Found Footage Friday: ABBY~! KIMALA II~! MVC~! PUTSKI~! REX~! LAWLER~! DEAN(SIMON)~!

Ivan Putski vs. Moondog Rex WWF in Kuwait 1984

MD: We sort of have to watch all of this Kuwait stuff, just for the novelty. Thankfully q8wrestling reposted the Piper/Orton tag from Kuwait that's been offline for a few years and that we covered all the way back on October 26, 2018. Yes, 2018. We're a couple of weeks away from 5 straight years of doing this weekly, without missing a single week. More on that at the end of the month. 

Here, it's Putski and Rex, which is admittedly not as exciting, but did the Kuwait crowd ever love Putski. It made for some really beautiful minimalist stuff to start. A lock up and push off by Putski would pop the crowd huge. Putski slowly powering his arms down out of a full nelson as Rex's expression goes from confidence to terror to agony (as somehow Putski has was trapping and squeezing his hands under his armpits) made them elated, with the Putski chant starting after Rex made it to the ropes. The rest of the match goes how you'd think. Whenever Rex tries for a hold, Putski powers out. The most motion in the match is him scurrying out of the ring to regroup. He gets over with a cheapshot but never for long. If Rex gets a pin attempt, Putski pushes him off so that he goes flying (to a pop, of course). Putski comes back quickly to the crowd's delight and plants Rex in the end with the Hammer. It's simple and straightforward stuff, but with the body language of guys who really knew how to connect with a crowd, and when they have an appreciative crowd, it's an enjoyable way to spend ten minutes. 

ER: This is so great. This is why we write about this dumb shit. Ivan Putski getting a superstar reaction in Kuwait, every single man in attendance (there are only men allowed to attend WWF Kuwait tour wrestling, sooo...) reacting to Putski like he was Hogan, and every one of them fully bought into Putski's strength. This man was treated like a mythological character and Moondog Rex knew how to play into all of it perfectly. I loved all of this. I have zero clue what the Kuwaiti peoples' relationship with WWF or pro wrestling would have been in 1982. I don't know if they were getting WWF TV, I don't know what kind of pro wrestling they were consuming, I don't know their relationship with combat sports, I know nothing. But they had a special connection to Ivan Putski, and I thought it made this match incredible. 

As importantly, Randy Colley made this match incredible. The Moondogs' WWF run is one of the more neglected runs in WWF history, based on what's been written about it after the fact. The WWF DVDVR 80s set was the first one of those 80s sets that we did, and every subsequent version of those sets (Memphis, Mid-South, New Japan, WCCW, AWA, etc.) had a much more vast and comprehensive selection process for what was included as the true best of their respective territories. The WWF set was the only one that was not comprehensive. There was no Terry Funk, not enough Andre, not enough Valentine, etc. There were zero Moondogs matches and since those sets, every time I've seen Larry Latham and Randy Colley I thought they were both among the best workers on the roster of their specific era. This match is a great illustration of that. As Moondog Rex, Colley sells Putski's strength so realistically and so believably that he perfectly feeds into the Kuwaiti frenzy surrounding this short and absolutely JACKED Polish man. It goes beyond Rex getting thrown far across the ring on every lock-up, and goes all the way into Rex selling everything Putski did as if he was facing the strongest man in pro wrestling history. 

We got an incredible full nelson escape, where Putski slowly broke the hold while the crowd swelled, ending when Putski clamped Rex's arms down to his sides, trapping the poor panicking Moondog in a dick to ass position, Rex running in place because of his hurt arms pinned to Putski's side by his World's Strongest Arms, causing only more friction between his dick and Putski's ass. Every single man in Kuwait BELIEVES in Polish Power and so every single slow squeeze knucklelock gets a huge slow burn reaction until people are losing their minds when Putski is squeezing Rex's shoulder. Rex sells his shoulder like it got run over by a truck tire, and if this was broadcast across the country in any way, every child watching would fully buy into Putski as the strongest God, all due to Rex's impeccable selling of every single show of strength.  

When Rex is in control, he has to believably muscle around the World's Strongest Man, who is also the World's Most Inflexible Man. He throws great full arm extension punches with his good arm, incredible aim for such a long release point, knocking Putski down to a knee in the corner. Ivan Putski takes a snapmare even worse than Scott Putski, and until know I thought Scott Putski took a snapmare worse than any man I'd seen. Ivan Putski's body is so rigid taking a snapmare, that it looked like Rex accidentally knocked down an expensive vase at a museum and was trying to slow its landing. Rex has to do all the lifting on a back breaker, and just the act of maneuvering Putski into a neckbreaker looked like Rex had to move an extremely large, cumbersome rolled up rug all by himself, up stairs. Moondog Rex went to Kuwait and moved mountains. For the finish, he made Putski's punches look actually good, better than they really were, bouncing and recoiling off the ropes into them. He runs into the Polish Hammer and gets stopped dead by it, making it really look like a guy getting hit in the chest with a big hammer. As Matt said, we've been finding and writing about unseen matches for 5 years now, and 5 years in we're still getting surprised by everything that exists. Randy Colley went to Kuwait and helped a man become a local legend. That's a sentence we get to write now. 

Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala II vs. Steve Williams/Terry Gordy AJPW RWTL 11/20/90

MD: You never knew that you wanted face-in-peril Abby having the ring cut off on him, with these amazing king-sized hope spots (neckbreaker drop, all time block and throat shot, etc.), and the fans chanting "Butch-ahh." That's what we get, followed up by hot tag Richard Morton Giant Kimala II hitting a World's Strongest Slam. When you look at how Baba dealt with the loss of Tenryu (and Yatsu and Kabuki and Takano and Fuyuki and), everyone thinks about the pillars, and yeah, they got there. Before that, however, we had the 1990 superheavyweight division around the Triple Crown and the Tag Titles. Doc, Gordy, and Hansen ruled the roost during the back half of 1990 and you got your share of larger than life matches. That was true with this RWTL too, where you had teams of Baba/Andre, Hansen/Spivey, and Jumbo/Taue on top of these two. 

The first few minutes of this were exactly that, with Gordy and Doc being super giving and stooging big for Abby. That meant Gordy falling all over the place for repeated throat shots or Doc selling his own head after headbutting Abby. It all lead to a huge Doc no-sell of one of Abby's headbutts to a huge Road Warrior Hawk style pop as he just stared him down. All great stuff. until Doc leaned into the illegal double-teaming and they were able to isolate Abby on the outside and clobber him. That's when the full on southern style face-in-peril stuff started. After a lot of clobbering, some woundwork, and a couple of unlikely hope spots, cutoffs, and a beautiful almost-tag, they veered towards the finishing stretch. Even though Kimala came in strong, Abby was hurt and MVC knew how to press the numbers advantage. While we didn't get the stampede, we did get a huge power slam and Doc and Gordy racking up a few more points on their way to topping the rankings. Post match? An awesome brawl as fans run around in a panic and I Love It Loud plays over the speakers. Wrestling perfection right there.

ER: We wrote about an incredible match from this same show, and Andre/Baba vs. JumboTaue tag that was one of the truly wondrous 1990s Andre performances. It's the biggest bumping 90s Andre match I have seen and we would have no idea had some man not gone to Nagoya that day and made sure he had enough camcorder battery. This match is not as great as the Andre/Baba match, but it's its own very important documentation of something else entirely, which is the absolute longest face in peril Abdullah performance I've ever seen. Now, before the match began I could have told you Kimala II would be the one getting pinned. That doesn't take an All Japan expert to figure out. But I would have never guessed how they actually got to that pinfall, because I don't think "Doc and Gordy getting 6 minutes of heat on Abby" would have made a lot of sense as an answer. 

It took a bit to get there, as Abby got to wreck Doc and Gordy with throat thrusts. Terry Gordy sold those hits to the throat as well as any selling I've seen, and Abby made them look really easy to sell (because they all looked violent). Every shot to the throat would send Gordy into a big hair whip recoil, and he's got that virgin never-been-dyed-in-his-life hair that just flows differently when whipped. Terry Gordy - somehow not yet 30 - has the hair of a 16 year old, and his full arm swing into Abdullah's neck is just a wicked clothesline. Doc staggering himself with his own headbutt was beautiful, and the no sell that followed was even better. I loved their face off, their stare down, revealing that Abdullah the Butcher and Dr. Death are the literal exact same height without a centimeter of difference, and when Doc decides to run off the ropes to collide, Abby throws a railroad spike of a thrust into his throat that bumps Doc like Psicosis. The heat on Abby comes when they drag him to the floor and start wailing on him, and Terry Gordy throws a dozen of the most perfectly aimed boot soles directly into Abby's bleeding forehead. I loved hearing the crowd chant for Kee-Ma-La to make the save, and I love the way they built this heat around Abby. 

Abby took a bump in such a weird Specifically Abdullah way that I am positive I've never seen anyone take it. It starts off super silly but then gets super cool, with Doc doing a low dropkick to roll Abby out of the ring. Well, the dropkick doesn't totally hit and Abby is positioned over halfway across the ring from where he's actually rolling out, so Doc kinda hits him and then Abby steamrolls his way all the way out to the floor. Silly. But when he gets to the floor, he does this trust fall bump backwards into the guardrail, his body rigid, and it ends with him falling into the rail like someone tipped a table on its end. Abby looked like Homer getting punched over the fire hydrant, just falling back diagonally into the railing. Abdullah's flash nearfall on his diving clothesline was excellent, like a real version of a Fast & Furious spot where Vin Diesel flies through the air to catch someone into a windshield. His Almost Tag out is legendary, perfectly timed and perfectly executed, with Doc baaaaarely grabbing Abby by the hooked boot, just in time to swing him around inches away from the reaching tag of Kimala. I wish we got more from Kimala's hot tag. It felt like he went down really easily, and it didn't need to go down that way. However, Doc's powerslam on Kimala was incredible. No cheapie in any way whatsoever, getting him up overhead really really high and actually controlling his weight on the way down! Who has the strength to control Kimala II's weight on a full rotation powerslam!?

Jerry Lawler vs. Simon Dean NEW 3/25/2006

MD:  Pre-match promos (sort of a necessity for a Lawler indy match) are here. I sort of wish there had been a throwaway Lawler vs Nova match in the late 90s. That would have been more conceptually interesting with Lawler having to constrain a guy who thought his path to the top was having a section on his website about all of the moves he created. By this point, Dean had already gone through the phase of deciding his path to the big time was by working on his body instead, followed by realizing that his limit was going to be as a stooging heel. Of course Lawler can work with a stooging heel and Dean wasn't afraid to stooge here, throwing his head back for punches, running out of the ring, slamming his hands on the apron, kicking the steps and then selling it, etc. In 2023, it'd probably be pretty refreshing. In 2006, it felt a little rote and by the books maybe. On second thought, even though Dean was committed to the act, it came off as a guy playing a character as opposed to something more natural and organic. They went through the right steps (wrestling as a balanced equation; Dean armdragging Lawler and slamming him leads to Lawler one upping him by doing the same, etc), but the immersion wasn't quite there. I'd love to know what the best Lawler stunner ever was, because it always ends up looking terrible, an amazing fact for a move almost entirely dependent on the guy taking it. The finish (a missed fistdrop but Dean walking right into the pile driver) worked for me, but the rest topped out at fun.

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Found Footage Friday: MISAWA~! KAWADA~! THE LAND OF GIANTS~! CHRISTIAN~! JOE~! DYING DAYS IWE~!

Rusher Kimura vs. Carl Fergie IWE 6/6/81

MD: It's always fun to see a journeyman overachieve in another country. You can think of Jim Dillon in the Maritimes (not that we have that footage) or the Rock 'n' Roll RPMs in Puerto Rico (that we do have and it's fun). Here, it's Carl Fergie - fresh off a midcard run putting guys over in Mid-South and on his way to do the same in Crockett - in a main event with Rusher Kimura. I was going to say that he was well prepared for this one by wrestling Lawler, but he doesn't wrestle Lawler until 1982, so it was somehow the other way around.

You need somewhat similar skill sets against both, mainly being able to snap your head back at the sight of a great worked punch and take a back body drop. With Rusher, however, you also had to deal with nasty chops in the corner and headbutts.  That gave the match a more visceral feel; when Fergie snuck in a kick out of the corner and tried to assert himself, he was probably forcing a break for the sake of his forehead and poor chest. Rusher was in a hybrid phase here: not the wrestler he'd been in the 70s, not the comedy statesman he'd be a few years later. It meant he'd try for things like a stretch out of a Russian Leg Sweep or the bearhug into a butterfly submission he won with, but no longer had the flexibility he once did. This set up other matches on the tour as much as anything else, with Gypsy Joe interfering to mercifully (as he was trying out that first submission) cause the first fall. I thought Fergie looked like he belonged, for the most part. Some of that was the state of IWE, but enough of it was Fergie himself.

ER: King Carl Fergie the Wicked, wearing a Nazi helmet for his dying days IWE main event. King Carl Fergie, conqueror of Goro Tsurumi and Atsushi Onita, partner of Gypsy Joe. Rusher Kimura's takedowns look so impossible to stop. Rusher had lost some speed but this man moved and manipulated the larger Fergie like a real shooter. When he pins Fergie's arm and grapevines the leg, you can see him using all of his weight to effortlessly drop Fergie to the mat. It's the way Fergie keeps trying to push Rusher off him from his back, but Rusher won't let go of that boot for anything. The shoulderblocks hit hard and Fergie gets tossed immaculately by a backdrop, then gets punched directly in the face, taking a tremendous floundering back bump with windmilling arms that almost catches the back of his neck on the ropes. Fergie took that punch like he was a heavy getting knocked out by Rick Simon. This is really fucking good. Fergie walks right up to Rusher Kimura because he's the man, and he punches Rusher in the face and shakes his fist out angrily after punching him, and every man in Korakuen knows that Fergie is the man. His elbow strikes to Kimura's collarbones only reinforces that feeling.  

I loved every headlock in this match. 

Carl Fergie takes an even higher backdrop than he did earlier and Rusher locks him into a killer butterfly mid-squat bearhug like he was a Negro Navarro T-1000 sent back to send Carl Fergie back to Memphis. Who was the human (?) who, over 40 years ago, knew how important it would be to document the time crimes that were happening in the final three months of the 4th most popular wrestling promotion in Japan. 

Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada vs. The Land of Giants AJPW 11/20/90

MD: Eric already covered the hugely entertaining 11/21/90 Land of the Giants vs Dory/Terry match (amazing Terry performance) so I'm poking at the guts of this thing instead. And on paper, it's kind of interesting. Misawa and Kawada had spent most of the last many months against Jumbo, Taue, Inoue, Fuchi, Doc, Gordy, Hansen and even occasionally stablemate Kobashi and Ace. Those are all guys you can do a lot against. Here, they were up against the sort of challenge rare to AJPW, two absolute lugs with size, no mobility, terrible clubbering strikes, little presence. That's the sort of thing you expect out of post-WWF talent 80s NJPW maybe, where they'd just trot out Mad Maxx and Super Maxx managed by Wakamatsu to face Fujinami and Kimura, but it's a lot less of an AJPW thing.

And, yeah, it goes ok. The real testament to Misawa, Kawada, and the crowd, was that there was a legitimately hot tag to Misawa towards the end and the crowd went up for it; I don't think it was entirely warranted, but they went with it anyway. After that, there was a great American tag moment of Misawa and Kawada whipping the giants into each other too. Otherwise, the big appeal here would be the Super Generation Army throwing really high kicks at really tall guys. Nitron took them pretty well too. That's about the nicest thing I'm going to say about Land of the Giants here, unfortunately. The blows didn't look great, crummy knees in the ropes, weak sweeping clubbering forearms, a couple of slams that didn't have much mustard behind them. There was stuff that worked in theory but not execution, like Nitron catching Kawada with a cheapshot clothesline from his spot on the apron to cut off a flurry. Their finish at this point was an assisted legdrop (from an atomic drop position) and Masters pumping his arm before going up with it was sort of entertaining. The finish worked too, with Kawada getting Nitron out of the ring so Misawa could throw some magic forearms and duck a clothesline to hit a pretty beautiful bridging German on a giant of a man. But like I said, that they got the crowd back was the most impressive thing here.

ER: Yeah, this wasn't great. It merely existed, and was worked surprisingly straight forward for being a couple of Faux Warriors vs. the two hottest young studs in the company. Misawa and Kawada didn't go after them any differently than they would have gone after Dynamite Kid and Johnny Smith, so that was kind of disappointing. I either wanted to see two giants with bad offense hold down two elites, or two elites absolutely lace into two bad giants, and we got something much less risky and much less interesting. What *is* important to note, is that the team of SKYWALKER NITRON and Butch Masters is not "Land of the Giants", which I suppose makes more sense than their actual name. No, their name is THE Land of Giants. Their team name makes sure to place the focus on the Land rather than the Giants who inhabit this Land, much like hit the hit Sid & Marty Krofft series The Land of Lost. 

In This Land of Giants, the Giants do not hit very hard. Of all the future X-Men, I imagine Misawa or Kawada could have worked a more compelling match with Kelsey Grammer or Alan Cumming. SKYWALKER NITRON throws two of the piddliest clotheslines, even though Kawada mostly saved one of them by just running neck first into it. Running into an actual clothesline in the backyard would have provided far more resistance that NITRON's long noodle of an arm. I do like how Misawa came in and kicked at him, actually liked his kicks more than Kawada's here. Lighter on form, harder on impact. Butch Masters is really good at stepping over the top rope, which is not a thing that every tall wrestler can say. SKYWALKER NITRON can't say it. But Butch steps over it straight, an optical illusion that makes it look like he's just stepping up onto a curb while he's actually clearing three ropes. NITRON meanwhile looks like he's trying to get into a ski boat from the water. Each man who hails from The Land of Giants did their own bearhug, and Misawa broke up SKYWALKER's by walking in and just elbowing him straight in the kidneys. Kawada hits a cool pescado into NITRON, and I do like the finisher of the team who hails from The Land of Giants, a man-assisted legdrop. What other Giants come from this Land? Were they sending their biggest and best Giants to the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium? Was this merely a work placement program, or a study abroad kind of situation? What is the Giant Exchange Program in The Land? Are these two as good as Tall Rick or Thomas Big Boots? 

Christian vs. Samoa Joe NEW 4/21/07

MD: I love Christian's WWECW work. He was an amazing week to week TV wrestler, someone who could work his own spots and his opponent's spots into a match in clever, believable, varied, and interesting ways to deal with the grind of televised match after match after match. A sort of neo-Bret Hart for a different era with different demands. I've never really had any indication that he worked it out much before that though. Some of that is on me in that I didn't chase down his TNA run. Unfortunately, I do think some of it might be on him too.

It's a little off-putting how much of this match is rote heel champion vs. local dominant attraction house show fare, actually. It's not that the stalling isn't fun and the antics with the ref aren't good and the cheating isn't effective. It just doesn't stand out as special like you'd expect a Christian vs. Samoa Joe match to be. In fact, even though he hits some of his big offensive moves, it's the least "Joe" match I've ever seen. He's so submerged in the formula that he comes off as just another guy lacking his usual aura. Because it's such an aberration, I'm leaning towards Christian not quite being there yet and my gut says that this would have been a lot better a couple of years later or even right now. Again, there was nothing bad or wrong about it and the stuff that was good was very good; it just was less than the sum of its parts should have been. That's all.

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Found Footage Friday: NEW BULLDOGS~! OLD FUNKS~! IWRG RETRO~! LA CORPORACION~! TEAM CASAS~! LAWLER~! MERCURY~! COACH~!

New Bulldogs (Dynamite Kid/Johnny Smith) vs. Terry Funk/Dory Funk Jr. AJPW 11/20/90

MD: I don't think this is an all time classic, but I do think it's a bit of a "for want of a nail" scenario. Let me put it this way: if this match had existed on tape in the mid-90s, I think it would have been put on a lot of comp tapes and traded around. I think it would have ended up as a match with a "rep." We look at things with different eyes in 2023 than in even 2003 though, and that means maybe not being quite so amazed by the most novel thing in the match and instead really appreciating certain other elements. 

As such, it was a tale of three or so matches. There was a lot of Dory being down on the mat with Johnny Smith and less of hm down with Dynamite. Smith, against Dory, felt smooth, credible, like he belonged. They kept things moving. The matwork was more explosive with Dynamite and that's actually impressive in its own right, just the notion that matwork can be explosive. Then there was Terry feeding, primarily for Dynamite, though with a bit of being stuck in Smith's headlock too. That style of chain wrestling is just so different from what we see today, less set spots and exchanges and more of Terry just grasping at anything he can to try to escape. When in there with Dynamite, Terry bounced around the ring as they crashed into each other at high speed.

The match shifted gears when Terry got Dynamite out and started to beat on him on the floor. My favorite version of the Funks is the bloody, scrappy one where they're fighting monsters, but my second favorite is when they're outright bullies, like that really fun Martel/Zenk match from 86 where they treat Martel with respect but wipe the mat with Zenk. That's what we get here, first on Dynamite and then, after he rolls limply over to Smith, onto him. Tag. Pile driver. Tag. Pile driver. Seven times on Smith in a row. It's just a remarkable two minutes. He kicks out (too much) and is saved in the end and it has some reaction from the crowd, but maybe not as much if they really milked it instead of doing it so matter-of-factly. Moreover, after Dynamite makes it back in, Smith is back on his feet and rolling just a minute later. Still, definitely 1998 comp tape material and certainly a worthwhile match for anyone with even a vague interest in either of these teams, something that should definitely see the light of day and now it has.

IWRG Retro 4/6/23

La Corporacion (Black Tiger/Pentagon Black, Dr. Cerebro/Cerebro Negro/Veneno/Scorpio Jr.) vs. Negro Casas/Felino/Heavy Metal/Matrix/Black Dragon/Mike Segura/Fantasma, Jr. IWRG 7/4/2005

MD: The     other half of the IWRG show and it got a ton of time (35 mins or so). It was good too, constantly moving with a lot of solid exchanges. I wouldn't say anyone stood out more than anyone else, really and no one looked terrible, though maybe Matrix or Fantasma, Jr. and Veneno were the weakest on either side. Maybe. There weren't any long bits of momentum from one side or another, just a lot of resets and into the next exchange. There was more of a sense that if you got into the wrong corner, you might get swarmed, in that sort of big NJPW multi-man tag style that you don't see in lucha as much.

Big indy moves had definitely reached lucha indy matches. Mike Segura managed to land on his head with some pretty crazy stuff from Cerebro Negro, for instance. And Pentagon Black was doing an Argentinian backbreaker into a cutter/facebuster sort of finisher. There was only one real dive but it was a huge one, with Black Dragon pressing up against the corner and going head first over it out of a running start. Despite a lack of major momentum shifts, there were patterns; Heavy Metal took out three guys with his bridging fisherman's suplex. Black Tiger got a couple of lucky fouls in. It ended with La Familia Casas vs Pentagon Black, Black Tiger, and Scorpio, Jr. with Metal outfoxing the rudos' interference for a deep roll up win on Scorpio, Jr. who had done a pretty good job asserting his physicality up until there. There was always something happening with characters that jumped off the screen just enough to keep you eternally engaged. Not at all a bad use of 35 minutes.

Jerry Lawler vs. Jonathan Coachman/Joey Mercury NEW 4/28/07

There was a similar handicap match vs. Romeo Roselli the night before and I'm glad we have this one instead. I loved the ebb and flow of it. They started off on the mic with Coachman bringing out Mercury as a surprise partner and teased a bit of Coach getting into it before starting with a big chunk of Mercury vs Lawler. It was all based around punches and it was all very, very good. King snapped his head back for Mercury's, of course, and he had a great tease high, go low that played off of Mercury's reconstructive face surgery.

When it was time for Mercury to take over, it was with a bunch of standard stuff like slams and back body drops but they all looked big and impactful and lived up to the moment. King got a comeback in when Mercury got distracted by the valet but he was able to take back over. Likewise, the first time Coach came in to pick at the bones, he got distracted as well, but they held off him getting his comeuppance. Eventually, Mercury went to the top rope double axehandle well once too often and ate the shot to the gut, the fistdrop, the pile driver. I would have liked them to find a better way to get Coach into the ring after that. He sort of just asserted himself to try to break things up and was pinned anyway. I would have preferred Mercury stumbling back into him or something along those lines. Regardless, he took two of the worst stunners imaginable, so bad that they were comically good, before Lawler pinned him for the feel good moment. There's a really good match with Mercury and Lawler from later in the year that felt more like a Memphis classic, but this was just straight up well executed and laid out and a lot of fun.

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Lawler vs. Steen! Piledriver vs. Piledriver!

Jerry Lawler vs. Kevin Steen NEW 8/2/14 - FUN

ER: NEW is an indy that gets mostly ignored by people who devour indy wrestling, while drawing bigger paying crowds than any of those other indies. This was one of their biggest shows of 2014, outdoors in a minor league baseball stadium in Fishkill, NY. They know how to book a show with something for everyone, from little kids on up to weird pervert adults. This show had a surprisingly good Mike Bennett/Matt Taven match (I'm pretty sure every single NEW show has a Mike Bennett/Matt Taven match, they worked each other constantly there), Reby Sky when she was working matches with her entire ass out, a 50 year old man former MLB player who pitched approximately 50 middle relief innings for the Yankees right before they started winning World Series again (20 YEARS before his wrestling "career"), and a main event Hardy Boys/Young Bucks tag that is legitimately one of the greatest tag matches of the 2010s. This Lawler/Steen match was on right before the Bucks/Hardys match, and was Steen's literal last indy match before debuting on an NXT TakeOver a few months later. It's a Piledriver vs. Piledriver match, which is the kind of gimmick match I love. I love when only a specific kind of move can be done to finish the match, or a specific kind of move CAN'T be done to win a match. Lawler had only done the Piledriver match a handful of times in his career and I certainly didn't realize he had done on in 2014. 

Lawler is 65, and yet Steen is the one working this like a guy who doesn't want to get injured on a minor league baseball stadium indy show. Lawler's belly here was the biggest it ever got, I mean he and Steen looked nearly identical. This could have, nay, should have been worked as a father vs. son piledriver vs. piledriver match, all Lawler would have had to do was talk about his son Kevin. Nobody in Fishkill knows who Kevin Lawler is, it would have worked. The NEW commentary guy sounds exactly like Eugene Mirman, and he points out that Steen has offense that "isn't typical of a man his size". Kevin Steen is 5'10 and has a big belly, so the idea of "a man his size" is a pretty hilarious thing to say in a match against his size equal Jerry Lawler, in a match that Steen works as if he was the 65 year old man. Lawler even takes two backdrop bumps in this match, and gets bigger height than Steen does on his one. Whatever Steen is capable of doing "at his size" did not come into play here, and it didn't really need to. 

This is a piledriver match, meaning that obviously there will be backdrop bumps from guys standing up out of piledrivers, but a lot of this match was just Lawler punching Steen in the face. Steen is really good at staggering into place, and Lawler is good at throwing 40+ punches in a match and making all of them interesting. He throws a lot of left jabs, at one point throwing 15 straight, like he was golf course Bob Barker. They're good at building sequences up to the people at the back of the bleachers, like Lawler running at Steen with KO fists, staggering him more with each running punch, building fire for a knockdown but getting his foot picked by Mike Bennett at ringside; when Steen hits a series of weak axe handles off the middle turnbuckle, it builds to him getting punched in the stomach on his third, taking the Arn somersault bump. My favorite part of the whole thing was Lawler punching Steen in the corner, going face/stomach/face/stomach to punch wherever Steen's hands weren't, before throwing a big flurry to drop him, adding in a little horizontal fistdrop as the cherry. Matt Taven, in cargo shorts and general goof troop attitude and stupid American Volador face, was there as Lawler's second, a person to take the package piledriver so Steen could get one off before Lawler wins with his own. This match was fun, but could have been really great if Steen was in there to work. But he knew what kind of show he was on, and knew what the match was, and I respect that. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE JERRY LAWLER

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The One Where Eddie Goes to the Amusement Park: Top of the Card from NEW Six Flags Slamfest 6/19/22

Sammy Guevara/Tay Conti vs. Ashley D’Amboise/Flip Gordon

MD:  This was not the best use of my time on a Sunday morning but I had a whim, and the whim was to watch this show and after the Eddie match, I sort of felt committed, so here we are. Why not write about it. I was expecting Sammy and Tay to go for huge heat, even with the family friendly crowd, but they were slapping hands and smiling big. I have a feeling we're not going to see this Tay for a while, so one more look isn't the worst thing, given that she's about the most natural babyface imaginable. Flip goaded them into putting their AAA titles on the line and they did. Cagematch says Sammy and Flip haven't wrestled each other since 2017 and the story of the match was it being a brofest between the two of them while the women wanted to scrap. To be fair, some of it, mainly both of them managing to land on their feet after 'ranas or headscissors takeovers was pretty impressive and them rushing to hug after the fact fed into what they both currently are, even if it clashed a bit with Flip's goading. Within the context of the match, you get the sense they just couldn't help themselves. The only heat Flip got wasn't anything to do with Sammy but when he tripped Tay on the outside. Tay had one fairly complex exchange with D'Amboise and then the intricate counter-laden tandem finishing stretch and it was fine. What makes Tay interesting to watch isn't her execution but her enthusiasm and exuberance as she really just throws herself into everything. This had a few too many rolls into moves for me, but you also sort of knew what you were going to get. You can't fault the timing or the athleticism between Sammy and Flip. Finishing stretch was cutesy but again, that's part of the charm of the Sammy/Tay act right now. It'll get old sooner than later, especially in settings where they're not trying to get nuclear heat, but for now I'm not so old and jaded that it's not at least a little bit fun to watch them have the time of their lives. 

Eddie Kingston vs Brian Anthony - FUN

MD: Look, if someone wanted to go GREAT on this, I wouldn't argue, but some of that is seeing the novelty of sanitized Eddie. In 2022, we live in a special world where Eddie Kingston can co-main event a family friendly show like this, get probably the best reaction, and be a variation on himself that still feels completely genuine. Who could have predicted this? SC's last reviews with Brian Anthony are from Lawler matches in 09 and he's just been a lifer as top heel in this promotion. Kingston came down slapping hands and the first half of this was him beating Anthony around the ringside area like only he can. But, remember, this is a family friendly theme park show, so as he chopped him and walked around with him in a headlock, he was sure to slap hands with the crowd. The best part was when he tossed him to the back, rushed back to break the count, and went to get him. He tossed him back through the curtain, disappeared himself for a bit as the fans chanted Eddie, and then came back with a salad to toss in his face. The heel manager, Vito, interfered to set up the heat, which was ok. You have to appreciate Anthony, with nothing in his gimmick to call for it, going for the shoulder claw nerve hold as his main wear-down move in 2022, but Eddie sold it like you'd expect. When the time came, he came back with the exploder, ate some powder from Vito, dodged the double team attempt, and threw a blinded backfist for the win. Post match, he cut off his music, played nice with Vito, backfisted him too, and then tossed his shoes into the crowd in theme park Cryme Tyme manner. Sanitized Eddie. What a sight.

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RIP Xavier

Xavier vs. Homicide JAPW 8/24/01

PAS: This was a death match, and a great example of these two at their athletic primes. We had some really nifty wrestling early, including Xavier flipping out of the cop killer countering into a grounded cobra, which Homicide broke with a kick to the knee. Young Homicide was really explosive, even just a run into a corner had so much pop, and his flip dive was as crazy in this match as I ever remember it.  Xavier was great in this too, he was a natural unlikable heel and had his shit talk game down. I loved him pricking his finger on the barbed wire bat when he grabbed it, such a great little heel move. I didn't love the finish of this match, felt kind of cheap to end it on the distracted heel banana peel, but otherwise this was great stuff.

ER: This match ruled so hard. JAPW guys really beat the shit out of each other (there was probably a reason why I glommed onto JAPW and IWA-MS when I was tape trading), and this match really highlights the violent athleticism of this perfect era of JAPW. Both guys take some shots that look like they'd put someone on the shelf, just an awesome level of trust and fearlessness and craziness on display. Homicide gets a rope around Xavier's neck and chokes him over the ropes, then snaps him around by the neck. A lot of necks and bodies looked like they were getting messed up throughout this match. Homicide threw several kill shots, and Xavier leaned into all of them. Homicide's yakuza kicks, big lariat, and corner elbow all looked like they hit Xavier square in the jaw. And while the hits in the match are big, I'm not sure any hit was as big as Homicide hitting the guardrail on a tope con hilo. I don't know if I've seen a man crash faster into a guardrail, he just flew past Xavier and I have no clue how he didn't break or tear anything. Xavier wraps a chair around Homicide's neck when he's crazy enough to go for a dive right after, then kicks the chair while it's still on Homicide's neck. I loved Xavier's corner cannonball, and his somersault legdrop while Homicide's head was under a chair was nasty as hell. I said necks and bodies looked like they were getting messed up, and Homicide's manager Johnny D gets in on the fun. He didn't look like a guy who knew how to take a neckbreaker, but Xavier made sure he took a brutal looking neckbreaker. The cop killa looks like it could have punctured a lung, just a match filled with sick shots. I love the violence this crew are capable of with each other, truly a special era.


Xavier vs. Christian Cage NEW 4/5/08

PAS: This was the second phase of Xavier's career with him working these 90s WWF style main events as the NEW champion. It didn't have much of an internet profile, but NEW drew (and still draws) big crowds. Xavier wasn't doing any of the athletic stuff he was doing earlier in the decade, but was really great as an undeserving champion willing to take any shortcut. Christian is great at working babyface in these kind of matches, times his comebacks well and bumps big for Xavier's shots. I really liked Xavier's short forearms, added a bit of violence to this match. Full on Dusty finish which works well for this crowd, especially because it wasn't a finish run into the ground in 2008.

ER: This was real satisfying, a well worked title match with some big moments, and a fun engaging performance from both. NEW crowds must be really nice to work for, as they are always enthusiastic and respond loud for crowd work. Xavier's style would be completely unrecognizable if you had seen any of his early 2000s indy work, but he knows the crowd he's performing for and has a completely different bag of tricks. A few years prior he was a super fast athletic bumper who leaned way into strikes, here he is a classic stooging heel who still has some explosiveness but doesn't show it off as much. There was a really great turnbuckle gag, a gag you've seen before but with an additional crowd pleasing twist: Christian slams Xavier's head into the top turnbuckle a few times, works his way down to the middle buckle, throws him into the bottom buckle (we've seen this, it's a good gag), but then works him back up the buckles, which I have never seen. It was great, the kind of spot any stooge heel wish they thought of. Xavier always went the extra stooge mile on bumps here, not simply falling to the floor after taking Christian's teeter totter kick in the ropes, but leaping to the apron and then making a comical face after hitting the rail. Christian bumps to the floor off a hotshot (I thought Xavier was going to throw him to the floor with a belly to belly, too much French Catch has been seeping into my brain and wrecking expectations) and Xavier does a good job dragging Christian around ringside to give all sides a show (Christian did this earlier and even posed for photos while dragging Xavier). He crushes Christian with a clothesline, and his neckbreaker finisher is just as nasty as it was in 2001. The Christian kickout after the 2nd ref came in was really unexpected, a big babyface moment that got a huge reaction. The finish is something that I am into, but it works great on shows like this, and Christian is pro enough to know exactly how to handle the post match in a way that fans weren't even thinking about him getting DQ'd.

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Each Time it Gets a Little Harder, Lawler Feels the Pain, and He'll Try Again

Jerry Lawler vs. Romeo Roselli, NEW 6/1/06 - SKIPPABLE

ER: Boy, this match. You know Roselli from his failed WWE run, where he was the HeartThrob who didn't get a giant goose egg on his forehead from Regal. Roselli was the other one. Neither were very good. This isn't too long after his release, and to the shock of many, he still is not good. Lawler and Roselli riff for seemingly ever on the mic pre-match, Lawler getting called a has-been in a variety of ways, Roselli flexing, Roselli's valet rubs his muscles and then hilariously wipes her now overly oiled hand off on the apron was incredible. That spot was clearly not planned, and to their credit I would have laughed if the spot was actually planned. But the valet did not have the acting chops to pull off the genuinely disgusted face she made while wiping off her oily hand. Match gets underway and I have seen the Lawler formula work on a variety of bad opponents. If Lawler is Lawler, it has to work, right? Well, Lawler worked about as well as Lawler normally works, but Roselli was such an absolute void of anything entertaining that the formula just had nothing to bounce off. They worked some amusing spots (Lawler going to punch Roselli in the face, Roselli begging not in the face, so Lawler punches his body) but mainly a lot of Roselli chinlockery, botched interference from Roselli's valet, a spot where Lawler has to threaten to punch the valet but ends up kissing her that went WAY too long because Roselli was way late with the save, all the match build focusing on the Lawler Stunner spot which sadly popped the crowd bigger than anything else. In maybe the worst spot of any Lawler match I've ever seen, he actually got on the mic to pop the crowd by saying he was going to hit a Stone Cold Stunner. I wept. This just didn't add up to anything good, and it took a long time to get there. Roselli had a nice elbow drop (I was taught to end on a positive note).


Jerry Lawler vs. Romeo Roselli, NEW 10/14/06 - SKIPPABLE

ER: Hey, remember the previous match these two had? Same fed, 4 months before, written about directly above this match? Well here they are with almost the exact same, identical match. They did almost all the same spots, in almost the exact same order. For whatever reason, this one was better. Roselli didn't dick around as much and the match felt tighter for that reason, the (new) valet was better and knew her spots better, Lawler didn't get on the mic announcing he was gonna hit a Stone Cold Stunner, etc. So things were better. They weren't great though.


COMPLETE & ACCURATE LAWLER

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Matt D: Credible? Untrustworthy? Person With Opinions?

It has recently been brought to our attention on the very electronic pages of this blog, that the credibility of regular contributor Matt D has gone down the "fucking drain". Matt is most certainly a person with opinions. Hopefully, all of us here are do, or else we'd just be soulless recappers. Some people trust our opinions, or at minimum enjoy the way we convey those opinions. But how credible is Matt?

Taken in a completely context free vacuum, Matt stated "I have no desire to see a Young Bucks match ever." That seems unduly harsh. But what is "desire"? Webster's defines it as "a strong feeling of wanting to have something". That's huge. There are few things in life that I feel a strong feeling of want for. I would say 80% of the things I review for this very page are things that I don't have a strong feeling of want for. How many things in life could I really "desire". There are many matches that I do not desire watching that I end up enjoying after watching them. I usually had interest in seeing them, but not necessarily "desire".





This match was a rematch from 10/18/14, and I really dug it. NEW can draw some pretty impressive indy crowds, and the Hardys were way over. Bucks worked like a heel Rock n Roll Express which really worked for me. I thought it was going to be a real challenge for them to come off as credible heels since the Hardys are so much larger than each of them. They're decent at stooging as both of them bump well, but the real fun starts when they take control. Matt Hardy is still a good salesman and the Bucks work him over in convincing ways. Young Bucks are a team with well known superkick humor, but here I loved how the superkicks were used. They were always used as a momentum stopper, a transition back to control. Matt would start to get a leg up, forget about the other Jackson, and turn around into a superkick. Jeff would come in for the save, lambaste one of the Bucks, turn around into a superkick. They weren't used in a cute way, they weren't used as a finish, they were used to slap down opposition, and often to put a coda on that particular section of the match. I liked all their dickish stomps and how they were able to portray hanging on by the skin of their tassels while also looking in control. Jeff gets taken out by a chair and emerges as Willow to make the save before a superkick starts more heat on Matt. Only complaint about the match is the finish didn't build and just ended up involving the Hardys taking Bucks' finishers and then just doing their own. Matt takes an absolutely brutal springboard stuff tombstone from the Bucks, really getting planted. Then the Bucks awesomely, dickishly do a Twist of Fate/Swanton combo to finish it, but Jeff saves. Then Matt just gets up, does a ToF and Jeff hits the Swanton for the win. Real lazy. So Matt basically took two big moves, was saved from the pinfall loss, but then just stands up and goes into finish mode. You wouldn't even have to modify the finish much to make it good, so that ended it sour. Overall though? Hot little match, excellent tag formula wrestling.

ONE SAMPLE MATT D CREDIBILITY:

After sample size of ONE recent Young Bucks match, Matt's credibility is not necessarily circling the fucking drain, but he does seem obstinate and resistant. I think a larger sample is due.

MATT: 0
BUCKS: 1

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When I Look Through the King's Eyes I Get Bitter

Jerry Lawler/Reid Flair vs. Trevor Murdoch/Brian Anthony NEW 4/25/09 -GREAT

ER: This was a really good tag match, much better than I expected. I've seen one Reid Flair match before this (against Chris Hamrick), but considering David Flair is one of the 3 worst wrestlers I've ever seen and Charlotte has all the charisma of a used mop, I was not expecting anything whatsoever from him (especially since he'd had less than 10 matches in his career at this point). But I thought Reid looked good and showed tons of potential. I think his floor would have been something like Cody Rhodes, with a higher ceiling. Lawler starts with Murdock and these two are natural opponents. I'm bummed Murdock doesn't wrestle anymore as there aren't many workers who do his style of stoogey asskicker. He stumbles all around for Lawler but looks like a monster against Reid. Not many guys can pull off both. Reid comes in and works shockingly stiff, throwing some pretty big bombs (nice overhand rights and a cool short left), nice chops and a real mean clothesline. His amateur background appeared to give him a cool power base, as he generated tons of POW on a clothesline that only had one step of momentum. I've seen plenty of guys with a full head of steam coming off the ropes that couldn't get as much power behind it as Reid did from a standing-still position. Reid is still obviously green in there and while he didn't look at all tentative, he did look a little slow and threatened to get lost at times. But Murdock and Anthony were both great at keeping things moving. Reid took their arsenal real well, leaning admirably into a meaty Murdock clothesline and leaning chin first into a couple Brian Anthony flying kicks. Lawler's hot tag was great and we get the elder Flair coming in post-match to clean house with Lawler.

PAS: This was a bunch of fun. I really liked how Reid threw those weird arms akimbo Ric Flair punches, he did take his bumps a little like first day of wrestling school but otherwise looked good. What I really wanted out of this is a long extended Trevor Murdock vs. Lawler feud. Talk about a guy born in the wrong era, Murdock looked like the Dream Machine or Dirty Rhodes, just an awesome hand who could have been slotted anywhere in a territory. Jimmy Hart looked perfect at ringside here, Murdock would have been an awesome member of the first family, and honestly I see no reason he can't play the Danny Crowe role for the Wyatt Family.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LAWLER

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Lawlers Gotta Have A Lot of Nerve

Jerry Lawler v. Jake Manning NEW 3/23/12 - FUN

ER: I had earlier called another a Lawler match vs. Brian Anthony the most barebones Lawler match possible, but I was incorrect. This was a sparse Lawler indie match, going just 7 minutes. That has to be the shortest Lawler indie match I've seen by at least 5 minutes. I'm not sure why this was so short. All of the elements of your basic Lawler indie match were there, him getting slammed, him getting backdropped, the punches comeback, the piledriver finish. A lot of bullshit was cut out to trim the match time, which depending on the opponent can be a blessing. Jake Manning was a guy who felt like kind of a modern Gambler, decked out in scout troop uniform and short khaki shorts, calling himself the "Man Scout". He took all of Lawler's punches really hammy (in a way that I enjoyed) that immediately reminded me of Gambler taking Sting's offense. So the Man Scout was a guy I would've actually liked to see more bullshit from. You can take your 20 minute Romeo Roselli matches, give me some Man Scout bullshit! I picture him standing on Lawler's throat while reciting the Scout's Pledge, or tying Lawler to the turnbuckles with the tag rope, using knots that he learned for his Knots Badge. Really for every scout badge there is, there's bullshit you can easily associate with it. Get on the mic and talk about your Public Speaking badge, carefully climb the ropes and point to your Safety badge, ape a bunch of Tatanka tomahawk chops for your Indian Lore badge, etc. Endless. So I'm bummed we got none of that here. Still, Lawler gets smashed into the ringpost a couple times, and the finish was fun with Manning taking down both of his straps only to immediately get caught in a Lawler piledriver.

PAS: Yeah I would have liked to see this go longer too. Manning is a guy I have seen before and is a really solid wrestler. Not flashy, but does everything well. He doesn't have as much Scout shtick as Eric suggests maybe Eric should be ghostwriting for a Southern indy Chikara knock off. Lawler looked great in the things he got to do, the postings were super brutal looking and the punches and piledriver looked great but this was the indy equivalent of a WMC studio match.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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At Night Time the King Goes Out to Look at People

Jerry Lawler v. Slyck Wagner Brown NEW 10/3/04 - SKIPPABLE

ER: Woof. When was the last time you went out of your way to watch a Slyck Wagner Brown singles match? Because I just did. And if feels like I went out of my way to watch a Slyck Wagner Brown singles match. This match just goes on forever. Brown is not good at doing things related to pro wrestling, but I suppose we needed 20 minutes or so to let him tell his story. His story was not very good. You can't get back 20 Slyck Wagner Brown minutes. They're gone forever. Brown has no offense outside of kicks, punches and a moonsault, but even those things seem like maybe too much for him to handle as he's not good at moving from one to the other and seems to get frequently lost during the match. Here he's always repositioning Lawler in unintentionally funny ways. He'll be punching Lawler in the corner, then stop, then kinda grab Lawler by the shoulders and move him over to the ropes, as if to say "Okay, now if you could just stand riiiiight there...." Other times Lawler has to put himself into position for moves that Brown is already supposed to be doing. At one point it was clear that Lawler was supposed to get choked over the middle rope, but Brown was just kind of standing around as if Lawler was supposed to be the one to drape himself over the ropes! Sadly, Lawler does exactly that. Also, we have Mick Foley as the muggy guest ref, who at one point stops the match to go on a detective hunt when he suspects Brown's second may have interfered. I can't shit talk Lawler's performance in this as he tries to make do with all the garbage, but he is just one man. His dropkick was incredible in this, one of the highest I've seen him hit, but Brown and everybody else just drug this dooooooown.

PAS: I remember a period when Slyk Wagner Brown was in the same general discussion as guys like Low-Ki and Christopher Daniel and Homicide. He always stunk, but he would get booked as a worker on USA-Pro and NWA-NJ shows. He was kind of big and the kind of fake athletic, ie could do a moonsault and had a high leapfrog. Some of the Northeast indy guys who disappeared, I would love to have show up and face Lawler, how good would Lawler v. Xavier be? Lawler could have a good match against Cheetah Master, a fun brawl with Magic, he could be a nice base for Ric Blade. It is too bad we have to sit through Slyk (by we I mean Eric, I didn't watch this).

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LAWLER

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Lawler is Looking At You and is Drained Outright

Jerry Lawler v. Brian Anthony NEW 5/2/09 -FUN

ER: Uh oh, we got some cool front row fans  in Waterbury, Connecticut! Whole row of dudes in their 20s, getting into Lawler's face as he walks by and acting mega tough, telling him he fucking sucks, really lame stuff. That must be one of the things guys who have enough money to live comfortably reallllllly love about working spot indy shows. Lawler gets in the ring and handles it admirably by pointing out that the whole front row is filled with guys who are so cool that they're all here on a Saturday night without girlfriends. I always like when wrestlers can handle hecklers without getting blue. It still keeps things fun for families. The match itself was okay, nothing groundbreaking. Lawler's punches were extra awesome as he kept pointing to those guys in the front row before blasting Anthony, and their heckling almost seemed to fuel him. He got some insane height on his dropkick and I couldn't help but wonder if he was thinking "I'll show those pricks who's old". This is essentially an extended Lawler squash. Anthony seemed fine in the punch exchanges. His only offense appeared to be a backdrop, which he busted out a bunch. This kind of feels like the most bare bones Lawler match possible. Might make for a cool 90 second Lawler highlight video.

PAS: Anthony brought very little to this, but I think I liked it more the Eric. We always talk about how great Lawler's punches are, but man is he great at taking punches, I imagine if Anthony was punching anyone else it would look like crap, but Lawler looking like he was getting waylaid by Joe Frazier. I hate the stunner but at least it wasn't a finish here. Anthony did just have a backdrop, but Lawler takes a great backdrop, and Anthony got some nice height on the payback backdrops.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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Lawler Looking At You Is Drained Outright

Jerry Lawler/Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart v. Sex & Violence (Dave Danger/Jeff Starr) NEW 3/10/07 - FUN

ER: Lawler teaming up with a Hart? That doesn't make sense. I also don't like that Neidhart was kind of put over as the star of the match. He and Lawler came out together, with Lawler walking out behind him to the Hart Foundation entrance theme. Neidhart got to start the match cleaning house on Sex & Violence (which is kind of a gross name), while Lawler was the one to take a beatdown and build sympathy for the big immobile Neidhart hot tag. I mean, for obvious reasons Lawler was the wise choice to play Morton, as he's good at selling and building sympathy, and also has no problem working the entirety of a match. Sex & Violence was kind of a pleasant surprise, for two guys I had never heard of. Danger was a big guy who kept it simple with stiff shoulderblocks and corner charges, nothing crazy. Starr seemed really good and I'm kinda surprised I haven't heard anybody mention him before this. He had really good punches (good enough to make exchanges with Lawler plausible) and had some personality. Lawler was really good in this and while it was lame playing second banana to Neidhart, the meat of this was like a good Lawler handicap match.

PAS: I liked this a little more then Eric. Neidhart gets to throw some clotheslines and shoulder blocks, but this is pretty much all Lawler, and he is pretty great. The missed fistdrop looked really nasty and was a great transition move. I like Starr working on the arm and wrist after the move too. I also liked Danger's clubbering, his elbow drop was appropriately violent looking for such a fat dude. I kind of understand Lawler playing second fiddle as he was a NEW regular at this point, and Neidhart was the special attraction, I did like Lawler doing the clothesline for the Hart Attack. Still a little short and basic to get to a GREAT rating, but this was high end FUN.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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Once Again The Kings Let Me Down, Broke My Heart and Turned Me Around

Jerry Lawler v. Joey Mercury NEW 11/3/07-EPIC

PAS: Just a gem of a Memphis match in Connecticut. Mercury at this point looks and wrestles like Brian Christopher with his weird tan, and he looks like the lost hidden Memphis heel master. We get a classic slow start from Lawler with Mercury taking over early with big bodyslams and awesome corner punches. He does this super douchy deep curtsy and Lawler unloads with punches and gets his revenge with multiple bodyslams of his own. Then we get a great hide the chain bit from Joey, he was super expressive here making sure the crowd saw every bit of his chicanery. Finish was awesome with Lawler eating a big backdrop, Mercury trying for a second and Lawler just spiking him with a piledriver, which Mercury sells with a great twitchy leg sell like he was knocked cold unconscious. So much fun, I wish there was still a touring Memphis fed were a healthy Mercury could be having classics with Drew Haskins.

ER: Man I miss getting Mercury matches on TV every week. Great worker. I love him going toe to toe with Lawler here (some of his right hands were making Lawler squint and sputter), and I dug all the chain stuff. Lawler is really damn good at making "Good lord I'm choking to death" faces. Really funny spot with a looooong build up to whether or not Lawler should accept it, ending with Mercury kicking him in the stomach...which Lawler angrily reacts to by kicking him back multiple times. I loved the slow, angry strap removal and Mercury's legs going spaghetti just seeing it. My favorite part of the match was Mercury hitting a brutal punch off the top rope. Lawler crumbled, there was a shockingly loud smack, and Mercury shook his hand out and felt his knuckles like it was broke. Man I wish this was a feud that had just started to play out.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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The King Got Kind of Lost, Lost in Giving

Jerry Lawler vs. Sid Vicious NEW 8/25/07 - FUN

ER: Frustrating match as Lawler turns in an epic performance but Sid works the match at half speed. I'm always a sucker for matches where the mean age of the participants is over 50, but damn if Sid had hustled things up a little bit this could have been great. "Methodical" is how announcers politely refer to the pace Sid worked this match, and because of that it felt like it never really got going. If you cut out all of the Sid downtime this match instantly becomes awesome, and that's including Sid's weird punches (alternating between politely knocking on a door with your knuckles, and pounding on a door with the side of your fist). So, about that Sid downtime. It basically forces a match restart every 90 seconds, completely grinding any momentum to a halt. There would be a lock up exchange, Lawler would sneak in a punch, and then Sid would lean on the ropes for 20 seconds, staring. There was a great exchange where Lawler snuck out of a lock up in the corner, started wailing on Sid and then started stomping the life out of him, getting the crowd completely fired up. So Sid rolls to the floor, walks around for awhile,  then eventually rolls back in and we start all over again. At one point Sid also locked on a looooong d'arce choke that looked more like when my cat is sleepy but wants his mouse, so he lies on his back stretching his arms above his head to grab for it. But hot damn did Lawler look great in this with cool corner stomps I've never really seen him do and built to a super high dropkick to knock Sid off his feet for the first time. He also did some nice callback stuff including hitting a bodyslam to a huge pop, that he had earlier attempted and failed at. He also threw some of the best punches I've ever seen him throw (I'm sure you know the ground that covers), lobbing them right at Sid's nose. I think Sid was trying to sell them with intense seething anger, but he came off as more lethargic than intense.

PAS: Yeah it was too bad such a great Lawler performance was wasted on such a dogshit Sid performance, it feels like Lawler would have a better match with an enthusiastic ex-Huskies center. I imagine if it was Lawler v. Haseem Thabeet it would have had more heat and Thabeet might have tried. Nothing Sid did suggested he was a trained wrestler and he looked like he couldn't give a shit. I did love Lawler though, the set up to the big dropkick and the big bodyslam were perfect, and his offense and selling were great looking, but man Sid, fuck that dude.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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King is Going to Dance at a Bar, He's Going to Fight on the Floor

Jerry Lawler vs. Michael Sane NEW 4/19/08 - EPIC

ER: Cage match blow off to their match the month before. I don't actually remember seeing too many Lawler cage matches before (I know I've seen a Savage one and an Austin Idol one, and I think clips of a Dundee one in a music video. I'm sure there have been others), and definitely haven't seen him in a cage post '87 or '88. So this is a real treat just seeing how he adapts his modern indy style to a cage match, and he really makes sure to fly into the cage in nasty ways and get his face smashed and rubbed into it a bunch. I loved the psychology of Lawler being the one to demand a cage match, and it immediately backfiring on him as he gets tossed all around and smashed into the cage. Lawler is somebody with good enough body language to put over that kind of regret. I thought this was really good and had some cool stuff like Lawler going for the kill with a top rope fist drop only to get caught in a chokeslam, and Lawler using an awesome Jean Claude Van Damme uppercut to the taint that I've never seen him do before. Seeing Lawler punch somebody in the balls kinda ruins it for everybody else, as I can imagine other guys backstage going "He already makes our haymakers, jabs, corner punches and punches from the mount look business-exposing. Couldn't he have at least left us ball punches?"

PAS: Sane was really good in this too, he doesn't have too many fancy moves, but does a nice job working a super generic indy psychopath. His facial expressions and fits of rage aren't too hokey and his offense is really violent looking. Classic slow starter Lawler as he gets violently beaten early before he could come back. I loved the nut shot as it did come off as a truly desperate attempt to escape a hellacious beating. Lawler unloaded all of his great punches, including a knuckle out straight right that might have been trying to split an eyebrow. Very good, nifty little mini feud. Would have liked to see more match ups between the two.

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The King will Steal a Car and Bring it Down

Jerry Lawler v. Michael Sane, NEW 3/15/08 - EPIC

PAS: Great out of nowhere wild brawl. The kind of thing a deep dive project like this is great for. Way more intensity then you normally see out of a 2000's Lawler touring indy match as he goes right at Sane from the beginning, and they have a classic Lawler v. Monster heel brawl. We get Lawler hurling a chair Moondogs style at Sane's head, Sane touring the whole ringsized smashing Lawler into each ringpost and some great punch exchange. Never seen Sane before but he looked like he belonged here. I imagine this is what the best Lawler v. Leatherface matches felt like. They did a really nice job of setting up the cage match as the ref gets between an awesome tee off punch exchange between them and they both waylay him. Crowd was super into the restart tease which I have no problem believing, as I was really into it too.

ER: This really was intense for a random Lawler vs. indy guy fight. Lawler throws a chair nastier than Necro and finds a few neat ways to get slammed into a post without resorting to Nigel idiocy. I had never seen Sane before but I really dug his throat thrusts. Lawler puts over his stuff well by doing little things that you never see, such as rubbing his hand over the back of his head and checking his hand afterwards after taking a few bodyslams. That's a level of detail you normally only get in somebody like Finlay, and it's pretty stunning to see on a random indy show. The crazy brawling over the final two minutes until the match is thrown out stand up with any crazy Lawler brawling you've seen.

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I Can't Get a License to Drive My Car, I Don't Really Need It If I'm A King

Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee MPPW 4/18/98 - FUN

This was billed as the final battle between Lawler and Dundee on the debut show for Memphis Power Pro Wrestling. Lawler comes out on a throne carrying his action figure, talking up a K-Mart promotional appearance. Dundee throws him from the throne to the ring and it is on. Compacted Lawler v. Dundee, but it had the stuff you want. Big rights and lefts, diving punches, and shit talking. I liked Lawler hitting a really stiff stunner, it is normally a Lawler spot which looks bad, but he wasted Dundee with it here. Match gets cut off before it really hits 3rd gear as Austin Idol (who was doing commentary) wastes Dundee with a chair shot, setting up a Dundee v. Idol feud which never happened. Always good to see these guys match up although it was too brief to get a higher rating

Jerry Lawler vs. Tommy Dreamer NEW 1/15/11 - EPIC

This is a steel cage match billed as the final battle between Lawler and Dreamer (apparently a gimmick Lawler does a lot). Lawler starts out by giving a great promo, talking about how people always ask him if he really hates the people he wrestles. He says that most of them are just like the folks you all work with, some you like, some you don't, but he has only really despised a couple of people. One is Terry Funk, one is Michael Cole and the final guy is Tommy Dreamer. Just an awesome way to put over this match, really got me excited to see what these guys were going to do to each other. They do one of those cool Lawler deliberate starts with both guys landing a single big punch early, testing the mettle of their opponent. We get some Dreamer ECW style crowd brawling, which Lawler does fine with, before we get back into the cage for the big end run. Both guys miss second rope moves onto chairs, both guys take big nut shots. Dreamer hits a piledriver, with Lawler putting his foot on the rope. Lawler attaches Dreamer to the cage with a bolt tie and laces him with a kendo stick. Just a lot of great brawling. We get a classic ending with Dreamer about to blast Lawler with a chair, before Lawler goes back in the day and lights his ass up.

Jerry Lawler/Jim Ross vs. Michael Cole/Jack Swagger WWE Extreme Rules 5/1/11 - FUN

This was the best match of the last couple of months of this feud. Cole coming out in bubble wrap was a really amusing comedy spot, and I though Ross using the ankle lock was a great fuck you to Kurt Angle's Twitter. They probably should have saved Ross's potato shots for this match, after knocking out Cole's tooth on RAW the strap shots didn't really resonate. Lawler was really a secondary guy in this match, which seems a weird thing to do to this feud. The blowoff to Andy Kaufman v. Lawler wasn't a Lance Russell piledriver.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

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