New Footage Friday: FINLAY!! MUTOH! 2 COLD!! RAMBO! BORGA!!

CWA Euro Catch Festival 12/16/95

2 Cold Scorpio vs. Danny Collins

PAS: This was a pretty basic mid 90s juniors match. There were a couple of nifty flourishes by both guys,  Collins had a nifty jumping rana and I always love Scorpio's standing flip leg drop. Still I thought most of this was relatively dull, I think I would still like high end 90s juniors matches, but the average ones are really not my speed. Always happy to get more Scorp footage, but this was mostly skippable.

MD: I'm a little bit higher on this than Phil, but just a bit. Collins got good effort marks at least, and had a lot of stuff, even if his ambition was sometimes bigger than his prowess. Scorpio was a natural in front of this crowd, coming out to his Slam Jam theme, dancing to Can't Touch This between rounds, etc. He was great at mixing his fighting from underneath with his selling, garnering both sympathy and admiration, but there's nothing new there. It's always nice to see it in a different setting. There were some stuff that felt off, both in Collins' execution, but also an arm drag or two that felt like they came way too late in the match. It was fine.


Ice Train vs. Big Titan

PAS: This was pretty fun, I am surprised that Ice Train never really went anywhere. He is big, agile and hit hard. I feel like he just got caught up in the churn of WCW, with too many guys under contract. Feels like the WWF might have been able to do something with him. I would have liked to see this run back a couple of years later with Big Titan as fake Diesel.  I especially liked Train's big second rope shoulder block, and Titan had a nice stiff clothesline.

MD: On a show with a number of big guys, Titan worked kind of small here, getting off his feet a lot on offense. I've heard him complain he was frustrated having to work like Diesel in the WWF because it neutered a lot of what he liked to do. I don't think it'd always have worked, but it did make for a nice contrast with Ice Train here. Train was still very green but charismatic with a couple of big memorable spots and a good act. I think he would have really done well ten years later, towards the end of the territories where he could go into a place for a few weeks as a special attraction tag team partner and move on before the act got stale.

ER: This was fine, but served more as proof that WCW really figured out how to present Ice Train. Ice Train matches in WCW were always 4-6 minute power sprints, so you got a big powerslam, big chops, big shoulderblocks, and then got the hell out of there. Here you see what happens with 10 minutes, and it's mostly Big Titan holding cravates and chinlocks. But this was fine! Because we also got a couple of great big man vertical suplexes, a couple of Train's big flying shoulder tackles, a beast of a standing lariat from Train, big missed splash from Titan, and Titan *did* have a nice cravat. I love the cravat variation of just pressing both palms against one side of a guy's head, rather than one hand twisting the chin. Here Titan just mashed palms into the left side of Ice Train's head, really introducing Train's right ear to his shoulder. Ice Train is a real heavy lander, one of the heaviest, and it rules. Other guys are bigger, but Ice Train lands with such weight that it really makes simple things like a standing splash or legdrop look colossal. And I also just realized that while Big E has the best standing splash of modern wrestlers, Ice Train probably had the best of his era. Big E is really working a spiritual Ice Train successor gimmick and that somehow makes me like both of them more.

Kama vs. Viktor Kruger

PAS: I thought this was a fine CWA heavyweight match. I am surprised that I liked Kama more than Kruger in this match. Kruger seemed a bit off, and Kama had a nice taped up right hand, and wins with a great looking huge spinebuster. I think I am more into C- heavyweight matches, then C- juniors matches like Scorp vs. Collins.

MD: Pre-match Kama came off like more of a star than he ever had in his career with any of his characters. He rode in on the back of a motorcycle to Thunderstruck and looked jacked (gassed?) to the gills. He juts seemed larger than life. The first minute or so worked out too, with him bumping around a bit. I think the reality of his bulk caught up to him after that, however. Kruger was disappointing. For a guy who clapped so much on the way to the ring, he really didn't seem to have any idea how to engage the crowd when working out of holds, and this match needed that badly.

ER: This was a pretty dull match with a very fun first 1 and final 3 minutes. Putting the best stuff in the first and final minutes at least makes it feel like a better waste of time, and saving big moments for the end is a smart structure for guys without a ton of big moments in them. I always forget how big Kruger is, as Kama is a huge man and Kruger matched him for size, basically Mike Awesome without any actual highspots. Kama routinely has heavyweight "pulling" matches, which are a time filler kind of heavyweight match that revolves around each guy just kind of pulling the other guy into things. Every transition is some variation of "okay I'm in the corner, now I'm going to pull you into the corner and now I am out of the corner, throwing slow punches at you, and then you kinda pull me into the corner and do the same" and you end up with a couple of giants just hitting soft shots and tugging each other around the ring for 10 minutes. But I loved Kama bumping for Kruger's shoulderblocks to start, and the big stuff down the stretch plays great: Kama's big Vader bomb into knees, Kruger's fantastic full steam lariat that sends Kama over the top to the floor, and Kama's high rotation spinebuster finish.

August Smisl/Tony St. Clair vs. Cannonball Grizzly/John Hawk

MD: The more I see Grizzly in these matches, the more I like him. He's a superheavyweight heel with a couple of good power spots that engages the crowd and that can go chickenshit and work vulnerable. That's one of my sweet spots if it works as a contrast to other things going on and here it absolutely did. This hit a lot of marks. Grizzly and Hawk controlled the ring well enough with plenty of cheating. St. Clair was fiery on the outside to screw his partner by distracting the ref. For the only tag match on the show, it was lacking a hot tag in the stretch. The first face win was off of a lightning power move reversal. The second one was off of a lightning cross body. There was a hot tag in the middle but so distanced from either of the finishes that it made the whole thing feel anti-climactic. None of the wrestling was bad. It just needed to be organized differently.

Fit Finlay vs. Franz Schuhmann

MD: This was excellent. Finlay was top notch here and Schuhmann was more than game in keeping up with him. Finlay was do-no-wrong beloved here which gave this a face-vs-face star-vs-star feel despite Fit absolutely acting like Fit, wrestling a merciless style and increasingly taking what advantages he could. He had a sort of shrugging charm that won the day. This went seven rounds with round three standing out especially as Finlay just moved from one piece of brutal business to the next, each one with purpose, always keeping the crowd engaged and active. It started with a powerbomb and ended with the reversal of one, telling a mini story within a few minutes. Schuhmann was able to get his revenge in the fourth (though it wasn't quite linear), with Finlay mounting an ambush at the start of the fifth and the two of them going back and forth until the end. The finish, with Fit stopping Schuhmann's momentum by catching him off the ropes and hitting the tombstone he was only able to attempt (and was reversed on) back in the fourth, was made all the better by Finlay waving his arms in elation right before he hit it.

PAS: I loved this too, mid 90s Finlay is pretty close to wrestling perfection and Schuhmann is a great dance partner. Schuhmann has really great looking suplexes, really popping his hips and dumping Finlay on the back of his neck. Finlay was a big bumper at this point too, he just flies over the top rope, and takes all of Schuhmann's moves in painful ways, Schuhmann applies maybe the greatest drop toe hold I have ever seen with Finlay looking like he tore his MCL going down. Of course he is an all time great offensive wrestler too, and we get some of the great Finlay signature spots, knees right to the nose, hard unforgiving bodyslams and an absolutely brutal hard tombstone finish. Rounds match can always be a bit choppy, but the actual wrestling in this match was tremendous.

ER: I honestly don't think there is another wrestler better at execution, illusion of violence, or selling than Fit Finlay. I think Lawler is his best competition, but 90s Finlay especially looks like my exact vision of perfect pro wrestling. This is one of his greatest performances (think of the ground that covers), and it's even better because this also happens to be the greatest performance I've ever seen from Franz Schuhmann. Finlay has this special ability of elevating nearly every opponent to his game, not necesarily working a match around an opponent's strengths, but actually getting his opponents to work up to him. If they don't they'll get left behind by way of cruel beating; if they're game, he rewards them by making their offense look better than ever before. In this match alone Finlay rewards a great dropkick by flying impossibly fast over the top to the floor, takes a bridged German suplex so perfectly that it should be motion captured, and takes a drop toehold and manages to make it look like Jaws was biting through his leg. This match could have been a total flop, and this drop toehold would have made it infinitely memorable. Schuhmann grabbed such a perfect grapevine of that leg, and Finlay sold it in a few nasty stages: Screaming out in anguish as it's applied, buckling a knee while fighting to stay standing, going down hard and grabbing for his leg when he realized his struggle could have injured him further. What a moment. His offense was as great as expected, one of the few men who can make a nerve hold genuinely look like the best way possible to bring a man to his knees in pain, grabbing Schuhmann's trapezius and forcing him to the mat, yanking his head back by the maxilla, and dropping a 12 to 6 elbow right across Schuhmann's nose. It's a classic Finlay sequence, and yet he never makes it look like he's going through any kind of motions. The tombstone Finlay finishes this classic with is one of the greatest I've seen, Finlay joyously catching Schuhmann and dropping hard to his knees, Schuhmann held cruelly at a bent neck angle before being left to flop dead to the mat. This was magic.

Keiji Mutoh vs. Jim Neidhart

MD: I'm not even sure how I'd classify this, maybe as an "overperforming, lost, late Neidhart performance." I really liked his presence here, coming out to Alice Cooper, chumming around with Kauroff, having Mutoh pull his beard, clubbering him on a table on the outside. It got a little hold heavy in the middle (though I was happy to see the Anvilizer, his Summer 1993 WCW finishing Cobra Clutch). This was ultimately more of a Neidhart match than a Mutoh match, though he got some of his stuff in at the end, but I'm not sure it would have worked any other way. Honestly, I think we all would have been better off with Collins/Neidhart vs. Scorpio/Mutoh.

Rambo vs. Ludwig Borga 

MD: Midway through this match (at the point where Rambo outright missed a jumping back elbow), I had the conscious thought "Well, at least Eric is probably going to go out of his way to watch the Finlay match too." This wasn't good. Rambo was more giving than I've seen him in this footage, but it didn't really matter. This had the same sort of dynamic as Finlay vs. Schumann, just with more of a heavyweight "clash of the titans" feel, but couldn't at all follow it. Too much of the crowd was behind Borga and while he laid in the cheapshots and eased into the heel role in the match, he just didn't go far enough with it for what they were trying to do. He neither lost nor excited the portion of the crowd that had been cheering him, so Rambo could only get so much support. It built into a few good nearfalls towards the end but then just sort of ended in a way no one in the crowd would even remember the next day. It probably could have used more violence on the outside as well. It just needed more sharply drawn lines, really just more volume on everything that it tried to do.

ER: I was actually really into this, and perhaps all the HBK tribute acts of all shapes and sizes have just made me more excited for slower paced 90s house show heavyweight style. I thought Borga was great here, really played a brick wall bully who still bumped for bigger Rambo spots. If you looked at the overall match you could think that Borga dominated this one, but there were key moments at the ends of rounds that showed Rambo may have been a victim of bad timing. Borga was much slower getting up at the end of the 2nd and 3rd rounds, the first after attempting to throw Rambo with a suplex while trapped in a headlock, and the second after eating a nice vertical suplex back into the ring. After two straight round breaks of Borga being slow to his feet, it's no surprise that he ends the next two rounds with cheap shots and warnings. You get the sense that Rambo could have beaten him had his timing and placement been a little more fortunate. But Borga's performance elevated this for me, as he works slow bruiser really well, making his strikes really resonate and allowing time for them to be sold. Big Borga hooks to the kidneys or breadbox look devastating, so I love that he doesn't make them useless with overuse, instead landing one big shot at a time, one big punch to the gut, one big downward strike elbow right to Rambo's chest, one big clubbing shot across the shoulder blades, really getting across the power of his strikes.

I liked the way Borga laid out big misses that sometimes later lead to big hits, like a big missed avalanche that gave Rambo an early opening, that we later got to see cashed in when Borga actually hits this big avalanche (getting enough height to also get tangled in the ropes, which made it look like the impact of the avalanche was really drove home); or, when he got brought back in the ring with that vertical suplex, and later walked Rambo over to the same location to give Rambo his own suplex, dropping him hard across the top rope with a front suplex. I even loved how Borga handled Rambo's awkward missed back elbow, as instead of selling it (which I imagine a missed leaping back elbow would almost always lead to both guys lying on the mat figuring out how to recover), Borga immediately drops down and grabs a nice grounded side headlock. Borga also showed tons of weakness on the floor, crashing into a table that gets shoved into the crowd, then eating an awesome ringpost shot (he and Lesnar really show that 100% of the guys who look like them, also take really great post shots), always going down for Rambo's biggest shots. The finish could have been better, as I kept expecting a Rambo final comeback, but instead they just had Rambo die a slow death. But even down the stretch I was into the attention to details from Borga, like his super low swinging missed clothesline, or the specific way he choked Rambo over the bottom rope, or how he just stepped right on Rambo's face as Rambo was trying to get back in the ring. That kind of stuff will always elevate a match for me, and Borga had plenty of that.

PAS: I am sort of in the middle on this match, don't dislike it at much as Matt, but think Eric is pretty severely overrating it. Borga is a guy who is always fun to watch and I will always be down for him bulldozing someone in the corner and unloading those beautiful hooks to the body. I am someone who always loved throwing body shots back in my boxing days, and Borga is really one of the only professional wrestlers ever to make a body shot look great. Rambo was real bad in this though, the best Borga matches have been him going to war with a fellow big hitters like Hashimoto or Vader, Rambo just had nothing on his stuff, and it was tough to watch Borga try to credibly sell for bad looking corner punches or lame bulldogs. He tried his best, but this was a one man show, and as much as I enjoy Borga he isn't pulling off both sides of a match.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FIT FINLAY

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LUDVIG BORGA

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WWF King of the Ring 1995

"Philadelphia, the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed! But tonight, MONARCHY will reign!" I love that line, and Vince shouts it like a deranged Kent Brockman. I am ready for this.

1. Savio Vega vs. IRS

ER: Razor Ramon injured himself at a house show a couple weeks before the PPV, so this was the match to determine his replacement to battle Yokozuna. IRS honestly has one of my favorite looks in wrestling history. His build was perfect for the Tom Fitton fit, with the sick cuffed short sleeves and deep red braces. It's a great look. The match was quick, 4 minutes, but worked fast. Vega starts the match with a super convincing small package, convincing enough that I thought they were pulling a "4 second record setting victory" type of angle to give Savio a push out of the gates. But Savio gets a good reaction with a couple more quick pins, with an especially nice high cradle. IRS presses the pace nicely, and Vega is good at quick bursts, so it's a surprisingly effective match. IRS goes up top because he's a dummy, and eats boot off an axehandle, then takes an amusing belly flop bump. The finish is a fun quick killshot, IRS running fast into a super high leaping Savio spinning heel kick. I like how this show is starting.

2. Yokozuna vs. Savio Vega

ER: Damn, they really gave Savio the short straw here, starting off the night fighting his way into the tourney and then immediately facing a force like Yoko? I do like Vince's reasoning that this is to Savio's advantage because Savio has his heart rate up and momentum rolling. Yoko is always so stoic to start matches that it makes sense Savio's fired up energy from his win would possibly overwhelm Yokozuna. And, naturally, Yokozuna would have been spending the past several weeks training specifically to fight Razor. Savio has inroads here. Yoko waves that Japanese flag in the faces of these freedom loving Philadelphians, and Savio waves a joint American/Puerto Rican flag to a surprising amount of cheers. 

And they play into that great Savio spinning heel kick I mentioned the match before, and it ties into Yoko training for Razor but gathering intel on Savio, as Yoko belly flops quickly to the mat early in the match when Savio tries to finish early with that same spinning heel kick. Yoko takes a couple of his big bumps here, a large missed elbow and a great transitional missed legdrop. The standing exchanges between the two are really strong, with Vega landing hard strikes and Yoko reeling before hitting back harder. Savio does hit his spinning heel kick but Cornette interrupts the pin, then takes a great bump to the floor after Savio belts him. The finish is lamer than the match deserved, as Owen Hart runs out to attack Razor Ramon at ringside, and then Savio runs out there, and then Yoko runs out there, but the camera completely misses big bump into the ringpost and ring steps, the bump that allows Savio to get the count out win. The count out win is cheap, and I am somewhat resentful of the Savio victory because it kills the chance of Mabel/Yokozuna. That's stupid.

3. The Roadie vs. Bob Holly

ER: Roadie is making his solo PPV debut, and you know he has a nice show vest for his entrance. But dear God the gear on Double J and Roadie is just woeful. Roadie also debuts his new PPV extensions and it makes him look like a weirdo creep maitre'd at a crime front restaurant in Strange Days. But the MATCH rules, outside of a second straight lousy finish. This is an awesome match with a real zilch of a finish, and that's too bad, but there's still a ton of match here that is really great. I kept thinking about 80s Brad Armstrong fast paced 10 minute singles, which is funny because Holly was the one giving me those vibes, not Brad's brother. This felt like a 1995 Rey/Psicosis match, only worked within the parameters of two southern wrestlers. 

It was worked super fast, Holly going for small packages and school boys and other flash pins while confounding Roadie with high hip tosses and shoulder dislocating armdrags. Roadie bails to the floor, comes back in and takes over. Roadie did have really good offense, different than his Road Dogg offense. The dancing was integrated better during his '98 run, but he has a couple things in '95 that he later unfortunately dropped. The best was a hard elbow drop to the back of Holly's neck, while Holly was sitting up. The whole thing was really good, good enough that if a couple of other matches hit this level of quality, I'll come away with favorable impressions of this show. Now, we do get some evidence of an ongoing problem, as this is the second match with a real lousy finish. Bob Holly goes up top, jumps off into Roadie with another downed opponent axe handle (already seen in the opener as a significant transition spot), but here Holly flies into Roadie's boot and gets pinned. I don't think I've ever seen someone get pinned from jumping face first into a vertically lifted leg. To his credit, Holly made it look almost plausible as a finish, and Roadie's scrambling opportunistic pin sank that in. But even though executed well, it came off flat as hell. Starting the main show with two sour finishes is a tough pill.

4. Kama vs. Shawn Michaels

ER: Well we definitely have established the theme of this show, which is very fun matches with very stupid endings. This one goes to a 15 minute draw, fully establishing the 15 minute draw as the Alone, Eating Over the Garbage Can of wrestling finishes. I was fully into this until they popped a countdown clock in the corner. Kama starts by throwing big telegraphed bombs, with Michaels hopping around like Ali, made all the more amusing when they cut to Joe Frazier in the crowd looking absolutely perplexed at Michaels. The two lady companions with Smokin' Joe are even pointing and laughing at what they're seeing. But there's a chance that those ladies were just plain wrong about pro wrestling, and that Frazier - some 20 years removed from his Ali and Foreman beatings - was actually just punch drunk. Because this delivered much more than I was expecting it to. And that's with me still miffed that Kama took Duke Droese's rightful place on this PPV! 

But the cat and mouse is good, and it leads to a great moment of Michaels skinning the cat but then getting lambasted with a great Kama lariat. Michaels takes a couple of big important bumps that play into the story, including a great version of his flipping corner bump that is just insanely fast, sending him upside down and over to the floor. Kama works simple stuff like backbreakers and that big man move I love where Michaels is bent backwards over Kama's knee, Kama pressing back on Michaels' chin. And what's awesome is that Michaels punches his way out of that, and he really tightens up his strikes in this match, clearly just punching Kama right in the head several times. That continues when Michaels gets on top and throws mounted punches, throwing 8 shots right into Kama's forehead, hard enough that Kama clearly checks to see if a cut opened. But the countdown clock really dampens the mood, as neither man seems to notice the countdown, so Michaels is doing slow corner 10 count punches with only a minute left to go, and while they built to a good "he woulda had him!" pinfall right as time expired, the fact that neither really acted like they were trying to finish really hurt it. Bob Holly worked the first several minutes of his match, they way they should have worked the final two minutes of this match. The fact that Michaels just immediately hits sweet chin music out of frustration post match, only highlights how stupid it was that he didn't go for that during any of the previous 15 minutes. Also, not having either guy advance is D-U-M-B DUMB. These finishes are brutal so far.

5. Mabel vs. The Undertaker

ER: This lags at times, sputters a bit, but eventually evolves into a real nice Mabel performance. He really got a bad rap from the internet doofuses not long after this, but he's a guy who would have been a big territory start if he wrestled exactly like this 10 years earlier. So it's a shame he never fully took during this era. Was it the shiny purple onesie? If he just had the Big Daddy V gear. All black gear, with his size, big star. This is filled with both guys running into each other with hard shoulderblocks, Mabel falls all over the place, splats Undertaker and sits on him a couple times, and we get cool moments like Undertaker with his foot tangled in the ropes and a tug of war while that happens (Taker trying to pull Mabel to the floor while his foot is tied up, Mabel trying to pull him up), and a huge belly to belly from Mabel that looked really great. Mabel even hits a picture perfect piledriver, and the visual of a 550 lb. man doing a classic piledriver is so bizarre, but so amazing. I thought a lot of Taker's stuff looked a little too tentative here. Mabel had obviously a slower gameplan, slowly crushing Taker, and it needed Taker to respond with a little more energy instead of just working the same pace as Mabel. Mabel whips Taker into the corner and smooshes the ref, allowing Kama to run in and interfere, allowing Mabel to hit a great legdrop to the back of Taker's head for the win. This match really did not need a finish based around interference, and the inability to give any single person a convincing win in this tournament is just bizarre. "People didn't take ______ seriously and that's why business is bad" is a pretty obvious take when everyone who has advanced in this tournament has done so almost by accident. Let Savio pin Yoko, let Mabel pin Undertaker, let The Roadie get a normal win over Bob Holly for goodness' sake.

6. Savio Vega vs. The Roadie

ER: This was a perfectly fine match, treated to a really icy reception from the Philly crowd. It's hard not to buy into the narrative that a series of bad finishes was wearing on this crowd. You had to think all the kids were thinking they'd be seeing a semifinals of Razor Ramon vs. Yokozuna and Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker, and instead they're seeing Savio Vega vs. The Roadie and No Match because of a Draw. They shorted them a match due to a Draw! So I get the icy reception, even though the match was fine. They got real cold during Roadie's control segment, quiet enough that both men verbally appealed to the crowd at different points. It sounds so foreign in a WWF environment to see Roadie first go "What does everyone think of the Road Dogg?" to silence, followed by Savio Vega stopping his comeback so that he could go "Come on!" to the crowd. 

It rattles them a bit and some stuff suffers, like Roadie doing his flashy jab combo with the big finisher right hand at the same time Savio is doing a salsa hulk-up, so Roadie's big punch combo that he is now doing for the first time, is ignored the entire time. It's just a middling layout in a match that could have been better. Savio gets the win, and in what should be his biggest babyface moment yet, he does a full ringside interview in Spanish with Dok Hendrix doing the translating; it's actually a really funny bit, with Hendrix saying things like, "He's saying 'I don't have a shot at beating Mabel...I'm considering just not showing up and going home...I don't know how I made it this far and I'm having doubts..." It's a genuinely hilarious bit, but the whole entire thing was done at the complete expense of Savio Vega. Vega is a guy who had been in maybe 5 TV matches before this PPV, and this was supposed to be his big hard fought struggle through the finals: He won a last minute dark match to make it onto the PPV itself, then had his first PPV match in the very next match! This was a hilarious bit at the expense of the guy who needed some help in that moment.

7. Jerry Lawler vs. Bret Hart

ER: In the TV leading up to this PPV, this match had to have had the most TV time devoted to it. Vince was absolutely giddy at the prospect of the first ever in history Kiss My Foot match, so we had a TON of segments with Lawler showing off comically gunked up bare feet, and so many segments with Bret calling Lawler a scumbag (which, well). But the segments clearly worked because this crowd despises Lawler. They are certainly treating this match as if it was the most important match on the show (though we can compare the reactions to the Bigelow/Diesel tag and Savio/Mabel). And the match itself is fantastic. I've never heard much praise for this match in their feud, but that was tremendous stuff. It's their great complementary styles compacted into 10 minutes, both guys work snug as hell, Lawler takes some of his best and unique bumps, and it's based around such a stupid horseshit mudshow stipulation that is the exact level of stupid horseshit mudshow stipulation that Lawler can get it over in his sleep. 

Hart had some awesome strikes here, really smashing his forearm across Lawler's nose, fast short uppercuts, tight headbutts; late in the match he punches Lawler while Lawler is on his knees, and Lawler takes this gorgeous gunshot bump to the mat. This show did a reported 16,000+ in attendance, and Lawler takes this admirable approach to things and works it like it was in front of 250 people in a church rec room. And this small focus work, getting into verbal spars with fans on all sides of the ring, really hammers home the threat of the stipulation, and this small focus work really starts to work for the entire arena. The match gets great heat and it's a beautiful thing to see small crowd Memphis heel techniques working on a big "workrate" Philly crowd.

Lawler hits three big piledrivers on Bret, all angling Bret off the mat in different ways, but Lawler takes a ton of time between all of them to talk shit to the crowd. Lawler in Philly full time would have been legendary. Then we get a great bit of BS where Lawler takes off his boot and has a bloody moldy sock that he tries to choke Bret with, Bret desperately hold the foot at bay. On the floor Lawler continues to show how he's the best ringpost bumper in wrestling history, getting pulled face first into it in such a convincing bit of magic that I expected to see a bloody nose. There was botched interference from Hakushi, more violent fast bumps from Lawler, a mean snap to Bret's familiar comeback offense (the Russian leg sweep and elbow off the middle rope landed especially sharp), the exact right amount of BS to go with the BS stip, elevated by perfect execution from both. This match was such an excellent use of time and really paid off the perfectly dumb TV time spent on it.

8. Mabel vs. Savio Vega

ER: This was a very good King of the Ring Final, easily the best of the actual KOTR matches tonight. This was an excellent match that the crowd TRIED to turn on with a loud ECW chant, and the match was good enough to get that crowd reinvested in the finish just moments later. Savio came out at the bell looking more impressive than he has in any appearance thus far, as he chopped Mabel into the corner - convincingly - and the visual of him backing up this mountain with chops made him like like a total pitbull. When Mabel is the slumped into the corner, Savio laces in with the best chops of the night; sometimes with both arms, always landing with a huge whipcrack. Savio Vega's attack on Mabel was great, peaking with Savio muscling Mabel over the top to the floor with a huge clothesline, Mabel taking a spectacular tumbling bump. Mabel smooshes Savio, hits his big belly to belly, and works a long bearhug that gets the fans restless. I liked it in the context of the match, Mabel playing the smart game, the odds, but it leads to an ECW chant lead by Straw Hat Guy and several other fans you've been distracted by while watching wrestling shows. But shortly into the comeback they can't deny the quality of the ringwork, and the match gets cheered to the finish. Vega got a great nearfall off a high cradle schoolboy, and also hit one of his best spinning heel kicks, getting unreal height. He gets a big kickout after a huge powerslam, but goes down to a big splash where Mabel really lays him out. This was a main event that did the tournament justice, something the rest of the tournament matches had fallen short of. This eventually got the positive crowd reaction it deserved, but it deserved it earlier.

9. Sycho Sid/Tatanka vs. Bam Bam Bigelow/Diesel

ER: The TV build up to this was all about Sid injuring Diesel's right elbow, Bigelow pledging his undying friendship to Diesel, and Sid making the best possible blinking crazy eyes facials in wrestling. Touched and crazy has always been a mode that wrestlers have struggled with, most commonly going far over the top or being too scared to do so. Sid finds the perfect balance and plays the man just on the edge of snapping better than anyone else. I wish we had a Sid cam, because occasionally the cameras during this era catch Sid on the apron just blinking and talking to himself - and this is during moments where he couldn't possibly know there are any cameras on him. A lot of this is kick and punch, with Bigelow occasionally taking a big dangerous bump to get people back into it. Sid kicks Diesel's elbow from the apron and Tatanka throws some tomahawk chops at it, and we get Sid really bending that bad elbow back across the ring ropes in mean ways, and the heels upheld their end of the bargain. Diesel didn't pay a ton of attention to it, outside of one big moment where he hit an elbowdrop on Sid, using the bad elbow, allowing Sid to go back on the offensive. 

But the problem is Diesel used his bad elbow for EVERYTHING. Every strike thrown, his big side slam, even posting up on the top rope while he was waiting for a tag. He used that elbow the whole damn match, and it really took away from the work of Sid and Tatanka. Bigelow tried some big things, including basically chokeslamming himself off the top rope. Sid backs him in the corner and gets Bigelow seated up on the top, choking him while Bigelow paws at Sid's face. I assume the plan was for him to be chokeslammed off, but Sid, didn't quite grab hold of him, and Bigelow just went for it anyway, taking a nice arcing bump and then selling it well on the mat; later Bigelow his a somersault senton on Tatanka and I'm not even sure that was supposed to happen, as Tatanka drops down and Bigelow does a big cannonball, but lands a little too vertically up on his neck. Considering the cannonball isn't a move that Bigelow commonly used, it felt like he was actually bumping but wasn't expecting Tatanka to be there? Vince and Dok were confused on commentary as well, but I like hearing Vince call it a cannonball. 

They also muff the hot tag to Diesel, as the way everyone was positioned in the ring made it look like Hebner was supposed to miss the tag, and to the crowd used to how tag wrestling works they clearly thought Diesel was going to be sent back to the apron, and even Vince was saying the referee didn't see the tag...but Diesel's hot tag was allowed, and this just means it was performed to no heat. I can't tell if Diesel was selling his elbow when giving Tatanka the Jackknife. He could have been, but if that's the case it just looked like he hit a really poor Jackknife. I do dig the finish of him pulling up Tatanka at 2, then challenging Sid to get in the ring, only for Sid to back down before Diesel pins Tatanka. On a show with too many screwy finishes, at least Sid committed to standing down as a classic heel move.


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The 1995 King of the Ring Qualifying Matches, Part 2

Duke Droese vs. Kama WWF Superstars 5/27/95

ER: There's something nice about these condensed big boy battles, I mean outside of the fact that it's a big boy battle and therefore the greatest thing in wrestling. The short runtime always turns them into sprints, and I love seeing these guys run around. I also amuse myself with the idea that somewhere, there is someone who champions Kama - the Extreme Fighting Machine - as the best era of Charles Wright's career. Wright is a guy who hung around for a LONG time without having many (any?) matches championed, but one era has to by default be his best in ring era. So why not Kama? I await the heated debates. And I can't get over how many people in the crowd love Droese! Since this was not an era I watched as it happened, all I've heard about was how lame it was that WWF had a garbage man and a plumber and a dentist etc. But the fans were clearly into Droese and he was clearly very good! There is a woman with an infant shown cheering elatedly for the Dumpster, and I wonder where that woman is today? 25 years on, does she remember how excited she was to see Duke Droese banging his trashcan down the aisle? I hope so. I hope that no matter her relationship with modern wrestling, she occasionally thinks back to how happy she was here, that one perfect day at the Superstars tapings. As for the match, I liked it. Kama throws some nice distance kicks, and I really liked his mule kick to counter Droese charging into the corner. But this was a MAJOR Droese showcase, and it's surprising how dominant he was here. He works really fast, really exciting on offense; he hit a high dropkick, really hard pair of clotheslines after some complicated rope running, and his big rotation powerslam on a big guy like Kama was impressive as hell. And my god, let me tell you, we also got my absolute favorite moment, which is Droese TAKING DOWN THE STRAPS OF HIS OSHA REGULATED HEAVY LIFTING BELT before going in for the kill. That's a flat out genius babyface character specific spot and Droese is so much better than I have ever been lead to believe. He and Kama worked a couple fun standing exchanges, and as nice as these sprints are it would have been nice to see them stretch out a bit. Instead, the match ends suddenly with a big Kama spinebuster. Million Dollar Corporation win again. That white male fan rubbing his fingers together during their entrance, eyes smug, showing he knew the international sign of Big Bucks? He was right.


Jeff Jarrett vs. The Undertaker WWF Raw 5/29/95

ER: This was tremendous, an awesome under 10 minute match. Jarrett was a real ace in '95, might be the very peak intersection of his specific set of skills. Here he was still a super fast, hard bumping, graceful moving stooge, a pretty boy in the most garish wrestling gear of the decade, a total non-threat who keeps somehow winning. Jarrett gets flung around the ring in glorious fashion, whipped hard into the turnbuckles, flying high on beals, big bumps off his shoulders. But with Roadie running distraction he is able to gain frequent advantages, able to control Taker convincingly while also seeming like a constant underdog who frustratingly stays ahead. Jarrett throws two stunning dropkicks, the second of which was a picture of a perfect dropkick, his feet perfectly together, body fully extended, feet squarely angled into Undertaker's face. This was the right way to work a back and forth match, and there were 5 momentum changes over a 10 minute runtime; that kind of back and forth can be tiresome in the wrong hands, but this was pretty expertly crafted. This had the feel of a real cool Coliseum Video gem.


Doink vs. The Roadie WWF Superstars 6/3/95

ER: Man I am a big fan of 1995 Ray Apollo Doink. He really served the gimmick well and was much closer to Bourne's style than Lombardi's. This whole thing was a really curious decision, even having Roadie in the qualifying rounds of the tournament. Roadie had one match in WWF at this point (the televised handicap match w/ JJ vs. Razor at the IYH that just happened) and was clearly just positioned as a non-wrestling manager. That's why it wasn't deemed an insurmountable threat that he was included as an odds stacker against Razor. The roster was filled with guys who would have made way more on paper sense to have in the tourney: Hakushi, Henry Godwinn, Lawler, 1-2-3, the debuting Candido (if they wanted a new guy in the final 8), Pierre, etc. I had said Jacob Blu was the weirdest inclusion in the tourney, since he had not wrestled any singles matches in WWF, but that's probably not as weird as the manager who had only been in one match to this point. Now the match itself is fun as hell, as Doink works this as he would a match against a non-worker. Apollo is really underrated in the gimmick, as his work is quick and he knows how to fill all of his time with action and gimmick. There is no dead air, he takes a cool approach to Roadie, hits a cool amateur takedown, grabs a single leg and works an ankle while stepping on Roadie's other ankle, flipping him and working for an STF, then passing to work on a grounded headlock, scrapes his boot bottoms across Roadie's eyes, holds him at distance in a collar and elbow, then pops Roadie's head between his knees for a piledriver and just stomps his feet instead to ring his bell. Doink's offense is great, and he comes off more like Mr. Wrestling II than the poor version of the Clown that Lombardi portrayed. Apollo is really great at getting the fans into his offense, knows when to include Doink, knows when to mock along with Roadie's stooging, really shakes his butt and taunts Roadie during the "piledriver" set up, and then his super high gorgeous kneelift while I was typing all of that just confirms that Ray Apollo was a 1984 territory babyface and was great at his job, the Hennig rolling necksnap a delicious cherry on top. Roadie does get offense in, has a really nice falling back elbow, but his strength here is stooging, and when Doink is dropping cool back suplexes like Jack Brisco that is not really an insult. And the finish to the match is far too simplistic for the quality work they had given the match: Doink goes up for the whoopee cushion, jumps down because Jarrett makes a fuss at ringside, then Roadie hits a kneelift to the back and gets a school boy. That's a shame. It's an ending that makes sense with the character and how he had been portrayed in limited physical appearances, but I just wanted something a little more clever. The match itself was super fun and gave me a new perspective on late period WWF Doink, might just have to seek out more Apollo Doink.


Owen Hart vs. The British Bulldog WWF Raw 6/5/95

ER: This was my least favorite of the KOTR Qualifying Matches. It is a 15 minute draw, and the commentary by JR and Gorilla had that exact same annoying quality that Jeff Blatnick's commentary during the Rulon Gardner/Karelin match had. The commentary was clearly dubbed over a previously recorded match, the live crowd clearly was not made aware of any time limit, so JR and Gorilla really started hammering home the remaining time in the last few minutes of the match, then immediately explained that neither man would be advancing since neither man had won. It was a real limp dick result to the match, and their scripted explanation was brutal. It was this blatant "Well you know neither man won the match, and if there was no winner then neither man can advance!" "That's right, rules state that winners advance, and there was no winner here, so that means that they lost their chance!" It came off extremely phony, a seemingly complicated situation shrugged off with some "Well what are you gonna do?" rules chat. It was Jeff Blatnick explaining the very obscure rules that zero people would know offhand, in the immediate moment after the bell, a man buoyantly pretending he didn't have the test answers ahead of time.

The match proper was a bit of a bore until a hot but meaningless finishing sprint. They telegraphed going long by the deliberate pace they worked for the first half, and that's fine, but once JR and Gorilla started talking about time limits that made me realize what we were working towards. Bulldog gasses after a run of offense that at least included a nice press slam and a hard delayed vertical suplex, but ended with him holding a chinlock and open mouth panting in Owen's face. Owen had nice comebacks and hit harder to make up the size, really whipping into Bulldog with his spinning heel kick. We got a long kind of awkward moment where Bulldog set Owen up for La Tapatia, which lead to him popping a squat while standing on Owen's knee backs, while the director scrambles to cut through all of the various camera angles to figure out which is the least provocative angle of Bulldog holding that squat. And then after he took all that time to apply and eventually roll Owen through it, the ref immediately counts Bulldog's shoulders down, which is very stupid. Not only stupid visually, but stupid because we sat through a minute of set up for a move that ended in 2 seconds. After planning. The stretch run of this was the greatest stretch of the match, as we go through a real good sprint through pinfalls, handled much better than the frantic Time Limit Remaining endings typically go. Owen and Bulldog are both really good at plausibly holding cradles and pins, making every single pin look match ending. Owen grabbed a small package to stop a rope running Bulldog that felt like a weird World of Sport round ender, and Bulldog hit a cool crucifix pin with a snug high bridge. The rush to that time limit was hot, but even that was marginalized because I was deflated by knowing exactly what they were rushing towards.


Yokozuna vs. Lex Luger WWF Raw 6/12/95

ER: Due to the flat tire that was last week's time limit draw, we get Yoko and Luger announced as the next to potential qualifiers for that 8 seed. They do a kind of hilarious and sad video package with a real insulting timeline: Yokozuna beating Hogan for the title at KOTR '93, Luger slamming him on the Intrepid the next month, Luger getting "the moral victory" at Summerslam, and after that...."Now Luger gets another chance at getting into the mix for the title!" The montage literally covered June thru August 1993, and then skipped straight to June 1995 to explain that this is "arguably" the biggest match of Luger's career. This match would be a big deal if say Barry Horowitz was getting a shot at being the 8 seed, but I'm not sure I should give them credit for painting this as Luger getting revenge after not winning the title 2 years prior. That seems like a hard stretch. And unfortunately for Luger, he comes off as big of a boner as he came off in not beating Yokozuna for the title two years earlier.

The match is really good, with Yoko working as sadistic big striking monster fat guy, buckling Luger with full arm windup chops, hitting him in the face with a big lariat, going down quick for missed elbows and a legdrop. Luger threw nice punches straight into Yoko's face, ran into him on shoulderblocks and axe bombers, hit a big flying clothesline off the top, and we built to Yoko's wonderful banana peel bump and his all time fat guy signature bump (the one where he crashes through the middle ropes to the floor). But the finish is rough and makes Luger look like a real doofus. He runs out to save his American flag, punches Cornette, Fuji chops Scotty Anton in the neck, Scotty Anton is there holding the flag for some reason, and Luger gets counted out when Yokozuna smacks him into the ring post and legdrops him. Yokozuna has haunted Luger ever since the Intrepid, and Luger is the high school QB who washed out in college.


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