Found Footage Friday: HACKENSCHMIDT~! HEENAN~! LANZA~! WANZ~! DON LEO~!

Georg Hackenschmidt vs. Joe Rogers 1/30/1908

MD: If you're here reading this, I don't have to give you the backstory. You know it. Full props to Dan Rice for going the extra mile and making this happen. With that said, let's take a look at the text itself. I've seen people come down on whether this was a shoot or a work, but Hackenschmidt absolutely dominant here, whether he was simply presented that way or not. We get two full falls with matches in between and outside of losing his shoe early on, he never seemed in danger at all. Past the opening when they were both standing and jockeying for position, most of this was on the mat and he was in control for most of it. He was constantly shifting positions, pulling Rogers leg out to hobble his balance, working around him.

Meanwhile, Rogers was constantly active but there was a sense that if he tried for anything to aggressive then Hackenschmidt would be able to get him on his back. A couple of times he was able to bring his arm around for a headlock but it seemed to do him more harm than good overall. Whenever they got towards the end of the mat, Hackenschmidt, being the one in control would indicate that they move back to center and they'd reset with him in control once more. Maybe the most compelling bits here were the pins, especially in the first round. Rogers was larger, more tan, more obviously muscular (though the end clip of Hackenschmidt flexing was certainly something). Hackenschmidt had his number regardless and eventually worked him to his back. Rogers was able to keep a shoulder up ever so slightly and over the span of a minute, Hackenschmidt ground him down switching positions and angles until the shoulder dropped and the ref called it. It was inevitable but compelling nonetheless. I have no great takeaways here, no great wisdom. You could see how this could evolve into something more with the drama of that finish, with the interest from losing the show and working the rest of the fall without it. Genuine sense of struggle, be it in a work or a shoot, will always be compelling. Maybe that's the takeaway.

Blackjack Lanza vs. Bobby Heenan AWA 11/4/83

MD: This was a Wrestling Playlists find and it's a lot of fun. Really, you're watching this for Heenan taking a bunch of interesting offense in incredibly over the top ways. Lanza hits him with a double eye poke, a claw, these great stalking and then corner punches, a head knocker, so on and so forth. Just grumpy old guy offense and Heenan bounces and bounds all over the place, often ending up stuck across the turnbuckles or into the ropes. At one point towards the end he takes a bulldog with a front roll, spiking himself in the process.

What offense he gets here is by using some wrist tape to choke, but Lanza only takes so much of that before angrily popping up to the crowd's delight. When he gets the tape himself, he doesn't choke Heenan with it but instead goes straight for the eyes in the nastiest way possible. This ends with Heenan running for the hills but the fans were booing him and not the promotion for ending a match that way. Thus was the power of Bobby Heenan. I could watch him take offense all day. There was never anyone like him.

ER: Anyone who goes out of their way to consume as much of Bobby Heenan: Wrestler as possible all know that he is in the discussion for wrestling's all time biggest bump freak. But a thing that doesn't get talked about enough is that he doesn't ever seem to do the same bump twice. His bumps are all instantly recognizable as Heenan Bumps but I swear none of them are the same. I've watched this man bump into turnbuckles a few hundred times and I don't think I've seen him land the same way twice. You can watch him get thrown towards, into, and onto the turnbuckles as many times as you like and come away thinking every one is its own snowflake. You've seen him take bumps like the ones you are seeing, but this time he's getting hung up in the ropes different than you've seen, going over the ropes different, or just falling into them different. 

Nobody lands like Bobby Heenan, and maybe that's because Heenan is a man who never gives anyone a blueprint of how to land. His blend of pratfalls and violent bumps and violent pratfalls are second to none. Lanza shot him into the ropes just so he could thrust both his thumbs into Bobby's eyes on the rebound, and Heenan - selling his eyes - staggered until he fell face first into the middle buckle, then bumped backwards from the turnbuckle impact. I've never seen him do that, that way, because that is what he does. Lanza is a great taller skinnier Greg Gagne and would have stood out in plenty of ways if his opponent wasn't Bobby Heenan. Lanza's big punches and those eye pokes and his undeniable charisma do hold their own, but so much of this act is completely made by Heenan wrecking his body in novel ways. You've seen Bobby Heenan flip over in amazing ways taking a punch, but you have never seen him flip the way he does here. Because that's how Bobby Heenan bumps work. He's just going to take a bulldog like a spike DDT.  

Otto Wanz vs. Don Leo Jonathan Graz, Austria 7/12/80

MD: The Great Don Leo Jonathan's final match. We previously had 12 clipped minutes of this in watchable format and the brunt of the footage in completely unwatchable format with the sound muted. I had watched the former a few years back when I was going over some Wanz and couldn't make too much sense of it, clipped. This is very much new and complete then and it's worth watching. It starts slow and clean with the two playing size vs size but quickly gets more heated.

Wanz wins a couple of early exchanges and Jonathan starts to go for inside moves. The engine of these Wanz matches was that his opponent cheated and Wanz tried to stay on the up and up with the fans wanting him to fire back and go dirty more and more. When he finally did it, they erupted. Jonathan had a great variety of punches. Pokey ones in the corner, these flicking backhands, big meaty shots. And when Wanz fired back he was willing to bump around, even it being his last match, including getting knocked over the top a couple of times.

They both had specific bits of athleticism too. Jonathan flipped over using the ropes to get of an armhold and hit a dropkick as well. Wanz had his flipping sentons towards the end but also did an up and over headscissors takedown. More than any move however, was the physicality and intensity of those corner beatdowns from Jonathan which ended a round and then Wanz starting the next round but rushing across the ring to pummel him to the crowd's delight. He had such a special relationship with them and they got so loud as started to fight fire with fire.

What we get here with the full match is much more fleshed out and valuable than the 12 minutes we already had. It seemed like Jonathan still had a lot to offer but he bowed out on a high note against Wanz.

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Found Footage Friday: BREMEN 1984

12/84 Bremen Part 1

MD: Again this is gated behind Richard Land's patreon but it's worth covering at length and there's a good chance more will keep dropping so best just get through it in two goes.

Billy Samson vs. Stephan Paersey/Petitpas

MD: Most of the footage here is quite complete but this is cut and we don't get a finish. instead, it's about nine minutes overall, but it's nine minutes of pretty good wrestling. Paersey is Stephan Peptitpas, mainy known for his work in Canada. These two match up pretty well, mainly contesting over control over the arm. Tight holds, very little given. Petitpas had a neat little dropkick to the held arm that looked good. Samson had a nice cross armbreaker takeover and this great little bit where he couldn't get Petitpas over with a cravat so he patted him on the back and teased a handshake and then went right back to it and got him over. Hard to say where this would have ended because the finish is cut off. They were pretty good at what they did though.

. .
Hans Roocks vs. Rene Lasartesse

MD: Speaking of good at what they did... I love watching Lasartesse. No one moves like him. The sheer confidence it must have taken to moved so woodenly but still be able to exude the amount of malice, just boggles the mind. He's like Yul Brynner in Westworld or something. Just always pressing forward, imposing, taking the air out of the room. Roocks is an absolute tank, big and thick and hard hitting. This almost felt like Wahoo vs Lasartesse in its own way. Early on they just laid into each other, Lasartesse with the height/reach advantage and Roocks throwing big meaty shots. The middle had Lasartesse control with holds meant to take the air away from him. He hit one bombs away kneedrop and had this sort of thumb on the throat headstand flip he did which I've never seen elsewhere. Roocks eventually fired back by swinging for the fences with European uppercuts and they hammered at each other until Lasartesse missed a second knee drop off the top and Roocks just scooped him over with a big pendalum power body slam for the win. Just mean stuff all around.

Dave Morgan vs. Caswell Martin

MD: Very, very good. Lots to see and take in. I tend to like Martin wherever I find him. This was absolutely a showcase for his great escapes. Headstands, sneaking through the legs, cartwheels and flips. Just interesting, imaginative stuff with Morgan setting everything up well. Martin controlled for a lot of this, hitting the armdrag slam (which got countered on the finish as he tried for it again), a neat front single leg dropkick, but mostly controlling through a top wristlock. Eventually, Morgan was able to get the up and over headscissors takeover, but he earned it, as he earned a rolling escape from an arm puller into a headlock. Good stuff. He leans towards comedy sometimes and they had a couple of funny moments here including a false start on rope running and him getting deposited on the top rope by Martin. Quite a few gif-able moments here but it all worked within the confines of the match.

Hans Steinblock vs. Giant Haystacks

MD: Steinblock is not well regarded but a lot of that is due to one famous Warrior match and being a promoter with a tendency to put himself over for years. Maybe when he was younger there was something there? I'm sad to report there was not. More than anything else, he moved and hit like Brutus Beefcake. Against almost anyone else in this footage, that might have still worked. Here, not so much. He had some hair and beard pulling and a big, crowd-pleasing knocking of Haystacks over the top rope. Haystacks was pretty good at knowing what to give and when but this wasn't the guy to give against. When Steinblock finally charged in one too many times and got caught, it felt like a mercy all around.

Otto Wanz vs. Giant Haystacks

MD: Primarily this made me appreciate the Studd match more. They hit hard at times. Haystacks got pretty good heat at times with cheapshots. They teased some of the stuff that actually got hit in the Steinblock match (like Haystacks going over the top). But this never came together for me at all. Too much of just wandering around and throwing their weight around ploddingly. I didn't feel any real sense of weight or gravitas. Things didn't build and payoff. They just kind of happened. It was just two giant behemoths encountering each other in the wild and crashing up against one another. Not a bad spectacle maybe but without the story and drama underpinning it. Even the finish seemed weird ad Otto got Haystacks down and went for a splash or went to go for one only for Haystacks to roll. So Otto just casually slapped on an arm bar and the ref called for it. It wasn't a Clash of the Titans because for that you need to have an actual Clash.

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FOUND FOOTAGE FRIDAY: OMNI '87~! OTTO~! STRONGBOW~!

Otto Wanz vs. Jay Strongbow Graz, Austria 7/7/79

MD: This is the earliest Otto Wanz footage I'm aware of. It's part of Richard Land's patreon drop for this month. It goes ~40 with 30 of that being actual wrestling and not round breaks. It has an absolutely remarkable crowd. Hopefully he has a bit more of 1979 Austria/Germany in that tape collection because I want to see more of these fans. They were singing and chanting early, but they were up for absolutely everything and did they ever love Otto.

This is also an incredibly rare look at heel Chief Jay Strongbow. Maybe surprisingly, he brought the goods. This was right in the midst of the Valentine feud where Valentine broke Strongbow's leg, and he came in off of that and was an absolute bastard here. Otto spent most of the match trying to fight fair while Strongbow would fire off on him in the corner and punch and tear at his wound. If Otto was able to fire back, he rolled on out to the floor and they repeated the cycle. 

While the fans went way over the top every time Otto fired back, he controlled just a bit too much of this. Strongbow might charge in before the bell and he'd find ways to get under Otto and the fans' skin but he needed to be on top just a little more in the middle rounds. That said, when Otto finally had enough and started hitting back on Strongbow's terms, ignoring the rules, the fans were in high heaven. This wasn't quite as good as the Studd match but it was still an accomplishment for them to be able to go that long and still get it mostly right. Primarily though, this was about atmosphere. Just an amazing crowd; hopefully we get to see them again.

JCP Omni 2/1/87

MD: Almost anyone reading this watched it in real time and knows how special it was. Yes, it was a short card full of "tournament lucha"-esque short matches because we don't have the main event (Flair vs Windham - 60 minutes) as that was on another card, but it was our first new Omni show in years and hopefully the start of a new trend.

Bill Dundee vs.  Dutch Mantel

MD: Dundee was the Central States champ here. Dutch controlled the center to start, was Dundee stooged around, eating a back body drop, complaining about a phantom hair pull, wanting time out. They had a great bit early where Dundee got an eye rake and went for Shoo Baby only for Dutch to get it back and Dundee to take a whip trip. Eventually Bill managed a low blow and took over on the arm for a bit. Mantel hit one of the many great punches in such a short match and they went towards the finish, with Dundee escaping a roll up and pulling the tights for the win. Starting a trend for the night everything looked great in this one.

Bob Armstrong vs. Jimmy Garvin

MD: 30 second crowd pleaser. I wouldn't have minded seeing what they'd do with a little bit of time but it wasn't meant to be. My favorite bit here was Garvin acting like he won after the fact (to no small amounts of heat too).

Arn Anderson vs. Brad Armstrong

MD: These weren't just matches for the sake of matches. This was shortly after Lex's debut and this show was another cog in the machine of getting him over as a key associate of the Four Horsemen, even if he wasn't wrestling on the card.  For something that's been locked in a vault for so long, the amount of care in the production is interesting. It's not just a single camera. They cut to JJ or cut to a reaction from Luger. This was meant to be shown. It just simply never was.

Obviously, Arn and Brad match up extremely well. There's a certain elaboration to the early sequences where they go around one more time than you'd expect or turn things in a way that feels just a little unpredictable while throwing everything they have into it. We had another quasi low blow to set up the heat, two matches in a row, this time off of an Arn inverted atomic drop out of the corner. One of the best things about this set up (more on this next match) was how well we could hear the wrestlers. Arn, after taking over, just says "Now, then..." and what came after the ellipse is his beatdown of Brad. They moved through it quickly with the spinebuster (being the most versatile move in wrestling) serving as a cutoff to a hope spot, before Bard caught Arn coming off the top. Finish had Lex intervene by pulling out the leg on a suplex. Just a small movement, nothing over the top, and then right back into his seat. A way to get him over as efficient and professional. Obviously it would have been nice to get a few more minutes of this but they made the best of the time they had.

Tully Blanchard vs. Wahoo McDaniel

MD: It's hard to go from modern wrestling to any of this, even for me who spends all of his time jumping around time and space. This match is the trickiest though. Everything looks so good and so credible. Every strike is a violent delight. It's almost shocking to see Wahoo chop away in the corner. It's so different from anything else you'd see today. There's nothing framed about it. It's not a product for TV. It's was there to capture every eye in the arena and somehow that translates better onto the screen than something perfectly posed for a hard cam.

Tully is so vocal here, blabbing on about how he's an honorable man, complaining about every perceived offense perpetrated by Wahoo. I imagine only the first few rows could even hear it but it was part of his full immersion into the moment. There was no going through the motions. He was living and breathing the part. It's magic watching him scramble out of the ring or try to dash his way back for a sneak attack only to get caught and have his limbs somehow fall over one another. Selling isn't even the word for how he takes Wahoo's stuff. His portrayal was so good that it warped reality and made the the lie more vibrant than any truth could possibly be. 

The finish was simple, straightforward, matter of fact. Wahoo had him down. JJ drew the ref. Lex casually rose, clocked Wahoo with the belt, and sat back down, crossing his arms. Nothing over the top. Everything subdued. Just a great way to establish Luger.

Elimination Tag: Ron Garvin/Robert Gibson vs. Midnight Express (Dennis Condrey/Bobby Eaton)

MD: Very fun seeing Garvin in there instead of Gibson for whatever reason. He was tagging with Windham regularly at the time, including feuding with the Midnights. You have to love Gibson in the shine. There was the spot where he leaped frogged over Eaton after Condrey had tagged in and you expect Condrey to be about to tag him, but Gibson just stops short and hits a bodyslam instead. Or Eaton feeding for Gibson when he was outside after tagging Garvin in. You'd half expect him to try to take Gibson off the apron with a cheapshot but he just gets nailed over and over. It plays with expectations just a little while feeling totally organic. Likewise, they played with them by having Garvin get his foot on the rope after the Bubba shot, something that followed two finishes where Lex had interfered in a similar way.

This morphed into a conventional tag for a bit with Garvin working from underneath. His comeback just being a shoulder block out of the corner was actually unconventional but fit him perfectly. The racket shot that took out Gibson was pretty nasty. Then, as Eaton was rolling Gibson out, Garvin rolled him up to even the sides. Maybe you would have wanted a second bit of heat to play on the numbers advantage instead but they were wrestling against the clock and these matches were so rare that almost any tweak must have felt new and fresh. They still had Condrey control for a bit until they cracked heads and went into the finish. Garvin went over after the miscommunication, but they made sure to get some heat back on him after the match.

Super Powers (Dusty Rhodes/Nikita Koloff) vs. Ivan Koloff/Vladimir Petrov

MD: Shame we miss out on the Dusty/Nikita entrance here. Non match as the Russians immediately use the chain. It's a little surprising how little the fans seemed to care. They were just happy about Nikita firing back and Dusty and Nikita having their hands raised. Not sustainable but it was early enough into the turn, maybe that was all that mattered. Just a crazy notion in 2024 that people would care so much about their guys winning that they'd accept a non-match like this. Different worlds. You can barely even compare them.

Road Warriors vs. Ragin' and Ravishin' 

MD: Definitely a show where maybe too many heels had the titles. Again, when the Roadies were proclaimed as the winners by DQ, the place went nuts, so maybe I'm wrong. Business doesn't stay good forever though. This was fun just to see Rude and Manny bounce off of the Warriors. When it was time for Hawk to get worked over, he balanced being a Frankenstein's Monster with being properly vulnerable extremely well. It's a tough line to walk but he walked it, things like popping up from the pile driver but only half way, just in his body language. It's tough to play sympathetic while remaining a entirely larger than life but he managed it and that just ramped things up for the hot tag.

ER: An hour of perfectly shot Omni footage shows up with little warning, incomplete but a gift nonetheless. I didn't expect the work to offer us any new insight into any of the workers as most of these undercard matches were short, but I am an easily persuaded man. I have the kind of simple brain that can watch one hour of wrestling from 1987 and come away with new opinions on workers that we have hundreds of hours of footage from. I'm going to say that it's because we got this footage in such sparkling HD, and more importantly some of the most crystal clear sound you will ever hear on a wrestling show. That might have been my favorite part of this gift, that there was no commentary so you didn't even have to turn your TV up too loud to hear details happening in the ring and the crowd that you would have otherwise never heard. I love any new handheld footage that we get. Handhelds might be my favorite kind of wrestling these past few years, giving us the experience of being in the crowd seeing pairings that otherwise never made TV. But this footage? This footage makes it feel like you're standing at ringside in 1987. You can hear so many little things, and the footage looks beautiful. There were 4,500 people in the Omni that night and due to the way they lit the place we can see maybe 30 of them. But we can hear what sounds like 10,000 of them. Wrestling is mic'd so terribly now that crowds are muted, commentary is king, and we realize that the crowds are muted because there just weren't instances of audience members trying to get themselves over in 1987. It was pure. 

When some woman screams out"Work on him, Dutch, work on him!" it's because she cannot stand Bill Dundee. Being here at ringside you can feel how badly these heels were hated, feel how adored every babyface was, and here in-ring insights that we've seen but never heard so clearly. When the ref admonishes Dundee for grabbing Dutch's hair, I've never heard Dundee say anything as hilarious as, "The hair? I don't want to touch his hair." Dutch Mantel did not give anyone a chance to not touch his hair. We get to hear better than ever before, every single Tully Blanchard dumb asshole flip out. Tully looks like Wings Hauser and screams at the ref over every non-infraction like a small-dicked high school assistant basketball coach. You've seen the body language of Tully being the biggest asshole in wrestling but you've never heard him like this. Every wrestler on this card is a wrestler with great body language, but getting such clear audio to pair with the body language is so special. It would have been great enough seeing Manny Fernandez and Rick Rude stumble and beg off from the Road Warriors, but things like hearing Manny screaming out NO! as Rude almost goes for a one-handed knucklelock with Hawk, or Manny screaming NOOOOOO! in a totally different way when he's getting press slammed for the second time. It gives such a new dimension to these workers and these matches. 

The two big tag matches on this show were as great as they looked on paper. Rick Rude was one of the hardest workers in history and my opinion on him goes up whenever we get new footage. I don't think I've ever seen a Rude match where he wasn't On the entire time, and seeing he and Manny both On against the Roadies is just great pro wrestling. Rude and Manny don't just bump all over the place, they're doing a constant physical routine against two of the most physical monsters of the era. Also, is Hawk one of the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time? If you had asked me 5 years ago I wouldn't have considered either Road Warrior for a Top 100, but Hawk was something else man. After going back and seeing how great "washed" 1998 Hawk was and seeing more and more footage from the decade before, it's clear that Hawk never needed Animal to be a real force in wrestling. This man had It. An unreal aura and some damn great in ring. I don't know how many better flying clotheslines I've seen than Hawk's in this tag. The clothesline off the middle or top buckle is one of the tougher clotheslines. You have to worry about your landing more than the impact of your clothesline, so they often land soft. Hawk's lands as hard as any of his running clotheslines and he follows it through all the way to the mat, like he was doing a flying STO. I think I've seen Daisuke Ikeda hit one better, but Hawk, man. I love this guy. 

This was a one hour presentation with nothing but highlights. The crack of Dutch's whip with this HD sound. Dennis Condrey making me ask aloud "wait was Dennis Condrey the better worker in the original Midnights?" The way Big Bubba held Robert Gibson for racket shots, and the perfect timing of Jim Cornette jumping to the apron to racket Gibson mid-headscissors. The way the Ragin Bull chopped Animal harder than either Road Warrior could hit. Lex Luger's two perfect pieces of interference to help Arn and Tully, remaining completely uninvolved in each match until the finish, sitting arms crossed and observing the matches like an indifferent-faced innocent boy, other than two quick moments of a grabbed ankle and a belt to Wahoo's face. The noise these people made for Nikita. This whole show was moment after moment after moment. And finally, we got to see them and hear them clearer than the folks in Atlanta that night. 

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Found Footage Friday: STUDD~! WANZ~! COCOS~! NOSAWA~! MASADA~! FANTASMAS~!

Big John Studd vs. Otto Wanz CWA 12/20/83

MD: This is a 40 minute John Studd vs. Otto Wanz match from December 1983 found in the massive lot of tapes that @maskedwrestlers was able to rescue from Germany. Go hit him up if you want to see it. Obviously, I jumped at it. I covered a slew of Wanz matches years ago and he has excellent timing, hits hard, and has a singular connection with the crowd. As the 80s roll on, he becomes less and less mobile and while none of those skills fade, the matches do suffer a bit for it. Then there's Studd. In so many ways, he's the most human of the giants, emoting frustration, fear, hatred, resentment. He's a two-hundred pound stalling stooge in a much larger frame. It creates an amazing dissonance he can use to rile an audience, but that dissonance unfortunately carries over to not being particularly dynamic on offense. 

This overachieved and I think it did so because the environment maximized the opportunity for these two to lean into their strengths. This match takes place over nine rounds. There's a minute rest period with music playing in between each. While the narrative can build over rounds, it creates a clear break and bit of respite. Studd has a reputation of sitting in some fairly uninteresting holds and there's very little of that there. There were other advantages as well. Studd's height allows him to strike down and always have an excuse for getting back into the match. They're both massive and everything, from a lock-up to punch to a snap mare to one of them daring to go up to the turnbuckles feels weighty and consequential. The ten count to win added gravitas to every knockdown as well. Maybe most important of all is the fact that Otto is very good at working from underneath in holds, constantly moving his hands, constantly trying to fight his way to a different position. That's more than half the battle against Studd. The crowd was hot the whole way through. There were two camera angles here, spliced together; one picked up the crowd better than the other, but they were buzzing, constantly chanting "Otto, Otto".

If any one of these pieces dropped, it might have been a slog, but none of them did. Let's take it through the text itself. This is going to be a little dry but I want to make the case knowing people may not have forty minutes for this. Right from the get go, after the anthems, Studd was quick to shove Otto, to demand a test of strength. They locked up, shoved off, crashed off the ropes into each other and shook the entire arena. Studd struck downwards with elbows and clubbers. Otto would come back off the ropes with big meaty shots. Studd would attempt a chinlock, a standing one at the end of the second round with him peppering in a knee, and grounded ones in the third, but Otto was quick to get up and the third ended with him jamming Studd's mare and turning it around, to a big pop from the crowd. 

Otto pressed the advantage in the fourth round, dropping Studd with a single leg and then rowing along in time with the crowd's chants with a standing toehold. Otto had a way to make these interesting and entertaining, whether working on top or from the bottom. They had teased slamming each other earlier, but at the end of this round, riding his momentum, Otto finally got Studd up and over as the bell rang. Right after, I'm Still Standing played for the crowd and it felt like a high point in some DreamWorks animated movie. In the fifth, Studd, desperate, was able to get Otto out of the ring and brawled with him there. He caught him on the way back in and layed in some heavy shots. He couldn't hold back Wanz for long though and Otto controlled this middle portion fairly well, even through Studd's attempt to work his arm in the sixth. 

By the seventh round, Studd was at his wit's end. He demanded they announce over the house mic that he had previously said that Otto was going down in the seventh. Otto charged in, they slugged it out, and Otto got the best of him in the corner at hit his signature flip senton. Studd was a bedraggled, sweaty mess by this point. He managed a cheapshot and a corner  beatdown of his own, but Otto powered up and tosses Studd from the ring. There was a clear narrative throughline in all of this, and while it could have potentially been a bit more dramatic, the crowd wanted to see Otto fight back again and again and it led to what happened after the seventh. Instead of staying in his corner, Studd attacked between rounds. This was treated like a horrific offense, with officials and Wanz's second coming in only to get dispatched with ease by Studd to a chorus of boos. Studd beat Wanz around ringside before pulling down the corner pad and opening him up with the metal underneath. Otto was able to fire back at the bell but Studd had the advantage.

Studd pressed that advantage in the ninth, picking Otto up a couple of times with a level of aggression you wouldn't expect out of him at this point of the match, before crashing into the exposed post himself, and finally getting slayed for the ten count (if just barely) by an Otto pile driver. 

Between the round system and Otto's ability to work from underneath, this never slowed down for long. The level of motion may have been more subdued but how hard they hit didn't. Studd taking three or four big steps across the ring to lay a clothesline across Wanz' chest was absolutely impactful. And those times when they really moved, whether it be Studd missing an elbow drop or Wanz coming flying off the top with a big shot, meant all the more for the build. Lots of little bits of build and payoff throughout too, whether it was Otto hitting that slam or changing the trajectory of the match by jamming the mare attempt. They very much knew what they were doing and while I think this could have been even stronger if Studd took slightly more of the middle, that only made his egregious (and dissontant; why does someone so big have to do that!) cheating between the seventh and the eight mean all the more. This was an unquestioned accomplishment. They went forty minutes, never losing the crowd, always hitting hard, utilizing holds at times but not wearing out their welcome and never just sitting there, finishing strong.

ER: I always think of Matt as the Big John Studd Guy because Matt was the guy who really dove into what made Studd different from other big workers, learning his patterns and strengths better than anyone else I know. I think I was close to the trail. I remember talking to Phil about him years ago, tell Phil that Studd wasn't anywhere near as big as he was billed. I thought he had Big Dick Dudley or Col. DeBeers size and build and was a fake big man. A man with military posture like DeBeers or Nick Nolte in Who'll Stop the Rain. Adding size. But I was just being tricked by Studd's sometimes odd style, the smallest working giant we've ever had. Matt recognized it for the oddity it was and cracked the code on what the best assets of Studd were. So Matt covered this match well, as I knew he would. Matt left me the link to this match in the draft of our review and told me to "give myself time." I did, because of course I wanted to watch 40 minutes of a Giant and an Obese Regional Megastar. I love the fat regional babyface. I love Big Daddy. Imagine if Abdullah the Butcher was the big Puerto Rico babyface and Carlos Colon was the island's greatest heel? The feud would be even more blowaway great than their actual feud. 

This is 40 minutes of big man wrestling heaven, where two behemoths worked like rival lumbering mastodons punctuated by polka and electronic instrumental themed rest breaks. It was slow but always intense. Otto Wanz is a real favorite of mine. I love a country who gets behind a big fat guy who looks like a King of Fighters character, and is the kind of fat guy that looks more normal in a double strap singlet than he does in normal clothes. John Studd has some of the great understated gear in wrestling. The long white tights have literally never been pulled off better. The fit impeccable, the build never more impressive. John Studd looked like a tree of a man and Wanz looked like a Bill Plympton drawing. His face has this youthful woundability, and no matter how short or long any Wanz match is, it will be constantly filled with Otto chants. Otto is a master of falling into ropes in dramatic ways, hitting the bottom rope on Studd's short arm western lariats to the fucking face, falling sideways or chest first into them reeling from other strikes. 

This was not a stiff match but had the appearance of a stiff match, an exquisitely worked long match where every single impact had real weight behind it. The longer they worked, the more dramatic it felt. This felt like a true clash of the titans. Studd was not a cheating heel, and often he would call his shot in a more badass way than I've seen from anyone this side of Stan Hansen: multiple times pointing to his very large flexed forearm before swinging it straight at the bridge of Otto's nose. Every time either one of them fell or was knocked down felt like a major deal. The few spills through the ropes to the floor felt like major moments all, none bigger than Studd kicking Otto's ass around ringside while a worried man on the house mic pleads with him to stop and a large old man in a dinner jacket keeps getting dangerously involved. 

The drama and big match feel were so strong here that you wouldn't even need to know anything about Wanz or Studd. You would be easily able to see their appeal even though nobody else works quite like them. I loved the pacing of this, I loved how it felt like it really could have kept going a full hour. I knew Matt had my best interests in mind when leaving a 50 minute link to a Wanz/Studd match, but I never anticipated feeling robbed of a longer match. 

IWRG Retro 3/8/2001

Suicida/Coco Rojo/Coco Blanco vs. Payaso Misterioso/Nosawa/Masada

MD: More IWRG Retro. This is episode 27 which feels like a high number so I probably have to go back and see what I missed. This is the same show with the Santo/Silver King trios main event. This from the undercard definitely worked for me. Nice mix of Nosawa and Masada moving at high speed with Segura, including doing a great job of getting into position for his stuff and then everyone just playing into Los Cocos' act with a bunch of crowd pleasing comedy stuff. Payaso Misterioso had some heft to him so Segura bounced right off of him, but then he'd stumble into a shot from Rojo or Blanco to get knocked out of the ring, that sort of deal. The primera had the beatdown, the segunda the comedy in the comeback, and then they cycled through fairly quickly in the tercera. The finish had Los Cocos get the advantage on the Japanese with quebradoras into submissions, only for a third figure to come in to disrupt things. Probably Minoru Fujita? What we had here was a little clipped but it was 13 minutes of good fun overall.

Enterrador/Bombero Infernal/Black Metal vs. Fantasma/Fantasma Jr/Ultimo Vampiro

MD: Pretty complete trios match here. Fantasma Sr. was just over 50 here if I'm not mistaken. Jr. is his nephew and, alongside, Vampiro, rounded out the tecnico side with flying since Sr. wasn't going to do that.. The rudo side were better than the sum of their parts. Black Metal was tall and Enterrador ("Undertaker") was wide in an Abyss sort of way. Apparently he'd have a mask match with Ultimo Vampiro later that year and from what I saw here, I sort of wonder if that exists. (Edit: It does.). Point being, in the segunda especially, Bombero Infernal was directing traffic as a poor man's Satanico and it all went quite well. Fantasma, Sr. was very giving, allowing for his mask to get pulled in a big way. He was front and center for the comeback, moving out of the way of an Enterrador dropkick. Black Metal used his height to the fullest, first eating a double dropkick from Fantasma, Jr. and Vampiro and then basing for a huge over the top dive. The finish had Enterrador vs Fantasma where Fantasma fooled Bello Greco (who had ref duties here) by tossing his mask to a charging Enterrador to draw the DQ. Totally blatant, no way the ref should have been followed, but wildly charming at the same time.

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Otto Wanz Upload Challenge 5: Black Bart and Great Kokina

Otto Wanz vs. Black Bart (Johnson) CWA 7/9/88

MD: This was legitimately good. Very good maybe. Black Bart is a guy that would make every roster in the 80s better. That doesn't mean you'd put him at the top, but he added depth and played a role in the undercard and if need be mid card. He had size and presence and while you might not expect him to win, he could believably do damage. He was a much better opponent for late 80s Wanz than Ottman. He also got to put his hand over his heart for the bugler playing the national anthem which felt like a big moment for him. There was nothing pretty about this. They did the unclean breaks and revenge bit to start, but on a Wanz clean break later, Bart got a hammering cheapshot in and stayed on top for most of the rest of the match, broken up by rousing Wanz comebacks (including the slam and senton after Bart failed at a slam of his own). Bart didn't try anything too. He punched, kicked, hammered, clubbered, but it was all appropriate. He took up time and ate up space and sucked the air out of the proceedings. All Otto had to do was sell and fire back when he had the chance. Wanz even bladed on the outside, which felt like a big deal, and led to some satisfying woundwork. Eventually, Bart missed a charge and went flying over the ropes, and then bladed big himself as Otto got revenge on the outside, setting up the slam and the splash for the win. Otto gave a ton here and the crowd hated Bart for it, but that just meant they went up all the higher for the win. No restholds here (and I never use that word lightly), nothing fancy, just straightforward beatdown, selling, and comeback, and it 100% worked. Otto was secure enough in himself to give what he needed to Bart to make it happen. 

Otto Wanz vs. Great Kokina, Prince of Hawaii CWA 12/17/88

MD: Not great. A story of two matches. When they were really laying it into each other, it was enjoyable. The rest was a litany of nerve holds, forehead claws, and chinlocks. I don't think Otto was bad from working underneath, but he wasn't great either. He just wasn't. He had the crowd naturally but he didn't lead them. There wasn't a build to a big moment in fighting out of holds. There wasn't an ebb and a flow. He was better at timing comebacks fighting out of the corner, for instance. This too, by the way, like apparently every Wanz match, started with just that. Kokina could bump big at this point, but he only did once, early. The match had no sense of escalation or build, just a constant drone of back and forth blows and revisiting holds. I did like the last minute or so, with a larger than life overhead shot and Wanz hitting a big slam. It's just that a guy like Hogan, for instance, would have teased that earlier in the match to make the payoff more meaningful. Wanz doesn't often get to that level of storytelling. Then again, if you listen to the fans, he doesn't necessarily have to.

ER: See I thought this was pretty great, kept me exciting the entire time listening to the loud Bremen crowds "OttO! OttO!" chants to rally every second of Kokina control. I love that we can go back to 1988 Germany to find a match where Kokina is the smaller guy in the match, and it's the kind of minimalist heavyweight wrestling that really appeals to me. I am becoming a big fan of the Otto Wanz slow motion between-round recaps, love watching Kokina take a snapmare and thinking it looks like Kobashi taking a backdrop driver. Otto is great at selling in nerve holds, with his expressive color changing face and excessive sweating, beating his chest and pawing at Kokina's hands. Both man had nice bumps, though Kokina didn't bump nearly as much as he would in just a year or two. He still landed heavy whenever he went down, made it look like Otto was really throwing around a boulder in there. Both he and Otto had a quick bump through the ropes to the floor, and it felt epic whenever we got a knockdown. The strikes all looked good, loved whenever Otto would back up Kokina with his forearms to the chest, and Kokina had big chops of his own and clonked him with a headbutt. I wish we got a better shot of Otto's rolling senton and bodyslam to finish the match (we cut away to a top down view for some reason, only time in the match), but this was what I wanted to see. 

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Otto Wanz Upload Challenge 4: Bobby Duncum and Big Steele Man

Otto Wanz vs. Bobby Duncum 6/12/82

MD: Similiarites are starting to become clear, though they're almost ritualistic. This starts with the clean break game, then it has Wanz eat some cheapshots and fire back off the ropes. The first round ends with a resounding snap mare after that. We've seen this before but it's obviously what the fans want, so what are you going to do? That was just the first round though. Things settled in very differently after that with Duncum managing his best Hansen impression (as good as I've seen it probably) and taking it to Wanz more than anyone I've seen in these matches as of yet. Wanz was more giving than usual, not smothering him but instead setting up big moments of payoff: he fought back valiantly after taking a beating on the floor; he perfectly timed going up and over with the headscissors takeover again; he picked Duncum up out of a headlock, placed him over the ropes onto the apron, and then knocked him down to the floor. Duncum does come back and keeps on him until the finish and this was probably the first time in the footage where I had the feeling Wanz might actually be at risk. That made the big toss off the top rope and headlock takeover suplex for the win incredibly feel all the more celebratory. Duncum being the aggressor for a lot of this brought it to a higher level, but all of Wanz' offense looked great, especially his strikes. If I had to classify Wanz right now, he'd be a cross between Big Daddy and Jerry Lawler.

Otto Wanz vs. Big Steele Man 7/8/89

MD: I get the sense that when Tim wanted me to watch this stuff, this is more of what he had in mind. The years were not kind to poor Otto. He was far less mobile by this point, and 89 Big Steele Man was not 92 Typhoon (who was not 90 Earthquake, etc.). The similarities and differences to earlier in the decade are interesting. Far more minimalist. Lots of sitting in holds. When Ottman (as opposed to the Otto-man) was putting on a chinlock, it sort of worked with Wanz trying to engage the crowd by pulling apart the hands again and again. The fans were kind of with him. They wanted to sing and chant. It didn't have that same sort of electricity as when he teased breaking a hold years before especially considering he had to go back to this well a bit too often or stay in the hold without breaking it for a bit too long. When he was putting on holds, he at least kept varying things so the fans wouldn't get bored. About 2/3rd of what Big Steele Man did looked good. The other third did not. He got good color, though. At times, they went toe to toe with some big blows and that worked, certainly. Wanz' selling of pain and exhaustion was excellent but part of that was because he looked like he could die from heatstroke at any moment. There were some of the old favorites (early unclean breaks, some brawling on the outside, one rollover senton), but many things (piledriver, the up and over headscissors, throws, even elbow drops) seemed to be gone from his toolbox now. The crowd went up big for the finishing bodyslam, but some of the magic was certainly gone.

ER: I'm a big fan of minimalist super heavyweight wrestling, and it doesn't get more minimalist or super heavyweight than later era Wanz. Wanz isn't taking many bumps at this point, but his selling was still strong and he was good at making rest holds look like actual holds. This was two big dudes throwing heavy forearms at chests, and big thundering body blows. They built nicely to bigger moments, like Wanz dumping Steele over the top after hammering his chest, or Steele knocking Wanz off his feet with two standing clotheslines. Otto's rolling sentons still looked great, and I like how he doesn't hit them the same way each time. Here he set one up more traditionally, rolling across Steele's body, then later rolls into one from north-south. I think the best parts of the match were actually the slo-mo recaps shown in between rounds, which really put over the force behind some of the blows, and also made some big moments feel even bigger. Watching Steele's standing clotheslines that lead to Wanz timbering over felt even more epic in slo-mo, like a mastodon getting felled by neanderthals. That the whole long match built to one triumphant bodyslam was really cool, with the Graz crowd reacting to the bodyslam like it was the highspot of the year. 

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Otto Wanz Upload Challenge 3: Slaughter

Otto Wanz vs. Bob Slaughter CWA 12/18/82

MD: This dropped a few months ago but I'd been hesitant to watch a 54 minute video. This initiative got me over that hump. The match is closer to 45 with round breaks as well. That said, any match that goes long has to justify the time. What can be accomplished in 40 minutes that can't be in 20? Is it just to make it seem more impressive/epic, to give the fans more value? There's a huge celebration at the end of this so I think that's part of it, that this was the culmination of something bigger, being a tournament or whatever. The narrative of the match itself didn't entirely make it work. There were repeated themes, such as Slaughter taking advantage out of the corner and beating Wanz around the ring, or Wanz damaging Slaughter's leg or back and keeping control that way, more than a general sense of build and escalation. There was an excellent fifteen to twenty minute match in the start which would have ended with Wanz, who had been beaten around the ringside area, no selling a few jabs and coming back, and some exceptional bumping and limb selling from Slaughter later on, but I'm not sure it ever came together to be more than the sum of the rounds. Wanz took too much of the back half too as Slaughter's control segments seemed to be shorter and shorter. The fans were happy with this and Slaughter kept it interesting from underneath with his bumping, stooging, and selling, but that doesn't make for the most compelling story. I did like the finish, as Slaughter's back ended up damaged and he got caught on a dropkick and turned into a crab. This has given me hope for the shorter 83 match at least. 

Otto Wanz vs. Bob Slaughter CWA 7/9/83

MD: Great slugfest, almost a sprint really. This had no rounds for some reason and had an ebb and flow to it but they went at it hard right from the get go. Lots of brawling on the floor, with Slaughter taking at least half of it and Wanz bleeding big. There was an air of inevitability in the back half as Otto hit some big clotheslines and Slaughter bumped out, to the point I thought it might end on a clothesline, but they brought it back in for a pretty good finishing stretch. I'd say it escaped the Wanz formula we've seen so far and stands better as its own entity than almost all the other matches. It might not feel as important as the longer match but it's easier to swallow and probably more enjoyable.

ER: I thought this was pretty incredible. A big powerful match with an Austrian crowd that kept roaring like a thunderstorm. Watching this made me feel that Otto Wanz must have been the biggest pro wrestling star in the world. Few wrestlers in history have played to reactions like this one, and that's something that moves me. Slaughter is a big guy, and he flies around this filled Graz arena in a way that makes Wanz come off like a real superhero, while making sure to take plenty of opportunities to punch Wanz right in the head. They start with some long lockups, all building to Slaughter taking bigger and bigger bumps as he's propelled away from Wanz, including an absurdly high backdrop bump. Slaughter begins to avoid Wanz, collecting himself on the floor and breaking counts in the teens, and this just makes the crowd swell louder with joy every time Wanz sends Slaughter pinballing into the ropes and onto the floor. Slaughter finally punches his way to control, sends a couple of short headlock punches into Wanz's head to finally slow him down, punches him in the ropes and chokes him over the ropes, using his large weight against him. Slaughter grounds Wanz with a nice side headlock, and the roar when Wanz started to power up out of it and finally turned it into a hammerlock was like sweet ambient noise washing over. 

We build to some great brawling on the floor with Slaughter throwing Wanz hard into the ringside barricade a couple times, throwing him into the ringpost, and throwing more and more hard punches at his head. Wanz gets busted open and it all makes the crowd wilder still for him. This was worked like a Texas Death Match, with both men having to answer a count every time they were knocked down, and the home stretch is this great drawn out back and forth with both men getting closer and closer to being down for the count, with a long run of Slaughter barely hanging on. Wanz hits his rolling cannonball and big clothesline, Slaughter punches back and hits a heavy ass bodyslam, and it all comes off very dramatic and important. I really thought this whole thing was tremendous, feels like it should become one of those matches with a legendary crowd reaction, deservedly so. 

MD: I think that covers most of the recent uploads. I can see myself coming back for some of the greatest hits (Andre, Funk, Murdoch, Bock, Vader) at some point now that I have a very clear baseline. And hey, if there's anything specific anyone ever wants me to look at, just leave a comment. 

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Otto Wanz Recent Upload Challenge 2: Ed Leslie and Sailor White

Otto Wanz vs. Ed Leslie CWA 7/14/84

MD: I've looked high and low for what I'd consider to be a good Leslie singles match. That's the kind of thing the Eric and Matt side of SC would tout if we could find. Not that long ago, I took a look Martel vs. Beefcake from right before the face turn. No dice. It was pretty terrible. The problem with heel Beefcake is that he's completely unbelievable. The harder he tries to emote and be into the moment, the more ridiculous it looks, a guy pretending to be pretending to be emotionally honest. That said, he was surprisingly decent here. His offense consisted of punches and swatting blows and knees, and the match was very similar to the Barbie one, down to a nearly exact finishing stretch (except for set up by a back body drop reversal of a pile driver before Otto hit his own and ended, after the bodyslam, with a Oklahoma Roll, which was a little more satisfying as a finisher). Maybe because he had such a large canvas to work on, Leslie's shots all looked pretty good. The opening comedy wasn't as structured. When Wanz hit the body presses in the corner, they weren't quite as warranted by unclean Leslie breaks, but the fans didn't care. Like the Barbie match, there was a bit on the floor with some shots into a table, but Leslie put up a bit more of a fight there. There was a much better transition where he ate a back body drop to the floor. He actually ate a couple of big bumps here. Moreover, his reactions only got over the top once or twice. I'd call this a legitimately good Leslie match. You saw the cracks, but enough went right that it was hard to care. The stark similarities between this and the Barbie match, however, would definitely raise some red flags for me if I was ranking Wanz for some sort of comparative project.

Otto Wanz vs. Sailor White CWA 7/11/81 

MD: This was very good. White is Moondog King and that makes for a hoss fight. They did the same playing with breaks (clean and otherwise) early on and the fans were delighted (as always) anytime Otto didn't break clean. Here it was definitely warranted though. White had a manager and he would slow things down by getting advice from him. There's a moment in the second round where he did so and immediately went for a bear hug, which is the sort of use of a manager you rarely see. He lifted Otto off the ground but it was reversed to a big pop. Between the second and third falls, White ambushed Wanz for big heat and he was able to keep control for a bit until Wanz made a comeback out of the corner, including one of those rolling sentons. Fiery and intense but White stalled it out by talking to the manager again and waited out the round. Point being, White was able to get advantages here and there with chokes and cheapshots, but Otto never gave him much for long. Wanz really got how to work the crowd while he's in charge of a hold, though. He'd starts with a toehold, which got a pop, and slowly worked the knee in to drive it further, which popped the crowd differently, and then turned it into a crab of sorts, which drew the chanting. It's always impressive to see a guy do so little and get such escalating results. There's a point later on where he tied White up in the ropes so he could go relax on the ropes himself, which popped the crowd in a folk hero sort of way. It's all but over after White bumps shoulder first into the corner and out of the ring and Wanz focuses on the hurt limb. The crowd went nuts when he went out after him. Ultimately, though It made for a fairly anti-climactic end, albeit one that both protected White and still made the crowd unbelievably happy. This felt a little formless at times, but some of that is what you get with the rounds system and the advantages and disadvantages therein. It was a good clash of the titans sort of match though and Otto showed a lot, without necessarily pulling off the athleticism he had a year before in the DLJ match.

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Otto Wanz Recent Upload Challenge 1: Dave Barbie and Don Leo Jonathan

MD: Rarely, relative to the other guys, do I get a request to cover something. I'm not on twitter, etc., but hey, if someone wants me to cover anything, generally I'll find the time. Tim Evans caught me on DVDVR and wanted me to take a look at the recent German Catch uploads involving Otto Wanz. A lot of these were out there either in a more clipped form or broken into multiple videos, so they're not quite NFF material. I'm going two at a time and starting with the older ones when I can, with the exception of the Slaughter match since there's a longer one that'd been out there for a bit longer that I'd like to see too.


Otto Wanz vs. Don Leon Jonathan (1980)

MD: I think this is from '80. DLJ is up their in years, of course. Wanz is younger, certainly more spry than he'd be just a few years later. He already had the crowd. This is heavily clipped but you see a lot of cool stuff, so it's fine. DLJ has great presence and timing, great strikes that use his reach and height and size. He hit a dropkick at one point and did the rope-assisted backflip to get out of an armbar, as well as solid little bits of mat wrestling. Wanz was a force here, impressively launching a couronne escape (up and over, this time with a heascissors takeover) to an armbar and another bridging headscissors takeover to get out of a standing toehold. Towards the end, he hit three rolling sentons and a great Oklahoma Roll. What stands out almost as much as that agility was his fire and intensity; he really came at DLJ in his comebacks. He was like an out of control steam engine. A lot of the Wanz I've seen before feels like it's two decades later than this (when it's generally just a few years later), but it's easy to see how he won over the crowd and earned emotional capital to cash in later with younger performances such as this. This, unlike the Barbie match, was too clipped for me to get any real sense of it as a narrative however.


Otto Wanz vs. Dave Barbie (1985)

MD: This is clipped too but I wouldn't say heavily. Considering most of the other Wanz matches go closer to 30 and this is a little under 10, it could be more complete, but you got the ebb and flow of it pretty well. Barbie was a mid-80s WWF enhancement guy who worked a few other places like Stampede. He looked like a guy who could lay in a good clubbering and at times here he did. It's a joy to see how over Otto was, especially considering our current lack of live shows. They kept this simple, with Barbie leaning into his foreigner's lack of understanding of the German rules to do damage and keep advantages. Early on they played with breaks, with Wanz breaking clean and Barbie not, but that meant when Otto finally body blocked him in the corner a few times, it got a big pop. Barbie was able to slam Otto no problem, which you think is something that should be more protected. His jabs and clubbering  looked good for the most part as I suspected. I'm also surprised he didn't get carded as he insisted on late elbow drops and choking in the ropes. It got him a little bit of heat, but the crowd really just cared about Wanz. Otto's comeback involved some nice revenge battering on the floor, including slamming Barbie's head into a table, before it went back into the ring for a piledriver, clothesline, and slam for the win. The crowd was elated with Wanz almost subtly conducting them at times. It was almost ritualistic. In general, I thought Wanz was fine here. I might have shifted the order of the finishing stretch and I'm not sure he always got his revenge at the right moments, but I'm ok watching more.

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Better is the Sight of Yoshiaki Fujiwara than the Wandering of the Appetite

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Osamu Kido vs. John Quinn/Otto Wanz NJPW 6/14/84 - SKIPPABLE

I have liked previous Wanz, but he was pretty much just working like a less mobile Northeast Indy mailing it in for a check Bundy. I'm not sure who John Quinn was but he wasn't much better. Fujiwara isn't going to be able to do much in this context, so it was all shtick. Quinn hurts his hand punching Fujiwara on his head, Fujiwara keeps hold of a headlock by pulling Quinn's beard. Add that to a desultory ending and this can be missed.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head: Hansen v. Andre V. Sailor White v. Otto Wanz

Sailor White v. Otto Wanz CWA 11/7/81

PAS: My kind of scrap. Two big fat mean looking dudes, throwing overhand forearm smashes with bad intentions. The thuds in the this match were something else, there were some slow parts as one might expect in a battle of porkers, but when it turned up it turned up. White kept attacking Wanz during the breaks and he looked like an out of control hobo who was about to be tazed by the police. Finish was a grim bit of violence, White takes a shoulder post bump comes up bleeding and Wanz just brutalizes him with running knees until White is lying on the canvas unconscious and covered in blood, such a vicious way for a local babyface to win a match. Great stuff

ER: This made me really want to find some Moondogs gems in 1980/81 WWF (seriously people, what WWF Moondogs do I need to watch?) as White was really great here bumping all around for Wanz. It's shocking to me that the median age of these two men in this match is the same as my own current age. They look like a couple of old fat guys getting into a heated argument at what has since been remembered as "The Worst Church 4th of July Picnic Ever". Which means that either I am now old, and/or these two look much older than their years. Nevermind the reminder of my own mortality, this was wonderful. It's my exact kind of match: Two big galoots throwing blows and splatting into each other. Icing on the cake is that the crowd is going nuts the whole time and responding to these two tubs like real heroes. The match moved in fits and spurts, with both crashing into each other and and clubbing wildly, then recovering while apart; it felt like a battle over territory in Grizzly Man. I loved the dueling bearhug spot, with both big dudes impressively hoisting the other up. But I went nuts for White bumping for Wanz, bumping on his hip in ring, getting tossed over the top, and that brutal post bump at the end. That finishing was a real shock and a tremendous exclamation point to the match.


Andre v. Hansen review


Verdict:

PAS: I love a violent fatty battle as much as anyone, but Andre v. Hansen is an all timer and will be very difficult to beat. Still go watch the CWA match, it's the goods.

ER: This was two big wild beasts having a mean clash, and that's always going to rank high with me. This feels like a match I would be the high vote for on the 80s project. But Andre/Hansen is the ultimate Clash of Titans. That's going to be near impossible to dethrone. But that shouldn't take away anything from worthy challengers.

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