Found Footage Friday: KERNODLE~! MANNY~! KHAN~! SADOKEN~! LA PARK??

Sandoken vs. Principe Island Panama 80s

MD: It's a matter of debate here whether or not Principe Island is a young LA Park. The answer seems to be no but some of the gear and the body type at that age, based on other photos we have, makes it seem at least possible. Let me tell you though, if it was him and I was to go back to after this match and tell him, "Hey kid, you just took the biggest beating that you'll ever take in your life," it would have seemed plausible. Obviously, it wouldn't have turned out to be true, but it was an absolute mauling. Principe Island came out to the ring with a sombrero and a snake (there was a very amusing pop when the ring girl took the snake away). And that was basically all he got to do for the entire match, because Sandoken came storming out of the locker room with a chair, a blur of violence, red cape falling off as he started to punish the poor kid. He beat him around the ring, with the chair, with the stairs, tossing his head in, with brutal straight punches. Principe Island bumped all over the place and writhed in pain. The ref called for a DQ once, so Sandoken pulled off the mask. Principe Island made it to the back and came back with a new one, so Sandoken ripped it and beat on him some more. He got DQed again later on theoretically giving the win to Principe Island, but it took multiple wrestlers to save him post-match. The last image of him was someone putting him in a fireman's carry and running him to the back. Just a triumphant beating and probably my favorite footage from Panama so far.

PAS: This would be really crazy if this was LA Park, considering the levels off asskicking he has laid out over the years. Sandoken is like Kevin Sullivan or Kurisu here just absolutely potatoing Island. Pretty crazy to see a guy come in with a cool snake like that and just get fucking obliterated without a single bit of offense, why waste the snake on this guy? I think at one point Sandoken smashes a bottle over his head and Island just bleeds and eats a beating. Cool if weird match, and it did make me want to see more Sandoken. 

Australian Wrestling 1985

Don Kernodle vs. Ron Miller

MD: As best as I can tell, Miller was promoting and had worked with Crockett to bring in a group of his talent for this 85 tour. Kernodle was billed (repeatedly) as former US Champion and Miller as the current Australian champion. Manny came out with Don and that drew Larry O'Dea out to equal things up. Kernodle absolutely earned his pay on this night, stooging early and then bumping for the rest of the match. He created almost all the motion. Some help from Manny on the outside led to him taking over and they worked in some nice hope spots and cut offs (including a missed corner charge that Miller should get some credit for) until Don hurt his knee on a missed move. Miller went immediately for a figure four and then a reverse figure four which drew Manny in for the DQ and O'Dea in for a brawl. Very complete match with Kernodle doing the work but Miller bringing the charisma and star power and credibility.

Killer Khan vs. Lu Leota

MD: I think most of the Lu Leota footage we have is from the New Zealand show On the Mat. I'm not very familiar with him. He was a Samoan who was heavily tattooed but didn't have a lot of size. Here, despite a few attempts at comebacks, he was beaten around the ring by Khan in a competitive squash but a squash nonetheless. Khan beating someone to a paste is one of the joys of 1980s wrestling, however, so I'm not about to complain. Was there anyone better at just tossing someone's head into the turnbuckle? Maybe it was the way the ring was set up or how Leota crashed into it but it was such a simple thing that completely took his head off. The match never really looked back from there.

Larry O'Dea vs. Manny Fernandez

MD: While we don't have dates for the tour, the consensus is 1985, so it's probably at least a year before Manny turns and it was interesting to see him as a heel at this point. This was sub-ten minutes but still felt fairly complete, just without the stalling and long heat from the Kernodle match. Manny was more than happy to bump around the ring (and out) and he ate a really nice drop toehold into a submission from O'Dea. He also ate the corner on a charging knee attempt. Manny took over out of nowhere with a flying shot off the ropes and all of his subsequent offense felt sharp and very credible. I could see them using this one to build up a match between Manny and Miller to close out the tour.

PAS: I enjoyed this a bunch, really fun TV match, with O'Dea having some nifty offense early, including some cool legwork. Manny takes over, and he really has the some of nastiest offense. When he catches O'Dea off the ropes he just starts unloading and it is a matter of time. That top rope half knee/half stomp was great looking

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New Footage Friday: PG13! FINLAY! KILLER KARL KOX! DERRICK KING!

Killer Karl Kox Turns Face! AWCW 1973     Pt. 2     Pt. 3     Pt. 4     Pt. 5

MD: We don't do whole TV shows often but this feels worth covering. It's possible this has been out there but quick googling and youtube searches didn't bring it up and it popped up on a TV youtube channel as opposed to a wrestling one, which is always a good sign. This is just a great episode of territories TV, one that felt close to ten years before its time. 73 is not that deep into the decade and things are already defined by the war between Big Bad John's crew and the People's Army.

Lord Layton's perfect as the host, always feigning a struggle with his own moral quandary of journalistic neutrality vs rooting for the good people against the very bad, which just somehow makes the good feel better and the bad worse. The fans are interesting here, never popping at individual lines in the interviews, but waiting until the end. As Karl Kox (who had just turned face) was going on about how he did it for his dead mother who didn't want to see him reviled anymore, I wasn't sure if he really had the fans because of it. In the end though, they were on board. It's such a novel, unique to this area, thing that Big Bad John's biggest gripe was that he had paid $1500 to fly Kox out to be part of his crew and now that money was wasted. That wouldn't have worked almost anywhere else in the world.

This episode had four matches, all of which at least a little competitive. The first (part 2 video) was Bulldog Brower/Abby vs.  Larry O'Dea/Billy White Wolf, with Brower taking a good chunk of the match and the promo after. It left me wanting to see more of him. He had a great presence, a bulky force of gravity in the center of the ring, with big wind-ups to his shots and smart use of his size. It was a weird setting to see Adnan, but he was mainly there to bounce of Brower. Post match promo had Brower enthusiastically talking over John so they couldn't entirely stay focused but it worked for what it was.

Part 3 has the second match, which is Tiger Jeet Singh vs. Kox. The match was short but effective in establishing Kox as a tough and mean looming presence, now a babyface but not one that changed up his style at all. Singh moved and bumped around a bit more than you'd see a decade later, but he was still mostly what you'd expect. The forearm out of nowhere that ended it was great though. Post-match, Kox talked about how the other faces didn't trust him yet, which brought them out. This was the best part of the whole show as King Curtis, untrusting but pragmatic, said that they needed the greatest weapon in all of wrestling, the brainbuster (said like only he could) on their side.

Part 4 introduced Angelo Mosca to the territory, with Layton (who claims to have personally recruited him) playing up his sports and academic credentials like JR might fifteen years later. George Barnes is the sacrificial lamb and he stooges and bumps around well for him, but obviously doesn't have the chance to shine like in the recent Memphis footage we saw. Mosca is fine, but honestly, what's most notable is how out of breath he is in the post-match promo, even noting it and his nervousness, which is a good cover. Definitely not the sort of crazy Mosca promos we'd get in 84.

Then it ends with Waldo von Erich vs. Mario Milano, and if you can get past how deep Waldo still was into the nazi stormtrooper gimmick, even in 73 (it felt more severe than the Barons' goose stepping), this was actually really good. I don't think I've seen a ton of Waldo but he really worked the glove gimmick well, just absolutely unrelenting with a lot of different but all credible bits of offense surrounding it. Milano was fiery in his comebacks and revenge spots, quick to throw out headbutts. Just a good TV main event to put some heat back on the heels after the Kox turn and his win over Tiger.

The fact that we have this whole episode, and with TV Roll information at start makes me wonder just how much is out there. I know there are bits and pieces floating around but I really did enjoy this.

ER: I'll primarily focus on the Kox stuff, but this was a fun episode of TV, presided over by the presumably 7 foot tall Lord Layton, we got to see Abdullah the Butcher without big flapping tiddies but just as stabby as ever, Bulldog Brower even bigger than Abby and with work that looked more than worth seeking out, a fun main event, and a classy 70s TV presentation. But I came here to see the Killer and I loved what we got. His opening promo was open faced and tender, talking about how he recently lost his dear mother, and how his hated ways had turned his family into targets of harassment, and how he wanted to change his ways to honor his mother. I loved his understand of the skepticism, and his reasoning that if he betrayed the fans and his word, he was also betraying his mother, and that couldn't be. It left me not knowing whether he was genuine or not - after all, we've seen old heels go back on their word after much greater promises - so Layton's skepticism is warranted. Kox's match with Tiger Jeet Singh was fascinating to me, as it seems like Kox might be the perfect kind of opponent for Singh. Kox is an expressive seller who can make a claw hold mean something, but I also like Singh digging his nails into Kox's neck and face, loved the way Kox would fight back and struggle up to his feet, and Kox throwing fists is always going to land with me. The finish even feels like a rarity, because how often have you seen a Tiger Jeet Singh match with him actually getting pinned? Kox pins him after a quick, sharpe forearm shot, the kind of shot that looks like it should end a match. Kox throughout this episode looks like Robert Duvall in Killer Elite, a tight mustache with hair that slowly unfurls around the edges, leaving him with fantastic wings that could even bely his plain faced honesty. I loved this whole presentation.

PAS: This really made me wish we had more Australian stuff from this period (do they have a TV archive we can raid?), the idea of these two warring armies full of super charismatic dudes is really appealing. Kox is just incredible in the role of the humbled man trying to atone for his many sins and this really made me want to see him face off with Brower and Abby and everyone. Really felt like a Florida style promotion 10 years before Florida was doing this sort of thing.

TKG: Everything I’ve ever seen from the People’s Army v Big Bad John has been a blast but I’ve only seen “best of never” full shows before. And these full shows are well paced. The whole Kox turns babyface because of his mother’s cancer is amazing. I dug the opening tag a bunch. Bulldog Brower is a guy I associate with dull WWF undercards and I left this thinking that I need to rewatch all of those. All his offense is nasty looking and he’s really fun as immovable object slowly getting knocked down when eating offense. Larry O'day is a guy I will forever remember being killed by the Miracle Violence Connection and it will take something spectacular to make me see him as anything else. The Mosca v Barnes match I thought was really dull but everything else was worth watching and neat watching a whole show format.

Fit Finlay vs. Rico de Cuba CWA 8/7/97

MD: This was a 10+ minute glorified squash where late 90s Finlay (having shrugged off a lot of the chickenshit stooging from his 80s career) just steamrolled some poor, long-haired doofus. He let Rico toss him a couple of times early on and gave him a thing or two as the match went on (especially due to slipping on a banana peel), but this was mostly Fit jamming elbows and forearms into different parts of Rico's skull, turning him inside out with an over-rotated powerbomb, unloading on him utilizing the apron like 00s Finlay, stretching him for fun, and getting so fed up with the guy's last comeback that he ate a red card DQ for half choking him to death in the ropes. More of a novelty for its length than anything else, since you come in expecting the cruelty. It's 2x your 98 WCW Saturday Night Finlay squash and it's good that we get to highlight that sort of thing to the world.

PAS: Rico De Cuba definitely looks like a guy who should have been walking across the beach with Joe Gomez, Jim Powers and the Renegade, and Finlay treats him like that guy. We get all of the classic Finlay brutality, nerve holds which look like he is ripping out chunks of his traps, elbows directly into the trachea, knees across the nose. Cuba gets a couple of comebacks, which didn't look great but Finlay bumped huge for, including flying over the top rope twice. I liked Finlay psychotically trying to rip his head off for the DQ, and this was exactly the kind of thing which made us fall in love with him.

ER: This was so great, this was like if one of those Finlay vs. Johnny Swinger matches from Saturday Night were given 12 minutes instead of 3 minutes. The beating was just as cruel, it just went on 4x as long. Rico de Cuba was given a couple of very short flourishes, and Finlay sold like Cuba was a total superstar in those brief moments. My favorite stretch of the match was when Finlay took two super fast bumps over the top to the floor, working a great Berzerker routine of taking a fast (flipping) bump over the top and landing on his feet, rushing back in and getting tossed just as fast out the other side. Almost all the rest of this is Finlay absolutely mugging Cuba. It is a true greatest hits of every piece of Finlay offense that I love: numbing bodyslams, hard strikes, cruel elbowdrops, snug cravats and chinlocks, precision kneedrops, stomping right on Cuba's chest, and drawing the match ending DQ by tying Cuba's head into the ropes and yanking on his legs. Finlay on WCW Saturday Night is some of the greatest wrestling displays in history, and this is him sharing that formula on some non-Karagias long haired shiny trunks pretty boy 5,000 miles away from Universal Studios.

TKG:  It’s Finlay beating the stew out of some putz. I will always watch that. The early elbows to the nose were so fucking great. And Finlay doing crazy flying out of the ring for de Cuba’s stuff was wild. Man when Finlay puts a guy in a crab that is a fucking deep crab.

Drew Haskins/Derrick King vs. PG-13 SAW ?/?/09

MD: My big takeaway from this is that Haskins with this same gimmick and attitude, would be pretty in demand right now. There's a pre-match promo here establishing the (newly turned?) heel character and how he's on Tiger Beat, etc., just ridiculous over the top snotty heel pretty boy claims. When he actually comes out, a big chunk of the match and commentary is based around the fact he's sans knee pads and wearing dress shoes. Dundee seemed way more into this than Wolfie, both in interacting with Haskins early on (taking the shoe off and tossing it, etc.) and the way he worked the apron during Wolfie's face-in-peril later on. Lots of charisma there still, even in 2009. This hit the marks for a TV tag match but what I'm going to remember the most is the shtick.

PAS: You don't normally see JC Ice outshticked in a match, but Drew Haskins was really on one here. The dress shoes was a great bit of nonsense, and when JC Ice wearing cut off acid washed jeans shorts and a hockey jersey is clowning your clothes you know you have really done something. I think this was hurt a bit by having most of the heat on Wolfie come during the commercial break, as it goes from heel bumbling almost directly into the count out finish, where a midget comes out and hits Wolfie with a broom. I do love watching Derrick King throw jabs, but I imagine there is a better match between these two teams out there.

ER: Hell yes, gimme something like this once a week to watch and write about, just the best kind of Wrestling is America footage you can get. Shown on regional TV, sponsored by a local bail bond company (Grumpy's) that has a crudely drawn rockabilly babe logo, Derrick King wearing hot pink gear, Drew Haskins in ice blue trunks, dress socks and loafers (wrestling in loafers is far more funny than it should be), and PG-13 looking like versions of their heyday selves who have since done time. Haskins takes great pratfalls related to his shoes, including faceplanting after tripping on the low rope getting back into the ring. Derrick King takes two of the highest backdrops, certified Memphis classics. Everyone throws punches at the level you'd want to see, with King's jabs and Wolfie's overhand right standing out especially. We even get an appearance of Half Dollar in the double count out finish, the cohort of King cohort Big Dollar. It's all classic Memphis bullshit, the best junk food.

TKG: The midget was named half dollar!!! I absolutely don’t understand how Drew Haskins didn’t become a bigger deal.

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