Kid Joe is a band who successfully tour Europe in the 2010s. I like this idea of Cannonball Grizzly being forever frozen in time in 1992, the peak of his US success. 

But yes, this was excellent. At the time of this writing, it is the greatest Paul Neu match any of us have ever seen. It's also perfect that a German worker's last name is Neu. It makes me want to seek out the work of John Guru Guru or Tom Ash Ra Tempel. This goes 7 rounds and builds slowly and steadily through all of them. It's built around struggling out of convincing and simple holds, and it's done fantastically. Grizzly has really convincing knuckle locks, and is able to hang in and hold onto then even while Finlay is elbowing him from his back foot. Finlay squeezed Grizzly's traps and grabbed at his nose in the 1st round, Grizzly used the first opportunity he got to return the favor why doing it right back in the 2nd. Finlay ends the 2nd by punching Grizzly in the face and then hitting three hard lariats, the first and third especially rough, sending sweat mist exploding off both. Finlay knows that the shot that puts a big man down needs to look like the strongest one. 

Finlay twists his way through a Grizzly bearhug in the 3rd, trying to break it with a leveraged judo throw and getting Grizzly off his feet but not over, turning in the bearhug to try and find any way out, ending when he gets whipped hard into the buckles. I wish we had gotten a 20 minute Finlay/Andre match that was just Finlay trying to find ways out of a bearhug until Andre just fell on him. Grizzly builds off that bearhug and turnbuckle whip in the 4th, immediately throwing elbows into Finlay's kidneys and locking on the bearhug with his hands clasped over them. Finlay finally getting the headlock takeover out of the bearhug felt like a huge escalation and I love how it took a lot out of him, finally lifting Grizzly off his feet enough to turn him over but walking around after like it wasn't quite worth it. 

Finlay pounces on Grizzly's limbs in the 5th while the German commentary still talks about Ugly Kid Joe. Finlay keeps adjusting his leg positioning while working an arm lock, keeping a wide base that looked impossible to get away from. The ropes were Cannonball's only possible escape. When he gets back in the ring he throws two full arms into the side of Finlay's head that make him look like Vader, but more so like Fat Joe wrestling like Vader. I think it's because Vader never had hot dog neck. There's a memorable fist fight to start the 6th and Finlay in his mid-50s still takes the hardest bumps into the turnbuckles since Bret. Grizzly missing an elbowdrop feels like as big of a nearfall as any actual offense you could do to him. Finlay starts the 7th by finding a fourth (at least) new way to painfully run into the turnbuckles, the top buckle hitting underneath the side of his ribcage, staggering him out into a real shutdown clothesline. Finlay's bump to the floor - through the ropes because of a traitorous Brookside low bridge - was a real surprise. Finlay is the absolute master at taking bumps that look like something he was not expecting to take. Brookside's attack on Finlay and the ring crew might be the most violent I've ever seen him. Brookside was kicking at Finlay's ear like he wanted to send him into retirement equilibrium-free.  

Fit Finlay/David Finlay Jr. vs. Dan Collins/Robbie Brookside 12/22/12

MD: Cagematch says this is both Fit's last match and David Jr's first one, and Cagematch would know in this case, I imagine. It wasn't exactly what I expected after the challenges following Brookside's betrayal, but it probably meant a heck of a lot more to Fit than a straight one-on-one street fight would have. David was what you'd expect here given his first match and his pedigree: slight in frame, flopping about with his selling, some promise when it came to shots in the corner and inspiring sympathy in this very specific situation. He had Collins and Brookside to move him about the ring when he was taking a beating and most of his offense was tandem stuff with his dad. Likewise, the structure went how you'd figure, a cycle of Finlay controlling, of David losing the offense and eating a beatdown, of that beatdown creating a handicap situation that Finlay had to overcome and of Finlay first overcoming, second smashing people into things (the apron, a table, any hard surface he could find), and then letting his son join in until he was overtaken again. It was effective and they filled a decent amount of time with it, never losing the crowd despite David's inexperience. With ten years of retrospect and considering that Finlay, Jr.'s had a pretty successful career so far, you can hardly imagine a better end to Finlay's career than hitting stereo finishers with his son in the middle of a German ring against some old rivals in front of an appreciative crowd. It was nice that he got to smash some heads in the process. 

Jerry Lawler vs. Sid Vicious NWA Main Event 11/7/08 

MD: Phil and Eric had reviewed a Lawler vs Sid match from 07 which sounds like an all time great Lawler performance and an all time terrible Sid performance. This pulls more towards the middle for both, as it was a pretty good Sid performance and your standard solid Lawler one. This was on the show that celebrated Lawler's 35th year in the business so you imagine Sid was a little more inspired because of that. He had Jimmy Hart at ringside. Lawler had Jim White, his first tag team partner with him though he was a non factor. They worked a bunch of Sid slams early and a Lawler attempt which let Hart mock him on the house mic (and set up the big moment towards the end). Having Hart here probably made it a little more successful than a similar gambit the year prior. After eating a few Lawler punches with a snap of the head but no overall selling, Sid cut him off with a slam out of a side headlock which was simple but effective. Lawler was going to make Sid's stuff look amazing, of course, but the visual that comes from Sid's size makes that pretty easy. It's not like he has great punches, but when he comes down with more of an arc with them instead of poking forward, it gave Lawler plenty to work with. They moved from hold (or choke) into shots, into a move (like a side slam or legdrop) pretty steadily here, with Hart slipping in shots when he could. Lawler, despite it being his night, still used a low blow to start his comeback. Sid not registering the punches early meant it mattered more when he did register them on the comeback and between that, the slam paying off, and Hart's interference backfiring, everything built exactly as it ought to have. Sid was fairly inspired on this night but I'm not certain this would have worked quite so well with anyone but Lawler.

ER: Sid felt really uninspired working in front of that 2007 NEW crowd, and while he doesn't "do a lot" here, it at minimum felt like he and Lawler were at least having the same match. In 2007 it felt like Lawler was having his own epic while Sid was fulfilling an obligation that he regretted. The only real difference between Sid here and Sid there, was his presence here always felt like it was building to the match's climax, easily controlling Lawler with his size in a way that was clear we were always building to a fired up Lawler finish. There is so little actual offense in this match, just a handful of bodyslams, some clubbing strikes, a big side slam, and a smothering hold, but they both knew how to milk the thriftiness of it all. Sid's bodyslams looked big and Lawler knows how to expertly sell a large man's bodyslam as well as he knows how to breathe air. 

Lawler tries punching Sid early and gets nowhere, but gets much farther when he punches and kicks Sid in the balls before punching face. The camera crew doesn't know how to film Lawler's fistdrop and they shoot his kneeling punches from his back, but the energy is there. The strap lowering into a dropkick was great, and the bodyslam payoff was real. I love heel Jimmy Hart getting involved. Hart mastered the old man big bump/non-bump, knowing exactly how to get up on an apron and get knocked off it without actually doing anything super dangerous. It's just another example of how everyone in this knew how to do the most without actually dying. How many of the Lawler/Sid USWA matches do we have? Any? It feels like mid 90s Lawler/Sid would have been the best version of their crossed paths.

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