Found Footage Friday: GIANT GONZALEZ SPEAKS~! LAWLER'S FANS SHRIEK~! HURACAN RAMIREZ RETREATS~!

Huracan Ramirez/Huracan Ramirez Jr./Kung Fu vs. Bestia Salvaje/Indomito/Killer Arena Naucalpan 1/10/88

MD: A farewell match for Huracan Ramirez and the oldest footage of Arena Naucalpan we have. We come in with a media discussion of Ramirez, but quickly get to the match. This is handcam and as blurry as can be but we can tell who everyone is (the hardest being between Ramirez and Ramirez, Jr. but there are clear differences to their bodies). 

And footage like this is a gift. Who knew that we'd ever get it, right? Yes, it's a little hard to watch but we're pros and it's worth it every time. The Ramirez' did well on early exchanges and then Kung Fu got to play into some very fun rudo communication including some scrambling and tripping that felt novel and interesting. Everything took a turn once Killer was able to get his hands on him, however, all the way to hitting a tombstone on the floor in the midst of the chaos.

That wasn't quite the match ender that you'd think it'd be but it let the rudos really take over. Ramirez got a big moment of shine here where he stood tall against all of them and did well for a while, but it was down to Kung Fu recovering and coming back in with nunchucks to turn things around. That was basically the end of the match but not the end of the beating as Indomito, bloody face contrasting with blonde hair, took an absolute thrashing from Ramirez around ringside. The match was thrown out or the rudos won by DQ but it hardly mattered as the crowd burst in the ring to celebrate with Ramirez. It's clear how much this mattered to them and to the wrestlers and shaky cam or no, it's a joy to get to be a fly on the wall to history like this. 

Jerry Lawler vs. Doink the Clown Pro Wrestling Shenandoah 3/19/94

MD: Indie match between Lawler and a Doink that the internet thinks is Steve Keirn and I believe it. We get maybe the first two thirds of this, as clearly the person filming was running out of tape from capturing the entire Damian Demento match that preceded it. But what we get is pretty great. All minimalist shtick in front of a crowd that was made up of kids happy to chant Burger King for twenty minutes. Basically the best crowd you could get for a thing like this.

When Lawler finally did engage, he got clowned (literally) again and again. He'd miss a punch in the corner and get tagged. He'd miss a punch, duck Doink's punch, miss another punch, and get tagged. The building, timing, and payoff were all wonderful. Exactly what you'd want. Eventually he started to play hide the object, never actually using it but hiding it over and over as the ref checked the hand then the singlet again and again. Finally, Doink got fed up, took the ring bell, and put it under his own singlet and it was a beautiful piece of pro wrestling hilarity I'd never seen before. The match cuts out shortly thereafter but that was well worth the YouTube click.

ER: 15 minutes of 90s indy wrestling Metal Machine Music in the form of shrill children tirelessly screaming maniacally at Jerry Lawler. Lawler doesn't land any offense for those 15 minutes. He takes one great back body drop, and takes two punches. It's what he fills in the spaces between those moments of impact with that draw enough heat to keep waves of high pitched ambient sound ricocheting off the walls of a packed to the rafters gymnasium. Shenandoah is a town with less than 5,000 people and it looked and sounded like every resident was there. Lawler could have worked this match with anyone - no offense to Keirn - such were his powers in 1994. I love the way he throws his over-confident missed punches. The two he throws to miss here are a comic book version of Lawler's normal punch style, reared back and thrown straight as an arrow to exaggerate his full body lunge when fist finds no face. I wish we could have watched 15 full minutes of him pretending to have a weapon. I wish we could have had 15 full minutes of him selling his balls after Doink pulled the middle rope into them. I wish we could have seen the Johnny Gunn/Damien DeMento semi-main that used up the rest of our cameraman's battery. The ending is lost forever, but Lawler made small town ears ring on a Saturday night, same as it ever was. 

Mr. Perfect/Randy Savage vs. Mr. Hughes/Giant Gonzalez WWF Dark Match 8/17/93

ER: I've wanted to see this match for so long. There were not actually that many Giant Gonzalez matches in WWF. 60 matches across 1993, 85% of them happening on house shows or TV taping dark matches. We've seen all of the other possible Giant Gonzalez combinations, of which there are far too few. He was mostly married to Undertaker and Randy Savage on house shows during his run, kept him away from most of the roster, offering no opportunities for him to break out of his comfort zone. I would have loved to see what Bret could have done with him in a singles match, hell in half a dozen singles matches. I'm confident we would have gotten Giant's best matches, until we get the Lawler match footage from USWA. But there's a roster of people I'd love to see interacting with him. Let's see what Tito could have done, or Mr. Perfect. Let's turn him on other heels so we can see freak show dreams like Gonzalez vs. Yokozuna. No, we got mostly Undertaker or Savage, meaning there weren't any unique one off matches that could potentially show up on handhelds. 

This match is the most unique of the 60 Giant Gonzalez WWF matches. It's one of his only tag matches, and it's an intriguing on paper pairing. I'm a big fan of Mr. Hughes and his 60-something match WWF run. He and Gonzalez are a cool team of freakshow giants, and while the match itself isn't some kind of hidden gem, there are moments featured that we don't see ever again and I always love that. The Mr. Hughes/Mr. Perfect sections are genuinely good. Perfect was on a strong run in '93 and I love the way his body reacted to Hughes. There's a Hughes back elbow and big boot that Perfect sets up and leans into so well, his bumping style more reactive than athletic, and it's one of the things that made his later work so good. Hughes was a real physical specimen that should have been a bigger deal. His size and look are awesome, and he takes an incredible Jerry Estrada style back body drop during Perfect's comeback, leaping his knees into Perfect's shoulder so he's several feet higher in the air when Perfect flips him. It's an impressive visual and you can probably count on one hand the men that size who could have done the same. 

But, while it's not a very adventurous offensive performance from Gonzalez - he limits himself exclusively to some of his worst overhand clubbing shots to the back - it gives us what is our only glimpse of something different. This match gives us Giant Gonzalez: Vocal Showboat, a completely different look at the largest man in wrestling. I've never seen him more vocal during a match. He trash talks the crowd, trash talks his opponent - both in the ring and actively from the apron - and he shows personality that was lacking in his TV footage. The camera catches him doing something so funny, and it more than anything makes me wonder what might have been, had they kept him around and used him as a tag partner of other monsters. The moment comes when he tags out, as he makes eye contact with a ringside fan. As he's walking to grab the tag rope, he waves a large hand down over his airbrushed ab muscles, smirk on his face like he's displaying his body for some taken girl, confidently showing off his muscles that are just as fake as his airbrushed pubes. It's such an amusing piece of heel comedy, something we otherwise didn't see him attempt. That's why I find these matches so valuable. All it takes is one quick gesture, otherwise unseen, giving us a glimpse of a different past.   

MD: I watched this before reading Eric's comments (usually I get places before he does so I can't cheat off of him but this time he got there first), and was thinking to myself that I was going to have to come down real hard on Gonzalez' offense. Real hard. You don't want to compare him to Andre but you do have to sort of compare a giant to a giant and late era Andre was immobile but he made every shot seem credible, while you got the sense Gonzalez, who was more mobile, was just afraid to hurt the people he was in the ring with. His kicks barely extended. His shots were just so so soft, and that's ok on some level, but there was no way to sell them as anything but. He didn't have any idea how to use his size to inspire imagination. Thankfully, the one shot that did look great was the one that counted, towards the end when he caught Perfect coming off the ropes while on the outside, which distracted the ref and allowed Savage to get his illegal shot in to set up the finish. That one looked quite good.

BUT that said, I am totally aligned with Eric on the idea that trash talking Gonzalez is something special. With no commentary, you heard everything, and he'd just bellow in from off screen and you'd more or less make it out, would make it out enough, and that guy was alive and feeling the moment. It made me think that he probably did have some pretty entertaining house show performances towards the end, especially if you shut your eyes.

Otherwise, the moments that stood out to me were right at the start, Hughes taking Harvey's hand in a sort of sensitive gesture of friendship as the match started. And the crowd going up for Perfect and chanting for him and Hennig letting it sink in and basking. Otherwise, he and Savage really got almost nothing, a couple of chops at the start. Even when Perfect went through the legs for a tag, Savage got swept right under almost instantly. Interesting match along those lines, one that really protected the heels even in a loss, but that still gave the fans that moment of basking at the beginning and moment of triumph at the end.

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Found Footage Friday: 1989 Copps Coliseum WWF Show

1/16/89 WWF Copps Coliseum Toronto

MD: This is another Richard Land find and you should be checking out his stuff at (@maskedwrestlers) since he provides about 1/3 of the new footage coming out today.

Red Rooster vs. Danny Davis

MD: This made me feel like I have to check out a lot more Danny Davis, honestly. He got on the mic at the start and said Heenan was paying him for this but he would have done it for free. Then he shoved Taylor and ran around the ring from him, got chased in, did some rope running, stopped, taunted, and walked right into a punch before taking a powder, all before his ring jacket was off. Great stuff to begin. Then came the real stalling as he just pressed himself in the corner and covered his head. When Taylor finally did get him he begged off until he could turn an arm wringer into a clothesline and then he looked pretty solid in control. There was just a spring to his step. He had some nice stuff (a weirdly balanced shot off the second ropes, a throat cross chop when Taylor started to come back) and then begged off again towards the finish where Taylor got him with the Scorpion Deathlock. I enjoyed this one.

ER: Imagine what a crushing day it was when Terry Taylor was told he had to get the top of his hair dyed bright red. I can't imagine, but it's a conversation about your career as a top pro being over and done with. Look at him here, with his blond locks and no red, a man existing as a man and not as a rooster. But I am much more of a Heel Terry Taylor man. Let me see that evil Mark Harmon unleashed, like you find out the guy running your goof around summer school is actually a real hard ass who will probably assault more than one of the students. No, this match is owned by Heel Danny Davis, and I agree with Matt that more Danny research must be conducted. Fans hate this man on sight, even before he gets on the mic to say, "Bobby The Brain Heenan paid me a lot of money to come to this god forsaken place! But brother, he didn't pay me a dime because it's gonna be myyy pleasure." Then he one-handed shoves Taylor.  

Davis has great movement and plays to the crowd expertly, the kind of guy who you'd want to keep as a heel house show undercarder. How he punches Taylor over the referee, that stiff quick short arm clothesline to break an arm wringer, those great running short kicks to a downed Taylor's jaw, his very good short right hands aimed straight at the chin - including a fist shake out after one, thus cementing Davis's status as a Great Puncher - all of it is stuff that Danny Davis performs far better than we've ever given him credit. If you were doubting his Great Puncher status, he also throws nice corner 10 count punches and dropped a hammering fistdrop from the middle buckle, and if that's not the trifecta then man I don't even know what we're doing here. The thing is, even better than his corner 10 counts? His shoulder shrugs in the corner. You remember how Batista always had real awful shoulder shrugs, coming in way too light and making it obvious just how much he was holding back? Soothe yourself by Danny Davis going hard into Taylor's stomach and ask yourself why we don't demand better. Demand Danny Davis. 

Curt Hennig vs. Rick Martel

MD: This was a draw that did air but was clipped in half or so. I can't speak to that version. I will say that the good stuff here was very good. The feeling out process where Hennig won the first few exchanges only for Martel to turn it around and toss him around with all the babyface fire anyone might want was just as good as you'd expect. Martel's one of the only guys I've ever seen that was so into the flow of what he was doing that he'd do flat back dropdowns to set up an armdrag. After that rope running they went into extended controlling of the arm by Martel and they kept it interesting enough, with lots of escape attempts by Perfect, before building to an elaborate bit where it looked like Perfect might get him three times before finally dropping him with a belly to back.

Perfect's control started out engaging (especially as he was still selling the arm) but they went into a long front face lock. Obviously, these are two guys that could work that, and Martel was going to work from underneath well, but it was also clearly eating up a bunch of time in a twenty minute draw. The payoff was good though as again Perfect was going to rush right in to all of Martel's fire. Once he cleared the ring of him that was the time limit so it didn't really even build to the sort of nearfalls you often get with a draw. It more felt like they were just calling it a day (even if Martel tried to invite Hennig back in).

ER: This did not need to be a time limit draw, and it didn't need the moments you knew they were working towards a time limit draw, but I also thought Hennig was fantastic throughout all of it. Look at black trunks Perfect in '89. It's easy to talk about Hennig the bumper but it's really all about Hennig the ball of energy. It's going into every exchange with real aggression, real purpose. You see how hard both men are leaning into a collar and elbow and you see how Hennig throws everything - armdrag, hop toss, fireman's carry - with real purpose. His punches look like he's really trying to mess up Martel's pretty face. This era Hennig was going to come in hard and then feed even harder, making his opponents' bodyslams and hiptosses look more violent than his own. Before things settle down into arm work and front face locks, he takes a great bump off a light dropkick, flying out through the ropes and off and over the ringside table, then faceplanting all around the ring while Canadians lose their minds. 

I love how hard he pushes all the rope running that leads to him eating shit. He pushes Martel fast, like he's trying to get him to mess up a sequence, but it always ends with him on the mat kicking his legs in a hold. He does two different missed charges into the turnbuckles that lead to long series of him eating bigger bowls of shit. The arm work is long but Perfect makes it look so convincing that I heard two different people - women! - yelling for Martel to break his arm. He's good at timing how long to keep the crowd engaged while kicking in a hold, and knows when to start breaking out match ending fireworks. Curt Hennig is perhaps our finest wrestler ever at bumping like a heel who has his shoelaces tied together. A lot of the Minnesota guys were great at that. Was it common practice to work 2 a day drills while pantsed or something? Hennig gets kicked around hard before fleeing at the sound of the bell, and every fall is that of a man escaping a ransomed kidnapping. We act like it's a foregone conclusion that this was "just another match clearly worked as a time limit draw" but this was the first time limit draw that Hennig worked during the Perfect era. This wasn't just a thing he and Martel were doing around the horn, this was a Copps exclusive where some tag specialist took Perfection to the limit. 

Rockers vs. Brainbusters

MD: This had Billy Red Lyons interview the Busters (no Heenan) before the start. Nothing notable but nice to see. The match itself started great with Michaels looking like a huge star outclassing Arn (Arn feeding for it perfectly) and then escaping to slap the hands of the fans like he had escaped with the crown jewels. Then, he, being Michaels, doubled down on it and no sold all of Tully's stuff (Tully still bumped huge for him), and it wasn't until Jannetty came in that they even started the false transitions. Just another case where this would have been better if Michaels took that first win, gave Tully a tiny bit, and then overcame. Ah well. Jannetty looked great as he overcame (including fighting out of the corner and hitting a backflip to reverse a double top wristlock.).

Really a never ending heel in peril (though one full of entertaining individual bits) until Michaels ducked a Tully clothesline on the outside only to run into an Arn one. Thankfully the Busters were great at making the most of their time on top. Michaels knew how to be a star already and was constantly trying to fight back. I think a babyface should be doing that but maybe he didn't quite have the proper escalation in it. Arn crotched himself on Michaels' knees to set up the hot tag and things got chaotic but the Busters fairly quickly snuck one out. The great stuff was absolutely great but in part due to Michaels' tendencies and Arn and Tully being happy to just go along with them, this didn't come together like it could have.

ER: This really did feel like a 15 minute match where Tully bumped and stooged and made narrow misses for 13 of those minutes, and I did not mind that layout one bit. I was wildly entertained watching the Rockers punch through Tully for a long tag, as Tully is wildly entertaining at getting run over by punches. He cannot just walk a straight line to a destination and it's perfect. When he's punched, it's a turning drop to the knee before getting punched in another direction; when he misses, it's a quick turn back to his target to take his medicine. He finds several safe and less safe ways to fall to the floor and continue his constant motion and I loved them all. I loved the theatrical slow mo Sgt. Slaughter bump to the floor and the ways he would fall off the apron into a back bump. He treats every punch from each Rocker as something worth bumping for, and it makes his eventual tag out moment even greater when he turned a near tag out into an inverted atomic drop. The Brainbusters really didn't have a lot of offense here - that Arn clothesline on the floor that the camera missed, Tully's atomic drop to set up his tag, and Arn's spinebuster after ducking a clothesline - but the Rockers didn't really have any offense either. Even when Michaels goes up top after they hit tandem superkicks, he only comes flying off with a punch. And I'll take it. The finish is fantastic, even if uncommon. Marty goes for his first flying headscissors but it's too close to the ropes, and Tully pulls his head down from the apron and slam dunks his head over the top rope.     

Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Paul Roma

MD: I'm honestly a little astounding how good this was. (Eric will not be, but he is a Mike Sharpe truther). It was 80% shtick and 20% Roma hitting dropkicks, but the shtick was really good and Sharpe was incredibly entertaining. He's one of the most vocal wrestlers ever and there were times where I could shut my eyes and still know exactly what was going on just from hearing him stammer. Mainly when he was begging off but not always. And he did a lot of begging off. A lot of stalling. They got tons of mileage out of a handshake bit at the beginning, out of him threatening to leave, out of Roma catching his foot on a kick attempt. Just one bit after the next after the next with Sharpe throwing himself into it completely and Roma being a perfectly fine straight man. It's the sort of match the sheets would have grumbled about in 89 but that plays a lot better in 2025 when there's nothing like it in the world anymore. You can see the value so clearly now. Honestly just a great show for stooging up til this point, and from guys that don't get the credit for it like Davis and Sharpe.

ER: We get an honest to god Iron Mike Sharpe ring entrance and the fact that he is in his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario and announced as such does not give him a single second of goodwill from his town. These are his people, and the people of Ontario fucking hate the mirror that he is holding up for them. The women scream for Roma as he removes his jacket, but when the match is over I will challenge those same women to tell me anything Paul Roma did during the match. They won't be able to, because this is Iron Mike Sharpe's town, and Iron Mike Sharpe's match. To use an already dated out of existence joke format: Mike Sharpe is the Tully Blanchard of Barry Darsows. He has the size and sound and lack of offense of Darsow, but watching him directly after a Tully match you really see what a large adult son Tully Blanchard he is. He is not as hateable on sight as Tully (few men ever have been) but how much of an instant turn off does one have to be within pro wrestling to be booed on sight in his own hometown? 

I love how quickly Sharpe takes armdrags and how it's the only bump he really takes differently than his standard arm waving back bump that he uses for everything else. His swinging arm into Roma's stomach looked excellent and the man gets tied up in the ropes more efficiently than any wrestler other than Andre. But where Andre was always a temporarily inconvenienced giant, Sharpe has a way of making it feel like he just might be stuck in those tangled ropes for the rest of the evening. The finish is outstanding and probably something that no wrestler other than Sharpe would even want to do: Sharpe loads up his cast and swings it at Roma, but Roma catches it and throws Sharpe's loaded arm back into his head. It's so stupid and so hapless that it can only be a Mike Sharpe finish. We didn't know how good we had it, and as Matt points out, it's because nobody comes close to being a Mike Sharpe any more. We didn't recognize how essential different workers were to a roster. 

Greg Valentine vs. Ron Garvin

MD: Another awesome match in their feud. What can you even say about this really? They lay into each other in the corner. Garvin's great at firing back out of it just when you think Valentine has him. Valentine's great at stumbling about and getting a sneaky advantage right until he doesn't. There were some really brilliant specific moments which shows you they weren't just hitting each other blindly. At one point, Valentine's about to do the flop and Garvin catches him so he can hit him one more time first. Valentine takes over with a shinbreaker but when he goes to the second, Garvin nails him before he collapses so they both go down. Finish had Garvin wanting to use the shinguard as a weapon and getting distracted by the ref so he got rolled up but post match he hit a punch version of the Garvin Stomp to a prone Valentine and nailed him with the shinguard anyway. The world would have been better off if we had whole promotions based around this style instead of whatever else we got in the 90s and after.

ER: It would be a good idea if we just kept getting new Garvin/Valentine matches every couple weeks. Every single one we have has been a real gift, and while there are a lot of similarities among them there are always new ideas and ways that certain sequences can be extended. This was, I think, the shortest one we have, and I think going less than 10 actually made their strikes play harder. The first two minutes is just them shoving each other in the chest with both hands and I would have been happy if we never even got to the punches. I could have watched them shove each other and burn out their arms for eight minutes, just to see who would be the first to fall. 

But I do like the strikes. 

Valentine always takes more punches than he gives in the Garvin battles, but I think this one takes the cake. He just gets battered. There is often a corner punch out stretch of their match, and Valentine's selling made this stand out from the rest. Garvin kept punching and chopping him and Valentine kept getting knocked to his ass, hitting the bottom buckle and getting pulled back to his feet only to be punched and chopped some more. When he finally can no longer stand and begins pitching forward into a Flop, Garvin actually holds him up with both hands on his chest. Garvin looks like a support beam propping up a leaning building in the Philippines, and it's all so he can just punch him in the head one more time.  

When Valentine does flop, there is no rest to be had. Garvin starts raking his back and Valentine sells multiple back rakes so well that it made me think of how Tenryu might've sold a back rake if that had been something that any wrestler in WAR ever did (they did not). But it's all back rakes that Valentine sells incredibly, punches to the nose (that Valentine sells incredibly), a fantastic headbutt, and one of those sleepers that starts like a violent clothesline. Garvin is a monster and I don't think there was anyone else on the roster who would have put up with this. Garvin has his own great run of selling when Hammer turns a side headlock into a knee breaker, then does it again. Garvin is limping around on one leg, and after he takes the second knee breaker he landed one big punch that knocked Hammer to his back while it spiraled him into the mat. 

I think calling Garvin's punches after the bell a punch version of the Garvin Stomp kind of undersells how nasty those punches were. Garvin just got into mount and threw disgusting punches while Valentine was on his back. He threw eight of them, and Valentine couldn't really move to absorb them, so Garvin just stood over him raining down shots that built into even more disgusting hammerfists, both fists held together like an ape attacking his handler. Hammer can barely move and has to take a rapid succession of wicked punches and man....is this the best of the Garvin/Valentine matches? I think this one packs in the most action, and it felt like they went even more violent with the shorter runtime. 

Randy Savage vs. Bad News Brown 

MD: This has been out there before but I'm not sure I've ever seen it. It's a street fight. Bad News is out with a Mets shirt. Savage is out with a white shirt with a Gold's Gym tank top over it and grey Zubaz type pants and pink elbow pads so it's a look. Liz looks like Liz. That feels like a missed opportunity. It's basically ten years before its time. You give it a couple more minutes and some more goofiness around the finish and it could have been a 1998 Austin No DQ main event. Brown started with a chair but then missed a punch on the post outside. Savage used the timekeeper's table and kept on him. Then he took the weight belt off and used that. Brown came back with a chair. They set up a table and but the ref got crunched in between it and Brown. That's when we got the Ghetto Blaster and the visual pin, then a hilarious second one as Brown got the ref up and slammed Savage but the ref did a face first bump as he passed out again. When he came to Savage rolled up Bad News for a quick pin and that was that. Post match they went at it with Brown getting an early advantage and Savage fighting back as the locker room cleared. Pretty bizarre to watch overall, but it worked well for what they were doing especially if they went back to it.

ER: This was on the very first DVDVR 80s set, the one that was assembled and arranged differently than all the other eventual sets because this was the very first time we were doing this and nobody had any idea how large this project would grow with subsequent sets. "Controversial" is not the correct word for it but I remember some people wondering why this match was included at the time. There were a lot of imperfections and missing matches on that first set, and I still can't believe that was 20 years ago now. 2005? Impossible. It was not well received by the people who participated in that first ballot. It finished in the bottom 10 out of 100 matches, and it almost surely wouldn't have been included were the set put together with the same method that all subsequent sets were assembled. From the very next set (Other Japan Men's) we were watching every single match from the territory/fed and picking among the very best. There were plenty of matches that should have been included in a WWF 80s set, and we sadly never got to re-do that one. I can't find my initial ballot either, so I have no idea how high/low I ranked it 20 years ago, when I was a 24 year old man, but now I think it's pretty safe to call this pick ahead of its time.  like a pretty ahead of its time fiat pick (that I believe was made by David Bixenspan, credit due).

Maybe it belongs just for the gear. Nobody shows up for a fight like this and they're idiots for that. I loved Bad News in his 50-50 poly-cotton Mets tee and Savage just went over the top with gear. The Golds tank top and Zubaz would have been enough but the tight undershirt and pink elbow pads that looked like knee pads he was wearing on his elbows make it insane. It's possible Big thought it belonged on the set because it was a unique match for 1989 WWF. Savage was the World Heavyweight Champ and it's not like he and Bad News were working Harlem Street Fights around the horn. This was the first (and only one that exists on tape) and they worked just eight total over the next couple months. It's short, it's a tough fight, Savage takes some tough spills - including getting thrown hard over the railing to the concrete, a girl in her neon green sweatshirt helping push him back over the guardrail so he can go after Bad News. Bad News punching the ringpost felt like a novel spot in 1989, and him setting up a table in the corner and running a ref straight through it feels even more novel. That ref got crunched man. The bullshit finish is incredible, with Bad News getting a real long visual pin over the champ, then reviving the referee just for the man to collapse again just as Bad News re-secured the pin. Maybe people disliked it 20 years ago because it was too short? It's less than 8 minutes long, which feels more like a snack than a World Heavyweight Title match, but I'm glad I watched it again now that I'm sliding down the other side of the mountain. 

Jim Duggan/Hercules vs. Ted Dibiase/Virgil

MD: This was already out there as well so I'll keep it quick. Herc and Duggan team up very well. Two versions of the same sort of visual idea with big shots and driving motion. Duggan constantly moving forward especially on his hope spot punches is something I didn't appreciate enough for a lot of my life. Honestly, Dibiase is fine here, feeding and stooging, but he doesn't give himself over to it in the same way a lot of the people earlier in the card. Everything is technically sound but it almost feels more like him putting himself in the right place at the right time in a more modern way as opposed to that sense of total abandon that we got from Davis or Sharpe or (in different ways) the Brainbusters (or in a different way) or Valentine (in a different way). Virgil is interesting here as he never really does much, mainly just plays interference and holds someone for Dibiase. It's actually a clever use for him. This was ok, and fit well on the card. I just don't think Dibiase stood up well to his predecessor heels.

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Found Footage Friday: LOST 1990 WWF HOUSE SHOW~!

WWF House Show Wisconsin Fieldhouse 10/28/90

ER: I love these "undocumented" WWF house shows so much. It's like they never existed, WWF out here running secret shows in podunk towns. Matt and I wrote about a WWF Boy Scout Fundraiser show from '92, which is one of my favorite show reviews we've ever done for Segunda Caida. These shows are special. The WWF showing up in some nothing central Wisconsin town with $9 tickets sold at the local hardware store, like when some mudshow Harlem Clowns barnstormers played members my small childhood town's fire and police departments in our high school gymnasium. I was $9, my dad took me and a couple friends, and we laughed when this one Healdsburg, CA cop kept getting Clowned. I had no idea who the Harlem Clowns were before but saw the ads in our local paper, the Healdsburg Tribune, and Healdsburg wasn't a place that got "events". We were going to a town event, like when the fair would come to town. That's the best part about a show like this: It's not filmed as a wrestling show. It's filmed as a Town Event. WWF sold cheap tickets to a show at Marshfield, Wisconsin's high school gym and we get to watch the home video. My dad didn't bring the camcorder to that Harlem Clowns game, the way he would to my baseball games or recitals, but somebody's dad did. If there are a few guys out there who run a Barnstorming Basketball blog, I hope they find it. 

1. Shane Douglas vs. Black Bart

MD: This is amazing footage to have in the first place as we'd never even had the card for this, just the date. This is clipped, but you still get probably half the match. Tail end of 1990 is when I first got into wrestling as a kid (a little bit of a late arriver) so seeing Black Bart and Shane Douglas in a WWF ring is just natural for me. As an opening match on a B or C show, things could have been a lot worse. Bart was a well-oiled machine by 91; he knew what to do. He knew what not to do. He knew when to do it. He could still execute it well enough. He was never going to be the star that he claims he was going to be if you listen to him do interviews now but he could be just as valuable on an undercard as he was in 85 when he was feuding with Ron Bass in JCP. He was solid enough here that it makes me want to go back and look at his WCW and GWF stuff the following year. It's funny to think that your real bottom of the card heels in 90 WWF were Buddy Rose and Black Bart. Your bottom of the card faces were Powers and Brunzell with Douglas just a bit above them maybe as a real up and comer. Bart worked Dustin a lot around this time as well.

From what we see here, it's paint by numbers, but the numbers add up and the paint is vibrant and the kids in the crowd are into it. Douglas is snappy in his shine, including a nice headscissors takeover and Bart sailing across the ring on an armdrag. We don't see the actual transition but we come in with Bart dropping Shane over the top rope. They then work a chinlock up and down but Shane gets the crowd behind him and he's dynamic enough in the rope running out of it. The finish is a sunset flip back out of the corner and it gets a big pop. Douglas had some legs as a babyface here and they could have done something with him. There are probably dozens of shoot interviews I'm not going to listen to for why they didn't. 90-91 Bart is the one that might get another look from us though.

ER: I thought this was a great opener, and I don't think I realized how good Black Bart would be for Shane Douglas. I have seen more than enough early 90s Douglas and I don't think he typically looks as good as he did here. Bart is a big guy, the kind of big guy that dads in the crowd look at and think "yeah now that's a big guy" and the perfect kind of big guy to take Douglas's babyface fire. There were hundreds of guys working matches just like this and Bart and Douglas were doing it better than most of them. Bart really was a (for me at least) much better Ron Bass, but I don't think I ever thought of Shane Douglas as being a potentially great Ricky Morton. He looked like a great Ricky here. His two headscissors were incredible. Everything Douglas did, Bart made look better, but those headscissors would have looked great against anyone. They were the classic Robert Gibson/Marty Jannetty style and Bart is a big sold guy who is able to "stand" with them longer. Those style headscissors are always more satisfying to me when you can see the babyface actually working to take their opponent over, so Bart being able to hold Douglas up for that pause before getting slid across the ring just makes them pop. The crowd is wild for everything they do (a beautiful running theme on the afternoon) and it made the simplest things sing. 

2. Warlord vs. Tom Stone

MD: This is more like it. Tom Stone has a windbreaker that fits 1990 perfectly. Warlord is lacking Slick but has the full half helmet and armor and staff. I watched some 87 Warlord in New Japan recently where he was the Dangerous Violence Warlord and very green. That Warlord would have given Stone half of the match. This one did not. It was worked like an enhancement match. Real Immovable Object vs. Stoppable Force stuff. Stone tried some clotheslines and punches and staggered Warlord a little but he did a good job portraying how shocked he was that things weren't working instead of doing what Duggan or Bossman would do and build up momentum. That meant he ran into a clothesline eventually. Warlord was really good at setting his stuff up, a bit lift of the arm before coming down with it, that sort of thing, but the impact never lived up to the preamble. Stone's big comeback was two eye rakes and the biting of the eye which seemed to confuse the crowd more than anything else. Then he ran into a lovely big boot and ate the running power slam. This didn't try to be more than what it should have been because of the setting. That meant no lengthy nerve hold. Unless Stone's family was in the crowd, I don't think anyone was disappointed at its absence.

ER: I'm a big Tom Rocky Stone guy, even though he's someone we barely write about. He's a guy I kept trying to get on the DVDVR 80s AWA set, just because I wanted him represented somehow. What's the best Tom Stone match? I have no idea. He didn't get anywhere near the same match length opportunities as the similar-but-different Iron Mike Sharpe, was never used by WWF as a job guy who would put up a fight or could occasionally win. Stone had to do things to stand out while rarely getting out of 2 minute losses. Here, we get 5 minutes of Stone and while none of his offense is really sold, it's a much broader picture of the kind of personality Stone could bring to a loss (that looked like it was headed towards a loss every second of the match). I love his windbreaker, love his dedication to the job guy singlet (the one with the horizontal strap joining the shoulder straps), and love how he still knew how to land offense that looked good while knowing it wouldn't be acknowledged. His clotheslines looked great, his punches looked even better - grabbing Warlord's head with his left and throwing heavy shots with his right - but his perplexed looks in the corner took the cake. He had no entry point into Warlord, he knew he had no entry point, and knew he had no shot. 

Everybody in Marshfield knew that Tom Stone had no shot. He was Mr. Belding in a way that is necessary but now completely unrepresented in wrestling. I don't think any wrestler projected School Principal than Tom Stone. If you didn't know better, you'd think he actually was a teacher at Marshfield High. We have all watched and attended wrestling shows where a teacher from that gymnasium's high school got into the ring. I went to a show at Antioch High School to see Greg Valentine and Sabu and Antioch High School's football coach wrestle. Tom Stone is the most subtly, skillfully acted goofball science teacher wrestling at his school's fundraiser. He's made for this show. He's the fucking Bruno Sammartino of this specific kind of show. His frustration at his own ineffectiveness, a great "here it goes" shake of the head, and a total surprise when he raked at Warlord's eyes and actually bit his eye! A reminder that Tom Stone is a bad guy who actually wants to win. A great pro wrestler. 

Warlord looked like trash. I've watched a lot of Maxx Muscle matches and Warlord was not as good as Maxx Muscle. He has no weight of any kind behind anything he did. His big boot was light, his clothesline soft. That's not really important. If Warlord had walked by me in my town's high school gym when I was 9 years old, my jaw would have been dropped. Gassed out guy in a helmet and Conan weapon would impress the hell out of 9 year old me. Warlord looks huge in a high school gym. You've never seen a bigger person in that building. His match ending powerslam was a real powerslam, an important lesson for wrestlers in "ending the match on a high note". Save your best thing for your last thing. Marshfield will remember Warlord's size and powerslam and nothing else he did. That means it worked. 

 

3. Sgt. Slaughter vs. Nikolai Volkoff

MD: Legitimately shocking. Slaughter came out to huge, huge heat with Adnan and the flag and singing the Iraqi anthem and calling people maggots. Volkoff had a huge pop and the US flag. I do like how this is an inversion. By that I mean, if you ever see a parody of pro wrestling, you'll never see the foreign guy as the face and the American as the turncoat, and Volkoff was super super over during the summer of 90. The whole bit he did with the scouts made him something like the third or fourth top babyface in WWF, at least for a few months. It really did set up the heel Slaughter character well and this was a mauling. Slaughter ambushed Volkoff from behind as Adnan was waving the flag at him and he never let up. His stuff was pointed and credible, mean, just rubbing Volkoff's face in the ground, plastering him with shots from every angle, just being relentless. Warlord is supposed to be slow and methodological, but the difference in the actual perceived impact was telling. You keep looking for Volkoff's comeback and it never gets there. He just eats a bunch of elbow drops and the camel clutch, followed by a post match beating.

ER: When Matt sent me the card for this show it hadn't crossed my mind that Sgt. Slaughter would be bringing his Iraqi Sympathizer routine to this high school. It would have been so fucking wild if someone came flying an Iraqi flag into my school when I was a kid. How could people in central Wisconsin process a guy coming into their town and rooting for Iraq? Do they know the formula? Could they understand it was all part of the show? What's the percentage of Believers? The Gulf War was fresh in 1990. I, a child, would not have been permitted to show any kind of allegiance with Iraq on school grounds and I wish I could have seen the reactions from my town's adults. Sgt. Slaughter praising Iraq and shouting a G rated Tracy Smothers promo at the unexpecting crowd is an incredible sight on its own, but, even as a child, I would have expected Sgt. Slaughter's comeuppance to be arriving any minute. 

Matt's not wrong about how loved Volkoff was that summer, but even if he hadn't been, it was a man waving a large American flag in the face of a man waving an Iraqi flag at what was basically the onset of the Gulf War. Everybody in that building knew that America would come out of this looking good. 

And then Sgt. Slaughter just fucked Volkoff up for several minutes and got him to tap without ever absorbing a single shot, then continued fucking Volkoff up after winning. I and everyone in Marshfield knew that it was only a matter of time before one of Slaughter's constant barrage of kicks to the ribs and big man shots to the body got turned back against him, and instead American got run the fuck over and buried like if the first 15 minutes of Red Dawn had been the whole movie. I don't know if I have ever seen America fare worse in a high school gymnasium. This might be our greatest document of America in the role of Yoji Anjo flying to America fight Rickson Gracie. 

4. Rockers vs. Power and Glory

MD: Really good tag. Great Michaels performance too but everyone was on here. It started with Jannetty hitting a top rope fist on Hercules who was swinging his chain in the middle of the ring for an awesome visual to start and never really let up. Rockers kept outquicking Power and Glory's attempt to cheat to take over to keep the shine but it was overall pretty brisk. Nothing wore out its welcome. When Jannetty was in there (and getting a chant), Shawn was engaged on the apron. It took a fairly complex series of three or four cheating attempts to finally take over on Michaels. They mostly worked over his leg. There was a great hope spot where Roma was stepping on the ankle to prevent him from tag and so he could taunt Jannetty and Michaels worked himself halfway up and did a sort of falling punch which looked perfect given the HH quality. They were drawing a bunch of heat by attacking Jannetty on the apron and focusing on the leg, building to Michaels kicking Herc into the corner on a spinning toe hold. Jannetty came in hot setting up the finish where Michaels, having been tossed outside, pulled Hercules away allowing Jannetty to duck the double clothesline and hit a cross body on Roma. Fans were into this and if anything, I could have used an extra minute or two.

ER: Great tag match from two of the great WWF tag teams. Power and Glory were so good. Of course the Rockers were good but Power and Glory were so good. Hercules and Paul Roma are each guys who don't give enough credit. Hercules' as a worker keeps looking better and better the more I revisit that era. He's another act that plays huge in a high school gym. Look how he swings the chains, knowing exactly how close he can stand to Marty Jannetty to not actually chain whip the man while still swinging the chains at full extension. Paul Roma, meanwhile, holds up tremendously, as he's the greasiest slimeball around and looks and acts like someone who should be the greasiest slimeball around. He was born into being an asshole. You cannot look like Paul Roma and not be a jackoff. This building understood that on sight, and they also understood that the Rockers were the coolest boys in town. Marty Jannetty especially got a huge reaction, and the opening of this match should have been the way a classic PPV match happened. Hercules swinging chains in Marty's face, Marty climbing to the top rope and leaping off with a fist to the face. 

I love watching southern tag formula in American gyms. Bad versions of it usually work, great versions of it lead to ear splitting joyous reactions. When Marty tags in after Michaels has been getting his leg kicked and stomped over? It's impossible to picture anything or anyone getting a louder reaction. Power and Glory did nothing over the top to work over Michaels' knee, other than look exactly the way Power and Glory look and simply kicking and stomping at his leg. They didn't need to do anything else, the energy was perfect. It could have gone on another 10 minutes and it only would have gotten better with each minute. This crowd would have been along for every stomp and every close tag. I do wish Michaels had been cut off from a tag one or two or three more times, but this deserved every scream of that hot tag. The Marty chants are calorific icing. 

5. Koko B. Ware vs. Boris Zhukov

MD: Koko looks like a million bucks here. Most entertaining, compelling, engaging babyface in the world. Zhukov does his part to start, stalling early while Koko keeps the USA chants going and holds court in the ring, and then walking right into a whole lot of stooing shtick. The best bit was when Koko would headbutt him and Zhukov would stagger and then Koko would mock the stagger. Legitimately funny stuff. Eventually Zhukov dragged him down into that nerve hold I was worried about in the Warlord match, but it worked here far better. Some good hope spots and cutoffs before Koko came back and eventually won it with a missile dropkick so high that he basically bounced off the top of Zhukov's head. I'm not doing this one justice but it was very good for what it was.

ER: Was every person on this roster just the perfect High School Gym Attraction? Any child who sees Koko B. Ware dance into their gym, literal parrot on his shoulder, bronze suit glittering, looking like the coolest confident most fun person in the world. A Megastar cartoon of a man. I dated a girl my age whose connection to wrestling was watching Sunday morning WWF with her brother, and Koko B. Ware was her favorite. How couldn't he be the favorite? Do you know how wide I smiled and how my voice went up when a hot girl told me she loved Koko B. Ware at some point in her life. That's special. We'll have that. I smile when I pass my Koko Hasbro. If, instead of Koko B. Ware - a name every American should be allowed to hear once in their life, because it's a fake name that has a real chance to stick with someone after hearing it just one time. What's a better pro wrestler name than Koko B. Ware? Gorilla Monsoon? Probably. But not many. We should have been given Attitude era Koko. Lives would have changed. The charm of children asking questions on pro wrestling handhelds is one of the truly innocent and charming experiences in our scumbag obsession of choice. Suddenly every child in every part of this building had questions when Koko B. Ware appeared in their lives. 

6. Texas Tornado vs. Mr. Perfect

MD: I don't know about this one. It had some weird, weird structural things that would have made more sense if Perfect had the belt and wasn't the challenger. He attacked Kerry on the way in, but Kerry came back, hit the tornado punch on the floor, and then started play King of the Mountain, keeping Perfect out of the ring. It was pretty back and forth after that with Perfect able to chip away but never hold control for long. Kerry was going to Kerry. They definitely felt more room to breathe given that this was a house show that no one was ever going to see. Perfect BLOCKED the discus punch on the inside. Kerry hit it another time or two in the match incidentally, just twirling around after his punches. Kerry kicked out of the PerfectPlex. At some point, you got the sense that maybe they were just having fun with it because they were on a B show in Wisconsin? 

The finish was fun with Perfect undoing the turnbuckles but Kerry cutting him off and running him across the ring to faceplant him into the metal. Perfect did a triple gainer in the air exactly as you'd want him to in that situation but he still managed to kick out at too. It didn't matter much though as Kerry just spun around the ring at full speed to hit the tornado punch one last time for the win. Post-match, Hennig just decided to lay there for a bit. It was an entertaining house show performance (and has value along those lines certainly) but I don't it necessarily had the substance to go along with the sizzle.

ER: I wish we had sound during Kerry's entrance because that crowd looked loud and Kerry took a long time with it, slow walked it in his perfect jacket. But we have all of this full match, and I loved it a lot more than Matt. I thought this was a great match, a stiff dominating heel Perfect performance against a tough fight back aw shucks babyface Kerry performance. Kerry spammed variations on the discus punch in between a consistently dominant Perfect attack. This was really physical. When Perfect bumped for Kerry, he bumped for Kerry, but when he hit Kerry he hit Kerry. Every punch and every chop Perfect threw played directly into this camcorder lens 12 riser seats up. Perfect was an unrelenting attacker, smothering our sculpted god. Two different times in this match, Perfect flung himself over the top rope to the floor to continue an attack as quickly as possible. Our cameraman misses a huge Perfect bump to the floor that gets the gym jumping to their feet, but you can see his feet go over the top, and it looked no different than him flying out to the floor just to punch Kerry in the face. Blocking the discus punch was a legit surprise, and a heel out punching the babyface champion famous for his punches. That's a hero facing a real threat, and Perfect looked like a real threat, easily the most violent worker on the show. Kerry kicking out of the Perfect Plex would have shocked me live; Perfect flipping for a discus punch would have delighted me.  

7. Earthquake vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan

MD: Earthquake had Hart with him and Jimmy even did the introduction for him. There was some fun house show goofing here too with Duggan catching Earthquake trying to cheapshot him a number of times. Quake was one of the best ever at knowing just how much to give and exactly when to give it. He was doing all of the Hogan poses too and it got big heat. He knew how to be a monster. He knew how to accentuate the things that made him larger than life. It's not quite the same as how Andre did it, because Andre had such a unique presence that he was accentuating being Andre. With Quake it was more about running a scientific experiment to prove beyond any matter of doubt that physics actually matter. Duggan got in a lot of shots and even got close once or twice (close being making him wobble or teasing a slam). Jimmy helped him take over eventually and he had some bear hugs that didn't look like the most amazing things in the world from the HH vantage but were naturally believable enough. Duggan was able to get hope spots through dodging and firing back but he was cut off. His comeback was pro wrestling perfection as Quake wobbled more and more, including this bit of remarkable fancy footwork to really get it across and build up the drama, before Duggan finally hit the three point stance. Hart intervened but eventually got squashed in the corner as Duggan moved and they sent the fans home happy with a quick roll up pin. We have the Summerslam Fever match between these two and some tags, but I think this was a pretty rare matchup overall and unsurprisingly, they matched up well together.

ER: Earthquake looks so massive here, in ways that we will never see in pro wrestling again. I don't think people realize just how much a big fat bearded guy fearlessly running ropes as fearlessly as God himself meant to our fandom. I don't know if I've committed to anything in my life as fearlessly as Earthquake commits to running ropes, and honestly it inspires me. I've been going on and on about how every wrestler on this roster is made to shine in a high school gymnasium but will you look at how perfect Earthquake and Jim Duggan look in high school gym of a town that had a Carl's Jr. but didn't get a McDonalds until 1991. Duggan's punches all looked like shit, and it didn't matter, because when it came time for Earthquake to tease out a Berzerkeresque spot where he legs keep splitting farther and farther apart with each subsequent Hacksaw clothesline, we were somehow witnessing Earthquake putting more faith into his adductor muscles than he puts into the ropes. I was so certain he was hitting the mat on that third clothesline, plopped down on his butt, and when he went full leg spread hunch forward it was like the greatest Andre spot that Andre never did. These men knew. Some kid went into their town's new-ish McDonalds that day and told them "Nick sent me," and later that night saw Earthquake vanquished by America. What a day. 

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WWF UK Rampage 93

 

I really like how Rampage 93 is filmed. It looks and sounds like an incredibly well produced handheld, capturing a neat up-close house show vibe. It's 12,000 loud people in Sheffield and the crowd and ring are mic'd like you were there live. It's a real house show card too, with tag guys split into singles and a 10 minute Brooklyn Brawler match. 

1. Fatu vs. Brian Knobbs

ER: Nasties were so over that Knobbs was able to go around the ring milking NASTY chants for two straight minutes without anyone losing interest. Knobbs was like a big fat sloppy Hogan to this crowd, and he is a pretty great fat sloppy Hogan. I love how Brian Knobbs runs the ropes like fat guy. Not a fat guy wrestler, just a fat guy. He runs the ropes like an overweight principal who gets in the ring at a school fundraiser to do a completely ill-advised spot. If your principal ran the ropes like Knobbs, you'd think he was just being fun dorky Mr. Wilson. But Brian Knobbs is like the school's weird janitor getting in the ring and running the ropes like a fat lunatic, and kids fucking love it. 

2. Doink vs. Kamala 

ER: Doink keeps wrestling Kamala to the mat and it's so damn cool. Nobody ever rushes in and grabs Kamala in a single leg and then start working half grapevine armbars on him. Doink is working Iowa shooter holds on Kamala and I don't know if I've ever seen anyone do that. Kamala falls in ways he doesn't usually fall, because nobody ever thought to work like Lou Thesz against Kamala. Doink runs into Kamala's comebacks really well, and there was a big time Kamala moment where he got sick of the armbars and just started swinging wildly on Doink as Doink scrambled to the corner. Kamala pinning Doink the wrong way took up too much of the runtime. 

3. Mr. Perfect vs. Samu

ER: Samu is so damn good during their opening rope running. He sticks every piece of Perfect's precise timing. He's the one doing the close call dropdown and leapfrog, and he's hitting them all while also working as careening out of control chubby guy. When they do more rope running he does another dropdown, then shuts it down with a cool clothesline. When Perfect gets thrown over the top to the floor, he REALLY gets thrown over the top to the floor. Perfect goes face first into the ring steps like he's trying to lose an eye. All of Samu's strikes look really powerful and Perfect bumps painfully for them, not doing big athletic bumps. His bumps to the floor were all really fast and I thought they had real complementary body language during their strike exchanges. Good rhythm. Perfect's inside cradle is a really great nearfall, but I do think they rushed to the finish. Needed a bit more build to the Perfect Plex. The whole match felt like a nice slow stiff build and then the finish was just bim bam boom. Bump to the floor, missed splash, Perfect Plex. This was all still really good, one of the best WWF singles matches of the year, but a finish that felt like part of the same match would have made it even better. 

4. Bob Backlund vs. Damien Demento

Why does it feel like I've seen half a dozen Demento/Backlund matches? Were these two just at the perfect corresponding place on the heel/face totem pole alignment, working low stakes face/heel back and forth, and there just happened to be some guy who followed WWF on tour to make sure and document several different Demento/Backlund matches with his camcorder? This is an official release obviously, but it feels like I've seen several Damien Demento/Bob Backlund matches and I'm just not sure how that's possible. They don't really have chemistry but they don't not have chemistry, they just fill about 7 minutes and it's fine, and some part of me has spent my life watching dozens of Bob Backlund/Damien Demento matches that were filmed by a Bad Dad, or perhaps the Greatest Dad. Demento took a big Berzerker bump to the floor and Backlund made a lot of great Popeye Whoa-Whoa-Whoa noises so maybe this was actually fucking great. 

5. Typhoon vs. Brooklyn Brawler

ER: What does it mean to the people of Sheffield, England, to see a man dubbed The Brooklyn Brawler? Had tales of the Brawler's Brooklyn Brawls made their way to South Yorkshire? Was Enzo Castellari's 1990: The Bronx Warriors been an underground UK hit, leading to a rising knowledge among UK teens of the various Five Borough Fighting Styles? Regardless, the people of Sheffield were treated to a real active Brawler performance, one that will no doubt be one of the great showcases of the best of his 1993, where he keeps running away from and running into Typhoon. He is great at getting leveled by Typhoon and building suspense by avoiding getting leveled, but things really jump a level when Typhoon finally misses an elbow and Brawler starts stomping his way through a really fun match. 

Brawler stomps away at Typhoon's head, stomps him right between the legs, stands on his throat, bites at his face, and stands on top of his back while Typhoon is draped over the bottom rope, surfing on him while pulling back the top rope reigns like Chris Elliot riding Melora Walters out to sea in Cabin Boy. He chokes and rakes at the eyes of a prostrate Typhoon, shouting out an amusing "Come on, that's a count!" while Typhoon's shoulders are down during the choke. This is among the longest Brawler control segments I've seen and I thought it was cool how he kept kicked at Typhoon's leg and really dominating this, keeping the big man down. When you knowingly go into a Typhoon match against Brooklyn Brawler, I don't think any of us would have expected it to be a mostly dominant Brawler performance with a quick and definitive Typhoon comeback victory right at the end. When Typhoon takes over, it is for good, and it is great. Brawler, who had been doing so well, makes the mistake of whipping Typhoon into the corner. Typhoon reverses that whip and follows Brawler in with a killer avalanche, then pulls Brawler by the arm directly into a perfect powerslam. I don't anticipate a better 1993 Steve Lombardi match from this one, but this is surely among his best matches of the 90s. 

6. Shawn Michaels vs. Crush

ER: I loved this. Anybody who ever got mad at me online for making fun of how terrible Shawn Michaels was during most of his last decade, should at least acknowledge how in the bag I am for 1993 Shawn Michaels. My 2000s and beyond criticisms come from a place of sadness, not glee. 1993 Shawn Michaels was a high speed John Tatum with better execution. He could push a pace without dropping the story at any point, was great at big momentum shifts, and knew how to work every size opponent instead of just mostly working the same match regardless. He was incredibly active but in ways nobody else was, flopping and stooging and bumping unnecessarily big, a great heel to get over the power of his opponent while looking like a joke, without ever looking like a joke. 

Crush and Michaels seemingly always had great chemistry as opponents. They have two big singles matches after this one in 1993: Their great King of the Ring Qualifier which is one of the great unheralded 5 minute matches, and their bloated but overall good IC Title match at King of the Ring, and there's a 1991 singles match on some Coliseum video or foreign Superstars airing. I wish we had more Rockers/Demolition matches or any of the 1993 Crush/Michaels house show matches to paint a fuller picture, but all the evidence we have paints them as natural opponents. 

This is the better version of the King of the Ring qualifier, as it had a much longer Crush control sequence before the great Crush ringpost bump, and more Michaels offense after his takeover. It's great. Michaels gets his ass beat in a non-stop sprint, getting pie-faced and pinballed across the ring, enough so that Heenan has to start bemoaning a Michaels title loss, and it's hilarious. 

"Can you imagine the embarrassment? 'Where did you lose your Intercontinental Title? In Sheffield?!' How could you ever live that down?"

Crush has a great way of catching a high speed Michaels in a bearhug - which Michaels escapes by throwing punches at his eye - and I love how he's able to go on bursts of matching Michaels for speed, then ends a quick moving exchange with something huge and forceful like a big backbreaker. There's an incredible press slam section where Crush walks Michaels around in full extension press for half a minute, walking him toward several sides of the ring and offering him up to the front row. When they saw how great Crush was at walking Michaels around the ring in a press slam, they really should have set up a Bam Bam/Spike Dudley spot with crowd plants, it would have played in Michaels highlight videos for the next 25 years. We'll settle for Michaels getting clotheslined over the top to the floor in the way that only 1993 Shawn Michaels was getting clotheslined to the floor. 

His comeback after a match-long beating is convincing, working smart spots to control a big man, like driving his knee into Crush's kidneys and then shoving him face first into the ringpost. Who remembered how great Crush was at taking ringpost bumps? Every one that he's taken in his Michaels matches has been Lawler-level great. The finish of this one is a less satisfying "Michaels just leaves" fuck finish than the KOTR Qualifier double count out, but I was really getting into the way Michaels was wearing Crush down after the ringpost bump. He just keeps coming off the ropes with axe handles until Crush gets dropped to all fours, then he comes off the ropes with an elbowdrop to the back of his neck. With an actual finish, this becomes one of the 10 best WWF matches of 1993 WWF. 

7. Lex Luger vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan 

ER: Jim Duggan was such a megastar in 1993 that he was able to drape himself in the American flag and lead the Sheffield Arena in loud USA chants. This was just a couple months after Duggan was the first person to knock Yokozuna off his feet, a moment I loved but wouldn't have thought that it would have a huge impact across the pond. Yokozuna had done an in-ring promo before this match and lingered at ringside the whole match, and when Luger's entrance music hit he was announced as "The NarCISSus" Lex Luger. Like the flower, not like the Greek myth. But they are merely afterthoughts, because the place comes unglued when Duggan's music hits. This is a 12,000 strong crowd and Duggan is wearing his USA singlet and USA kneepads, and gets the entire crowd to chant USA. Can you even entertain the IDEA of a foreign crowd chanting USA at a WWE show any time during the past 20 years?? You'd think this was in Alabama, not Yorkshire. USA chants. Loud. What a different time. Luger might as well have not even been in the ring. 

Luger works this as a stooge for Duggan, bumping around for Duggan's running clotheslines and playing into spots like trying to smash Duggan's head into the turnbuckles, only to have it reversed. Duggan was treated like Hogan and it was like I was watching this match from some weird alternate timeline. 1993 Duggan's appeal to live crowds was undeniable. 1993 Luger is a far better wrestler than Duggan, but Duggan would have drawn a far bigger number than Luger with a PPV match against Yokozuna. These two work the loosest match I've seen in 1993 WWF, leaning out of every clothesline and every strike, and it didn't matter an ounce. This was a Rick Reuschel/Mark Buehrle soft contact battle and it completely worked for the live crowd. Yokozuna sits down on Duggan's chest out on the floor and rolls him back in the ring, and there's a great show closing segment when Mr. Perfect runs out to start beating on Luger before Duggan can be pinned. As loud as the crowd was for Duggan, they react to Perfect as if he was the biggest name on the show (which was true, so that checks out). The main thing this match accomplished was making me genuinely want to see a Luger/Yoko vs. Duggan/Perfect tag match, which is a match they set up perfectly here and then never mentioned it again. All they did was run Luger/Perfect and Yoko/Duggan singles matches the rest of the tour. It's wild how many interesting workrate and fan service matches they left on the table during this era. 

Go out of your way to watch this for the great Samu/Perfect and Michaels/Crush matches, and a total surprise in Brooklyn Brawler/Typhoon. 

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The 2002 WWF Royal Rumble Match: A Great Royal Rumble Match

ER: I had not watched this Rumble since it originally aired, and I was surprised at just how many specific things I remembered. I have real goldfish brain these days and yet I somehow remembered more about this Rumble than almost any of the 20+ that have happened since. I watched this one specifically for the 2002 Boss Man content. Boss Man was good enough in 2002 that it's worth checking out a 70 minute match for what is no more than a few minutes of Boss Man action. This was his final PPV match appearance before spending the next few months working compelling matches on Heat. Going out like a legend. But this match had a lot more value than just a few minutes of Boss Man. This is one of my favorite Rumbles, one with nothing but great punches and ass kicking. Goldust/Rikishi was a great starting two for this Rumble. Honestly, Goldust making his WWE return and looking this damn good is something that should be brought up every time you talk about Dustin career highlights. He and Rikishi were pacesetters for this, focusing snug punches, fast near eliminations and hard bumps, and at least 15 guys in this Rumble focus on the same. Boss Man is actually the third guy in this whole thing, and in a Rumble where half the men involved made a case for having the best punches in WWF, Big Boss Man made the best case for #1. 

Based on this Rumble alone, the 10 best punchers of 2002 WWF were:

1. Big Boss Man

2. Matt Hardy

3. Val Venis

4. Goldust

5. Perry Saturn

6. Mr. Perfect

7. Chuck Palumbo

8. Christian

9. Scotty 2 Hotty

10. Steve Austin

Goldust/Rikishi/Boss Man makes for a really great fast paced three way, with all taking big bumps and throwing stiff strikes. Goldust gets crotched up top, Boss Man gets whipped into Goldust's groin, and Boss Man slips Rikishi ass over elbow with a running forearm shiver. During his few minutes in the Rumble Match, Boss Man threw upwards of 16 different precise punches to Rikishi's and Goldust's body and face. 

He made the most of his too brief time, then took a real tough elimination: He was the matches' lone Stink Face victim, and it was a particularly aggressive and lengthy, just buried. What were they doing out there. How were we a baby step away from a wrestler being allowed to put his balls in his opponent's mouth or something. Boss Man staggered into a big bump elimination, Rikishi blasting him with a fully extended superkick and a freight train clothesline over the top. I still can't believe how great Boss Man was in 2002. 

Goldust has some of the best in-ring timing of any wrestler of the last 20 years, but we get blessed with an unintentionally hilarious Rumble moment where Goldust starts a corner 10 count punch sequence on Bradshaw at almost the exact same time the countdown clock begins, so you have 13,000 people colliding on numbers with everyone going in different directions. 

Undertaker clearing the ring, laying waste to everyone - Goldust claiming best elimination with his chokeslam bump elimination - was really well done. Undertaker felt like a real force and everyone in 2002 moved like they were somehow injected with extra testosterone. But the best past of Undertaker eating waste was Matt Hardy and Lita beating the shit out of him, and it only got better when Jeff Hardy came in because then all three of them kicked the shit out of him. I wish we got more of that before Taker made his comeback, but I just love the Hardys. The Last Ride on Matt was huge, and Jeff got to distract Taker enough for Maven to make him look like a bug eyed idiot. But they got a lot of good mileage out of the Undertaker/Maven brawl, with Undertaker beating the shit out of the never-eliminated Maven and then walking down the aisle to punch Scott 2 Hotty in the face before just walking back to continue the beating. Maven bleeds and gets dragged into the concourse area, security guards having to actively shove fans out of the way as they crowd in. 

There's a lot of star power, and the guys who get less of a reaction all do stuff to make the crowd pay attention. Christian, DDP, Scotty, Chuck Palumbo, Godfather, Albert, all worked hard for their 1-10 minutes, everyone of them throwing hands and bumping big. DDP had this great tumbling backwards bumps through the ropes after a Scotty superkick; Christian, Palumbo, and Perry Saturn all have a face punching challenge and we are all winners, with Saturn and Chuck especially teeing off on each other. 

The match can be divided up 65/35 between the build to Austin charming the big crowd by running the ring, and the comedown when Austin has to share the ring with HHH. Even though the entire Rumble has good parts, it is top loaded and I like how everyone filled time before HHH was in there. Austin is a great battle royal worker. That's no secret. I love watching him fill time and I loved the gag of him eliminating everyone too quickly, so needing to punch everyone back into the ring to eliminate them again. Austin runs through several guys and it's a weird call to have Val Venis show up for the first time in 8 months and be the first guy in the match to ice down Austin. Turns out, it was a good call. I liked the Austin/Venis stretch so much that I immediately checked for any singles matches they had, and now I'm definitely going to watch their 1999 Smackdown match. I don't think HHH is bad in this Rumble per se, but he's so fucking serious and it kind of spoils all the fun. He's a scowling frowning buzzkill who glowers and sucks the fun out of exchanges, and spends a lot of time lying down and catching his breath. The first 70% of the match is kids having a blast at a sleepover, and the last 30% is like kids still having fun, but it's on a field trip while a teacher keeps telling them to be quiet. 

I really loved this match as Mr. Perfect's last big moment. Making the final three, swatting his gum into the crowd while Austin and HHH try to eliminate. What a guy. Does anyone else swat their gum like they're Mr. Perfect? I think I'd be too afraid of it getting stuck to my hand or whiffing. It takes high levels of confidence to pull Curt Hennig's gum swat success rate. Do you remember the little buzz after Perfect came back after almost a decade? I was on those message boards. I was talking about how great the Perfect/Tommy Dreamer match was on Heat. I didn't know he wouldn't even work 20 matches after that one. Is the Curt Hennig Puerto Rico any good? What about the XWF that he recorded right before returning to WWF? It probably is, and I'll probably watch that along with the Austin/Venis match. This Rumble has a lot of fallout. The push to the finish of the match was exciting enough. Big Show looked really good in the double strap Bundy singlet. Kane lifting, walking, and tossing Big Show over the ropes to eliminate him was legitimately impressive, Kurt Angle had a lot of enthusiasm, the Austin elimination was fairly shocking, and you're left with a 70 minutes match that did not at all feel 70 minutes long. I think that counts as high praise. 

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2002 Big Boss Man Runs Into Bradshaw

Big Boss Man/Mr. Perfect vs. Bradshaw/Faarooq WWF Metal 3/23/02

ER: Okay well this is the match right here. This is the kind of match that makes me want a series, and  makes me mad that most of the Boss Man/Perfect team's existence happened on house shows. Everyone came off tough, a real hardscrabble match that was cooperatively stiff in the best way. Perfect really works heavyweight here, and while he takes the most bumps of anyone they aren't athletic stooge heel bumps, they're hard back bumps off a shoulderblock or powerslam. Perfect and Boss Man cut Bradshaw off from Faarooq, which wasn't the direction I thought this was going, and I liked it. Boss Man is great on the apron, doing his "gotten to" expression to the crowd the first time he's tagged in, stalking up the apron, letting them chant Boss Man Sucks. His feeding into the chant is always so good, because he shuts them up quick by going right in and always punching a guy. Those chants never continue on into the match, he makes sure to quiet them quick, and having a big punch out with Bradshaw is a really cool way to guarantee they stop.

Boss Man and Perfect hit Bradshaw with a hard double shoulderblock, and Perfect is the one that Bradshaw throws around, but not in any kind of dominant way. I dug how Perfect got up quick after taking the fallaway slam, as it actually makes sense that a rolling bump like that wouldn't be as impactful as a suplex bump, and there's a killer tangle where Perfect kind of stops short but Bradshaw snags him and turns it into a hardway suplex. I'm not sure if it was a miscommunication, but I don't think it was, and it just made the spot look way cooler. Faarooq was the big hot tag while Perfect was getting run into the ringside steps, and I like that Faarooq couldn't fully lift Boss Man. He hit a spinebuster but it wasn't clean, but still enough to put a big man down. The most intense moment of the match came right after, when it looked like Faarooq was actually going to hit the freaking DOMINATOR on BOSS MAN! He hits a powerbomb instead - which is great - but my mind was racing at how both of these men just might injure themselves doing a move that I am still stunned was allowed to be used at all. Knowing this match exists should excite you, and it delivered on its potential.

Big Boss Man vs. Bradshaw WWF Heat 4/14/02

ER: First things first, this match is 30 seconds long. Second, it's the greatest 30 second match in wrestling history. I love 4 minute Wire songs, but I also love 45 second Wire songs. I love 2 minute Minutemen songs, but I also love 30 second Minutemen songs. I would certainly love a 5 minute bruise filled good ol boy fight, but Boss Man will also put the same effort and story progression into 30 seconds. It's got everything: Stiff work, loud crowd heat with immediate Boss Man Sucks chants, 8 great punches, a sternum breaking chest bump in the corner, and one highlight reel worthy Clothesline from Hell. It's as much heat and fight and payoff as a 3 minute match. Greatest Hits Played Faster. Boss Man has phenomenal timing, and it makes spots like Bradshaw's missed elbow look that much better. Boss Man hangs into spots like that until the last possible second, Bradshaw committing all of his weight, and before long Boss Man is throwing punches like he's trying to bust Bradshaw's eyebrow. Boss Man got incredible steam on a missed corner charge while everyone in the arena let him know how enthusiastically he siphons, and he turned around just in time to be obliterated by the Clothesline. Big Boss Man: Ultimate Tik Tok Wrestler. 

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An Exhaustingly Exhaustive Review of WWF Royal Rumble 1/24/93, Pt. 2

Bret Hart vs. Razor Ramon

ER: Another great match. Perhaps too long, but still a great match. The first 75 minutes of the show is one of the best 75 minute stretches of wrestling you'll find in any era of WWF. A couple pieces could have been placed differently, and the crowd gets weirdly restless in the middle (maybe burned out by too many closely strung together nearfalls? I don't know). This starts with a great opening punch exchange, and Razor never got enough credit at the time for his punches. I'm not sure who else could even make the claim to a better whipping right hand in this era, or any era. Razor's punch doesn't allow much wiggle room and requires a lot of moving parts, and I don't know who threw a similar punch better. Also, Razor and Bret are both great stomp punchers. Razor throws those long rights, whips Bret hard into the turnbuckle, and Bret takes just a classic back first bump into them, making it look almost as violent as his classic chest first bump always looks.  

Hart takes over by working over Razor's leg, kicking it out from under him a few times while holding onto his other leg, slamming it into the ringpost, and it's the only part of the match that feels incomplete or misplaced. It never really leads anywhere, Razor doesn't sell the knee, and I don't think you really needed a leg work segment to set up the Sharpshooter finish 12 minutes later. You can just win with the Sharpshooter, you don't need leg work. Now Razor working over Bret's ribs is much more interesting, and it starts with Razor reversing an Irish whip by jamming a kitchen sink knee into things, then whips Hart low into the corner. Bret slides across the mat ribs first and gets wrapped around the ringpost, and the ribs give Razor a cool focal point for the rest of the match. We DO get Bret going hard chest first to the buckles and we realize, yes, the Bret chest first turnbuckle bump IS the definitive violent corner bump. This particular one is one of Bret's best versions, and think of how many matches that covers. I don't know how Bret's arms didn't go completely numb after hitting the buckles. He ran full speed into them like he couldn't see them and had no idea they were there, and then fell backwards, rigid, to the mat. Most match finishes do not look as nasty as Bret running into the buckles. 

We get a lot of Razor working on Bret with his abdominal stretch, stomps, a stiff shoulderblock, and his always nice fallaway slam. Bret's big comeback from all of that is big, with Razor taking a high  backdrop bump to the floor and then Hart nailing a full body tope (with a couple of sneaky mounted punches thrown in after the landing). They work in a lot of momentum shifts down the stretch, which were all handled well but might have benefitted from one or two of them being dropped. Still, it lead to some classics, including proof that Bret might be the only person who can make the jump off the middle buckle into someone's boot actually look damaging and not silly, and the way he crumbles after hitting it is an incredible sell. It also helps that he hits his Hitman elbow off the middle rope so actually has a reason to be leaping off it into a boot in the first place. The match really should have ended with Bret wriggling out of what surely would have been a match finishing Razor's Edge to trap Razor with a backslide. Nothing that came after was necessary, and the finishing itself came off a little clunky (even with Razor grabbing onto the ropes and Earl Hebner's pant leg to desperately stop the Sharpshooter. Pulling a backslide out of the jaws of a Razor's Edge would have kept Razor stronger, and the backslide looked like a finish (most of the crowd bit hard at the late kickout). Still, even with my criticisms this felt like the 2nd best match on a card with four strong matches. 

Lex Luger debuts as Narcissus in an awkward segment where really nothing at all works. They have the trifold mirror set up in the entrance way, but Luger's gear covers up a lot of his body so you can't even see what all the fuss is about. And there IS fuss. Luger poses to an obstructed view while Heenan lavishes such praise over his body that it nearly approaches Power and Glory workout video levels of uncomfortable. My favorite part was when Heenan drooled over Luger's thighs. "Yes! Look at yourself! Enjoy yourself, Narcissus! Look at his thighs!!!"

The Rumble Match

This is a really really good Rumble, with the only flaw being that it is TOO LONG. It has a great first half and almost felt like a love letter to fans of the territories, as it was front-loaded with several different world and regional champs and that early star power felt big. Within the first 10 entrants we had Flair, Backlund, Dibiase, Lawler, Tenryu and Perfect. Flair and Backlund start it off, and neither Monsoon or Heenan talk about what a historic showdown it legitimately was. When you think of early 80s WWF champ, you think Backlund; When you think of early 80s NWA champ, you think Flair. As best I know, this is the only recorded footage of these two facing each other. There was an early 80s "title unification" match at the Omni but I don't think footage of that was ever shown on TV. So you get a fairly decent chunk of a Flair/Backlund match, years later than you would have wanted it, but they work it like an actual match (as opposed to spending the time trying to lift a guy's leg over the ropes). Papa Shango interrupts as the 3rd entrant but gets disposed of immediately, so we get a 4 minute Backlund/Flair match, and that's pretty neat. Now, Backlund was in this Rumble for over an hour, but I thought he looked pretty bad during at least his first half hour, and 1993 Backlund had a ton of weird timing issues. It often felt like Backlund was purposely trying to throw off his opponents' timing during this run, but he doesn't seem the type to do that. 

The two major standouts of this Rumble are Flair and Lawler. They're each in for just 15-20 minutes but their activity and execution and sheer knowledge of how to work a great Rumble is unparalleled. Flair must have had a running bet to see how many eye pokes he could fit in to his run, as he cuts off every single spot with an eye poke and it's incredible. My favorite was right after Max Moon came in and hit a fiery babyface sequence, and Flair tapped him on the shoulder and poked him in the eyes before just walking off. Lawler looked amazing during his whole run, punching everyone in sight and selling even better, getting into battles with guys we never got to see him battle (like Lawler/Backlund, or Lawler/TENRYU! Just the idea of a Lawler/Tenryu singles match makes me angry that they were even in the same ring and it didn't happen). Lawler has an awesome moment with Max Moon, where Max hits his nice corner spinning heel kick on Lawler, goes for it again and eats a huge backdrop bump to the floor. Huge bumps to the floor were one of the great things about this Rumble as I'd say 2/3 of the eliminations were dangerous bumps or bad landings, and that's an insanely high percentage. Also, Lawler has these incredible lowrider car show screen printed tights. Perfect targets Flair and Lawler and anything those three do with and against each other is gold, and if you want to talk about disgusting eliminations then you have to talk about Lawler and Perfect. 

Lawler takes the highest elimination bump of the match, getting launched by Perfect, and then immediately cashes in that receipt. Dibiase and Koko start shoving Perfect over, and Lawler begins yanking him by the head, really making it look like Perfect was desperately trying to hold on to that bottom rope, turning it into a really violent elimination. Referees are trying to pull Lawler away, guys in the ring are shoving Perfect, and Perfect hangs on to the bottom rope as long as humanly possible. It's, ahem, perfect. Knobbs, Skinner, and Samu have really memorable 3 minute runs, and you need a few high end crash and burn guys to make a Rumble good. Knobbs got a huge crowd reaction and had a real fired up run, Skinner came in like a dangerous potato throwing asshole, and Samu came in throwing headbutts. They all took tremendous bumps to elimination, with Samu's maybe the most dangerous. Undertaker had come out midway through (hilariously right as Lawler was headed back through the curtain, and Lawler gives Undertaker a wide berth) and he eliminates Samu by setting him on the top rope and shoving him hard, Samu flipping onto the apron on his head before going to the floor. Berzerker was fun during his 5 minutes, but with a guy who can eat up that much of the ring you hope for more than 5 minutes. I loved how, when Berzerker entered the ring, he went around the ring literally hitting every single person in the match. He didn't focus on anyone (until following Backlund to the floor and hitting him with a chair) but instead just stomped and clubbed his way through everyone. Koko also had a good run, building off 10 year feuds by going after Lawler while gleefully hiking up his gigantic High Energy windbreaker pants. 

The halves of the match are really clearly divided, as the ring needs to be fully cleared so Giant Gonzalez can debut and attack the Undertaker. I liked the Gonzalez debut, even though they never actually learned how to film him. When a guy is *actually* 8 feet tall, you don't need to film him from the floor up. He's the tallest man in pro wrestling history! Show him from far away so you can see how much larger he is than anything else in the arena! When you shoot him ground up it just makes him look like a normal guy, albeit a normal guy wearing a fur and muscle suit.  The problem is, since you had to clear the ring for that angle, and you front loaded the Rumble with most of the best workers, you're left with IRS, Damien DeMento, and Backlund when the smoke clears. It takes quite awhile to build any of that lost momentum back, with even a Natural Disasters Explode moment feeling tepid. Earthquake went right after Typhoon with no explanation, eliminated him, and then it was never mentioned again (Earthquake was gone at the end of the month and worked WAR for the rest of the year). 

Carlos Colon comes out fairly late, but it's really weird because he clearly belonged in the first half of this when it felt like they were legitimately trying to bring in a ton of regional champs. What would Carlos Colon even mean to a 1993 WWF audience? Also, you better believe Monsoon referred to the 45 year old Colon as a youngster after both he and Heenan had spent the entire match using Backlund's age 43 as a negative against him.  I would love a show of hands at the Arco Arena to find out how many in attendance knew anything about Carlos Colon. They had him announced for the Rumble several weeks before the match, but had only showed a picture of him during Mean Gene's Rumble previews, no footage or anything. It would have been far more valuable to see Colon throwing punches and headbutts at Lawler, Tenryu, and Flair; instead we get to see a lot of Colon against Damien DeMento, which is weird! Tatanka was by far the most exciting worker of the 2nd half of this, and his chops in the corner were thrown with more force than any Flair chop. 

Bob Backlund is 28th elimination, going past the hour mark and getting the most mixed reaction of the match. For the first half hour the crowd audibly hated him, but the longer he stayed in the more the crowd seemed to be pulling for him. When he was eliminated I genuinely could not tell if the loud reaction was applause for him making it that far, or relief that Backlund was not going to be in the main event of WrestleMania. The finish run is Macho Man vs. Yokozuna, which was better than I remembered, but the execution of the finish is as bad as I remembered. They work a 5 minute singles match as the final two, and it's good. Savage gets Yokozuna reeling with axe handles, Yokozuna hits a great thrust kick, Savage fights back, and eventually hits the big elbow. And then Savage pins Yokozuna...in the Rumble...and Yoko kicks out, sending Savage over the top to the floor. I kinda get it, I guess? The pinfall attempt just looks stupid and makes Savage look like a total dweeb, but I guess I can buy that the two of them had been one on one so long at the end that Savage went into Singles Match Mode. But that elimination? One man just cannot press a man from his back, over the top rope, and make it look like anything other than a man jumping over the top rope. Savage does as well as possible in that situation, but surely we could have figured out a better way for Yokozuna to eliminate Macho Man. This Rumble is way too long and dips hard for a bit in the middle, but that first half has some of the best work in Royal Rumble Match history and that alone makes this one of the best Rumbles, warts and all. 

This feels like one of the best WWF PPVs and it's weird that it doesn't get discussed as such. I thought every match was a varying degree of great, with the Rumble Match itself being too long and having too much deadweight but still succeeding due to a lot of hard work from the entrants. Lawler, Flair, Perfect, Dibiase, and several guys who were only in for 3 minutes all had great showings, and it had some of the nastiest elimination bumps of any Rumble. The other 4 matches are great in their specific way, and I think it's important that they all accomplished something very different, all felt very different. The opening tag is one of the great WWF tags of the 90s, Michaels/Jannetty had a better match at a house show the day before (and a much better match a few months later on Raw) but still delivered here, the big boys fight was fast paced and fun, and Hart/Razor gave us a Bret singles match that we rarely saw (they had two PPV matches and to my knowledge no other singles matches that made tape). This was a great show. Every single match is recommended. 

Best Matches: 

1. Beverly Brothers vs. Steiners

2. Bret Hart vs. Razor Ramon

3. Big Boss Man vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

4. The Rumble Match

5. Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Jannetty

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WWF Handheld Reno, NV 1/23/93

Running a 2,000 attendance house in a 12,000 capacity arena just a day before the Royal Rumble, this show had a couple unique matches I wanted to see and a nice snowy winter season happening outside. 

1/23/93 Full Show

The Predator vs. Jim Powers

ER: God bless early 90s camcorder dads who knew how short the battery life on their camcorders were, yet always overextended themselves thinking they could afford to record Jim Powers working Tony Garea tribute matches and still have enough battery for the main event. Memories of every plug of the school gymnasium being hogged by dad's charging their extra batteries. Predator is Horace Boulder under a mask, and it's really funny to me to have a guy named PREDATOR but have him working a lot of pointing at his head after dodged charges or complaining about Powers pulling the tights. Predator seems like a risky gimmick to assign someone in wrestling, but it also makes me laugh thinking about the Predator pointing at his head in the jungle right before Arnold sneaks up behind him with a schoolboy. Predator was the only one keeping this match interesting as Powers is all bad punches and arm wringers. There was a nice spot where Predator blocked a sunset flip and then punched the mat going after Powers, and I like  a guy who pulls his opponent face first into the turnbuckles by grabbing the waistband of his trunks. Predator does an admirable job selling Powers' punch and kneelift to set up his match finishing powerslam, and we collectively thank this camcorder dad for editing out a long Predator chinlock where Powers' abdomen was desperately heaving. 

Samu vs. Owen Hart

ER: This was a better version of the Powers/Predator match in half the time, with our undaunted director also opting to trim out Samu's chinlock. WWF loves having a babyface make their comeback after being held in a chinlock, and this man recognized what he should and shouldn't be filming. Here Owen gets that sunset flip that Jim Powers couldn't turn, but it only gets a one count and Samu hits him with a thrust kick after. There's a fun stretch where it felt like Owen could pull it off, after hitting a nice spinning heel kick and then knocking Fatu off the apron. I thought he was going to put Samu away with a missile dropkick, but Fatu snuck up and knocked Owen balls first into the top turnbuckle, Samu putting him away with a follow-up superplex. After the match, Owen continues selling his balls in the ring long after the Headshrinkers have left, even explaining to the ref what happened from his back. Owen makes the Vader V with his right hand and then uses the edge of his left hand to chop at that V, explaining what the top turnbuckle did to his balls. The ref nods understandingly before exiting the ring. 

Yokozuna vs. Earthquake

ER: This showdown would have looked insane to my 12 year old eyes, a clash of the two (probably) largest men I had ever seen. Little could anyone in attendance have known how rare this match was going to be. Their sumo match on Raw over a year later was their only televised match, and other than that they had only a few scattered house show matches, many of them in California. Seems cruel to present an Earthquake as a babyface in California but that's what they do. This was great in its too brief existence. We get some good shoving to start, Earthquake showing off his footwork to dodge Yokozuna's shoves, running into Yokozuna with shoulderblocks that make both take a step back. Yokozuna takes over with a back elbow to counter an Earthquake avalanche, and runs over Earthquake like it's nothing. Maybe I just get dewy-eyed and sappy during a wrestling match between two gigantic fat guys, but I tell you the air went out of the crowd when Earthquake took that back bump. Yokozuna dropped a gorgeous legdrop and Earthquake did a full body spasm like he had just been decapitated, and I was shocked at how quickly and easily Yokozuna put things away with the banzai splash. This match felt big enough to be a PPV attraction and get 12 minutes. But some things can only be contained in short starbursts. This was only their second match, and all 3 of these minutes were great. But it's a shame that we never got to see them have an actual war of the colossus.

The Beverly Brothers vs. The Undertaker

ER: This was advertised on the arena sign as Undertaker vs. Papa Shango, so I guess they felt like since they blatantly false advertised one of the two matches they announced for this show, the best way to pay that back was by just having three minutes of Undertaker laying waste. The great twist, is that I think this 3 minute sprint is more entertaining than any Undertaker/Soul Taker match I can remember. Undertaker vs. Papa Shango doesn't play as big as it should, but this handicap match was like a T-Rex vs. two velociraptors. But, well, two dumb jock velociraptors. This looked like it was going to be a one-sided mauling, both Beverlys getting run over by Undertaker for a minute straight after cheapshotting him before the bell. Bloom and Enos are both great bumpers, and they play this match like they were Kaientai, and it was the best. They get some brief control, when Bloom hits Taker with a chair and Enos snaps his neck over the top rope. The crowd reactions for Taker's deadman sit-ups keep getting louder, and the Beverlys act more and more annoying the longer they're in control. Undertaker has a fun time with the whole thing, and it looked like he was doing his own separate bit at ringside as he kept stumbling and falling into Mike McGuirk. Beverlys hit a bunch of elbowdrops after hitting a tandem vertical suplex, but leave their backs turned for far too long around a man known for rising from the dead, and the Reno kids lost it when he sat up again and ran wild. Enos takes a huge cartwheeling bump over the top to the floor to sell an uppercut, Bloom gets finished in ring by the Tombstone.

Berzerker vs. Bob Backlund

ER: Berzerker is a great house show act, as he works with the crowd and does unique bits more than any other wrestler from this era, even more than Flair. Here he barks ar Backlund and starts whipping at him with the belt from his tunic while Backlund is folding his ring jacket, that belt coming closer and closer with each whip. The crowd reacts with some real hostility to this one, the Reno crowd booing Backlund's dorkiness at the bell and only mildly getting behind him when he swept Berzerker's leg into Berzerker doing the splits. Berzerker getting his leg swept or kicked into doing the splits is the kind of spot that should get a big reaction every time, but this is a weird pairing and the crowd didn't seem to like it. It's funny when Berzerker rolls out of the ring and is out of camera sight, but you can hear him Hussing around ringside at people. They take a long time to lock up, with Berzerker repeatedly challenging Backlund to reach up and grab his right hand way up in the air, and Backlund responding with trepidation. 

The crowd seems annoyed that the match isn't starting at first, and then Berzerker keeps milking the annoyed reaction to build more and more heat, until the crowd is loudly mocking Berzerker with Huss chants and he is doing back bumps out of frustration. Berzerker finally does get that knucklelock and forces Backlund to his knees, and Backlund valiantly fights to his feet before rolling through to his own top wristlock, which Berzerker breaks with his fist. It's like they're working a Jack Brisco/Killer Khan match straight out of 1979, and that, while simple at times, mostly works. Berzerker eventually takes one of his big backwards bumps to the floor and then marches angrily down the aisle, drawing heat the whole way. In ring he hits a couple of bodyslams and jaws at fans, and works a long (probably too long) bearhug which eventually ends with Backlund somewhat lamely just falling on Berzerker for the pin. A fan either near the camera or holding the camera thinks aloud that this was one of the worst matches he has ever seen. This was not a classic, and was somehow the second longest match on the show, but it did have its rewards.  

Ric Flair vs. Mr. Perfect

ER: This was a real crowd pleaser, the kind of strong 15 minute match that you'd want to see if you were excited to see either of these two, checking off all the greatest hit Flair boxes without ever feeling like it was coasting. Flair is a guy who can play the greatest hits and not feel like he's bored with them and can still throw in a couple surprises with a smile. It's cool seeing how big he can work a house show match, taking some painful high bumps (on a hard ring) while working toward specific sides of the crowd. He's a guy who is excellent at causing a stir in a specific section of the building, knows how to pick fights with people from the ring, and knows how to get great heat for 15 minutes. He does all his shtick and does it get: He shoves Perfect a couple times and gets slapped each time, he takes a long walk down the aisle after eating a shoulderblock, he gets caught going up top and takes a hard bump getting press slammed down, obviously he's going to take a high backdrop. 

When he's on offense he's cheating, and it gets a rise the entire time. I'm gonna give the cameraman credit for partially obscuring the lens when Flair threw a low kick and eye poke, as if he was helping Flair cheat to transition. Flair worked over Perfect's arm and held a grounded headlock while planking his legs on the middle rope. He does the full routine on two sides of the ring, and the spot our cameraman picked couldn't have framed it any better. Flair was practically working this entire routine for this guy. Flair really rubs his cheating in to our side of the ring, at one point holding just one straightened leg on the ropes while bicycling his free leg. We also get a perfectly framed shot of Flair holding his calf over Perfect's throat, like Flair was putting on a show especially for us. The finish stretch is great, with stiff chops from both, Flair getting his trunks yanked down for a good sunset flip nearfall, and then keeping them down to the glee of the crowd when he ducks his way right into a Perfect Plex. Classic house show stuff, 100% success rate. 

Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Jannetty

ER: Shawn gets announced first and does a great job getting heat just by taking off his chaps. He also tries to grab Mike McGuirk a couple times and it gets people upset because he looks like a guy who would definitely try to grab a woman. Marty is wearing fantastic turquoise and zebra tights with perfect tassels, honestly some of his best gear. A stark, damning contrast to the atrocities he would would inflict upon the Royal Rumble crowd the next night. This match had the finish stretch of that next night's match but was pretty different overall, and probably even better. There's a long Michaels abdominal stretch spot that has an excellent first act but then probably carries on a bit too long in the second act before rushing through the third. You can usually wrap up your abdominal stretch spot in one act, but it was still a great hammy Michaels performance. The best kind of hammy Michaels is house show shithead Michaels, where he's shaking his ass at the crowd and giving people in the front row cocky asshole smirks, and those abdominal stretches give him plenty of time to rub some specific fans' noses in it. Michaels goes into control really quick in this match (he skipped and floundered around the ring for a lot of okay Marty offense the next night), sending Jannetty frisbeeing into the ringpost. 

He works over Marty's arm with hammerlocks and strikes, and once he's worked over the arm enough he starts working over Marty's midsection. I love when a heel switches targets after suitably damaging one area. There's a great spot where he drops Jannetty stomach first over a chair on the outside, which at least gives us good reason to work that abdominal stretch for so long. The great first act on that stretch that I mentioned earlier, is Michaels locking it in near the ropes (for cheating purposes) and a nice build to Marty hip tossing his way out of it. But right as Marty gets there, Shawn holds onto the tope rope to block, and the blocked toss re-injures Marty's arm. GREAT spot. The finish stretch has a lot of similarities to the PPV match the next night, working out the timing for a couple of spots: Jannetty catching Michaels with a DDT after Michaels thought he got out of the way of a fistdrop, and Michaels missing a superkick only to be nailed with one for a close 2. If anything, Earl Hebner was really rushing counts, which didn't give a lot of time for the nearfalls to settle in, but added a manic feel that the crowd did respond to. Since Sherri wasn't here, the finish was different, simple, and well done. Michaels gets thrown into the buckles and slumps into them, but ducks out of the way of a great Jannetty missed avalanche and then scrambles onto him for a quick pin. He shoots a quick Fuck Yeah glance at a person at ringside he'd been taunting the whole match, and BAM, Shawn Michaels has left the building. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

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