Found Footage Friday: BACKLUND IN KUWAIT~! BUSHWHACKERS~! CONDOR~! ESTRADA~! PSICOSIS~! VOLADOR~! WINNERS~!

AAA TV 5/21/95

MD: A new Roy Lucier drop. I think the top two matches were already out there so we'll dive into the undercard. 

Karloff Lagarde Jr./Mr. Condor/Perro Silva vs. Brilliance/Diamante/Zafiro

MD: I loved the primera beatdown here. The rudos just hopped out as Mr. Condor wrapped a cape around a tecnico's neck even as he was coming in with the valets and the commentators were just casually announcing who would be in the match. Business as usual. Some gnarly stuff on the beatdown with Condor's arching power bombs, a giant lifting face plant, and Perro Silva looking like a beast between the way he threw himself into things and this brutal reverse hotshot where he dropped the back of the neck onto the top rope with a spinebuster like twist instead of the throat. Argh. 

This was going just two falls with a fed up fiery tecnico foul finish so they actually teased a comeback early in the segunda which was pretty spirited, tossing rudos into the crowd and what not, before it got cut off to set up yet another comeback a minute or two later. Sort of a false short segunda (almost makes you wonder if there was a cut, but I don't think there was). Down the stretch Mr. Condor bled all over the place even on the undercard and the tecnicos got a lot of revenge but they lost their cool and the rudos took this one by DQ. Everyone leaned hard into their roles here and the match was fun because of it.

Antifaz del Norte/Panterita del Ring/Volador/Winners vs. Arandu/Jerry Estrada/Misterioso/Psicosis

MD: Some of our Monterrey pals here in the form of Panterita and Arandu (who came out to the Flash Gordon theme by Queen!). Very nice to see them in this mix with some of the AAA mainstays. That's an awesome rudo side right there. And honestly, this was great. The primera was at least somewhat subdued. Misterioso was leaning hard into his gringos loco look and attitude and was dodging Volador. Arandu bumped all over the place. Estrada teased his big bump over the top but didn't give it to people. Psicosis was an absolute jerk paired with Antifaz. I love watching him just exist and antagonize people, even on top of his basing and offense and bumping. He's one of the best bullheaded jerks in wrestling history. Anyway, the tecnicos took it after some exchanges and general chaos with Volador getting a shot in on Misterioso on the outside too.

Things went absolutely nuts in the segunda though. They started destroying both Antifaz and especially his mask. Somehow Estrada got a fork and started to stab away, lick the thing, paint his face with blood, just have a merry time. Then the comeback had all the crazy bumps you might imagine. Psicosis took the corner knee over the top bump as wild as I've ever seen it. Estrada just got yeeted into the third row like a rocket on a reverse whip. I'm not sure I've ever seen that concrete ground look harder and more solid. Finish was the rudos getting back in and getting Antifaz' mask off so thoroughly and clearly in the camera that someone could have picked him out of a police lineup. Just wild stuff in the back half.

Mr. Bob Backlund/Leif Cassidy vs. The Bushwhackers WWF Kuwait Cup 5/11/96 

MD: Recent Richard Land upload. I had thought we'd be getting the Yokozuna tag vs. Backlund, but nope, we've got the Bushwhackers instead. I don't know exactly how much Mr. Bob Backlund heel footage we have but whatever we have, especially after he got shunted down the card, it is 100% not enough. He's as absurd and over the top here as humanly possible and it's wonderful. First off, he comes out to the Rockers theme with Leif and he wants absolutely nothing to do with him. Cassidy tried to bow down to him and go for a handshake and point to the Bushwhackers and everything under the sun and Backlund just shook his head and shouted NOOOO. 

Then, there'd just be random booing no matter what Cassidy and a Bushwhacker was doing in the ring and the camera would cut over and Backlund would be out there on the stage gesticulating to the crowd and going wild and getting huge heat. When he came down he went right after some kid in a Bret shirt and he never really let up. It takes minutes for the match to begin because every time you think it might, he has another fit to huge crowd reaction. When they get going, they do some heel miscommunication spots almost immediately and then have Backlund get shown up by a Bushwhacker, including sneaking out and pointing to his head only to have him right behind and then hiding in the corner just to get bitten on the butt.

They eventually take over on Luke's arm and it's all pretty good with some hope spots and cutoffs until he finally makes the tag and they do one last bit of miscommunication before Butch gets the roll up. Just unbelievably entertaining. Lightning in a bottle. If you could follow one wrestler around to every house show, 96 Backlund feels like a great one to pick. 

ER: When you get access to a 1996 Kuwait show where Bob Backlund is the third oldest (second youngest?) guy in the match, I feel we are then obligated to write about that match. There is so little footage of Mr. Bob Backlund from this era and now we officially have our most substantial look at him. I loved Backlund's look and attitude during 95/96, when he was mostly a house show worker and cantankerous TV presence, but we don't have a lot of footage of him actually wrestling. We have so much footage of his 92/93 babyface return, which I think is mostly awful (unless I find one credible source telling me that it was an elaborate troll and he was fucking up every single non-Doink wrestler's timing intentionally, then I might like it), but not nearly enough of heel Mr. Bob Backlund. Now we have real footage of Backlund charging at a Kuwaiti 11 year old and getting in his face, just because he was wearing a Bret Hart shirt. Backlund singled that kid out and went straight for him (and the kid loved it). 

Throughout my wrestling fandom, not that long ago in the grand scheme, I had no room for bullshit in my wrestling. I wanted action, and I wanted wrestlers to get to the action. I'm not sure when it changed, or what inspired my initial dislike of it. I viewed it as "guys not wanting to work" and maybe it was due to Scott Keith and others demonizing of stall tactic wrestlers like Larry Zbyszko, spurned on by older local indy wrestlers who were taking a Friday night off in the ring. When we did the initial WWF 80s set, I had the Rockers/Rougeaus Full Bullshit match (from France or Italy) ranked very, very low. Not many years after that, the Rougeaus match in Puerto Rico where they take forever to lock up while getting pelted with diapers and other garbage became one of my favorite matches to show friends who were and were not wrestling fans. I don't know when the change happened, when I went from wanting action to embracing bullshit. The change happened quick, I know that, and is surely directly related to indy wrestling styles becoming about All Action, no doubt caused by similar people to me who grew up being told that bullshit and stalling in wrestling was bad. 

Now, most wrestlers are petrified to let anything breathe. Well, either they are petrified or they honestly have no idea what it even means to let a match, or sequence, breathe. They surely never watched wrestlers who knew how to do this, and they surely won't be seeking any who did so. Bullshit became extremely rare (and has only gotten rarer) and now that action is the literal only thing on the menu, I find that I cannot wait to shove my nose in a steaming plate of Bullshit whenever I have the opportunity. And Mr. Bob Backlund was allllll Bullshit. This entire match is 90% bullshit, and I chose to prioritize it over the two awesome lucha matches unearthed above. I don't think anyone takes a bump until well past the 10 minute mark, although Backlund does get knocked off the apron by Cassidy, and he hits the ground running and gets in the faces of more fans. So look, I'm not saying all of this was good. The Bushwhackers are old and they aren't going to bump or throw punches that look good - although Butch Miller throws a fucked up clothesline to Cassidy's neck on his hot tag - and a lot of the bullshit won't seem unique to anyone who had the privilege of seeing guys like Honky Tonk Man work indy shows in the late 90s, but the unique setting and the bizarre pairing and the rarity of Fully Unhinged Mr. Bob Backlund made this well worth your time. Backlund does none of his strength routine, none of his amateur wrestling, and I don't even think he took a bump. Yet he was On during every second he was on screen, a true weirdo being his weirdest self in the weirdest possible live wrestling environment. 

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We'll Meet Again Terry, Don't Know Where, Don't Know When, But We'll Meet Again Some Sunny Day

Black Terry vs. Mr. Condor vs. Pirata Morgan Zona 23 8/11/19 - GREAT

PAS: Terry in the junkyard is really special. This wasn't close to singles Mr. Condor match a couple years later (but honestly what in wrestling history ever was), but it was three awesome old men beating the shit out of each other in a rain storm and a junkyard. Lots of great punch exchanges, including an awesome one between Pirata and Terry, with Terry peppering him with jabs, and Pirata countering with a huge hook. Condor also nukes Pirata with a bottle. I think with a finish this might have touched EPIC territory, but instead it had a long meandering run in finish with Ovitt maybe? Some fat dudes who couldn't match the energy of the senior citizens they were beating up. Still this was sick.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BLACK TERRY

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Mr. Condor, Black Terry, a Junkyard, and a New #1

1. Mr. Condor vs. Black Terry ZONA 23 12/5

PAS: I don't even know what to say about this match. Black Terry is 69 years old, Mr. Condor is - in comparison - a youthful 64, this is a fucking junkyard somewhere in Mexico, and dear god is this one of the wildest fist fights I have ever seen in pro wrestling. These two just absolutely unload on each other with incredible looking rights and lefts, slam each other into the sides of cars, break beer bottles and stab each other with them. The pace of this is incredible. I mean guys this old shouldn't even be able to walk slowly on a treadmill, much less fight at this intensity for this long, especially while spraying blood out their heads. At one point Condor breaks a fucking pane of car safety glass on Terry's head! There are punch exchanges in this match which are as good as any punch exchanges in wrestling history. The finish is slightly unsatisfying but doesn't do much to mitigate the hellstorm which preceded it. Eric and I just did an hour plus podcast on how much we loved Eddie Marlin vs. Tommy Gilbert and old man punchouts and then THIS fucking drops. Just watch it. It is unbelievably great.

MD: I made a mistake in the first seconds of this. Mr. Condor had come down in full regalia that made him look like a younger man. I thought Terry might do the same, so I looked away and took care of something else for a moment. Alerted by the crisp yet moist sound of bone hitting flesh without hesitation or remorse, I glanced back at the screen. In doing so, I immediately realized that I needed to jump back fifteen seconds to watch Terry, and the violence he draped himself with as casually as his red Flash shirt, arrived fists-first. I should have known better. I didn't make that mistake again. For the rest of the match, I didn't look away.

This was about the sights and the sounds and the sensation. Sometimes, looking away wasn't my choice. They occasionally cut wide to the crowd, showing us this outside venue, adorned with a burnt out remnant of a car, raucous, chanting people huddled all around, and clouds of dirt bursting up through the air and into the ring. It was during one of those wide shots where we heard the breaking of glass and the gasps that had followed. Mr. Condor had escalated the situation by breaking a bottle, which we saw very clearly as we returned the action, the action, in this case, being the rending of Black Terry's flesh. Condor followed it up by placing Terry's head upon a chair and bringing another down upon it. As Terry was battered, dust came flying upwards, as if an almost 70 year old rug had been smashed against a wall for the first time in decades.

Terry would come back, winning a strike exchange which was exactly what you might expect it to be: two old, hard men standing their ground with no recoil, no give, not moving an inch as you could see their skin compress from the impact. As Terry got the better of it, Condor reached for another bottle, smashing it. You could feel the immediately changed mood through the screen and on the faces of Terry and all of those around him. Terry found a bottle of his own and it became detente, a necessary deescalation to prevent mutually assured destruction. Bottles discarded, they finally moved back into the ring; destruction would come anyway, at the hands of Condor, his constant need to escalate, and a giant glass plate. By this point, there was blood everywhere, coming off of not just foreheads but shoulders and backs as well.

Terry would win the one exchange in the match that truly mattered, picking up and dropping Condor to set up a submission, but the ravages of a lifetime of this slowed him down and neither could claim an advantage on the hold that would follow. Terry would recover first though, would manage to drop back into a pin, but just as with the leglock he had attempted, no human that had been through what he had, not even the toughest, most reliant 69 year old man alive, could be expected to hold the bridge. All four shoulders ended up on the mat. All four shoulders were counted out together. In the end, nothing was proven between these two men. There was no resolution. But does that mean that nothing mattered? For fifteen minutes, these two withered, gnarled legends showed that they had more life within them still than men half their age. If that doesn't matter then what does?

JR: This match made me think about eye contact in wrestling. Generally, there are two moments that stand out in terms of eye contact, and both are things that I could do with less of. The first is when it is done in order to start or continue some overly choreographed spot, both wrestlers lock eyes and then begin something they discussed backstage at great lengths, like a silent countdown. The second is the mid match staredown, which has now become such an emotional short cut that it tends to lower the stakes rather than heighten them.
 
But here, I think about eye contact in a new way. The majority of this match is two men punching each other in the jaw and in the chest and in the face. And throughout, Mr. Condor stares at Black Terry, looking at him with hate in his heart. The camera is so close. You see him do it. You see which punches hurt, which punches rock him, which punches he braces for. And during each one, he stares at Black Terry. It is riveting in a way that is totally unique.

And again, what can be said about Black Terry that hasn’t already been said here? I feel like we said it earlier in the year with the Marvin match, and I think there is chance, at least upon first watch, that this match is just flat out better. I think that the more Terry I watch from the past few years, the more I think he is the greatest sound maker in wrestling history. He is like Jim Breaks, in that you can listen to a Black Terry match and it elicits a feeling. Of course, Breaks used this gift to make whine and cry and give a crowd someone to hate and laugh at in equal parts. Terry’s grunts and sighs and yells and vocalizations are the edge of suffering. Terry breathing hard and loud while you hear his fist hit bone again and again is like the camera whirr at the beginning of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It makes you queasy with your eyes closed, and if you dare to open them, you see only violence.

There is nothing else like this match this year. It’s the first match I watched and immediately texted people about. It’s something else.

ER: Sometimes there's a match. Sometimes there's a match that's the most anticipated match all month in the group chat, the one. multiple people spent 4 weeks wondering whether that day would be the day that this match would appear in full, wondering if we would get a Christmas bonus drop, reassuring each other that we *usually* get full Zona 23 shows.

Sometimes there's a match. Sometimes there's a match that so perfectly defines a connection formed by two friends over the past 20 years, that Phil Schneider calls me at 9 AM - at least 105 minutes earlier than I have ever fielded a call from Phil Schneider in my life - the day that match finally drops. Sometimes there's a match that makes you answer the phone at 9 AM with total concern, immediately wondering why your friend - who has never called you before the morning fog has broken before in your history together - is calling you on a weekday while you're getting ready for work. Sometimes there's a match that feels so noteworthy that it prompts a phone call reunion between two great friends who met because of pro wrestling, but haven't talked on the phone in at least 5 years. 

Sometimes there's a match. Sometimes there's a match where two AARP eligible men, one who looks like the toughest possible Richie Aprile and one who looks like the coolest most violent Glenn Greenwald, have a fistfight with punch exchanges that you could sincerely, soberly argue are the greatest punch exchanges of any wrestling match in history. Sometimes there's a match where a man who lost his mask to Rey Misterio Jr. 30 years ago throws at minimum 12 different right hands in a dirt lot junkyard that are as fine as any right hand thrown by Lawler, Eaton, or Murdoch. Sometimes there's a match where two grandfathers each drip so much blood out of there heads that it makes you wonder how high the percentage of men this age have lost this much blood and not been on an ambulance within 5 minutes. Sometimes there's a match so stiff, so gleefully violent, a match that's more than its punches; a match where the chairshots are just as painful, where the punches hit so hard that you swear you can see facial swelling minutes in, where you genuinely don't know how far they will take this blood feud and it makes you actually shift in your seat with unblinking eyes wanting to know. 

This is that match. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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IWRG 3/19/09

PAS: Alfredo got in a batch of IWRG including some shows that didn’t show up on youtube, this show was earlier in the year then any of the other stuff we have reviewed.

Black Thunder, Mr. Condor, Muerte Roja vs. Turbo, Bushi, Pendulo

TKG: Mr Condor was pretty bad ass here. And you wanted to watch whatever he did but this was a mess. Black Thunder is the rudo who specializes in eating Turbo’s stuff better than anyone else (Averno to Turbo’s Mistico), but he looked like a mess eating either Bushi or Pendulo’s offense. Surprisingly, he didn’t look that great opposite Turbo either. Where is Marabunta? The Bestias Metalicos? Mr Condor deserves better Nuevo Diabolicos.

PAS: Turbo has some nice looking armdrags, but they were only occasionally eaten nicely. This was the first time I had seen Muerte Roja and he really wasn’t doing it for me, really a poor mans Hysteria. This was all about Mr. Condor as he was in the role Black Terry often plays in IWRG, legendary rudo carrying five other guys.

Black Terry, Pierroth II, Arlequin vs. Chico Che, Fantastik, Multifacetico

TKG: Aw man this was an awful mess. What the fuck? IWRG shelled out the money for Dr Wagner Jr and didn’t pay anyone else? These guys looked like unpaid trainees. Maybe Dr Wagner Jr has access to the good drugs and partied with the roster preshow. I haven’t seen Fantastik in ages and he looked barely trained. No one but Black Terry and Multifacetico looked like they knew how to run the ropes. Arlequin looked like Jim Belushi disinterestedly brawling in a fight scene in a shitty direct to video action movie. There is a point where Arlequin and Fantastik try to do fighting spirit chop exchanges…I don’t know if Arlequin was doing a Kawada sell, but he sells the pain and then goes to fighting spirit sell by doing push ups but is in too much pain and does girl push ups instead.

PAS: The thing you love about IWRG is that they will give great matches enough time to really be great, the flip side is when you get an abortion like this, it will be a long drawn out abortion. Tom talked a lot about how bad Arlequin was, and he was really bad, but man alive did Chico Che and Pierroth II look like crap. They kept matching up with each other in long rope running sections, where neither guy looked like they had run ropes before. I thought Condor kind of kept that last match together, but Black Terry wasn’t able to do anything with this.

Hijo del Pierroth, Oficial 911, Máscara Año 2000 Jr. vs. Zatura, Fuerza Guerrera, Dr. Wagner Jr.

TKG: This wasn't really much until the third fall. House show Dr Wagner working mailed in brawl through crowd and running through his charisma posing spots. Wagner does have a ton of charisma and him tearing off 911's police hat and posing with it was amusing. Official 911 looked really amusing without the hat,as he still had the visor and looked like a highschool football coach or retiree golfer. I was surprised by how well Mascara Ano dos Mill Jr looked doing the half assed brawl through the crowd. Third fall was the IWRG regulars getiing all their stuff in, the fall in the Wagner touring match thats built on locals showcasing their stuff and they all delivered.

PAS: This was the best match of this sub par episode. Like Tom mentioned it was a big batch of nothing up until the third fall, but the third fall was really good. Zatura was all over the ring, in a show with some impressive flyers (Turbo, Fantastik) underwhelming, Zatura busted it out. My favorite move was his rana to the floor which sent 911 somersaullting into the crowd where he totally wipes out a fan. This dude was flipped head over heels. Fuerza had some fun interactions with 911 too. For a guy with shtick, Wagner doesn't really have shtick I love, but I don't hate it either.

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