Found Footage Friday: ABBY~! KIMALA II~! RUSHER~! INOUE~! ORTON~! TAKER~! OMNI~!

Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala II vs. Rusher Kimura/Mighty Inoue AJPW 12/1/90

MD: Big IWE stars vs. monsters energy here, even if Rusher and Inoue were up in the years. This overachieved from my expectations, which were set in part for seeing Abby in so many short, abruptly ending tags from this era and from seeing Rusher in so many comedy matches. I love those matches by the way, but that wasn't going to work here.

What we got instead was pretty gruesome actually. Rusher bled early and they worked over the wound with headbutts, chops, and Abby just sticking his finger in the wound awesome. When Inoue got in, he turned the tables, sitting up on Abby's shoulders and poking him repeatedly with the fork until he dropped back. Then he kept it going with a bunch of awesome headlock punches until Kimala broke it up. The kept things rolling with a couple of chairshots from the outside in. Pretty valiant stuff.

Even the finish had one or two more rotations than I was expecting as Abby hit his cool Angle Slam type suplex but Inoue survived it only to get crushed with the throat shot/elbow drop combo. Post-match, Abby and Kimala bowed to all four sides. Not a lost classic but I'd say still well worth your time.

ER: This was disgusting, extremely violent, not far off from Great. Matt said gruesome and that's a good word for it. This wasn't a Fork Stabbing Abby match, this was built around punching and bleeding and digging into cuts. The match is helped by the HD of these new episodes of AJ Classics, as the second Abby is stabbing his fingers into Rusher's head I knew they weren't going to hold back. Abdullah's stiff fingered thrusts and jabs looked so painful, and it is 50-50 whether or not he had some kind of blade in his finger tape, because Rusher's head bled quick and Abby's fingertips were soon soaked red. Kimura's blood ran in rivulets down his chest and Abby dug his fingers into Rusher's cuts and the rest of his face. It was disgusting and the cameras zoomed in close on it to show the savagery. 

But these IWE guys are tough, so when Rusher finally tags in Might Inoue, Inoue shoot punches Abby in the head a couple dozen times and it's incredible. Inoue enters the ring climbing onto Abby's shoulders and just punches and stabs away at his head. Did we know Inoue was hiding a sharp object that he was going to use to scrape and stab at Abby's head while throwing shoot hammerfists? Abdullah the Butcher doesn't stab a single soul in this match with a fork, but Mighty Inoue introduces a weapon with no warning? Maybe this match is actually greater than great. When they both go down, Inoue grabs him in a headlock and throws sick blood wet splat punches repeatedly as the camera is again right on top of these slasher movie visuals. Every time Inoue ran and flew at Abby with a headbutt, you could hear his head actually smacking into Butcher's chin! He hits one in the ropes to knock Abby to the floor, and more in the ring. Great spot. Inoue's flipping senton is always so cool. It hits with impact but has the flourish and showmanship of French Catch. Abby rolling just out of the way of a senton and leading to him massacring Inoue's throat was a great late match sudden turn. Abby's Angle Slam is a really great spot and I love when he breaks it out. Using his bulk to perform weight physics is an Abby we don't get to see as often as Stabbing Abby. 

Kimala II was the odd man out in this, and he usually is, which is why I always look forward to Kimala II matches. He is the weirdest All Japan regular during their extended run of high expectancy ring work. He is clumsy, he doesn't work anywhere near as stiff as the style demands, he falls weird on offense, and despite being in his mid 20s he moves about as well as Abdullah the Butcher. But he torpedoes into the action at fun times, including a big bump thrown through the ropes to the floor. He's probably the thing holding this match from being legitimately great, but you can't deny the crowd excitement when he started slapping his belly. 

Dustin Rhodes/Ricky Steamboat/Shane Douglas vs. Steve Austin/Brian Pillman/Barry Windham WCW 2/7/93

MD: We get the last eight minutes of this and then a big post-match brawl. On the one hand, it's a shame we lose out on the elimination match because it sounds amazing on paper, but we're better off for what we do get here than nothing at all. Part of that is because Steamboat looks like the best babyface in the world here. Some of it is the way this is shot with no commentary. It just feels closer up, right in the midst of the action, and Steamboat working from underneath here is just transcendent. The way he moves his body, expanding and contracting, hanging on to the ropes, finding strength within, expressing pain and writhing emotion, is just over the top great. 

And Austin, in his own way, is almost as good. He's put upon, frustrated, aggravated that Steamboat refuses to quite, that he paints himself as so sympathetic a figure, that he dares to appeal to his humanity. At one point, Steamboat ... it's not begging off, I wouldn't say he's begging off, but he does seem to call for some level of mercy, maybe just to get things back on a more even playing field, but Austin, framing it perfectly, timing it as dramatically as possible, cinematically in a way that would only work in footage like this, that would be overwrought or overproduced on TV, literally spits on the effort. That makes it all the more poignant when Steamboat, in the midst of his big comeback, blows a mist of spit himself later on. Just really primal stuff.

That stays through into the chaotic post-match, bodies flying and violence ebbing and flowing and ebbing again. Weirdly enough, Shane Douglas might have stood out the most here, as he came off as a real powerhouse. Still, this post match, as good as it was and with a real sense of consequence for matches to come, comes off a little like a consolation prize for the elimination match we didn't get. Still, what a look at Steamboat and Austin.

Kurt Angle vs. Undertaker vs. Randy Orton vs. Mark Henry WWE 3/3/06

MD: House show match from the vault from Australia. I was expecting to see Henry assert himself. That was the draw, but really this was all about Randy Orton, especially but not only him reacting to Undertaker. It's a bit clipped and we come in after entrances with him preening in the corner only to turn around and find Taker there, going for a handshake before he gets rocked with punches. It's easy to joke about the Kyle Fletcher parallels but he was around 26 here and they're clearer here than at almost any other point of his career as best as I can remember.

This is not a version of Orton I remember well, but he was pretty effective even if I did see the strings at times. Plus it was a house show so they really played into it. There was a bit where he teased getting knocked into the crowd three or four times before finally landing on a fan's lap and thanking her after the fact. It was all pretty funny stuff. Plus he was flying around as a menace throughout, including dashing from one opportunistic pin to the next.

Angle was a bit of a non-factor overall, in part due to his current persona, I think, but just because Undertaker and Orton were taking up so much air. And then Henry just seemed there to cut people off at times. He did it effectively but his role could have been much more interesting. Still, this was fun for what it was, but it would have probably worked just as well as two singles matches. 

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Loosely Formed Thoughts on WWF Unforgiven 4/26/98

 

1. The Rock/D-Lo Brown/Mark Henry vs. Faarooq/Ken Shamrock/Steve Blackman

The Nation team is billed at 950 lb, meaning they could have gotten this to 1,000 if they subbed in Kama for D-Lo, meaning they fucked up.  

Blackman and D-Lo have very little chemistry but D-Lo's snap suplex looks excellent and Blackman throws the fastest spinning chop I've seen. 

Blackman is too hesitant this entire match and leads to awkward timing whenever he's in. He even tags back into the match when Shamrock was clearly setting Faarooq for the tag and Shamrock forces him to go back to the apron. Holy moly. Blackman has really bad timing with everyone, like he totally forgot how to bump for anything. It's really odd. Fans are noticing it and it's a bizarre choice to have him work the bulk of the match as FIP. 

Everybody is taking everybody else's offense slightly wrong, it's not just Blackman. He's merely the worst offender. 

The Rock's punch when he tags in to a dazed Faarooq is the best part of the match up to this point, and his clothesline is hard. I love all three of Mark Henry's quick elbowdrops when he tags in. Faarooq is a much cooler face in peril that Blackman but they cannot wait to get Blackman back into this match. I don't know why Steve Blackman is in this match so much. 

Blackman wailing on D-Lo with chops is a Better Blackman, and his punch exchange with The Rock felt like it should have looked a lot worse, but the Blackman FIP stuff doesn't work. People really dislike the Rock still, but they feel nothing for Blackman. He is just not a guy who should be selling in long matches like this. Use him like fucking Ernest Miller, let him fly into the ring in the last third throwing improvised kicks, don't have one of the worst physical actors on the roster go in there and sell for the bulk of your opener. 

The Faarooq hot tag could have been fire but it was way too rushed. I loved how he threw his body into the back of Mark Henry's knees and Henry took a great bump for the double leg spinebuster. Henry took another cool fall on a big Blackman kick. Shit, earlier he set up a nice powerslam on Blackman by throwing him into the Rock's knee and I didn't even mention it. Another strong Henry performance, really exposing all of us for not being fully into this guy the moment he re-debuted after his ankle injury. 

Boy this match did not work at all and on paper it really looked like it should have. This was a complete and total failure from the babyface side. Everyone in the Nation looked great, all standout performances. Faarooq's side all wrestled like they had just met each other backstage before their entrance, and none of them looked good during their brief windows to shine. Shamrock barely got involved, Blackman was taken way out of his comfort zone for far too long, hardly any focus was placed on Faarooq getting revenge on the Nation, just a full three person bag fumble. The crowd was quiet most of the match and it was due entirely to the uninspiring babyface squad. 

2. Owen Hart vs. HHH

Chyna in a tiny cage suspended near the ring feels like one of the last times Cornette convinced Vince to do a silly territory gimmick that WWF had never done at any other time. For all the things about territory work that HHH clearly never understood but constantly pretended he was an expert student, he at minimum does understand that he needs to kick the tires on the cage and rigorously test its sturdiness. 

This starts off a lot better than the opener but the crowd is still quiet. HHH bumps around ringside and Owen throws a nice headbutt that he doesn't use enough. Owen runs hard into HHH's jumping knee and it's among the best that spot has looked - equal credit to both - and Owen gets dropped kind of disgustingly chin first on the top buckle when HHH takes the legs out of his 10 count punches. 

Owen takes a lot of hard bumps in this, a great string of them. He makes all of HHH's knee offense look good, bouncing less on impact and making them look more painful. He hits the buckles really hard, and takes a couple more chin first bumps into them. This was the most spirited Owen performance since the rest of his family left for WCW 5 months prior. 

Neither of them can make HHH's Dragon Sleeper I Guess look interesting but at least HHH tries it out three different times, just in case the first two disinterested crowd reactions were a fluke. I don't think I have seen him attempt this submission before or since, but he's also done plenty of things that looked worse, so...

Chyna dangling from the cage is a really great, tremendously performed stunt spot. I forgot sometimes just how much my friends and I were excited for Chyna's further involvement in matches, dying for her to start doing more than hit Owen Hart in the balls. I forget sometimes how much of a Chyna Fan I was at 17. This was one of her greatest physical performances and a spot that looked actually dangerous the entire time it was happening. When she broke free of the little shark cage she was suspended from, and attempted to climb down it? That woman was at least 12 feet in the air, possibly higher, and did a full "hanging by one arm" stunt. Chyna was old John Cliffhanger up there, working with no safety net, with the very real possibility of her falling hard onto concrete or the entrance ramp. She was great at milking the danger, kicking her legs, making the cage sway, making it look like a struggle, making it completely impossible to focus on anything but her. What could have even been happening in the ring, HHH trying out another submission he saw a Japanese guy do better? 

Much better than their WrestleMania match, elevated by a big bumping Owen performance and Chyna's legitimately cool stunt. 

3. New Midnight Express vs. Rock n Roll Express 

I actually think it's pretty cool that they put the Rock n Rolls on a 21,000 house Greensboro show, but every criticism at the time of this match being put out there to fail, is sadly accurate. 

Bob Holly takes an awesome backwards cannonball bump to the floor from a Gibson shoulderblock, and Cornette still draws Greensboro heat by hugging him. Bart Gunn takes a nice bump off the apron too, after Ricky dodges a punch from Holly, and then they work another spot where the Midnights bump each other off the apron. The crowd should be responding much better to these bumps. 

What does not help is when Bart Gunn goes to an abdominal stretch like 2 minutes into this thing, the first heat they got on Ricky. The man tagged in and went straight to the stretch. 

Cornette plays this whole thing way too desperately, which is probably much more entertaining to the people backstage who wanted this idea to fail. I've seen Cornette start dozens of fights with referees and this is one of his worst, a fight with Tim White using the worst exaggerated "Let's Fight" mannerisms he's ever used. 

Ricky gets to take his own cool bump through the ropes to the floor and Cornette does wind up throwing the best worked punch of the match.  

I liked Robert's hot tag, leaping in quick on an advancing Bart, throwing fast punches, working 10 count punches with Ricky, sizing up the double dropkick. All of it looked good, none of it got much reaction, which is a drag. 

This was exclusively talked about at the time as something intentionally set up to look sad instead of cool, and that self-serving missions was mostly accomplished. Rock n Rolls were set up to fail in their WWF run, and that sucks because they were still a better tag team than basically any 1998 WWF tag team other than the New Age Outlaws. Robert especially was going hard every chance he got, they just couldn't have ever worked hard enough to succeed. It wasn't allowed. 

4. Evening Gown Match: Sable vs. Luna

I wonder how long it took the 40-something adult man in the front row to make his Sable Free Tongue Bath sign. This man had to go buy a poster board and at least two markers and had to have the commitment to thinking it was a great idea every step of the way. 

This is the first real misstep of their use of Sable. The WrestleMania match was excellent, and the pull apart brawl at Mayhem in Manchester was so authentic and natural that it seriously ranks as one of the best wrestling pull apart of the year. But every part of this suuuuuucks. 

The fans are undeniably into it, and that means something, but they are nowhere near as into it as they were the WM tag or the Manchester brawl. 

Also, why was Sable out there in such a dowdy gown? Talk about terrible lines and no sense of style. I know the dress wasn't staying on for long, but let's get your star in something that actually fits so she looks good in clothes before she is out of clothes. 

This whole thing is only two minutes long, and the only good part was when Sable booted Luna in the neck and then flung herself onto her and punched her several times in that same part of the neck. 

Also, it's wild how Luna often comes off as less trained than Sable. She looks lost in a two minute match where they only goal is to tear fabric, and the more of this I revisit the more I remember how Luna got 100% of the credit for anything that worked in this feud but it is very clear that Sable is responsible for all of it. Nobody was giving Sable credit in 1998 for any of this. 

It's two minutes long, Sable gets her Mama's Family funeral dress ripped off, and the whole payoff is Sable's 1990s Elizabeth Berkley long butt. The fans love to see those long flat white butts. Butts just used to be different and we can't ever put that genie back in the bottle. In 1998 America still liked 'em long and low. 

5. New Age Outlaws vs. LOD 2000

JR is still talking about the Outlaws shaving off Hawk's bi hawk like half a year ago. This entire feud is based around Hawk getting a 3/8" strip of hair shaved off part of his head two seasons ago. 

You knew the damn fix was in man, because directly after a segment where Lawler and Greensboro wolf whistled and unrolled their tongues at Sable's Classic Kelly McGillis Ass, Sunny is out here in her far and away hottest era. Her LOD 2000 gear made her look like the most incredible lead Fred Olen Ray could have found for Deathstalker III & IV. Babes don't come this hot in the apocalypse, but JR is busy talking about Hawk's mohawk. There should have been a social uprising whenever Sunny appeared in her LOD 2000 gear. 

The New Age Outlaws have aged really well as a tag act, especially during this early part of their run. They felt like a real natural team from go despite each completely languishing separately for well over a year before they teamed. Huge portions of their act would have killed in Memphis, and they threw in a lot of nuance that I didn't give them credit for at the time. I loved Road Dogg adjusting Billy's trunks for him, getting them just right while Billy was waiting to lock up. 

I also actually like this old out of shape Road Warriors era, because Hawk is still a really good puncher. So you get him pulling his tights up over his belly like a 60 year old luchador. He has no power whatsoever, but he also still hits a great fistdrop and is a great puncher. I would have watched another several years of Hawk as a punch guy. It's weird seeing a 40 year old Road Warrior work matches like 70 year old Jimmy Valiant but also I sincerely love Hawk as Jimmy Valiant. He fires off punches as well as anyone on the roster. I also remember liking 2006 Wrestling in Jeans Animal so it's possible I either have total dogshit taste or more likely really refined taste. 

Every match on this card feels like it's being worked the exact opposite from how it should be worked. Animal tags in and holds Billy in a cravat and I have no idea why we're building up to Billy's comeback but the crowd doesn't know either and they are silent. 

There's a cool and dangerous spot where Billy Gunn chops blocks Animal during the first Doomsday attempt and Animal crumples while Road Dogg just drops down onto him. That could have gone badly but instead just looked cool. The Outlaws try to get heat by working over Animal's knee, and Animal does a really great job selling the knee damage. All of the work looks good, it's just not getting any kind of response and it's always eerie when a crowd with this many people are this quiet. 

But the finish was incredibly insulting, and that's not going to help the crowd noise. Hawk pinned Road Dogg with a German suplex, they won the belts, but of course Hawk's shoulders were counted down. Why the ref was only looking at Hawk's shoulders, I don't know, you'll have to ask the Gods of the Bad Finish, but it's one of those wrestling finishes that can get no other reaction from the crowd than an annoyed "Oh seriously? Fuck off." It's a finish designed to get no heat, just insult everyone who saw it. Throw a flat as hell German suplex, ref gets down to count right next to Road Dogg's shoulders, but looks right past them to Hawk's shoulders. Nonsense. Well, have fun feuding with DOA for the rest of the year.  

6. Inferno Match: Undertaker vs. Kane

I don't know what any of us were expecting from this match. They kept details intentionally vague and I guess we were all supposed to believe that we would witness a man being burned alive, and that we were supposed to be intrigued by the idea of a man being burned alive? This PPV was primarily sold on one of these men being burned to death, and also on the possibility of you seeing Sable's tits. The Austin/Dude Love title match basically got added as the main event the week of the show. This was a PPV built on Fake Tits and Fire Death. 

Now, it's been long enough that my internal timeline has blurred and I don't actually remember if I saw this match first or if I had already traded for a 6 hour Sabu comp tape in 8th Gen quality and saw Sabu and Sheik and Onita and Tarzan Goto almost die in an outdoor wrestling fire. I had no idea who Atsushi Onita or Tarzan Goto or The Sheik were when I got that tape but I knew that it looked like several people almost died from Fire. Which match was my first Fire Match experience? That memory is lost to time. But damn this must have looked so fucking cool from the upper deck of Greensboro. The Colosseum darkened, the literal danger of INDOOR FIRE. Can you imagine being inside a building with open, flaring flames? Not me, not since the Great White incident. Fuck no. I'm not going to be one of those bodies trampled in a doorway. 

Hey, is this match actually really fucking great? This is fucking fire and it's also 300 lb. men fighting near fire! Normal Kane/Undertaker spots look better with fire! The flames shooting up the ropes when Undertaker does Old School is the best that a jumping punch to the arm is going to look. Undertaker's flipping clothesline now becomes a riveting miss because it sends him tumbling to the edge of the ring next to The Fire! And yes, they probably should have saved all of the fire flare-ups for big shit like chokeslams and Undertaker's superplex instead of doing them for every bump or impact, but it is also Very Funny seeing flames shoot up 6 feet in the air after Undertaker does a side Russian legsweep. 

A note about Kane: you know how Kane threw great worked uppercuts but couldn't throw any other kind of punch that looked good? Here he threw great overhand rights but didn't use any uppercuts at all. What is considered the Best Kane Era? 

Kane takes the biggest over the top rope bump to the floor of his life when Undertaker has to throw him far enough to clear The Fire. And how about the fucking VADER chant when Vader In Sweatpants runs down to ringside and starts punching and headbutting Kane in the face!! I get Undertaker needing someone like Vader out there to provide more landing coverage for his tope suicida over the fire. Great spot. Undertaker does a suicide dive over Fire and the crowd is left chanting for Vader. That's huge. That means something. Fans either still believed in the big man in 1998, or those Vader/Flair matches left a long lasting impression on the people of North Carolina.  

Paul Bearer hits a big bladejob after Undertaker hits him square over the head with Star Search band Sawyer Brown's kick drum. A big sweaty fat guy hitting a huge blade job is one of the great disgusting visuals unique to wrestling. You couldn't just fire up the internet in 1998 and see a fat guy bleed in a suit after a kick drum was slammed over his head. It was only a pro wrestling visual then. A fat sweaty guy dressed for the finest Sunday Service potluck gets his head busted open by the same kick drum that was used earlier in the night to perform Sawyer Brown's smash hit #1 single (from 1992) Some Girls Do.   

So it turns out the Inferno Match is really good. Let's turn this one into the new King of the Road Match. This one is due some revisionist history I think. I had openly wondered what the best Undertaker/Kane singles match was, and this has to be one of the absolute top contenders. Great spectacle.  

6. Steve Austin vs. Dude Love 

The wrestling sections in this were so much fun, and I love how it evolved from a classic wrestling match into sick bumps and bullshit. Dude Love running the ropes all fast and sloppy and Austin rolling in with a perfect dropdown, catching Dude on the run with a Thesz press. That falling elbow Austin does is one of my favorite moves in wrestling. I'm a person who hates having my neck touched, hates shirts that are too tight and rub against my neck, hated playing night game baseball in high school because it meant turtlenecks under my uniform. So I can't really picture the kind of trust I would need to have to be okay with Steve Austin sending the point of his elbow down towards my Adam's apple only to stop a couple centimeters short. It's one of our purest pieces of worked pro wrestling offense. 

All of Austin's classic pro wrestling exchanges look great, but when he throws Dude off the stage we all know a guy splatting onto concrete so early in the match meant that there was a chance Foley might do something even more painful. 

Nobody had lower crotches on his tights than Foley. Dude's tights fit like old long johns.

Austin is a guy who knew how to capitalize on Foley as an opponent. I guess a lot of guys did that - he took some terrible beatings - but you can tell Austin is really sinking things in. He back elbows his way out of a body vice (a Dude Love body vice!) and runs clotheslines at him as hard as he can. 

This is the first time (of what would be many times) that they milked the Montreal Screwjob as a Vince Tactic. I don't know if anybody I knew in 97/98 actually knew what actually happened in Montreal at this point in our lives and probably just assumed that Vince stopping matches was just going to be a finish we'd get every few months. We had a party to watch Wrestling With Shadows when it aired on A&E, but that was several months after this match. I don't remember how effective this angle was to me and my friends as teenagers, how much we bought into the worked shoot that we wouldn't have known was a work or a shoot. 

Foley does save some really great bumps for the finishing stretch, bouncing off concrete, getting tossed over the guardrail and back, and getting suplex off several corners of the ring steps. I'm not sure you could have suplexed a man into a more painful part of the ring steps. All edges. 

Vince McMahon takes a chairshot right off the side of his fucking head, a completely insane thing for a man with real money to be willing to do. Vince was willing to take a harder chairshot than Foley took (*in this match) and Austin was a man being paid to hit a sociopath in the side of the head with a chair. No wonder we all loved the Austin/Vince stuff so much. 

Well, this was an overall underwhelming PPV, and it all started so promising with a direly serious Undertaker/Kane video package that's nothing but grim allusions to an afterlife spent in hell, broken up bouncily with a "1-800-COLLECT PRESENTS...." It's tough to top that. 

Best Matches:

1. Steve Austin vs. Dude Love

2. Undertaker vs. Kane

3. Owen Hart vs. HHH

Worst Matches: 

1. Sable vs. Luna

2. The Nation vs. Faarooq/Ken Shamrock/Steve Blackman

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Loosely Formed 1998 WWF: Mark Henry's First Great Performance

Mark Henry vs. Owen Hart WWF Raw 3/2

I thought this was a really great Mark Henry performance. The first great Mark Henry performance. A great performance from a man who literally all of us missed on for four years. You can see here how great he was at taking all of Owen's offense AS a superheavyweight (important), selling everything appropriately and to the degree it needed to be sold. 

Henry's bump through the ropes to the floor on a spinning heel kick looked was so well done, and it's the way he leans into Owen's baseball slide dropkick and bumps back flat on the floor. Later he takes a similar bump off a nice Owen missile dropkick, taking it all with his chest and flying straight back. 

Criticizing Owen's ring work is one of my least favorite things, but man Owen had some bad looking offense here. Brother, it's just flat out stupid to do shoulderblocks to the stomach of a man like Mark Henry. Look at how ridiculous Owen looks trying to hold Henry in the corner while jamming his shoulder into his stomach! Why is he doing them? One of my least favorite parts of Owen's in-ring is the way he auto pilots his way through matches, and has these moments where he only knows how to do one thing one specific way, regardless of who his opponent is. He knows how to move a match from A to B to C, but he doesn't change his A to B to C to account for differences in opponent. So while it might make sense for him to throw shoulderblocks in the corner at Jeff Jarrett, it looks absurd against Henry. Henry is the one who should be throwing shoulderblocks, and when he does exactly that later in the match, it only makes Owen's look sillier. When he's kicking away at Henry's leg? Perfect. But come on, it looks ridiculous to put a man that size in the sharpshooter (even if I liked how Owen bumped when he got kicked off his sharpshooter attempts). 

If you compare their selling over the course of the match, it is not a favorable comparison for Owen. Henry builds to his bumps and knows how to sell the size difference, meanwhile Owen is the one taking a strong backbreaker and elbowdrop only to jump up to his feet like nothing at all happened to him when Henry misses his next elbow. Owen is working the match in segments, while Henry is working it as a complete match. When a segment is done, Owen basically claps his hands and moves on to the next section, ignoring everything that just happened. Henry is just out here working a full match. 

I loved the way Henry threw himself into his misses. The leaping elbowdrop miss was the best, but his missed charge into the turnbuckles looked great, better than Owen's. I love the Bret chest first bump as it always looked like it shifted his whole skeleton and usually lead to his opponent taking over for long control. Owen never uses it meaningfully, and seems to just do it because his brother did it. Henry's version actually makes sense within the match. Also, Henry's missed seated splash on Owen's sunset flip attempt (and the subsequent ass cheek sell) was sweet sweet icing. 

BUT maybe the coolest thing Henry did in the match, was the way he RAN toward Owen after whipping him into the corner, before throwing him with a belly to belly. The best wrestlers in wrestling history would have just let Owen recoil and stumble out towards them before hitting their move, but running to meet him right after the recoil and then waiting a beat before throwing him, now that's brilliant. 

I think it's safe to say that this is the first match where Mark Henry looked Actually Good. I don't think this level of performance keeps up through 1998, but this is like finding the good Tamon Honda performances from the 90s that nobody actually talked about in the 90s. 

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WWF 305 Live: Vader vs. Henry!

Vader vs. Mark Henry WWF Sunday Night Heat 8/9/98 - VERY GOOD

ER: This was the 4th and final taped Vader/Henry bout, coming after their match at Fully Loaded. I thought what was most notable about it was how damn good Mark Henry looked, and how sad and sluggish Vader looked. I'm always hesitant to say someone is checked out, but Vader actually looked good in early '98 and this wasn't that. The most joy Vader brought here was during his entrance, which had so much wonderful hand dancing and shoulder shrugging, shimmying down the ramp while shoulder shrugging his way over to ringside fans. Vader had the kind of movement that would make him a consummate dancer and entertainer during literally any wedding. If Vader was just an uncle at a wedding and not one of the greatest wrestlers of my lifetime, I don't think I would be able to concentrate on anything else in the room once he took the dance floor. You're a beautiful dancer, Vader. 

But all of that pep he showed during his entrance kind of vanished during the match. There were some shockingly lazy moments that I wouldn't associate with someone as high end as Vader, and now I'm wondering if there are other late run WWF matches where he coasts been more. This was Vader just a couple months before returning to All Japan, so honestly why not coast down the stretch, but it's still surprising to see him do things like slowly walk far too long backwards to get into position to be Irish whipped. He doesn't cut corners like that. Vader is someone you can always rely on to punch someone in the ear to get him into position, so seeing a few moments where he just casually walked into position for offense looked bad. 

And yet, Mark Henry looked like the wrestler many of us would catch fire for heavily praising 5 years later. While Vader looked like he was holding back on his ear cupping punches and heavy clotheslines, Henry went full force. Vader doesn't budge Henry on a couple of shoulderblocks, and early in the match Henry actually pulls off a press slam on Vader. It's quick, and Vader lands it on his feet, falling to his stomach and rolling to the floor. There's a sad Vader stair bump in here, where Henry throws Vader into the ring steps and Vader just kind of gently pops into them, but Mark Henry responds with what had to have been his best punches of 1998, right to the side of Vader's head. Vader looked listless, but got great height and impact on his standing splash and even busted Henry's mouth open. Henry looked incredible with a blood red mouth. They should have found the best shot of him with a bloody mouth and used it on every Titantron video and t-shirt for the man. I thought the DQ finish was really great: Henry hitting his own standing splash once, twice, a three times, JR getting excited talking about Vader's potential internal injuries by the second splash.  

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Loosely Formed Statements on WWF's No Way Out of Texas 2/15/98

 

1. Marc Mero/Goldust vs. The Head Bangers

Marc Mero is a 1998 Rising Stock. Always on. Endless energy. 

Marc Mero's high back elbow and precise elbowdrop. Stocking Rising. 

Marc Mero's ass over crown bump to the floor for a Mosh lariat. Heat Seeker. 

Goldust working dropdowns and leapfrogs and a high backdrop bump in black lingerie. Picturing him working 2000s AAA. 

Marc Mero draws real heat. His bumps for Thrasher's shoulderblocks are real. Online Mero Discourse will swell. 

We get real blood 10 minutes into No Way Out of Texas. Thrasher takes a real manly bump when Goldust snake eyes him onto the ring steps. Blood spidering down his face. Match at a new level. 

Mero - the worker of 1998 WWF - immediately targets the cut whenever he is in, including stomping Thrasher all over the cut to spread the blood. 

We'll see if any chant will be louder during any other match than this MERO SUCKS chants. Scotching heat in February. That's before he unwraps some wrist tape and chokes Thrasher until the tape is red, and then the chants resume. 

Mosh has four sincerely great punches on his hot tag. 

2. Pantera vs. Taka Michinoku

Pantera has the greatest offense. Multiple rolling armdrags, THAT running swanton to the floor, a tricked out headscissors that felt more World of Sport than lucha, and a fast flipping bump to the floor. 

Taka's springboard plancha flies 4 feet past the guardrail into the entrance.

Pantera's rolling headscissors from the top rope to the apron is in the discussion of Greatest Headscissors in History. The tope diagonally past the ringpost was triumphant garnish. 

Well Brian Christopher called Taka Michinoku "slant eyed" on commentary. Jesus. 

Cools down a bit when Pantera is working over Taka's back, but I like it. 

The cooldown burst into flames when Taka took one of the highest bumps over the top to the floor that I've ever seen, moments before Pantera leapt over the top rope with his running senton, the most incredible move on 1998 wrestling TV. 

The cool back work stretch is paid off many times over when Pantera fills every bit of space with elbowdrops aimed with precision at Taka's lower back, and two different backbreakers that looked...backbreaking. 

Pantera pulls off an effortlessly accurate top rope moonsault, the way I might take a bite out of a sandwich, then snaps off a hurricanrana with both of them jumping off the top rope just as easily. 

Brian Christopher was a...real presence...on commentary. The entire match. You have never heard louder slurs on commentary. 

3. The Quebecers vs. The Godwinns

I'm not sure why they even brought in the Quebecers in 1998. They brought them back to Raw with no re-introduction, just the two of them wearing the blandest and worst gear of their respective careers. Still a good team, but out of place and oddly presented. 

Rougeau keeps ducking Phineas's lock ups and then yells "How about those Canadians, eh?" to the crowd like a prick. 

Jacques is out here getting mowed over by shoulderblocks, and when Pierre tags in he starts working wristlock exchanges with Henry. It's kind of silly, but those big boys did really yank the hell out of those arms. 

Phineas works really vicious with Jacques. He hits a full on Glacier front kick into Jacques's stomach and tries to pull his arm off with a single arm DDT. 

Henry drops his head and Jacques kicks him hard right across the chest. Pierre is the only guy not throwing leather so far. 

They're working this as a classic WWF heel in peril match, the crowd completely silent as the Godwinns cut Jacques off from Pierre. For some reason, the fans do not cheer for Rougeau's sunset flip nearfall, and I have no idea what crowd reaction they were expecting when Henry held Jacques in a chinlock that could only build to Jacques fighting back to his feet. 

The match is actually really good but the role reversal fucks everything up. 

The fans do not want to see Jacques make a hot tag to Pierre. The cannonball that they hit is not triumphant. 

Jacques hits a pretty crazy plancha off the top to the floor, crashing into Henry. 

Everything was completely backward and the crowd was icy but it was a good tag if you pretend it was in Montreal with a poorly mic'd crowd. 

4. Bradshaw vs. Jeff Jarrett 

Say what you will about Cornette being given a dead in the water idea, but I loved the short-lived NWA stable. What a bunch of weirdos. Windham, the Rock n Rolls, and Jeff Jarrett with my favorite gear and hair of his career. Robert Gibson is wearing a duster with county fair sweatshirt art of him and Ricky on the back. 

The opening is really well worked, just Bradshaw swinging arms and chaps and boots at Jarrett and Jarrett taking all of it. I loved when Bradshaw ducked down and Jarrett finally landed something, a stiff kick to Bradshaw's chest, and Bradshaw just straightened up and booted Jarrett in the face. 

It's funny when they exchange strikes, as Jarrett is doing these nice worked right hands but Bradshaw is just hauling back and smashing Jarrett with the edge of his elbow. 

I appreciate JR pushing the story that Jarrett knew to target Bradshaw's knee because Barry Windham told him about Bradshaw's knee in secret, because I guess it's better than telling the story of Jarrett targeting the two foot long braced kneepad that covers most of Bradshaw's left leg.

All of Jarrett's kicks to Bradshaw's leg look good, but none of it leads to anything. 

This was a lot better when it was Bradshaw laying waste to Jarrett and the NWA. It loses steam once they went into more of a back and forth. 

When the NWA runs out after the match, Robert Gibson takes a really fast, pretty crazy bump to the floor. I have to remind myself that Gibson was only 39 during this run and was really busting his ass. 

5. Faarooq/The Rock/Kama Mustafa/Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown vs. Ken Shamrock/Ahmed Johnson/Chainz/Skull/8-Ball

I remember watching this PPV a couple days after it aired, getting the tape from a friend whose dad had a co-worker who taped the PPVs. Something something the kids will never understand what we went through. If your parents didn't let you actually order PPVs, that's how you got to see a PPV in 1998. 

I remember watching this match before school, and my dad getting actually offended by them clearly running a team of militant black people opposite several white supremacists. My parents already hated pro wrestling because of its stupidity. I don't think my dad had ever even considered that there would be angles with white supremacist good guys. I remember him reading the paper and putting it down, saying "It's VERY clear what they're trying to imply here" and being mad about it. 

This match was set up by The Rock hitting Shamrock in the face with one of the most disgusting chairshots in history. 

Does anyone actually know any differences between Skull and 8-Ball? Is one of them better than the other? Does anyone actually know which one is which? Did they themselves actually keep track of which was Skull and which was 8-Ball? When JR tells me that Skull is in against D-Lo, should I trust him? Should I trust JR to know the separate identities of Skull and 8-Ball, even though this is a War of Attrition match and JR very clearly did not know the definition of "attrition" when Lawler asked him to define it, and JR had to use schoolyard tacts like "*I* know what it is, do you?" until the moment you can tell someone came on the headset and told him the definition. You can tell someone came on, as JR was *floundering* and fucking seething at Lawler for pressing him on this, and after 20 agonizing seconds suddenly JR blurted out 6 synonyms for "attrition". (Skull has a slightly rounder face, FYI)

Shamrock dumps himself on his head doing a Japanese armdrag to D-Lo. 

Chainz drops several fast elbowdrops but I'm not sure if any of them are good. His big boot is better. 

Mark Henry looks like a total badass calling for Ahmed, and the crowd really comes alive when he and Ahmed start wailing on each other. 

D-Lo does a frog splash onto Ahmed's ass and legs, committing to the splash even as it looked like Ahmed was a man not expecting a frog splash. 

It is wild how much smaller Shamrock looks than everyone else in the match. 

Who could possibly give a shit that D-Lo Brown is a Certified Public Accountant, JR? How would that be interesting to any person watching D-Lo Brown in this War of Attrition? Talk about his nice Hitman elbowdrop.

Jesus now JR is talking about The Rock's degrees. JR tanked this match. They're fucking fighting JR, stop talking about everyone's fucking GPA. 

6. Vader vs. Kane

The cameras cut away just as Vader was about to do some V-hand crab dancing and shit this company hasn't known how to film wrestling in 25 years. 

Vader is throwing punches straight at Kane's forehead and then swinging his whole arm into the side of Kane's head. 

Vader gets a rear waistlock and grabs Kane by the hair with his left hand so he can punch Kane in the back of the head a bunch with his right, including one shot from behind that snuck up and under into Kane's temple. 

Kane isn't bad in control, but things are much better whenever it is Vader punching Kane in the head. 

Vader has taken big bumps for clotheslines. 

My dad would have made such a good Paul Bearer, if he was someone who ever dressed up in a costume for any reason (I have never seen my dad in any costume for any reason). My dad is more handsome than Paul Bearer, but the body shape and parted brown hair are too similar. 

Kane does his uppercut but he hadn't learned how to arm slap yet. 

Vader tests just how sturdy Kane's mask is by punching him directly into the face six times until Kane literally responds as if he's being swarmed by bees. 

Kane is wearing some insane Boris Karloff lifts, and whenever Vader rocks him with a standing clothesline you can really see them throwing Kane off balance. 

Does Vader have the best standing splash? It's up there. 

Kane's strikes don't look great, his top rope clothesline doesn't look great, but there's absolutely no denying how awesome it looks seeing Vader get tombstoned. 

7. Savio Vega/HHH/New Age Outlaws vs. Steve Austin/Cactus Jack/Chainsaw Charlie/Owen Hart

Savio Vega sure makes a lot of sense as a kayfabe partner and as a guy who would be able to work this match, but when a teenager hears Mystery Partner and that Mystery is replacing the World Heavyweight Champion, well...

All of the Austin/Gunn exchanges are really great. Gunn scrambling out of the ring to avoid a Stunner, then bashing Austin with the edge of a trash can on the floor, Austin running him the hell over with a clothesline, beating him with 1998 chairshots

Billy Gunn is doing all of Hunter's Flair bumps better than Hunter

Funk is in there taking nothing but damage, beaten by trash cans, getting powerbombed through a pair of chairs, taking a piledriver on a trash can lid, back suplex onto a lid, also threw a trash can into the air and taking the hit when it comes back down.

Billy Gunn has that Paul Koslo weave

Cutting Funk off from everyone else is a cool way to work this 8 man

Austin throws a mashed up trash can so hard at Billy Gunn's head, and again, Gunn bumping for Austin is perfection

Nobody backstage told Savio and Funk that they were wearing the same thing? Both got that big ol dad butt denim 

Owen Hart's best role is running in from the apron to back off DX, and then returning to the apron. He hits a great missile dropkick into Savio and later runs across the ring to hit a big dropkick and take swings at all of them. 

Ending is a bit abrupt, with Austin tagging in, wasting everyone quickly, and then just hitting a Stunner on Road Dogg, but the match was a really fun brawl. 

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WWE 305: Moondog Spot!! Cousin Junior!! Big Show!

Moondog Spot vs. Cousin Junior WWF 11/10/85 - EPIC

ER: This kicked so much ass. I loved this match. They built to big spots well and Moondog had a real great carry job, working a match around Cousin Junior's surprising bursts of speed, his good bumping, and his 2 or 3 cool highspots. Moondog would fill in the downtime with great cutoffs, and I'm not just talking about his jeans. Gorilla and Jesse turned in an excellent commentary performance, going on some genuinely laugh out loud tangents, like Gorilla laughing about Pigeon Forge, TN while Jesse is telling him that Gorilla's career isn't as impressive as he thought it was, since Gorilla had never main evented a show in Pigeon Forge. Later they go on about what cut of meat Moondog's bone came from, with Gorilla detailing just how long it's taken Spot to get the bone as clean as it is, picking off all the meat scraps. It's genuinely great material. 

Moondog was really great at letting all of Junior's spots shine, like his cool mule kick or heavy crossbody, and they kept working fast impressive rope running with nice dropdowns and leapfrogs. Moondog cuts off a bunch of Junior's charges with knees to the gut or great punches. Spot throws a headlock punch with a fist shakeout afterward that made me want to write up every Larry Latham match I have access to. He hits two cool as hell fistdrops off the middle rope and throws Junior into a hard bump on the entrance ramp (where a Maple Leaf Gardens security guard literally tickles Junior's feet???). The match also has an unexpectedly cool finish, with Moondog catching Junior and about to hit a big powerslam, but Junior rolls through the slam with a really nice cradle! Everything about this was a real gem: Great Moondog performance, super spirited Cousin Junior performance, and some classic Ventura/Monsoon commentary. 

Big Show vs. Mark Henry WWE Raw 6/29/15 - SKIPPABLE

ER: This must have been during a period where they needed to make Big Show look strong again, so they did that thing where he beats someone really big really quick. Like, we need to make Big Show a main event title threat again, have him beat Mark Henry in under 90 seconds! And it was kind of like Henry was being directed to not go as hard on Show as Show went on Henry, so that Show looked more dominant. Henry held up a bit on his standing splash and wasn't throwing his punches as snug as Show was throwing his. If I was there live for this match, I would have been losing my shit knowing I was getting a Show/Henry singles match. And then I would have been livid seeing Henry downed by a KO punch in under 90 seconds. In 2009 I went to a Raw taping in Oakland that was supposed to have Mark Henry vs. Shawn Michaels. I was not a fan of Michaels by 2009, but Henry/Michaels is a singles match that only happened once before, and I think a 2009 singles match between them would have been really good. The match ended by DQ 1 minute in and I drove home pissed (the rest of the show was not great either).

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WWF Raw 6/15/98: A Great Episode of Wrestling TV

Vader vs. The Rock

ER: Even though they were in the same fed for two years, Rock and Vader aren't two guys I think about matching up too often. It's a cool match, and it did happen a couple times, but my brain thinks of them as from two different eras. And I think this is our only Vader match vs. "The Rock" as opposed to Rocky Maivia which is a whole other thing. There were a bunch of Vader/Rock matches from 10/98, and my reaction to that was "Wait Vader was still in WWF in October of 1998?" Babyface Vader just crushing the Rock is really damn fun, and Rock is game to get rocked. Vader hits some nice avalanches (loved his short arm lefty clothesline as Rock staggers out from the corner), a bear attack, a big splash off the middle buckle and also a great standing splash. Vader takes a big bump to the floor off a Rock clothesline and while down there takes a standing splash from Mark Henry. Mark Henry had nearly the exact same form on his standing splash as Vader did, which is cool. The match simply ends with a Rock Bottom after the Mark Henry interference, but this was a cool bit of megastars who barely missed each other colliding. 

 

Darren Drozdov vs. Jeff Jarrett

ER: This match was not much, nor was it meant to be much. It runs about 2 minutes, focuses a lot of attention on Marc Mero/Jacqueline at ringside, and mostly appears to be killing time until Mero punching Jarrett in the balls. I am still curious whether Droz actually got good before his injury, because he does not look ready for Raw so far. Some of the spot set ups are unintentionally humorous, like Droz doing a big boot so that Jarrett can catch it and sweep a leg, and a lot of the problem is that Droz doesn't move around the ring who understands wrestling. I'm curious if he found a steady moveset that fit him or got more comfortable in there, because right now he feels like an undercooked Power Plant guy, only without the cool danger of a Power Plant guy. 

Chainz vs. Val Venis

ER: Now this I thought was really good. Val Venis was really good in 1998, and I think his offense would have made him a really good regular All Japan gaijin if he had made a different career decision. He did a couple of All Japan tours the year before and I really would have loved to see him settle in with that 98/99 AJPW roster. Chainz could have done well in Japan too, and his cool offense really made this in a hard scrabble match, a nice 1998 TV gem between two guys nobody remembers having a 5 minute TV match. They both kick each other in the face with big boots and mafia kicks, Venis took a high backdrop, Chainz took a hard bump on a snap suplex, and all of the strikes looked great. Venis had a few different strikes he threw from a couple angles, a big looping low starting arm slot uppercut (which is honestly one of the best  strikes in 1998 WWF) and a full body knife edge chop. Chainz throws some strong turnbuckle mount punches and throws a great overhand right up at Venis while Venis was on the top rope. This had the stronger pacing of a same era WCW TV match, and even though they weren't getting a lot of reaction for what they were doing, it didn't stop them from hitting each other. Venis buries his knee on his kitchen sinks, and Chainz has these awesome fast drop running elbow drops, tons of action crammed into its run time. This is the kind of gem you'd hope to see on WCW Worldwide or WWF Velocity. 

Dustin Runnels vs. Marc Mero

ER: Dustin gets the sad "already waiting in the ring" entrance, but the Texas crowd still reacts louder for him than many other people on the show. The match was much more angle than match, and there's a certain awkwardness that comes with a 4 minute match that's playing into more than one angle. Not only is it very obvious that Sable is going to show up, but Jeff Jarrett and Southern Justice are also at ringside the entire match, so you have two pros not working a match with any throughlines, just filling time. And two pros filling time is kind of cool, because none of it is going to flow anyway, the two guys know that the cameras are going to constantly be cutting to people at ringside, so you might as well break out some neat stuff in a vacuum. Dustin flies full speed into armdrags and throws a couple of his own, and I just love how Dustin takes arm drags. Mero even hits a powerbomb at one point! No real set up for it, just decided to powerbomb Dustin in the middle of all this. The distraction finish is a real fun lemons into lemonade situation, as Sable comes down to distract Mero, but instead of Dustin getting just a simple schoolboy on Mero he runs into the frame with an awesome bulldog. Dustin has one of wrestling's greatest ever bulldogs, and beating a distracted man with something cool like that will always be more interesting that the distraction -> rollup finish they went to a ton in this era. 

X-Pac vs. HHH

ER: I remember my friend being so excited for this match, a big Waltman fan who had been wondering every week since he returned to WWF and was just WAITING for him to actually wrestle. The crowd seemed both excited for the match (and not knowing what would happen in a singles match between two members of DX) and also like they had no idea how to react. They seem to root for X-Pac, but he also had the flashier highspots, but mostly had no idea how to react. X-Pac looked great in his in-ring return, and I'm not sure he has hit as many of his kicks this squarely under the chin in any match. HHH was good at doing his fast back bumps for X-Pac's kicks. Yes I know that these are the exact same fast back bumps that HHH takes for every single strike, but Pac's kicks earned those bumps. His leaping spin kick is really great and he was throwing all of them with real accuracy. Almost all of HHH's offense is based off Irish whips, the kind of thing you can't unsee, but X-Pac is one of the few wrestlers who can take an insanely violent Irish whip bump off a turnbuckle. Pac flies into the buckles so hard a couple of times that I have no clue how they weren't skeleton shifting. Both guys took big bumps to the floor (both seem to be in competition to see who takes a faster bump to the floor, and we ALL win), but this was a real X-Pac showcase, and you could see HHH actually wanting X-Pac to be showcased, and that is the unique thing about HHH working matches against his friends. 

Mark Henry/Owen Hart vs. Dan Severn/Ken Shamrock

ER: This kicked so much ass. Every pairing brings something really original and it had a really quick violent pace for its 5 minute runtime. Shamrock/Owen was a hot opening, with both going really fast. Owens hits a fast spinning heel kick and Shamrock just cannonballs himself into Owen at full speed. There's this awesome competitive vibe to the Henry/Shamrock section, as Shamrock drops a charging Henry with a drop toehold, and it looked messy which made it look better, like Henry was getting dropped by a spike strip. Henry took it like a man not quite expecting to go down from a drop toehold, which is of course going to make it look better. Henry was much better much earlier than we gave him credit for. Even us Henry stalwarts didn't really start beating the drum unit 02/03. What change did many of us go through collectively in 2003 when we realized how we had completely ignored Honda and Henry up until then? After Henry got taken down, he scrambled to his feet faster than Shamrock, which looked really cool, and I love Henry's full rotation powerslam. 

Severn/Henry is an awesome encounter I didn't know we ever got, and Severn hits a big belly to belly that really looks like he deadlifts Henry, and also has the gall to try to hit a German suplex (Henry throws a back elbow right to the temple to shut that idea down). Severn/Henry is just a cool match up that we should have got again, but they were moving Henry into a Vader feud, and instead Severn fought mostly against Owen for the rest of his WWF run. But we got a minute of Severn and Henry and it was what you would want. Owen and Severn were very good together, with Owen especially good at moving around the kind of non-moving Severn. Severn wound up in some wrong places some of the time and kind of stood still (this was a feature of Severn that I enjoy, I don't view it as a bug), but the two of them had a killer mat scramble and Owen looked like he could have taken him. Severn also must have still been imagining he was giving Mark Henry a German, because he LAUNCHED Owen over quickly with a German so fast that it surprised JR. This ended in a big huge schmozz with DX and The Nation and Vader all running down to fight, great way to protect everyone while still having a cool match. 

PAS: This was Owen Hart and three mega athletic guys who clearly didn't fully grasp pro-wrestling. Hart kept it together, while the other guys did a bunch of cool looking things which were 10% off from the way wrestlers work things. Shamrock was so jacked up everytime he is in the ring, and hits this crazy spinning bodypress. Loved the Severn vs. Henry stuff, including Severn hitting a couple of big suplexes on Mark. Green Henry ruled, he always looked like he was going rip someones arm off. I would have loved to see what he could have done in a shootstyle fed.

Tag Team Royal Rumble

ER: This was weird but kind of good in that good 90s battle royal way. But this was a tag team royal rumble, which was clunky to start but got to the right place. They must have been running short on time, as they had teams enter every 30 seconds. 30 seconds is close enough between that you wonder if things would have just been more satisfying had everyone started in the ring like a traditional battle royal. By the time all the teams were in only a few minutes had gone by and only the New Midnight Express had been eliminated. So with the quick entrances they may as well have just started with everyone in the ring, as they basically got to that point anyway. But once the rules silliness and quick entrances were out of the way, it was easy to just settle in and enjoy the wonderful little battle royal details that we got: 

This was obviously a hugely emotional battle royal, as a few of these teams never teamed again. Faarooq and Steve Blackman (a team that had several matches as a team! And disappointingly they did not team long enough for Russo to brand them Two BlackMen) never teamed again, unable to get past their battle royal loss. Same thing with the team of Bradshaw and Taka Michinoku (who clearly would have already been slotted into the team name of Bradshaw and Rickshaw by Russo), and this might have been our final appearance of the only mildly cool era of the Oddities, when they still had carnival music and were both heels, Kurrgan still in his black tights and Golga in his filthy brown gear. We got some bizarre interactions, with none weirder than Terry Funk getting into it with Kurrgan. Funk throws some truly terrible looking strikes that also probably felt stiff as hell, but it's the exact kind of thing you want from a battle royal, because who else ever realized that there was any kind of Terry Funk/Kurrgan interaction? The eliminations come quick and several guys take hard spills. Taka gets press slammed to the floor, Brian Christopher gets eliminated, then kicks a just-eliminated Mosh on his way to the back, Bradshaw throws a couple of stiff full arms strikes to Kurrgan, and unexpectedly the battle royal comes down to Kane/Mankind and....Funk/Scorpio. Kane makes a Scorpio spin kick look terrible, Funk hits a full swing chairshot on Kane, then takes one from Mankind right to the face, and by the end this had more than enough moments of small joy to make this a recommendable battle royal. 

The show ends with a bunch of great chaos that I remember from watching in high school. Once Paul Bearer came out and the Cell lowered, I thought "Doesn't Bearer hit a big blade job here?" And he does! Kane and Mankind are out to take on Austin and Taker in a Hell in a Cell, with the Texas crowd clearly waiting around all night JUST to see Austin run out and attack people. Austin gets into it with Kane and Mankind, Bearer is inside the ring/Cell, Taker rips his way up from underneath the ring to surprise Bearer, and the beating Bearer takes is really well done. The blade job looks great, Taker looks like he really kicks him several times in the ribs and scrapes his face across the Cell, Kane climbs to the top of the Cell to try to get in and help Bearer, great chaos. All I could think of was how cool it would be to be there live watching, seeing Kane scale the Cell, seeing Bearer bleed out, love it. 

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WWF Raw 6/8/98: A Fine Episode of Wrestling TV

I didn't feel like watching AEW tonight, but here's an old episode of Raw filled with a ton of pairings that I loved. I did not write about any of the DX segments, but they happened - were plentiful - and were skipped. 

Kama Mustafa vs. Ken Shamrock

ER: This was an opening round King of the Ring match, and they worked it like a 3 minute round in a Different Style Fight. That's exactly what you want from this pairing, and it's one of the best Kama performances we have. He came off like a cool shoot fighting monster here, integrating kicks and strikes with cool big man pro wrestling like a heavy avalanche, hard clothesline to Shamrock's chest, and a brick wall shoulderblock. This had a nice Brawl for All feel to it, but if the fights were actually interesting in a worked way. Kama should have worked like this more often. Shamrock always tried weird things in the first year of his WWF run, here he gets caught in a big slam after leaping up knees first into Kama's shoulders like he was going for his rana on someone super tall, or adlibbing a chest breaker. Shamrock gets a cool roll into the ankle lock, this whole thing ruled. 

Marc Mero/Jeff Jarrett vs. Faarooq/Steve Blackman 

ER: This tag has a cool FMW feel to it, even though it features four guys who didn't work FMW. It's got a martial arts guy, a boxer, a Memphis guy, and a tough guy power wrestler. And they all wrestled as those exact styles so the whole thing was a constant style clash in the best way. Blackman was working somewhat awkwardly timed karate sequences, Jarrett caught Blackman in a nice Russian legsweep, Mero threw punches, Faarooq threw big blocks into shoulder joints and yanked on an arm, it was great. Over in less than 3 minutes, cool combination of the roster. 

Scorpio vs. Owen Hart

ER: This was always a great pairing, and this match is no different. We got this pairing a lot, and it felt more like a regular WCW series, like Malenko/Eddie. The crowd was real icy here for no reason, certainly not for lack of effort. I think Scorpio was pretty low profile at that point and people weren't taking to Owen's tough whiny guy heel turn. Confusing characters aside, the ring action was as fun as you'd expect. They were the only guys on this episode to go off the top rope, and they still worked as snug as the other matches. So you had sturdy landing German suplexes and a big heavy Scorpio crossbody, each had stiff spinkick variations, nice mix of snug work and flying. Owen takes out Scorpio's leg with a real nasty chop block, cool way to set up a submission finish. 

Chainz vs. Darren Drozdov

ER: Chainz was the worker of DOA, but it was pretty surprising to see him (fairly easily) beat Drozdov here. I liked the way they ran into each other, liked how Chainz actually made Droz duck on clotheslines, and thought Chainz made good use of his offense. He's got a good big boot, and a great high rotation powerslam, and he missed a kneedrop off the middle turnbuckle like he was Bobby Eaton. Droz at this point didn't have the poise of a wrestler, not quite blending from one spot to the next very well. Did that get better by a year later? I honestly don't remember anything about the in ring abilities of 1999 Droz. Chainz was gone from WWF this same month, so again it's so weird seeing him get a clean win off a Death Valley driver (was that Chainz' finisher?), but hey, I'm a Chainz guy. 

Mark Henry vs. Vader

ER: These two weren't in the same place for long, so I'm glad we got a few singles matches out of it. This was the first of their singles matches, and I imagine if these two crossed paths in another time, another place, we could have had some real classics. I still loved what little we got here, it really felt like something that could have been good for both if they ran with it. You know it's a big hoss battle when JR compares them to at least four different kinds of animal (we got bulls, Clydesdales, thankfully avoided comparison to large apes, but I got nervous the more he kept running through the large mammals), and it's awesome that these two are not only identically sized but really similarly built. They both do cool full arm strikes while refusing to budge, both standing chest to chest and throwing arms at the side of heads. 

Henry leans way into throwing a huge elbow strike, Vader boxes his ears, and we get some cool attempts at Vader slamming Henry. Henry makes a show of doing a clean jerk on Vader, snatching him up and walking with him a bit before slamming, and then hits a great elbowdrop and great legdrop (Vader sells the legdrop like Henry landed all his weight on his eye socket). It feels like a big moment when Vader finally bodyslams Henry, and I liked how they set up Henry powerslamming Vader, with Vader leaping off the middle buckle into him and Henry turning it into a slam. Sadly, Taker limps down to the ring wearing sweatpants and a weightlifting sweatshirt that hugs his gut, then relies on these two leaping into his chokeslam. Taker was interrupting stuff all night and it made Henry and Vader look like real dweebs to just lie there and put up literally no fight whatsoever. They should have flattened him together and then formed an unstoppable monster tag team, then taken that tag team to All Japan. 

D-Lo Brown vs. Dan Severn

ER: Thankless crowd, but some great stuff happened here. Severn was a little slow on the draw, more hesitation than in his other WWF matches so far, but D-Lo did a really great job of filling in the gaps. Severn kept locking in these real constricting rear waistlocks that led to some heavy landing amateur takedowns. D-Lo throws some nice overhand rights and was surprisingly good at neutralizing Severn as Severn went for takedowns. I don't remember seeing matches with much D-Lo grappling, and I can't imagine he was doing a ton of that pre-WWF vs. Wolfman or Power Ranger in Smoky Mountain. But you could see it here as Severn goes after takedowns like a Pitbull and D-Lo is great at grabbing Severn's leg to block things and make his body dead weight. That dead weight makes Severn's big suplexes look earned and finisher worthy. D-Lo knocks Severn down with a nice calf kick, then taunts him and clubs him while down, leading to Severn grabbing his arm and throwing him with a trap arm belly to belly. 

Severn's German suplex is a real highlight, and this one was closer to a Tamon Honda Dead End than any other suplexes being thrown in 1998 WWF. Severn threw D-Lo much more like an MMA suplex, the form looked a lot like Frank Shamrock dropping Igor Zinoviev. It would have been a cool time to try a stoppage finish. The match was already getting a completely icy reception, it's not like a KO stoppage would have made things worse. The German didn't read as a pro wrestling suplex, it made no loud ring bang noise, it was just a crazy throw. I'm sure it would have made Severn look like more of a threat than the bow and arrow submission he finished D-Lo with, if only because the application of the hold took far longer than it should have. The hold itself looked awesome when it was fully applied, looked like he could snap D-Lo in half, but the application was unnecessarily sluggish. Still, the overall match was one of the strongest match-ups for Severn, and I wonder what a full return match would look like. Wait is this the submission that lead to D'Lo getting his chest protector? Maybe it was a worthwhile finish. 

Val Venis vs. Dustin Runnels

ER: This had a kind of weird match dynamic on its face, as Venis got his full entrance and long pre-match promo, while Dustin was already waiting in the ring. But Venis works heel through the whole match, and Dustin gets arguably the best in ring babyface reactions of the night. The crowd was mostly quiet ALL NIGHT through a lot of wrestling, but when Dustin comes out of the corner punching Venis and hitting a swing for the fences lariat to knock Val to the floor, the crowd was loud and alive. They don't fully capitalize on that reaction, as they quiet things back down as Venis controls with decent punches, and I liked how they worked through a miscommunication. Dustin had gotten Irish whipped into the ropes and came out with a great back sell, dropping to his knees after it sounded like he knocked the turnbuckle loose. Val had clearly been running in with a clothesline right as Dustin dropped to his knees, and Val took the opportunity to use his outstretched arm to lock in a sleeper. I really like how they transitioned things back to Dustin, with a good version of that transition Faarooq always puts in matches, where he catches knees to his balls after dropping his weight down on his opponent. Venis works it far more plausibly than Faarooq and Dustin aims the knee perfectly, and Venis was incredible at selling his balls, doing his hip shimmy as a ball sell instead of as a towel removal. Dustin hits an inverted atomic drop after, just to give us more of Venis selling balls. Dustin practically takes Val's arm off with a great arm drag, and the crowd reacts big to his dropdown uppercut and great old school style bulldog. Sweatpants Undertaker also interrupts this one with chokeslams for both, so we get deprived of another finish. It was cool to hear the crowd so fully into Dustin, as I'd remembered the Runnels Era being a more unappreciated era for him. 

8-Ball/Skull vs. LOD 2000 vs. New Age Outlaws

ER: I really like Washed LOD. Both still do cool things while also occasionally stumbling and/or losing their balance, it gives this great vulnerable monster feel to their matches that was never there. Animal works a fast rope running/drop down exchange with Gunn and hits a great powerslam and Hawk hits a nice wobbly enziguiri after an exchange, adds in these little suck it taunts to the Outlaws all match, love my old washed boys. The Outlaws were the ones who saved this, as they actually looked great. The highlight for me was this great drop toehold/kneedrop combo they did, which I get sounds like a way to backhand compliment a match, except it was a perfect drop toehold/kneedrop. Gunn's drop toehold was especially great, really grapevines that leg to force a faceplant, right at the exact moment Road Dogg is there with a knee. Billy Gunn was great at working with Animal and there was this cool Road Dogg moment against 8-Ball where he skidded to a stop after ducking a clothesline before reaching back with a punch. This is the match that made the "Outlaw Rule" as both wind up in the ring together while the other four guys have to distract themselves so none of them can get in the ring in time to break up the pin. JR even points out what fucking idiots LOD and DOA are for trying to get the NAO to fight. Strong Outlaw performance in a mostly bad match, but the Outlaw highlights were enough, while Sunny in her Never Hotter LOD 2000 gear at ringside was undeniable. 

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WWF 305 Live: Bradshaw! Rhyno! Undertaker! Mark Henry! Big Daddy V! Kane!

Bradshaw vs. Rhyno WWE Smackdown 12/11/03 - VERY GOOD

ER: It's pretty jarring how much faster some the house style was in 2003. Guys obviously move fast now, but an absurd amount of the time is based on missed moves and reversals and learned behavior garbage. This was worked super fast but built entirely around both guys colliding. Learned behavior wrestling is a real curse, give me 4 minutes of two big guys throwing punches and boots and taking big spills. Rhyno starts by running at Bradshaw before the bell, Bradshaw turns and sticks his boot up and Rhyno stops. No contact made, but a fun way of doing it that you rarely see. When was the last time you saw a guy try to get a cheapshot, get caught before delivering the cheapshot, and agreeably stop the cheapshot? Bradshaw hits a nice floatover suplex early, which is a neat way to hint at the finish. There was a weird delay in his floatover, that also planted a visual seed for the finish. He hit the suplex, but didn't immediately float, instead they both lied there as if he was considering rolling into another suplex...but then floated over. The delay felt odd, but I understood what he was doing after the finish.

We got plenty of big chops, Bradshaw throwing short right hands and big elbows, a nice big boot, and the whole thing was go go go while always based around collision. I loved how Bradshaw missed an elbowdrop: as quickly and close to Rhyno as possible, the kind of miss that looked like it was aiming to hit. Bradshaw was really good at working cutoffs, my favorite being when Rhyno climbed to the top and Bradshaw just grabbed his hair and headbutted him. What I was not expecting was Bradshaw to hit him with a fallaway slam off the buckles. Bradshaw headbutts Rhyno (who is already mostly to the top buckle), then climbs to the middle buckle while also lifting Rhyno, and it would have been so easy to lose his footing and drop Rhyno directly onto his face, the whole thing looked super dangerous. Now, the finish was both solid and a little too manufactured. Bradshaw hit a fantastic superplex, and then - just like that earlier vertical suplex - they both lie there. For a bit too long. I'm starting to thing "did they BOTH get stingers? That's why huge dudes shouldn't do superplexes", but then Bradshaw goes for the floatover, and Rhyno sees it coming and gets a small package win. So, yes, Bradshaw was really showing his work to the fans, making it a bit too easy to connect the cause-and-effect dots. "Ohhhhh, he waited a couple seconds to floatover with that suplex earlier, and this time his habit of waiting several seconds to floatover cost him the match." It's a neat idea to leave breadcrumbs like that in a match, and it often makes for a much better match. But it's not neat when it's something like this that looks so out of place. I'd never seen Bradshaw delay a floatover on a suplex, so when he delayed even longer on the finish floatover it looked even weirder. This wasn't a regular thing he did, it was an odd pitfall invented only for this match, and not a very good one. When you leave match psychology breadcrumbs for fans, their takeaway shouldn't be "wait why was he lying on the mat for so long after hitting a suplex?"


Undertaker/Kane vs. Big Daddy V/Mark Henry WWE Smackdown 2/1/08 - VERY GOOD

ER: This is an on paper dream pairing for 305 Live, a match they ran a few times on house shows (wish any one of those made it as a handheld), and I really wish they had given Henry/V a run as an unstoppable monster team. They paired them infrequently enough that they never completely gelled or felt like a team, and they were around so much at the same time that they really should have been given that chance. This was their highest profile tag together, and also their last time tagging together. The match itself is kind of aimless, and more than a little repetitive. It was made by Undertaker flinging himself into the corners off of big whips from giant men, and Mark Henry leaning into every single piece of offense thrown at his head. Taker and Kane hit him with four big boots over the course of the match and he's out there taking all of them with his face. Henry is the real slugger of these four, and it's wild how much that stands out here. You'll have Kane hitting these bad stomach kicks and you know it blows, but then Henry will counter with two nasty clubbering arms sounding like he's beating a rug. Henry hit a knee right to Kane's jaw that was probably the coolest thing in the match, and that's saying something because put four 300+ pounders in a ring and it is impossible for there not to be cool stuff. BDV came off a little too tentative, not so much in his offense as in how he was treating the storyline. The week prior Undertaker had debuted his triangle choke on him, and they did a cool angle where V tapped quick and then bled from his mouth. He gets backed down by Taker a couple times here and obviously I was hoping it was building to Taker getting crushed and flattened (it wasn't), but V has no problems smooshing Kane. BDV really crushes Kane with a corner clothesline, and Kane pays that back by hitting his big flying clothesline that stops a few feet short of the target. This actually could have been a really cool feud with some legs to it, easily could have seen this getting a big street fight stip on a PPV, but this was always going to be a Brothers of Destruction slaughter. Henry gets big height on the chokeslam and also bleeds from the triangle, putting this epically mammoth tag team to permanent rest.


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WWF 305 Live: Mark Henry! Undertaker! Yokozuna! Uncle Elmer!

Uncle Elmer vs. Bigfoot WWF 7/29/85 - SKIPPABLE

ER: This is more of an on paper inductee into the 305 annals, if only because big ol' Uncle Elmer taking on the Sasquatch sounds like the thing of heavyweight pro wrestling dreams. Now, in reality, Bigfoot is Rip Morgan, whose size is generously upsized to make him seem like a larger threat (and they also upsize Elmer, as Gorilla outright says "I know he was announced at 412, but he's 7' tall and 500 pounds if he's an ounce"). Really, Morgan likes like a deflated Bruiser Brody, with legs that appear to be about the same size as mine. I'm an Elmer fan, but this is quick work. A couple of nice avalanches, a backdrop that Bigfoot flies into (I like the way they played it, as Bigfoot went for a sunset flip but Elmer just straightened at the right time, making it look like he just bucked the sunset flip attempt to his advantage), and a nice Elmer legdrop followed by Elmer just steamrolling onto him for the pin. Area Hillbilly Bests Bigfoot!


Yokozuna vs. Isaac Yankem DDS WWF Kuwait Cup 5/11/96 - FUN

MD: I feel like I really need to go back and watch whatever babyface Yoko is out there. When you combine his selling with his timing with his charisma, he's just an amazing presence. I don't think he could do too much for too long, but what he does do on this tour is constantly worth seeing. I think there's still a chance that a new Owen vs. Yoko match will show up. Yankem stalls and stooges for Yoko pretty well to begin and has the great punches when he does take over. They repeat the punches on a second attempt to cut off a Yoko comeback but he ducks it to set up the finish. Nice little wrinkle that is smarter than what they'd need to do in this setting. Honestly, there's a real Rock vibe to Yoko between the amazing moment of Yoko taunting with the Just Bring It and the straight up Rock Bottom he uses at the end. He was just that charismatic here.

ER: I am in love with Matt's revelation that babyface Yokozuna is the Rock, because it's really accurate. He was a charming guy with a super warm smile. You see Yokozuna toy with Yankem and lean in the corner smiling at the crowd, and it's a face that's impossible to hate. I have a real love for immobile wrestlers, whether it be due to size or age. Yokozuna is so huge here, you can see how mammoth he is just during his entrance (that doesn't show his lower half). Every month he was in WWF he became more and more worthy of his own show on TLC. So the lion's share of the actually movement was left up to Yankem, and Yankem blows, my dudes. I think his punches have nice form, but they aren't as "tight" as they would be 3 years later, so he throws an insanely slow overhand right and a couple decent uppercuts, with some corner stomps that looked so bad you'd think this man was an actual dentist who was just play fighting with his kids. Yokozuna was 600 pounds man, feel free to throw a couple boots to the gut. The real joys of this were watching Yokozuna use his small movement for max effectiveness, like seeing him avoid lock ups early. And that rock bottom finisher was spectacular, shaking the ring so much I thought a new oil reserve was about to spout.


Undertaker vs. Mark Henry WWE Unforgiven 9/16/07 - GREAT

ER: The hype video for this was so sick. It really captured a weird Italian horror movie vibe, torch bearing druids digging up a crate of rattlesnakes in Death Valley after Mark Henry murdered him and cost him his title a few months before. Henry's in ring boasts were edited in nicely, guy came off like such a killer and it's crazy how long it took them to pull the trigger on him. This match could have been the first match in a big feud, but Henry was knocked down swiftly and became the big guy all the other bug guys got constant wins over. Totally baffling. Henry even gets right into some kids face on his way to the ring, a kid there with his family wearing matching safety green shirts. Henry just came off like a big deal, clearly ready. Undertaker gets one of his good entrances too, which Henry trash mouths as it's happening. "Where is he? Where is he?" The crowd oddly couldn't be bother with it, much colder reception than I thought the match deserved.

The match had a slow pace, and that probably turned off a lot folks looking to be critical. But I was into the pace, thought it made the strikes come off like Kong vs. a T-Rex. And they laid out everything appropriately to the story, with Taker coming out ahead quick. If someone had put you on the shelf for 4 months and this is your first opportunity to punish them for it, of course you're gonna come in with big right hands and headbutts, corners splash, more punches, really overwhelming Henry. And I love that Henry's first offense of the match was something big, Taker so fixed on punching Henry and hitting corner splashes that Henry ends up hitting a superplex. If the earlier parts were Kong battling the T-Rex, this was the two of them tumbling off a cliff. I'm not sure I'd seen Henry do a superplex before this, and it looked incredible. Henry throws a great clothesline too, just brickwalling himself into Taker, even catches Taker with a big STO. And then Henry starts spamming splashes. I always love when a big man just starts using effective repeated crushing offense. There's an odd stigma on repeating moves in a match, but there are certain moves that you can do plenty of times and not diminish their value. Henry tossing out several different standing splashes in a match is just smart, and it's a smart way to set up a Taker comeback as he eventually misses one. Henry bumped really well for Taker's big comeback (Henry eating a clothesline over the top to the floor is always going to be a cool visual), and the nearfall off a Taker chokeslam was timed so well, I thought for sure Henry was done. Earlier in the match Taker had gone for a Last Ride, a crazy enough thought that I said outloud "Wait, Taker is going to powerbomb MARK HENRY!?" It failed, but he eventually plants Henry with one as Henry had him trapped in the corner. I like the juxtaposition of Henry hitting that awesome superplex to really take control in the match, with a big powerbomb off the same turnbuckles being the thing that puts him down for good. If people can get over the slow pace - and a fast pace would be a silly thing to expect from this pairing anyway - there's a ton to appreciate here.


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On Brand Segunda Caida: Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown

I really liked the late 90s Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown team. It was early, raw Mark Henry trying out new things every week, and it was really the only time Mark Henry was a tag wrestler. For a guy around as long as he was, it's kind of cool that he was only a semi-regular tag partner to D-Lo, but they were a super complementary team. It didn't last long, so I'm going to tackle all of their matches.


Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown vs. The Head Bangers WWF Raw Saturday Night 9/12/98

ER: Damn this was good! It got robbed of an actual finish, but this was a good tag match. Fans responded louder to the Head Bangers than they did to a lot of people on this show, and D-Lo actively sought heat throughout played more to the crowd, which kept them much more engaged than during the other matches. D-Lo works some fun fast rope running exchanges with them and we get an actually awesome Santo up and over sunset flip spot between D-Lo and Mosh. Santo would join WWF a couple months after, I'm going to just assume that this was Mosh staking his claim to the offense before he got there. Thrasher is quoted on documentary film stating he was going to steal a move from Mike Modest. These Head Bangers are no good move thieves! It's a great spot, Mosh leaping up for a rana but D-Lo catching him, fighting for a powerbomb before Mosh goes up and over. They built nicely to Henry coming in, Head Bangers keeping him away. And Henry is cool when he comes in, moving quick and hitting a nice press slam. What didn't I immediately see in this man? The match was worked pretty even, which I liked here, as it gave us cool spots like Head Bangers hitting a cool vertical suplex on Henry, but also stuff like Henry catching a crossbody and holding it and walking around before hitting his powerslam. D-Lo hits his awesome running powerbomb (though for it unexpectedly made me feel odd, since I had seen Droz working a match earlier this same episode), they have a couple nice double teams, and I dig the dichotomy of D-Lo's nice legdrop and Henry's crazy vertical leap elbow. Chyna runs in to attack Henry, so we don't actually see where all this is going...but I see these teams matched up a couple more times. They had some magic going here. I'm curious if they can sustain it.

Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown vs. The Head Bangers WWF Raw 11/2/98

ER: A weirdly paced match, as it kinda felt like they were all killing time until the inevitable Kane run-in, and Thrasher clearly tweaks his knee within minute one and continues to work. You can easily see the moment the injury happens, as Mosh shoots D-Lo into the ropes and Thrasher comes off the middle buckle with a clothesline. Thrasher lands it on his feet and every part of the landing looks awkward. He still works as much of the match as Mosh, but he's noticeably hopping through it. There's a nice spot where Henry catches Thrasher on a crossbody, walks around getting him in position for a powerslam, but then eats a missile dropkick from Mosh to get them a nice nearfall. Later Mosh tries to leap up for a rana on Henry and - much like when he tried the same thing two months prior with D-Lo - Henry catches him, planting him with a spinebuster. Henry also throws a few nice low missed clotheslines, and drops a nice legdrop (something he didn't use for much of the rest of his career). Thrasher really impressively guys things out, even doing a team vertical suplex on Henry; I know it's a team spot, but he was still doing some lifting. D-Lo takes a big flapjack bump and Thrasher continues to surprise by hitting a pescado!! Now again, there was a feeling of waiting around for Kane, but I give them credit for getting Henry the hell out of Dodge so people didn't get a visual of Kane easily dispatching him with a chokeslam. That's something. We'll see if they mention Thrasher's knee injury during their Survivor Series match a couple weeks later.

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WWECW 10/30/07

Elijah Burke vs. Jimmy Wang Yang

ER: I don't remember the Yang ECW run, but he's a fun big bumping ECW archetype, and here he dies with a great spill from the apron to the post onto the stairs and into the barricade, and a later shoulder first bump into the ringpost that sets up Burke's great double knees finish. His offense was mostly defensive, like when he hit a hooking spin kick to knock Burke out of the air (replays show Burke jumping face first into boot). But I dig the way Burke moves, like a kind of proto Velveteen Dream, a lot of flair to even the simplest things. Burke works chinlocks and other grounded holds with nice energy, bends Yang's elbow, drops a knee on his triceps, does some nice glancing stomps to Yang's face, and bigger things like a cool shoulderbreaker and an even cooler diving elbow to Yang's back. This was fun, if inconsequential.

Nunzio vs. Tommy Dreamer

ER: This is billed as a Trick or Treat match, with Nunzio dressed as Count Dracula and Dreamer doing a spot on Paul E. Dangerously impression. At least there wasn't a situation where Dreamer has no said in interview that he was going to bumrush a WWE event to murder Paul Heyman and then blow his own brains out live at a PPV. I'm sure Dreamer's accurate and public Paul Heyman costume has nothing whatsoever to do with Dreamer wanting to share Paul Heyman's skin. A Trick or Treat match is apparently two men dressed in good Halloween costumes, hitting each other with items that you would find at a Peanuts Halloween party. There is a table with pies (nothing but pumpkin, it would seem) and an apple bobbing station. There isn't a ton to it once you get past the costumes, but Nunzio bumps around way more than he should have in a stips match designed to be immediately forgotten. He takes a great running banana peel slip bump on the floor, slipping in reddi-wip that Dreamer had already sprayed, then getting the apple bobbing bucket kicked into his face before spiking himself for Dreamer's DDT.

The Miz vs. John Morrison

ER: This is like the last match up I'm interested in seeing from this old WWECW, so the fact this is a #1 contender's match means they're both lingering around the title picture. This is not the kind of wrestling I am nostalgic for. This is the worst elements of 2007 Edge offense combined with the worst elements of 2020 Athleticism Wrestling. They nearly win me over at least two times: Once, when Miz throws three hooking left hands - the first an excellent worked punch - in a better way than he throws that similar punch now. Here he was making it look like a punch; now, he makes sure to make it look like he's throwing a fake punch. That weird bloated theatricality is a thing that keeps me from buying into any Miz hype today. These punches were a good thing, that he should still be doing. The second way they almost got me was a cool sequence with the two fighting in and around the ropes and the apron, stuff they gave a little struggle to, ending with Miz kicking Morrison into the barricade with both legs. But their tendencies always butt their way in and take me back out of things. Mix bunny hops into a hotshot like a goober, there's silly Edge offense where one guy grabs an arm and the other guy falls onto his face, and a general "we learned wrestling from Matt Sydal trainees" vibe.

CM Punk vs. James Curtis

ER: James Curtis is the last name used by KC James, one of those 2000s Smackdown workers I liked, the kind that would show up for 6 months and then never be heard from again. There were a lot of those guys during the 2000s who either worked like or were Cornette fed trainees, and they always stood out as "not quite WWE style" just enough to make me like them and also make sure none of them went anywhere. He's the kind of guy who can throw a nice corner clothesline and a good shoulderblock, who wrestles like a cross between Tim Horner and Kendall Windham. This was a quick Punk showcase, just 90 seconds, and Curtis is a good guy to have a showcase opposite. Punk during his WWECW run was such a pastiche of the worst parts of indy wrestling: Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 puro move aping with sloppy movement. It's weird seeing a guy do Kawada forehead kicks somewhat well on WWE TV, but it's a thing that I sure hated as it continued spreading over the indies. Punk at least keeps his floor high by keeping things like the running headlock bulldog as a presence on TV, when most had switched to the awful hand on back of head method. The match is good for 90 seconds, and Morrison (winner of the earlier #1 contender match) lays Punk right on out with a diving forearm to the back of the head while Punk was still pinning Curtis. It was the coolest offense Morrison threw on this episode, and if there was going to be just one well he picked a good time for it.

Monster Mash Battle Royal: Great Khali vs. Mark Henry vs. Big Daddy V vs. Kane - FUN

ER: What a concept! Throw your 4 biggest goons into the ring at the same time on your Halloween episode, one giant Monster Squad all turning on each other. It's great. It's a great visual to get 4 mammoth guys in there all at the same time, total no brainer booking move. V and Henry crash into each other, Kane throws a potato shot to V's cheek, V misses a big charge into the corner and then takes a big bump to the floor. Khali takes his own impressive bump over the top, and we get a quick violent Mark Henry/Kane interaction: Henry lifts Kane up and flings him over the top! Kane getting manhandled usually isn't a thing that happens in a match, so Henry definitively chucking him to the floor was a great finish. There was a little messiness, V drops Kane on his big spinning slam, and the whole match barely goes 4 minutes. These 4 together is such an impossibly rare treat that I needed twice as much time with them crashing into each other, but what we get is giants gold.


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On Brand Segunda Caida: Bill Irwin in WWF (Non-Goon Edition)

So Bill Irwin is a guy I've been digging a lot lately, and I had planned on writing up all of his matches as The Goon. But then I noticed three separate appearances he made with WWF - two Before Goon and one After Goon - and that kind of stands out. Were these tryout matches only televised? It's odd for an established guy to just work occasional one off matches with a major fed without having some kind of deal. But, here we are. Three non-Goon WWF Bill Irwin matches, and they are all genuine gems:

Bill Irwin vs. El Matador WWF Mania 1/16/93

ER: I love these kind of oddities. Here we get a territories battle between two guys who would have never crossed paths. I don't know why WWF brought in Irwin for a one-shot debut at the age of 38 (we already established they also brought in and pushed Pierroth at 38, which makes me - a 38 year old man - still feel viable) but it's a fun match. Tito works armdrags and hiptosses, Irwin takes a couple surprising bumps. The first is off a do-si-do hip toss, where they keep reversing each other until Irwin is tossed over the top to the floor. Later Irwin gets plastered by the forearm and falls butt first out the bottom two ropes to the floor. Irwin always has a couple surprises, from something little like a short jab, to something unexpected like a slingshot splash. The finish is cool too, with Tito hitting the forearm to the back of Irwin's head, almost like a slash attack. Irwin would not appear on WWF TV for another 3 years. The announcers talked the entire time like Irwin was an actual established guy, he got his "Wild" Bill nickname announced, got to  use the bullwhip before the match, then he went and had a great match...but this was it for 3 years. 

Bill Irwin vs. Duke Droese WWF Superstars 3/16/96

ER: Oh, so...this was great? This was really great? Is Duke Droese actually great and people haven't told me about it? This was during the era when I was not watching wrestling, so I have blindspots throughout (when I started playing catch up 20 years ago I wasn't running through Superstars episodes from a couple years prior to do so), but never remember hearing anyone talk up Droese. Droese fires off hard and fast straight right hands to start, and absolutely nothing was skimped on. Droese's punches looked great, he keeps a good base on his chops so he can throw them fast and cutting, lands boot on kicks to the stomach, even clonks Irwin with a hard trash can shot behind the ref's back. This whole thing was pretty relentless and Irwin hit back just as hard as he was being hit, hit a diving headbutt WAY too far across the ring, scraped his boot across Droese's face in nasty fashion, hit a full extension pump kick that didn't seem like it would reach (he started way early as Droese had barely come off the ropes) and yet it landed clean, clubbed him hard in the back of the neck, oh, AND Irwin takes a crazy high speed Harley Race bump to the floor. Irwin gets whipped in, flips backwards to the floor, hits the apron just about headfirst and then spills to the floor. Irwin took some great bumps in his first two WWF matches (three years apart), so we can only hope that he's the curly haired bump freak that WWF lost when they sent Berzerker on his Viking funeral. This whole match was an excellent pairing. It was a total hidden gem, just the tastiest peanut butter/chocolate combo, and it ruled.

Bill Irwin/Kit Carson vs. Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown WWF Shotgun 2/21/98

ER: The third and final of our "Bill Irwin" matches in WWF, and he remains an odd guy to only be bringing in for occasional job duty. If that's all they wanted out of him then I'm sure it would have been easy to offer him full time work, put him in a team with Windham or Bradshaw or job him out on weekend shows. But it's also weird for them to bring in a guy in his mid-40s for job duty, so I don't know what to make of these scattered Irwin appearances. I do know that WWF talent has looked fantastic opposite him (which again makes it weird that he wasn't used full time, this Irwin ouroboros is confusing me) and that's what matters. This match is basically about the asskicking team of D-Lo and Henry. D-Lo was a mean dude here, and everything he did landed hard. Hard punches, back elbows, and the best lariats I've ever seen him throw. We get this awesome sequence of Irwin getting ahold of D-Lo's left arm and wrenching it, leading to D-Lo rattling his teeth with a right back elbow, unspooling his arm from Irwin (like he was rewinding a Rainmaker), and nails him with a short arm lariat. Hell yeah. This was early in Henry's TV time with the company, and he had just joined the Nation a month before, so he was green but clearly had the goods. I loved his brick wall stuff, big man elbowdrop, and two humongous slams. His powerslam finish is great, and a huge arc Henry powerslam topped by a D-Lo splash is a great team finisher. This made me want to go watch a bunch of D-Lo/Henry tags.

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