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: AWA SuperClash IV

ER: Before our first match we find out that Junkyard Dog injured his knee the night before and was being replaced by Baron von Raschke as Col. DeBeers's opponent. I think I would have quite liked even 1990 JYD vs. DeBeers, as DeBeers is a good big bumping match for that era JYD. But there are also no records that JYD fought anywhere nearby the night before this show, or even the prior month, so I assume this was some false advertising leading up to the day of the show. Also, this being a Sunday afternoon in Minnesota, most of the crowd looks like a bunch of guys meeting up at a bar for their local Teamsters meeting. The crowd is Teamsters and 10 year olds, and that's a GREAT wrestling crowd.

Jake Milliman vs. Todd Becker

ER: An opening match that felt like an opening match. I have a soft spot for Milliman and he's a fun area favorite, a barrel bodied man billed suspiciously at 5'6". I know wrestlers exaggerate but that seems beyond the pale. This is 5 minutes and feels like a people getting in their seats match, Becker drops some decent elbows and tries to ground Milliman, Jake throws his weird arms close to body armdrags and a nice monkey flip that gets a good reaction. He also has a nice Super Porkyesque sunset flip where his large solid and compact body stays close to his opponent all the way over. There was a weird missed spot where Milliman hits a low shoulderblock right to Becker's stomach and Becker just stands there, so Jake bumps. Jake should have had way more torpedo body block moves, the guy was a toy tank. This was simple, easy, did what it needed to.

Texas Hangmen vs. Brad Rheingans/DJ Peterson

ER: Solid house show tag, always going to be excited about the Network putting up new Bull Pain and one of Mean Mike/Tough Tom footage. Bull Pain works a lot of this, building spots by complaining of hair/mask pulls early, all to just eventually land one great cheap shot punch. Face team was hiptosses and armdrags and dropkicks through much of this, while Hangmen played big bullies. I dug the Hangmen cheating and liked how Rheingans played Morton, it's cool when the more powerful guy on a team is the Morton, switches up the dynamic. DJ Peterson is kind of boring Mark Starr on hot tag, so it's more interesting to have Rheingans build to a big Saito suplex and German suplex, and I like Hangmen's accidental middle rope clothesline miscommunication to set up the hot tag. I wasn't expecting the Hangmen to get the win here so that was a fun surprise. Also, I am loving how we get no commentary, and instead get audio of a couple kids getting picked up by the camera mics, yelling at wrestlers (they must be sitting in an area where guys are walking in and out backstage). It's fun hearing them tell DeBeers that he sucks, or flip out trying to get Tully Blanchard or Greg Gagne's autograph.

MD: This was a pretty enjoyable house show feeling tag match (Hey, I just looked at what Eric wrote and he went the exact same way with it. Good for us) with the crowd playing along. Rheingans, edging towards 40, was the world's least explosive Kurt Angle, able to hit suplexes with a little effort and manage at least one cool roll up at 75% speed. The Hangmen were underrated and fed well, sold properly, and kept things interesting enough while on top. Some weird timing things throughout, like the long, droning, extended announcement (Gagne daughter maybe?) of the 10 minute mark happening right during the hot tag build up, or Brad getting in the way on the apron during the double-clothesline set up. The Hangmen should have gotten a better run somewhere.

Col. DeBeers vs. Baron von Raschke

MD: This was originally supposed to be JYD vs DeBeers which is a kind of fascinating thought but would have been much more so in 1982. I think the crowd was actually happier with the Baron in there, which is MN for you (not that 90 JYD was any great shakes but you get the idea). DeBeers had lots of heat throughout the night, even when it wasn't his match. This was by the numbers with Baron's stuff (even his knee lift which he used twice to set up the Claw tease) pretty rough. I did like the briefcase block of the claw late in the match. Since it was a replacement, the babyface went over but they immediately beat him down to cover for it.

ER: I liked the sound of this on paper, just because DeBeers is a big guy who bumps big - and bumps plausibly - for old or otherwise immobile guys. DeBeers is big enough that he can easily control and bully, and he's someone who works in his stooging well. And it turns out I like the match even more in execution than I did on paper! They kept it short (around 6 minutes) and Baron (who is just about 50 here) doesn't have any time to get in trouble, so what we do get is DeBeers bumping big for kneelifts that don't quite lift, and working a few really fun sequences around a limited opponent. DeBeers has a great bump through the ropes to the floor, which leads to him slam dunking Baron's neck right over the top rope in an awesome visual. DeBeers controls with nice punches, backing Baron into the corner and throwing uppercuts, short shots to the face, and nice headlock punches, Baron throws some nice comeback punches, and the finish had two VERY great pieces, two things that I absolutely loved: DeBeers gets tied up in the ropes Andre style, Baron calls for the claw, gets people all exciting with some babyface goose stepping, comes in for the claw...and Sheik Adnan blocks the claw with his briefcase!! Honestly, I was way into the rest of this match already, but if the rest of this match had been a 5 minute chinlock leading to that spot, I'd be writing just as favorably about this match. The fact that they roll to the floor and set up a spot where DeBeers accidentally lobs a straight right hand into the ringpost was the tastiest icing. This ruled.

Tully Blanchard vs. Tommy Jammer

MD: This was a Tully performance that would have worked at almost any time, in almost any place, except in front of this crowd and against this opponent. They had been running with Jammer a bit. He was undefeated. There just wasn't anything there. Tully had Christopher Love with him and the subtitles on the network (since I couldn't make it out at first) said that he had the Perfect Ten Baby Doll with him, which merged together, was kind of a horrifying thought. They went fifteen minutes with Tully sneaking a win at the end due to a foot grab from the outside by Love. This was obviously an attempt for Tully to help make Jammer by giving him the near-entirety of a long-ish match, but the fans wanted nothing to do with it. To Tully's credit, when he realized how little they were engaged, he worked even harder from underneath and tried engaging them more, but it was blood from the stone here. Part of it was them not caring about Jammer and part was the fact that Tully wasn't a regular in the area. I honestly don't know what more he could have done here.

ER: 90s Tully feels like one of the bigger things that we wrestling fans missed out on. He was still in his mid 30s here, and his Muga match 5 years later showed he was still a clear top in-ring guy. It sucks to think of how many fun Tully matches could have happened during those 5 years if things had gone differently. And a match like this really showcased the kind of match Tully could craft without...well without much of anything. Tommy Jammer was basically a Tony Garea style good looking babyface with one hold, and not much else. And I thought it was great. It was a cool glimpse at what Tully could do with just about...well, just about literally anybody. This is a 15 minute match and the first 9-10 minutes is Jammer holding Tully's arm behind his back and Tully actually making that interesting. There are a couple times Jammer loses his grip and Tully holds the whole thing together, and I was completely engaged the whole time by just how engaging Tully was while wrestling a match on his back with one arm. 

I thought Tully made the pinfall attempts way more interesting than they should have been, thought he feebly fought back well and made it seem like Jammer was actually bossing him through things, and loved the moments like his little panicked expression when Jammer was dragging him back to the center by his arm, and Bert Prentice yanking his leg from the floor, just Tully panicking hilariously at his potential quartering. Tully took 15 minutes of minimalist wrestling and made me interested at any turn. He hardly used any offense, with his biggest spots being the two times he grabbed Jammer by the front of the trunks and flung him to the floor (for his part, Jammer falls nice and recklessly to the floor). Tully works some interesting stuff with an incomplete Sharpshooter, holding Jammer up vertically and trying to leverage a pinfall out of it, and I loved it all. I was kind of transfixed by Tully the whole match, really begging off and making Jammer look like someone he was actually threatened by. The fans don't seem to care one lick about Jammer, but there is no way in hell that was Tully's fault. There are so many other wrestlers throughout history who would have benefitted from a legend like Tully crafting a match like this around them. I loved it.

Yukon John Nord vs. Kokina Maximus

PAS: This was a little disappointing, both these guys are such huge bump freaks, you would hope this match would have some big bumps, instead we got a lot of Kokina nerve holds. There are some fun clubbering exchanges, and Sheik Adnan getting his comeuppance, and Nord has an all time great big boot, I just wanted more.

MD: This was lead-babyface Nord, and by damn, I think that it could have worked on a bigger stage. Maybe not with the Lumberjack gimmick, but you almost didn't need a gimmick. He was a big crazy guy who could kick people in the face. Kokina here makes me think we were robbed with the scowling sumo gimmick. He had so much swagger and cockiness, like a proto-heel Uso. He could move a hundred and fifty pounds heavier but he could really move here. The match itself was a little too nervelock heavy but Nord really worked it well from underneath. The gimmick was that Al-Kaissie had a 50K bounty on Nord but that the briefcase was actually just full of paper, so after 1.) the colossally big boot (as in the biggest boot ever, as in if they were going to keep doing TV, it should have been the very last thing in the opening montage) 2.) Kokina accidentally squashing Kaissie, and 3.) Nord flattened him with it for the pin, causing it to fly open, Kokina had a babyface turn which the crowd was mostly into. Twin Wars had Nord and Norton face the Hangmen and how great would the team of Nord and Kokina have been instead?

ER: How did it take so long for us all, collectively, as a fully undivided group, to realize how incredible John Nord was. Even just his pre-match routine of putting his giant fur trapper hat on the ref while taking his rapid fire back bump, that stuff just cracks me up every time. I love this guy. This is also a look at super skinny (on his scale, and by that I mean when his weight would have still shown up on a normal human scale) Kokina, and I had a blast with this. Nord is such a gigantic guy, with a big goofy personality and tons of skill, and he really makes this whole thing work. It's a lumberjack stip, even though it really only comes into play when Adnan is thrown back in after the match, but he's the one actually engaging the lumberjacks and putting on a spectacle for fans in the back. We get fun early moments of shrugged off shoulderblocks, and Nord is someone who will run as hard as possible into a shoulderblock, and I loved all the ways Nord made a nerve hold interesting (my favorite was him grabbing at Kokina's hair, leading to a dramatic hair whip from Kokina as he sank the hold back in). 

Things get really good as Nord is left staggered by a thrust kick, so Kokina clotheslines him over the top to the floor. You knew Nord was going to take SOME bump to the floor, and here's where he plays it to the back. Once on the floor, being larger than any of the lumberjacks containing him, he starts stumbling his way through all of them, a man lost in a mosh pit. Nobody is hitting him, he's just making his own action, falling into chairs and then getting tangled in a chair, throwing that chair into the air, and then pie facing Jake Milliman; honestly it felt like he was channeling Terry Funk, and a gigantic Terry Funk is too much fun to even consider. Back in the ring we build to Nord hitting a tremendous big boot, just an all time highlight reel big boot, with him practically doing a mid air splits as his right leg is fully extended and kicking right through Kokina. Now you're talking about boots, kid. These two, both heels by then, obviously never crossed paths in WWF, so this was a dream match for me. It didn't live up to my internal expectations, but I knew those were too high to live up to. It certainly left me smiling and satisfied, and still perplexed wondering how Nord wasn't an absolute megastar.

Larry Zbyszko vs. Masa Saito

MD: Not a ton here. They worked it a little bit like Larry was the vulnerable challenger (likely because he was going over) including a long sleeper. There were flashes of great matwork at the beginning, counter-heavy instead of moving in and out to spots like you'd expect in a title match but it didn't last long. Saito had history but maybe not the right sort and he wasn't the right guy for this role in front of this crowd. The finish felt five years before its time though, with Larry surviving one Saito suplex only to get his feet up on the ropes to press back harder on the second which theoretically (physics be damned) let him get his shoulder up at the last second.

ER: Whose physical appearance in pro wrestling reads more "Badass Motherfucker" than Masa Saito? And here he looks even more badass wearing that big beautiful title belt (truly one of the better belt wearers in wrestling, as this footage shows) while standing next to Business BBQ Riki Choshu in his dad jeans and ponytail. But I really dug this match. Neither man really felt like they were sticking to assigned face/heel dynamics; you assume Saito would be the heel just because "not American" but Zbyszko doesn't really work like a face for large parts of this. But I liked all the work and when heel work would happen it was never cheating, it just meant each guy worked more aggressively, and that's more interesting to me. I thought the early grappling was really tight and a lot of this felt hard fought, more of a struggle than the match structure I was expecting. It looked like Larry tried to take Saito down right at the beginning and Saito blocked it and immediately turned it into a shoot Fujiwara, with both then scrambling for dominance. The standing grappling down to even stuff like their knucklelocks were totally engaging to me.

I liked them working holds, and I thought that was a good way to highlight the other nice feature of the match, an Actual Good Guest Referee in Nick Bockwinkel. I liked how he would handle the holds and pinfalls, getting down athletically and engagingly without ever being tempted to get in the way of action or drawing attention to himself. If it wasn't Nick Bockwinkel and just some guy, he would just come off like a really good ref. It's not a surprise that Bockwinkel is a good referee. It feels like something he would excel at. I loved how they made big parts of this look like a fight, and the turnbuckle spots were some of the absolute best in recent memory. I was impressed with how great Saito was making shots into the buckles look, really looking like Larry was forcing his face into them....and then moments later Zbyszko was ramming that top buckle so ferociously that he looked like he was trying to hardway bleed. You watch Saito slamming Larry's head into the buckles for a 10 count, and you tell me the last time you saw that spot done as well. 

The Saito suplexes were great, loved the way he drops Larry straight down. But man did I hate this finish. It felt both ahead of its time, and completely annoying and nonsensical. Saito lifts for a Saito suplex, Larry walks up and pushes up off the ropes, sending him backwards even harder than the other suplexes he took...the suplex even harder than he took any other suplex in the match. He landed higher up on his shoulders and it looked hard as hell...but then he just got his shoulder up at the 3 count. I hate that fucking finish, and if this was the first time I'd have seen it I'd have hated it for the first time. There's a big muddled confusion as Saito is announced as winner and Bockwinkel slowly and too casually walks over to Zbyszko and raises his hand, and then Zbyszko acts surprised and disbelieving that he won, which came off like a really bizarre reaction. A fan is shown in the crowd holding a "Larry Does Not Suck" sign, which I am still actually laughing about. It's calmly and sincerely meaning to answer a question I didn't realize was being asked, and it open-faced honesty is so hilarious to me. Not "Larry Rocks" or "Larry Rules", but taking the opposite approach and saying "Larry Isn't Bad at This" or "Larry is Trying and I Noticed". I love it and hate every part of the ending, even my favorite front row Teamster immediately understanding what happened and trying to alert officials that Larry got his shoulder up, even Saito sending Larry into a killer postmatch beatdown backdrop (okay no I obviously loved it because I'd probably love a backdrop in any part of a match). This match has now left me confused.

The Destruction Crew vs. Paul Diamond/The Trooper

MD: The more I think about this, the more I like it. Given the purpose it had, it was nearly perfect, actually. The only issue was that the crowd kind of loved the Destruction Crew. There's not a lot that they could do about that, I guess. So the deal here was this: one of the big matches at Twin Wars was going to be Rheingans teaming with Benchwarmer Bob Lurtsema - a local sports star/sports bar owner pushing 50 - against the Destruction Crew. This was going to set it up by having him be a special ref. It follows the formula of Zbyszko vs Ledoux a bit, which feels like it was a success for the AWA but I can't at all quantify that. Two ref shots for Lurtsema (this being the second) and then the match. Therefore, instead of the babyfaces getting a real comeback here, Lurtsema was going to cannibalize that pop.

With that in mind, they sort of flipped the script. At first I thought it was because Wilkes was super green and enthusiastic, but it's because of this. The first half of the match is Enos being petrified of getting into the cage and then tossed into it by the babyfaces again and again and again as he bleeds all over the place. Generally, I like cage matches where they really build to the use of the catch, where the babyfaces barely get to use it at all until their comeback, but it made sense to topload it here. The transition was Trooper missing a ridiculously big elbow drop off the top and what really kept putting him down was Tully putting a chair up to the cage from the outside so that the Crew could toss him into a completely no-give situation. The fans were generally behind the Crew over the babyfaces but that still got heat every time they went to it. Honestly, I get what they were going here and I think, if you add in the post-match promos (of which we have a litany of, including Verne, from off camera, completely browbeating Bischoff who looked like the most uncomfortable sap in the world), it was a fairly successful promotional tactic. The problem is that this was shaping up to be a pretty solid cage match and we got robbed of a comeback. I wish they didn't eminent domain away Verne's collateral so that we would have gotten another year of the Tully/Crew pairing.

PAS: I thought this was really good, and if the Lurtsema stuff had worked for the crowd, it could have been an all timer. Man the 90s pairing of Destruction Crew and Tully Blanchard has to be an all time What Ifs. I could just see that trio running rampant all over a fed with more of a future. Enos takes a big time thrashing early and it was some really good babyface standing tall stuff. Trooper's big missed elbow ruled, and the beatdown was great stuff. I agree that putting all the heat on Benchwarmer made the match feel incomplete, the Trooper just gets wrecked, we never get a big Paul Diamond hot tag or Trooper comeback. You could have still had that, and then run some business with Benchwarmer Bob. I actually like this roster, they are a little light on babyfaces, Saito should always be a heel, and really Nord is better as a heel too, but the heel roster is pretty great.

ER: I thought this was legitimately great. I thought it stood up among the greatest tag matches in AWA history, and honestly it's my favorite tag match I've watch in 2019, and it's one of the greatest tag team cage matches I've seen. I loved this, every bit of it. It was a perfectly condensed 10 minutes of bell to bell asskicking. Both teams were so good, Diamond and Trooper exceeding all expectations and beating so much ass that this was like watching Destruction Crew vs. Destruction Crew. Mike Enos eats a beating on every single inch of that cage, he was such a great meathead pinball, flopping onto his face and comically stepping over the whole ring, taking all sorts of hard face first shots into the cage, and bouncing back and forth between big Diamond and Trooper punches. Enos gets busted open and his big bumping doesn't slow when he gets bloodied up, and watching Diamond and Trooper punch away at a loopy Enos's bloody head gives me a full head of respect for Diamond and Del Wilkes. 

Wayne Bloom comes in and I love what he does with all of this, scrambling up and over the top and getting pulled over, getting punched on the top of the cage, and then coming up with several dramatic blocks of his face going into the cage, all leading to an eyepoke to finally get the Destruction Crew out of the red. Then we get Trooper flying 2/3 across the ring with a missed elbow, and you get Enos and Bloom throwing their dickhead elbows (Enos would run at the faces and hit these rad almost standing elbowdrops, running into them at a nice lean elbow first, whereas Bloom has one of my favorite traditional elbows and all of his elbow strikes look even better with his sharp ass 'bows), and by the time Tully was holding up a steel chair on the floor for the Crew to run the faces into, I was over the moon. And that was before Destruction Crew's insane Doomsday Device had even happened. Swoon. Say what you will about the Lurtsema stuff, I thought it was fine minor celeb involvement. I have no idea how much of an actual local legend Lurtsema was to people 15 years after he was a Viking, like would a 2019 Minnesota native get excited for Lew Ford dropping a leg drop on someone in a cage match? Probably! This whole thing ruled. I genuinely do think it stands up with the greatest AWA tag matches in history, and completely unheralded matches than many knew existed are some of the greatest joys in wrestling. I already knew I was going to eventually do a Destruction Crew/Beverly Bros. C&A; I didn't realize I would be looking through Paul Diamond or Del Wilkes' careers either...

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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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New Footage Friday: Paul Diamond, Liger, TNT, Hashimoto, Claudio, Navarro, Solar, Quack

Negro Navarro/Claudio Castagnoli/Mr. Ferrari vs. Mike Quackenbush/Solar/Kendo LLM 3/9/09

ER: This is something I've heard about for a decade, but have never seen, and now I have! And it is just what I hoped it was. It has a super satisfying build and the pairings I hoped to see, thought everyone was good at ramping up the intensity of the match. Just some maestro lucha straight outta Delaware, a state I think about less than at least 40 other states. At minimum I wanted some exciting Navarro/Quackenbush in spades, and we got a nice bounty of them; the whole match starts with them and far more time is devoted to them together than anyone else in the match, which is what I wanted. The pairing is playful but can turn painful in a blink. Navarro was looking spry as hell and it was great seeing him whip Quack's legs in a predicament and then clap his hands and break, like a magician doing a trick for you, and then repeating it to see if you can figure it out. Quack is a perfect dance partner for Navarro as he has a bottomless bucket of ideas and can execute them at any moment, and it was cool seeing them both executed and blocked. I loved a moment where Navarro was on his back, Quack grabbed his hand and immediately did a handspring off Navarro's chest, dragging the arm with him and setting into position; not long after Quack went to grab Quack's hand and Navarro immediately dropped it, dropping Quack in the process. There exchanges were what trippy lucha matwork dreams are made of. We didn't get to the Navarro/Solar section until 3/4 of the way through the match, really building to the longest running feud, and their short time together was pretty amazing. It's a match-up we've all seen many times but they appear to be doing their thing in double time, and I mean these are guys in their early 50s and we know that, but I don't think I've ever seen someone in their 50s move like this. The others in the match are nice complements: Ferrari is a husky boy who resembles no kind of sleek Ferrari that I've seen, but I liked what he and Kendo pulled off together; I thought Claudio was somewhat out of place - his strength is his work as a base and there weren't really fliers here - but there were rewarding moments with him; I loved a Navarro moment right at the end, going back to the theme of Navarro as Lucha Magician, where he comes in only to boot Solar in the balls, and then disappears by bumping backwards through the ropes to the floor, like he threw a flash bomb after a ball kick. Why do I suddenly want to see Navarro vs. Jarek 1-20?

MD: Big thanks to Rah for reuploading this after other things went down. We get two falls out of three here and while a lot of the narrative is sort of the sloppy indy affair you'd expect, that's not why you're here. This is about seeing Navarro work with an empty canvas and with a wholly receptive opponent. Quackenbush must of had the time of his life getting stretched. He was smaller and very flexible and totally willing to let Navarro bend him in any number of shapes. That his own stuff looked so good is a testament to both of them too. There were a few moments that looked just a little too cooperative (or involved excessive waiting) but in general, everything was way more fluid than you'd think. That's not a slight on Quack either. It's just that the stuff they were trying was so tricked out. The rest was ok. Claudio was deep into shtick at this point, flexing at every point. He worked a bit with Solar and it was ok with lots of armdrags, but really didn't have nearly as much time to breathe. Kendo and Ferrari were fine rounding things out. We had the segunda and tercera here and we probably missed a bit more with the others not having the primera. The rudo beat down towards the end gave me just a taste of the other thing I wanted here, Claudio and Navarro working together. Navarro's a ham too (though the world's most astute, dangerous ham) and you figure the two of them could have really done some fun stuff. We get a hint at it but no more. Watch this for Navarro and Quack, which felt twice as long as it actually went but in the best way.

PAS: Tomk and I went to this show live in 2009 (long road report which really pissed off a bunch of Chikara die hards here) and outside of a random bit of this showing up on a weird streaming site later that year and disappearing (that might be what Rah got his hands on) I hadn't seen any footage of this show. Really cool to revisit this a decade later. From reading our live review it looks like we actually get most of the first fall, and the third fall but miss the segunda. Some of the narrative issues Matt have had might be because of that. I loved Navarro schooling Quack, and we get almost 10 minutes of those guys rolling, sometimes Navarro's catch and release mat work bugged, here it worked great. He was showing this indy punk that he could tap him any time he wanted, so he would lock him up and let him out, just to lock him up again. In that second fall we don't see here, Quack gets the tap, which really helps the story. The taste of Solar vs. Navarro was incredible, just adderall fast which was nuts for so many old guys. Too bad Navarro pissed off Quack, as he would have been an awesome semi-regular in Chikara like Skayde or Saint, still not knowing what happened between them, I am always siding with Navarro.

Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Paul Diamond NJPW 7/18/93

MD: I wasn't entirely sure what to expect out of 93 Paul Diamond here, but he delivered. He could have been the third guy in a Kroffat/Furnas trio. He had some great junior acrobatics, including a cartwheel out of a monkey flip, traded holds well with Liger (though there wasn't a lot of chain wrestling though what they did was ok), and had great offense (this deep German, a slide through the legs from the outside in to a Northern Lights, what looked like a Casas seated dive off the apron, and a gourdbuster, plus this great kick in the corner), and mostly everything was smooth. For all the limb targeting they did, it could have used a bit more focused selling, but this was an overachiever of a back and forth juniors match.

PAS: This was a Diamond showcase match, and he really looks like a guy who could have had a Benoit/Guerrero/Malenko like run in the New Japan juniors division. He had some big time offense for this time period, his Northern Lights suplex looked great and his Casas senton off the apron got great height and distance. Liger is an all time master at working with a guys strengths, so maybe you need to see Diamond's Kido singles on the same tour to really get a sense of his potential, but this was a weirdo match up which totally delivered.

ER: The Paul Diamond showcase we've all been waiting for! Phil is right that Liger is great at showcasing any guy's strengths, a guy who will always have an interesting match with a young lion, a guy I saw try to do things with Blue Demon, a guy who is going to make a singles match work. And Diamond is a guy with cool stuff! More cool stuff than I realized! He kind of came off like a junior heavyweight Jerry Flynn. I dug how the crowd reacted to him cartwheeling out of Liger's monkey flip, liked the matwork as he's a guy I've never seen work the mat this long, hit two really nice lefty lariats, a cool hooking kick in the corner, a guy I've seen plenty of but felt like I was seeing something really different from him here. There were a couple awkward moments but overall this was a blast, and jeez does Liger take 2" of Diamond's height with his match ending Liger Bomb. He practically dropped Diamond vertically, and we're obviously happy that this exists. 

Shinya Hashimoto/Akira Nogami vs. Brad Armstrong/TNT NJPW 7/18/93

MD: I also had my doubts about this one (it fit into our weird match ups for the week), but I thought it really held up. Vega as TNT can be great or goofy depending on how deeply he leans into the shtick and who he's up against. Here it's perfect though, because Hashimoto's the perfect intersection of toughness and charisma. After a bit of anticipation by having Armstrong star the match against Hash, TNT comes in and it's great. They ran a couple of sequences of TNT controlling with cheapshots and martial arts punctuating with both guys missing spin wheel kicks and TNT doing his karate chop pose at the end. Finally though, Hash hits one and follows it up by mocking the pose with a middle finger payoff. Great stuff. About one third of the way in, Brad starts to work heel which is surreal but really enjoyable, with them primarily working over Nogami. It's a little nervehold-centric but with some good hope spots (including a headbutt flurry) built in. The hot tag's good, with another wrinkle of Brad and TNT cheating to take back over on Hash (including Brad's always awesome Russian Leg Sweep) before Hash comes back for the win. Good, measured stuff, making the most of the tag structure, including utilizing break ups instead of kick-outs. Post match, TNT and Hash clown around with the pose and middle finger again.

PAS: I really loved the opening section with Hashimoto and TNT, it was more Stan Lane martial arts then normal Hashimoto stand offs, but I thought it worked really well and I loved Hash doing the TNT pose and flipping him off. Still this was a Hashimoto match where Hashimoto is almost an afterthought. Most of this match was Nogami being worked over by TNT and Brad and Nogami isn't really a compelling face in peril, and TNT and Armstrong aren't doing many interesting things in control. It picks up a bit at the Hashimoto hot tag, but that doesn't last long before the finish. Fun oddball matchup, but I want more Hash.

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