Found Footage Friday: DOUBLE DUSTY~! MURDOCH~! SUPER DRAGON~! taro~! BOSS MAN~! IVAN & SHEIK~!

Dusty Rhodes/Dick Murdoch vs. Iron Sheik/Ivan Koloff GCW 4/3/83

MD: Another recent vault drop. It's a Texas Tornado match and it's a shame we don't have the whole card as it has Buzz vs Masked Superstar, Tito/Blair vs Arn/Borne, Larry vs Tommy, and Flair vs Atlas. BUT we will take what we can get. Heels have Homer O'Dell out with them. Dusty vs Sheik feels like a really unique match up. There's some great pro wrestling bs at the start as the announcer says that Sheik has requested the fans not chant USA USA.

The Outlaws are such a blast in this setting. A lot of it feels like Dusty doing his thing and Murdoch knowing exactly how to riff off of it. They'd throw double elbows or simultaneous punches or pingpong people between them or as part of a comeback. At one point they each took a leg and dropped an elbow (though Dusty didn't go all the way down which was funny). When the heels were able to pry one off and double team, Dusty was great at throwing himself to break up the pin (Sheik did that once or twice too). We don't have a ton of Outlaws footage and to see them conduct a crowd like this and the sheer fluidity in how they worked together is just magic.

This made good use of the rules by stressing that there were none. That meant that Murdoch could toss people over the top. It meant that at one point they grabbed a belt and used it as a weapon, just like that. It meant O'Dell could break up pins. And it especially meant that he could take Dusty out with a cane shot. Apparently he was taken to the back to get bandaged up though we don't see it. That left it two-on-one against Murdoch and he knew exactly what he was doing there too. Biggest pop of the match was him kicking out when both men were pinning him at once. He'd get comebacks but ultimately swept under, setting up the bandaged Dusty coming back and chasing the heels off. Wonderful stuff that set up the following month's bullrope/chain match as they couldn't get away then.

ER: This is from a new Dusty mixtape but it felt like it belonged on the WWE Vault's Dick Murdoch Mixtape that doesn't actually exist. Dusty is getting bandaged up for a long stretch, returning right at the end, which gives us a chance to see how great Murdoch was at working 1 on 2. We all know how great Murdoch was, but handicap matches are tough to work and most people aren't good at them. Murdoch could have been, if it ever made sense to put him in one. This was Texas Tornado rules and I think that format benefitted the pairing. I can't imagine a long Sheik/Ivan control segment would have been worth the hot tag it led to, so seeing the ebbs and flows of Murdoch and Dusty punching the hell out of these two lawless foreigners is the best version of this match. Murdoch knew exactly what to do as Dusty's partner in the TX Outlaws. During the first half there were all these little moments where each man was doing his own thing, and Dick would come in to add a little punctuation to some poetry Dusty had just finished writing. I love all Murdoch punches, but the best was when Dusty was setting up the Flip Flop & Fly without noticing Murdoch moving in, and as Dusty was throwing the payoff punch to Sheik, Murdoch landed one at the same time. Southern Synergy. 

Texas Tornado matches can often have too many instances of bodies getting in the way of other bodies, but Murdoch is a natural at moving through the chaos without slowing down. He was so good at little punctuations, like when Dusty knocked Koloff flat on his back, and as Murdoch casually walks out of the corner to go after Sheik, he stomps Koloff's face as he passes by. The 2 on 1 was really fun and led to Sheik bumping far bigger than I was expecting. The madman from Iran takes two big bumps over the top to the floor, and the guardrail was so close to the ring that his leg gets hung up on it as he's falling! When Sheik and Koloff were pinballing away from Murdoch throwing punch combos from his knees, it's perfect heel feeding and perfect babyface timing.  Murdoch is great at moving between the two as he fights to his feet, never leaving them standing and selling for too long, a man who always knows where he needs to be. 

Dusty makes his triumphant return with a bandage that makes him look like sassy Rambo, and everyone in the Omni loses their minds, except for depressed Omni Superfan Donald Sutherland, who holds the front row hostage every week with his arms folded, a man forever unmoved by the most charismatic wrestlers in history. 

Dusty Rhodes vs. Big Boss Man WWF (Toronto) 10/29/89

MD: There's a moment midmatch where Boss Man has on a hold which one might graciously call an "armbar." Boss Man is making a face that represented the exertion of effort and he was sweating enough that you bought into it. Dusty was making a face that showed the world that the world was painful. I am usually not a stickler for details such as this, but it was not a very good armbar, ok? But it didn't matter. Because Dusty simply turned his hand upwards, flexed his fingers a bit, asked the crowd to come up for him, to help him, to be there for him, to participate, to make noise, to be part of this match and this moment, and they did. 

It was enough. 

Because Dusty was Dusty. Because Boss Man was huge. Because they wanted to be there to see them. Because someone in the back row probably couldn't see the hold all that well but their eyes gravitated to the faces and the faces were larger than life. 

And he asked them. Dusty Rhodes, who himself was larger than life, flexed those fingers. There's some kid in that crowd, someone who had worked a full shift before dragging themselves to the stadium, some old lady who had seen cheered for Billy Watson decades ago.. and Dusty was asking them to come up for them.

And they did. 

And more and more as the match went on, he would reward them. Just as he rewarded them preemptively at the start by stepping on Slick's hand when it was on the apron pre-match. Late in the match he'd reward them by dodging an Avalanche so that Boss Man went careening into Slick. And at the end? As he sent Boss Man reeling, Traylor making up for the dubious hold with brilliant physical charisma as he bounced off the top rope and then the second rope, Dusty would send them over the top by diverting a Slick nightstick shot into Boss Man's head and picking up the win. 

Once upon a time I might have grumbled about this. Plenty of people still will grumble at it. Now? I see how it's so much more impressive to create something out of nothing than far, far less than the something Dusty created here out of far far more. 

ER: A much better match than their SNME match that was taped two days later. That match ended with a weak roll up and had unnecessary arm work instead of dancing, not enough of a big fat guy swaying from punches and elbows. Dusty was on fire here, and Boss Man was great at being a huge young guy setting up every Dusty strike. Boss Man had some material I've never seen, a real guy who keeps giving the more footage you watch. There's a lot of great Boss Man that's just hiding in plain sight, a gifted worker who has aged sneakily well. We've all seen the incredible All Japan 1993 but Traylor is a guy who looks really great through way more years than we talked about at the time. 

There's a fantastic rhythm to this match, like everyone took Dusty's lead and made this into Parappa the Rapper with elbows and a nightstick. When Dusty is dancing in the ring with Boss Man's stolen nightstick, Boss Man is so fed up and humiliated on the floor that he starts banging the apron while hopping down the length of the apron. Five big hopping open handed swats, bopping down the length of the apron, Slick and Boss Man banging out their own Robbert Loggia-Tom Hanks long piano. Boss Man tops himself later when he lands a swinging punch on the floor, punctuated with two lateral hopping apron slap beats before landing the punch on 3. I don't know that I've ever seen so much apron work from Boss Man and it's because NBC didn't want to let him show his rhythm. He rocks and sways for Dusty the effeminate snack charmer, the finish showing off Boss Man's legendary rope work. Dusty elbowing Boss Man into the top rope, into the middle rope, all the way across the ring into Stick's errantly swung nightstick. A flat on his back knock out ending on its biggest beat. 

Super Dragon vs. TARO LXW (New York) 9/27/03 - EPIC

MD: Traveling match as Dragon vs TARO take New York. Apparently TARO had no idea this was taped until it popped up a month ago. Fun (and as you'd expect, brutal) showcase in front of a crowd that probably didn't know what they were getting into. Lots of Dragon basing for TARO. Lots of body contact in general. We have endless reversal sequences now but these two had a way of chaining one attempt to a reversal to the move all while Dragon had TARO up or was catching him in mid air. It creates a different sort of effect where it's less do-si-do somehow, almost as if there's a better application of pro wrestling physics at play. 

Likewise there was a sense of escalation. Armdrags and headcissors to the start, strikes and grinding holds in the middle, a dive to change chapters, and bombs at the end. On the dive, TARO's button gimmick really did feel fifteen years too early. That would have been over huge in 2018. On the bombs, Super Dragon's buckle bomb hits so much better than anyone else's because he almost makes it a sit out with the roll back that follows it. I imagine the people in the crowd couldn't believe some of the kickouts and felt that the lariat that ended it might have been a little anticlimactic. At the same time, one thing I appreciated was the commentary going up for things like a dodged chop or Dragon just chucking him across the ring, even as much as some of the tricked out offense. The lines were less clear back then. If the crowd was at all thrown by the finish, they would soon get it over with the head crunching punctuation Dragon put on things after the match. I'd say that this was what they'd all be talking about in the car on the way home, but the next match was Corporal Robinson vs Necro Butcher so who knows. 

PAS: This as a touring match is pretty fucking crazy. There is something about Taro and Super Dragon doing this to each other in a warehouse in Southern California, as an attempt to start something, or change something, which makes sense. But to just take this on a tour? Do this as the third match on the card? Justin Credible in the back stretching and warming up (to wrestle La Parka, what the fuck was this show? As grody and violent as these guys ever got, nothing in wrestling was ever as sick as what Super Dragon would do to his friend Taro, and this match was loaded with stuff I have only ever seen in this match. A running liger bomb into the corner? A suplex using the horns of Taro's mask? A tapitia flipped into a powerbomb? Fucking hell. Super Dragon did a Psicosis corner bump as hard and fast as it has ever been done, in case you thought this was a one sided mauling. Unbelievable stuff, what a pair of demented psychos. 

ER: This Super Dragon YouTube channel has been such a great personal gift. As Segunda Caida's only ever West Coast representative, we grew up with completely different scenes and regional styles. Indy wrestling was at its most regional in 2001-2004, Bay Area style different from LA style, different from New Jersey style, different from Pittsburgh, different from Georgia, different from Kentuckiana. It was my incomparable favorite time to be a wrestling fan. I saw the West Coast style first hand in the best wrestling years of my life, and I bet Super Dragon was a guy I saw live more than almost anyone. Michael Modest, Donovan Morgan, RevPro/Early PWG guys, Boyce LeGrande, Bryan Danielson somehow, Jardi Frantz, Vinnie Massaro, Larry Blackwell. Those were my guys, who I drove my friends to see in my 1987 Chevy Astro van. 

This channel has given me back so many Super Dragon matches I was at with friends. It's given me back memories of Super Dragon matches I had somehow forgotten, like when I watched myself reacting to Super Dragon/Bobby Quance on the hard cam. I saw Super Dragon live at least a dozen times at the APW Gym, front rows only on three sides of the ring. I saw a Dragon/TARO match a year before this match, and I've seen plenty of tags with Super Dragon/TARO pairings. I love these two. The first RevPro tapes I traded for were shows from July 2000, and their earliest matches are just as good as their latest. TARO is one of those great regional finds from that special era. A flyer with great daring ideas and under a hundred matches; one of several guys who got talked into regularly letting Super Dragon drop them on their heads. He had to have been Dragon's most frequent opponent, and they had years of ideas for each other. 

Super Dragon had a Psicosis/Rey, SUWA/Dragon Kid level base for TARO's imagination, and their matches felt like nothing was off limits and real damage had to be happening. They were strong at placing the biggest spots of their matches, smart about match pacing and still surprising. There are consequences to the matches and the selling is perfect in the same way I think Jersey All Pro selling from the same time was perfect: the realism, stiffness, and the innovative ways to drop guys head first with suplexes was actually happening. They were enduring actual shit kickings. Whatever selling we were seeing, we were seeing a guy actually getting his nose smashed full speed into a turnbuckle, actually thrown unprotected onto his head and neck by the horns. Deranged, TARO, Orion, Nate Webb et al can sell any way they want. They were taking real life damage. Every TARO match is a reason why TARO had less than a hundred matches.  

There's so much to see, so many bumps, so many exchanges that never quite go the way you think they're going to go, so many things you may only see in one of their matches and never in anyone else's matches. This had a sitout buckle bomb that was so precisely and violently executed, a swinging fireman's carry splash mountain. and a suplex so damned it could only come from our early 2000s era of head drop innocence. Just like Jersey All Pro guys from the same era, they knew how to get to big moments in creative ways. TARO hit what had to be one of the earliest topes into a tornado DDT, but it came after Dragon had wrapped himself around the ringpost in that way he does, which was different from Cassandro's way, which was different from Psicosis's way. Setting up a big high spot with a big bump in stead of a big spot causing a big bump. They understand set up and payoff and escalation. There was a moment that felt like something Tully Blanchard would have thought up: Dragon prevents TARO from crotching him on the top buckle by bracing himself, but deservedly Mutumbos TARO and gets his legs swept out from under him into a worse crotching. I don't know if I ever loved wrestling more than when I was 22 years old.   

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SUPER DRAGON

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Found Footage Friday: PRE-MUTA SCALE MUTO SCALE~! BUZZ~! NEW VS. NOW~! BIGELOW~! FUJINAMI~!

Buzz Sawyer vs. Keiji Muto NJPW 7/21/87

MD: This episode of NJPW TV wasn't in the usual sets over the years. It had fallen through the cracks. There's very, very little written about this match, for instance, and the match deserves to have a lot written about it. It's wild. I have some questions about this episode of TV actually. There are some hype pieces before the matches and I don't know if they were just clipped out of how I usually watched NJPW or if this was a different show but they are cool and of the times. Laser lights and noises as you see Buzz posing and stuff.

Muto was Space Lone Wolf here, coming out to Final Countdown. He was getting a push as the young guy in NOW but he really felt like an outlier here. His stuff was smoother and more theatrical than anyone else in the company. He didn't fit in against the UWF guys, for instance, but since he was the only guy like that, he stood out. Buzz, is, of course, way over the top here, funny faces, noises, whining, etc.

At first this is a normal match with Muto controlling the arm and Buzz hitting the floor and Muto hitting the handspring elbow in the corner. But then Buzz tosses Muto out and they end up sort of under the ring with Buzz biting him and obviously some big blading happens here, as they both comes up bloody. Buzz works the wound: headbutts, biting, a chairshot. Muto bites to break a hold and they slam each other's head into the mat. It's pretty glorious carnage by this point, exacerbated by Muto punching the wound in the corner and Buzz hitting a snap suplex on the floor. All the while, the blood masses all the more. Muto reverses a suplex. Buzz gets his power slam. Muto tries for a desperate roll up out of nowhere.

It builds and builds, but to what? It builds to Buzz getting knocked out of the ring. He staggers, stands, arms extended, welcoming, blood running down his face. I've never seen a man waiting for a dive quite like this. He invites it. He longs for it. He wants nothing more than for Muto to embrace his in this grisly bloodletting, for the two to become one there on the floor. He craves an escalation of the violence, an increase of the danger, for flesh to hit flesh and bone to crash against bone.

And Muto, Space Lone Wolf, a boy becoming a man before everyone's eyes, does not disappoint him. 

The match is shortly thereafter thrown out, a heap of bodies and blood, but what a ride while it happened.

ER: Buzz is no longer working as Mad Dog, here he is some kind of ill, demented, disease riddled dog. He's weepy, he's weird, he sometimes appears to be crying, he mainly appears to be unwell. It's a totally unique take on the unleashed monster gaijin. He's not out and swinging at a soul, he's like a rabid dog who goy sprayed by a skunk and he's just wandering around and sort of whimpering, effects of the rabies hitting his system hard. Every time the camera cuts to Muta in the ring, he's wearing an expression of concerned distrust, no clue what this diseased dog has in store.

As he works over Sawyer's arm, Sawyer howls and whimpers and you can see a version of this match that doesn't build to blood and stays Sawyer fighting through arm work and I can see an interesting match there...but it plays so much better as Muto using it as a way to restrain a large unpredictable animal before he breaks free from his restraints. I don't know if I've ever seen a scene like Buzz holding Muto on the floor of the gym for so long, biting at his head. It goes on long enough that it almost seems like the illusion is broken, as it always looks like a man holding a smaller man down solely for the purpose of gigging his head, but the longer it goes it dips into the wrestling illusion being broken and back into something Not Supposed To Be Happening. The more young boys swarm, the more it feels like this diseased animal had done something unpredictable even for him. When Muto comes up bloody, I admittedly expected there to be more, but I also don't think there are many instances of Muto bleeding before this. The truly shocking thing happens just after, when Muto gets his first chance to bite Buzz back, and it is truly disgusting. Muto digs the entirety of his full lower jaw of teeth into Sawyer's forehead, and when he pulls away Sawyer has so much dark crimson on his face and chest that I said aloud "Muto fucking bit him FOR REAL!?" 

Buzz Sawyer has this magical blood that behaves differently from any other bleeder I've seen. His blood is not free flowing. He tried several times, earlier in the match, to bust himself open by slamming his head into the railing, but he only ever got a stain. Now, cut open, his blood does not flow free but it flows in spurts, when attacked. I don't know if I've seen bleeding like this. He spurts blood after Muto bites him...then it stops. Until Muto rans him into the ringpost, and then a new batch gushes out all at once, repainting his body. It's fascinating. The whole things ends in a mess, Buzz staggering around to let everyone in the arena see the damage, Muto looking shell shocked. I love the use of Sawyer's signature bump, flying out backwards through the ropes from a dropkick, and I loved him simply standing up from the floor, arms raised. He flies through the ropes and rises from the depths like Michael Myers standing up after a shotgun blast, and Muto knows his only chance is to ignore rules and referees and just try to escape intact. 

Every new piece of Buzz Sawyer footage adds to his legacy, the type of person who we will likely never see in pro wrestling again. Shape, look, attitude, style. We're not getting any of that back. Celebrate this.  

 

Antonio Inoki/Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Masa Saito vs. Akira Maeda/Kengo Kimura/Nobuhiko Takada NJPW 7/21/87 

MD: This was right in the midst of the NOW vs NEW feud where instead of having, for instance, Choshu's Army come in and declare war on everyone, they positioned all the old guys (and Muto) against all the younger guys. Inoki, Fujiwara, and Saito were sort of the leaders of NOW. Maeda, Fujinami, and Choshu were the leaders of NEW. This meant that Inoki could be positioned against all of the other top stars and none of them could be positioned against each other. It was a real frustrating state of affairs that only lasted a couple of months even if it did make for at least a couple of fresh match ups. It also absolutely killed Kengo Kimura's momentum. He was one of the hottest acts of the year having turned on Fujinami (in a Choshu-esque way) at the start of the year and disappearing to "learn boxing". 

Regardless of how frustrating the overall feud was, just given the people involved here and the potential match-ups, this was going to be fun and heated. This wasn't a subtle feud either. The commentary more or less outright said as the NOW team came out that they were trying to protect their spots and they presented it as a battle between fathers and sons (or at least older and younger brothers).

We never got that satisfying Inoki vs Maeda singles match but it was always exciting to the crowds when they faced off in a setting like this. Even before getting the towel off, Inoki charged him here. But all of these match-ups were exciting. The fans wanted to see Fujiwara vs Takada after a year and a half of the two being on the same side. Saito vs Takada was fresh (and felt unlikely). Fujiwara vs Kimura was particularly chippy with Kimura using that boxing skill in the corner (and some slaps) and Fujiwara fighting out. And Inoki vs Maeda when they finally faced off? Well Inoki was a genius in framing it. He took a tag from Saito and time just stopped with a huge pop. Takada was in the ring and he saw Inoki poised to enter and tagged in Maeda, and the place went nuts. It was a minute of awesome scrapping with a rolling kick and the spin wheel kick and headbutts and a half hatch suplex and Inoki scrambling his way to an advantage and Maeda jamming it. Just what you'd want until Inoki made the tag.

But even that was okay because the tag was to Fujiwara so now the crowd got THAT match up. That's the way a match like this worked. Fujiwara did get swept under, and I've seen enough of these, that for him to be the one to take so much offense in the match and work from underneath, well, I knew the ending midway through this bit of heat. It was chaotic enough but he was going to get the armbar on out of nowhere, and he did. All of this did feel larger than life. The feud was a failure but not necessarily because the action wasn't good or fans didn't like specific match ups. It's just that it didn't give them everything they wanted most. 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Bam Bam Bigelow 7/21/87

MD: This is usually a solid match up, but maybe not as fun as Bigelow vs Choshu, for instance. They'd wrestle a notorious 3-match series in early 1989 which was about making Fujinami as champion look as dominant as possible as he was teaming with Inoki and Choshu, wherein he won all three matches. 

This was well before that. It's sub-five minutes but I think we get most of it. Bigelow (who came out with a chair threatening the crowd effectively) dominated to start, just clubbering and power moves. I wouldn't say that it was the best clubbering in the world, but it worked. Fujinami came back by ducking a clothesline and leapfrogging Bigelow but then he crashed into Shibata's dad who was reffing. I can only assume he was supposed to crash into him right after the leapfrog which would have been a great visual, but instead, he came up short and had to clothesline him by accident, which came off as pretty funny. Bigelow used this to get a chair and smack Fujinami. He went for a top rope splash with the chair (with Japanese letters on it) on Fujinami, but Fujinami rolled. I'm sure he was supposed to get all the way out of the way but instead he ended up tripping Bigelow on the way down, which was another great visual, this one made better by the miscue. 

If it went to a finish right after that, this would have actually been very effective and one of the better sub-five minute matches I've seen in a while. Instead, Fujinami threw an enziguiri but then Bigelow went out and eventually over the rail for the DQ instead. Ah well. 

ER: This was like going into an ice cream shop intending to buy a scoop, but getting enticed by the different flavors on display, getting a few different tasty samples on those little wooden spoons...and then you realize the samples scratched that sweet itch and you back out of buying a scoop, annoying every employee in the shop. It's over before it really begins, but contains several moments of intrigue, most of them from the young red singleted Bigelow. You expect a couple big bumps, and get them. Toward the end of the match he ocean crashes over the top to the floor off a dropkick, then takes a faster and even cooler version of that bump going over a guardrail. While I wasn't sure which type of big bumps we'd get, I was expecting them. The neatest things were the things I wasn't expecting. Bigelow had an almost fistdrop turned into a single hand choke. I've never seen Bam Bam do a fistdrop, and this was not intended to be one, but it very clearly was one, just with different intentions. Then a huge missed splash off the top, that turned into a much weirder and cooler and bizarre looking moment. Bigelow had set a chair over Fujinami before going up top, but Fujinami rolled out the way of the splash a bit late. What this wound up doing was causing a fluke log roll effect, where Bigelow was going to splash flat on the chair, but instead his ankles caught Fujinami mid-roll and it whipped Bigelow into a face plant on the chair. A much worse bump than was planned, but much cooler in an unintentional cool accident way. 

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Found Footage Friday: HANOVER 86~!

Hanover 

9/86

Franz Schuhmann vs. Steve Wright

MD: Four shows. Mainly the layperson appeal is Bull Power against all of these guys but it's nice to see some shows not even on wrestlingdata with guys we've been watching in 80/81 and some others. They fit 4 hours onto this tape and we'll see how many shows we make it through this week. We have dates for the subsequent shows but not this one but it's probably the first few days of September 1986.  Everything is clipped but you tend to get the flow and a lot of fun spots. 

For instance, you get a lot of Wright really stymieing Schuhmann here with his meticulous precision, Even when Franz has a good counter, like looping one leg over the other to turn Wright over, Wright just moves into a cartwheel to get out of it. There's some fun bits where they hang onto holds through escape attempts (there Wright lets Franz hang on even as he does a scooping hip takeover for instance). Some fun pin exchanges too where they both end up laying there. If this boiled over we don't see it but as things progress to rope running, we've seen Wright win enough times that even without the actual finish, we can imagine it.

ER: It's too bad this is so heavily clipped. Weight looks extremely spirited all match and I love when he tries out tricks. The clips mean we miss on some of Wright's move application, and I like seeing how he gets into and out of things. He works his way into several inventive and firm submissions on Schuhmann, but we never get to see how Schuhmann gets out of most of them, nor how Wright maneuvers through them. We get to see a lot of Wright getting into things, and that in itself is great. He is a clever Dean Malenko, a Dean Malenko with follow through and natural progression through holds. I don't have any experience with 80s Franz Schuhmann. I've seen plenty of mid 90s Schuhmann but no mid 80s. This match doesn't offer much insight, it's clipped into a Wright highlight reel, but I loved the way Wright maneuvered him through sequences. A series of rolling Malenko nearfalls actually felt like something, and ended with both men lying flat on top of each other, a rest neutral position that hasn't been seen in pro wrestling in 40 years.  

Tony St. Clair vs. John Quinn

MD: Quinn had superior size but got plenty of heat by going with inside shots or hair pulls to keep St. Clair on his back leg as well as just bullying him around. Nice Tony chant here. He always had a connection with these German crowds (as early as 86 we can see now). Tony would finally get one over on Quinn and use a  headcissors and they'd do the Gotch Lift style spot but out of the headscissors which you never ever see and is really the damndest thing. We get this a number of times but the clipping means it's never QUITE as clear as I'd like. They take it out of the ring and then back in from the apron, working in and out of it. A very cool spot (and way to spend a few minutes). Quinn bullies St. Clair some more, tossing him out, but St. Clair comes back with a number of nearfalls en route to the time limit draw.

ER: Quinn kicked ass here. There are very few men today who look like John Quinn and none of them are trying to become wrestlers. I like Quinn, a worker I don't think I'd seen before Matt and I started writing about Germany, but this is the coolest I've seen him. He's a monster, a sadist. I don't remember him being so sadistic in the '81 footage we've written about. This was mostly Quinn beating St. Clair's ass, as viciously and as stiff as I've seen him beat someone. He's a hard hitting bully, hitting St. Clair hard enough that St. Clair gets loud reactions any time he's in control (which isn't much, that we saw). Everything Quinn does looks mean. Kicking Tony in the back with a scoff, hammering him several times with punches to the stomach that St. Clair sold as if he didn't think he was actually getting punched in the stomach, headlock punches so good that you realize it's been ages since you've anyone do a headlock punch even thought they're literally always good. Holding a headlock away from a referee, unleashing your inner Nolan Ryan just once, elevating yourself as a wrestler to all who see? Easiest shortcut to looking like a great wrestler, right there for the taking. Headlock punches, gone. Why don't you see brown cars anymore? 

Eddy Steinblock vs. Bull Power

MD: This isn't 89 Vader here. He's only been wrestling for about a year and he's been a babyface for a lot of that, even if he had another tour of Germany before this. He's out with the flag and a trucker hat and windbreaker type jacket and American flag, shoving fans away before the bell. Also attacking Steinblock with the flag before the bell, which gets the exact right reaction from the get go. 

He's raw but there's a lot to like. You don't want to look away a bit due to the rawness, not just in spite of it. He has brutal looking blows from every angle, plus the Vader Attack (with a big pose) and usage of the ropes or just wrenching his back over the corner turnbuckle. He'll just throw in a knee on Steinblock or lean on him with one. Some of it got a little repetitive since he only had so much stuff (the back elbow and Vader Attack hit multiple times) but it was all doing damage so you hardly cared. Steinblock came back with dropkicks and big sweeping blows (to huge crowd reaction since they cared about Vader already) but he missed a splash onto the leg and Vader never really looked back, crushing him with an Avalanche and a Splash for the win. Definitely a way to establish him for later, bigger matches.

ER: Not much Vader earlier than this. This is Vader at his most long haul trucker, with the perfect wrestling body and his sweet round face. He shifts side to side with soft polite eyes during the long in ring introduction ceremony with everyone from the tour, but when he's out for his match he's taunting everyone with an American Flag. An odd sized American flag, Vader's belly sticking out under his short, zipped, normal man's windbreaker jacket. Pointing to the flag, doing ethnic heel "How about that, huh? How about that right there!" Cheap heat diner brawler Vader, Bull Power, works the best Eddy Steinblock match I've ever seen, because he just beasts Steinblock's ass and makes him sell and bump. If it's not the best Steinblock match, it's the most compelling. I haven'y seen any 80s Steinblock, but I've seen plenty of 90s Steinblock where he's booking himself on top forever. It's wild to see him get punched around and beaten up bad by Vader. Bull Power doesn't have all of Vader's presence and size confidence, but he knows he can hit hard and throw his weight around. This man looked tough and out of place, a different cool version of a favorite.  

Axel Dieter/Steve Casey vs. Le Grand Vladimir/Rasputin II

MD: A feel good tag. We've seen a bunch of these now but the clipping made it seem even more so since you never really saw the heels on top. Maybe they never were even over two falls. This had heel miscommunication, Vlad walking into a bunch of spots (the best was when he armdragged nothing and was made to look the fool), Dieter playing the hits and Rasputin bringing size and energy in his bumping and Casey relative youth. You got some fun moments in here but it was harder than the other matches to get a real sense of things past Vlad's annoyance with Rasputin.

ER: We only have four minutes of this, but we see a lot in four minutes. Matt and I are the only two people in the world who talk about Le Grand Vladimir and this is the first I'm seeing him five years older, and he's somehow even better. This German style that nobody cares about that acts as a fountain of youth to older tall brutes. Vladimir works as stooging brute great at getting caught off guard by Steve Casey, a chance to nuanced bad partner bullshit with Rasputin, five years older but taking faster bumps to the floor than in 1981. I was blown away by how strong Casey's fundamentals were, admittedly more so when I thought it was Texas Steve Casey. No, British Steve Casey has the fundamentals and worked real strong as a babyface with heavyweight moving dropkicks and snug headlocks. Dieter is eternally loudly over, a god. Steve Casey looked like he belonged with Dieter in every big babyface moment, a natural fit. 

9/5/86

Franz Schuhmann vs. Hansi Rooks

MD: Rooks is kind of like if you merged Vader with Harley Race, in look at least. He's a real jerk. Schuhmann had a connection with the audience which reminds me of UFO and especially Sal to a degree and it made sense he'd be a top guy there for years after this. He went sailing out at Rooks' hands right towards the camera to start and then pulled back in. Then Rooks had the audacity to go for a handshake and kick him. When Rooks was beating on him on the outside and got a yellow card, he merrily waved to the crowd on the way back in. You have to like his style at least. Franz had some fiery comebacks including dropkicks that knocked Rooks out of the ring or that pinballed him, but Rooks eventually won it with a nice tilt a whirl slam.

ER: You're telling me that there was a big fat guy with Harley Race hair out there named Hansi Rooks?! Fans wanted to see Otto Wanz's body with the familiar blond curls of Harley, with a name honoring Razzle Dingley. I've never heard of this guy and neither have you. He's the perfect kind of brute for our German tent shows, a big heel who knows how to kick and punch and is a real bully. That's what they wanted to see and that's the 80s German heel style I've grown accustomed to. Rooks is not as good as Quinn or Vladimir or Wiskoski or Vader and he leans out of strikes but he is one of them and this was a fun, clipped look. His clubbing to Schuhmann's chest looked heavy and his finishing slam was cool, but this was just a glimpse. 

Otto Wanz vs. Col. Brodey

MD: I'll be honest that part of the appeal of the 80-81 shows is that there's just a bit less of the familiarity we've already had with later 80s German footage. Guys like Brodey and Guajardo. They're fine and generally functional but I've liked getting to know Morowski better for instance. 

So this felt familiar, almost stereotypical. It was, of course, a nightmare of a time for Brodey. Wherever he tried to go, whatever he tried to do, Wanz was there. He'd go for a full nelson and Wanz would butt butt him. He got whipped into the corner and belly attacked. Wanz would throw these brutal looking hamhocks or take him down with a swank tricked out armbar takeover. Once or twice Brodey would pry off a leg and have some hope but Wanz would just kick him across the ring or propel him that way out of a pin. When he hit the flip senton and the splash it was a mercy, even if Brodey's ineffectual kicking might have said otherwise. Obviously, the crowd loved it all of course.

Bull Power vs. Axel Dieter

MD: We're lucky to have this footage. It's very good, even if Leon was just figuring it out still. Dieter was not and he knew exactly what to do, charging in right at the start and doing some damage. The ref wasn't going to let him go wild so early though and Vader used that distraction to snatch Axel's throat. He'd do these lifting hanging tree chokes, put him down and just clobber him. It looked great. He had plenty of Vader attacks and back elbows and a tendency to move Axel around by his throat. Dieter would come back when he could, either throwing desperate shots, or after Vader missed a corner charge or he could duck a back elbow. The place went nuts as he just laid into him with uppercuts and punches. All it took was one shot from Vader to turn things right back around though. Both men went over the top once or twice (with Axel able to use Vader's weight against him) and things devolved on the floor. This was raw but well worth watching.

Klaus Wallas vs. Eddy Steinblock

MD: Wallas was a judoka in the 1976 Olympics which more or less made his pro career and got him runs in New Japan. He picked up a thing or two there like the enziguiri he used at the end of one round. he was 43 and at the tail end of his career but he had presence and confidence as he moved around. My favorite thing he did was this little duck around to whack Steinblock in the back to cut him off. The first time we see him do it, he does it in the lower back with an outright slap and it looks nasty. Steinblock would come back which would mean mostly whips into the corner and mares for Wallas. I get the sense he wasn't taking too many big bumps anymore, but the fans ate it up anyway. I liked the finish which had Wallas whipped, do a little do-si-do where he hooked the arm to whip Steinblock back the other way, where he caught him in that European arm drag slam that ended so many matches.

Steve Wright/Klaus Kauroff vs. Rambo/John Quinn

MD: This got time and actually had a decent amount of heat. It's one of Rambo's first tours of Germany, if not the first. Apparently he had come in through working for Delaporte in France. Of course, the heat wouldn't start until Wright clowned these guys, absolute menace that he was. Fun bit with Quinn where Wright would cartwheel off of whips and Quinn would just walk off of them, refusing to run. Wright also did the multiple kip ups deal with Rambo, and then a great chinlock bit where he worked up to a fireman's carry, got cut off by Quinn, did it again, and then when Quinn came in whacked him with Rambo's feet on an airplane spin. Big pop for that. Heels controlled with a lot of illegal cutoffs and even when Wright came back after ducking a second double clothesline, Rambo kept breaking up pins until he got red carded. You need to do a finish like that now and again to get over the rules, really.

 

9/7/86

Bull Power vs. Steve Wright

MD: This feels like a real find honestly. We're just looking at 86 Bull Power here, but you watch him against a guy like Wright who was such a master of his craft and Vader comes off like a huge monster, a huge star. He nails Wright before the match with the American flag and the image of it made me wish he had worked the whole match with his hat. Ah well. Wright dodges a Vader corner charge at the bell, and follows up, knocking Vader all the way out of the ring. Vader comes back and press slams him over the top rope. They really don't look back from there.

There are cool bits in here where Wright, who is usually a menace to everyone, just can't get out of a wristlock and he keeps monkey flipping Vader who just hangs on. You get all the stuff you'd expect, Vader Attacks, and corner charges, and just the meatiest shots from Vader. Wright comes back by throwing his entire body at him and choking the life out of him desperately, no funny tricks here. Vader's able to shut him down with one shot though. Ten shots from Wright equal one from Vader. They go quite a while and we get a sense of it even with the clipping, before Vader KOs him with one, slams him, and hits the big splash for the win. It's a very good match where Wright took but only at a high cost and when it made the most sense. Mostly it was giving. They were still building to the Otto match here.

Axel Dieter vs. Le Grand Vladimir

MD: It might just be a selection of the footage we have but these two feel like lifelong opponents. I just went over to wrestling data on a whim, after having that thought, to see how many times they faced. I clicked on Dieter's opponents and there, at the very top of the list by a wide wide margin was Vladimir. I wouldn't have necessarily guessed that but I'm not at all surprised by it. So it's not the selection of matches we have. It's simply truth.

There's such familiarity and contempt in this match. They spend the first round trading mares and chinlocks and fighting out of them and cutting each other off, but as it gets going, Vlad comes in with his overhand hammers and his casual knee strikes and his stomps, and Dieter comes back by ducking a shot and catapulting him into the ropes so he lands on the knees, and ultimate finishes him off with mean whips into the corner and body slams. These two know each other, every cell, and it's almost like watching a married couple bicker on some level, the way it's obvious they're under each other's skin. It's a very lived in match, if that makes any sense, and it's fun to visit, especially knowing we get to go home and they're stuck with one another.

Kid Burgess/Steve Casey vs. Hansi Rooks/Klaus Wallas

MD: Burgess is George Burgess, also Jamaica George and "Coolcat Jackson" which is an amazing name. He passed away a couple of years ago. He was able to clown the heels by escaping things and especially (of course) with a preternaturally hard head. They were able to get their heat on Casey instead and leaned on him hard. After winning the first fall, the camera cuts to the crowd where some security guards have to force a guy back into his seat and I got the feeling people were getting upset. That's probably why Casey came back (as Rooks was trying to work over his ears) and won the second fall with a quick jumping back elbow that seemed to surprise Wallas on the apron in that he didn't move to interfere until it was too late. They did a lot of brawling outside of the ring in the third fall, probably to try to channel the energy elsewhere, so that when they worked over Burgess and Wallas won with a suplex, there wasn't a riot or anything. 

 

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Found Footage Friday: 1990 FMW~!

FMW 3/10/90

Kumiko Matsuda vs. Crusher Maedomari 

MD: Crusher isn't Crusher yet. This was pre-show and you could tell they were working things out, but they had good aggression, Matsuda with strikes and Maedomari with throws and holds. Lots of shoot pin escapes. Matsuda could be pretty relentless with the kicks and knees. At one point, they had a funny bit where she missed on a spin kick in the corner and got the ref. Maedomari wanted in on the fun and turned to nail the ref too. It was funny but added to the sense of wild aggression from these two. Matsuda finally got a series of dropkick in the corner which let her hit a double underhook suplex and follow with a jackknife pin for the win. This was rough around the edges but had good energy for what FMW was trying to be at this point, which was definitely a little bit of everything.

ER: Strong Opener, great energy. Matsuda does her leveraged throws and kicks with intent and can believably back Maedomari up with palm strikes. I loved the bit with her spin kicks in the corner swinging wide into the referee's ribs. Her dropkicks down the finishing stretch could use some steam but I also like the raggedness of someone 10 matches into her career guiding someone through their first ever match. Actually that feels like the exact situation where you'd expect someone to be murdered by dropkicks. 

Miwa Sato vs. Drake Morimatsu 

MD: DVDVR stalwart Gordi had been at a party recently with Morimatsu, so I was hoping to get this match back out there after seeing the listing, but it's a non match. Thanks to BAHU's history of FMW, I know this was the debut of Kudo with two fellow non-active AJW Class of 86 alums (Reibun Amada and Noriyo Toyoda) as the The Outbreakers. They come out of nowhere and destroy Miwa (including with a spike kneeling pile driver), setting up a tag and then singles match later in the month (we have the 3/30 singles and Kudo dominates). There is a clear sense of chaos to all of this though and it helps the overall feel compared to what else is happening in Japan at the time. Like any other unexpected surprise, this had a big buzz from the crowd.

ER: This angle made me so excited for tag matches we're never going to see. Miwa Sato takes a great beating at the hands of the AJW veterans. The kneeling stuff piledriver was disgusting, just a full head drop. Sato comes off like an underdog babyface star and it sucks to hear a Kudo singles match was one sided. 1997 Kudo would have had the most memorable match on the card with her. 

MD: After this, they played Final Countdown and had everyone come down to the ring. I've seen enough AJPW and NJPW house shows to think they didn't do that for those in this era, but they did for UWF in a big ceremony. This sort of aped that but you have such a misfit bunch of people out here that it has a completely different effect. 

Yukihide Ueno vs. Shooter #1 

MD: Shooter 1 is sort of credible, I guess. He had debuted earlier in the year as a "discipline of Tiger Mask" and had been over enough for it. This is all over the place at times, but Shooter has just enough presence to press an advantage and he has solid strikes and can bully Ueno around on size alone. He's constantly fixing his mask which is not something that usually bugs me, so that gives you a sense of how often he does it. He hits big stuff but can't always follow up because it's all a bit too disjointed. Ueno has the crowd (who are primarily happy to be there I think). He gets one big comeback with a gutshot, a German, and a kick out of the ring (and does get one big dive) but Shooter takes back over with a great press slam where he takes him off the top but slams him out of the ring instead of into it. Beautiful visual. It meanders a bit to the finish and there are a few times where the thing probably had an offramp to end and they should have taken it, but I'd say the trainwreck feel adds more than diminishes given the setting.

ER: Ueno would go on to be Choden Senshi Battle Ranger, one of those sick undercard FMW guys who didn't get as much acclaim as the more violent guys he shared rosters with. He became a gifted flier with great glue, and seeing him work a Different Style match like this you can see where all his stickiest glue came from. He debuted earlier in 1990 and is quickly tasked with working a long shootstyle fight against a guy who seems less familiar with the concept. Ueno is much smaller but had great purpose on offense, in a way I could have seen him controlling the whole match. His rolling kick that knocked Shooter to the floor was awesome, the follow up plancha a beautiful one within the crowed pool of wild 90s Japanese indie planchas. 

Ueno looks like he going to dominate with kicks and armbar takedowns, when he gets gorilla press slammed to the floor and spends a long back stretch fighting to get back to his feet. Shooter kind of sprang to life as a worker after this, turning into a kick combo machine while trying pro wrestling clotheslines and rope running for the first time. He wasn't great at peaking his knockdown kicks, mostly throwing left-right body combos and trying weighty kneelifts. He needed a big finish instead of a long wear down. Ueno fighting through the knockdowns was impressive, but he's someone who got so good at chaining big runs of cool offense that I wanted to see more of what he could do when he was a rookie menace.  

Masanobu Kurisu vs. Shooter #2 

MD: Shooter #2 is not nearly as credible. He tries for an ambush but obviously that's a terrible idea. There are no good ideas against Kurisu, except for maybe to run. Kurisu headbutts him out of the corner and doesn't really look back. He headbutts him again, stomps and kicks him, hits him with a chair on the outside, and it's all top 5% ever pro wrestling brutality. Just another day in the office for Kurisu. Shooter gets a miracle clothesline and tries to get a hold out of it. Kurisu reverses the hold and kicks and headbutts and slams and clotheslines and chicken wings this poor jerk. Shooter doesn't quit (he should). Instead he gets a miracle belly to belly but Kurisu just rolls him over and gets the double wristlock for the win. Almost a mercy.

ER: A 5 minute classic, something for every fan of wrestling violence and all Kurisu heads. The full Korakuen crowd is in LOVE with Kurisu and actually laughs with glee as he stomped the skull plates apart of the future Ryo Miyake. Miyake by the mid 90s was a WAR/Yume Guy I Liked, here he is a game sacrificial lamb who takes the worst of Kurisu's head kicks and bone breaking submissions. He gets to kick Kurisu in the head a couple times and bounce him with a pretty nasty suplex, but mostly he was in there to test a 1990 theory about how many unprotected kicks a rookie could take to the cranium. 

We think of Masa Fuchi as evil, sometimes. It's because of his eyes. He is a businessman who double crosses you on a deal, but will also step on a guy's face. But Fuchi was never evil, he was a dickhead. Masanobu Kurisu is Evil Fuchi. Kurisu unleashed on the 90s All Japan Old Men division would have been Hell on earth. He would have been the reason everyone traded for All Japan tapes. He throws a short fast overhead chair shot that lands with such impact it's like seeing someone get hit with a chair for the first time. His submissions always look like we're getting a glimpse into dojo torture, a live bone density test on a Saturday. Miyake making the ropes more than once felt like huge moments, as they felt like they actually pissed Kurisu off. Bad news for Miyake, but he came out of this looking likWhen e a guy. 

Tarzan Goto vs. Satoshi Imaizumi

MD: Not sure why Goto had back to back gimmick matches but here we go. This was more of a judo gi mixed styles deal (Goto did have a gi too). FMW was still transitioning towards death matches as more the norm and there was still so much of the early martial arts feel here. I think it worked better in the main event than it did here though. At least the people around the camera were into all the judo throws. Goto would try some more pro wrestling, things like kicks and clotheslines. Imaizumi got his knees up on a Vader Bomb attempt and almost won it with a cross arm breaker but Goto came back for a choke. Not a ton here but it's fun to see him go from one gimmick to the other in subsequent matches. 

ER: I saw Imaizumi standing around during the extended Europe introduction ceremony and I wanted to see him more than anyone. He looks like Kurisu's large son with the exact same hairline but a young  branching out from his tough father mustache. Goto looks trim in his gi and ponytail. This started like a kind of dry judo throw exhibition and slowly grew into an aggressive sparring dojo war. Imaizumi started going for broke and using his strongest throws on Goto, working hard for a head and arm submission like he was really trying to end this fight while he had a gas tank. When he pulled an armbar after getting his knees up on a Goto Vader bomb I thought he had it. There's this weird FMW guy trend of shoehorning a dropkick into their Different Style fight. None of them have had dropkicks good enough to work in a shootstyle/Different Style setting, Goto included. Goto's headbutts were welcome but Imaizumi came across as the more intriguing figure. Goto is such a good pro wrestler that I thought he would have been more of a dynamic tough guy fit in a Different Style division. 

Tarzan Goto vs. Beast the Barbarian

MD: This was far more interesting than the judo jacket match. I always joke that Beast could be a time traveling Mad Dog Connelly, by looks and gimmick but he didn't have the intensity or presence. He was set up to succeed with this match gimmick though and this was a perfectly acceptable dog collar match. He's able to use the chain as a weapon and clubber Goto down and he laid it in. Goto would come back hitting just as hard. There were a few transitions with one or the other getting a little tangled up with the rope and the chain and I do wonder if this wouldn't have been better with a slightly shorter chain which kept them a little closer together without some of those apron bits. Goto bled. Beast asserted himself pretty well overall especially relative to his Onita match a couple of months before. And cleverly enough, after each man meted out a sufficient amount of punishment, Goto won with a backslide of all things. Beast didn't think his shoulders were down which led to a post-match fit.

ER: If Matt is saying he has a regular routine about Beast the Barbarian, I can confidently say that I have never seen nor written about a Beast the Barbarian match in my life. I don't know a thing about this guy but on sight he's like Damien Demento working a balding shorter Bruiser Brody gimmick. 

Atsushi Onita & Sambo Asako vs. Kim Sung Ho & Lee Gak Soo

MD: The story of this one was that Asako or Onita would get one of the taekwondo guys down and in a hold and again and again and again, the other would come in to break it up. That lasted until Onita finally got fed up and hit his deadly over the shoulder power bomb. Even that wasn't good enough but then Asako got the message and cut off the ring for so he could hit a second one. That was the basic story but the devil's in the details and Lee Gak Soo is one of the most dynamic pro wrestling kickers I've ever seen. 

He somehow manages to throw kicks from every angle, sometimes flying around with them, and obviously Asako is a great canvas, but Onita would get knocked out of the ring like it was nothing too and the fans loved it. Kim had some fun charging ones too. Basically Onita would run at people with lariats or trips, cutting the distance however he could, and Asako had all these cool throws if people got close enough to him, but then the subsequent holds would get broken up and Kim and Lee would just take right over with the meanest stomps and kicks imaginable. 

Right until Asako (also fed up) dragged Lee over to the corner and the power bombs happened. Crazy, enjoyable stuff.

Battle Royal

MD: This was all about the taekwondo guys just throwing flying kicks everywhere in the middle of a battle royal. Even more fun than that sounds. What you need to know is that Onita and Kurisu were working together but Onita accidentally chopped Kurisu which went about as well as you'd expect. Onita eliminated him but Lee and Asako immediately eliminated Onita afterwards. I imagine he and Kurisu are still fighting to the back today. This is one of those battle royals were people get pinned by everyone in the ring piling on them. I think that was Imaizumi's fate. It ended up Asako, Shooter, and Lee and then was an entertaining mess of guys kicking and then immediately falling over. Asako shoved Lee into the ropes and he came right off on him for the pin. Then he followed up with a kick off the top on Shooter. Stupid amounts of fun. 

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Found Footage Friday: 1989 AJPW~! MALENKO~! FUCHI~! ABBY~! BABA~! KAMALA~! MIGHTY~! RUSHER~!

Mighty Inoue vs. Shinichi Nakano AJPW 2/23/89

MD: Another set of Classics drops as we go down the list of new footage. This one is probably one I wouldn't have gone out of my way for in general, but it was good overall. A Jr. Heavyweight Title match. We've gotten pieces filled in for this lineage and defenses and the matches hold up quite well against late 80s NJPW title matches really. You have guys like Fuchi, Inoue, and Momota carrying the division with people like Joe Malenko popping in.

I don't have a lot of time for Nakano in general, but this was set up to be almost impossible to fail. For one, he ambushed right from the start, giving things early direction and not forcing them into feeling out matwork he might not excel at. He slapped Inoue out of nowhere and then hit his signature power slam before tossing him to the floor and destroying him on the rails. Back in the ring, it was a seated chinlock. He at times had a sense that he wasn't sure how to best capitalize on the moment. 

None of that from Inoue. First chance he got (grabbing the head out of a Nakano toehold) he focused right in and chained three or four things together perfectly. As the match went on and they went back and forth, he wouldn't let things meander much either. At one point, Nakano was hitting shoulder thrusts in the corner with not enough pepper behind them, so Inoue asserted himself and started shin kicking him in the face. 

They had an exciting finishing stretch where Inoue got him down for the flipping sentons but missed the second. That allowed Nakano to hit his fisherman's suplex but Inoue got out to win with a very cool headscissors roll up out of a side slam. This overachieved, but it was entirely because Inoue is so good.

ER: I love Matt's specific, targeted dislike of Nakano, but I'm not sure I agree. I thought this match was great, but because of both men, and how easy they made it to buy in to an All Japan juniors match based around stiff work and snug holds. When I first started trading tapes, traders were not fans of the All Japan juniors division. If you wanted "Juniors Wrestling" there were so many other options: Michinoku Pro, New Japan, WAR, lucha, all filled with small guys working fast and flying, building to big highspots. All Japan's juniors division had none of that. It was permanently understocked with talent, AJPW never used it to showcase a future star, gaijin imports mostly focused on heavyweights (meaning you might get at best Rex King in a juniors match), and the matches were mostly worked like Kings Road undercard matches. It was not the style people associated with juniors wrestling, and now I'm far enough removed from that, that I can see the style for what it is and love it. 

Nakano tried to get the drop on Inoue and wear him down with holds, but since he is just a lesser version of Inoue it only worked until Inoue got fired enough to put him back in his place. Nakano came out hot, staggering Inoue good with a slap across the face and trying to secure a quick surprise title win with an awesome powerslam, knowing Inoue would be favored the longer the match went. When he moved into wearing down Inoue with holds, I bought all of them, because every submission felt like Nakano was working it to specifically finish the match. He believed in this firmly held submissions, and it made each one matter. His camel clutch, late match Boston crab, his single leg crab, all felt like something he was locking in to force a submission, never just to kill time. I bought into the struggle on every hold, and especially got into Inoue's long escape pulling a chinlock out of a deathlock, stretching Nakano until breaking. It all led to organic advances. Inoue's grounded headlock was snugly pulled into a swinging neckbreaker, the way he fanned Nakano's legs while locking in a butterfly stretch looked punishing, and when he locked in the tightest headscissors possible it was nice foreshadowing for the headscissor cradle he used to retain his title. 

If I'm talking about guys pulling snug submissions that look like they could get a tap, none looks better than Nakano pulling Inoue into a bow and arrow and holding it firm. How many bow and arrows subs have you seen fall apart at the seams? The legs come uncrossed, the knees aren't pressed firmly into the back to hold the sub taut, it's almost as common to see someone inadvertently slip out of the hold while rolling onto their back than it is to see a firm successfully applied lock, and Nakano puts the work in on every part of the sub. He put in the visual work of digging his knee into Inoue's back while securing the deathlock, worked through every bit of securing the hold at both ends of Inoue's body, leaving no wriggle room when he rolls to his back with Inoue stretched. 

Does Inoue "look better" as a wrestler? Yes, probably. His fast and weighty crucifix pin was so good I thought it was the finish for sure, and the way he makes cradles and backslide attempts feel threatening in general means there's always a sense he can surprise with a finish, which made his cradled headscissors work so well. He gives weight to opponents' with good selling in holds and fast bumps. His flipping bump through the ropes to the floor is one of my favorite signature bumps. I love how this man exits a ring. But, All Japan Juniors matches were never about crazy bumps or building to big highspots, which was why the division never got acclaim 30 years ago. I'm not even sure what the biggest highspot of this match was - the crucifix pin? Inoue's somersault senton? - and that's why people weren't seeking out this work. Viewing it outside of its Juniors framing you can see how tight the work was. 

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala AJPW 3/8/89

MD: It would be easy to dismiss this, to just say some fun things about Baba's cool trip on Kamala, how Kamala fought out of the corner, or how great Rusher's strikes against Abby looked. Or we could play into the amusing bits here, the amazing look on Baba's face when Abby got a cheapshot on him on a rope break and then did the whole martial arts hand waving shtick. We could go on about how they were like a married couple having a spat and how delightful that was. And that'd be valid. We could talk about how into this the crowd was, how they buzzed for Kamala's big moments or Abby asserting himself or Rusher making a comeback or whenever Baba came into the ring. 

And on some level, I am going to talk briefly about the sum of all of that. But I just don't think I can do this justice. I'm not even sure I want to do this justice. This match, ten minutes or so until the countout, is its own sort of magic. It's delightful. I was smiling the whole way through, out of delight, and I rode the same wave as the crowd, decades later. I could argue that we were taught and trained and conditioned not to enjoy matches like this and then I'd feel dumb, because of how stupid that sounds, but also because how stupid it makes me feel that at one point in my life many years ago, I would have denied myself this sort of joy, would have tried to hide behind a sort of self-important sense that wrestling had to be something else. 

Sometimes wrestling should be this. Hell, most wrestling should be begging to be this, because this clash of characters, of timing, of conducting a crowd, of heart and humor and misfit, monster, mythic heroism and villainy... it's just so different than we can hope to find out of most other forms of entertainment. There's nothing in the world quite like this. Watch this. It's ten minutes plus some before and after. Let yourself feel what that crowd was feeling. Smile along. Be delighted. It's okay. The world is a dark place, but there's light to be found in the least likely of places.

ER: I get so excited whenever Matt and I get to write about Abdullah the Butcher and Kimala 2 teaming in All Japan, that I went into this having no idea it was actually Abby teaming with the real Kamala. I've seen so many Abby/Kimala 2 matches, several matches where both Kamala's team with Abby in a trios, but I've seen little of Abdullah and original Kamala as a team. I think it only happened on this one tour. Also, it's important to note that I don't think Real Kamala is an upgrade overall, but it does make the team more threatening and less beatable. Kamala in Japan is weird. He looks like he'd be a natural fit, because his size and appearance makes him stand out more than at any time he was in WWF, it's just that his work does not fit in with Kings Road style at all, and at times he comes off like a total first year fat guy who isn't sure how to work with any of the old pros he's in with. He throws his overhand chops somehow worse than he threw them in 1993 WWF, but at least he tried throwing spin kicks like 1986 Kamala. His early match spin kick into Rusher's chest was easily his highlight of the match. 

So, with no Kimala 2 to work the heel in peril role, it is down entirely to Abdullah to create all the match's intrigue, which he is great at doing. His work against Baba and Rusher is always worth seeing, regardless of what current freak is teaming with him. Abby's aura lifts other, differently fat ships, because there is no other situation where Kamala would have grabbed Rusher to headbutt him if he wasn't headbutting him with Abby. I was impressed by Baba's work with Kamala, how all his chops looked like they were moving the large savage, knocking him down to build to the big Abby/Baba showdown that everyone was dying to see. Abdullah looked like he had so much fun working with Baba, just try not to smile as Abby is doing his karate posing. He looks like he's having a ball, and while I think it is very silly that Abby gets busted open by Kamala's tribal mask, it leads to Baba straight kicking Abby in his forehead grooves several times and Rusher opening those cuts with headbutts, so the silliness leads directly to violence. The karate chops and backhands Abby throws at Baba's neck to stop the onslaught are one of the things that make their showdowns worth watching no matter the year. 

I take it back, maybe Kamala's best contribution to this was when Rusher swarmed him with chops and punches, Kamala selling the swarm by backpedaling in fear while flailing his arms to keep hornets away from his face. Kamala feels so out of place in Japan, that there can be awkward moments...but when a moment like that plays into his fish out of water placement, suddenly it all makes sense. 

Joe Malenko vs. Masa Fuchi AJPW 10/20/89

MD: I can't help but think about this match in context. 1989 All Japan is defined by the war between Tenryu and Jumbo, between Hansen teaming with Tenryu and tearing through people, by Footloose having spotfests, Rusher and Eigen and Okuma doing comedy, guys like Shunji Takano and Kabuki scrapping and holding down the midcard against both Revolution and foreign monsters. And yet, here is a an absolute throwback to both the sort of 70s hold-driven matches Jumbo had made his name on and the sort of Junior Heavyweight technical battles we'd expect out of Fujinami at the turn of the 80s before Tiger Mask changed the paradigm in New Japan. It feels like the pinnacle of the Denny Brown/Nelson Royal style of NWA Junior Heavyweight Title matches that riddled the undercards of certain territories for years. 

I also can't help but think of Newborn UWF, a native monster that was threatening all traditional ways of doing business in Japan. To watch Maeda, Takada, Yamazaki, Anjo, and all the others is to feel a constant sense of danger. One mistake could bring a fight to an end or allow for severe punishment. There's a tension that leaves viewers on edge the whole time through. It's exciting but it's also exhausting. There can be narratives. There were always narratives. But they were based on an incessant pressure. This is different. It's a slow unlocking, a game of chess instead of a perilous tug of war. Damage had to be done, joints had to be weakened, effort had to be put in. It required a different sort of investment, both for the wrestlers and for the crowd. The struggle is somehow more simulated but also richer and broader for that simulation. It may not feel quite as real but it feels just as true. The wrestlers struggle for every inch, sell every twist of a joint, and react emotionally to consequences (such as Fuchi retreating from the ring, arm damaged, after it seemed like Malenko had an answer for everything he tried). If UWF was constant sudden death, this was regulation soccer, where the ebb and flow of shots on goal and ball possession would add up over time.

And of course, I couldn't help but think about Fuchi. He's the most versatile wrestler I've ever seen. He could go from comedy, to a title match like this, to mauling younger wrestlers. You see wrestlers manage that over their career, but for him that might all be within the same week. I think about him destroying the knees of the Super Generation Army on tables, brutality on top of brutality. Here though, it was a chess  move. It opened the match up, turned everything on its head, gave him a lever to pry on for the rest of the match, and pry he did. Malenko was constantly off balance and every subsequent move he hit was full of desperation. Fuchi could, would, and did throw little pokey kicks to the knee to take back over whenever the opportunity arose. It was the same move, even the same brutality, but it was used in an entirely different way than those Tsuruta-gun trio matches of a year or two later. 

It all built to a spectacular finishing stretch. Malenko's desperation paid off for him as he caught Fuchi in a bridging blockbuster fallaway slam. He followed it up with a northern lights suplex and then a clutch armbar. With leg damaged, he couldn't put Fuchi away. Fuchi, arm possibly still hurt, went with leaping enziguiris instead, and then was able to jam Malenko's final attempt to slip around him for a bridging butterfly suplex and the title win. So while I thought back, forward, and laterally to 70s Jumbo, to Denny Brown, to 1989 AJPW, to UWF, and to 1991 six-mans, what I thought about most of all was how this match stood on its own, and just how good it all was. History might show these late 80s AJPW Juniors matches to be a last gasp of an older tradition in some ways, but it was a gasp that showed how much vital, vibrant, and worthwhile life might have still been left to be found in the style.

ER: I wrote about the maligned/unregarded All Japan juniors style up above as we were breaking down Mighty Inoue/Shinichi Nakano without realizing that Matt went into different detail on the style in this review down below. Denny Brown is an interesting style comparison for this type of match, and it's interesting because at one point that would have been considered a pejorative and now it's clearly being used as a positive comp to something that we both miss from modern wrestling. This match is nothing but excellent, honest work, both guys gluing themselves together to craft something tough and true while making my own joints and ligaments scream out in pain. 

They build this around increasingly torqued holds, no traditional "highspots", no strike exchanges of any kind, just one blunt attack that leads to a long full match of superglue. The blunt attack comes when Fuchi begins smiling and taunting Joe with a couple of head fakes, a couple of lunges that weren't ever leading to anything, but Joe sees the evil behind Fuchi's smile and just headbutts him in the face when he gets his hands on him, wrestling him to the ground and beginning the always satisfying wrenching. Joe's holds all look like the finish: his cradle, grapevining one leg while concurrently forcing Fuchi into a painful half nelson, using all his limbs to manipulate Fuchi's body, not going for a pin just going for pain; a camel clutch with no pullback on the chin, all focus instead on hooking both arms and pulling back on them as he sinks into the hold, leaving Fuchi wincing and rubbing out his shoulders after he escapes to the floor.

Joe Malenko is someone who can make a Fujiwara armbar takedown look like a hold that damages the entire body. The way he takes Fuchi's arm and drives him down with his full weight sends Fuchi's head, face, and shoulder into the mat, like he was using the arm as leverage to do something more sinister. He uses that same leveraged arm to do a Russian legsweep when Fuchi eventually fights to his feet, holding the arm the whole time and using that as the point to pivot into attacks that folded in other limbs. 

Fuchi makes no inroads working the mat with Joe so eventually involves his tried and true friend Ringside Table to smash Joe's knee into. Joe's knee selling is real and escalates the match instantly. I love an injury coming into play late in a match, rather than give someone a memory exercise in the first couple minutes that makes it near impossible to do an actual match without conveniently forgetting your injury. Once Fuchi smashes Joe in the knee, Joe's strategy changes entirely and you can see in his eyes that this was the worst thing to happen to him. Fuchi is now in kill mode and Malenko is bringing out the big guns. The way Joe swings his leg away from Fuchi's single leg attempt before swinging him over with a front face lock takeover, catching a high crossbody and floating over with Fuchi's momentum into a bridging pin, and a clean northern lights that I'm sure he wished he had pulled off earlier with a sturdier knee. Fuchi doesn't so much as wear Joe down as he does hold him down long enough to win, the same thing Joe had been doing all match long. Excellent work all around, showcasing a style that really wouldn't be hard to integrate into any modern work, you just have to be honest and actually put in the work. That's the thing I don't see happening.  

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Found Footage Friday: LOS INFERNALES~! VALENTE~! GUERRERO DE LA MUERTE~! NIEBLA~! LATIN LOVER I GUESS~!

Rayo De Jalisco Jr./Latin Lover/Valente Fernandez vs. Los Infernales (Satanico, MS-1, Pirata Morgan) Monterrey 8/23/92

MD: We had previously covered the Latin Lover vs Valente Fernandez apuestas match so it's nice to get this as well, which has Fernandez turning on him, including him explaining it after the match. Morgan wears a bandana through this as he'd just lost his hair to Vampiro. Infernales ambush to start, and it's a solid rudo beatdown where they cycle through the tecnicos before slamming Lover, holding him down, and having MS-1 squash him with a top rope splash. Segunda starts with Rayo charging the ring and it settles down to exchanges. He gets all of his stuff in as the Infernales bumble about. They're as good as anyone playing into it. Fernandez looks very good too, sharp offense, going out as a tecnico with a bang. Lover less so, overall. The tercera was short but chaotic with guys going in and out of the ring and the tecnicos sort of trying a hit and run approach. It ultimately backfired as Lover rushed in to save Fernandez from a 3 vs 1 situation and accidentally dropkicked him. Fernandez lost it after that and started in on Lover with a chair before raising his hands with the Infernales and going back out to post Lover some more. He got a ton of heat for it and on commentary after noted how sick he was of Lover constantly being so clumsy. The payoff was fun so now it's nice to have the set up too.

ER: I loved the match long payoff of Valente losing his shit on Latin Lover, because every time Lover was in this match he looked like the worst wrestler in Monterrey. Were Rayo's bunny hop headbutts ridiculous? Yes. But everything Latin Lover did - outside of a cool bad landing dropkick on the floor to MS-1 - looked like it was done by a guy who should not be in a ring in front of paying customers. Watching him hit light clotheslines below the boobs or his weird Roadblock moonsault bumps to the floor was enough for me, but watching Valente doing several flawless classic lucha bumps to the floor made me fully understand his turn, even before the dropkick. And let's hear it for my boy MS-1, the least acclaimed of Los Infernales but a helluva show here, outshining Satanico and Pirata, huge aura, big top rope splash, throwing harder punches than his celebrated brethren. 

Latin Lover/Kato Kung Lee vs. El Sanguinario/El Mercenario Plaza De Toros Monumental mid-1992

MD: It's worth going through all of this just so we know someone's covered it. Rob had pointed out a number of new matches on this channel and I can report back that there's not a lot to see here. Lover still had his mask at this point and he was over with a part of the crowd as the new idol/sensation, and I'd even say his stuff looked a little better here, maybe because Sanguinario was flying into it so well, but this was fairly straightforward. At one point in the segunda when the rudo beatdown abruptly start, he got lawn darted into the seats and that was pretty satisfying and Kato Kung Lee got to do his stuff right at the end to entertaining effect but the VQ was rough for the most part and the opening exchanges were pretty subdued. Unless you really want a glimpse of what early Lover looked like, I'd say this is probably a skip.

ER: If any of you are out there reading this and still wondering what early Latin Lover looked like, picture the worst Lenny Lane match you've ever seen and now picture Lenny with less polish. 

Mr. Niebla vs. Guerrero De La Muerte Arena Coliseo 12/17/96

MD: Just the tercera here. We come in with Guerrero in charge, first with a camel clutch and then tossing Niebla off the top. He has a cool little bit he does where he winds up with his foot for leverage before tossing him too. He then starts slapping the piss out of Niebla, which only enrages Niebla and enables the comeback, which included a great moonsault from the apron to the floor. On the way back in though, Guerrero pulls off Niebla's mask. The ref buys that it was an accident and the match continues (which I've rarely ever seen actually).They rolled into a stretch from there, including a big top rope dive to the floor and then wiping out over the top in a Jerry Estrada bump by Guerrero which was followed up by Niebla having to shift directions to hit his tope. Guerrero caught him on a rana attempt and dropped him with a power bomb for the win though. A good fall. Shame we don't have the whole thing.

ER: Fantastic one fall tercera look at the things that made Guerrero de la Muerte a special worker, one who we've likely highlighted much less than other special workers from this era of special workers. This was Guerrero's fall. Niebla got a couple cool tecnico moments: a big Asai moonsault (the way he slingshots himself to the apron made it look like he was going to go even crazier, like Gran Metalik or Taka) and a tope with hardly any run up, just switched directions when he saw where Guerrero was running. Guerrero was great at setting it up, his backdrop to the floor superb, holding onto the top rope to get full extension and holding it for a full arc. It looked like he was captured in a vert ramp trick on the cover of Thrasher. 

But the fall was all about building to those few big Niebla moments and letting Guerrero run wild with the rest. Even Guerrero gets a big dive, hitting an awesome full arms out plancha. Both were excellent at catching the others' dives. I'm with Matt in that I don't think I've ever seen a mask removal deemed "accidental", and in this case Guerrero was definitely Up To No Good with the mask removal. The way it happened was so sick. He had the mask partially removed and had a handful of the mask's jawline so he could hold Niebla in place while punching him in the face. Niebla began to fall after taking punches and the mask came off in Guerrero's hand. An accident, in that he wasn't attempting to rip his mask off, he was merely using the mask to punch his opponent in the teeth!

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Found Footage Friday: HANOVER 1981~! BRET~! BELLOMO~! DIETER~! MOROWSKI~! GORO~! KIMURA~!

10/23/81 Hanover

Bret Hart vs. Paco (Francisco) Ramirez

MD: We only barely hear Bret come out to Some Girls by Racey which is the highlight of his matches in Germany generally. Paco Ramirez was really leaning into the bandelero thing with the hat and the music and the pancho as best as we can see at least.Nice bit to start. Bret pressed Ramirez to the ropes and Paco tripped him. Then he tried it again and Bret sidestepped and whacked him. Paco let the crowd get under his skin pretty well. They did some bits where Bret outwrestled him only for Ramirez to hair pull and then get run over. This was all sound but clearly Ramirez had more connection with the crowd. 

You know who else had more of a connection? The ref. At one point Ramirez refused to break a hold so the ref dropkicked him out of the ring to a huge pop. I'm not sure this helped either Bret or the match though. Bret got a big comeback out of the corner reversing a whip and all of his babyface offense (forearms and dropkicks and a legdrop) looked crisp, crisp enough to score him the win.

ER: I think I like Germany Bret Hart a lot more than Matt. I see this guy a couple years into his career, and am kind of blown away by his execution and poise. His connection to German crowds wasn't there, but who do you expect him to be, Sal Bellomo? He works this match at a very brisk pace and I was impressed by the deep bag he brought. He played wet behind the ears rookie to Ramirez's sneaky vet, but his ring work did not look like a rookie's. He has snap on everything he does, every collision looks honest, every throw or takedown is physically sound. These are the full grown snapmares of a man who understands the physics of a snapmare, understands the physics of an armdrag. When he runs at Ramirez, his approach is believable whether he connects or misses, because there's an honesty to his work. I am a big fan of Established Bret and one of the things I love most about his work is his honesty. 

There is a logic to his progression, he clearly mentally keeps track of what kind of offense he "should be able to do" as a match progresses, and the execution is that of someone in his current match condition. He is never a worker who is going to work the match the exact same in minute 15 as he was in minute 2...but that seems like a much more impressive skill for someone to have this early in their career. He is not fully formed Bret, but he's much closer to that level than we could have reasonably assumed. The one noticeable thing he grew out of as he continued to improve, is he lost that kind of hunched shoulder stillness during what should be the glue moments. I think of Bret as a strong Glue Guy because he is never caught in a state of stasis in between The Action. He's good at occupying space, good at gluing spots together with body language. Here he was still standing there in a wrestler's hunch, waiting for the next thing to happen. I wonder when he grew out of that. Owen never grew out of that. You can watch almost any 1998 Owen match and see him standing dead still in that same hunch, waiting in place for the next thing to happen. 

Sal Bellomo vs. Manuel Lopez

MD: If you asked me fifteen years ago if I'd rather see a comparable Bret or Bellomo match... well, Bellomo was beloved here. Lopez came out to bullfighting music but with less aplomb than Ramirez. This was face vs face and had a lot of fun tit for tat type spots. Lopez would flip Bellomo and play it up, then Bellomo would do it to him. Lopez would escape a hold by lifting Bellomo and carrying him to the top turnbuckle and seating him there, then Bellomo would escape one by positioning Lopez onto the apron. All fun stuff. Handshakes and sportsmanship. In the second round, Bellomo escaped a headscissors by scooting around and kicking at Lopez' belly a bunch which popped the crowd. Then they went into a bodyscissors sequence that ended with them stuck together by their legs.

Lopez had a lot of fun stuff. They did a bow and arrow, a stump puller (which is not something you see often), and he had ways of stepping over and whacking the arm to unlock things. All that and a ripcord spinout backbreaker. Bellomo was happy to take all of it since shortly thereafter he leaped up to the second rope and hit a flying body press off of it to pick up the win. Pretty fun stuff while it lasted though.

ER: Many in our community love to "build books" on guys. Do a dive into someone known or unknown, see if there are any things that were missed, anything we can mention about someone's work that could change an opinion or inspire further digging. There are sexy names to do dives on, and, well, less sexy names. Salvatore Bellomo feels like a guy who is being discussed only by me and Matt, a German sensation who showed next to none of his babyface crowd connections in his WWF undercard work. We had no idea about Bellomo in Germany and even after writing about several of his German appearances, I feel like he is still a guy only being experienced by me and Matt. Are some deep dive names so unsexy that even upon finding revelations about said sexless wrestler, they inspire more of a "we'll take your word for it" approach rather than a "I too will now form opinions on this man on whom I had none"? I have yet to see Salvatore Bellomo Discourse outside of what Matt and I have written, but I suppose I also have not sought it out. We are alone on our Bellomo Islet, down here in our Bellomo Mines.   

All that to say, Bellomo works in Germany like I have never seen him work anywhere else. There was an armdrag spot where he flew up around and over Lopez and it had so much snap that it looked like a Tiger Mask spot, only Bellomo's had more quick burst speed. Who is this guy? The bulk of the match is built around Bellomo holding a near pornographic body vice in a long, extremely entertaining sequence. The holds were strong and believably cinched in, Bellomo refusing to break a snug body vice while the talented Lopez found ways out or attempted to lock in his own. I need to see Bellomo's early 80s striptease routines because the way he keeps his legs locked around Lopez in various positions points to someone who would have incredible pole control. When the round ends there's one of the best ref untanglings I've seen. The bell sounded while their legs were fully tangled, standing on their heads no differently than a spot I'd see live 20 years later between American Dragon and Low Ki. I am going out on a limb assuming that neither were inspired by early 80s Sal Bellomo, but now I know it only would have made their spot better. The ref had to work hard to unlock these holds, both men crying out in theatrical pain while what sounds like Dutch pop music plays buoyantly over the top.  If that's not better, maybe it's better to just leave Matt and I on our islet. 

Axel Dieter/UFO vs. John Quinn/Grand Vladimir

MD: So until last week or so I had no idea that Kaiser was Axel Dieter Jr. That just shows you how tuned out I am I guess. Maybe Eric knew? Anyway, they chant for Axel as he's announced and for UFO after that. Fans love these guys and for good reason. 

This might have been for some sort of title or an end of tour tournament or something since the faces got big wreaths at the end. Shine at the start was a blast. Dieter is so good at presenting himself as a star and taking up space. UFO is beloved but more wins slugfests or out-techniques opponents. Vladimir shines as a stooge (Quinn does more teeter tottering but is probably better on offense). Dieter had all of the headstand toupie takeovers before he finally got beaten into the corner. After quite a bit of doubleteaming but nothing that stood out, he got punched into the corner and UFO came in hot to win the fall. Second fall had heat on UFO leading to a Canadian backbreaker, with the third fall continuing the heat leading escape of more backbreaker attempts to a much bigger hot tag to set up the finish. I'm not sure the heel control was quite as compelling as I'd like for a double heat even with some threats of cards and what not.

ER: I had no idea that Ludwig Kaiser was Axel Dieter Jr. but I also haven't watched WWE in so long that the last time I did that guy was named Marcel Barthel and wasn't 't a big crossover star in a Mexican lucha fed that The Undertaker is booking, so there are probably a ton of things in life that I don't know. Who knows what kind of sons Le Gran Vladimir could have out there. Water softener repairmen, HVAC guys, insurance salesmen. Matt and I are the only ones who speak the name Vladimir, who knows who he has spawned. I love teaming up the two tallest foreigners to fight the two biggest babyfaces, made this seem like a big match from go. Quinn and Vlad are very similar workers (at least they're working a similar style in Germany) and their simple control is easy for crowd favorites Dieter and UFO to build off into bigger things. Dieter works more FIP while UFO is the one coming in and trading blows with the big men.

Neither big man does anything spectacular - that's not really the big heel German style - but they're good at basing for things like Dieter's complicated headscissors, and they can break out some surprisingly vicious stuff, like when Quinn stomped down hard on Dieter's face. Vladimir hits one of the biggest and baddest kneelifts I've seen, after Quinn roughly whips UFO into the buckles, tagging in and moving UFO's whole body several feet with the power of his knee. It didn't look like UFO leaping in response, it looked like a man being launched against his will by a powerful knee force. They are powerful, but we need to believe they can be felled by our heroes, and they're good at getting felled. Vlad is great at felling them. There's an excellent spot where UFO is uppercutting Vlad in the ropes, getting into a rhythm, hitting him again and again, and when Vlad's body is anticipating the next recoil UFO steps aside to break the rhythm and send Vlad faceplanting to the mat. 

Karl Dauberger vs. Kengo Kimura

MD: First round had some good dueling armwork, including Kimura getting a hammerlock on repeatedly. When Dauberger started to take liberties in the ropes, Kimura showed real fire with the ref. He had some nice escapes from holds with various scissors including one on the arm I haven't seen much before. Second round was mainly Dauberger grinding down on him with chinlocks and headlocks until Kimura was able to get some kicks in right at the bell. Kimura came back big in the next round with some huge whips and kicks. Dauberger could sell being whipped into the corner (and bump big and stylized along with it). He took over when the ref finally pulled Kimura back (too fiery for his own good). On offense Dauberger was very meat and potatoes with his clubbering and leaning. Kimura came back one more time but Daubuerger got him to the apron and attacked his leg from the floor until he got DQ'ed. Maybe this is why Kimura ended up in his trademark leg brace. Probably not.

ER: Really good stuff, a great asshole Dauberger performance and some always engaging selling from the underdog Kimura. Dauberger goes after Kimura's leg with nothing too fancy, just being a brute, and I was super impressed with Kimura's selling. It felt like someone selling an actual knee injury and not Wrestling Selling. Even between rounds he was stretching his leg on the ropes, in a way that wasn't fully attached to the match. He wasn't limping his way through sequences, he just looked like a guy convincingly working hurt and it gave him this subtle fire that got people fully behind him the deeper he went. Dauberger leaned his weight on him and smothered him, and whenever they were apart he would start trolling Kimura again. There was a great moment where he kicked Kimura in the face while drawing the ref's attention to his complaint, then casually sidestepped Kimura's dropkick response. This needed more of a Kimura comeback to evolve into something special, but I also liked that Dauberger recognized when he had gone too far and fucked Kimura up a bit more before taking the DQ. No comeuppance, just suffering. 

Moose Morowski vs. Jim Neidhart

MD: This had moments where it looked like it was going to hit a different gear, but never quite made it. When they were slugging away, it was good. When Neidhart was charging at him, it was good. Problem was, he started the match by having Morowski move and knock him out and ended it by having him crash hard into the corner and get pinned. In the middle, he got a bearhug on a few times and knocked him over the top once with a hard shot, but it was more posturing and teasing them really going at it than them really going at it. 

ER: It's true this never grew to the power struggle it could have, for reasons that might be Neidhart's inexperience or maybe even his inability to do more. He doesn't have great strikes for various reasons. Either he's not good at throwing worked strikes, or was told to never put weight behind his strikes, so I don't know if he has it in him to escalate this match the way it could have. This is not me saying Neidhart isn't a tough guy, more that I wish his toughness would come through in some fucking slug out with a hoss like Moose Morowski. It doesn't. Neidhart rarely gets to that level. We have more than enough footage of the guy to determine that he just does not have that level in him. We've heard enough stories about how hard he partied, so you'd think reaching that level in a ring would be second nature, but it may be that he was actually conserving his energy for partying while holding back as much as possible in the ring. I don't think I can find fault with that mentality within pro wrestling, really. An NFL practice squad guy should be an expert at violently crashing into guys nicknamed Moose, so we know it's a conscious decision when he does not do that. The power grappling was what made this worth watching. Morowski holding Neidhart in a painful crossface, forcing Neidhart to break by grabbing handfuls of Morowski's hair into a snapmare, that kind of thing. Do more of that and it's a heavyweight struggle that wouldn't need strikes. But I do love Morowski capitalizing on Neidhart's meathead idiocy, essentially painting a tunnel on a rock face and tricking him to run full speed into it...twice. 

10/20/81 Hanover, Germany

Sal Bellomo vs. Goro (Tsurumi) Tanaka

MD: This threw me at first since Bellomo had Kauroff as a corner man and Tsurumi had Kimura and they got announced in their track suits and everything and that doesn't usually happen. This was going all the way and they really milked it. Some great lockups in the first round leading to them trading headlocks. Second round was about armholds and armdrags but again they were working it and it felt very competitive. 

Goro opened things up in the third with shots and stomps and was able to control the arm accordingly. Bellomo had some great hope in the fourth, including a rolling leg pick and a kip up followed by a dropkick but he ended up right back into holds and was really selling the arm by the end of the round. That continued into the fifth which was all Goro. He'd do waterpumps and even cross arm breakers and while Sal tried to fight back, he couldn't get anything going. 

Sixth round had him scrambling, just trying to survive and avoid Goro getting his arm. Lots of rolling away or spinning out as the fans cheered for him. He somehow managed a drop toe hold and things picked up to rope running. That let him hit a back body drop and finally take control on the leg. Seventh had him press his advantage with a roll up into a leglock but Goro had enough and started chopping away, getting real heat since he didn't go to this until things had turned on him. Bellomo took a real beating through the round with Goro's bs kung fu looking good. Eight had Bellomo start to fire back. He'd get cut off a few times but would power through and the fans loved it. He ended it with holds but unable to put Goro away. The last round was a testament to their wind as they really went at it, but just as Bellomo was going to win with his leaping back body block, the time expired. It was pretty good but maybe not worth the time investment if I'm going to be totally honest. Sal really was super over in Germany though.

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