New Footage Friday: FLAIR! MURDOCH! DOUGIE! FUJIWARA! TAKADA! BURKE! GORDY! ULTRAMAN

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Nobuhiko Takada vs. Rocky Della Serra/Leo Burke UWF 7/24/84 - GREAT

PAS: This was early UWF, before they were really a shootstyle fed, so this was a standard pro-wrestling tag match. It was mostly hard head Fujiwara, which is far from my favorite Fujiwara, but he does hard head spots really well. Burke especially leaned into stooging big from punching or elbowing Fujiwara in his rock hard dome. Takada continued to underwhelm me, lots of kicks which only semi-hit (although he did waste Burke with a top rope dropkick).Burke was the revelation here, he has a big rep, but not a ton of footage, and he was on one here. Great looking bumps, awesome offense (he hit the best inverted atomic drop I have ever seen) totally looked like a super worker. 

MD: Fun stuff. Della Serra is a guy we've seen pop up in a few places since we started doing this and Burke is obviously one of the greatest journeymen of the 80s. What I liked about them here is that this, in early days UWF, felt almost like a different style battle where they were utilizing the sort of pro wrestling they'd do anywhere else and Fujiwara and Takada were Fujiwara and Takada. That might be a series of overdramatic elbow drops from Della Serra or an inverted atomic drop from Burke or whatever. It obviously meant that they knew how to play into all of Fujiwara's head spots for the best effect. Adding to this you had Takada bringing a little more flash with whips and dropkicks on top of things like the belly to belly right into a submission. It all came together pretty well despite it all.

Ric Flair vs. Dick Murdoch NWA 9/11/86

MD: Maybe not the best week to cover Flair, but what the hell, it's footage, it's new, it's Friday, and it's of historical value since, unless I'm mistaken, we just have a couple of minutes of garbage footage from 78 over two matches of Flair vs Murdoch, so this is a new, iconic pairing. I liked the creativity and the variation here, much of which I'll credit to Murdoch. After the initial matwork (not Flair's best, but it was fine) they made the most of the relatively short fifteen minutes of match time, just throwing out interesting transition after interesting transition to the point where it never felt like a your turn/my turn match but like a real struggle where both guys were trying to outfox the other. My favorites were probably Murdoch catching the knee on an early knee drop attempt and Flair causing Murdoch's elbow drop to the leg to overshoot forcing him to wipe out on it. But Murdoch also got a snap turning backslide counter and Flair jammed him on a fireman's carry attempt by punching him in the face, and so on, combined with what you'd expect like Murdoch answering the chops with punches out of the corner or Flair getting a cheapshot in after begging off towards the ropes. 

The finishing stretch was, of course, BS, but still had enough wrinkles to feel creative. Murdoch hit a running power slam instead of slamming Ric off the top. They had a ref bump, Flair tossing Murdoch over the top, a phantom pin off a punch by Murdoch, before the actual finish of Murdoch inadvertently back body dropping Flair off the top onto Tommy Young and then hitting the brainbuster but getting DQed. If you're going to have a finishing minute like that, at least it was dynamic. You didn't know if Flair would win by cheating after Young went down or if it'd be Flair tossing Murdoch over the top that would cause the finish or if Flair would win after the phantom pinfall, etc. On the other hand, if you're having to stack elements of a Dusty finish one on top of the other on top of the other to keep it fresh, maybe there's something problematic with your booking?

ER: I thought this was excellent, just the panacea I needed after a long work week with some late nights. The chemistry between the two was great and they kept upping the ante in ways I wasn't expecting. This match had a ton of activity to it and they kept pulling off sequences that I hadn't seen done quite this way. That always excites me, when I see a new match with two guys I've seen a ton. I can't really get excited about Flair matches these days. I imagine if an unseen Flair/Steamboat there's a good chance I'd watch it, but probably a better chance that I would just watch a random episode of Sunday Night Heat instead. And yet I loved everything Flair did here and loved even more how Murdoch worked with him. The opening was some light matwork with them moving in the familiar ways, but it really kicks up when Murdoch catches and blocks a Flair kneedrop inches from his nose, drags himself to his feet by Ric's leg, and before long is dropping elbows on Ric's leg. That leads to Dick missing one of them when Flair shifts and then Flair starts working over Murdoch's side from his nasty spill. 

Now, this match had a lot of "stuff". Murdoch and Flair are guys with a lot of stuff, and Flair more than most is a guy who is going to get his stuff in no matter what. But this match managed to have a ton of stuff while feeling like all of the stuff served the match. This didn't feel like Flair giving the fans Flair, it felt like Flair giving the fans a good match with memorable Flair moments. And Murdoch was there with some incredible selling and super impressive body work to make Flair look even better. Murdoch's execution was all time great in this match. His misses landed like a man who didn't expect to miss, his punches looked as punishing and sharp as ever, but his technical ability was amazing. He had a nice tight reversal on a Flair abdominal stretch that he then rolled into a tight cradle, and later he hit one of the most finely executed sunset flips I've ever seen. Murdoch understood the physics of wrestling, and his move execution legitimized his fighting. It wasn't just his offense, but the way he took Flair's offense was a real mastery of physics. Murdoch is able to look heavy while taking offense but you can tell he's getting up for everything with ease. He hangs in the air taking a Flair back suplex, and makes a hiptoss look like Flair really has to muscle him over. Murdoch's selling was excellent throughout, taking a Flair kneelift and holding the left side of his belly like he got stuck, or the painful grimaces when Flair would raise his arm and punch him in his left side. 

The dedication to every small spot made every big spot look fantastic, with the best being Flair going up top and Murdoch running across the ring to plant him with a huge powerslam. And we got an all time great punch out, with Flair dishing a hard knife edge in the corner that sends Murdoch responds instinctively to with a three punch combo, and Flair bumps his way through these fists in great ways, leading to ref Tommy Young stopping Murdoch from hitting his big wind up right, only to have Murdoch throw a just-as-nasty left jab over Young's shoulder. It wouldn't have looked better if it was a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and I'm not sure Bugs could work that punching sequence as expertly as Murdoch or Flair. I loved all of this match, bullshit finishes don't bother me when the journey is this much fun. 

PAS: There is an apocryphal Murdoch vs. Flair match from Mid-South which Joel Watts called the best match he has ever seen, but the tape melted in a hot car. From this relatively abbreviated version you can really tell that they had special chemistry. This was way more reversal heavy then I expect from Flair matches, with lots of cool counter wrestling by both guys. This was counter wrestling which felt organic rather then two guys waiting around to dance into another spot. Murdoch especially found neat ways to pick the leg or sneak in punches. I loved Young catching the haymaker and Murdoch sneaking in a jab, I love when punchers have a bunch of different signature punches and Murdoch unloads the arsenal. 

Doug Gilbert/Keizo Matsuda/Tiger Jeet Singh?/Ultraseven/Takashi Uwano vs. Terry Gordy/Shoichi Ichiyama/YUJI KITO/Yukihide Ueno/Tomohiro Ishii IWA Japan 2/4/01

 
MD: Full disclosure: I'm not super familiar with some of these guys, but I found this overall pretty compelling. The story here was good, with eliminations possible by going over the top too, which meant Gordy was a beast here just due to the size differential. I know he was diminished, but you put him in a tag like this where he could be dangerous in the corner or come in and have some guys run into his stuff or just throw his body around and he could still be incredibly effective. I wouldn't want him working a twenty minute singles match necessarily but he had size and presence and meant something to the crowd: when Ultraseven (who was bigger but could still move pretty well) faced off against him the crowd had a real buzz. Anyway, this was ultimately the Keizo Matsuda show. Mostly thanks to Gordy it became 5 on 2 pretty quickly, with a long beatdown on Matsuda, to the point I thought we'd get ten minutes of Gilbert vs the World, but they were able to get it to 4 on 2 and then Gilbert did his job by double eliminating himself and Gordy. After that, Matsuda had some real hope and momentum and it looked like there might be some heel communication and another elimination but the double teaming works and then works more and then works even more and after a valiant attempt to hang in there, the numbers game ends up as just too much. Matsuda is probably stronger for his showing though.

PAS: This was a couple of months before Gordy's death, a full year after his last listed Cagematch match (Hardy Boys vs. Gordy/Hayes, which is pretty intriguing). I thought he looked great. In some of his 90s work he looked addled, but here he moved well, hit some big hard shots, great clotheslines, nice suplex. I liked how he was a real obstacle for everyone he faced, and I dug Dougie needing to sacrifice himself just to give Matsuda a chance. That was definitely not Tiger Jeet Singh btw, it was some guy in a mask, which is always the trouble with translated match listings. Matsuda was fun as a guy dying on his sword, but be valiant all you want, you are still dead. 

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 1983: MS1 v. Sangre V. Piper v. Valentine

Roddy Piper v. Greg Valentine 11/24/83

PAS: My goodness, I haven't seen this match in years and the brutality really stands out 30 years later, I can't remember a more violent focused attack then Valentine trying to destroy Piper's ear. Piper's ear is just oozing blood as Valentine beats on it with a length of chain, harrowing stuff. I really liked the opening of this with both guys almost doing a test of strength with their neck muscles and slowly inching forward to attack. Piper had a bunch of really creative uses of the chain early, wrapping it around Valentine's mouth, pulling it taut and smacking it into Valentine's eye, using at as a wench to lock him in the corner, just a ton of neat flourishes. Once Valentine gets a chance to attack the ear though, it goes to another level. I always love Piper's wild brawling, he just throws hands with such abandon, they don't always hit, but a crazy fuck like him will throw five to land one. That style of brawling and his crazy selling really work for a guy with a damaged equilibrium. Finish felt a little abrupt, which is my only criticism, I think Piper really should have unloaded with some bigger shots then a yank off the ropes to get the pin in such a war. Still the 80s were a decade with amazing brawls and this is right at the highest level of them.

ER: I also hadn't seen this in probably 15 years, and my god did it hold up. Any 30 second segment of this match would have me laid up for days. Somehow they worked 3 more dog collar matches over the next few weeks which...could not have been THIS violent, right? I would never want to see a dog collar again after working this match. I'm sure we have zero footage of those other dog collar matches, right? Anyway, the neck muscle strength makes this unique and painful enough for me. I sleep wrong and get a kink in my neck for two days. But these guys are leaning back with their full body weight, whipping their own neck around to damage the other's neck. It all looks so nasty. And then the chain shots start. Caudle and Solie did a good job putting over the bulk of the chain links, even pointing out that it was a "cow chain". Because all the chain shots are gross. A lot of the shots WITHOUT the chain are gross. But the chain shots are gross. The chain gets whipped into each man's head, neck, arm and shoulders, and bless these men because it looks just as great when they're just punching each other in the face. Valentine shows he's not messing around in the least when he clubs the side of Piper's neck with his fist. The shots are so great, and they'd get tired of throwing blows, then go back to the chain. Both guys sold the chain so perfectly, and sold the ricochet effects of the chain so perfectly. Probably because they were both getting hit with a fucking chain. But Valentine raking the chain over Piper's eyes while also wrapping it around his ears (you can see the blood getting cut off to Piper's ear!!)? That's freaking pro wrestling right there. 

Piper puts over the ear injury great, stumbling around like only he and Funk can pull off, And Valentine drops all kinds of great elbows and knees. That leaping knee to the chest was a killer spot I don't remember him doing even a few years later. The wench spot was awesome and something I've never seen, with Piper teaching a science class on simple machines, wrapping the chain around the ring post and giving Valentine slack before choking him back, just so damn cool. The ending was confusing and felt like something additional was supposed to happen: Piper yanked Valentine off the ropes face first and looked like Valentine was supposed to land throat first on a punch, but doesn't really put that over well. Piper beats him some more with the chain and even hooks Valentine's leg with the chain, but Valentine sells the whole thing kind of strange considering how he was acting moments before the pin, and moments after the pin. A finish with just either man bloody and getting KO'd would have made this a GOAT contender, as is it's a match that's "merely" a MOTY most years.

Chicana v. MS1 review

Verdict:

PAS: Piper v. Valentine would win a lot of years, but MS1 v. Chicana is the greatest match in wrestling history. There were moments when Piper v. Valentine approached those heights, but it had kind of a weak finish and a match will have to be perfect to take down MS1 v. Chicana. Champs retain.

ER: It doesn't matter, but I'm going to go Valentine/Piper. I love stipulation matches executed at the peak of their stip: The Dundee/Koko scaffold match was my #1 Memphis match, Panther/Villano mask match is my favorite match of all time, Colon/Hansen strap match is my favorite of that year, Kabuki/Adams superkick match was my favorite WCCW match. I freaking love stips matches executed to the limits of the stip. I didn't actually realize that until I saw the Colon/Hansen match. And I don't think it's possible to have a better dog collar match than this one. I mean, Piper does a fist drop with a chain on his fist! This takes it for me, but champ retains on the split.

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