Found Footage Friday: Universal Pro Wrestling 1992~!

Bulldog KT (Gedo)/Pat Tanaka/Villano IV vs. Coolie SZ (Jado)/Lightning Kid/Jerry Lynn Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: It's important you know that Lynn and co. come out to Don't Cry by Asia. Also that Pat Tanaka is a huge jerk in this match and I'm all for it. They did a lot in 20+ minutes over three falls. It was fun to see Villano work with Lynn (bounding fast exchanges) and Kid (hitting him really, really hard and then taking all of Waltman's karate bs). The heels worked together well, lots of setting a babyface up for a double team or single shot. There were some nice pushes by Tanaka, on a suplex to give it extra oomph and then to set up the finish by basically shoving a victory rolling Lynn and Villano out of the ring. Gedo and Jado generally worked together but their stuff looked practiced, solid, and usually pretty mean. After coming back from a relatively long, cycled beatdown, Lynn broke up a hold on Kid and they hit a tandem missile dropkick/Northern Lights. Second fall had some funnier stuff from Lynn as he tossed Tanaka into the corner and Tanaka twisted twice on the way and then got down on his hands and knees and dog barked Gedo out of the ring. But it came back together for the fireworks down the stretch. 

ER: I was pretty blown away by this, a frenetically based long three falls match where every guy is working fast and hitting harder. Everyone had standout moments, with Jerry Lynn being the guy who blew me away the most. Lynn looked ready to work any promotion in the world, breezing into Japan and working smoking hot dodging and tumbling sequences with Villano IV, throwing perfect snug execution on everything he attempted. His offense makes extravagant bumps look necessary. When he hits a dropkick to Villano IV, it makes sense that it sends him flying out of the ring; when he blasts Pat Tanaka with a clothesline, he swings it so hard that it makes Tanaka's inside out flip bump seem like the natural way to get eaten by that clothesline. Everything Lynn did was crisp, established the pacing of the match, and followed through to logical match building conclusions. When I say I was blown away, I mean it. Jerry Lynn is a guy who I view as a known quantity. We've all seen many JL matches, we all know he's talented, the industry respects him, he's worked everywhere, etc. But seeing Lynn here is like seeing him for the first time, seeing things he was capable of that never defined his style. Lynn really could do it all...but I don't know how often I've seen him doing It better than he does here. 

The thing is, everyone kind of comes off that way. Jado and Gedo as beefed up Mr. Perfect Singlet Boys is the most interesting version of them in the 90s. I love the wave of T&C Surf Designs inspired Japanese indy wrestlers of the late 80s/early 90s, from the surf punks surrounding the ring in the most violent late 80s FMW Different Style bouts, to these two beefy Malibu boys in their mullets and surf suits. It's unfathomable to me that 1992 Jado and Gedo had great clotheslines, but video doesn't lie. Jado throws a top rope clothesline as hard as Ikeda ever threw, and that's arguably the toughest clothesline to throw well. Gedo blows up Jado with a clothesline that would get Tenryu's attention, and it's a wildly more interesting version of themselves than all their bad juniors wrestling the rest of the decade. 

If Pat Tanaka was a real jerk - he was! - then Villano IV might have been an outright sadist. This man was in his late 20s and a physical danger. If I praised Lynn's execution, then V4 deserves the same praise. Everything he does has such force behind it. He has these cool kneedrops, where he starts from a kneeling position and drives a knee into his opponent's temple, and I'm not sure I've ever seen legdrops thrown with more force. I didn't think you could get such impact from a standing legdrop, but Villano made them look like real finishers. 

But the thing that really stood out in a match filled with standouts, was Villano IV and Lightning Kid starting off the third fall with a literal shoot fight on the floor. I couldn't tell why it escalated, but they clearly start throwing increasingly harder and harder shots during a routine sequence. I don't know the exact moment it turned unprofessional, but Villano knocked Kid to the floor and Kid came up throwing elbows meant to crack jaws, and Villano recognized the intent behind those elbows immediately and landed five straight punches to Kid's face and head. This all happened within 15 seconds, where a hard Villano club to the back turned into a Kid shoot elbow, and suddenly Kid was fleeing while wisely shielding his face as Villano finds every uncovered part and lands every punch he throws. No idea what happened, but there's no mistaking those punches for worked, and whatever might have happened didn't affect Kid's big comeback in the tercera, which played as great retribution. Villano IV stood in for spin kicks and cooperated to make it look like a strong comeback, taking all of his kicks and making the decision to not punch him directly in the face, again. 

Gran Hamada/Panterita del Ring vs. Shu el Guerrero/Scorpio Jr. Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: Shu and Scorpio come out to Simply Irresistible. Good for them. Anyway, I struggle a little with matches like this. There's just not a ton to say. There were 12+ minutes of bits/spots to start, and they were good! A lot of them were really good. But do I just list them? There wasn't a lot of rhyme or reason to them. There was a little bit of progression with early matwork, but after that, it was off into bit-land. Yes, Shu based well. Yes, Scorpio had some moments of stooging, including a great one where Pandrita was able to roll through on something, drive him out, and force him to walk down the ramp hands up in retreat so there was no dive. There was a great bit where Shu swiped away a Panterita dropkick and slapped his chest repeatedly only to end up in the corner for a knee driving headscissors takeover. Hamada in general looked like a million bucks. Then they had a few minutes of beatdown which was, again good (really liked a catapult where Shu choked Hamada down onto Scorpio's knees), and a comeback with a strike exchange and some big dives, before Shu scored a clutch powerbomb and a pretty swank tied up pin. Definitely good action. A lot of character and personality. Super entertaining. I'm sure DEAN would have been able to write the hell out of this. But all I can do is bear witness.

Kendo/Great Sasuke vs. Rocky Santana/Super Delfin Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: This was the main event, 2/3 falls. By the way, the first match on the show, that we don't have, is Black Magic vs Rey Bucanero. Though it's 92 Bucanero so he was like 12. Ah well. Kendo comes out with a soccer type shirt with himself on it. The fans are immediately behind him.

The initial Kendo vs. Santana and Sasuke vs. Delfin exchanges (two times) are a lot of fun. Nice tricked out back and forth with Kendo and Santana where they both hit the mat hard and Sasuke being insanely flexible against Delfin. Some nice comedic bits in there as well, like Santana getting skidded out and Kendo sliding out to invite him back in and Santana faceplanting a few times. It's mostly friendly though Delfin takes (and misses) a swipe at one point. The fall ends with the pairings getting switched up and Sasuke flying off the top on both Santana and Delfin leading to a funny bit where they toss Kendo off and Sasuke tosses him back on until he finally sits on all of them for the pin.

Second fall switches the pairings for real, with Delfin falling for all of Kendo's tricks and Santana feeding for Sasuke. The rudos take over though and run a beatdown on one than the other than the first again. They tease a comeback but Delfin gets a tornado DDT and locks up Kendo for the pin. After that, Kendo gets rolled out of the ring hurt, and I thought this was going to turn into a different sort of match. It lets the de facto rudos control for a bit but Kendo just comes back in pissed a few minutes later and he gets into the most ridiculous kneeling strike exchange with Santana that I've ever seen. They whack each other, then fall over backwards then get counted and pop back up and do it some more. It goes on for quite a while and it is a crowd pleaser. After that, they pop right into dives with Sasuke knocking everyone out with the Space Flying Tiger Drop to get the countout win. Definitely fun. Might have been interesting to see it take a more grisly turn but that's not what they were doing here. 

ER: I love these proto-MPro matches where you can see the style almost fully gestated, the lightheartedness with the stiffness, the innovative movement with the strong lucha inspiration. I love Rocky Santana within this world. He understood the kind of regional lucha comedy that would crossover well to Japanese Indies, while also working stiff enough to capture the attention of the rest of the crowd. They laughed when Santana charged into the ring and tripped on the bottom rope, face planting into the ring and crying to the ref for support. When he did the exact same thing in the second fall, they ate it up, fully understanding his vibe. He bases as well as Hamada and moves the same, but he'll also break down and start punching people. The whole match building to a long stretch where Kendo and Santana kneel in front of each other and do several minutes of stiff punches, comedy punches, and exhausted punches, is brilliant. We've all seen enough "two men throwing strikes with no defense" at this point, but it's crazy how many innovative versions of that exist on small lucha shows and Japanese Indies. This exchange starts normal...until the strikes start becoming unexpected, sometimes silly, sometimes mean, thrown in a totally unpredictable rhythm. It looked like Kendo and Santana were playing some kind of memory game that nobody else knew the rules to, and this memory game involved being punched in the jaw, ear, and neck. I've never seen an exchange like it, one that had multiple goals and just kept going until everyone in the building was on board. That's wrestling, baby. 

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1992 WWF Boy Scout Troop 3 Fundraiser 1/18/92

Full Show


ER: If you like the sound of a wrestling show where the wrestling is treated with as much value as the day itself, and don't mind 50% of the tape being taken up by non-wrestling, then I invite you to settle on in. This here's a recently unearthed WWF fancam of a show many of us didn't realize even happened, filmed by any old dad as more of a memorable church picnic than as a man filming a pro wrestling show. When my dad got a video camera in 1988 (the kind where the VHS tape slid into the camera itself), he quickly produced half a dozen tapes that were filled entirely with him recording the yard, doing commentary about how the yard looked, filming my toddler sister following a frog, just a grill dad enjoying his new toy while acting out his inner Terence Malick. I still know where tapes of our old Easter egg hunts and 4th of July parties exist at my folks' house, even if they haven't had a VCR to play them on in at least 15 years. This show is the closest to the vibes of those home movies than any wrestling fancam I have ever experienced.

The man who recorded this, is a man recording this event the way my dad recorded every event of our lives over a period of several years. This is not a man recording a pro wrestling show, this is a man recording his niece's wedding, his son's little league game, his daughter's school play; this tape would exist no matter what the event was. If the fundraiser had been a chili cookoff, there would be a tape of Boy Scouts Chili Cookoff and we would likely not be writing about it. But this is a WWF Boy Scouts fundraising show, and this man - I presume - is affiliated somehow with this specific Shelton, CT branch of the Boy Scouts.

Growing up, we used to have a big Harvest Festival every year with all of the 7th Day Adventist churches in our county, held in the gymnasium of a local high school. This wrestling fancam is the exact movie of my dad filming us and several other families and students on a Saturday morning, setting up for the Harvest Festival and decorating a gymnasium. This man is not worried about saving tape space for the matches, he is more concerned with documenting the entire experience, and we're lucky for it.

One of the early joys, is that it's never actually even apparent that any attendees enjoy interacting with our cameraman even in the slightest. Most in attendance don't even act as if they know who he is, let alone act socially familiar with him. But HE feels familiar to these people, and nobody appears to be startled by his presence, so we can assume he's at minimum welcome and/or tolerated. Also, among the 80 or so volunteers in the building, he is the one guy just walking around with a camera and not doing any kind of set up or physical work, so "tolerated" is probably a more believable stance.

Letting yourself get taken in by these home movies, you really appreciate the well oiled machine that is the volunteer staff of Scouts and family of Scouts, as we get to see the ins and outs of what's happening at Shelton High School on a winter Saturday. Our Connecticut Attenborough helps paint the mise en scene by mostly letting the camera do the talking, outside of segment-introducing observations such as "Lots of chairs to be set up" or "Here's another popcorn machine being set up, down at the end of this hall" or "Still setting up these chairs, 600 of them" or "Mopping the floor" or "Taking a break from setting up all these chairs?" or "Gonna sell a lotta merch tonight?" or "Hey how many chairs did you bring in the truck?" The candid interviews aren't particularly insightful, and he is not a very probing interviewer. These interviews do give us some insight into a truck that broke down that was carrying a lot of chairs, and we get some unblemished brief backstage footage that gave us more of a look behind the scenes than any "matches only" fancams have ever bothered with.

Not only do we get to see the catering spread for the wrestlers (literally just a half dozen 6 foot long party subs from Subway), but we get the Bushwhackers signing autographs for all the nerdy adorable Scouts, and what appears to be one specific family meeting the incredibly jacked Chris Walker. One of the Double Trouble members is also there milling about, and we get to see anti-drug PSAs from Virgil and Sgt. Slaughter. It's kind of amazing that this guy was allowed to film Virgil as he took several re-dos on his not great Say No promo. Slaughter cuts his with ease, salutes a local LEO ("from one Sgt. to another"), and then points directly at our camera as we fade into a packed gymnasium. Our ring announcer (who as we saw was there 3 hours early and showed up wearing a great brown leather jacket) is now in a suit looking like the coolest possible Perd Hapley, and announces that due to illness, Bret Hart would not be facing The Mountie tonight. Hart had lost the IC title to Mountie literally the night before, but the crowd is justifiably excited to find out that Roddy Piper would be replacing Hart in that IC title match.

MD: I can't add much more to what Eric's written here about the non-match footage but I will note a few things: First, I was pretty much the target age here. This was January 92. I was 10 years old. I'd watched WWF for less than two years at that point, getting into it late. I'm from the Northeast. I also had some small experiences backstage due to a friend's uncle working for Titan in some capacity. That consisted of meeting Bret backstage after his match with Barbarian in the underdwelling hallways of the Boston Garden, and then, two years later (Survivor Series 93), having a photo shoot opportunity with the Smoking Gunns and getting a free shirt. I can say that the company changed incredibly in those two years when it came to that sort of thing. This is right in the middle.

I was absolutely terrified of meeting the Bushwhackers as a kid, because I didn't want to get licked by them. This was a completely irrational but very, very real fear of mine, especially as I wandered into these backstage scenarios. I wasn't a germaphobe, but I guess I had some texture issues, and the idea of it was literally terrifying to me. They scared me as much as anyone this side of Papa Shango, what with the sardines and the missing teeth. Obviously, they're absolutely great with the kids here, even if they do lick one. Sarge has it down to a science (I caught him at a signing when I was in college and while it was a conveyor belt, he'd still find a way to engage with anyone who engaged with him). You could tell how much value he still had to the company in a show like this. It was also nice to see Sherri interacting with people, though obviously not getting mobbed like Slaughter. What really stands out though, what I will remember forever, is Virgil being completely unable to hit the "Don't do drugs" speech. I always wondered why he never got pushed more; Repo Man helps Dibiase gets the $$$ belt back a little before this and he just tumbles down the card. His liberation from Dibiase was such a huge storyline in 91 and he was legitimately over with the crowd (and he'd become surprisingly engaging destroying jobbers by the end of 92), but seeing this promo attempt makes it all make more sense.


British Bulldog vs. The Barbarian

MD: While we have a thousand Bulldog vs. Warlord matches, this is a more novel pairing. Unfortunately, we don't get much of it.

ER: We get about 90 seconds of this, nothing close to a finish, but mostly a mid match test of strength, a nice Bulldog bump to the floor, and a Barbarian clubbing forearm. But our cameraman shows a strong knack for recording wrestling, knows when to follow the action and knows when to zoom in on holds. That's a good sign. This brief glimpse of a match segues immediately into...


Beverly Brothers vs. The Bushwhackers

ER: In which Luke is biting Blake's rump, and I believe that is the start of the match. The first two minutes of this is so great, the Beverlys bumping all over for shoulderblocks and clotheslines, both taking pratfalls over the top to the floor, all leading to them smoothly transitioning to a classic cut off the ring tag match. The Beverlys look like they're having so much fun, the perfect heel team for a house show like this, the kind of time that makes a gym echo with high pitched little kid anger. Luke is just about the worst person ever at putting over offense, never falling right, barely regarding punches, but it doesn't faze Blake and Beau. Blake is dropping elbows and we get a nice cut off spot where Blake drops a falling lariat on Luke, and when we get to the Butch hot tag we get another run of big flipping Beverly bumps, with Beau bumping to the floor off a battering ram. Blake is making Butch lariats look far more powerful than they should be, and Beau expertly hooks Butch's leg from the floor, really upending him for the finish. Beverlys continue to soak up the hate on their victorious walk to the back, with Blake wiping sweat off himself and flinging at fans.

MD: This was the match that made me realize that I had to absolutely make sure Eric caught this show. If you told 10 year old me how much I'd love a Bushwhackers match like this, I'd tell you that you were crazy. If you'd tell 20 year old me, I'd tell you the same but with worse language. Every single person reading this over the age of 25 was programmed by every sheet-writing print or internet personality to hate matches like this, and it's the craziest thing in the world! Because not only is the match amazingly fun, but there's so much crafty, savvy, old tricks, put into this: the timing at the beginning where the Beverlys try to run in only to be unable to get the advantage, the fact they actually work in the hope spots and cut offs, the Beverlys working the crowd from the apron, and the bumping towards the end. Luke and Butch had this match with the Rougeaus, the Beverlys, the Heavenly Bodies, maybe even Honky and Valentine, spans of six months feuding with these guys around the horn. I'm watching this and I can feel the frustration for these kids that even at the charity show, they can't just put the Bushwhackers over here. Of course the Beverlys were happy. They had the most receptive audience possible, got to go over, and didn't even have to bump for the Road Warriors (or, if they could see their future, the Steiners).


Roddy Piper vs. The Mountie

ER: This was great. Tragically cut short by our fearless editor, so naturally we don't get the finish, but what we do get is great. Piper is such a great house show guy, and this felt like Piper with a decade shaved off his life, working like he was a Portland babyface, just an excellent school gym performance. Piper is super fired up here, and Mountie is game to work some fast exchanges with him. This would have been Mountie's first and only IC title defense after beating Bret on a house show, and it's a cool scrap. They do this great sequence that felt like a WCW Finlay sequence, with Roddy doing quick rope running and making Mountie do two quick leapfrogs, ending with Piper dropping an awesome fistdrop after Mountie drops down. Later, Mountie bails to the floor off an Irish whip, jaws with the fans, and Piper runs around ringside to punch him right in the side of the head. I wish we could have gotten the whole thing, but Mountie's heel control and Piper's crowd control made this great for what we got.

MD: We haven't gotten a ton of new Jacques over the last few years but one thing we did get was his last WWF singles match for a while, against Bret. Between that and this, I'm thinking we probably missed out on a nice long IC title run where he would have been more or less what Honky is remembered to be: a hugely entertaining, vulnerable champion with a big mouth, getting a ton of heat. Piper hits all the marks here perfectly and the fans love to see him, but Jacques is 100% on for every moment, and you buy into the stakes of it (even though it's non-title so there are no stakes) because he obviously cares so much. Even as he tries to express that he doesn't, like when he stalls and beats a ten count at the last, panicked moment. The transition point of the ref grabbing Piper's arm on punches in the corner looked great from the angle we got it, and the ref (Davis? I forget now) kept the heat off of him for the most part by being so frustrated at Jacques taking advantage. We lose the finish, but it seemed to be poetic, with Mountie trying to run one last time only to have Piper come after him. Piper got the cheap pop with the local high school shirt after the match and Jacques stayed completely on, smarmy and disaffected, until he was entirely out of sight.


Ted Dibiase/Repo Man vs. Tito Santana/Virgil

ER: Repo man actually makes some sense as a Million Dollar Man teammate, though I'm not sure it ever crossed my mind until now. We could have gotten a whole Capitalism stable with Repo and Money Inc. that would have been decried by dorks as the Worst Workrate Team Ever. And we get 5 or 6 minutes of a classically structured house show tag match, and even with guys like Repo Man in there it is so obvious how a simple southern tag structure is a much more interesting structure than the modern wrestling tag. It's a simple layout, the pros can easily hit all the beats, and the interesting ones know how to fill in the connecting stretches. Dibiase really takes it out on Virgil, laying into him with a great chop/short forearm combo in the corner that lays him out. The child heavy crowd is way behind Virgil, and Sherri is active the entire time getting into it with fans and cheating for Ted. We get a great build to a Tito hot tag, including Repo Man sneaking over and yanking Tito off the apron just before Virgil could get there. When Tito eventually gets in the building is molten, all three members of the heel squad are bumping for him, and sadly our cameraman misses the end of match Sherri involvement. We get a quick cut and the match is over, Sherri lying on the floor, and you just know Sherri took some too dangerous spill on a fundraiser show that wasn't even going to be a part of listed company history. After the match, we get some footage of Slaughter and Sherri signing autographs and shaking hands, then get a brief interview with Miss Valley, a pretty young blond wearing her pageant sash and acid washed denim romper.

MD: We lose the beginning and end of this, unfortunately, but we can see how it's laid out. I always like wrestlers with unique stances, and Darsow worked as Repo Man with a hulking hunch, even as he's coming to and exiting the ring. Dibiase does everything right here, but he's more going through the motions. We only see a bit of him, but it's obvious Darsow's more engaged. He wanted to go babyface with the character and be beloved by children. He claims to have quit in 93 because they wouldn't let him. This is the crowd for him. The heat's ultimately on Virgil and it seems ok and lets Tito come in later on with some great sweeping dropkicks when the hot tag happens, but the guy filming gets bored of it all midway and focuses on Sherri for a minute. You can't really blame him, both for Sherri's qualities and what was going on, but it's pretty funny, nonetheless. Also funny is that we miss the Sherri involvement at the end, anyway, and just cut to her being disheveled as she walks out with her losing team. A big run of Dibiase/Repo Man would have probably been better than what we ultimately got with Money, Inc.


Berzerker vs. Sgt. Slaughter

ER: I had a hunch this wasn't going to live up to my internal expectations, because how was the only recorded singles match between Berzerker and Slaughter going to do that? There is only one singles match on the books between them, and that was a 1986 AWA show in Oakland (cruelly just an hour away from me, but I was a dumb baby who didn't even know what pro wrestling was). This show is entirely off the books, and this man somehow didn't understand the magnitude of the history he was recording. The cruelty is in what we won't ever know. Did Berzerker take any big bumps? Not on the footage we have, but we have no way of knowing how much of the match we missed. What we did see was Slaughter being enough of a lunatic to take his signature bump, and I just HAVE to assume that if Slaughter is flying stomach first over the top to the floor, then Berzerker had to have at least done so twice. I had no clue Slaughter was doing that bump on 1992 house shows, and considering Berzerker was a guy who didn't let Curt Hennig outbump him, no way in hell was Sgt. Slaughter's bump going to be the only time in the match that a giant man flew to the floor of a gymnasium.

Slaughter's bump was the clear highlight, but I loved Slaughter dropping Berzerker crotch first on the top rope, because as we know Minnesotans are the best in pro wrestling history at selling their butt and balls. So Berzerker gets bounced on the top rope by Slaughter, then rolls to the floor and massages out his sore balls while still Hussing in the faces of children. I love this man. Berzerker also had a fun diving punch to Slaughter's balls, which made a ton of sense as payback for Slaughter's prior ball torture. The finish left a lot to be desired, with Berzerker arguing with the ref and leaving himself open to a schoolboy, but the match was filled with joy. I wish we got a shot of Berzerker signing autographs for Scouts after, just because I needed to see how huge Berzerker was while standing next to some kiddos.

MD: Bit of a reverse structure on this one as Nord stooges early with groin based stuff, working big as always, but maybe showing a bit more ass, to the point that he had to hit a low blow to take over. Sarge's corner bump out of the ring looked great and good on him for breaking it out given the setting. I imagine no one does it now because it defies physics, but it's a great bump and people would be into it. Nord worked the ref and the crowd and his stuff all looked credible, and Sarge is capable at garnering big sympathy so everything worked. I would have just liked to see a little bit more of it due to the clipping. Sarge took the win with a shoolboy out of nowhere, which was kind of a shame as I wanted to see Nord bump all over the ring for his comeback. Not the match I wanted, but perfectly fine as the match we got.


Orient Express vs. The New Foundation

ER: Strong house show tag, the opener of the next day's PPV, but a match that felt like a main event. Kato was really good at riling up the crowd, and the fans were way more into Owen than I realized in 1992. My favorite was a kid screaming for his attention during their entrance, wanting nothing more than to touch Owen's hand. Orient Express were unsurprisingly big bumpers, both whipping over on Owen's armdrags and taking hard ring bumps for Neidhart's shoulderblocks and lariats. Owen was super active, doing a bunch of double dropkicks and crossbodies, really felt like he was zipping around. Neidhart comes off like a real force with an almost Masa Saito presence, but he is also someone who will grab a chinlock out of absolutely nowhere, which is always so odd to see from a babyface. Tanaka was either really gassed and Neidhart was doing him a favor, or Tanaka was great at putting over the damage of a Neidhart chinlock. Still, the crowd was into all of this and again, it felt like a main event on a show with some pretty impressive star power. This was a great crowd, but obviously a crowd with 80% or more children in attendance is going to be a great crowd. Kids are the greatest wrestling fans possible, and a hot crowd made up of tiny excited screaming kids just hits differently, makes you remember the best parts of pro wrestling. 

MD: Cliff notes version of their Royal Rumble 92 match: no Fuji, shorter all around, and weirdly, less Owen working the crowd with clapping or stomping. Some sequences were exactly the same, including Owen's bridge up, springboard backflip, rana bit, and the finish with the dive and rocket launcher. I liked the hot tag here, which wasn't so much a tag as just a frenetic burst of motion as Owen zoomed across the ring until Neidhart was ready for the slingshot. The crowd was into all of it: Owen's flashy moves, Neidhart's size, energy, and charisma, the Express beating down Owen as Neidhart got increasingly frustrated, and the comeback, but it was missing a bit of a spark I was expecting given the setting and the rest of the show.


ER: And with that, we brilliantly close with a fleeting shot of Ted Dibiase, sitting backstage wolfing down a section of those Subway party subs we saw earlier, wearing the brightest purple Zubaz pants and a gym shirt that looked like a girl's blouse from Urban Outfitters. It was arguably the great wrestling fit I have ever seen. What an incredible coda to the most unique wrestling fancam I have ever seen.

 

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New Footage Friday: HOTSTUFF HERNANDEZ! RAGING FERNANDEZ! FUNK! WAHOO! ROCK N ROLLS! BADD CO!

Hotstuff Hernandez vs Terry Funk EWF 1/26/02

MD: I love the contrast here. Funk comes in trying to survive. Hernandez is bigger, stronger, younger. Funk's a man in his late 50s. The weapons are the equalizer. He comes right out of the gate by throwing a chair as Hernandez, young and brash, is preening. Then he follows up with one nasty shot after the next with chairs and tables, linking in his mastery of wrestling violence with a neckbreaker, and a pile driver and DDT on the chair. Hernandez has to get a foot on the rope, even so early into the match, after the pile driver, though he does manage to kick out of the DDT. Ultimately, Funk, really having no choice, leans too hard into it. The table he's used as a weapon, a lot like his own body, starts to break down and as it falls apart, he takes some collateral damage from a shot with it and Hernandez is able to come back. He doesn't go straight to weapon shots. He doesn't need to. Instead it's a clothesline and a toss into the corner. When he does go for a time, that gives Funk a chance to recover and toss another chair, taking back over. He's fighting against time, however, against youth and regeneration.

Funk throws everything he has at Hernandez, his own body, fists and head, but it takes a toll on him too. Hernandez is able to recover (and really all he has to do is throw himself at Funk to take back over), but his cockiness costs him once more as he misses a dive onto a table, something he absolutely did not need to do but very much wanted to. Funk comes back with a chair but leans into it too hard once more and eats a recoil shot. This time, however, instead of allowing to slow him down, he calls upon the very last thing he has left, the acceptance of his own mortality. Instead of pulling back, hesitating, recovering, he dives the rest of the way in, launching chairshots that bound off of Hernandez' head and onto his own, again and again and again, until both men collapse. Maybe it's the superior physical prowess and reflexes of youth or maybe it's the sad reality of an old man who'd used up all his luck decades before, but Hernandez falls upon Funk and takes the wholly Pyrrhic victory. Funk clears the ring after the match and basks in the crowd's respect for the effort they just witnessed and the memory of every effort that had come before.

ER: I'm not going to attempt to match the old horse poetry of Matt, but I loved this. If you were told there was a great Funk/Hernandez match out there, you would probably assume it was Funk/Gino, not Funk/Hotstuff. Funk is pushing 60 here and decides to take at least a dozen shots directly to the head, and this builds into one of the best matches of the last phase of Funk's career. This match was within the final 60 matches of his career (which I guess we can't officially call finished until the man is actually in the ground) and I think it ranks among the best of those 60. This was so much more of a big Funk performance than anyone could have reasonably expected in 2002, coming out throwing hard plastic chairs into the ring and starting the match proper with a chairshot exchange. Funk got his hands up on a couple of shots, but takes far more right on top of his head. Funk's offense looked strong, strong enough to believably put down a larger and younger man. His neckbreaker was tremendous, one of the more violent things in a match filled with chairshots and broken tables. He hits a nice piledriver and drops Hernandez with a DDT on a chair, and I loved that the placement of all of Funk's biggest pieces of offense were at the very beginning of the match, making it more believable that Hernandez was still fresh enough to kick out.

We get a great broken table spot in the corner off a Hernandez avalanche, Funk takes more shots to the head, and eventually Funk looks to only be standing by holding onto the ropes. Hernandez is just wailing on him with heavy chops, and I kept waiting for Funk to collapse in the ring. We get a huge moment of Hernandez missing a superfly splash through a table (with a perfect narrow escape from Funk, and the turning point where Funk just decides he's going to outcrazy Hernandez to psyche out the youngster is late career Funk brilliance. He misses a big chairshot that bounces off the top rope and recoils into his face, and it's one of the better versions of that spot out there. It's a spot that looks stupid at least 75% of the time, but with Funk it almost comes off as baked in. We're so used to seeing Funk hit by shrapnel and friendly fire that of course he's going to hit himself in the head occasionally. The finish is excellent, a bit of deranged theater that few could pull off, but naturally Funk is one of those few. He starts bashing Hernandez in the head with a chair, and then starts taking shots for himself, one for you, one to myself, over and over until it all catches up with him in an instant. Hernandez falls onto Funk like he's a vending machine that robbed Funk's quarters, pinning him under his dead weight. I loved this match.

PAS: Every Funk match we get is a total mitzvah. I don't think he has ever had a match that wasn't at a minimum worth watching. It's crazy the amount of punishment he was taking at this age, he certainly could have gone in there and played the hits, and everyone would have been happy. Instead he is taking multiple chair shots to the head, and getting speared into the ropes. The finish was a total joy, Funk chairshotting Hernandez and himself until they were both splayed out.  What a performer Funk was, and major props to Hernandez for putting him over so well.


Wahoo McDaniel vs. Manny Fernandez AWA 6/25/88

MD: This was pretty much what you expected it to be. Manny wasn't even 34 here (though he almost was) but he felt more like Wahoo who was 16 years older than him than Hennig who was just four younger. It felt like two old guys beating the crap out of each other. There was one fan who was heckling early on which got a rise out of Manny, and the match would have been more interesting if he had kept going. Also this is the only HH I've ever seen where the camera operator spent the first two minutes of the match trying to find someone else to film it. Premise was that Wahoo would get an advantage, Manny would go over the top/more vicious to get over on him and repeat, until Wahoo was fed up with it, scored a mule kick low blow, and they ended up outside for the countout. Nothing revelatory but one's going to complain about watching two great strikers beat on each other for 8 minutes. 

PAS: I loved this match up. One of my favorite things in wrestling is two fry cooks tossing spuds. Wahoo at one point just backhands Manny right in the face. This doesn't really go anywhere, but it is stiff as all get out, and Manny especially is a guy we don't have a ton of footage of and just watching him throw those backhand shots is nifty.

ER: This ruled, because it was Wahoo McDaniel vs. Manny Fernandez. I wanted to meaty dudes to welt each other up, and that's literally all the did. Some guy near the camera operator keeps trying to make fun of Manny's forehead. "Nice forehead! How's your forehead!?" As if Manny Fernandez has no idea that his gouged forehead looks like a topographical match of the Appalachians. Honestly I knew this match was getting high marks for me the moment Wahoo ran at Manny and threw one of his chops right across Manny's face. Wahoo knocks Manny straight onto his ass with a running backhand!! This is a high school gym crowd, and they got to witness a bigger backhand slap than I've seen in any Jack Hill movie. Manny drops to his butt and begs off, and this is a 5 star match. Wahoo is great and breaking Manny with knucklelocks, and Manny is great at being the guy brought to his knees by a knucklelock. And by the time this broke down into these two chopping each other as hard as humanly possible, I was in heaven. These are some of the hardest choppers in wrestling, and neither was holding back. They were throwing these chops HIGH too, aiming them no lower than the collarbones. We're talking the most painful sounding chops thrown right at the collarbones, neck, throat, and face. The guy stops recording while they're still kicking each other's ass on the floor, but this was a hearty meal of chops. Everyone needs these 10 minutes in their life.


Rock N Roll Express vs. Badd Company AWA 6/25/88

MD: Following the Wahoo vs Manny match is about half of a Lawler vs Hennig match. It's a shame we don't get more of it because Lawler had a lot of tools to work with there. The crowd's pretty goofy (more on that later) but it's intimate and full of some loudmouths. Hennig was super athletic and would bump like crazy for him. He had Madusa to play off of, etc. Just when it was starting to get good (missed fistdrop leading to Hennig limbwork) it cuts out. The tag match was good, if straightforward (short heat, single heat, quickly over after hot tag). Really, they were playing off the crowd and the homophobic loudmouths within it. That meant a lot of big bumping heel miscommunication spots early, a sense of Company really taking it out on Gibson when they took over, and Ricky never really taking things seriously which is why he launched a few low blows in the comeback just for the hell of it and to pop that one loud section of the crowd. That ultimately drew a DQ and a Dusty finish (I think that's what happened at least). It was, in a lot of ways, an expert performance of giving the crowd the sort of match they wanted, right down to Morton believably costing his team the match, and while that's important in examining all of these wrestlers across their career, what we end up with is me not wanting to go to 1988 Jersey City anytime soon (the whole thing was in front of a big banner stating pride in being JC students) and a match that probably wouldn't quite make the AWA set.

PAS: This is similar to Manny match, a pair of great teams kind of working their way through a formula match for a shitty crowd. Manny and Wahoo are going to stiff each other, and Pat Tanaka and Ricky Morton are going to pinball, and that is enough for me. I get the sense these teams have some stuff to have a really great match against each other, and I imagine it happened somewhere. This wasn't it, but it had enough professional shtick that I enjoyed it.

ER: Loud pre-match gay slurs aside (easily solved by a lowering of the volume for the match), this was a killer Pat Tanaka bumpathon. Badd Company don't really get much, as this is mostly the Rock n Rolls pinballing Tanaka around, but I'm cool with that. There are plenty of fun moments with teams this good, like Tanaka ducking away when he gets too close to Gibson on the apron only to turn around into a great Ricky clothesline (with big flipping Tanaka bump), just one instance of Tanaka treating this match like it wasn't at a Jersey City high school. I liked Badd Company's cheating, always love over the ropes chokes, and I loved Paul Diamond's ankle pick to prevent a tag. After the match Tanaka takes two of his bigger bumps, a nice backdrop (of course Tanaka had to get a backdrop bump in), and gets awesomely faceplanted on the ringside announce table. He and Ricky walked right onto the table, and Tanaka gets shoved down hard into it, belly flopping into that empty pool.

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New Footage Friday: DiBiase, Race, Lawler, Kerry, PS Hayes, Boogie Woogie, John Paul?

Harley Race vs. Ted Dibiase AJPW 10/31/83

ER: This was one of those matches that, for me, highlighted the structural problems that both of these guys have. Race and Dibiase are two guys who do a ton of things I like, but sometimes they do them in a way that does not make me care very much about those things. So we get fistdrops and kneedrops and headbutts and powerslams and brainbusters and big bumps to the floor, and a lot of the time it just feels like stuff they're doing on the way to filling their allotted time, and the transitions often feel like "alright that was fun, now it's my turn to try something!" Everything they do LOOKS good, the order of these things just feels off. I liked how tenacious Dibiase was, as it looked like he was trying to find ways to finish Race early, and before long he was trying to lock in sleepers and a figure 4, and I liked how that would lead to Race anchoring himself and sending Dibiase sprawling. A sleeper leads to Race ducking his body weight and flinging Dibiase to the floor, a figure 4 inevitably leads to Race kicking him off and Dibiase taking a great bump over the ropes to the floor. But a lot of this stuff that looked cool felt like both guys trying to get their cool stuff in, regardless of when it made sense. Race hits a brainbuster on the floor, but misses a headbutt off the apron. The headbutt off the apron could have been missed at any point, why do it when it requires somebody to get up right after you gave them a brainbuster on the floor? Both guys don't seem fazed by piledrivers or powerslams, and even Dibiase going for figure 4s so late in the match only read like a prop to set up him losing and not like an actual match long plan. It was much more "try to powerbomb Kidman" than "I'm wearing down his legs to win". I like both guys, I liked how everything looked, but the order of that everything made me feel disconnected from the match.

MD: There is a new 1983 AJPW TV set out there from Dan over at PWO (go get it!) and while we expect it'll take a while to figure out what's new and what's not (anyone who feel like they have a great sense of what's been out there and what hasn't, reach out), this one jumped out immediately.

We lose just a scant two minutes of this, which were mainly headlocks I imagine. It's a pretty strange creature, feeling ten years before it's time, and not necessarily in the best way. Once they really get going, which is only about four minutes in, it's bombs, bombs, and more bombs. It's hard hitting (especially the headbutts and strikes) and everything looks great, but the whole affair is pretty jarring for the time as a NWA title match. It's purely back and forth with nothing really settling for long. The spectacle and the struggle makes it stand out: you're not going to forget Race hitting that brainbuster to the floor or missing the subsequent headbutt plunge off the apron anytime soon and standing tall babyface Dibiase is the best Ted Dibiase, but this was not some high watermark of storytelling. All that said, if you're going to get a Harley Race title match, you'll probably want this one, where he does a bunch of stuff and fights real mean, instead of something where he gives up 75% to his opponent.

PAS: I imagine if we saw this as a music video in 1983 (maybe set to The Warrior by Scandal) we would thing it was the coolest fucking match ever and be begging to see the whole match. As a whole match though, I thought this was actively stinko. Eric hits it on the head, they just did a bunch of cool stuff totally disconnected from any structure. Cool bumps to the floor, huge moves, but no selling, no progression, no actual wrestling match. That brainbuster on the floor, leading to the missed headbutt by Race is about as bad as it gets. For two hall of famers who are considered all time great workers, this felt like a match you might see two rookies work at an indy fed somewhere, where they want to hit every video game spot they practiced until the arbitrary finish. Man I bet Meltzer would love this if he saw it.

Cactus Jack/Bad Company/Rock and Roll RPMs vs. Jeff Jarrett/Rock n Roll Express/Top Guns AWA 9/18/88

MD: This was a nice showcase for both sides. The 10 man tag format allows for a lot of energy in the shine since everyone gets to move in and out, with the babyfaces working together even in unique pairings and all looking good except for Rice who seemed to puff his cheeks up weirdly with every punch. The heat was all on Paul (who I initially thought was a weird choice) and I thought he looked surprisingly good, bumping high on a back body drop, selling well, fighting back in the most direct way possible and leaping across the ring for the hot tag. I thought Gibson getting cut off without chicanery almost immediately after the hot tag was a weird way to have everything break down. It would have been better if Page grabbed a leg (which would have protected the AWA champs) or even if the heels all rushed in when he had the advantage. Everything else basically worked though.

PAS: Got to give John Paul credit, he takes the biggest back body drop bump in a match with Cactus Jack, Ricky Morton and fucking Pat Tanaka. He had to be a -800 in Vegas betting for biggest back drop bump. This had moments, but kind of sputtered out instead of building to a big finish. Pat Tanaka was such a ball of energy back them, and he brought a lot of the pizzaz to this match. No big bump by 1988 Cactus which was a shocker, you figure if he had a chance to be on ESPN he would land tailbone first on the concrete or something.

Jerry Lawler/Jimmy Valiant vs. Kerry Von Erich/Michael Hayes AWA 9/18/88

MD: Weirdly, this felt more iconic to me than the Superclash title match. I think that was trying too hard to be something specific and this was lower stakes and allowed Lawler and Kerry to just be themselves. That meant they traded struts after lock ups or shoulder blocks. It meant that they got to work fun little spots around the discus punch or the fist drop or dropkicks or just double punches. It was loose and fun and really highlighted how equal they were. Extremely smartly put together to accomplish what they were trying to do. Immediately, this feels like one of the most enjoyable match-driven builds to a babyface vs babyface match I've ever seen.

If you're going to have guys working the apron or around the margins, Valiant and Hayes are pretty much the best ever. They had a little moment of playing to the ground with stomps at the beginning. Just good, charismatic stuff. This was a great little piece of color with a heated post match.

PAS: This was nifty. Totally perfect way to set up a big PPV match. We get just enough of Lawler vs. Von Erich to wet your whistle. Some face offs, some big shots, but nothing definitive. We get Hayes and Valiant being rock stars on the apron, and having a wild punch out on the floor. We have Lee Marshall and Frank Dusek making drinks and steaks bets on commentary, and we get an awesome pull apart at the end. Lawler unloading his punch combo on Kerry in the corner is all time great stuff, no one can put it together the way Jerry Lawler can.

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My Favorite Wrestling! WCW Worldwide 9/15/96

I'm currently on a train from San Diego on up to LA to visit my buddy Will and go to an Angels/Dodgers game. It's a 3 hour train ride, and I figure what better way to tell everybody on the train "don't talk to this loser for 3 hours" than put on 18 year old wrestling with all the gassed bodies, mullets, and neon singlets that 1996 still contained. I snuck on train liquor, I got grapz on the laptop (grapz on lapz!) and I'm set.

1. Jim Powers & Renegade vs. Harlem Heat

Haven't done one of these in awhile and boy did I pick a winner to jump back in on. And you know I talk shit about these guys (for 100% deserved reasons) but this was probably better than it had any right to be. I mean, it wasn't great, but you look at those 4 names and…woof. Harlem Heat has been maybe my least favorite thing about this project, as they're both awful, sloppy, horrible long match workers. But this was probably the Heat match I've enjoyed most from the era so far. When they're in there with a more work rate team it's just always sloppy and awful and ugly looking. But here they are with a couple gassed guys trying to be athletic and it's pretty fun. Really Renegade and Powers don't seem much worse than Heat here, pretty even working level. Powers - despite his ghastly 0.5 Abyss punches - was kinda fun; had a nice go behind, stomped Booker in the face at one point, worked an arm wringer alright. Renegade looked awful but bless him for trying. He tried a sort of slingshot dropkick at one point and kinda landed one foot and almost buckled on the other..but shit it's Renegade trying to do some shit. Good for him. His body press earlier was decent enough. Booker hits a wild standing spin kick that looked cool, and match ended with a potentially grisly double powerbomb where the timing was all off and Renegade almost gets spiked. Harlem Heat: We'll almost dump you on your head at least once in a 5 minute match!

2. V.K. Wallstreet vs. Ice Train

Woman across the aisle from me has a Powerpuff Girls text alert song, the song by Apples in Stereo, and it goes off every fucking time she gets a text. Which is like every minute. I like Apples in Stereo. I do not like this trend  though. Mute yer phone! I'm watching my trash on headphones, because I'm courteous like that. She also has a shirt that says "I woke up looking this good" which is really only a shirt that can be properly worn by really fat men who are comfortable in their skin. If you have even a tiny amount of good looks in you, this shirt will make you look like a real asshole. And worse, if you're like this woman, you don't want to risk the shirt sounding 100% believable. Somebody wears a shirt that says "I woke up looking this good", and my reaction is "Yeah. That probably checks out," and that can't be the reaction they wanted. Anyway, holy shit Ice Train both looked awful in this, AND won the match in 90 seconds. Was not expecting that. Wallstreet gets a clothesline, rest of the match is all Ice Train. Was not expecting a finish this soon as Ice Train doesn't do any cool squash match offense. He does a body slam, knocks VK's head into the turnbuckles a few times, Irish whips him into the turnbuckles…and then pins him with a standing splash. Huh.

Awwww yeah a commercial for Last Man Standing! That movie was pretty awful but totally enjoyed by me. Fun Bruce Dern role, fun William Sanderson role, Christopher Walken as a villain which is always great. Total piece of garbage, but I'll watch Walter Hill's garbage before almost any other director's garbage. Love that guy's vision, whatever it is.

3. Pat Tanaka vs. Rey Misterio Jr.

Goldberg's music hits and the one the only Pat Tanaka comes strolling out in his kung fu jacket. Boy that's weird. I would've loved to see this get some time, but it goes 2:15. Great. Tanaka is working a weird Kung Fu master, lots of odd tai chi poses and karate strikes. It's amusing so I get the guy trying to find a gimmick for himself. Why not? Rey is a little sloppy with some of his stuff, he kinda whiffs on a headscissors that Tanaka has to bump anyway. But this era Rey is always super watchable due to his bumps. Here he gets planted with a powerbomb off a rana attempt and does a great flip bump on a clothesline. Heenan is pretty smart on commentary saying that in the future guys will try and imitate Rey, but nobody will be as good at it.

We get a commercial for Levis wide leg jeans. "You can live your life however you want. I'm gonna live mine WIDE." Catch that wide leg fever.

4. John Tenta vs. Konan

Weird little match with Tenta taking 90% of it. Tenta had his ridiculous half shaved skullet at this point, which really seems like the next look someone like Skrillex will have (maybe without Tenta's cop mustache though). Konnan is usually pretty selfish in his matches, making all his opponents work within his sequences, but Tenta takes this whole thing. I wish he looked better as I'm a Tenta fan, but he didn't look great. He didn't look bad, still throwing a great elbow, nice legdrop and a nice powerslam. But he also had a lot of less than devastating stomach kicks and an ugly missed splash. Konna wins with a somersault senton off the middle rope to a standing Tenta. Never seen Konnan pull that one out before.

5. Hugh Morrus & MAXX vs. Nasty Boys

Wasn't expecting much from this, but whatever it was, was okay. Nasty Boys both made a point to stiff Maxx (ne Muscle) for the whole match, every time he was in. Knobbs threw a bunch of nasty punches  to the side of Maxx's head, and Sags did the same. Maxx does his part by not shying away from them, so that's kinda neat. Hugh Morrus is junk, but he hit his moonsault pretty flush here and mostly stayed out of the way. Knobbs took a nice bump after getting posted by Maxx on the floor. So much like our opening tag, 4 guys I'd rather not watch a bunch, putting forth pretty decent stuff. I'm okay with this.

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My Favorite Wrestling! WCW Main Event 5/24 & 5/31/97

1. Pat Tanaka vs. Yuji Nagata

The Main Event was pretty much the D-List WCW syndicated show, as it was 50+ minutes of recap and had one exclusive match. This was a kick in the dick as Tanaka/Nagata is joined in progress. Soooo many minutes of Bobby and Tony hanging out in the studio talking about feuds and doing "analysis" and I can't see how the one exclusive match started?! But either way, the match was cool as hell and Tanaka still appeared to be a great worker in '97, even as a tubbo. Match went only 3 minutes but Tanaka had a GODLY fist drop, flying halfway across the ring with it. Nagata threw a bunch of nice kicks, tons of different varieties, which ended with Tanaka catching a leg and hitting one of the more brutal dragon screws I've ever seen. I can't believe Nagata's leg didn't snap. Nagata's comeback is really good as he had a few great suplexes with his exploder and awesome overhead belly to belly. Tanaka was aces here leaning into all of Nagata's kicks, flying chest first into turnbuckles, eye gouging and fish hooking and dishing fine offense of his own. These guys could have an epic if given 8-10.

2. Super Calo vs. Lizmark Jr.

Decent rushed lucha match. Lizmark goes over I guess because of his size, although the announcers seemed to be putting over Calo the whole match. I actually had assumed Calo would go over, just because I know he ended up in some ppv singles matches and I don't recall Lizmark getting the same. Lizmark was in a pretty tough spot in WCW as he was a luchador, but used a lot of power offense like lariats and powerbombs so didn't really "match up" for lucha singles matches the way WCW wanted to present them (fast action, lots of flips and spins) and was bigger than all the other luchadors (save Parka), but wasn't big enough (or white enough) to be pushed with other WCW heavyweights. He and Calo work about the most basic 3 minute lucha match you can work, with Lizmark hitting a cool spin kick and Calo hitting an awesome tope en reversa/back elbow after running up the turnbuckles. Finish was nice with Calo going for a rana off the top and Lizmark planting him with a powerbomb.

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