New Footage Friday: BELLOMO~! TSURUMI~! NEIDHART~! KIMURA~! VLADIMIR~! MOROWSKI~! QUINN~!

Hanover Germany 

10/20/81

Sal Bellomo vs. Goro (Tsurumi) Tanaka

MD: It's insane how much this crowd loved Bellomo. And he gave them lots to root for. The first couple of rounds here had him ducking every Tsurumi shot and then firing back big. Tsurumi was game for it too. He got a throat shot or knee to the gut in here or there but ended up getting stretched by Bellomo. Bellomo got to slam him but he really had to work at it including a gut punch. He hit a bit back body press off the second rope but it was at the end of a round. Tsurumi finally took over with a great bear hug into a belly to belly, which he followed with nasty abdominal style stretches that were half octopi but Bellomo kept on fighting as much as he could nonetheless, surviving to the end of the match and the draw. Post match, he and Tsurumi hugged. 

ER: I love Goro Tsurumi's matches with Sal Bellomo. They officially have a series and we are documenting it, and it's one of those great things wrestling offers us, giving us something unexpected to look forward to. You watch enough wrestling, you find yourself getting excited by sometimes unexpected things. Matt and I wrote about a different 1981 Goro/Bellomo match a few months ago and it was a good feeling, gaining an opinion on Salvatore Bellomo. Isn't it great when you gain an opinion on a wrestler, especially one who you've known about so long? Wrestlers are just footage waiting to be found. It's never too late to recognize how good Iron Mike Sharpe was. Sal Bellomo was a German babyface superstar before and after he worked interminable undercard matches in WWF. Goro Tsurumi is a dude tough with throwing power, and they build the first two round into a wild 3rd round fight. 

Bellomo thinks he came a beat away from winning the match at the end of the 2nd, so Goro charges out like a wild man in the 3rd and goes straight into the buckles. When he finally recognizes he can't out-quick Sal, he drops to his knees and challenges him to a fight. In the 1st, Bellomo was landing every punch and dodging every overhand Baba chop Goro threw; in the 3rd, Goro goads Sal into a kneeling fist fight, and before long they're trading meaty headbutts. The 3rd round is one of the best individual rounds of all the 1981 Germany we've written about. It's a real fight. Bellomo throws himself into a Thesz press but Tsurumi catches him in a bearhug, holds him a beat, then throws him with a belly to belly like 1991 Scott Steiner. Tsurumi comes off so dangerous that the crowd screams in unisons, counting down the final 10 seconds of the round, relieved that Bellomo was simply going to survive. They cheer for Bellomo not tapping out to an abdominal stretch like they were watching David Hasselhoff perform on the Berlin Wall. Sal Bellomo was there. 

10/6/81

Grand Vladimir vs. Sal Bellomo

MD: This wasn't bad by any means, but it was a little dry, especially considering just how good a stooge Vlad can be and how into Bellomo the crowd could be. This was stark, that's a good word for it. Vlad controlled a lot of it by cheating, hairpulls, cheapshots, just laying stuff in. My favorite thing he did was an alternating clubber/headbutt in the corner. Whenever Bellomo would start to come back something would work against him. The ref would hold him back in the corner and he'd eat a gut shot around him or the bell would ring. He did come out one round guns blazing and gave Vlad the what for, but Vlad was able to turn things around and chuck him over the top. That was the beginning of the end and Vlad ultimately put him out with a cobra clutch. Post match he helped him up just to deck him (which was great heeling). Bellomo fired back but Vlad cut him off since he was still groggy and left with his head high in victory.

ER: There are different things to value about Sal Bellomo in his matches against someone as large as Vladimir vs. someone his size but with a different skillset like Tsurumi. Vladimir doesn't react to Bellomo's strikes at all, isn't moved by them at all. So, Bellomo starts throwing uppercuts as targeting missiles, leaving his feet and flying up into Vlad, and that starts to move him. I loved Eddie Guerrero's flying back elbow, thrown like a full body block like a Darby Allin cannonball. Bellomo's weren't that advanced, but it made them look more raw, like when Bill Dundee would leave his feet for a few fired up punches. Bellomo didn't throw uppercuts like this to Tsurumi, because he didn't have to. He changes full range of motion depending on opponent, and a year ago that's something I wouldn't have known Sal had in him. The finish was great work from Vlad, choking Bellomo out but helping the referee get him back to his feet, only to knock his ass back to the mat. That's for the 8th flying uppercut. 

Mile Zrno vs. UFO

MD: They introduce Mile Zrno as "Super Talent" and yes, yes he is. How do I put this? When you watch Mile Zrno you realize that you've been taking so much for granted. The world is a more vivid place during a Mile Zrno match, even with this not ideal video quality. There's more snap to everything, more torque, more struggle, more balance, more rotation. One thing I tend to try to do as I write about wrestling is talk more about structure and story and feel and mood and plot than actual execution. Because I can tell and understand stories but I haven't done any martial arts since I was a teenager and certainly not most that come into play here. But with Zrno, you can just see the technique on the screen, it's undeniable.

UFO is obviously no slouch and he is the aggressor for the brunt of this, but everyone knows what's going on. He's there to put on a hold so that Zrno can escape in the most spectacular way possible and put on a tricked out counterhold of his own. There are so many bridges and flips into bridges and rotations and everything. In the second round, UFO takes things to strikes first and has an advantage because of it, but Zrno can fire back that way too. They take this just about as far as they can, going right to the bell in the last round. They're really slugging away and trying quick takedowns and pins as the fans are counting down. As good as it sounds.

ER: Mike Zrno is a great Girlfriend Wrestler. I've watched a lot of pro wrestling with a lot of unlucky girlfriends in my life. Since wrestling is such a constant dripping faucet that is leaking every day, my girlfriends have all just gone through the same habits and same projects as I have, experiencing DVDVR 80s sets and other neverending streams of dvds and video files in my own real time. They absorb maybe 5-10% of it and I have only modest influence over what is absorbed. Zrno is a guy who moves in a way that gets noticed, gets absorbed. The way he floats on kip ups, the way he fights hard and falls odd. He is noticeable. All the girlies watching Mile Zrno's kip ups and Bob Della Serra's lightning fast lucha maestro drop toeholds are over here in the corner, unnoticed. Bob Della Serra is Silver King to Zrno's Juventud. Zrno is Baryshnikov and Della Serra is...uh, whomever Baryshnikov's thicker rival was. Both men throw different kinds of violent strikes and strike like cobra's on single leg takedowns. The second round has grinding matwork and UFO slamming his way out of a flying headscissors attempt. The third fall builds to a sick fight down the home stretch. Both men move with such grace and control that it looked like two Cirque de Soleil performers miming Futen. 

Goro "Tanaka" Tsurumi vs. Moose Morowski

MD: Two guys who really knew what they were doing in this setting. Morowski didn't break clean right at the start and controlled the entire first round, including tossing him out liberally. Tsurumi carried himself in a way that it was clear once the round was over, he was going to strike back hard, and he did, taking basically the whole second round with karate shot after karate shot. When Morowski came back it was with an extended atomic noogie, so that was great. He hit a pile driver to cement it. Morowski drove him off of the ropes throat first repeatedly, only for Tsurumi to come back with one of his own to a big pop. Finish had Morowski jamming a roll up off the ropes and then hitting a shoulderbreaker. Straightforward stuff but they worked very well together. 

Kengo Kimura vs. Jim Neidhart

MD: If there are WAR tags, there should be weird 1981 Germany match ups. This one is so bizarre on paper, but it worked. Neidhart screwed around by breaking Kimura's full nelson to start, but then ate a dropkick after he broke it the second time and Kimura switched it right into a mare the third time. Kimura then started in on the leg with a take down and later a low kick. Neidhart sold it well and eventually escaped to the floor while Kimura theatrically helped the ref count. 

Second round had Neidhart charge right in with an eyerake and clubber down on him. After a while, Kimura ducked a shot and came back with chops and overhand karate strikes. Neidhart actually took the bret face first bump into the corner. Neidhart tried to charge in again in the third round but Kimura ducked it and started chopping. He hit a body block but got caught in a side backbreaker the second time. Then Neidhart hit the stampede for the win. Pretty good for two and a half rounds. 

Axel Dieter/Klaus Kauroff vs. Karl Dauberger/John Quinn 

MD: Pretty unsubstantial tag, a feel good sort. The heels never really controlled for any length of time and it was straight babyface pins. Dauberger got the worst of it, just getting knocked around the ring with hard shots from both Dieter and Kauroff. Fans loved Kauroff and would stomp when he was pounding on his opponents. Quinn fared better and could more than hold his own. Against him, Kauroff needed to pull out headbutts and the like. But it was all feeding and stooging for the most part. Dieter got a pin with a nice rollup for the first fall and Kauroff took the second with a big slam. Sometimes I guess you just need to send people home happy.

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Found Footage Friday: HANOVER 1981~! BRET~! ROACH~! MOROWSKI~! DIETER~! ZRNO~! STREET~!

Hanover 9/9/1981 

Moose Morowski vs. Axel Dieter

MD: Another batch of Richard Land found footage behind his patreon. Really great long draw here. I can't say enough good stuff about this one. Morowski ambushed right before the first bell and didn't look back for maybe fifteen minutes. Big shots, some big bombs like a shoulder breaker, tossing Dieter out, etc. The ref would try to intervene and Morowski first ripped his shirt and then tore it off completely. And later on, when he got a new one, he did some damage to that too. 

Dieter would get escalating bits of hope, arching Morowski over the top, blocking a posting and returning fire, eventually even outpunching him once, but he only really came back into it when Morowski tried charging in once again and he got his feet up. From there was a round or two of really glorious comeback. At one point he was so fiery he got carded for trying to use a chair. Then they worked towards the draw by throwing blows on their feet and knees til the bell rang. Morowski has maybe the only acceptable recoil shot in history as he uses it as a subtle little thing. Then after the match they slugged it out some more. Anyway, draws are almost never satisfying but this one was about as close as you can get. Great stuff. 

ER: This is one of the best matches we've seen out of these 1981 Hanover shows. This was excellent. Morowski is one of those wrestlers I don't think I even knew about a decade ago, and now he's a guy whose name always stands out on cards like this. He's a big burly Harley Race type who likes to slug it out, and that's what he does here. He ambushes Dieter (and the referee) and punches and claws his way through most of the match. Dieter is great at being the babyface who the crowd stays behind, repeatedly getting to his feet only to be punched to his back by Moose. Moose throws a variety of great punches, sometimes just using big swinging arms to knock Dieter around, other times throwing targeted left-rights to Dieter's chin. He hits a piledriver, a shoulderbreaker, and he wants at Dieter so bad that he gets into multiple collar and elbow tie ups with the ref, eventually ripping his shirt so much that the ref just removes it and works shirtless with the boys. That rules. When the ref gets a new shirt after the 2nd fall, the literal first thing Morowski does is rip the new shirt off him, and that rules even more. 

Dieter's survives Morowski's onslaught and Morowski gets tired out and then the real fun begins. The crowd gets louder than ever for Axel and Dieter starts landing more shots. Morowski isn't completely down, and can still land punches that knock Dieter down, but he is certainly exhausted and has to cheat even more to keep Dieter down. Morowski is landing several unanswered punches at the round bell, stomping his face, and they fight to the bell. I don't know that this match would have even benefitted from a definitive finish. Dieter standing alone in the ring after surviving cheap shot after cheap shot after cheap shot and coming out the other side more loved than ever. What a great showing from both, but more evidence of how cool a worker Moose Morowski was. I don't know where he stands in terms of territory draws or reputation among other peak workers, but he was completely off my personal radar even while we were diving into the thick of the 80s sets and more 70s footage became available. He's someone who everyone needs to see, and this match is as great a place as any to start. 

Pat Roach vs. Bret Hart

MD: Yes, this is a match that happened. I wish it was 93 Bret vs. 81 Roach but what can you do? This played out pretty much exactly like you'd expect. Almost exactly. There was about a round and a half of Roach beating Bret around the ring with mares and clubbers and running him into the turnbuckle. Bret got a bit of hope with a sunset flip or backslide only to get beaten down. Bret finally came back with some big shots and dropkicks only to eat the turnbuckle face first (as early as 81!) and then he got demolished by a big side backbreaker and press-slam gutbuster. Good effort and the crowd (generally always hot) was behind him, but this was more or less a mauling.

ER: I thought this was excellent, and I'm not sure it would have been better with a 1991 Bret. I loved the structure of this and felt it worked so perfectly with Young Bret, who was an absolute bump machine and ran into all of Roach's believably stiff work. Bret in 1991 would have worked this closer to equal and relied more on the big man's misses to capitalize on. Now, I love his 1991 work with Berzerker and Barbarian so put Roach in that framework and the match would be excellent. But I don't think Roach could bump as big as Barbarian and definitely couldn't bump as big as Nord, so Roach as the domineering grappler kicking a young worker in the bread basket and snapping his neck with cravat snapmares works really well. Bret was already such a polished bumper in 1981 and his work looked just as honest as it would a decade later. Roach had a lot of cool ways to slam Bret to the mat and Bret made such good use of his small comebacks and two nearfalls that I thought his backslide was legitimately the finish. Bret firing back with one big elbow smash surprised me and seemed to surprise Roach, and I came away extremely impressed by how well his flat back bumps (and huge face first bump running into the buckles) felt like responses to the exact offense Roach was giving him. His feel for everything felt so much more advanced than other early Bret I've seen. This was a must watch for me. 

Micha Nador/Gran Vladimir vs. Steve Wright/Kengo Kimura

MD: Steve Wright/Kengo Kimura is the most Lethal Lottery team I can imagine really. Of course this is a fairly young Kimura, just like Bret was fairly young in the previous match. I haven't seen much of Nador but early on he's in there, like Vladimir, to base for all of Wright's shtick, the cartwheels and bowing and a long cravat where he hung on through slams to the crowd's delight. Kimura got to join in a bit with some karate type strikes and some real fire stomping in the corner. The heels were able to beat down Wright for a bit and then Kimura, but never for too long. Wright came back with a body press mid match but when he tried to do it later, he got blocked by Nador grabbing his feet from the outside and forcing him down into a Vladimir pin which was a unique finish at least. This didn't wear out its welcome.

9/22/81

Manuel Lopez vs. Adrian Street

MD: Street was, of course, at the height of his power here in early 80s Germany, with the fans laughing again and again at every antic. He gave more here than in the last few matches we've seen him in, playing it just a bit more bumbling, where things either backfired or worked despite it all. He still got to get over on Lopez quite a bit, either rolling around like a top or poking him on the nose or just leaping into his arms and both of them sailing over because of it, but he was actually a little subdued relative to the other matches I've seen and Lopez controlled more. Maybe it was more grounded because of that but it wasn't the can't miss spectacle of the others. Still worth watching of course, but more as part of a card than something that is absolutely transcendent. 

Achaim Chall vs. Gran Vladimir

MD: These two had been wrestling off and on since the 60s. This started pretty low key, with some mares and holds out of a lockup. But Vladimir got under the fans' skin and someone threw a hat into the ring at him. At that point, Vladimir put it on and marched around the ring until Chall grabbed it, pulled it over his face and hit a jumping double knee before tossing it back out. You never know what you're going to find in these. Lots of fun bits with the ref as things went on too. Chall got frustrated as he got in his way and grabbed him, and then chopped him later, and finally, when he got in the way of the charge towards Vlad (who was tied up in the ropes), went careening into him, into Vlad, as the ref was blowing his whistle. He got carded for this but it wasn't the match.

Vlad ended up controlling for a while and he did vary up holds, but it wasn't with the same sort of brutal and vicious charm as Morowski. But the fans were very happy whenever Chall was in control and went up for all of his hope spots. He was in the midst of a comeback when the time ran out and this ended up as a draw.

Sal Bellomo vs. John Quinn

MD: I get such a kick of Quinn coming out to The Mighty Quinn. It's got a sort of chorus unlike almost any other pro wrestling theme you can imagine. I feel like it'd be super over today for instance. This was okay, they took it up and down. Quinn, despite a size advantage, would take over with hairpulls, eyerakes, and using the ref as a stalking horse in the corner. Bellomo would fire back. Eventually, Quinn tossed him and Bellomo grabbed him on the way back in and they brawled on the floor a bit. Finish had things picking up with rope running, but Bellomo ran into a foot and then a back elbow. 

9/6/81

Mile Zrno vs. Gran Vladimir

MD: Zrno is so much fun to watch. In some ways, the comparison point is Steve Wright, but where Wright has more flair and pomp to his counters, with Zrno, it's more about leverage and positioning. But nothing Vladimir puts him in works and it's all entertaining to see him get out of one thing after the next. There's a great bit where Zrno ties Vlad up in the ropes and in order to get the ref out of the way, he undoes the turnbuckle pad. The ref has to run to redo it and then Zrno charges in. Vlad does take over with clubbers eventually, but Zrno catches him with a knee off the ropes and then wins it with a body press. Very fun.

ER: Fantastic. This solidifies Vladimir as a great opponent for small fliers and acrobats, a role he seems to relish more than his work against other heavies. Against other heavyweights he can work like a spry Baron von Raschke, bumping like a tall man of size and nothing beyond, but against a fire starter like Zrno he's bumping constantly, feeding far quicker than I expected. It's not just Vlad going over for armdrags, it's that he knows how to bump and feed for all of Zrno's complicated unique unrelenting juniors offense and it feels like Akira Taue taking way too much Marufuji offense in the way he makes it look like none of this offense should work and this big man just keeps falling over. Now, Marufuji's offense was the shittiest offense on a roster of 40 men and Zrno's offense is revolutionary and moves like nobody else, but Vlad takes it the same way I would imagine Taue credibly selling really bad juniors offense. The stumble, the look of "this man shouldn't be taking most of this", the way it looks like he's not so much taking the moves as trying not to take the moves, like it's an issue of balance. 

Special note must be made about the incredible work of the referee trying to wrangle this confusing mess, specifically when he gets roped into a bump over the top to the floor when Vladimir is trapped in the ropes like Andre. Zrno is hitting crossbodies while Vlad is trapped, the ref is trying to untie him, and Zrno comes in hot with another crossbody, and the momentum send the ref over the top with it like a man getting hit with a wave while leaning out of a boat. I thought this match was great and worked in a way that I was not expecting. A match doesn't have to surprise me for me to like it, but I do like surprises. 

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Found Footage Friday: NJPW 85~! DANCING ANDRE~! CAPTAIN REDNECK~! INOKI~! BACKLUND~! SHARPE~! ADONIS~! HIRO~!

NJPW 5/18/85

Masked Superstar vs. Kim Su Hong (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbKieuAaBEQ)

MD: Kim is a South Korean wrestler who shows up on these NJPW cards now and again. I can't say that he stands out much. I love Eadie, love him, one of my favorites, but in New Japan he is so often a gatekeeper, just an incredibly credible wall for people to push off against. He takes 90% of this. Still some neat small things like losing Kim early and then claiming he was oiled up. That sort of being alive within the match. All of his stuff looks mean and credible with both a killer neckbreaker and then a twisting drop down into a front facelock. He also whacks him with something outside of the ring to big effect. Kim does come back late and his stuff is middling, some good, some bad. Superstar drops down on him and nails him with a clothesline to end it.

ER: We don't have Hashimoto/Sano, or the Canek/Enrique Vera tag, but we have Masked Superstar throwing Finlay level clubs to Su Hong's chest and killer knees to the side of the head. I liked how Superstar held the ropes to block a single leg and just went right back to clubbing. Superstar kind of jams Su Hong up on his small pieces of offense, running too hard into dropkicks that really shouldn't have moved him but looked worse with how he treated them. His clothesline looked like a match finishing clothesline and there's a good chance I won't watch a Kim Su Hong match the rest of my life. 

Super Strong Machine vs. Tony St. Clair (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pADWavSmgM)

MD: Just a credible back and forth match. I wouldn't say any of the transitions were particularly interesting but everything looked good. SSM is a tank and St. Clair can hold his own. They traded advantages and holds. Machine had a nice leaping headbutt off the ropes and a killer clothesline. St. Clair turned a headlock into a backbreaker (by slipping out, not a Robinson backbreaker). Good finishing stretch where St. Clair got a nearfall on a sunset flip in but Machine was able to get a German for the win. Wakamatsu got involved pre-match even though Machine wanted nothing to do with him and then tried to attack SSM post match only to get thrashed for his trouble. Added a little spice to what would have otherwise been a meaty but straightforward midcard match.

ER: This crowd is so fired up for Super Strong Machine. He was getting clapping Misawa-type chants during his entrance. I wasn't expecting Tony St. Clair to look larger than Strong Machine. My mental pictures don't always give me accurate reads but both are 15-20 pounds in the opposite direction I picture them. Made it look good when Tony started hitting Machine. SSM can work real tough and St. Clair looked like he was moving him good with his back elbow and uppercut, sharp front chancery. His dropkick pushes up under the chin and he makes a whip into the buckles look like it made all his limbs go briefly numb. I like the way these two hit each other. St. Clair is great at leaning into lariats while selling how much he doesn't like taking them. Strong Machine has one of my favorite German suplexes. Both of them work exactly how Bret Hart would have worked New Japan in 1994. 

Kengo Kimura/Seiji Sakaguchi vs. Adrian Adonis/Dick Murdoch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bqyZdnuwVU)

MD: Honestly, this is yet another all time Murdoch performance, and on a house show too. Granted, the stuff I loved here was stuff Meltzer wouldn't have liked anyway but what are you going to do about it. For instance, there's a moment in the middle where Sakaguchi's on a rampage. He takes out Adonis and then goes to the apron to get Murdoch and Murdoch moves to the other side of the post and the crowd cracks up. It's great. But it's such a tiny little wrestling thing. His reactions are great throughout. The way he takes the Inazuma leg lariat by covering his face like he'd just lost his nose is amazing. Dick Murdoch. Captain Redneck, or as they call him in NJPW, the Super Rodeo Machine.

This had a great heat on Kimura where he kept almost coming back and Murdoch and Adonis would just make a quick tag. Eventually, instead of going for a hold, he threw a dropkick instead and made it to Sakaguchi. They did another bit of heat on Kimura and then a big hot comeback. Everything ended up thrown out. Post match they had both a great bit with a chair and being afraid of it and an even better one of double elbowing the ref. Great stuff.

ER: Great Dick Murdoch handheld matches are the best, because not only do you get to see Dick Murdoch being the greatest pro wrestler, but it makes me think of DEAN. To take us back at least 15 years, the moment I always remember from Segunda Caida Radio - something I am not sure exists online anymore, but was loved by all the real SC Heads - was DEAN making fun of Meltzer for thinking Dick Murdoch was a guy who only worked for the cameras. By then we had a lot of handheld footage and had all seen Murdoch wrestling exactly the same as in all of his great matches. DEAN had seen Murdoch live. We were all talking about how great Dick Murdoch was, but DEAN was the one who saw him live and knew how good he was off camera. I always think about DEAN doing a bit as Murdoch, where he's dogging it in Korakuen and does a Don Knotts reaction when he sees a Japanese guy in the crowd with a huge 1985 camcorder.  

This is the only match on this show that doesn't have a listed cagematch runtime, and I didn't realize it would be the longest match of the show. And in that time, Dick Murdoch kept putting on a performance that grew in elegance the longer they went, arguably peaking two minutes after the count out when he got cheers for beating up the referee and then running shenanigans around a chair swinging Kengo Kimura. The match goes long enough that we get several momentum shifts and each one peaks the action and story and Murdoch grows with the story. I think my favorite part was when he had been worked over for awhile and got to tag out, and he stayed in the ring shaking out and rubbing his arm after tagging in Adonis, not participating in but watching Adonis lay a beating on Kimura. The cattle branding looked like a wild rapids ride, his punches matched the energy at all times, and he sold Kimura's like they were the stiffest punches of the match. The fans treated him after the match like a charming folk hero. 

The Cobra (c) vs. Hiro Saito (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIud5l0HlGc)

 

MD: I am not at all a Cobra guy. I think some of his Rocco matches are really bad, for instance, as he tried to fill a post-Tiger Mask gap and ended up with the worst of two worlds. A lack of substance and not even all that much style. Action for the sake of action and the action tends to frankly just be okay. This was great though, and so much of that was on the contrast. Saito is the prototypical cruiserweight bully and he gave everything weight and heft as the two of them threw everything they had at each other.

 

That meant that when Cobra was going to do an unnecessary backflip charging at Saito in the corner, Saito would come back and take his head off with a lariat. Or if he'd get pushed off after a kick and do another backflip within the ring, Saito would dropkick him out and crush him with a dive. They worked it like a title match starting with holds and going back to them, building to big spots and exchanges, with meaningful momentum shifts usually based around a big reversal/mistake/missed move. As time went on they traded some really great pile drivers and the dives you'd expect. Saito got a German mid match but couldn't put away with it and down the stretch Cobra finally escalated to a Tiger Suplex for a win. Very good lost Jr. Heavyweight Title match.

ER: We don't really talk much about how cool Hiro Saito is, and for how long he was cool. He's cool in all the eras. He was cool when I started getting New Japan tapes in 2000, and he was a bleach blond black beard surf punk with a tight bod, punk groupies and surf licks. Cobra feels like a throwback in 1985 by comparison, and it's punk scum vs. Mil Mascaras. Cobra's Mil hits hard, and Saito keeps spiking Mil with martinetes. The crowd was real into Saito's grounded piledriver when Cobra tried standing out of a headscissors, and they kept coming alive when they see how tough and well worked. I knew it was really good when Cobra's cravat into a stump puller and how Saito slowly powers out of it by eventually digging into Cobra's mask and hitting a GREAT fistdrop. Direct, hard. His piledriver after is perfect. Two kids in the crowd invent TomK's famous Dueling Chant 15 years before he did while Saito takes a crazy bump getting dropkicked to the floor. Cobra's kip up to dropkick is as beautiful as anything by our most graceful lucha legends. Saito hits a massive tope that is what you want a tope to be. I was going to write about how Cobra's flying offense isn't as good as his matwork and hitting but then he hits a piledriver so good that I felt I shouldn't harp on his lesser offense. Hiro Saito is so good. He's such a hard bumper, and strong, and fast. His forceful kickout just after 3 is the exact right energy. 

Andre the Giant vs. King Kong Bundy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kntbQ5SjUs)

 

MD: I wasn't going to cover this one since it was already out there, but it's pretty remarkable. My gut says that this was during the period where Andre was really breaking down, before his surgery and the switch to the singlet, but also before he really figured out how to work his late era style. So he was left in there against Bundy not entirely sure what he could or couldn't do. And what he ended up doing was being as entertaining as humanly possible. Yes, they did the bit where Bundy walks up the ropes to try to escape a hold and gets dropped, but Andre's mannerisms and little dance moves in this one are all over the place. Little shuffle steps. Hand motions. Weird faces. Outright dancing. He doesn't do the Fargo Strut but basically everything else you can imagine. And the fans do respond to it. I mean, who knows. Maybe he was just ribbing, maybe he was drunk, but I've only ever seen him do one or two of these little crazy finger motions or screw around like this, not build a whole match around it.

ER: I think every single Andre match I write about has me talking about some little thing I've never seen Andre do before, and I always mean it. But this Andre is an entirely new Andre. This is a house show taped by some saint, and without it I'm not sure we ever get to see Andre as a dancing babyface. It's incredible. I've seen Andre do something that could be considered sassy before but never a full match of him working as Dusty Rhodes. It's incredible. It doesn't start right away, but when it starts it does not stop. It feels like it's going to be your standard great Andre performance, smothering the humongous Bundy, muscling him into corners, hooking him in heavy sleepers, and I was excited about how he was going to sell for Bundy's comebacks. But when things take a turn, they really take a turn. I certainly was not expecting Bundy to walk up the ropes like Bret when Andre had a sleeper locked on, a real Dig Up mentality, and when Andre just drops the big man flat the crowd erupts. 

That's when Quirky Andre comes out. He makes the cuckoo sign, twirling his finger around his ear, and then does a kind of soft shoe routine, a little tap dance with a hard final step, like he's letting everyone in on his bit. If he'd had a cane and top hat it only would have made more sense. He keeps it up. While holding Bundy in another standing choke, he floats some butterfly steps, skipping in place in a movement that I have not once seen Andre do. He becomes Dusty Rhodes, flip flopping and flying. Bundy himself seems confused, he doesn't seem to understand the timing of the dancing and the strikes, leaning out of Andre's first punch after a perfect dance, so Andre has to catch him even harder with a backhand. This is truly an Andre I've never seen. Bundy takes a huge bump over the top to the floor and eventually just leaves, but not before more Andre dancing. How does history's greatest wrestler keep raising his stock? You think you've seen everything the biggest spectacle in wrestling history has done, but he keeps bringing out new tricks. This is no different than if a dancing babyface Stan Hansen match had just been discovered. It's bizarre, it's great, it's nothing you've seen. It's Andre.   

Bob Backlund/Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Antonio Inoki/Tatsumi Fujinami (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsW8GclZnt4)

 

MD: Honestly, I was here for Backlund vs Inoki and we really don't get that. What we do get is very good though. A lot of it is Sharpe being as vocal as humanly possible in a ring but entertaining and credible. Most of the rest, though, is Fujinami vs Backland and of course they match up so well. They matched up well years earlier and they match up even better now that Fujinami is a credible heavyweight. Right place, right time, smooth, slick, imapctful. And yes, they do a great short arm scissors sequence leading to the Gotch lift, just like you'd want. I just wanted a little bit more Inoki in here though. 

ER: I went into this wanting the most Popeye noises ever heard in one wrestling match. This was our chance. I wanted to hear Backlund and Iron Mike Oh-Whoa-Whoa-Whoaing all over the ring in the only time these two ever tagged. But we didn't get that. Backlund ceded the constant vocals to Sharpe and Sharpe ran with them. Backlund was shockingly silent. 1985 Backlund is interesting. It's his first year at sea after his long reign on top. I wonder what drove him to wrestle that year, seeing how much he pulled back for several years after. He surely could have been working regular Japan schedules had he wanted to, so he clearly just didn't want to. He only worked this one short New Japan tour and now we have another small piece of it. Sharpe vs. Inoki is an amusing footnote. You look at this tag and you've never seen a more obvious Taking the Fall guy than Iron Mike. Backlund's matwork with Fujinami was something I could have seen a lot more of. The crowd was so into Backlund's slow powerful reversals, but most of this tag felt like it was just about to kick into gear and never really did.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE THE GIANT

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Found Footage Friday: 1981 HANOVER~! STREET~! WRIGHT~! HART~! NEIDHART~! ZRNO~! TSURUMI~! ROACH~!

MD: Another Richard Land (@maskedwrestlers) special. Another pretty amazing find. Go check out his patreon if you want access. 

John Quinn vs. Pat Roach

MD: It's definitely a mood to watch the darkened picture as Quinn stands in the ring waiting for Roach as the entirety of The Mighty Quinn by Manfred Mann plays in 1981 Hanover, Germany. This was exactly what you'd expect it to be. They started slow with Quinn holding on to an inner chicken wing/armbar for the entire first fall and into the second as Roach tried to get out with increasing desperation before finally powering out. Then they crashed into each other for a while. And things ultimately built to a massive slugfest with two giant bruisers just going at it. Quinn had more sweeping blows, over the top, from the side. Roach hit from underneath or straight on. Occasionally they'd get a move off the ropes or a slam. Occasionally they'd both go down. It went round after round until it looked like Roach might win it with a slam and then a backbreaker but a foot was on the rope for the first and the bell ran on the second and as they called it a draw, he just stormed out of the ring, a professional ready to move on with life. Hard to fault a match where two guys hit each other as hard as these two hit each other here.

Jim Neidhart vs. Goro Tanaka (Tsurumi)

MD: Straightforward stuff with Tsurumi directing traffic. When they were doing shtick it was a lot of fun, things like Neidhart breaking out of the full nelson and calling for it again only to get dropkicked in the back or eating chops or running into the corner. He had some pretty good clubbering offense too. This didn't go more than three rounds, and had a lot of Neidhart taking liberties and getting admonished by attacking after rounds. More importantly, it didn't wear out its welcome. Tsurumi had a real attraction feel to him where he leaned hard into the chops and the sumo stretching. I'm not sure Neidhart would work as well against one of the real technical guys at this point of his career but he was a good foil for Tsurumi.

------

Jim Neidhart vs. Bret Hart

MD: This was a lot of fun actually. They worked extremely hard against one another Neidhart (Who is the one who has Racey's Some Girls as his theme, not Wisokwski!) charged in right at the start with a killer tackle in the corner and didn't look back for a while. The ref got a big pop by pulling him off with a hairpull. Whenever he tossed Bret in, Bret flew in harder than anyone. That's both against the ropes and into the corner. Bret finally started to fire back and get some revenge. They'd get chippy with one another at the end of the falls. Anvil was using this great Oklahoma Stampede as his finish here and he also did a bodyslam variation that I've never seen before. Bret fought valiantly but he got tossed out one too many times and Neidhart was able to just pick him up from the apron and hit the stampede after crashing into two corners. This was good though. Neidhart had lots of zing and both guys really crashed around for each other.

Mile Zrno vs. Achaim Chall

MD: Two masters being absolutely masterful. We really didn't have much Chall before so it's nice we have a few more matches now, even towards the end of his career. Zrno, on the other hand, is one of those rare wrestlers where you want to see every exchange just to see how he gets out of it. He was the slicker and more agile with Chall being more the one to put on holds so he could get out but Chall certainly held his own with some bigger and trickier spots.

They told a dozen little stories in here, one going to the next. It might be Zrno clapping Chall's ear on an escape and Chall following up with a facewash before cooler heads prevailed, or both escalating things into some nasty shots. They did a short arm scissors exchange with gotch lifts. They had this amazing up and over with dragon sleepers (1981 remember) until they got lost in the ropes. And Chall had the armhook rana mid match where Zrno did a great bridging escape, only to go for it again at the end and get folding pressed for the loss. Definitely a treat to see these two ply their trade.

Moose Morowski vs. Bob Della Serra (UFO)

MD: Another very long Morowski match where they start by trading a round of holds (headlock, armbar) each, before things start to get heated and never really look back. This includes some great exhausted selling as time goes on too, as well as a few sojourns to the floor and a Morowski pile driver (jammed on the second attempt), and his share of cheapshots. The crowd was behind Della Serra with plenty of UFO chants and Moose got (and deserved heat). Not too much to say about the specifics except for that once they started pounding on each other it got quite good but didn't really build to anything meaningful.That didn't mean it wasn't enjoyable for what it was though.

Goro (Tsurumi) Tanaka vs. Ed Wiskowski

MD: These two worked well enough together that I'm sad Wiskowski didn't bring Tsurumi back to Portland to face Buddy Rose (though the timing of that may be off anyway). Wiskowski would get a cheapshot in to take over, Tsurumi would work from underneath with some big karate chops. Wiskowki would run head first into things while bumping for them. Wiskowki would take back over by tossing Tsurumi out and fighting him on the outside. And it would all repeat. Very fun stuff with some unique bit of stooging out of Wiskowski until it got called off and he got DQed. Tsurumi wasn't at all happy with that and wanted to keep fighting but the ref awarded the match to him anyway.

Paco Ramirez/Karl Dauberger vs. Kengo Kimura/Caswell Martin

MD: This didn't go super long even at 2/3 falls but it was a lot of fun. For one thing, I'm not sure I've ever seen Kengo Kimura in a comedy match but he was working as Martin's second banana and there was one clear sequence where he did some fun 2 s 1 stuff. He had a headlock, got hit a with a gut punch from outside, put it back on, and then did the headscissors/headlock combo takeover with a big pumping arm to get the crowd going. They also did a bit where Martin catapulted one into the other while he was holding Kimura so Kimura got out of there at the last second. Stuff like that. All fun. Martin, as always, was confident and creative. He had one bit where he was in a leg stretch and kept making his legs wider to force Ramirez to try to keep up (he failed). We had seen Ramirez as a stylist in the later French Catch stuff so nice to see him get so into this stooging role.

Adrian Street vs. Steve Wright

MD: I cannot begin to do this justice. I could tell you how all wrestling is symbolic and that this was a comedy spotfest with one hilarious bit after the next. I could explain how Steve Wright usually eats up his opponents and here he was up against someone who made fools of them (at least in Germany). I could tell you how they bridged that gap by having both wrestlers menace the ref, with Wright doing it more and more as the match went on and countering more and more of Street's antics by giving it back to him, or how he spent the entire match with a sort of wild whimsy you wouldn't expect. I could explain how the crowd was laughing uproariously the whole time but how they still built to big moments. I could explain specific spots including maybe the funniest ref bit I've ever seen. But, none of this does it justice. No even close. I can't do it with words. Maybe someone could. Not me. This match was buried for decades in a private collection. It only got transferred because it was at the very end of a tape with Bret vs Neidhart on it, an unlisted match from a different card. I think it might be the funniest pro wrestling match ever, though don't show it to your grandmother.

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Found Footage Friday: Hanover 1981

Hanover 1981

MD: Another Richard Land (@maskedwrestlers on twitter) find. He has a ton of these from a recent haul that he'll slowly go through. We've already seen the next and it's full of great stuff. If you are, however, let's say the biggest Adrian Street fan in the world, do feel free to reach out to me. Some things really need to be seen.

Achim Chall vs. John Quinn

MD: Quinn had a size advantage here and could pepper in shots from almost any angle whenever he wanted. Chall was obviously skilled, both generally and in kayfabe, presented as such. He was able to score clever takedowns and get in jumping knees. The problem is that Quinn gave him no room to breathe. He was constantly being admonished by the ref for picking Chall up too early or kicking at him while he was down or stepping on him. When he hit moves, it was dropping him throat first on the ropes. He would put illegal holds on and hide punches with a headlock. You could hear the announcer mention some slight he did every few seconds. Eventually the ref had enough and red carded him, awarding the match to Chaim. It wasn't satisfying but because of those little glimpses of Chall's skill maybe it was effective in getting Quinn heat for the tour overall, allowing Chall to beat him without hurting Quinn at all (even if it didn't help Chall a ton) and reinforcing the rules, always important in the grand scheme of things.

Adrian Street vs. Francisco/Paco Ramirez

MD: Street's song is so effective at making him stand out, even in 1981 Germany. It just transfers anywhere and is so unique relative to everyone else's presentation even though people tend to come out to music here. But he was going to stand out anyway. This was one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen. He was a babyface at times in the States but he was still the Other and it was much more about seeing the heel get embarrassed in the South by someone who you'd never invite to dinner. This was different. It was celebratory in the most German way. It was Cabaret. There was pure elation for everything he did, whether it was using Ramirez' arm to mimic sexual acts while in an armbar or dancing with high kicks between falls or menacing the ref. Street may or may not have been the best wrestler in the world on this night in 1981 but he was the most appreciated and maybe the most alive. I've never seen him quite so free to be this over the top in everything he did but the fans absolutely ate it up. It was on Paco Ramirez, one of our old friends from the later French footage to play the straight man. Yes, Street was over the top, but it took incredible skill and understanding of pro wrestling (including, yes, the mechanics) to make this all work. No one could have done it quite like him and we've never had footage of him doing it quite like this.

PAS: Killer stuff, the decadent Weimar Germans are eating up his act with a spoon, really reminded me of a crowd super into an all timer lucha exotico like  Pimpinela or Cassandro. Really made me wish we had an epic bloody lucha Adrian Street apuestas match. Not a ton of actual wrestling in this, but you could tell that Street was a master of that part of it all as well.  This was a couple of years after Bowie moved to German, but it had that Bowie spirit. This isn't the kid of thing which encourages a lot of written scrutiny, bit what a delight.

 

Alex Dieter vs. Moose Morowski

MD: There's a noted classic 1980 match between these two that I'm not nearly familiar enough with, but I can say safely that these two were familiar with one another here. Dieter attacks right from the start and controls for the entire first round and the fans chant his name and love it. You get the sense that Morowski deserves it as well. Nothing flashy but a thorough beating. Then Morowski returns the favor in the second round with violent, rudimentary offense incensing the fans. After tossing Dieter out of the ring, a fan decides to take matters into his own hands and tosses a chair in. Morowski immediately beelines towards the ropes and charges at him and that's basically all she wrote for this one. We see the camera trying to track what's going on but it's hopeless. Completely unexpected. Totally wild. True heat and immediate consequence. Pro wrestling, everybody.

PAS: I loved the 1980 match

https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2016/11/all-time-moty-list-head-to-head.html

This felt like a house show version of the epic 1980 match, and clearly had some building to do until the fan chucks the chair at Moose ending the match. Would have loved to see the beating Morowski clearly put on that dude, and that is certainly a legit memorable finish. 

Grand Vladimir vs. Caswell Martin

MD: Pretty enjoyable stuff! Vladimir is very funny at first, doing everything over-the-top sporting to Martin and the crowd's surprise. A lot of raising his hand and shaking his hand and really making a show of it. Martin returns the favor by holding on to a cravat for the entirety of the second round despite every attempt by Vladimir to escape. One idea executed perfectly. In the third round, Vladimir goes for another handshake and then hits a gutshot and tosses Martin out as the ref is distracted and it's lovely payoff to all of the build. He ultimately gets disqualified but then is run off post-match. 

Goro Tanaka (Tsurumi)/Kengo Kimura vs. Cowboy Ed Wiskoski/"American Football Star" Jim Neidhart. 

MD: Goro totally gets it. He does a big sumo introduction including a split where Kimura bounces on his back. Wiskoski comes out with a cowboy hat and to "Some Girls" by Racey which is not a song I had ever heard before but it's quite the entrance overall. This is two out of three falls but none of the falls get a lot of time. Tsurumi is working for the last row and Neidhart is a tank. He catches Kimura off the ropes for a stampede to end the first fall. Second fall ends with them doing a bunch of silly karate moves on Neidhart, with the third ending abruptly with a dropkick to reverse a bodyslam into a pin. Things were simple and straightforward here, with one inversion instead of six, but it was all very effective. Just a weird match on paper and in practice though.

Moose Morowski vs. Pat Roach

MD: Roach took the first quarter of this by controlling the arm with a double wristlock and all sorts of other offense. But once it opened up, they absolutely pounded on each other and never looked back. Just a total war of attrition. It spilled out multiple times and came back in. There were cheapshots at the end of the round and then cheapshots to counter the cheapshots at the end of the next round. I don't think there's a whole lot to say about it, but that it's just great pro wrestling, blurry, gritty, full of animosity, with the most believable late match selling you'll see. Of course they were exhausted. Of course they could barely get up. They'd been going for minutes upon minutes just laying it in on one another. You could get parts of a match like this today but not, I think the total sum of it.

 

Achim Chall vs. Bret Hart

 

MD: This being on the tape was why it was prioritized and I'm glad it was for the Morowski matches and the Street match, but there's not a lot here. Chall is obviously very skilled at doing simple things extremely well. This is all Bret working the arm and Chall countering with some fun cravat stuff. They'll work up to their feet and crash into each other and go back down into the holds. Perfectly solid stuff. The highlight was probably Bret doing one of those bridge arounds to keep the hold that always look so slick and that I've never seen him do before. It ends just as simply with Chall falling on Bret for the pin.

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Found Footage Friday: KIMURA~! FUJINAMI~! INOKI~! HULK~! CHOSHU~! YATSU~! KHAN~! MAEDA~!

Kengo Kimura vs. Tatsumi Fujinami 11/19/82 NJPW

 

MD: Another day, another Japanese HH channel. This one feels particularly interesting as it's a new challenge by Kimura for Fujinami's title and in some ways it feels like a precursor to their 86/87 singles feud after they have great success as a tag team. Kimura comes in with a chip on his shoulder, refusing to shake Fujinami's hand and then immediately bypassing the early feeling out process for a belly-to-back and a jumping kick to the head off the top. Throughout this match, Kimura would strike first, but Fujinami would shut him down until slowly, surely, he rose to a level of competitiveness and likely anger to meet him in the middle. Case in point, Fujinami would wrestle his way back into the match, containing Kimura, but Kengo would refuse to break clean in the ropes, slapping at Fujinami multiple times before Fujinami started to return the favor. No matter how much aggression Kimura showed, Fujinami could hit a dropkick out of nowhere and get back in it. Eventually, Fujinami had enough and started working at the leg. Kimura took advantage of that eventually by catching a kick and hitting a dragon screw. That opened Fujinami up for a pile driver. He was able to fight back though, reversing a whip into the rails on the floor before eventually taking over just enough to hit a belly-to-back (with a close kickout) for the win. I know it took a few more years for it to all bubble over, but Kimura did not look like a guy who fully got it all out of his system here. Definitely an interesting piece of the puzzle.

Antonio Inoki/Tatsumi Fujinami/Akira Maeda vs. Riki Choshu/Yoshiaki Yatsu/Animal Hamaguchi NJPW 10/19/83

MD: I've seen a bunch of these tags and six-mans from this feud but I don't have a chronological sense of everything and how this one fits in. The universal traits are all there though. Over time, six-man tags have been about a lot of different things. Right now, very often, they're an opportunity to get in as many spots as possible, to keep cycling through to ensure that the action never ends. Here though, it was all about the mood of danger. If you got too close to Choshu's corner, you were going to pay. If you couldn't stop them from pulling you back in that direction, you would pay. The extra person took up an extra ten, fifteen percent of the apron and created an additional danger zone. Likewise, if you were able to roll towards your corner desperately, there was that much more chance you'd be able to tag your partner. The physical space of the ring had a different value assigned to it than in normal tag matches and they leveraged that value to create an overarching sense of peril and opportunity. It's fun to watch it play out in the moment. Everyone had a chance to face everyone else here. Maeda got to hit his suplexes and spin wheel kick, Fujinami his dropkicks, Choshu to throw some lariats. Obviously, the most electric pairings were Inoki vs Choshu and Fujinami vs Choshu, but everything felt dynamic. There was a moment where they were able to down Inoki with a couple of double teams (which contrasted with the moment early on where Inoki shrugged off a double headbutt to burst out of their corner), and Choshu, sensing the opportunity rushed at full speed towards him to lock on a Scorpion as only he could. Choshu just had an extra theatrical gear he could tap into that electrified the crowd and made everything feel larger than life, and of course, if he was doing with Inoki, the effect was multiplied. Things broke down eventually, as you'd imagine, but Inoki got at least a moral win by throwing everyone out as the bell rang. Nothing particularly stood out here relative to other matches in this series but it's all good so that's ok.

Antonio Inoki/Hulk Hogan/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Killer Khan/Tiger Toguchi/Yoshiaki Yatsu NJPW 11/19/83

MD: What stands out immediately is just how hot the crowd was for this, or at least how hot they were for Hogan and most especially Inoki. He was getting chants far before arriving and when he and Hogan came out in matching robes, the place went nuts. This was more or less back and forth but I didn't agree with all of the backs and all of the forths. Starting with Fujinami and Toguchi made sense. Things cycled around with a slight good guy advantage until Khan carried Fujinami over to his corner so they could double team (a fireman's carry clubber followed by an Argentinian backbreaker clubber). Then the other side cycled around on Fujinami until he came back on Khan. That was unfortunate. I don't mind double heat with some comeback/control in the middle but it would have been better if it was, let's say, Yatsu getting his leg worked over as opposed to the monster. There was a bit of a foreboding feeling as it cycled back around to Fujinami doing it as you just knew Khan would come back, and of course, he did. Eventually Fujinami got a hot tag and Inoki and Hogan cleared house. Things built to Hogan vs Yatsu, which went about as you'd expect. At one point, Yatsu half ducked an Axe Bomber and I'm not sure Hogan expected it as he followed up with some big clubbers before doing it again. Things devolved into chaos and everyone getting counted out shortly thereafter. Hogan was repeating himself a couple of times and Yatsu especially wasn't there yet, but they were very, very over and that's always fun to watch.

ER: A very entertaining Tiger Toguchi and Killer Khan match, with them and Yatsu carrying a kind of uninspired Hogan and Inoki (Fujinami was plenty inspired). Inoki has this major presence and the crowd is dying for him, so it's funny when he finally gets into the match and just ices everything down with a standing leglock. 1983 Hogan in Japan has that Bodybuilder Dauber Dybinski posture, lumbering around and looking like a neanderthal with no juice. It's alarming how wild the crowd is for Hogan as he doesn't acknowledge them once the entire match. But if Hogan was a first year Batista and Inoki was mostly indifferent, Toguchi and Khan knew how to keep this moving. 

Toguchi looks like the largest possible Japanese member of Mamas and the Papas and I love how he never hesitates to step to Hogan or Inoki. The longer the match goes, the bigger Toguchi bumps, and he has this great Clumsy Taue motion. He gets run upside down in the corner and takes a big bump through the ropes to the floor from a Hogan knee. He bumps so hard to the floor, and Hogan just stands in place like Bull Buchanan. Killer Khan has to jump to the floor and tell Toguchi to stop selling and get back in the ring because Hogan wasn't budging. Hogan didn't budge until Yatsu ducked instead of taking an axe bomber, but wound up making the spot cooler by getting scalped and stumbling face first into the ropes. Hogan doesn't see it that way and is suddenly Stan Hansen but in a kind of bratty way. Look at the slappy stampy way he tags out after stiffing up Yatsu and hitting his Realest axe bomber. Hogan stiffs up Yatsu and suddenly looks really overpowering, and it stands out as the first time he's looked alive all match. The thing is, that's basically how overpowering Khan looks whenever he is in. Khan is a huge guy who knows how to wrestle big. He's one of the all time great Hogan and Inoki opponents because he could push pace and fall big for stars. But you see Inoki's jawline and pompadour and it's pretty easy to see why he still gets the biggest reaction in Chiba for his loaded up enziguiri. 

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Found Footage Friday: PANAMA~! SANDOKAN~! KATO KUNG LEE~! OLIMPICO~! GIGANTE TATAKI~! DYNAMITE~! CANEK~! KIMURA~! TAKANO~!

Sandokan/Kato Kung Lee vs. Gigante Tataki Panama 

MD: Tataki was Walter Quisbert Limachi, a 7'5" Bolivian giant who had been a boxer before getting into wrestling. They get around twenty minutes out of this before it breaks down completely. Tataki was fairly agile for his size, with a ton of presence. At one point, he gets Sandokan down and just bounds up to the second rope to miss a stomp. When he took and when he gave was a little suspect and he sure liked to bump out of the ring whether it was warranted or not. In general though, this all worked pretty well. Early on Sandokan and Kato Kung Lee used a lot of kicks to the legs and tried to play cat and mouse with the giant. If he got his hands on either of them, he could chuck them across the ring without any issue. The first time he stepped through the ropes to give chase, you could hear all of the kids screaming in horror. When they were double teaming him they were able to bound over him to hit sunset flips and what not. Unfortunately for the heroes, around halfway through the match, he got them both outside and smashed Kato Kung Lee with a chair. That was it for him and he got taken to the back. After that, Sandokan put up a valiant attempt, staggering Tataki with ten punches for every one that Tataki could throw, but after getting knocked to the floor, he recovered and started tossing Sandokan around again, including hitting a kneeling pile driver and this great toss where he grabbed Sandokan's singlet and rolled backwards. Both Sandokan and Kato Kung Lee were more than happy to fly around for him. Eventually, Olimpico (I think) came out to even the odds allow Sandokan to recover. Even then, they could barely hold the giant at bay, but after getting posted, he eventually got angry and went to the back, only to come back to sign a contract for the apuestas match we have upcoming. This wasn't Der Henker vs LeDuc/Corn or anything, but it was a pretty solid way to fill almost half an hour as a total package. All we have is the footage to go off of but Sandokan continues to look impressive as a local Carlos Colon type ace. Tataki may have given a little erratically, but for a guy his size he had a lot of presence and surprising athleticism. 

Sandokan/Olimpico vs. Gigante Tataki (Hair Match) Panama

MD: This falls on the spectacle side of apuestas matches as opposed to the bloody sort, but it was a hell of a spectacle. Sandokan and Olimpico started like the tecnicos did in the last match, throwing kicks in and darting around so Tataki couldn't get them. He sold the leg kicks as if he was taking bullets, but he'd also bound to the second rope threateningly. It didn't take him long to separate his opponents, given that he was able to toss them around so easily. Things opened up once he hit his kneeling piledriver to Sandoken on the floor. Once they could no longer double team him, he'd pummel one and then the next. The comeback was big, but it could have been bigger as he just missed a big splash in the middle of the ring. It was fun though, with Sandokan running up to sit upon Olimpico's shoulders so he could smash Tataki on the head, right until he'd get rolled forward, forced to victory roll his own partner. They kept bounding up and doing it again though. I was picturing Carlos Colon and Invader 1 doing it to Andre, and it was all pretty wonderful stuff. Tataki wasn't exactly subtle in his shift from taking to selling, but he sold enthusiastically when it was time. Even then, he was able to separate his opponents and was taking back over again with huge hanging tree slams onto Sandokan, until the ref ended up distracted by Olimpico and Tataki ate a mule kick to the groin. He sold this bigger than anyone has ever sold anything, basically, falling out of the ring and spasming across the basketball court towards the crowd. That set up the absolutely iconic finish with Sandokan and Olimpico throwing chairs at Tataki one after the other, burying him so he couldn't answer the count.

Dynamite Kid/Canek vs. Kengo Kimura/George Takano NJPW 4/3/81

MD: Chippy stuff actually. Early, early 80s mean jerk Dynamite is the best Dynamite and here he had a couple of kids to beat all over the ring. Canek tried to keep up, which was welcome, but he wasn't nearly as mean. Kimura and Takano had something to prove so it ended up being a little less cooperative than you'd think. Less artful exchanges. Kimura was especially good at hoping into the ring to assert himself and break things up and just swipe from the outside in general; good fire overall. When they could work together, they had a chance and Dynamite wasn't afraid to bump for them when warranted, even if he was less eager to sell. In return, they went up for all of Kid and Canek's stuff (butterfly suplex, delayed vertical, gutwrench suplex, clothesline onto the top rope, Canek's plancha, the press slam into a backbreaker that ended it). Like I said, Canek was fine but whenever he was in there, you wanted him to tag out just because you knew Dynamite was going to throw a nasty European uppercut or drop a headbutt.

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New Footage Friday: FUJIWARA! KIMURA! FUJINAMI! MAEDA! NAVARRO! SOLAR! KATO! DIABLO!

Tatsumi Fujinami/Kengo Kimura/Shiro Koshinaka vs. Akira Maeda/Nobuhiko Takada/Yoshiaki Fujiwara NJPW 3/1/86 - GREAT

MD: The handheld nature of this one let us really hear the crowd, and they were super into this. The makeup of these wrestlers and this feud meant that there was so much anticipation for almost every exchange; just a constant feeling out process that got the fans ready for the payoff of the actual contact each and every time, which almost never disappointed. Whenever one of the NJ guys would switch in, the fans switch the chant for them like clockwork. The first minute or two was really fun as Fujiwara controlled the center of the ring and drew people in however he could (including a slap punch in the corner) and then just dominated on the mat. Lots of brutal kicks from the other two UWF guys and a healthy amount of Koshinaka getting tossed around. Towards the end, the NJ team figured out they could hold an advantage with some teamwork but it broke down pretty quickly into a chaotic and violent scene.

PAS: New Japan versus UWF maybe the greatest in ring feud in wrestling history, and it is a real mitzvah to get another installation. Unsurprisingly I loved Fujiwara in this, swaggering badass who is so slick in the way he counters attacks by all three New Japan guys. Fujiwara and Fujinami tragically never had a singles match during this period, but they were incredible dance partners, and had some very cool exchanges here. Maeda really ramps up the violence in the end of the match pinning Fujinami against the ropes and winging kicks, including a headkick which felled him like an oak tree. Love Akira starting the 10 count with the rent, felt like the kind of taunt Alan Iverson might do. Finish was a wild breakdown and the crowd was going bonkers. Great stuff, super glad it showed up. 

Solar/Stuka Jr./El Gallo vs. Negro Navarro/Barbaro Cavernario/Rafaga CMLL GDL 12/1813

MD: It's been a while since I watched any 2013 lucha even though that was probably the height of my writing about it here and this was a mix of comfort food overlaid with maestros. The Rafaga vs Gallo pairing wasn't much (and good on Solar for clapping for them from the apron; nice guy) and Cavernario and Stuka went all out with their primera pairing but for less than a minute. The primera then was therefore all about the five minutes we got of Solar vs Navarro, which had all of the charm and skill you'd want out of these two in this setting. About half the time, it shifted to a close-up, high quality camera shot which really let you see what was going on. My favorite bit was early on when Solar hooked Navarro's arm with his legs and took him over into a cross arm breaker and Navarro responded by waving his hand in a "Yeah, that was so-so, I guess" sort of manner. Cavernario wasn't in much here but whenever he was he brought a ton of energy and motion. He let Solar catch him head-on to set up the finish and post-match everyone posed together. Hopefully we get more like this soon.

ER: This was really fun, and I loved some of our HD camera angles that we got. I always love seeing Solar and Navarro play their hits live, as they never play them exactly the same. Most of the highlights of this were Solar/Navarro, and while I wish we had gotten actual significant Stuka/Navarro and Barbaro/Solar interaction, I loved all of our maestros. Solar broke out a few tricks that are super impressive for a guy in his late 50s, and I thought he was excellent at playing into Navarro's subs. Like Matt, my favorite moment came when Solar totally caught Negro, flipped him halfway across the ring with a leg drag, and Navarro sat there on his butt, doing a 50-50 ehhhhhh shaky hand. I love the way they tangle their legs, and each knows the right amount of pressure to apply to not slip out of holds and made them look strong. Stuka and Barbara looked really exciting when they were in. Barbaro came off hyper and fun (and skinny!), and Stuka's rana, handspring headscissors on the floor to Rafaga, and his match finishing torpedo splash all looked great. I love nearly every Navarro/Solar match I see, but I think I like this format more. It gives the two maestros natural breaks while keeping the match centered around their work. We get some entertaining sideshows, and seeing brief flashes of them working with their younger new partners, then they come back to escalate their own personal 30+ year battle. 

PAS: Solar vs. Navarro is something we have in numerous variations, but it is cool to see a 2013 version pop up with both guys in their 50s not in their 60s. There is still some athleticism in their exchanges, not just pure skill, grab an arm, grab a leg spin counter, reverse. They always have a new wrinkle or two in their game, although here this really felt like a them doing their thing for a different audience. Everyone else in this match was fine, and Stuka Jr. has one of the great top rope splashes of all time, but this was getting to watch two Jazz greats noodle away and that is a pleasure.

Shigeo Kato vs. Diablo Mumejuku Pro 2/5/17

SR: By god, is Segunda Caida the Shigeo Kato superfan blog now?! Diablo is a guy who is also around for a really long time, he was a +20 year veteran in this match. This was the best Diablo match I’ve seen, as it is a bloody brawl, which was worked exactly like how a bloody brawl should be worked. Kato was a part time wrestler at this point and for a guy who was a skinny ratboy in his heyday, he seemed to have no muscle mass at all here, but he could still go like a wrestler. Really loved how he just stomped on Diablos face during the opening brawling portion. Then an exposed turnbuckle comes into play and Kato is soon bleeding all over the place. Katos selling was a millions bucks here as he looked to be hanging on by a thread (maybe he was also legit blown up) . I’m not going to pretend Diablo was brilliant, but he knew exactly what to do, punch the cut and waffle Kato with a chair out of nowhere. There’s an actually great Figure 4 Leglock spot and the ending felt appropriately murderous. Not gonna see these guys are superworkers, but I respect them for producing a match like this even with little athletic ability. Proof that structure is everything.

MD: Nice focused brawl. I have no idea who these guys are. Kato took it to Diablo early, working the mask. I loved the ref bump where Diablo caught Kato's kick and spun it into the ref's groin. High comedy there. After that, he landed a low blow on Kato and pulled the corner guard off and just unloaded on Kato. Once he got him upon with his chain, the woundwork was incredibly on point. He got a lot of value rubbing his head against the top rope, more than you'd think, but it felt pretty nasty. I liked Kato's hope spot where he went to the top and shouted woo just to get thrown off. He finally took over by taking out Diablo's leg, though they went away from it before long and Kato shouted out "Brainbuster!" like he was pointing into the stands for a home run and then couldn't hit it. A for bloody effort though. Lost focus towards the end but some great woundwork and it didn't wear out its welcome.

PAS: I thought this was cool shit, a couple of guys who have been around for a long time, beating on each other like veterans do. All of the stuff with Diablo and the chain was sick, there was some real thump on those punches, and his opening a cut punches with the fist would have made Harley Race proud. Kato had good fire as a bleeding old guy coming back with vim and vigor, and really took it to Diablo in the early going. I want to see all the variations of this feud, really feels like something a territory could work around the horn for months.

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A Viking, a Deadman, & A Low Ranked Noncommissioned Officer Walk Into Japan...

Nord the Barbarian/Punisher Dice Morgan/Mike Kirschner vs. Masa Saito/Kengo Kimura/Osamu Kido NJPW 3/5/90

ER: Look at that gaijin lineup! It was recently brought to my attention that we have footage of Berzerker teaming with Undertaker, years before their near-fatal feud that began with an attempted sword impaling. This was before that, the prequel that we now know would lead to attempted murder just a couple years later. Also, the next night NJ ran Nord/Dice/Bigelow vs. Hashimoto/Saito/Choshu, and that match doesn't exist on tape because life is cruel. But we get this, and it hits all the right spots.  For a JIP 7 minute match we get a lot of gold.

Nord is fired up throughout, and at this point it's a real mystery why he wasn't thought of higher at the time. He had great energy, unique presence, and cool offense. We start with Saito jumping all over Nord's leg, and the home fed heroes trying to bully Nord into the corner, Lilliputians trying to wrangle a wild outsider, and it was a cool visual to see the three of them swinging into Nord while he swings his way out. I'm not sure why Mean Mark was working as Punisher Dice Morgan on this New Japan tour, but this is one of the few Punisher Dice Morgan matches we have, and while he's not in it a ton he shows a lot. He comes into the match with a great headbutt, and his brawling style and the way he moves looks a lot more like Steve Austin, if Austin had gained 50 lb. and half a foot in height. Morgan works a genuinely funny spot where he tries to get Saito in a test of strength but Saito is too short. I've seen that spot a zillion times, but I don't think I've ever seen it done to a certified badass like Saito. Their body language is great - Saito was this awesome fired up babyface throughout, a change from his more stoic tone - and Morgan keeps yelling at the crowd that he's on the level. I love Morgan working the Okinawa fans as if he was working a Memphis high school, and everybody plays along. The bulk of the match is our Americans beating down Kengo Kimura, and it's good. Kirschner comes in and throws nasty punches to Kimura's kidneys, and Kirschner is not a wrestler I think about a ton (though I really need to go through FMW at some point, I bet there's a lot of cool stuff I haven't seen) but he looked damn good here; his strikes to Kimura were all good, and he ran great distraction when Nord and Morgan dragged Kimura to the floor, he hits a nice kneedrop, and his apron work was great (mocking Saito's height is something I certainly wouldn't have the courage to do).

Nord is an absolute monster to Kimura, throwing him forcibly into and over the guardrail, and it looked like Kimura was not necessarily wanting to be thrown into the crowd. Sadly, when Nord is the man doing it you won't have much say in the matter. He really bullies Kimura around ringside, and then starts battering him with Necro Butcher level chairshots, and when Morgan gets involved you realize what a fun team Berzerker and Undertaker would have been. Nord drops his huge legdrop back in the ring, but they get too cocky and try to send Kirschner off the top with an ill advised Rocket Launcher, and it does not work. Saito is incredibly fun as a hot tag babyface, and I honestly don't know if I've ever seen Saito run into the ring on a hot tag and do a little dance before taking out every one of the heels with punches and chops. He was the worlds most dangerous Robert Gibson, and while I wish we got twice as much, the Saito suplex is a fitting finish.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BERZERKER

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New Footage Friday: Rudge, Kido, Fujiwara, Choshu, Mutoh

Terry Rudge vs. Osamu Kido NJPW 5/20/77

ER: A cool snack, with Kido really impressing me with his speed and toughness against a noted tough guy like Rudge. The first 75% of the match really could have been worked the exact same if both men were tethered by a 2' rope. A lot of action is started just from establishing wrist control and we get a lot of cool minimalism, like Rudge on his back looking for the right time to kick out Kido's ankle, or Rudge trying to bridge out of a chinlock before eating a hard hammerfist blow to his stomach. Kido really gets to show off his speed when things get off the mat, and I absolutely loved him whipping Rudge into the ropes only to completely halt his momentum with a big headbutt to the stomach. Rudge sold it like me running into a bollard stomach first (it was at the park and I didn't see it). This match didn't aim for epic status, but who needs epic status?

MD: This worked out really well. These two went at it with absolutely nothing given for free but a whole lot ultimately earned, though never for long. Rudge worked this like he was in England, making sure to chain together knockdowns with holds (which is a necessity there because if you try to put something on too late after you take your opponent down, the ref will break it and call for a reset). In this environment, it made everything seem all the more visceral and unrelenting. Kido, on the other hand, was a master of just not letting go, no matter what Rudge might try to do. My favorite bit of that was probably a nasty hammer blow to the mid-section as Rudge was trying to bridge up out of a chinlock, but there was a long, dynamic wristlock spot early on too. Oh yeah, they beat the heck out of each other with forearms and European uppercuts too, really just at every opportunity. This kept a good pace, never wore out its welcome, used whips liberally to bridge things. I really dug how Kido both entered and exited the match with the backbreaker too. I'm not sure what that said narratively, but it was novel and interesting yet still totally believable.

PAS: I loved this, Rudge is one of my favorite Euro guys, definitely in the same phylum as guys like Regal and Finlay, and he worked this in his tough man style, Yanking and twisting at limbs. Kido can be a bit passive sometimes, but Rudge forced him into his style of match, and they really laced each other with tight looking elbows and uppercuts. No wasted moments, no flab, just a tight corners punch out.


Riki Choshu/Osamu Kido vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Kengo Kimura NJPW 10/22/77

MD: One thing that stood out immediately was how little 28 year old Fujiwara stood out visually. That was true to a degree with Choshu as well, especially considering his later look, but Fujiwara always seemed to have a look that matched his style be it the mustache or what. We've seen him so old for so long that it's a bit offputting to see him young. He was still himself, however, able to manipulate limbs and space and grind down on everything he did. The strikes were great and varied in this one, with Kimura especially having great jabs. Choshu got to sell a little (and better than Kido who was more than happy shrugging off legwork) but spent most of his time just tossing people around with these dynamic, over-the-top slams. Honestly, that last bit, along with the repetition of some spots (like a knee drop on the way in after a tag) made some of this felt weirdly experimental. It was a fun snapshot.

PAS: This was an undercard tag and thus not really shooting for anything too big, but it was a chance to see two all time greats in Choshu and Fujiwara in their relative youth (also two pretty cool dudes in Kido and Kimura.) Fujiwara has a perm which is truly bizzare, he still is Fujiwara though, he throws some really great looping body shots to the kidneys, and does some nifty arm and leg work. I also really liked Kimura throwing hands too. Choshu did seem a bit washed out, he is such a great minimalist wrestler but back then he hadn't yet figure out how to project his personality into his work.

Keiji Mutoh/Michiyoshi Ohara vs Shiro Koshinaka/Akitoshi Saito NJPW 7/18/93

MD:In digging through this footage, you never know what's going to jump out. Yeah, something like Diamond vs Liger is going to get flagged immediately just for the oddball nature of the pairing, but a third or fourth from the top match like this tag, you can't really know one way or the other with unless you watch.

I ended up really liking this. It was straightforward but still dynamic, maybe more down my alley than Phil or Eric's. It had three or four distinct bits of heat, with Koshinaka and Saito playing the part well (Koshinaka is particularly punchable) and ultimately getting a satisfying but never-for-certain comeuppance. I loved the initial tease of Koshinaka getting in, only to drive the action right to his corner and get his butt shot in to start off the first bit of heat. Mutoh was pure charisma. Ohara was the world's best Taz, with all sort of great suplexes and throws, both in reversals out of nowhere and coming in after a big tag. Everyone was more than happy to lay their shots and kicks in. The finishing stretch had just enough wrinkles to put things in question without ever stretching credulity. This was just good wrestling.

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New Footage Friday: WE DECLARE WAR!!! 6/25/93

WAR 6/25/93

This is a six match series with WAR vs. Heisei Ishingun. Sort of a border skirmish in the WAR vs. NJ conflict, with Koshinaka's band of outsiders taking on a group of WAR defenders. Weird show, having a WAR card in 93 with no Tenryu, but tubby interpromotional asskicking is about the best thing in wrestling and this had it in spades

Show starts with sort of a drawing of straws to set up the match ups


Koki Kitahara vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi

PAS: This was the longest of the matches on the show, and goes into several different phases, all of them pretty great. It opens with both guys throwing taters at each other, they spill to the floor and wildly fling chairs. One of the things that made this match so great is the raggedness of it. There isn't very many smooth exchanges, and lots of the time they are just grabbing each other by the hair and sneaking in punches and headbutts. Large parts of this feel  bar fight, where both guys are a little unskilled and a little unsteady. I loved Kobayashi just throwing multiple fisherman's suplexes and not going for the pin and Kitahara's dickish little kicks to the head. Finish was cool with Kitahara DDTing Kobayashi on the floor, rolling him in and locking in a bodyscissors sleeper for a but until Kobayashi passes out, it wasn't really a dramatic pass out, and it almost felt like a questionable UFC stoppage, I loved the shoving and the "hold me back" from both camps. Thought it worked really well for the opening of a series like this.

MD: I love the dissonance of a tug of war rolling right into this match. It's a twenty minute match that's almost entirely uncooperative all the way through, which feels pretty long for this sort of thing. It's brutal and it's great. Kitahara took the brunt of this, coming off like an absolute killer, with nasty headbutts, chair shots, and kicks, but throughout most of it, he couldn't really lock in a hold. Midway through Kobayashi comes back with these amazing running headbutts, really just a momentum-laden collision and then finally locks in a leglock which feels like a big deal given the struggle up to there. They roll into the finishing stretch not long after with Kitahara hitting a German, Northern Lights, and Backdrop Driver all in a row. It felt like a clear moment of escalation which means Kobayashi popping up almost immediately thereafter to hit three fisherman's suplexes of his own felt a little unearned. It was somewhat forgivable due to the unclear death match rules but it did take me out of the match a bit. Thankfully, it set up the further escalation with the three DDTs on the floor and the rear naked choke to close it all out so it more or less worked out in the end. Anyway, the sheer brutality more than makes up for that. What a way to start a show.

Ashura Hara vs. Akitoshi Saito

ER: Tenryu may not be on this show (which is weird for a WAR show, but I see Tenryu worked a Hashimoto singles match a week before this show and then didn't work again for a month, so taking a month off work after 20 minutes opposite Hash does make sense) but Hara is clearly the Tenryu proxy as he works this match almost exactly like I think Tenryu would have, and even has a bunch of great Tenryu selling moments. It's almost as if Hara was ALSO great or something. This is the kind of match you want out of a WAR/NJ showdown, Hara roughing up the relative newbie, beating him down with chairshots on the floor and lariats to the neck, and there's a great moment where you hear the buzz of the crowd building as they anticipate Saito finally hitting his first big spinkick of the match. Hara is running to set up a killshot lariat, and the crowd knows exactly the mistake he's making, and Saito hits that spinning heel kick that is arguably the best spinning heel kick of anyone who does a spinning heel kick, and that sets up the next several minutes of Saito kicking Hara a TON. Hara's selling of Saito's kicks is downright lordly. He leans into brutal baseball bat shots to the chest, Saito comes off the ropes with a punch right to the guy that sends Hara staggering beautifully into the ropes. Saito stops him in his tracks with a couple high kicks, throws a couple of crescent kicks that glance off Hara's temple (loved Hara's selling of a glancing blow) and Hara gets literally moved back on his feet like a tackling dummy by a couple of Saito lariats. We get a couple great moments of Hara eating kicks and occasionally catching one, only able to toss Saito away to get a couple seconds or reprieve before eating more kicks. And the longer Saito kicked him I knew Hara wasn't just going to just keep getting kicked and NOT pay him back for it, and when we got to the Hara payback it delivered. Hara throws the three meanest kicks of the entire match, one to Saito's ribs and two more right to the face - the kind of thing that would make Futen main eventers blush - and then gets to show off a couple more lariats of his own. This is the match I want to see when I sit down to watch WAR.

MD: Great, straightforward nine minute match. Hara's initial demolishing of Saito was great, straight up to the nonchalance in his nasty clotheslines and chairshots. I liked how he kept tossing him out of the ring. There was just so much personality to the violence. Saito's comeback spin kick was a thing of beauty. I'm a sucker for matches that can turn on a dime on one big move like that. Speaking of personality, Saito losing the gi and then posing before every kick like he was charging up was definitely memorable and seemed to work for the crowd. Hara willfully absorbing kicks (gritting through) is a much preferred method of selling than just eating three suplexes with no real effect and the finishing flurry of clotheslines felt like the inevitable destination the match had to go.

PAS: This was pretty much a poor man's Tenryu vs. a poor man's Hashimoto, but you can match up poor man's versions of those two and have it still be fucking incredible. I loved Hara hurling Saito to the floor and plastering him with chairs, Saito's big spin kick was incredible, and he really leaned into those body kicks, those are the kind of things which would turn ribs into popcorn. Hara just grumping his way out and chucking lariats was great stuff too, I love a larait to the back of the head and Hara was just cracking Saito with them. WAR as fuck.

Masashi Aoyagi vs. Super Strong Machine

ER: I both liked this, and was disappointed by this. I didn't love the layout, there were a couple dodgy moments from Aoyagi, and the finish is literally the exact same finish as the Hara/Saito match that happened right before this match. What I liked, is further evidence that Super Strong Machine may be one of the more under discussed ass kickers of this era. He is not flashy, his offense is simple, but he executes the offense with a Finlayesque reasonable recklessness, hitting his body slams hard, sitting down fast on his piledriver, throwing running and standing lariats with a full arm, the kind of guy with a vertical suplex you can set your watch to. He's a real bully in this, beating Aoyagi through the crowd and battering him with a chair. Now that I think about it maybe the entire layout of this match is a lesser executed version of Hara/Saito. But SSM is a fun smotherer, I can really get into a guy with a nice headlock or chinlock, and he really looks like he's hooking that arm to suffocate Aoyagi. Aoyagi throwing fast kicks over his head to escape was a great touch. Aoyagi's kick section isn't as nice as Saito's, he even whiffs a kick over SSM's head by several inches, but he hits a couple really nice rolling kicks and I always love his out of control corner spinkick that ends him spilling to the apron. The leaping knee to the back of Strong Machine's head is just icing. It is strange to me that Machine finishes this in the exact same way as Hara, even bouncing off the same ropes in the same order. And the match had flaws, but really played as a nice Super Strong Machine showcase for me, made me want to dive into some more.

MD: Context has an impact on this one. As a standalone match, it was definitely good, but following the two matches that it followed, it came up a bit lacking. I liked the opening exchange with Aoyagi rushing SSM and the paralleled violence on the outside, though the punctuation of the DDT on concrete felt like it came a bit early, especially considering how it was used to end the first match. I suppose it did set the stage for Aoyagi working from underneath for most of the rest of the match, though with no particular focused selling. I like SSM because he stands out relatively with the clubbering and power moves and presence, but I don't necessarily want to see Aoyagi fighting from underneath because his stuff is so good (like that knee to the back of the skull off the ropes!). The best parts of this was when they were going toe-to-toe and there just wasn't enough of that. At least Aoyagi got to take it out on the ref after the match. Again, still good, just not "this card" great.

PAS: I agree with Matt and Eric, this basically felt like the same match we just saw, just not as great. I dug chunks of this, Aoyagi is a C+A guy, one of our all time favorites, and had a bunch of fun athletic spin kicks and I loved his early bum rush. There was a great heads up section with both guys throwing bombs at each other, but man was that finish hurt by comparing it to the previous match. Hara is looking to decapitate with his clotheslines, and SSM just didn't deliver that. This was solid WAR undercard stuff, but we are getting bigger and better then solid on this show.

Tatsutoshi Goto vs The Great Kabuki

MD: Whereas the SSM vs Aoyagi was more of the same as the first two matches, just not as good, I thought this was a nice palette cleanser on the card. Goto rushed in early (though instead of a killer knee to rush in on, it was more hugging and rolling) and took an early advantage on the outside. He pressed that into the armwork that would take up the entirety of the match. There was a great consequence-laden hope spot early into this where Kabuki punches with the bad hand/arm and immediately drops down selling it. Past that, Goto working on the arm wasn't super varied but it was focused and mean with Kabuki selling well. When he finally was able to fire back, late in the match, the crowd was definitely into, but then things sort of meandered to an out-of-nowhere finish. If they had tightened this up by a couple of minutes or let Kabuki get a more sustained comeback at the end, it would have been better. I liked most of it for what it was though.

PAS: Very different match with this being mostly just Goto working over the arm of Kabuki and Kabuki selling. The arm work was fine, and Kabuki's selling was great, the moment where he finally hits his uppercut only to collapse in pain was awesome. Still Kabuki is a so much more dynamic offensive wrestler then Goto, it was a bit of a bummer to see him smothered for most of the match. I liked the surprise roll up pin, but I just felt a little robbed of a big Kabuki explosion. 

Hiro Saito vs Kengo Kimura

MD: Another very solid match. This one felt just as violent as the others (especially everything that happened on the outside), but at the same time, somehow more cooperative, or at least conventional. I think that says more about the rest of the card than about this match in and of itself. The first third of the match was focused around chairs, beatings on the outside, one brutal whip into a tiny table, and the setpiece of the exposed corner buckle (Kimura's attempt to expose it partially lets Saito come back, Kimura cements one transition by tossing Saito into it, etc.). The exposed buckle is a non-factor for the rest of the match, which is a shame. The finish is set up by Saito missing a top rope senton out of that exact corner. Kimura diving to crotch him on it to set up the exact same finish would have been more rewarding. Small thing. Also, this was probably a good spot on the show for color with Saito's head rammed into the buckle a few times. (Note after the fact: PWO's Jetlag got to these before we did and I went to check his review on this and he had the exact same notion. That makes me feel less monstrous). Some of Kimura's jumping knee offense looked muddy with the fancam, but I really love his double axe-handle clubber. He throws himself into it more than anyone I've seen. This was a good mix of brawling and more conventional moves and transitions.

PAS: I dug this, there is something very appropriate about sitting in the front row of a WAR show and having fat ass Hiro Saito flying over the railing and landing on top of you. No reason to think that this feud should respect the fans anymore then the wrestlers respect each other. Hiro Saito doesn't do a lot of different things, but does the things he does exceedingly well. His senton is honestly one of the greatest looking individual wrestling moves ever, just pulverisingly beautiful, the standing one looked bad enough, but that second rope one was like an anvil hitting Wile E. Coyote. If Kimura didn't move out of the way of the tope rope attempt he would have looked like spilled condiments. I do think this was the match that could have used blood, but otherwise this show keeps delivering. 

Shiro Koshinaka vs Takashi Ishikawa

MD: This was one-third a really good match and two thirds an excellent one. I loved how Koshinaka took it right to Ishikawa to start, but that first third got dragged down a bit by holds that lacked struggle (though, once the armwork started, not necessarily direction). What it did manage to have, however was Koshinaka being the only guy on the card really to play to the crowd and just enough brutality to keep things somewhat interesting. They get way more interesting when Ishikawa takes over. Everything he does here is great. He can't transition from one piece of offense to another without making sure to pepper in a stomp on Koshinaka's face. In the middle here, it breaks down to a lumberjack match of sorts with both camps going at it. We only see bits and pieces of this as the camera stays with Koshinaka's selling. That's ok, I think, because that was another strong part of the match. He's definitely a guy who could get the crowd behind him and they pop big when he hits his comeback butt bump (and as goofy a move as that always is, it has a symbolic power with the crowd so it absolutely works). His offense on the back half was a lot better with nothing seeming meandering in the least. Instead we get some nice knee drops and an unforgiving double stomp off the top.

I liked how smart the end of the match was too, with clever use of repetition and payoff. As much as anything else, the key moments of the match were the transition points: Ishikawa armdragging his way out of an armbar (followed by a huge stomp, of course), Koshinaka countering a three point stance clothesline attempt with a butt bump, and then late, when Ishikawa turned the third butt bump attempt in the match into a snap clotheslining on the top rope which allowed him to set up a series of chokeslams and the second three point stance attempt clothesline (this time successful for the win; I need to work in how great his rapid fire clotheslines to the front and back of the head were earlier in the match so I'm sticking that here). A match like this didn't need that sort of narrative cleverness. It could have just been these two guys killing one another. It's a testament how good this was and how well it closed out the show that they went a step beyond.

PAS: Takashi Ishikawa's WAR run was one of the great short term wrestling runs of all time. He was there from 92-94 and was uniformly excellent including several all-time level matches. This was a step below that level, but not a huge step and his performance was excellent. Koshinaka was really great as a underdog babyface (which is weird because this was a WAR show) and takes a big time bloody beating from Ishikawa and really rallies the crowd behind him. Matt is right about how awesome that butt but is as a momentum shifter. I loved all of Ishikawa's nasty stomps, he really looked like he was trying to extinguish a brush fire on Koshinaka's head. The spot were Ishikawa blocks a hip toss, lands a judo throw and just stomps Koshinaka in the eye was good stuff. Loved the die on his sword performance by Koshinaka at the end, as he is able to string some big stuff together before getting absolutely smashed by a big clothesline.

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