New Footage Friday: TANK ~! BOSS MAN~! DEVIL'S REJECTS~! NWA ELITE~! FUGO FUGO~! ISHIKAWA~!

Big Boss Man/Tank vs. Pomp and Circumstances NAWA 2004

MD: This was a fun local match with a big star, though it was definitely much more of a Tank match than a Bossman one. That said, this was a younger, spry dominant clapping babyface Tank and no one's going to complain about watching him crush Rockwell and Tempers. The few times where Tank and Bossman did some stuff together were a hit, obviously. I thought Rockwell was more the stand out in bumping and feeding here, really flying around the ring. The transition, fairly deep into the match, was a low blow and the heat mainly about working Tank's leg and that was fine. When they swarmed him or cheated, they controlled things. When they let Tank create some distance, he got hope spots in. There was a fakeout hot tag that the ref didn't see. Because of that, I didn't like the lead in to the hot tag where Tank walked over to the corner and hit a superplex despite the bad leg. He could have just walked over to his own corner instead. It would have worked better with just a basic toss off the top. The finish was pretty much what you'd expect in a situation where they didn't want Rockwell and Tempers to lose clean. Overall, this was fun stuff though.

PAS: This was a fun Southern tag, with some big babyfaces mostly bumping around weaselly heels, MX vs. JYD and Bill Watts with Bossman in the role of Watts. Not sure of the date of this match, but Bossman would be dead in August 2004, so this was one of his last matches. He still came off like a star, but was clearly diminished. We have Devil's Rejects Tempers this week too, and it is fun to see him as a pretty boy heel as opposed to a face painted psychotic. It is a different role for Tank too, and one he does well. Nothing that will blow your mind, but something that delivered for sure.

Devil's Rejects(Tank/Iceberg/Shawn Tempers/Azreal) vs. NWA Elite (Kory Chavis/Jeff Lewis.Michael Judas/Onyx) NWA Anarchy 12/30/06

MD: This felt like the first chapter of the next book of the saga, a transitioning from the Rejects vs NWA Anarchy to the Rejects vs NWA Elite, something to whet people's appetites for the escalating violence to come. They always do an amazing job of making everything feel like it has gravitas and lore. There's just a lot of weight and inertia behind what was going on in the promotion. Everyone involved had a history with one another, with Bailey, to a degree with Wilson since he'd been the voice of the company for years. They were all former champions in Wildside or Anarchy or both. This expanded, extended Elite was made up of former allies and enemies, and they always seemed to work surprises in. In this case it was Mikael Adryan returning from Puerto Rico as Mikael Judas and Kory Chavis returning for the Elite even though they'd been enemies in his last appearances. It did hammer the notion that the Elite was elite which was necessary given the sheer force and dominance of the Rejects. 

And I know all this because they spent the first five or six minutes of the match not actually calling anything but just laying it all out. I'm not sure how much use that was to people closely following along in 2006 but I appreciated it fifteen years later. If I spent most of this review just setting the stage, it's because it was a stage worth setting. This feels like the most important thing in the world for the residents of Cornelia, Georgia. Past that atmosphere, the most impressive thing about the match was the restraint. While there was some interference from the outside, some foreign object use, Wilson involving himself a little, it was primarily kept to standard tag rules, with believable and fairly even momentum shifts and transitions, for an astounding amount of time. When it broke down and got violent, they built to a few big, memorable spots (primarily the massive, seemingly impossible razor's edge out of the corner by the returning Judas) and the arrival of Dominus who was best used as a tease anyway. It moved things along, gave the crowd a taste of what would come, decided nothing, reintroduced some players, and fit well on a card that also had a couple of title matches and AJ Styles. Maybe not the over the top spectacle we're always hoping for looking back, but a good piece of business overall.

PAS: This was the first match in this feud, we have the Wargames blowoff and are anxiously awaiting footage to drop of their fans bring the weapons match. This feud got covered in great detail on the Way of the Blade pod I did with Jeff G. Bailey and Rev. Dan Wilson which is a great listen. This wasn't one of the wild brawls that would follow, but a more traditionally worked tag that built to a pretty big crescendo. I liked the early Onyx stuff with Iceberg and Tank, he came off like a total horse throwing those huge guys around. We get some violent interference from both Bailey and Wilson behind the ref's back. It breaks down at the end with Judas hitting a razor's edge on Iceberg which was wild, and we had a lurk in by Dominus and the Rejects lay out Judas with two huge Iceberg splashes, and a sick top rope double stomp where Judas was being lifted off the ground. Totally did the job of making folks wanting to see the Elite get back their win.

Yuki Ishikawa/Joeta vs. Fugofugo Yumeji/Buki WUW 7/14/18

PAS: This is in what looks like the back of a comic shop in Tokyo somewhere. There is a tiny ring with chains instead of ring ropes and Japanese indy legends Yuki Ishikawa and Fugofugo Yumeji bringing along two guys I hadn't heard of to have a violent punch out. They couldn't run the ropes or do any complicated sequences in that ring so it was all punishing grappling and hard shots. Buki and Joeta were in the spirit of things, and their exchanges were nearly as violent as Fugofugo and Ishikawa. Buki especially was a nasty little prick yanking at Joeta's face and stomping on limbs. Ishikawa and Fugo is as great as that match up promises on paper, Ishikawa is a more skilled grappler working out of the guard, but Fugofugo throws some gross headbutts and uses his strength to move into positions. Really nice mix of FUTEN/BattlArts style stuff and backroom violent indy sleaze.

MD: Phil covered this well, but I'd like to double down on the sense of confinement. This ring was tiny. It was surrounded by chains. While they never came into play, all it took was one hard shot to knock you back to your own corner. When Ishikawa and Fugofugo tested each other with early grappling, there was a sense of extra care to it. Movement was limited and they were very much aware of it and working all the harder not to allow for openings or make mistakes. Buki came off like a real bastard throughout most of this, just a guy with a huge chip on his shoulder. Joeta held his own, just solid throughout, especially when going strike for strike against Fugofugo. As this escalated and became more and more violent, you lost sight of what was on the walls behind them and only focused on the cage and the tiny box which it enclosed. It gave everything almost a pitfighter atmosphere that really encapsulated the underground feel they were going for and that I imagine most of the rest of the card couldn't begin to manage in the same visceral way.

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New Footage Friday: SLIM J~! AZRAEL~BRYAN~! KOFI~! BIFF~! LEE~! JAGGED EDGE~!

NWA Anarchy (Hate Junkies (Dany Only & Stryknyn)/ Azrael/Slim J/Mikael Judas/Nemesis) vs. NWA Elite (Jagged Edge/Bro Newsome/Se7en/John Johnson/Shawn Tempers/Jacoby Boykins) NWA Anarchy 6/30/12 - GREAT

MD: You have to love how many stories they pack into a match like this, each and every time we see one of these big multimans. This one was all action the whole way through but never felt like meaningless noise. Slim J and Azrael working together at the start; the build to Jagged Edge vs Judas (and the payoff in a way that made people want more); Nemesis getting quickly rolled up after wanting to be in there for a chunk of the match (which would theoretically pay off at the end); the John Johnson goofiness which they closed off quickly and with satisfaction; Stryknyn's eye being vulnerable; and having it end with a big finishing stretch between Slim J and Tempers where they were able to set up and payoff the cobra clutch in a clever way for a great false finish before having the turns and setting things up for the future. Everyone did well in there, with the monsters protected and nothing seeming out of place. There wasn't that sense of guys eating pins too easily that you often get in elimination tags too. Mostly everything here was earned. I will say that it didn't quite have the sense of chaotic danger around the ropes with hands swiping that you see in some of the multi-man tags I like the best, but really that just let them focus more on whatever story beat they were telling with the wrestlers in the ring. The crowd was hot for the start of this and it's obvious why given the amount of care and thought put into each and every one of these big matches.

PAS: It is really hard to have a match with this many people in it, and give everyone a moment to shine, and have no unearned pins. I mean you got a pretty good sense of everyone in the match, even the guys who weren't in it long. Loved the Jagged Edge vs. Mikal Judas showdown, really teased a big showdown, got a taste of it, and left folks wanting to a buy a ticket to pay it off. Jagged Edge's chokelsam was probably the move of the match he sent Stryknyn into the cheap seats. Slim J gets the big finishing run with Tempers and it was pretty great, I imagine they had a hell of a title match at some point in this. The finish was booking heavy, but these always are, and I do think a heel Urban Assault Squad is a cool idea., and this was leading up to the great War Games later in the year.

Biff Busick vs. Trevor Lee XWA 1/17/15

MD: This was from January 2015 in RI, so not on as big a stage as their Evolve match a few days before. Lee was 21 at this point but he already had so much of it down. The crowd was absolutely game and really eager to see Biff kill someone. Lee gave them the all too rare for mid-2010s indy wrestling stalling to start and it worked huge. My favorite bit of it was a fan on the outside shouting "I thought you were supposed to be good" and Lee shouting back "I am good!" He cycled that right into a picture perfect eyepoke on a handshake attempt and an opportunistic throw to the outside. All great set up to clearly make the crowd against him and for Biff and to rile them up for some violence. They got that in spades with the crowd brawling as they went all around the place, really keeping things moving including a great visual where Biff got his leg caught on a chair off a whip and bumped huge, and then a bunch of nasty revenge shots using the terrain as a weapon. He even let a kid get a shot in on Lee. Eventually it had to get back in the ring and they moved into more of the back and forth you'd expect with a few big suplexes and shots and collisions. Again, I liked Lee's timing a lot here and his body language, overly following through in a believable way when he was about to run into something for a transition. Biff's stuff all looked unsurprisingly great (though I wish he wouldn't do stuff like the running blockbuster, but I get why he did) with the fans into everything. I haven't seen a Lee match in a long time and this made me want to see how he was doing now as Grimes in NXT.

PAS: This was a really well executed indy wrestling match, which hit on all of it's individual points really well, without ever moving fully into special territory. Still I can imagine the crowd was really happy to see this match live, and I dug watching it 6 years letter. Busick is a guy with tremendous explosion and execution, really tremendous at a fiery babyface comeback. Lee really put in the work early to make the crowd dislike him which made that comeback work. Loved the flip powerslam counter by Lee, it came out of nowhere, looked awesome and was a great moment to cut Busick's momentum reloading it for one more big comeback. This would be a fun feud to bring back in NXT, or if both guys end up someplace else.   

Daniel Bryan vs. Kofi Kingston WWE 9/2/19

MD: What a difference a decade-plus makes. This was an entirely different crowd, up for everything, but pretty annoying, down to the CM Punk chant in the middle (though at least that got booed down). It was a sort of crowd Kofi and Bryan were used to by this point, however, and they worked well to it. If you said this was a top 5 Kofi career singles match, I'd believe you, though Bryan drove most of the action and big moments. They worked the first half straight, babyface vs babyface, with just a bit of tension on whether Bryan would turn on him, and it was good, athletic stuff with kip ups and tapitias into surfboards and hesitant handshakes and both guys rallying the crowd and what have you. It felt a little like a mid-2000s indy affair to be honest. Midway through the match, Kofi following some major clowning of Bryan by taking a big bump out and Bryan feigned concern before turning on him with a hard whip into the post. He amped up the aggression after that but didn't really heel it up enough to get the crowd to turn on him, which sort of put a cap on how good the match would ultimately be. The battling over the yes lock towards the end was really good though, especially how Bryan finally got it on Kofi (which is something they probably used in their PPV matches too but I barely remember those); Kofi jumping into it from the top was a great visual. Finish was a bit too big on Kofi escaping Bryan's big stuff without one more rotation of Bryan dodging something of Kofi's but in general it was excellent house show fare that would have been better still if they led the crowd instead of following it.

PAS: The Mania match between these two is an all timer, and it was fun to see how they ran it back on tour. I liked all of the early feeling out sections on the mat, and Bryan turning more vicious. You don't really think of Bryan as an all-time puncher, but he really lays it in here, with those almost Bret Hart overhand loopers. Kofi was fine, he hit his stuff mostly, got height on his dives and didn't get outclassed. Of course this is Brynn's match. He looked great as the wounded ex champ who is plotting to get back on the top of the mountain, only to fall victim to a great looking spinning kick to the face. 

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