Found Footage Friday: SABU~! NISHIMURA~! COSMO SOLDIER~! WILD BOYS~! MOONDOG~! DANTE~!

Wild Boys vs. Dante/Moondog Power Slam Championship Wrestling 9/17/93

MD: Not going to lie, I can't tell Jordan and Neely apart in a cage. That's going to make this problematic because while I think Jordan is the one in the post match angle, I'm not sure. If I'm wrong, accept my apologies here. The actual action here was pretty brisk. Maybe six or seven minutes total of a match but it was nonstop. There was a chair in the cage and that defined almost everything that happened, with the Wild Boys controlling early. Everyone ate the cage well here too, including the Moondog but it was those chairshots that stand out. Dante was able to take over midway through including a number of shots off the top where he use the cage to steady him. Wild Boys mounted a heated comeback and got a roll up win, but one left the ring post match and the manager trapped the other in there. The beating was bad enough but then Moondog threw a fireball and it nearly became a riot scene as everyone was rushing to get him water and there was some deep Nashville concern at play given the selling and how close to the ring everyone had been.

ER: I had no idea what to expect from this match, as I didn't know anyone in the match until I saw it was an actual Moondog and not just some guy working Mudshow Moondog. So Larry Latham is in there and that means I know who Dante is, and the Wild Boys are in jeans and sneakers with full heads of hair, like 75% scale Bart Gunns. Latham was 40 going on 70, Dante was a white goof in a mask, and the Wild Boys were southern boys in jeans. Except it was like Rock n Rolls vs. Russians in a cage that was sturdier than you'd assumed when your brain was in Mudshow Mode. The Wild Boys are the perfect punch-backers, firing punches that kept getting better the longer they were in the cage, Dante taking really strong bumps hitting the cage and falling to the mat holding the ropes to desperately stop his momentum. Dante took bumps like a more hinged cage match Bobby Heenan: not as spectacular, but the same As A Manager energy to make up for Moondog Spot's old man shutting down comebacks and taking chair shots. Dante was the one taking back body drops, Moondog was the one with the clout to shut down the Wild Boys with a single shot. The Wild Boys had honest babyface energy that kept getting stronger the more they were allowed to fight, and I loved the quick fireball escape. Moondog gets the hell out of dodge before most people can even figure out what happened, and the ringside concern for the burnt Wild Boy is so sincere and serious. I don't know how many people in frame were In On It or were genuinely concerned and helping out as a Good Civilian, but I'd buy any number from Zero to All. 

Sabu vs. Osamu Nishimura Lima, OH 8/7/94

MD: Blurry ten minute sprint. I thought Sabu might work more towards Nishimura since it was a rare opportunity and that they might start on the mat, but there really wasn't much of that. They only lingered there towards the end and then not for long. If anything, Nishimura worked towards Sabu, which was what the crowd hungered for anyway. That even meant a relatively early dive.

One great strength of Sabu is that he was very giving. He had the luxury of being so because he could grab a chair at any point and become instantly credible. That's what happened here. Early on he ate a clothesline on the floor and the dive and a subsequent dropkick in the ring but the second he introduced the chair, everything turned on its head. His strikes looked great too and I don't know if that was Nishimura leaning into them or the video quality of the tape. A second chair attempt backfired on him down the stretch and Nishimura hit some real bombs (a German and a nasty Power Bomb) but Sabu survived and overcame with the chair yet again. The Facebuster is one of those moves that looks almost more nasty when it's not coming off the top because of the short period between start and finish. Part of me wanted a bit more of Sabu hanging on the mat but this was probably the right match for this crowd on this night and it's hard to fault it overall.

Cosmo Solider/Super Taira vs. Koji Niizumi/Kubo KAGEKI 2/27/11 

MD: A Sebastian special obviously. Speed and finesse vs size and toughness as everyone worked hard for a non-stop twenty minutes. Kubo had the size and hit like a truck while still able to move. Niizumi had precise, stiff strikes. And Cosmo and Taira stayed in it by utilizing double teams and quick shots. I will say that Taira, while hitting as hard as anyone in the match, did bug me a bit by not registering shots that were coming his way, even when Niizumi was starting to come back and fire back, for instance. There were plenty of times where Cosmo would go for a lift or a suplex and barely get the guy over and that just added to what was going on. My favorite bit of all of this might have been when he turned Niizumi's crab attempt into an ankle lock with the Fujiwara headstand twist, but there were a lot of little slick bits like that throughout. The back half had things moving at a machine gun pace but it was all interesting enough that you didn't mind much, and other than Taira, everyone was register what was happening consummately. The finish sort of came out of nowhere on a rana but you got the sense almost anything that was happening could have ended it, so it was as good a way to exit as anything else. 

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Found Footage Friday: SOLAR~! IN~! JAPAN~! AZTECA~! JIRAIYA~! DRAGONS~! SKULL REAPER~! URA~! ITO~!

Hiroaki Ura vs. Yusaku Ito Sportiva 2/6/19

MD: Sebastian sent this one on to us. He described Ura as in his black trunks roookie stage but very talented. That tracked. He started out with very basic holds to just try to contain Ito and I had the sense Ito was taking him lightly and letting him sow his wild oats a bit, ready to shut him down when he'd had enough. Ito didn't turn things around early enough though. Instead, Ura was able to pry a leg off and start to do real damage with it. Throughout the match, especially after the tide turned back the other way but even before, I had the sense that Ura was like the dog that caught the car at times; once he got it, he wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. He was going off desperation and instinct and throwing anything he could. It meant that when he shifted away from the leg and to broader offense. It didn't work so well for him. Ito, on the other hand, was entirely deliberate. If he couldn't get a hold, he jammed an elbow down onto Ura's skull once and then took it. He'd block him and turn him right into a hold. The finish is him shutting Ura down with a decisive motion to hit a Michinoku Driver. The damaged leg is a wedge that Ura could use to get back into things though. He also had a potent explosiveness able to zoom across the ring while Ura was stumbling in his selling. When they moved into strike exchanges, it had fighting spirit how I particular like it, with staggering and recoiling, and a struggle to push forth and some really spirited screaming from Ura. This was inevitable, of course, but they did a very good job in not quite making it look so. 

Solar I/Dragon Yuki vs. Azteca/Jiraiya KAGEKI 7/13/13

MD: This had been thought lost but it's just been out there where no one knew to look for it. I think it was on the Azteca 20th anniversary show. Here, you have Solar in his most exhibition-y, touring mode, but somehow more so. He's so over the top here with poses and flexing and pandering to the crowd that it's almost transcendent. Especially because he backs it up. It's in one fall so the structure is kind of loose, in as you get exchanges early with a lot of motion and everyone getting to pair with everyone else, things building to some relatively big dives including a huge Yuki flipping senton off the second rope to a grounded Azteca on the floor, and then the matwork which actually gets some room to breathe, with the pairing of Solar and Jiraiya particularly great. It was a little weird to go into the matwork after the dives but what I was watching was so enjoyable I didn't mind too much. It both gave rationale for no one to break things up as Azteca and Yuki were still recovering and also sort of felt like a tercera where teams trade submissions once they were there to save their partners. In a lot of ways, this was Solar at the very height of his old man powers, completely confident in his own skin almost to the point of bombastic parody. But he still went hard to celebrate Azteca.

Solar I/Azteca vs. Azul Dragon/Skull Reaper A-ji KAGEKI 7/14/13

MD: I was a little worried this was going to be more of the same but it really wasn't. Dragon and Reaper came in full rudo, ambushing to start and using their second to cheat to take back over when the opportunity arose. It meant that there was a lot more heat. The previous match was celebratory but in a good way, certainly structured like a real match. This didn't have anything quite as tricked out but there was a lot more animosity to draw upon. When Solar and Azteca fought their way back, there was some of that posing and pandering (but in the best way, of course), but the rudos kept it from going overboard by keeping the pressure on. That's not to say it wasn't without levity. The commentators (and Azteca) watching it back got a real kick out of Skull Reaper nonchalantly taking out the ref to break up a pin. It all built to Solar quebradors as you'd imagine followed by a simultaneous Solar submission and Azteca splash. Fun stuff but I did miss the matwork of the other match.

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