Found Footage Friday: SAVAGE~! LAWLER~! MABEL~! PCO~! TAKER~! MANKIND~! JARRETT~! RAZOR~!

Jerry Lawler vs. Randy Savage Memphis 3/23/85 (Jonesboro)

MD: I'm not going to wax poetic on the WWE Vault finding this. You know. We live in amazing times.

The match itself was very interesting. Savage had turned a couple of times during his primary Memphis run and he was a familiar face and he was over. He had Newman with him. He was clearly the heel. The fans were still split. So they did everything they could to present Lawler as worth cheering and Savage as worth booing. To start, they had Lawler break clean at every point and get the best of Savage on rope running exchanges. 

After Lawler got a knee up in the corner, and raised his hands to show he meant for it to be a legal attack, Savage went out, got on the mic. Then Lawler did the same complaining about Tux, then Tux got to talk, and Savage again, and they went around with it, really laying out the case that you should cheer Lawler and boo Savage, even if it didn't look like that at face value. And then, when they got back into the ring, Lawler nailed Savage on the break, but by now, it was fully established how much he deserved it and how Lawler had tried to play nice first. On the next break, Lawler stepped on Newman's hand on the apron instead. The fans want to see the babyface hit hard and clown the heel and they built to it coming off as a pure babyface move and nothing petty or spiteful. 

Then of course, they inverted it by having Savage freak out about Newman getting stomped, run around with a chair, and get a cheapshot in on the next break. Unlike Lawler, though, Savage celebrated as if he'd accomplished something monumental. Suddenly, the crowd wasn't split anymore. They were booing Savage. Pretty masterful stuff. 

Because they had to tear things down and then build it all back up, Savage didn't really take over until around twenty minutes in and he did with a clever bit of misdirection with Tux and his cane. From there, things were pretty wild with Lawler coming back a couple of times and the fight spilling out to the audience. Incredibly crowd pleasing stuff with rapid fire slamming of heads into turnbuckles and grounded punches. Lawler turned Tux interference back on Savage one last time and hit the fist drop for a definitive win. Post match, he ALMOST got his hands on Tux but had to fight off three other heels instead (and he did to the crowd's delight). Really brilliant stuff overall in how they ensured that the crowd was exactly where they wanted them.

ER: To think there was a time in my fandom that I would have been bored by something like this. Savage, avoiding contact to rile up the half of the crowd who hates him while simultaneously appealing to the half who adores him, an incredible cross section of fans that not only allows this match its beautiful slow burn, but encourages it. This was 20 minutes of slow burn and shifting allegiances with men actually pleading their case on the house mic far more than hitting each other. They get so much mileage out of Savage just going out to the floor and getting upset, with little bits of in-ring character like Lawler popping his head up and down for four straight dropdowns while Savage sprinted back and forth over him. 

All the bullshit started breaking down when Savage finally started hitting Lawler and Lawler caught a Savage kick, hopping him out to the center of the ring, holding Savage's leg high up on his chest and drawing it out before finally tipping and fistdropping him in one move. Savage then catches Lawler's leg the same exact way and goes  through the same routine, only this ends with a Lawler enziguiri (a great one!). The misdirection around Tux Newman getting his cane to Savage and everything that happened after that was the kind of fire you want to see from a Lawler/Savage match. The way Savage punched Lawler all around ringside was filmed so perfectly it's as if they purposely took the brawl in front of the cameras, without actually doing that. It was just Savage giving everyone some close up magic and popping Lawler in the forehead around each side of the ring, these individual reared back shots every 10 feet, then hitting a big axe handle to the floor, then another. It's an honest to god miracle that he didn't blow out his knee until his mid-40s because he was just jumping onto concrete on every show for 15 years with or without cameras present. 

Savage is battering Lawler, and it all turns into one of the great turnbuckle smashing comebacks. Savage is bashing Lawler's head into the buckles, and they start coming a little slower with a little more resistance. The sixth time Savage is actively working to get Lawler's face to the buckle, and by the seventh Lawler has fully blocked it, and the crowd is here for it. When the strap comes down, Lawler's back is to the camera so we get to see Savage react to it, and Savage's eyes are the perfect eyes to be reacting to the strap coming down. We get them in shocking HD and it plays like such a famous clip that you'd think we'd have been seeing it in highlight videos for 40 years. Lawler's fistdrop off the middle buckle is as good as you can actually do a fistdrop...but his earlier missed fistdrop into the mat and subsequent sell might have been even better. Just another classic match we didn't realize existed until the last week. 

WWF House Show Footage

Mabel vs. Pierre MSG 11/26/94

MD: Really enjoyed this one. Pierre looked as good as anyone in the company at this point. He flew all over the place for Mabel early, timing all of his stooging perfectly and just bumping big given his size. One bit of punishment after the next. The transition was great. Mabel tried to suplex him back into the ring (and this didn't seem like a huge effort considering what he'd already done to him) and Pierre dropped straight down to the floor from the apron, causing Mabel to get hotshotted onto the top rope.

Then all of Pierre's offense was equally good, maybe too good, because the crowd was starting to go for him despite him working them a bit. Thankfully, they still went for Mabel on the comeback (reversing things on the floor to post Pierre) and Mabel hit two or three big things on the way out. Just a strong, larger than life undercard house show match.

ER: I love Mabel, ADORE Mabel, I will always back the big man...but HERE is a damn Quebecer Pierre performances if ever there was. It's no secret PCO is insane - it's been his main brand for a decade now - but I don't remember him going this hard in New Generation Raw matches, let alone on house shows. This was a man working UP to MSG, taking bumps that put 1-2-3 Kid to shame and hitting offense like a truck. I loved the layout of this, where it looked like the whole thing was going to be Pierre getting tossed repeatedly. He gets thrown so violently to the floor on the first lock up that there is no way he was able to work like this night in and night out....a thing one could have said before we found out how much he loves falling from great heights. Mabel suplexes him like it's nothing, throws him into the air with a high back body drop, really slamming him at will. 

Pierre turns the tide by stopping a suplex into the ring by throwing his body weight back and stunning Mabel on the top rope as he drops to the floor yet again. Then we get this great mix of Pierre trying to tame this sea beast by jumping all over Mabel's back, and taking big bumps as he's swatted away. He takes a back drop to the floor and responds by running up the nearest turnbuckle and hitting a real heat seeking missile of a dropkick. It always feels unsustainable, only a matter of time before Mabel would catch him again, and when he does it's just as great as before. Pierre takes an even higher backdrop than before, kicks out of the spinning heel kick but gets crushed by an avalanche, than takes his well earned time wobbling to the center of the ring and back, turning around to get flattened by a Mabel crossbody. 

Undertaker vs. Mankind Meadowlands 7/5/96

MD: I haven't seen any of the Taker vs. Mankind  stuff in a while and I wasn't quite prepared for where they were at this point in the feud. I don't remember Taker's shots ever looking quite this good for one thing. I don't know if that was Mankind leaning into them or Taker just laying them in because he was used to working him. 

This kept moving quite steadily, with Taker controlling for the first half but never in a straight line. Mankind would take over for a few shots and get cut off. He'd lose focus and start chasing Bearer. He'd go for a chair only for Taker to get it instead. He'd knock him over the rail only for him to come flying back with a clothesline. 

When he did really start to lean on Taker, he couldn't put him away. Taker punched out of the Mandible Claw in a great bit. He'd kick out of everything else and eventually Mankind lost focus again and started to hit himself and slam his head against the turnbuckle. Even then, even as he shot a choke up to stop the second Claw, Taker had to really fight for the comeback and it ended up as a pretty complete experience for everyone watching. A good entry into their series. 

ER: I shouldn't be surprised by Foley going this hard on a house show, but seeing it in HD it's shocking how much damage he took in front of a bunch of New Jersey sickos who knew how much of a sicko he was. If you ever look at Foley's schedule over '95-'98 and see a house show match like this, you'll wonder how his body didn't give out the first few months of his WWF schedule. When Foley started in WWF he was still making trips back and forth to Japan, going back and forth to take sick beatings on opposite sides of the globe. I guess his body was just conditioned to it by that point but I was still surprised how hard Taker was laying it in and how bad Foley's bumps got. It's obvious Taker is hitting him hard from the bell, clubbing him hard on the back of the neck and throwing tighter strikes than I associate with 1996 Undertaker. 

But then the chairshots start, which are much harder than 1996 WWF chair shots, and it all peaks with Foley taking his backwards bump off the apron to the guardrail...but this lunatic lands back-of-head first into the thickest bottom rail of the guardrail, and the leap back was FAR. The leap backward being so far is probably what led to his body not flying into the railing itself, but flying backward just to whip the most tender part of your head into the thickest steel...that's a guy who should be working 180 matches a year right there. That bump would concuss and give brain damage to most men, but it doesn't even slow Foley down. He still takes more crazy bumps on the floor, including a great one over the railing, off a chair and onto the concrete, which seemed to signal to the Meadowlands crowd that he really was doing this for them, as the chants for Foley started to have a One Of Us feel to them the more damage he took. Awesome fight. Foley really did himself a minor disservice by focusing on his goofy "having fun with Owen" house show matches in his first book, because I had no idea there were hard performances like this out there. I, of course, should have known. 

Jeff Jarrett vs. Razor Ramon Montreal 10/21/94

MD: Most of the Hall I've seen lately has either been 90-91 Puerto Rico or 88 NJPW so it's weird to see him as Razor. This went a few directions I wasn't quite expecting and I think, as much as anything else, it was them trying things. They had wrestled a few times earlier in the year but this was fairly early in their 'marriage' that would last a while.

It's funny because I buy it out of 2025 Jarrett, but I'm not sure I was feeling the strut here. Much more gripping and organic was the way that he paintbrushed Ramon's head after taking him down a few times. All of that paid off so well with him running right into Ramon's open handed slam and bumping huge. Beautiful stooging and feeding. He'd subsequently get knocked out, come back strong, and run right into the fall away slam and Ramon paintbrushing him a bit in return.

Once he took over, he controlled primarily through some nice cutoffs (an enziguiri, dropkicks, corner whips, a nice punch, etc). They really did a great job of building the hope spots, getting bigger and more elaborate each time until Ramon finally punched his way through it all only to get redirected over the top. Ramon controlled out there but Jarrett reversed a whip for a cheap (but effective count out). 

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Found Footage Friday: OKI IN KOREA~! DUK~! HEEL TITO~! TOR~! IDOL~! PATERA~! BRET~! HAKUSHI~!

Kintaro Oki/Kim Duk vs. Dick Blood (Tito Santana)/Tor Kamata Korea 1978

MD: What an amazing find. Oki and Duk as native heroes. Plus we had that one Andre match where Tito and Chavo are his little buddies from 79 but this is some of the only heel Tito footage ever. It goes 40 with all sorts of pomp before and after the match (check out the robe on Oki) and is a fully fleshed out 2/3 falls match.

Tito isn't fully developed yet, but he's a stooging (lots of early headscissors foolery), big bumping (he must go over the top rope hard five times), dropkicking (the big finishing bit is Oki avoiding one of his dropkicks), heatseeking heel, as fiery as we'd expect. There are a couple of fun strike exchanges or flurries, especially in the third fall when he's kicking at Duk's wound leading to a huge comeback moment.

Duk's actually the standout here. Oki's fun on the mat once or twice and when he unleashes the headbutt (first in the corner as Santana was taking liberties, then against Kamata, driving him back on the outside, and finally to take out Tito to build to the finish) the crowd erupts but this is really much more the Duk show. He's super charismatic here, calling Tor into the ring, gesturing to him when he has control of Tito. After Tito won the first fall with a sunset flip in, Tor spends a chunk of the second, keeping him on the floor by knocking him off the apron again and again to the crowd's delight. You don't usually see a babyface king of the mountain bit but it worked here. He even had a football charge from a three point stance.

In the third fall, Tor pulls the pad back and opens him up with it, working over the wound like you'd want him to. When Oki finally gets in after Duk's big comeback shot on Tito, Tor tries to get Oki's head with the post, but he no sells it and takes out Tor which sets up the finish while Duk and Tor are brawling on the outside. This match was full of a lot of the conventions of the time but the roles were reversed and it made for just an amazing bit of lost footage.

Austin Idol vs. Ken Patera Memphis 9/5/83 

MD: This was on the Savoldi network and it's about as far from those Idol vs. Hansen matches as humanly possible. It's still really good but it's conventional as can be. You can shut your eyes and see this match play out for the most part, but the crowd was up the whole time and the performances were good and sometimes pro wrestling just works the way it's supposed to. 

Idol got the fans riled early which upset Patera. It was a contest between him waving them on and Patera posing. For a chunk of it Idol controlled the arm and teased punches to the fans' delight as Patera tried to cheat to get out by pulling the hair, that sort of thing. Patera got over on him and worked the back with a great bearhug. Idol was perfect in it, lilting sideways and appealing to the crowd to support him, appealing to God to look down and bless him, appealing to you, the viewer, decades later. Just a transcendent over the top selling of it.

He fought out but Patera cut him off with a reverse of a whip and a clothesline out of the corner and got on the full nelson. Idol climbed the turnbuckles for a double pin but apparently he got his shoulder up at the last second. Post match, he took out Hart, dodged Patera's jumping knee into the corner and put his leglock on him. Again, delighted crowd. As straightforward as could be and I wouldn't change a thing.

ER: Patera in '83 was such a feast for the eyes. He's constructed like a freak Rob Leifeld drawing; cut, but with incredible mass. You catch him at certain angles and it doesn't seem possible to be that rock solid and have so much space between your belly button and spine. It's incredible. Perhaps more incredible, is that Patera has that body but Idol is the one posing, and the posing is the best. It all happens when Idol holds the ropes on a whip and breaks out all these excellent little kneeling poses and flexes. And I just kept waiting for Patera to wreck him for it. It's a crime that Patera has that body and that power and mostly wrestles like a guy in a mid tier Russian gimmick, all clubbing and axe handling. I need more bearhugs, more presses, more whips with crazy pull strength. I wanted a Patera/Idol match and this felt more like a match that Idol could have had with Don Bass. I dug the way Idol sold Patera's grounded bearhug - I actually wish we got more bearhugging in this - and was excited to see how Idol would sell the full nelson. We didn't get him selling the full nelson, instead we got him doing one of the messiest, loose ropes versions of the Austin/Bret finish (yeah I know this was well before Austin/Bret but it sounds better than describing what happened). His missed knee into the corner, after the match, looked really cool with his size, wild that he used it in a post-match deal. I don't know enough about Patera to know if he's a guy who usually limits his bumping in a match and saves it for after.  

Cage Match: Bret Hart vs. Hakushi WWF 7/25/95

MD: Dark match from a taping. Honestly, I won't lie, I would have rather had Brad vs. Flair which lost the poll to this one. The best part of this was probably Hakushi's entrance in the cage which was moody and will stick with you. The biggest issue overall is that they went to too much selling too soon, before it was earned. Whenever Bret hit the ropes or the corner, there was a big clunking sound from the cage but he wasn't really selling cage shots from it. I'm not sure if he ever went into the cage. Instead, he got the early advantage but both of them crashed into each other in the first minute or two with a double clothesline and they went right into the labored slow attempts to escape for the next ten minutes. They probably should have led with an extra five minutes of action before that double clothesline spot instead?

There were bits I did like down the stretch. There were certain parallels, like Bret missing his second rope elbow drop and then Hakushi instead of leaving the cage, choosing to hit the diving headbutt and wiping out. Bret snuck in the five moves in interesting ways and yeah, sure, there was always the sense that they were trying to win, even if like I noted, the drama didn't quite feel earned. The finish was a superplex where Bret was able to recover first and scoot out and the fans responded to a lot of the big moments but this all felt just a little underwater to me due to that narrative choice early.

ER: I thought this was both really good, and felt unnecessarily long due to the narrative choice Matt pointed out. It's really strange, how much weight they each decided to give a double clothesline. The entire match can be divided into two, uneven parts, by that double clothesline. The single minute before the clotheslines was absolute fire, both men throwing worked strikes so great that the entire match could have been sustained by them. Hakushi throws a throat thrust (one of many, but one in particular) that sounds insanely loud, the crowd reacts to it like death, and Bret crumples from it like a hardened hand of stone had just smashed his trachea. This was a battle. 

Then there was a double clothesline that carried the weight of a thousand bad decisions. And that double clothesline seemed to double as the missing 6-7 minutes of work that led to both men being tired slow climbers the rest of the match. Here's what's important: I thought all of the slow climbing and tired selling was really good. That ring looked like unmoving concrete, and every bump Hakushi took off the ropes onto it was completely unforgiving. There are three different landings - before the insane match ending superplex - that had no give, no bounce, nothing but a man's skeleton absorbing his landing with no bounce. The speed they worked had actual drama, the crowd bit at the cage escapes, and the final 10 minutes of escalation felt right. It also made a 12 minute match feel like 20, instead of a 20 minute match that was missing an important 8 minutes. It's so weird. All of the elements we have are good, nothing is missing, it just feels incomplete and also too long as is. Bret's bumps into the buckles looked damaging as ever, and the superplex is something that I literally don't understand. I don't see how it's possible to be doing bumps like that when they "don't count". You watch that ring. It does not budge. Hakushi came off the literal top of the cage, suplexed onto a sidewalk, for a match that was never supposed to air, and is still wrestling 30 years later instead of in a chair. And I guess it's bizarre to me that, in a match that went on to have several high end skeleton-eroding bumps that should have naturally led to slow down, they paid so much more lip service to a double clothesline. 

 

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Found Footage Friday: HANSEN~! IDOL~! WAGNER SR~!? HANSEN~! IDOL~!

Dr. Wagner (Sr.) vs Manuel Soto 1979

MD: This was apparently the first round of a $100,000 tournament with the finals in Madison Square Garden but I'm not going to look it up and try to figure it out if that was actually something that happened. This is a rare look at Wagner, especially in a full match. It goes around ten minutes and was worked "gentlemanly" and primarily on the mat with a few escalations and those were usually armdrags and the sort. The wrestling was god though. Wagner wrestled interestingly in the first few minutes, very reactive, very defensive, a lot of counter-wrestling. Soto came off as a bit more fiery and won most of the escalations with Wagner basing for him. They never stayed in anything for long, keeping things moving even though it was mostly on the mat. I wouldn't say we learned a ton about Wagner here but you got the sense he could back it up with skill in a straight match like this. I have no reason, after seeing this, to question anyone who might say that he was great certainly. I just maybe don't have a ton of proof to verify a sort of greatness that would take him over the top either.

Austin Idol vs. Stan Hansen Memphis 9/12/83

MD: A wild almost nine minutes here. Stan ambushes Idol as he's coming over the guardrail and they never look back. He opens him up immediately and once they make it back into the ring and the bell rings,  targets the wound like only he could. There's a bit early into this where he puts his heel right on the bloody forehead and scrapes and it's the simplest thing in the world but given how he does it, it's downright grisly. Beautiful pro wrestling. Idol fires back after a couple of minutes of it and the crowd goes nuts. Hansen is extremely giving here, bouncing over the ring, flailing limbs, letting himself get slammed. It builds to Stan tied up in the ropes, Idol pushing the ref away, and then Stan kicking Idol into the ref in one of the better ref bumps you'll see, and Hansen taking advantage, hitting a lariat in the ropes and winning by DQ. Hart's a great little nuisance throughout as Hansen has absolutely no regard for him. 

ER: The face of the DVDVR 80s Memphis 100 has changed over the last couple weeks. We wrote about a tag a few weeks back that could have placed in the top 10, and now we have two more Stan Hansen Memphis matches. Stan Hansen worked one month in Memphis in 1983, in between All Japan tours. He showed up and kicked Austin Idol's ass over five matches, three of which were included in and underrated on the DVDVR set. Now we have the other two. All five of Stan Hansen's matches in Memphis, during that one month of 1983 directly after he won the PWF title from Baba, are now all viewable on YouTube and you could watch all four singles matches and the tag in under an hour. That's a thing we can all now do, any time. 

Stan Hansen blew into Memphis one day and beat Tom Prichard's ass for the TV title and then hung around for a month before blowing out. Imagine how large Hansen must have looked inside the WLMT studio. If you were a fan of Tom Prichard in 1983, it must have felt terrible seeing this large man with no mustache show up and just beat your boy's ass the way he did and then make fun of the trophy that Memphis was using for their TV title. Hansen looked completely unstoppable in every way for 5 minutes and then came back a couple months later to beat the blood out of Austin Idol for one of the couple dozen titles Memphis had. This was full unstoppable Hansen but I like that it was very clear Idol was jumped. The official match time is about the same as the one-sided mauling of Prichard, under 5 minutes. But this 5 minute match is preceded by the out of ring beating that leads to Idol's incredible blade job. Hansen jumps Idol in the aisle and it's a beating that stands out as good in Memphis. He does this thing during the beating that's so perfect. It's a thing Hansen can do that any other big guy could do but doesn't have the intuition or charm to do. While bleeding Idol out on the floor, he rolls into the ring - there was no count, the bell hadn't sounded - and just runs the ropes a few times at full speed before going back out to bleed him some more. I don't think any wrestler understands the value in this, to look this aggressive and unflappable at the same time, knowing your opponent won't be getting up and leaving while you run the ropes. 

Idol's blade job on this video quality makes him look like Hogan, the entire top of his scalp dyed red giving him the same blond horseshoe haircut. Hansen goes after that cut in some disgusting ways too, digging his heel into it and punching down at the cut multiple times, even doing his perfect kneedrops into the cut. He forces Idol into one of the most natural and effective ref bumps I've seen, shoving Idol with his boot so hard that it looked like Idol couldn't help but careen into the ref. Hansen's lariat in the ropes was as nasty as any he's hit in the middle of the ring. Idol did not go flying backwards to the floor, he absorbed it. There is a full arm smack as Idol is momentarily flattened between the ropes and Hansen and the crowd audibly reacts to the sound. Imagine seeing this monster destroy Austin Idol in his first night at the Mid-South Coliseum. Hansen could just show up in any room and any building and look like this, at any time.  

Austin Idol vs. Stan Hansen Memphis 9/19/83

MD: This time, Idol attacks before the house lights come up. Great fire as he takes it to Hansen and Hansen gives and gives. He eventually gets an inside shot in as he is want to do when pressed and takes over. The transition is him missing a second rope knee drop and Idol soften him up for his leglock. I imagine Hansen couldn't keep doing a big miss bump like that as the decade went on, not with any regularity but it would have provided a bit of welcome variety to his usual open door to vulnerability in AJPW (the missed lariat into the post). Before the leglock can happen, Hart gets up on the apron and everything devolves into chaos. Post-match, Hansen says he's going to show him a thing or two about the leglock, brandishes a chair to injury him, Lawler makes the save and Ventura comes up to set up the next tag because Memphis booking is a never ending churn of great stuff. I know I didn't say much about either match, but they were simple, straightforward, primal, territory wrestling perfection really.

ER: This is the weakest of the four Hansen/Idol matches, if only because it feels the least complete, but has a completely different charm than those other matches. It was also weakened by having a completely spaced out Randy Hales on most of the call instead of Lance Russell, and when Lance joined in he kept throwing too often to Randy. Randy sounded like he had never spoken about wrestling to anyone before this match. This one is more of an Austin Idol match. Idol got blindsided and brutalized a week ago, now he's back and not going to make the same mistakes. Hansen in Memphis is amazing, but also might be one of the places that Stan Hansen wouldn't have really "worked". I love Austin Idol and I love his offense. I love Lawler, Dundee, all these guys. The Memphis set was my favorite of the 80s sets. But watching Austin Idol work strikes with Hansen, I'm not certain all of these Worked Strike Masters play as well off Hansen as they do off men who don't seem so large and indestructible. 

I think Stan Hansen is a gifted seller. The way he drops to knees and gets staggered and backed up and the way he eventually falls is genuine talent, a real theatrical gift. His body control seems impossible for a man his size, but he does several degrees of staggering and lost steps that show he always knows the exact level of punishment he's supposed to be selling. Sometimes, however, it looks like he is selling almost too much. Idol was laying it in, but not laying it in for the level that is necessary to look like Hansen is actually taking damage. I don't know, maybe I'm up my own ass on this one. Hansen is just such an armored tank that the best worked punches in the world are only going to look as good as Stan Hansen can make them look. The missed knee off the top rope is a nutso spot for Hansen to use, like the John Nord kneedrop plancha a decade later. A man that size should not be able to jump off the top rope and land like that without blowing out his entire lower half. Hansen missing offense always seems to make more sense as a transition to his opponent, because again it just rarely feels realistic that someone is able to fight their way back into control. I wonder how often Hansen did a miss this spectacular. You have to have a finite amount of them. That's not a spot I'd seen him do - not like that - and I imagine the total number is low. Now we have one of them. Maybe it's the only one. 

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Found Footage Friday on Saturday: LAWLER~! IDOL~! RICH~! BAM BAM~! ROSE~! HENNIG~! SHEEPHERDERS~! NIGHTMARES~!

Sheepherders vs. Nightmares CCW 1/17/87

MD: Charles has received a new set of DVDs in the mail. He's going through it and has already identified some very interesting sounding lost matches. Be sure to follow his work in general. Here's one of the matches and it's a very straightforward, very solid tag. Got to love Solie here, first calling the Sheepherders "twisted steel" which made me wonder where he was about to go with that, and then refusing to differentiate Butch or Luke or Davis or Wayne for the entirety of the match, just calling them "A Nightmare" etc. Thanks Gordo.

This hit all the right notes balancing being grounded and maintaining a slightly chaotic feel throughout. During the shine, the Sheepherders kept rushing out of the ring every time the Nightmares got the better of them. It put a certain sort of punctuation on everything and really got across the slickness of the Nightmares. I'm pretty sure it's Wayne that works FIP here, and the transition was this great over the top bump due to the rope being pulled down. He got color as time went on and had some really well timed hope spots. When the fans started to chant USA, he'd reward them by giving them hope. That's exactly how these things should work. Always be struggling to get back into it but struggle the most when the fans are getting behind you. Some nice cutoffs too, including him going to the wrong corner. Plus a missed tag due to drawing the ref. They did a bit where the Sheepherders chair use backfired to set up the hot tag and had everything thrown out on the comeback as they used a chair successfully this time. The Nightmares got the best of them on a subsequent attempt and everyone brawled to the back. A good use of thirteen minutes of your time.

ER: Love this kind of 10 minute forward moving simplicity. When I think of Nightmares tags I think of minimum three great Danny Davis bumps. This had no Danny Davis bumps and instead had one great Ken Wayne bump that built to a great Davis hot tag. In between that bump and that tag we got the Sheepherders clubbing and kicking ass. Aggressive Sheepherders were a thing man. What a cool team. I would have loved to see heel Bushwhackers in WWF. Heel Bushwhackers during that couple month of '93 when Rock n Roll Express was in. Do we have any of the Well Dunn house show tags? They have such a great asskicking look here. I've always appreciated how clean Butch Miller's bald spot was. He had that young Bob Hoskins cut. Luke Williams had great pop and execution that you'd never expect even if you were familiar with some of their best brawls. He had this nice missed Hitman elbow off the middle buckle (more like a diving forearm smash) and paid it off later as they're cutting off Wayne when he hits a truly excellent falling elbow on him. You don't think of "precisely worked offense" when you think of the Sheepherders or Bushwhackers. Ken Wayne's backwards bump over the ropes to the floor was a cool Big Bump of a match to set up the nice long heat, which had one of those really well done moments when a ref cuts off a freshly tagged babyface with a near spear, making for a waist tackle and actually holding Davis in the air for a moment as Davis is reaching past his shoulders to join the fray. The eventual hot tag was hot, Luke bumping these nice careening pratfall bumps while getting punched around by both Nightmares. As they fight to the floor, Butch monkey flips the ringside commentary table onto himself in the chaos after getting smashed into it. It's all hot. 

Jerry Lawler/Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Austin Idol/Tommy Rich Memphis 3/9/87

PAS: Lance Russell saying "Tommy Rich is split wide open" is my love language. Incredible stuff, one of the best matches we have unearthed in the history of this project. Wild bloody Memphis brawling with three of the greatest ever to do it in Rich, Idol and the King. Add in a green but game Bam Bam Bigelow, who came off as such a force of nature. 9 minutes bell to bell with the wild pushed pace of a bar brawl. So much of this feud was built around nasty ball shots, and I loved how they teased the posting on Lawler, and then had Lawler finish Idol with a top rope fistdrop to the nuts, an awesome NO DQ finish. Bam Bam flying through the hard ringside wood table was wild and unexpected and the post match beatdown and bloodying of Lawler was tremendous, especially considering how rarely Lawler bled. Pure joy, the platonic ideal of what I want from wrestling and a hell of thing to wake up to. 

MD:  I feel like you could watch this a dozen times and see something remarkable that you hadn't noticed yet each time. It's great that Russell is not looking on some sort of monitor but calling what he's seeing, so we hear different tastes of chaos than what's right in front of us. I've seen this a couple of times now but on my last watch the things that stood out the most were the way the heels just charged into every bit of offense, Lawler's ability to create organic and interesting violence from all sorts of obtuse angles at any point, and how well a guy as relatively early into career as Bigelow knew when to give and when not to give. There was a sense that Rich and Idol really needed to get either Lawler or Bigelow (the latter being more of a challenge) down and out of the match to control 2-on-1, but they simply couldn't. Lawler was too savvy and Bigelow was just too much. The big moment in that case was when Lawler more or less blocked the chair shot and came back to even the odds. Maybe my favorite bit of all of this from bell to bell is when Lawler scoots up from the second rope to the top to hit the very low fist drop as Solie notes it's legal in this match. The way the table bounces and contracts as Bigelow hits it post match is a wild bit of physics to really cap everything off. You can read about this one but it's really best experienced yourself.

ER: Our 1980s DVDVR sets were so comprehensive. The first time Phil and I met, we hung out in his parent's apartment watching 4 hours of handheld 1989 Memphis footage and made the historic decision to each vote YES to include the match that would go on to place 125th out of 125 matches on that set. The Memphis set was better for having Jerry Lawler, Jeff Jarrett, and Freddy Krueger vs. Dutch Mantel, Master of Pain, and Ronnie P. Gossett. Just like it was better for including Buddy Landel vs. Freddy Krueger. Also, what kind of idiots were voting on that thing who thought there were 121 matches better than Jackie Fargo vs. Jimmy Hart? Anyway, if that Ronnie Gossett trios match had been unearthed in 2024, you would be reading about it on Segunda Caida. Instead, we're talking about a match that could have placed in the Top 10 of that Memphis set if we had it then. If we had it then, one of the Freddy matches wouldn't have made the cut, so this is for the best. It's incredible we're still getting new matches of this caliber. What a powerhouse, even better than it sounds on paper. 

I've watched this thing three times now and I've come away with a new favorite thing each time. Well, that's not true. My favorite thing ever single time is Lawler piledriving Austin Idol and dragging him spread eagle to the turnbuckles, climbing to the middle buckle, doing that perfect pause that Lawler does to build suspense on whether or not he thinks he needs to come off the top rope, then doing that perfect no look step to the top rope he does (that is one of my favorite signature movements of any wrestler in history), before flying off with the greatest fistdrop ever committed to tape. If there was one man in the world I trusted to safely fistdrop me in the balls from the top rope, it would be Lawler, but it's still a real Wheelbarrow on a Tightrope situation and I don't know if I can name a wrestling finish I've ever loved more. Look at the way Idol straightens and kicks his legs! Look at the way Idol holds and rubs his balls with his left hand during every second of his post-match spike attack on Lawler! I might have been too bearish in thinking this was only a Top 10 Memphis set match. 

So my favorite thing is locked in. But Matt's right about seeing something remarkable each time you watch. By the third viewing I was wondering if I had ever seen a babyface physically chasing a heel through the crowd during a brawl. I've seen a hundred ECW matches where guys walked together in the crowd while holding each other's hair, but I don't think I ever saw anyone getting punched in the face and running from the back of the arena for the safety of the ring only to run directly a Bam Bam Bigelow punch. God I wish I could have seen Chris Candido do just that, even if Candido was no Tommy Rich or Austin Idol. Rich and Idol took offense, ran into offense, and turned violent as great as any heel team of the 80s. Lawler and Bigelow were great at surprising them with a punch or a knee, and it's incredible how well everyone in this match had a constant innate sense of where everyone else was at all times. I've never seen such precise, out of control chaos. 

Everyone in this match was constantly turning around into a punch or turning around to punch someone, and there was more struggle in these 10 minutes than I see on entire wrestling cards now. Not every punch came easy, a face didn't get smashed into a guardrail every time someone tried. Lawler held onto the ropes to prevent Idol from pulling his balls into the ringpost like he was fighting against being pulled into hot lava. Bam Bam shoved Idol's head back by the chin before punching him and it looked like violent mafia shit. I couldn't believe Bigelow's bump through the ringside table, and was astounded that a match that ended with The Greatest Finish Ever wasted no time moving into the biggest bump of the match and some of the most violent sharp stake work we've seen. If Lawler punched one ball of Idol's he was going to take it out on his face with a broken piece of wood, and Lawler's gusher after being run face first into Idol running at him with a stake tells me that fistdrop crushed nuts. Tommy Rich is like Bobby Eaton for me, a guy who I love more with literally every new match I see. If there was a wrestler today who moved in and around and through a brawl the way Tommy Rich does here, I'd show you my favorite wrestler in the world. I watched this match a fourth time while writing about it. 

Buddy Rose vs. Curt Hennig Portland 7/2/88

MD: This was a special "Curt Hennig returns" episode of TV. He commentated on a match, cut a promo with the babyfaces, wrestled Buddy, and then came out at the end to explain to the ref how the heels cheated to have a result overturned. The appearance was setting up a match against DeBeers who he said was part of why he lost the World Title two months earlier. My memory is a little iffy on that one though. Rose was primed for a loser leave town match with the Assassin. The stakes on this particular TV match, however, was that the loser would end up a dunk tank later that weekend. Curt would be in WWF by the end of the month after a few more AWA shots, but here, he felt like a very big deal. In some ways it reminds me a little, thematically, of that post-world title match between Martel and Race right before Martel goes to WWF. Just a last burst of someone being a certain sort of star before they ended up stamped by the WWF machine for the rest of their career.

The match was very fun but obviously, coming in at just ten minutes, wasn't going to live up to the previous Hennig vs Rose feud. Some of the usual brilliance though. Buddy started by turning a rear bearhug into a dropping body scissors. Then after Curt escaped, Buddy dodged something with a cartwheel only for Hennig to get him in that self same drop down body scissors. They did a tit-for-tat bit with Buddy bumping off the top with a press, only for Curt to turn it into a great small package when Buddy tried to get him the same way. Cute finish where Hennig was able to eat a Superplex but hook the legs at the last second and get a shoulder up. That meant Buddy thought he won and started to gloat only to realize what had happened and that he had a dunk tape in his future. Just a fun glimpse of something that had been out of our reach for a long time.

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 1977: Lawler vs. Dundee VS. Race vs. Funk

Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee CWA 8/22/77 - EPIC

PAS: Arguably the greatest one on one rivalry in wrestling history, this is another in their endless matchup. It is great whenever it happens, I saw them live when they were both in their sixties and it was awesome. This is one of their earlier matchups with a ton of stips (Lawler is putting up his Cadillac, the AWA Southern Title and his manager's hair, and Dundee is wagering his hair) and is one of the few we have with Dundee as a face and Lawler as a heel. We get classic slow starter Lawler, with both guys a little hesitant to engage early. Dundee works over Lawler's knee, with a clip, and a series of indian deathlock attempts. After that early section we get into the punching, which is what we bought a ticket for. Lawler uses a chain to open up Dundee and he just demolishes him in the corner with huge combos. The NWA rep at ringside stops the match because Dundee wasn't defending himself, and it felt like the kind of stoppage you would see in a classic boxing match. Dundee is able to convince the ref and NWA rep to restart the match, and is able to take back control after an initial fantastic Lawler swarm. We get a classic Lawler vs. Dundee slugfest, until Lawler misses a second rope elbow and Dundee lays an arm over for the pin. Didn't love the finish, a match this incredible needs a better climax, but still this is Dundee vs. Lawler in their primes and that is as advertised.

ER: I celebrate the entire wrestling feud and history of these men, two guys who routinely challenge for the best match of the year any time they meet, and this is them in their prime. It's the much rarer heel Lawler/face Dundee pairing (sadly we don't have any late 80s Miami Vice heel Lawler vs. face Dundee), and it has the great wrestling execution and build that you'd expect from them. I don't totally understand the stipulations, as Dundee is the guy challenging for Lawler's AWA Southern Title, and puts up his excellent head of hair. But Lawler - the champ - has his belt, his Cadillac, and manager Mickey Poole's hair on the line. What would make the heel champion put more on the line than the face challenger? Isn't that weird? Is Dundee's head of hair that valuable? Few heads of hair look more valuable, I admit. 1977 Dundee had the finest Prince Valiant. He looked like a jacked of Davy Jones. 

The match had a nice slow build, some nice leg work from Dundee, building to throwing hard forearm shots to the chest, and then really peaking with Lawler throwing every single punch he knows at Dundee's head and torso. The match could have had nothing else of value and still been incredibly memorable if it had only contained this punch sequence. Lawler builds and builds to such a crushing wave of punches, nearly 40 unanswered shots that play as the ultimate worked punch clinic. It's one of the most amazing displays, Lawler showing off 7 or 8 different worked punch angles and variations, thrown better than any other wrestler in history. In the middle of Lawler beating Dundee senseless in the corner, showing off jabs that look like he's punching Dundee right in the bridge of the nose, Lance Russell proclaiming "I don't what's even holding Dundee up at this point, other than Lawler," the match is stopped by a ringside official. It's a great stoppage as it really does look like Dundee can't defend himself and is just eating increasingly worse shots from Lawler. Most matches that do worked stoppage finishes never end on something that actually looks like it should have stopped the match, but this really looked like Lawler was mercilessly beating a side of beef. 

And that's why I didn't love the restart. Dundee argues his way into getting the match restarted, worried more about losing his hair than not winning the title, and runs right back into a Lawler pounding. Lawler's post-restart punch flurry is arguably the better half of his long punch sequence, as he goes off FAST on Dundee and eventually throws an incredible style of mounted punch that I don't think a single other wrestler could pull off: He throws free swinging left-rights down at Dundee's face, relying on the pinpoint accuracy and landing of his punches thrown from an angle with no net. Mounted punches are already the hardest punch to work, and Lawler takes away the one cheat by not holding the back of Dundee's head with one hand and throwing with the other. Just left-right downward combos thrown without the worked benefit of your opponent being able to whip his head back to absorb. 

But I don't love how easily Dundee comes back, and how it really only takes a couple of well timed Dundee punches to completely derail Lawler. Other than those punches, Dundee doesn't get any offense in on his way to winning the title, and there's some awkwardness around them seemingly redoing the finish after the ref just stops counting at 2. Redone finishing range from unfortunate to really dumb, and this was more dumb, because they redid a really bad finish. Dundee wins when Lawler misses an elbowdrop. The first time Lawler misses a jumping elbow and that's when the ref stops at 2. So, Lawler gets up and misses one from the middle buckle, Dundee lies on the mat for an eternity, and then drapes the arm over Lawler. Lawler punched Dundee in the mouth for 3 minutes, but got put down by missing an elbowdrop. I am a fan of match restarts, but the finish after the restart actually needs to be good to make the restart good, and this was a bad finish. Dundee came back too easily and Lawler didn't take anywhere near enough damage to lose as he did. Dundee needed to have a strap down moment, not come back and work like Mikey Whipwreck without the height. 

Race vs. Funk review

Verdict:

PAS: This was incredible stuff, and maybe with a better finish I could see it as a real contender, but Funk vs. Race is a strong contender for Match of the Decade and will be really hard to unseat.

ER: Race/Funk retains, but everyone should watch this match just to see the kind of magic Lawler can make with his fists. You're never going to see better worked punches. As an entire match, Race/Funk is the more complete war. But this Memphis crowd reacts to this one like it was the best match of 1977, and that's a win on its own. 

ALL TIME MOTY MASTER LIST

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LAWLER

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The King Made it Known He Could Make it On His Own

Jerry Lawler/Bill Dundee v. Brian Christopher/Shane Williams Gulas OSW 7/30/11-GREAT

This was a really fun nostalgia match from a nostalgia fed. They bring out Jackie Fargo to talk some shit and then have a classic Memphis tag. Christopher and Williams are basically pinball stooges and are they are great pinball stooges. Lawler and Dundee have forty years of experience at setting up heels to pratfall. Lawler takes some bumps and both guys unload with some beautiful punches. Lawler gets a hot tag and just unloads on Christopher with a multi punch combo. It is a little weird to watch Lawler pound on his son, it is a known fact now, and makes him sort of unsympathetic.

Complete and Accurate King

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Lawler's Real, So Real

Jerry Lawler/Bill Dundee v. Gary Young/John Tatum USWA 8/31/90-GREAT

PAS: Total blast we have two of the best Memphis style babyfaces against two of the stoogiest Memphis heels and it's all you want it to be. Man I could watch Tatum make funny faces all day and he makes some very funny faces when Bill Dundee punches him. Mostly just Lawler and Dundee running through great face shticks while Tatum and Young bump around. I loved the knuckle lock variations where Dundee and Tatum would match up and Lawler would keeping crawling through legs to pop up and punch someone in the grill. Better finish and another five minutes would have gotten this to Epic, but I had a smile on my face the whole time

ER: I may be the biggest John Tatum fan in the world. He's far and away my favorite stooge in wrestling history (Smothers is up there, but still not close to Tatum). I think I even had an Chris Adams/Tatum match #1 on my Mid-South ballot, which is one of the main reasons my ballots are always so perfect. I love his big pout face, I love his pratfalls, I love when he kind runs in place for a bit after getting sucker punched. Tatum sells a punch like a cartoon cat getting his nose stuck in a moustrap. He's like the greatest possible Alpha Beta permanently reacting to being outfoxed by the Tri Lambs. It's the absolute best bullshit in wrestling.

 Literally 8 of the match's 12 minutes were spent on Lawler/Dundee finding ways to hit Young and Tatum in the dick, and then Young and Tatum selling their dicks and selling the fear of getting hit in the dick. Dundee stomps Tatum right in the taint at one point. Much time is spent with Lawler/Dundee trying to pull Young/Tatum balls first into a ring post. I love Lawler tossing big haymakers in wild brawls, but it's just as satisfying seeing him surprise Tatum with a downward glancing punch right onto the bridge of his nose. Dundee and Lawler threw some hilarious sucker punches all throughout this. Whichever one of Young/Tatum were on the apron would be holding their genitals either to massage feeling back into them or to protect them from future stompings, and Lawler or Bill would sneak up and coldcock them. I imagine if I was there live I would have had sore cheeks from laughing so much.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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Lawler and Me We're Free

Jerry Lawler vs. Steve Corino JAPW 8/10/02 - EPIC

ER: Man Lawler had quite a run in early 2000s JAPW. The unreal Kamala match, Funk match, inexplicably great 3 way with Maff/Shane Douglas, and now we can add this Corino match (we'll pretend the Slyck Wagner Brown match happened somewhere else). I assume a match like this must have been a huge treat for Corino, as he gets to work a hide the chain match with the master of hide the chain. Corino spends the pre-chain portions bumping all over for Lawler (including a big one over the top from a perfect Lawler dropkick). Lawler was also throwing these cool left hooks that he really doesn't do anymore. He usually sticks to the left jab to set up his right hook or uppercut these days, so the boss left hooks stood out as being especially awesome. The chain stuff is all fun. I've said before that Lawler gets choked in the ring better than most. He really puffs up his face and sputters. I actually bought the finish when Corino hit his piledriver. I thought Lawler was too far from the ropes, but him barely draping the leg at the last second was a great moment. It all builds to the strap drop which makes Corino instinctively panic and drop the chain. And after that you can't ask for more of a finish than Lawler braining Corino with a piledriver ON the chain.

PAS: I liked how this was worked more violently then a lot of the Lawler 2000s matches. Parts of this were worked like a nasty fight. The chain choking wasn't a stoogish spot it felt like a mean fucker choking a guy. I also loved Corino's stomps to the head. Lawler was great as well and his comeback was a fist fight, Lawler's flying fist drop was like Dr J, flying from the free throw line. That piledriver by Corino was totally badass and I also kind of bought the near fall even though in my mind I knew Lawler wasn't losing. Man I wish Lawler worked other JAPW guys during this run I can imagine how great 02 Homicide v. Lawler would have been.


Batman vs. Dr. Frank vs. Wolfman vs. Bill Clinton vs. Bulldog Rains vs. Killer Klown vs. Popeye vs. Grave Digger Memphis Power Pro 10/31/98 - FUN

PAS: This is a studio elimination match where everyone is dressed up in costume. Has some amusing nonsense with guys wrestling in goofy costumes, but no one seemed to work the gimmick particularly. Finish was kind of fun with Popeye (Brian Christopher) trying to brain Batman (Lawler) with the can of spinach, before smashing him with a pumpkin. Still mostly weak stuff, only misses skippable because of all the goofiness.

ER: Boy...this happened. This was a goofy, only-in-Memphis, studio elimination match that happened on a Halloween morning. Part match, part advertisement for a local costume shop. Not a joke. Most of the guys in this looked bad and until they started getting unmasked upon elimination I assumed most of them were not even wrestlers but perhaps maybe employees of the costume shop. But, no, these were actual workers. Kid Wikkid was Killer Klown, and he had downy soft Petey Williams offense. Dr. Frank wore Zubaz pants. Wolfman didn't even howl (and I also can't figure out if he sold a DDT really nicely or was just trying to keep his mask from falling off). Clinton's pants split up the backside. Spellbinder/Streak was shockingly much better than I remember him being. He was Grave Digger and actually knew what he was doing in there. You know a match is really something when Spellbinder is the guy I'm playing up out of all the participants. Christopher's pumpkin shot looked like it hurt. Likely won't have to type that sentence too many more times in my life. The real winner of the match was probably Stacy Carter decked out in her vinyl Catwoman suit. Most of the workers here couldn't really pull off their look, but I can't imagine too many viewers having a problem with her costume.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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Top 30 Thursday - Memphis #30. Jerry Lawler vs. Crusher Blackwell, 5/14/81

ER: Lawler vs. Monster is one of the all-time classic Lawler formulas, and the monsters don't come much better than Blackwell. I actually didn't remember this match placing this high. This seems like the kind of match that I throw in my top 10 and everybody else has bottom 50 (because they don't like fatties). But fatness always seems to just make matches float to the top of my ballot.

Crusher might be the fastest morbidly obese man I have ever seen. My dad was/is fat but nowhere near this fat (like 300), and one time when I was 11 we played in a father/son softball tournament and he turned a triple into a single. Not a fast man. I couldn't ever imagine him gaining 100 lb. and doing any of the stuff Blackwell does here. Right from the get-go we get Crusher hitting a great dropkick and then just sprinting across the ring for a corner splash. Dude is just crazy agile and everything he does has such awesome impact. Lawler takes a huge beating here, taking tons of splashes and suplexes and holy LORD Blackwell's punches in the corner saw him out punching Jerry! I mean, it helped that Lawler leaned chin first into all of them but fuck those punches. Also, Blackwell threw the mother of all fist drops here. I'm a man who loves even the worst fist drops, and this one was just a thing of beauty. And good lord the elbow drops!! Each one nastier than the last!!

But also, Lawler. Lawler Lawler'd like only Lawler can Lawler. The punches, the selling (his missed fist drop sell off the middle rope was an all-time great Lawler sell. It felt like MY hand was fucking broken, the way he limply was holding it and just...ouch). Finish was logical and maybe Lawler took TOO much of a beating, but who cares. This was great and one of the all-time Lawler/Monster matches. I'm glad others loved it as much as I did.

P.S. Lance Russell was great here too. Short version of this post could have been "Match was great and stuff looked painful".


PAS: In many ways this match reminded me of the John Cena v. Brock Lesnar match earlier in the year. Local babyface comes across an impossibly athletic monster who just overwhelms him. Lawler is a notorious slow starter (which is a great Lance Russell line) and he gets blitzed by Blackwell who just looks amazing. Little by little he finds his moments though, and is able to squeak out a victory using guile and guts. Blackwell is great here allowing little breaks in his facade while still feeling like a steamroller. Really enjoyed rewatching this and it got me very excited for all of the AWA set Blackwell.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE JERRY LAWLER

80's Project Results

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Top 30 Thursday - Memphis #5. Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantell (No DQ), 3/22/82

5. Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantell (No DQ) 3/22/82

I just adore this match up. Mantell v. Lawler is maybe the grittiest most violent feud of the entire decade. Everything they did felt like a bloody boxing match in a seedy Tijiuana arena. The early part of the match has Lawler on the attack quick. Lance Russell drops the classic "Lawler is normally a slow starter" talking point. I am not sure I have ever actually seen Lawler start slow, but when Lance says it, it really makes a fast start seem special. He is just tagging Dutch with jabs and right hands.

The match turns with the single greatest transition I have ever seen. Lawler throws a chair at Mantell, and Dutch wings it back at him catching Lawler hard in the ankles and knees. I am not sure if it was a planned spot, but it was perfect. Dutch goes after Lawler like a Badger smelling a Pine tree. Vicious stomps, punches, ringpost smashes, chairshots and other assorted brutality. Just laid in an epic beating, including a normally illegal in TN piledriver. We get an all time great Lawler comeback where he just lights into Dutch. A wild near fall run, and a shocking finish with Dutch pinning the King clean as a sheet with a sunset flip. I may even like Dutch v. Lawler better then Dundee v. Lawler, there is less fanciness, but both guys are so good at toe to toe epic brawling. I probably have used Lawler v. Mantell as a shorthand for great brawling in a dozen reviews and it is great to rewatch the original.

80's Results and Reviews
COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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You're All Right, You Put up a Good Clean Fight, I'm Afraid You'll Lose Tonight to The King

Jerry Lawler/Tommy Rich/Jerry Oates v. Rip Rogers/Bob Roop/Ted Oates GCW 10/31/84 - GREAT

Truly enjoyable workrate TV six man tag. Just a menagerie of random awesome 80's wrestlers (plus the Oateses) moving at a fast pace. We get to see Lawler work against both Rip Rogers and Bob Roop, neither guy got any sort of Memphis run, but both matchups are really fun. Rogers is exactly how you remember him, athletic wild bumper who had a great pace. Roop didn't do as much of his awesome tricky mat wrestling in this context, but he threw some nice punches and he and Lawler had a great standoff. Tommy Rich worked face in peril and threw nifty elbows, the Oates's were perfectly fine, and the match breaks down entertainingly at the end. The kind of match you didn't know you really wanted to see.

Jerry Lawler v. Chris Benoit 1994 - FUN

This is sort of dream match (well pre 2007), the best US based worker of the 1980s v. one of the best of the 90s. However it was pretty much Lawler plugging Benoit into Lawler's touring heel match. Lawler's touring heel match is a pretty great match, but in the role of heel Lawler opponent, Benoit doesn't have the charisma of Eric Embry or Tito Santana and it comes off flat. I imagine this would have been better as heel Benoit v. face Lawler. This had some stuff I liked, Lawler selling the diving headbutt like Fred Sanford coming home to Elizabeth was pretty great, but this was overall sort of a disappointment. Post match Benoit double nogging knocks Lawler and his valet, and it is hard enough to watch Benoit matches without him manhandling women. The rating is FUN, because it had too much good stuff to be SKIPPABLE, not because I had particularly fun time watching it.

Jerry Lawler/Bill Dundee v. Billy Joe Travis/Bulldog Rains MPPW 7/26/98 - FUN

Only about five minutes and it needed another two minutes or so to push over the to the GREAT category, but man alive what we got of this match was pretty awesome. Bulldog Rains is a perfectly serviceable bald goateed guy with big arms and a gut, but holy shit did Billy Joe Travis look amazing when he was in the ring. Travis and Dundee just unload on each other with Travis's uppercuts vs. Superstars short hooks, BJ also takes one of his in the lights high backdrops. Memphis studio wrestling at its most energetic, Lawler looked good, although this style was always more suited to Dundee who shined. Mainly though this match made me want to do a BJ Travis Complete and Accurate.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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Top 30 Thursday - Memphis #10. Jerry Lawler vs. Randy Savage (Loser Leaves Town), 6/3/85

10. Jerry Lawler vs. Randy Savage (Loser Leaves Town) 6/3/85

Lawler and Savage had a great rivalry over the years, but this is clearly the pinnacle of their feud. This was the second run of the Lawler v. Savage feud, Savage came in as an invader from ICW, turned face and then turned heel again and this was the final battle, with the Loser Leaving Town. The match starts with a classic Memphis slow burn. Lawler starts by pot shotting Macho, with Savage getting more and more frustrated, even breaking out the peekaboo Boxing stance. Savage starts prowling around the ring like a leopard, jumping out to jaw at the fans, throwing chairs into the ring, overturn ring stantions. At his best Savage may have been the greatest short fuse wrestler ever. You really got the sense he might snap and start beating fans or pistol whipping Bill Dundee with his own gun.

We unfortunately get a clip and the story of the match kicks in, with Savage bumping Lawler off of ring apron face first into the thick wooden Memphis table. Lawler is one of the great bumpers in wrestling history, and this was a great bump. He opens a cut over his eye and Savage launches a vicious attack on the wound. Biting it, slamming Lawler into the post, unloading with shot after shot. Then you have a truly classic wrestling finish. The referee stops the bout due to the seriousness of the cut over Lawler's eye, with Lance Russell talking about how Lawler might lose the eye. The King crawls over to the house microphone to get the Mid South Coliseum to beg the ref to restart it. By the time Tom Renesto orders the match restarted the crowd is apoplectic. We then get arguable the greatest strap drop Lawler has ever done, as he just rapid fire assaults Savage with punches, two fistdrops and a piledriver for the win. It really felt like the absolute last burst of energy he had, if he didn't beat him with that flurry, he was done. I normally don't like quick finishes after restarts, but it really worked for me here. The fact that this just barely made the top 10 is a real statement to the quality of Memphis wrestling in the 1980's. What a match.

80's Project Results
COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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Best of the 1980's Project: Reviews and Results

The DVDVR 80's project has always been tied closely to Segunda Caida. I came up with the project during a conversation with Bix and Kris Zellner, and took the lead in bringing in Goodhelmet, Tomk, SLL and EricR have all helped with match selections, it is as much a SC project as a DVDVR one. So we have decided here to review the top 30 finishers for each of the sets. Results are below with links to reviews. Check in for Top Thirty Thursdays where we will be adding new reviews every week.

Other Japan Results -Top 30
Statistics

1. Nobuhiko Takada vs Akira Maeda UWF 11/10/88
2. Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger UWF 12/5/84
3. Nobuhiko Takada vs Bob Backlund UWF 12/22/88
4. Riki Choshu vs Genichiro Tenryu JPW 2/21/85
5. Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger UWF 7/17/85
6. Masakatsu Funaki vs Tatsuo Nakano UWF 7/24/89
7. Super Tiger vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara UWF 9/7/84
8. Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Kazuo Yamazaki UWF 1/7/85
9. Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger UWF 9/11/85
10. Kazuo Yamazaki vs Nobuhiko Takada UWF 8/13/88
11. Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Kazuo Yamazaki UWF 7/24/89
12. Super Tiger/Nobuhiko Takada vs Akira Maeda/Yoshiaki Fujiwara UWF 7/23/84
13. Akira Maeda vs Kazuo Yamazaki UWF 5/12/88
14. Atsushi Onita vs Masashi Aoyagi FMW 10/6/89
15. Kazuo Yamazaki vs Nobuhiko Takada UWF 9/11/85
16. Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Akira Maeda UWF 3/02/85
17. Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Nobuhiko Takada UWF 10/22/84
18. Nobuhiko Takada vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara UWF 10/25/89
19. Yoji Anjoh vs Masakatsu Funaki UWF 6/14/89
20. Super Tiger vs Akira Maeda UWF 9/11/84
21. Super Tiger vs Nobuhiko Takada UWF 9/6/85
22. Akira Maeda vs Kazuo Yamazaki UWF 5/21/89
23. Kazuo Yamazaki vs Nobuhiko Takada UWF 5/4/89
24. Bob Backlund vs Masakatsu Funaki UWF 5/21/89
25. Atsushi Onita vs Masashi Aoyagi UKIKM 6/2/89
26. El Gran Hamada vs Perro Aguayo UWF 4/11/84
27. Nobuhiko Takada vs Akira Maeda UWF 1/10/89
28. Kazuo Yamazaki vs Nobuhiko Takada UWF 12/5/84
29. Nobuhiko Takada vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara UWF 7/8/85
30. Super Tiger vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara UWF 6/24/85

Mid South Results -Top 30
Statistics

1. Ted DiBiase vs. Hacksaw Duggan (No DQ, Loser Leaves Town, Coal Miner's Glove,Tuxedo, Cage match) 3/22/85
2. Dick Murdoch vs. Barry Windham 7/11/87
3. Ted DiBiase vs. Ric Flair 11/6/85
4. Hacksaw Duggan vs. Buzz Sawyer 11/11/85
5. Mr. Olympia vs. Chavo Guerrero 6/24/83
6. Butch Reed vs. Dick Murdoch 9/22/85
7. Ted DiBiase vs. Jim Duggan (No DQ) 3/8/85
8. Magnum T.A. vs. Ted DiBiase (No DQ, Tulsa) 5/27/84
9. Mr. Wrestling II & Magnum T.A. vs. Butch Reed & Jim Neidhart (Cage Match) 12/25/83
10. Junkyard Dog & Mr. Olympia vs. Ted DiBiase & Matt Borne (Loser Leaves Town) 10/27/82
11. Butch Reed vs. Dick Murdoch 10/14/85
12. Chris Adams vs. Terry Taylor 5/3/87
13. Rock N Roll Express & Hacksaw Duggan vs. Midnight Express & Ernie Ladd 6/8/84
14. Jake Roberts vs. Ric Flair 11/24/85
15. Ted DiBiase vs. Dick Murdoch (No DQ) 12/31/85
16. Terry Taylor vs. Ric Flair 6/1/85
17. Terry Gordy vs. Dr. Death 6/22/86
18. Magnum T.A. vs. Ted DiBiase 7/6/84
19. Ted DiBiase vs. Dick Murdoch 12/27/85
20. Ric Flair vs. Wahoo McDaniel 7/12/85
21. Dick Murdoch vs. Dr. Death 6/13/87
22. Ted DiBiase vs. Hacksaw Duggan (Street Fight) 7/29/83
23. Magnum T.A. vs. Ted DiBiase (No DQ, OKC) 5/27/84
24. Ric Flair vs. Butch Reed 8/10/85
25. Ric Flair vs. Terry Taylor 4/28/85
26. The Fabulous Ones vs. Chavo & Hector Guerrero (Mexican Death Match) 1/24/86
27. Ric Flair vs. Terry Taylor 5/3/85
28. Dick Slater vs. Jake Roberts (No DQ, Dark Journey In A Cage) 2/28/86
29. The Fantastics vs. Chavo & Hector Guerrero 10/12/84
30. Buzz Sawyer vs. Jim Duggan (Dog Collar Match) 12/27/85

Memphis Results -Top 30
Statistics

1. Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (Loser Leaves Town) 6/6/83
2. Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (No DQ, Loser Leaves Town) 12/30/85
3. Jerry Lawler vs. Terry Funk (No DQ) 3/23/81
4. Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantell (Barbed Wire Match) 3/29/82
5. Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantell (No DQ) 3/22/82
6. Jerry Lawler vs. Austin Idol (Hair vs. Hair, Steel Cage Match) 4/27/87
7. Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (No DQ, Loser Leaves Town) 7/14/86
8. Koko Ware vs. Ric Flair 11/18/85
9. Jerry Lawler vs. Bam Bam Bigelow (Texas Death) 9/7/86
10. Jerry Lawler vs. Randy Savage (Loser Leaves Town) 6/3/85
11. Jerry Lawler vs. Terry Funk (Empty Arena) 4/6/81
12. Jerry Lawler & Dutch Mantel vs. Bill Dundee & Buddy Landel 3/10/86
13. Jerry Lawler vs. Nick Bockwinkel (No DQ) 11/8/82
14. Tommy Rich & Eddie Gilbert vs. Pretty Young Things (Falls Count Anywhere) 5/18/84
15. Jerry Lawler vs. Ric Flair 8/14/82
16. Jerry Lawler vs. Nick Bockwinkel 10/18/82
17. Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantell (Loser Leaves Town) 3/27/82
18. Jerry Lawler & Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Austin Idol & Tommy Rich (Texas Death Match) 3/23/87
19. Jerry Lawler & Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Austin Idol & Tommy Rich (Double Jeopardy Match) 3/16/87
20. Fabulous Ones vs. The Moondogs (Stretcher Match) 5/2/83
21. Jerry Lawler vs. Curt Hennig (Title vs. Retirement) 5/9/88
22. Bobby Eaton & Sweet Brown Sugar vs. Dutch Mantell & King Cobra 7/19/82
23. Jerry Lawler vs. Nick Bockwinkel 10/25/82
24. Jerry Lawler vs. Rick Martel (Nashville) 10/12/85
25. Ricky Morton & Eddie Gilbert vs. Masa Fuchi & Atsushi Onita (Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl) 9/4/81
26. Bill Dundee vs. Sweet Brown Sugar (2/3 falls, Scaffold Match) 6/21/82
27. Ronnie Garvin vs. Randy Savage (Cage Match) ICW 1982/83
28. Jerry Lawler & Randy Savage vs. King Kong Bundy & Rick Rude 9/10/84
29. Fabulous Ones vs. The Sheepherders (Cage Match) 8/6/85
30. Jerry Lawler vs. Crusher Blackwell 5/4/81

New Japan Results -Top 30
Statistics

1. 5-on-5 Gauntlet Challenge 4/19/84
2. Andre the Giant vs. Stan Hansen 9/23/81
3. Tatsumi Fujinami, Keiichi Yamada, Shiro Koshinaka, Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Kengo Kimura vs. Hiro Saito, Kuniaki Kobayashi, Super Strong Machine, Masa Saito & Riki Choshu 9/12/88
4. Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Kengo Kimura, Umanosuke Ueda & Kantaro Hoshino vs. Akira Maeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Osamu Kido, Nobuhiko Takada & Kazuo Yamazaki 3/26/86
5. Riki Choshu vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 6/9/87
6. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Akira Maeda 6/12/86
7. Jushin Liger vs. Naoki Sano 8/10/89
8. 5-on-5 Challenge 5/1/86
9. Andre the Giant vs. Killer Khan 4/1/82
10. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Riki Choshu 4/3/83
11. Inoki/Fujiwara/Sakaguchi/Hoshino/Mutoh vs. Fujinami/Choshu/Maeda/Kimura/Super Strong Machine 8/19/87
12. Riki Choshu & Masa Saito vs. George Takano & Super Strong Machine 3/16/89
13. Antonio Inoki vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 2/6/86
14. Tatsumi Fujinami, Nobuhiko Takada, Riki Choshu, Akira Maeda & Super Strong Machine vs. Antonio Inoki, Dick Murdoch, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Masa Saito & Seiji Sakaguchi 9/17/87
15. Shinya Hashimoto vs. Vader 4/24/89
16. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Riki Choshu 8/4/83
17. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Riki Choshu 4/21/83
18. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Kengo Kimura 1/2/87
19. Riki Choshu vs. Big Van Vader 6/27/89
20. Tatsumi Fujinami & Antonio Inoki vs. Dick Murdoch & Adrian Adonis 12/7/84
21. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Riki Choshu 7/7/83
22. Antonio Inoki vs. Masa Saito 4/27/87
23. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Dynamite Kid 2/5/80
24. Akira Maeda vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 2/5/86
25. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Vader 4/24/89
26. Antonio Inoki vs. Dick Murdoch 6/19/86
27. Shinya Hashimoto vs. Victor Zangiev 4/24/89
28. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Kengo Kimura 9/25/80
29. Akira Maeda vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 1/10/86
30. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Riki Choshu 6/24/88

World Class Results - Top 30
Statistics

1. Terry Gordy vs. Killer Khan (Texas Death Match; Special Guest Referee, Kerry Von Erich) 11/22/84
2. The Fabulous Freebirds vs. The Von Erichs 7/4/83
3. Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich (2/3 falls) 8/15/82
4. Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich (Cage Match) 12/25/82
5. Harley Race vs. Kevin Von Erich 6/17/83
6. Gino Hernandez & Chris Adams vs. Kerry & Kevin Von Erich (Hair vs. Hair Match) 10/6/85
7. Kerry Von Erich vs. Michael Hayes (Loser Leaves Town Cage Match) 11/24/83
8. Ric Flair vs. Kevin Von Erich 4/1/83
9. Terry Gordy & Buddy Roberts vs. Kerry & Kevin Von Erich (Badstreet Match) 2/12/88
10. Jimmy Garvin & Terry Gordy vs. David & Kevin Von Erich (2/3 Falls) 8/15/83
11. Ric Flair vs. Chris Adams 2/3/84
12. The Fabulous Freebirds & Jimmy Garvin vs. The Von Erichs & Iceman King Parsons (Elimination Match) 5/27/83
13. Kevin Von Erich vs. Ric Flair 5/5/85
14. Terry Gordy vs. Kerry Von Erich (World Title Match) 5/7/84
15. Gino Hernandez, Chris Adams & Jake the Snake vs. The Von Erichs 12/31/84
16. Ric Flair vs. David Von Erich 10/11/82
17. The Fabulous Freebirds vs. The Von Erichs (Lumberjack Match) 2/18/83
18. The Fantastics vs. Midnight Express 1/11/85
19 .The Fabulous Freebirds vs. The Von Erichs 9/5/83
20. The Fantastics vs. Midnight Express 12/25/84
21. The Fabulous Freebirds vs. The Von Erichs (Bunkhouse Elimination Cage Match) 9/3/84
22. Abdullah the Butcher vs. Bruiser Brody 8/4/86
23. Jimmy Garvin vs. Chris Adams (Cage Match) 1/30/84
24. Ric Flair vs. Terry Gordy 2/4/83
25. Jimmy Garvin vs. Kevin Von Erich 7/18/83
26. Gino Hernandez & Chris Adams vs. Kerry & Kevin Von Erich (Lumberjack Match) 2/22/85
27. Eric Embry vs. Jerry Lawler 9/8/89
28. Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich 5/11/84
29. Chris Adams vs. Kevin Von Erich (No DQ) 9/2/85
30. The Fabulous Freebirds vs. The Von Erichs (Badstreet Match) 7/4/84

All Japan Results - Top 30

1. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Genichiro Tenryu (6/5/89)
2. Genichiro Tenryu & Toshiaki Kawada vs. Stan Hansen & Terry Gordy (12/16/88)
3. Jumbo Tsuruta & Genichiro Tenryu vs. Riki Choshu Yoshiaki Yatsu (1/28/86)
4. Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Stan Hansen (12/6/89)
5. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Ric Flair (6/8/83)
6. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Kerry Von Erich (2/3 Falls) (5/22/84)
7. Giant Baba & Rusher Kimura vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Stan Hansen (11/29/89)
8. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Genichiro Tenryu (8/31/87)
9. Riki Choshu vs. Killer Khan (7/31/86)
10. Terry Funk vs. Stan Hansen (4/14/83)
11. Toshiaki Kawada & Ricky Fuyuki vs. Dan Kroffat & Doug Furnas (6/5/89)
12. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Genichiro Tenryu (10/11/89)
13. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Genichiro Tenryu (10/28/88)
14. Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Toshiaki Kawada (2/26/89 TV)
15. Billy Robinson vs. Nick Bockwinkel (12/11/80)
16. Jumbo Tsuruta & Kenta Kobashi vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Stan Hansen (7/15/89)
17. Dory and Terry Funk vs. Stan Hansen & Terry Gordy (8/31/83)
18. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Stan Hansen (10/21/86)
19. Jumbo Tsuruta & Genichiro Tenryu vs. Riki Choshu & Yoshiaki Yatsu (2/5/86)
20. Bruiser Brody & Jimmy Snuka vs. Dory and Terry Funk (12/13/81)
21. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Ric Flair (6/8/82)
22. Toshiaki Kawada & Ricky Fuyuki vs. Shunji Takano & Shinichi Nakano (7/19/88)
23. Genichiro Tenryu & Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Killer Khan & Riki Choshu (8/2/85)
24. Genichiro Tenryu vs. Stan Hansen (3/27/88)
25. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Tiger Mask (3/9/88)
26. Jumbo Tsuruta & Genichiro Tenryu vs. Riki Choshu & Yoshiaki Yatsu (1/24/87)
27. Genichiro Tenryu vs. Stan Hansen (7/27/88)
28. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Dick Slater (5/1/80)
29. Jumbo Tsuruta & Genichiro Tenryu vs. Riki Choshu & Yoshiaki Yatsu (2/5/87)
30. Masa Fuchi vs. Mitsuo Momota (3/29/89)

AWA Results - Top 30

1. Nick Bockwinkel vs. Curt Hennig (11/21/86)
2. Buddy Rose & Doug Somers vs. Midnight Rockers (8/30/86)
3. Buddy Rose & Doug Somers vs. Midnight Rockers (Cage Match) 1/17/87)
4. Nick Bockwinkel vs. Wahoo McDaniel (8/28/83)
5. Stan Hansen vs. Curt Hennig (5/31/86)
6. Buddy Rose & Doug Somers vs. Midnight Rockers (Cage Match) (12/25/86)
7. King Tonga, Masked Superstar & Sheik Adnan Kaissey vs. Crusher Blackwell & Sgt. Slaughter (Cage Match) (4/21/85)
8. Nick Bockwinkel vs. Curt Hennig (5/2/87)
9. Jerry Lawler vs. Kerry Von Erich (12/13/88)
10. Nick Bockwinkel vs. Rick Martel (9/20/84)
11. Tito Santana & Rick Martel vs. High Flyers (8/29/92)
12. Jerry Lawler vs. Curt Hennig (7/16/88)
13. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Rick Martel (9/29/85)
14. Crusher Blackwell & Sheik Adnan Kaissey vs. High Flyers (Cage Match) (4/18/82)
15. Buddy Rose & Doug Somers vs. Midnight Rockers (1/27/87)
16. Nick Bockwinkel vs. Curt Hennig (12/25/86)
17. Ken Patera, Jesse Ventura & Bobby Heenan vs. Hulk Hogan & High Flyers (3/13/83)
18. Da Crusher & Greg Gagne vs. Crusher Blackwell & Sheik Adnan Kaissey (Cage Match) (3/25/84)
19. Crusher Blackwell vs. Mad Dog Vachon (Algerian Death Match) (5/22/83)
20. Stan Hansen vs. Crusher Blackwell (6/28/86)
21. Nick Bockwinkel vs. Ric Flair (1/17/86)
22. Adrian Adonis & Bob Orton Jr. vs. Midnight Rockers (January 1988)
23. Mr. Saito vs. Rick Martel (4/24/85)
24. Ric Flair vs. Magnum TA (9/28/85)
26. Crusher Blackwell & Ken Patera vs. High Flyers (11/24/83)
27. Nick Bockwinkel vs. Curt Hennig (3/7/87)
28. Stan Hansen vs. Nick Bockwinkel (4/20/86)
29. Nick Bockwinkel vs. Rick Martel (8/16/84)
30. Stan Hansen vs. Sgt. Slaughter (2/23/86)

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I Can't Get a License to Drive My Car, I Don't Really Need It If I'm A King

Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee MPPW 4/18/98 - FUN

This was billed as the final battle between Lawler and Dundee on the debut show for Memphis Power Pro Wrestling. Lawler comes out on a throne carrying his action figure, talking up a K-Mart promotional appearance. Dundee throws him from the throne to the ring and it is on. Compacted Lawler v. Dundee, but it had the stuff you want. Big rights and lefts, diving punches, and shit talking. I liked Lawler hitting a really stiff stunner, it is normally a Lawler spot which looks bad, but he wasted Dundee with it here. Match gets cut off before it really hits 3rd gear as Austin Idol (who was doing commentary) wastes Dundee with a chair shot, setting up a Dundee v. Idol feud which never happened. Always good to see these guys match up although it was too brief to get a higher rating

Jerry Lawler vs. Tommy Dreamer NEW 1/15/11 - EPIC

This is a steel cage match billed as the final battle between Lawler and Dreamer (apparently a gimmick Lawler does a lot). Lawler starts out by giving a great promo, talking about how people always ask him if he really hates the people he wrestles. He says that most of them are just like the folks you all work with, some you like, some you don't, but he has only really despised a couple of people. One is Terry Funk, one is Michael Cole and the final guy is Tommy Dreamer. Just an awesome way to put over this match, really got me excited to see what these guys were going to do to each other. They do one of those cool Lawler deliberate starts with both guys landing a single big punch early, testing the mettle of their opponent. We get some Dreamer ECW style crowd brawling, which Lawler does fine with, before we get back into the cage for the big end run. Both guys miss second rope moves onto chairs, both guys take big nut shots. Dreamer hits a piledriver, with Lawler putting his foot on the rope. Lawler attaches Dreamer to the cage with a bolt tie and laces him with a kendo stick. Just a lot of great brawling. We get a classic ending with Dreamer about to blast Lawler with a chair, before Lawler goes back in the day and lights his ass up.

Jerry Lawler/Jim Ross vs. Michael Cole/Jack Swagger WWE Extreme Rules 5/1/11 - FUN

This was the best match of the last couple of months of this feud. Cole coming out in bubble wrap was a really amusing comedy spot, and I though Ross using the ankle lock was a great fuck you to Kurt Angle's Twitter. They probably should have saved Ross's potato shots for this match, after knocking out Cole's tooth on RAW the strap shots didn't really resonate. Lawler was really a secondary guy in this match, which seems a weird thing to do to this feud. The blowoff to Andy Kaufman v. Lawler wasn't a Lance Russell piledriver.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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Some People Read Idea Books, And Some People Are Kings

Jerry Lawler v. Toru Tanaka CWA 5/19/79 - FUN

Really enjoyable short studio match, with the slim trim 70's Lawler. Tanaka is very much a 70s/80s Japanese heel, lots of nerve holds and judo chops, he did put on a cool submission hold where he drove the top of his head into the back of Lawlers neck. Lawler squirms in and out of the holds and unloads with really pretty rapid fire rights and lefts. Finish has Tanaka try to throw ceremonial salt, hit the ref, which leads to Gorgeous George Jr. and Mongolian Stomper run ins. Basic heel vs. face stuff and neat to see just to get a sense of the era.

Jerry Lawler/Bill Dundee v. Eric Embry/Tom Prichard USWA 7/27/91 - GREAT

This is a studio match, so it isn't very long, but man did I enjoy every minute of it. Embry is just a heel whirlwind. Constantly in motion, whether it is on the apron talking shit to the fans, diving into the ring with a flying headbut for a save, unloading punches and stomps to Dundee, bumping around for Lawler, making faces. Just a tremendous workrate southern heel performance. Mostly Dundee in the match, with the Texas bunch working him over. He gets a great fired up comeback, before going for a rolling tag, and rolling right into Lawler in an amusing botched spot. The match spills to the floor and they brawl around the studio a bit. Not much of a Lawler showcase, but he was good when he was in, and everyone else ruled.

Jerry Lawler v. Bret Hart 11/5/93 - GREAT

This is a cage match handheld from a WWF house show pre-Survivor Series. Lawler is one of the most logically consistent wrestlers ever. This is the first time I have seen him work an escape the cage match, and he does what makes sense. Immediately try to bail out of the door, during the whole match Lawler would take the opportunity to skip town. There wasn't huge spots here, lots of nice looking punches from both guys, and Hart unloading a piledriver, but the match was consistently exciting. Lawler works the chain and really unloads on Bret. We get interference from a masked guy (I am assuming he is one of Lawlers Knights) and the masked guy takes the biggest bump of the match flying off the side of the cage to the floor (did they bring in Foley to work house shows?) We get a Bret win and big Lawler post match beat down. Cool opportunity to see what a touring cage match between the two looks like. Good shit


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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Doing A Cool Jerk, I Want You Like a King A Roo

Jerry Lawler vs. Jimmy Hart CWA 6/29/81 - GREAT

It is too bad Dean Malenko did watch this youtube video before Wrestlemania, because this is how you work this kind of match. The other big Memphis faces (Mantell, Dundee, Keirn and Roy Rogers) are at ringside as lumberjacks. Jimmy Hart has his moments, he gets some offense from a face full of powder, and a wrapped chain, but neither last long as Lawler drops his strap and his right hands. Hart is the best ever at both frenzied desperate attack, and wild crazy manager bumping. Lawler flies him all over the ring with punches, before breaking his leg with a spinning toe hold. It is amazing how well this came off considering Lawler had the deck stacked for him, and comes off like kind of a dick for snapping Harts' leg.

Jerry Lawler/Brian Christopher vs. Bill Dundee/Jamie Dundee 3/2/11 - EPIC

Man alive was this great. The best of your 2011 Lawler indy run. Everyone looked great, especially Jamie Dundee who was completely off the charts here. His offense looked great, he was taking big in ring bumps and he is still awesome at being a skeezy dirtbag. There is a point where Bill is working with Christopher and Jamie is on the outside doing jumping jacks and deep knee bends, I wanted to leap through my computer and punch him in the face. Lawler looked great too, he didn't take the bumps he has been taking in other matches, as most of the heat was on Christopher, but his offense was Jerry Lawler offense. Nothing I enjoy more then watching Bill Dundee and Jerry Lawler slug it out, they do kind of a quick exchange of punches early, then have another awesome exchange later in the match, where each guy was dropping the other with bigger shots. Christopher was fine as the face in peril, and I really enjoyed the goofball finish ending in a Dutch Mantel run in to count the pin. Lawler did have to hold Jamie down for a long time, Dutch can't run as fast as he used to. If you are on this blog, reading this review, you will enjoy this match.

Jerry Lawler vs. Jack Swagger WWE Raw 4/11/11 - FUN

Entertaining TV match. Both guys looked good, I loved Lawler doing the running airplane taunt (which is something I loved when Bischoff and Ogawa did, props for Swagger bringing that back). I also really enjoyed the no commentary with both Ross and Cole yelling encouragement from the floor, it actually kind of felt like an Ultimate Fighter fight. Lawler's dropkick to the back was awesome, as was his selling. I am not sure how the tag match is going to work, but I continue to love the weekly Jerry Lawler TV matches.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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