Found Footage Friday: 80s SPAIN~! PANTHER~! PSICOSIS~! REY~! FANTASTICS~! KIKUCHI~!

Santi Rico(c) vs. Manuel Acapulco 3/30/83

MD: Spanish wrestling! Don't get too excited. This looks like a one off and it is well, well past the glory years. As an overall presentation, it's fascinating though. This is on a variety show of sorts and likened to when they had someone run two days straight from one city to another or a stunt man on. Here it's the defense of a title. That said, they were ready to put their best foot forward and it was a celebration in its own way.

The centerpiece was not Mr. Ferraras, the president of the Castilian federation who was interviewed beforehand and presented  the belt/sash (a nice collection of flags upon it) to the world champion at the end. It wasn't the wrestlers, Santi Rico billed from Spain who had been active for a few years at least and Acapulco (Montezuma?) who was billed from Mexico. Apparently neither had 100 matches under his respective belt. More on them later. It wasn't even Quasimodo, our friend from the French footage, who was known in French as the Caribbean Cyclone, who was there to witness and talk about his school of 30 wrestlers he was training. 

The centerpiece, to me was Bobby Deglané, who even with my rough Spanish and YouTube's translate function, came off as an exceptional commentator, especially for someone who was never on national TV as such. He was a stalwart of the radio days however and was as poised and collected as one could be. He introduced all the rules (which part of the foot you could hit with, for instance, or the twenty count on the outside which was different than boxing) and explained all the techniques. They describe the realness of wrestling as half spot and half spectacle and he was quick to point out the damaging effects of shots to the head for instance. 

Some of the normative things were interesting. They called it American wrestling, Catch as Catch Can. The referee had a whistle for rope breaks. It was set up in six rounds of five minutes with a minute in between. There were ring girls to kiss cheeks and present trophies at the end as well as hold up the round numbers. They even said "Seconds out" at the start so there were elements of British wrestling as well as French (or vice versa depending on how things developed). The crowd was very into it despite being potentially unfamiliar.

And the wrestling was ok, spirited, high effort. It was rough around the edges based on what you'd expect, but that made sense given how quiet the scene was. I'd say that Acapulco looked the smoother of the two as one out of every three things Rico.went for didn't quite work. A lot of the holds did, headscissors, inner armbars, headlocks, mares, with all of the escapes. Rico had dropkicks and they varied. Acapulco leaned rudo as the match went on, throwing knees and rabbit punches and eventually headbutts that led to color (have to make things feel legitimate). This was not Cesca vs. Catanzaro. I'd say it wasn't even Flesh Gordon vs. Eliot Frederico but it was a pretty fascinating glimpse into a people trying to showcase and remember their lost tradition, a tradition that we've more or less accepted that we'll only ever be able to marginally touch.

Isamu Teranishi/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Fantastics (Bobby Fulton/Tommy Rogers) AJPW 1/11/91

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HjFd7h3fKU

MD: We've missed a few matches from AJPW Classics but it's a bit tricky since some of what gets shown are matches we already had JIP where we just get the first 5 minutes. Maybe we still should go back for something like MVC vs. Jumbo/Taue but I never know. This, however, is, I think, new. And it's fun if flawed.

I struggle with this Fantastics run as they tend to do a lot of stuff and really eat up their opponents if possible. They got the memo and knew they had to look strong in order to be over in All Japan but it really doesn't make for great matches, especially when they're up against Footloose. Then you just get noise. This was better than that because they were able to dominate and Kikuchi's a lot of fun working from underneath. Lots of individual fun stuff whether it was Teranishi trying (and sometimes succeeding) to land on his feet against Rogers or the Fantastics hitting a bunch of double teams. 

Still, when Kikuchi was able to fire back or Teranishi able to stand strong, the Fantastics generally just shrugged it off. The worst of this was when Fulton missed an axe handle onto the guardrail from the apron. Pretty good spot, something you don't see every day. Didn't change the trajectory of the match a bit. Ah well. This isn't Can-Ams vs. Kikuchi, that's for sure. Still pretty fun for what it was though. Just what it was had a ceiling.

ER: I thought this was real tough, hard fought, with a feeling like it was going to turn unprofessional any moment. There were moments of miscommunication between Rogers and Teranishi, but it added to the vibes of Something Going Down. Really, it was probably just because everyone worked real stiff and kept fighting all match. Matt correctly notes some seemingly big spots that don't change the trajectory of the match, but I thought that just made everyone come off tough, wanting to fight. I like Asshole Bully Fantastics as their style is totally different. You still see those moments of babyface grace - look at how clean Tommy Rogers hits a sunset flip off the top - but there are more moments of these little guys throwing real shots. Rogers throws two hard back elbows at Kikuchi's eye when he seems surprised by a hammerlock reversal, so Kikuchi throws two elbow smashes at his eye. I love when Kikuchi is targeted with real abuse, like they all know he can take it and it gives them license to fill up their asshole meter. 

Tommy Rogers bodyslams Kikuchi from the ring out to the damn floor, just slips out the back and throws him over the top on his back. It looked more like John Nord eliminating a job guy from a battle royal, not little power pack Tommy murdering a fellow junior. It looks nasty...but Bobby Fulton's full speed baseball slide dropkick as Kikuchi is recovering looked even worse. Fulton flew between the bottom and middle ropes and connected so flush that he bounced back clean. Now, I expected this to lead to a long heat section on Kikuchi, but there's that thing about everyone just coming off tough, because when they go outside to capitalize Kikuchi just fights them both off with elbows and a stiff clothesline. Bobby Fulton looked like a real killer here, even more than Rogers, and seemed to work a bit better with Teranishi. I was shocked by how fast old man (same age as me) Teranishi flipped onto his feet, and Fulton seemed surprised by it as well. Kikuchi's comeback was real choice, ducking a tandem clothesline and hooking Fulton's waist for a "surprise" German suplex that Rogers instantly dropped an elbow on. The finish was real sick too, with Fulton scooping up Kikuchi for a Samoan drop and flinging Rogers onto him with a cannonball. The Fantastics worked as bully heels in All Japan better than the similar sized State Patrol, and I bet there are many who have never seen them quite like this. 

Blue Panther/Cien Caras/Psicosis vs. Konnan/Rey Misterio Jr./Angel Azteca Promo Azteca 11/30/96

MD: Roy says this is new and even though it cuts out before the finish, that's over 20 minutes and when you look at who's in it, it's worth checking out. Blue Panther was paired with Konnan early and it was sort of fascinating what they did. I'm not saying it was always exactly what I wanted, but it was always interesting. Panther had all of his tricked out stuff and Konnan just sort of roughed his way through in a believable, competitive way. Psicosis or Caras would sneak in to get cheapshots whenever he had the advantage. Rey and Psicosis was old hat but the best damn hat you might want with how Psicosis would base for Rey and Caras and Azteca had some stalling and cheapshots around Azteca getting things in. That was the primera, ending with some rope running with Panther and Azteca and Konnan vs. the world before he set Rey up with a monkey flip right into a 'rana that was pretty damn spectacular.

Segunda has a brief but great Blue Panther vs. Rey exchange and Psicosis stooging beautifully as he was heading into the ropes when Rey was doing the 619 dive tease and he bumped on it. Psicosis also got jammed on a monkey flip in the ropes by Konnan and took a bump over the top after some great struggle. Caras overpowered Rey and the rudos took over. They kept the beat down going into the tercera (including Blue Panther just tearing at Konnan's eye) before Konnan mounted a big comeback against everyone and things picked up towards the finish as it all cuts off. Some very fun pairings and imaginative stuff here though. Tons of personality too.

ER: Any time 20+ minutes of prime footage turns up of these guys, it needs to be covered, and this is a fun as hell way to watch these guys, so many fun exchanges and individual performances. Any new Rey/Psicosis interactions are going to cause excitement, and the more Psicosis footage we get (there is a lot) the more obvious it is how much better he was before WCW. WCW really sanded all the edges off a tremendous all around rudo and boiled him down to being a base with a couple big bumps who wasn't really great at working 3 minute singles matches. Whenever I watch a lucha match from the same exact era he was working WCW, he's so much more of a character, so much more fully formed, so much more of a star. His stooging is an incredible part of his rudo character, one that was mostly boiled away when he became Rey's touring dance partner. Here it's alive and thriving. Tripping over the ropes and getting upset with the ref about it is a great Psicosis trademark that wouldn't have translated to American audiences but was perfect for Mexican audiences. He's able to work more violently here than he would in WCW, and him being more of a flagrant asshole gives greater weight to all of his big bumps. 

My favorite things about this were the Panther/Konnan matwork in the primera, and Cien Caras's increased involvement as the match went on. I don't think I've ever seen Panther hit the mat with Konnan and I thought it was awesome. I am someone who thinks Konnan is better than given credit for while acknowledging that many of the criticisms are fair. He doesn't look like someone who can keep up with Panther on the mat, but he doesn't need to. Panther doesn't need someone who can mirror his abilities on the mat, he is good at working with anyone's personality and ability. Konnan is no slouch, and I like the strength component he brings to mat reversals. Panther may catch him with slickness and technical ability but Konnan is able to use strength to adjust the hold around himself. There was a cool takedown where Panther went inside and used his body to force a single leg, working himself up to an armbar, and Konnan started escaping from it by getting one of Panther's legs in a scissor and forcing it one direction, then grabbing the leg nearest his head and pushing that another direction, so both wound up in this awesome tangle where Panther still had a sub but Konnan was forcing his limbs apart. 

If Psicosis was someone who dumbed his style down for American TV audiences, Cien Caras was a star whose character wouldn't have translated to American audiences at all. He is such a stud, but wouldn't be perceived as a stud to Americans, so all of the great stuff he does here wouldn't get over at all. This cool Mexican stud in his goatee, who keeps going for cheap shot attacks all match and bumping almost to avoid interaction. I loved the end of the segunda, where his boys started being pinned and he bumped himself over the top to the floor, eating shit in the process, running away from Konnan just to avoid being one of the guys taking the fall. But in the primera he also bumped around for Azteca and took a big charge over the top to the floor after missing him, setting up one big bump on offense to get over his big "own goal" bump later, meanwhile always running in and kicking an opponent hard to break up a pin. It's a shame we don't have the finish as I really wanted to see the payoff of Panther goes after Konnan's eye, but you don't need to watch this for its Great Match potential, just watch it to see some legends at various peaks, doing exchanges you haven't seen. 

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Found Footage Friday: BACKLUND IN KUWAIT~! BUSHWHACKERS~! CONDOR~! ESTRADA~! PSICOSIS~! VOLADOR~! WINNERS~!

AAA TV 5/21/95

MD: A new Roy Lucier drop. I think the top two matches were already out there so we'll dive into the undercard. 

Karloff Lagarde Jr./Mr. Condor/Perro Silva vs. Brilliance/Diamante/Zafiro

MD: I loved the primera beatdown here. The rudos just hopped out as Mr. Condor wrapped a cape around a tecnico's neck even as he was coming in with the valets and the commentators were just casually announcing who would be in the match. Business as usual. Some gnarly stuff on the beatdown with Condor's arching power bombs, a giant lifting face plant, and Perro Silva looking like a beast between the way he threw himself into things and this brutal reverse hotshot where he dropped the back of the neck onto the top rope with a spinebuster like twist instead of the throat. Argh. 

This was going just two falls with a fed up fiery tecnico foul finish so they actually teased a comeback early in the segunda which was pretty spirited, tossing rudos into the crowd and what not, before it got cut off to set up yet another comeback a minute or two later. Sort of a false short segunda (almost makes you wonder if there was a cut, but I don't think there was). Down the stretch Mr. Condor bled all over the place even on the undercard and the tecnicos got a lot of revenge but they lost their cool and the rudos took this one by DQ. Everyone leaned hard into their roles here and the match was fun because of it.

Antifaz del Norte/Panterita del Ring/Volador/Winners vs. Arandu/Jerry Estrada/Misterioso/Psicosis

MD: Some of our Monterrey pals here in the form of Panterita and Arandu (who came out to the Flash Gordon theme by Queen!). Very nice to see them in this mix with some of the AAA mainstays. That's an awesome rudo side right there. And honestly, this was great. The primera was at least somewhat subdued. Misterioso was leaning hard into his gringos loco look and attitude and was dodging Volador. Arandu bumped all over the place. Estrada teased his big bump over the top but didn't give it to people. Psicosis was an absolute jerk paired with Antifaz. I love watching him just exist and antagonize people, even on top of his basing and offense and bumping. He's one of the best bullheaded jerks in wrestling history. Anyway, the tecnicos took it after some exchanges and general chaos with Volador getting a shot in on Misterioso on the outside too.

Things went absolutely nuts in the segunda though. They started destroying both Antifaz and especially his mask. Somehow Estrada got a fork and started to stab away, lick the thing, paint his face with blood, just have a merry time. Then the comeback had all the crazy bumps you might imagine. Psicosis took the corner knee over the top bump as wild as I've ever seen it. Estrada just got yeeted into the third row like a rocket on a reverse whip. I'm not sure I've ever seen that concrete ground look harder and more solid. Finish was the rudos getting back in and getting Antifaz' mask off so thoroughly and clearly in the camera that someone could have picked him out of a police lineup. Just wild stuff in the back half.

Mr. Bob Backlund/Leif Cassidy vs. The Bushwhackers WWF Kuwait Cup 5/11/96 

MD: Recent Richard Land upload. I had thought we'd be getting the Yokozuna tag vs. Backlund, but nope, we've got the Bushwhackers instead. I don't know exactly how much Mr. Bob Backlund heel footage we have but whatever we have, especially after he got shunted down the card, it is 100% not enough. He's as absurd and over the top here as humanly possible and it's wonderful. First off, he comes out to the Rockers theme with Leif and he wants absolutely nothing to do with him. Cassidy tried to bow down to him and go for a handshake and point to the Bushwhackers and everything under the sun and Backlund just shook his head and shouted NOOOO. 

Then, there'd just be random booing no matter what Cassidy and a Bushwhacker was doing in the ring and the camera would cut over and Backlund would be out there on the stage gesticulating to the crowd and going wild and getting huge heat. When he came down he went right after some kid in a Bret shirt and he never really let up. It takes minutes for the match to begin because every time you think it might, he has another fit to huge crowd reaction. When they get going, they do some heel miscommunication spots almost immediately and then have Backlund get shown up by a Bushwhacker, including sneaking out and pointing to his head only to have him right behind and then hiding in the corner just to get bitten on the butt.

They eventually take over on Luke's arm and it's all pretty good with some hope spots and cutoffs until he finally makes the tag and they do one last bit of miscommunication before Butch gets the roll up. Just unbelievably entertaining. Lightning in a bottle. If you could follow one wrestler around to every house show, 96 Backlund feels like a great one to pick. 

ER: When you get access to a 1996 Kuwait show where Bob Backlund is the third oldest (second youngest?) guy in the match, I feel we are then obligated to write about that match. There is so little footage of Mr. Bob Backlund from this era and now we officially have our most substantial look at him. I loved Backlund's look and attitude during 95/96, when he was mostly a house show worker and cantankerous TV presence, but we don't have a lot of footage of him actually wrestling. We have so much footage of his 92/93 babyface return, which I think is mostly awful (unless I find one credible source telling me that it was an elaborate troll and he was fucking up every single non-Doink wrestler's timing intentionally, then I might like it), but not nearly enough of heel Mr. Bob Backlund. Now we have real footage of Backlund charging at a Kuwaiti 11 year old and getting in his face, just because he was wearing a Bret Hart shirt. Backlund singled that kid out and went straight for him (and the kid loved it). 

Throughout my wrestling fandom, not that long ago in the grand scheme, I had no room for bullshit in my wrestling. I wanted action, and I wanted wrestlers to get to the action. I'm not sure when it changed, or what inspired my initial dislike of it. I viewed it as "guys not wanting to work" and maybe it was due to Scott Keith and others demonizing of stall tactic wrestlers like Larry Zbyszko, spurned on by older local indy wrestlers who were taking a Friday night off in the ring. When we did the initial WWF 80s set, I had the Rockers/Rougeaus Full Bullshit match (from France or Italy) ranked very, very low. Not many years after that, the Rougeaus match in Puerto Rico where they take forever to lock up while getting pelted with diapers and other garbage became one of my favorite matches to show friends who were and were not wrestling fans. I don't know when the change happened, when I went from wanting action to embracing bullshit. The change happened quick, I know that, and is surely directly related to indy wrestling styles becoming about All Action, no doubt caused by similar people to me who grew up being told that bullshit and stalling in wrestling was bad. 

Now, most wrestlers are petrified to let anything breathe. Well, either they are petrified or they honestly have no idea what it even means to let a match, or sequence, breathe. They surely never watched wrestlers who knew how to do this, and they surely won't be seeking any who did so. Bullshit became extremely rare (and has only gotten rarer) and now that action is the literal only thing on the menu, I find that I cannot wait to shove my nose in a steaming plate of Bullshit whenever I have the opportunity. And Mr. Bob Backlund was allllll Bullshit. This entire match is 90% bullshit, and I chose to prioritize it over the two awesome lucha matches unearthed above. I don't think anyone takes a bump until well past the 10 minute mark, although Backlund does get knocked off the apron by Cassidy, and he hits the ground running and gets in the faces of more fans. So look, I'm not saying all of this was good. The Bushwhackers are old and they aren't going to bump or throw punches that look good - although Butch Miller throws a fucked up clothesline to Cassidy's neck on his hot tag - and a lot of the bullshit won't seem unique to anyone who had the privilege of seeing guys like Honky Tonk Man work indy shows in the late 90s, but the unique setting and the bizarre pairing and the rarity of Fully Unhinged Mr. Bob Backlund made this well worth your time. Backlund does none of his strength routine, none of his amateur wrestling, and I don't even think he took a bump. Yet he was On during every second he was on screen, a true weirdo being his weirdest self in the weirdest possible live wrestling environment. 

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Found Footage Friday: MICHAELS~! GOLDUST~! CACTUS~! SABU~! REY~! PSICOSIS~! GALLAGHERS~!

Doc Gallagher/Mike Gallagher vs. Scotty Andrews/Donn Lewin 1950s Buffalo

MD: Wrestling Films has posted a lot of things lately but a lot we already had. This one does seem new to us though. It's a relatively rare look at Donn Lewin (Mark's brother, who we have a 1951 match we're very high on) though they do say he was a twelve year vet here. The Gallaghers are, of course, very good at what they do, and what they do is cheat, goozle, and clubber. Stooge too. Andrews and Lewin control early and Mike really scrambles to try to make it to the corner while in a top wristlock and it's fun stuff. They trade off keeping that wristlock on until the Gallagher's start switching off with illegal chokes themselves. Honestly, for an old tag, it all breaks down sort of quickly, building to Doc holding the rope down so that Scotty crashes and burns to the floor. It all came off quite well and the crowd, even in the studio, was hot for it. Lewin had good fire in the ring while this was going on but he wasn't the legal man so him pinning a Gallagher didn't matter. They got Scotty back in there and made short work of him. Very fun sub-ten minute match here.

Cactus Jack/Psicosis/Sabu vs. Rey Misterio Jr./Super Calo/Winners IWAS 10/21/95

MD: This was an Arezzi show with AAA and ECW talent and was a gem. Of course, with the Vault, we just get the primera, but we'll take it. I do wish sometimes they'd go a little further on some of this. Why just give us Goldust/Michaels if they have the whole card (maybe they don't?). Why give us just Gonzales and Hogan interacting after the finish if they have the whole Money Inc. vs. Megamaniacs lumberjack tag (that they must), etc. But we take what we can get, and this is a very cool thing to have.

It's the primera, so you get some posturing, some ambushing, and a couple of exchanges. Psicosis is great here, tossing a chair in at first, mocking Rey with a little dance from the apron, and then taking all of Rey's stuff like an absolute king, including getting pressed head first into the post in an impossible sort of way that he made seem not just possible but feasible. They teased Jack vs. Rey for a moment there but we ended up with Jack vs. Calo instead, still a fun and weird scenario. That was mostly Jack's forearms in the corner but they were great, so I'm not going to complain. Sabu got to take some of Winners stuff and land on him repeatedly. Winners tends to look super charismatic in this era (it's after the point where he lost his mask). It builds to chaos and Rey hitting the tightest 'rana on Psicosis to pick up the fall. Every indication here is that the rest of the match (even if it ended in a no contest) would have been just as fun, plus they probably would have mixed up the pairings a bit. Ah well. We didn't think we'd ever get even this much so we're glad to have it.

ER: I fully second everything Matt said about the unnecessary tease aspect of the WWE Vault. Here's one scorching hot half of one match from a Chicago AAA show. Let me see the Koji Kitao/Masaaki Mochizuki match. Let me see what 2 Cold Scorpio does on a show with cool luchadors. There's a Superstars taping Dark Match Jarrett/Bulldog ladder match released on the same drop as the incredible Michaels/Goldust match we praise below, but from that same Superstars taping there was a Sid/Kama vs. Michaels/Undertaker dark tag and that's the kind of shit that I would also really want to see. If they have one, they have the other, so just put the shows up man. We don't get shows, we get teases of footage that isn't being released. 

That said, we now have extended sequences of Cactus Jack repeatedly elbowing Super Calo in the face like an early version of Necro Butcher in Chikara. It's amazing how much faster Cactus was in '95 compared to '97. That bump card filled up fast and the Jack/Calo pairing would have been so different just a couple years later. This feels like the best year for it to have happened. Cactus elbows him in the face but good, and he also takes two big bumps to the floor for him, including getting clotheslined over the top and later fully catching his missile of a dive. Winners looked so good, a guy who went on to an iconic gimmick but in '95 made a fascinating "what if" among the guys who could have crossed over to the US mainstream, instead of just being thrown out to die on a couple of WWF shows. His plancha soars far off camera and he had such potent tecnico energy any time he got in the ring. Did he really debut the Abismo Negro gimmick at the Royal Rumble? Anyway, Rey/Psicosis was so amazing in '95. I said Cactus lost a lot of speed just two years later but seeing Rey/Psicosis in '95 after watching all of their '97 work and you see so many things that slowed down and got changed. Rey still had his original knees here and was so much faster, while Psicosis had a smoothness that had vanished by summer of '97. "Clunkiness" sounds like I'm insulting his work, but compare some of his bumps here to the same ones two years later, and those later bumps seem like someone doing clunky versions of Psicosis bumps. His ringpost bump is incredible, getting alley-ooped into the ringpost but doing it in a way that looked so alien, just amazing. His fold on Rey's huracanrana bends physics, like he was a human Popple whose head could easily be folded into his own ass. 

 

Ladder Match: Shawn Michaels vs. Goldust WWF 8/24/96

MD: This is not new, per se, but it's an amazing footage upgrade to a match that I've seen at least a few times. It's one of those matches that we give people new to the community on the way in (like Dump vs. Omori or the Savage vs. Garvin cage match). What we had before, however, was a pretty blurry handheld, and this is crisp and beautiful single camera ringside footage. Early on when Goldust brings the ladder towards the ring, you can hear it scraping against the ground perfectly. It's quite the footage upgrade.

And it's a match worth seeing again. When we handed it to people, we'd say it was one of the best ladder matches ever. So much of that is because they delay the use of the ladder. It shows up early as Dustin goes for it and then once in the heat as he puts it over the guardrail and ring to create a hard surface to drop Shawn on, but other than that, it really doesn't come into play until the back half when they start to try to win thing. 

What you get before that is a rough but generally conventional match between Shawn and Dustin where all of Dustin's stuff, which generally looks great to begin with, looks all the better because of Shawn taking it. Just the drop down punch alone maybe never looked better. A bit of extra zing and extra electricity. It means instead of having a match full of contrived spots around the ladder with a lengthy set up and dashing one's suspension of disbelief, they just get to do their thing, and their thing was as good as almost anyone in the world in 96 and we have so little footage of them doing it together.  

The setting is great, an outdoor show at the Canadian National Exhibition Stadium (the site of The Big Event) with a giant Ferris Wheel lit up in the background. The card was stacked with gimmick matches (casket, strap, street fight, etc.) so it's pretty remarkable that they showed the discipline that they did. You get some big bumps (Shawn over the top, a splash off the ladder), but it's all smartly put together. Early on they tease a Curtain Call and then Superkick. Dustin pulls off the turnbuckle pad to do some more damage. Late in the match, Dustin takes a bump off the ladder into it face first but recovers to try to catch Shawn in the Curtain Call while he's climbing. This time when Shawn goes up and over he actually hits the Superkick and is able to win. It just hits a bunch of marks between thought and execution with just enough discipline to hold it all together, to put it above any number of more spectacular ladder matches. Now we get to see it so much more clearly.

ER: This is some incredible footage. I'm not saying this as any kind of brag, but I stopped watching new WWE matches well over three years ago and I haven't looked back. It wasn't a decision I made where I consciously said, "After today, NO MORE!" Because it wasn't a conscious decision, it was the culmination of something that had been building up for several years. There will always be enough people on the roster who I enjoy watching, but what began majorly turning me away was the entire presentation of the product, of the wrestling. I don't think there has ever been a wrestling fed in history who makes their in-ring product look shittier than modern WWE. What an ugly product, directed by people who seemingly hate wrestling, with garish LED lights and quick camera cuts and identical match structures designed to be ROLLING into commercial breaks. Everything is bright as hell, phony as hell, manufactured as hell, and as inauthentic as possible. This match could have feasibly happened in WWE some time in the last 5 years, but you take this exact match and present it the way WWE now presents pro wrestling, and the whole thing would have been half as effective. 

The ring work in this is undeniable. We hardly have any Dustin/Michaels matches (how many of the other Goldust/Michaels World Title house show matches do we even have? Any?) so that makes this extra special. Dustin Rhodes told me that Shawn Michaels is one of his four favorite wrestlers of ALL TIME. One of the four on his Mount Rushmore (with the others being his father, Terry Funk, and Barry Windham). I can't imagine higher praise for a peer, and you can see that respect - mutual respect - in the brilliant and extremely energetic way this match was worked. 

But you can really see that energy because of the way this match was filmed. One camera, at ringside, now in HD detail so crisp that it feels like you're roving ringside while two greats in their prime worked close up magic in an amazing outdoor carnival setting. 20,000 polite but excited Canadians outdoor with a lit up Ferris Wheel in the background like a nighttime Super Nintendo background. The work in the ring was so clear, the camera so embedded into the action, that you feel the very hard bumps both men take and see just how hard they're hitting each other and, eventually, a ladder. The sound is so good that you're put directly in the middle of this carnival. The sound of Dustin's back hitting the ladder is or Michaels hitting a table engulfs you. You run this exact same match today, only with WWE's modern direction and lighting, and it would play as half effectively. 

All of Dustin's strikes - his great worked punches, his great stiff punches, his hard slaps - would be jumped away from, all of Michaels' big bumps - taking an almost Falcon Arrow on a ringside table, springing away from a Dustin uppercut, recoiling off the ropes after being tipped off the ladder more than once - would have been hit with the ugliest fast zooms and held for reactions. Even the small bits of comedy play better from this live ringside angle. I cannot tell you how hard I laughed at the very beginning of the match at the face Michaels makes, when Goldust - jumpsuit hugging those buns tighter than you could ever imagine - approaches him in a flirtatious manner and Michaels uncomfortably looks off to the side, like he doesn't want to make eye contact for fear of being lured in. 

I wish we had a dozen more Michaels/Dustin matches. We have a Raw match and this excellent ladder match, where you can see their off the charts chemistry. 

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New Footage Friday: SABU~! PSICOSIS ~! REY JR! KANEMOTO! SAMURAI~! DEVIL'S REJECTS! CASKET!

Psicosis/Sabu vs. Rey Mysterio Jr./Konnan IWAS 7/1/95 - FUN

PAS: This is from John Arezzi's Patreon and a cool chance to see Psic and Rey at their young peak. This is JIP which is a shame because Psicosis and Rey opening sections are usually huge highlights. This was them doing a lot of TJ/ECW stuff, like cookie sheets and chair shots. That isn't what you want really out of 1995 Rey Jr., although there were some real moments, including a nasty springboard rolling senton. Sabu absolutely eats shit through a ringside table, and sometimes you forget about Sabu, but you shouldn't. Konnan had some nice clotheslines, but was Konnan. Fun little snapshot of a time. 

MD: We come in somewhere in the segunda here and it's impossible to say that what we haven't isn't a lot of fun, even if it's not at all complete. Right at the get go, the rudos take over, and Sabu is beautifully cast as a rudo, with Rey as a perfect receptacle for his body thrashing assault. He hits all the classics, contorting off a springboard, using a non-folding plastic chair as a launching pad, twice, and hitting the Arabian Facebuster with some sort of metal tray. You have to applaud Psicosis' restraint, as I've seen him do some crazy things, but here he didn't follow any of Sabu's antics and try to outdo him (he might have been able to but at the expense of a year or two of his lifespan), though he did hit a pretty nice moonsault. When the tecnicos come back in the tercera, it's by whacking skulls with said metal tray. All of this builds to Sabu absolutely wiping out through a table as Konnan moves. It was definitely a shame that we lost the opening exchanges but Konnan wasn't exactly zooming about in the bits of offense he got in late, so maybe it's not the end of the world. What we got was more or less what you'd imagine it to be, so long as you imagined slightly more Sabu than Rey.


Koji Kanemoto vs. El Samurai NJPW 3/17/96

SR: Crazy stiff match that builds to a huge finish. A nice reminder of how good the NJPW juniors could be in the 90s. Samura is fired up to begin, slapping the taste out of Kanemotos mouth before hitting a big dive. Samurai is this weird guy who is often dull but when he‘s on he‘s pretty great. He was on here working like Fit Finlay, dropping elbows across Kanemotos face, even headbutting him in the nose. Of course Kanemoto is a right fucker too and when he comes back he cracks Samurai with nasty stomps to the skull and kicks to the ribs. The whole match was pretty much all guys stubbornly sinking into submissions, not cooperating on basic moves and brutalizing each other. It builds to a pretty big crescendo, Kanemoto is slapping around Samurai, pulling him up spitting on him. He goes for a big German Suplex off the apron (you know, this was before moves like that were thrown out 10 times a month) but hits his own head weakening himself, his hatred got the better off him. Samurai in desperation mode trying to inch out a win after being beaten to a pulp was great, hell this whole thing was pretty great. Apaprently before there was only an 8 minute TV version of this available before so praise the lord for handhelds like this so we can get the full undistilled brutality.

PAS: This was killer stuff, a lot more based around stiffness and grappling then I remember from this period. 70% of the match was hard nasty grappling and forceful stiff shots. I loved those short elbows which Samurai was throwing across the bridge of Kanemoto's nose and his cheeks and Koji of course is going to respond in kind. The Kanemoto kimura counter of Samurai's German Suplex was incredible looking and the big spot section at the end had appropriately big spots. Spots on the apron are an overused thing in wrestling today, but not in 1996 and the German on the Apron was incredible stuff. Very cool this showed up in a more full format. 

MD: Liger vs Otani from the same show has been out there and talked about but this didn't get released in full apparently, which is a shame as it's both a title change and a hell of a battle. They get time on this and work it that way, mixing holds and hard shots and then escalating into bombs. Samurai's great early on after an match-starting tope, just bullying Kanemoto all over the ring, switching holds anytime Kanemoto starts to come back. It's all both perfectly smooth while still being accented by nasty shots. While Samurai had an advantage early and Kanemoto has an advantage late, a lot of this feels very even, full of gamesmanship, even if no one can chip away at a specific body part. It's a theme throughout with them going for similar moves and managing similar counters. The bombs, when they come, are outright huge, a reversed suplex to the floor, a kick off the top to a head dangling on the ropes, the German onto the apron that crushes both guys. This leads to Kanemoto's advantage and a great finishing stretch with the sort of parallels we've seen all match where it could have gone either way. Exciting stuff.

Devil's Rejects (Dominus/Iceberg/Azriel/Rev. Dan Wilson) vs. Team Anarchy (Jerry Palmer/Jason Justice/Micky Free/Abyss) NWA Anarchy 11/4/06

PAS: Dan Wilson talked about this match on my podcast it was the end of the Team Anarchy vs. Devil's Rejects feud and the start of Reject's vs. NWA Elite. It wasn't the bloodbath brawl I was expecting, this was worked mainly as a straight main event six man tag. Lots of big showdowns and some booking but mostly a traditional match. Abyss was fun as a guy getting hyped for a hot tag, but Abyss vs. Dominus punch exchanges are no bueno. Iceberg was a fun momentum eraser, just killing folks with big splashes. They really put over Palmer, as he is suplexing and spearing the heels, gets the dramatic stretcher to the back only to return, and finishes off Rev. Dan by stabbing him. Definitely left the crowd satisfied, especially with the AJ Styles cameo. 

MD: If we've learned anything from all of this Anarchy footage it's that they knew how to lay out these big matches. Here, Abyss was the special attraction on the side of NWA Anarchy's team, with fireman owner Palmer involved on one side and satanic emissary Wilson on the other. They went out of their way to shine up Palmer early on knowing he'd get taken out by Iceberg and it was a tricky balance. Azrael was in there to take his stuff and outside of a back body drop and some of the moments where Palmer just threw himself at him, it didn't look all that great. Obviously, it wouldn't have worked against Dominus or Iceberg but you didn't want him getting his hands on Wilson before he came back from being stretchered out either. If I was laying this out, I would have had him get a few more assists from his partners as he was hitting his stuff. Punching Azrael in the corner so he could hit a big shot from Justice or Free or Abyss and then Palmer could hit something. That's a nitpick though.

Abyss was a great cheerleader on the apron and it was fun when he was in there working with Justice Served. Once Palmer got taken out, Wilson served as just enough of an irritant to rationalize the heel advantage. It all built to the implement of destruction being unleashed and Palmer's return before things got cute (but in a crowd-pleasing way) with Tempers interfering and AJ Styles making a surprise appearance. I would have liked to see the Casket play into things a bit more before the finish. That's my only other nitpick. Even if it was just a few more shots in there. In general, it's no surprise the promotion lasted so long if it was giving fans moments like this and the others we've seen so often though.

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New Footage Friday: Nuevo Lardeo Super Card

This looked like an all-timer of a discovery, and only ended up being a cool novelty

Full Show

Damián 666/El Hijo del Diablo/Espectrito I/Super Crazy vs. Gitano/Mini Rey Misterio Jr/Rey Bucanero/Zorro

MD: This was a ton of fun. I've seen less atomicos with a mini than you'd think and maybe that means that the novelty still gest me, but Mini Rey was really good in his underdog role, Espectrito was very good getting punked by larger guys as a counterpoint, and Damian was incredibly giving (and a real louse, cheating when he didn't have to instead of facing Rey straight!), to the point where I came out of this thing primarily wanting a singles match between him and Mini Rey. I never expected the two of them to be the main pairing for the match but it absolutely worked. Everyone else worked, but maybe not too memorably. I lost track of Zorro after the primera and only caught track of Bucanero at that point. There was a little clipping too but you could tell this was fun nonetheless.

La Mascara vs. Antifaz del Norte

MD: Not going to lie. I'm not sure who Mascara is here, but I thought this was pretty good. They shook hands right at the start, as this was a title match, but Mascara started with the cheapshots almost immediately thereafter. Antifaz had just begun to get back in it when the brazen double-teaming set in and he had to spend the rest of the match fighting the odds. To their credit, they made it fairly compelling and you felt the triumph of his win in the segunda, just as you probably felt like the screwy finish for the tercera made the journey they'd taken you on a little less worthwhile.

Arandu/Pimpinela Escarlata/Pirata Morgan/Psicosis vs. Felino/Mascara Sagrada/Super Parka/Vampiro

PAS: We really only get parts of this, and it gets cut off in the second fall. There were some highlights, with Pimpi looking like a total killer just unloading all of the tecnicos including big overhand right chops and flinging chairs. There was also a great Psicosis vs. Felino exchange, not sure how many times those two interacted, but man did Felino's speed and Psicosis's recklessness meld well. 

Pierroth vs. La Parka

MD: We got a little burned on the promise of this, because really what we have here is most of the primera and segunda and just some clipping of the tercera, but it's ok. I really loved those first two falls. I also really loved the finish. What I didn't love were the glimpses in the tercera of the ref interference, so I'm almost happier not having it. We lose the very initial scene-setting of how Pierroth takes over, but between the heel ref and everything else, you can guess. The beatdown's good enough that it doesn't matter. Pierroth has great clubbing blows and both of these guys can milk absolutely everything, from a punch to the gut to a chairshot on the floor. There was mask-ripping, blood, Pierroth just being a total jerk, and it had that one core element you want from an apuestas match, from lucha in general, that buzzing build towards a comeback. 

Pierroth planted him with a power bomb and the beatdown continued into the segunda. The buzz built too, to the point where the fans were chanting for Parka while Pierroth was all but laying on a chinlock. So it built and built and built, until the lightning crack of Park's kick to the side of Pierroth's head, the greatest thing that can possibly exist in pro wrestling, the moment of comeback in an apuestas match. These guys really milked it too, with Parka having to really fight back after that moment. He did though, getting amazing revenge by wrapping a chair around a trapped Pierroth hanging on the apron. The ultimately finish played off the powerbomb in the primera and that will always work for me. A tercera for an apuestas matters so much more if you don't know the outcome; here, we did. What we didn't know was when and how Parka was going to come back and how that would shoot through the crowd like electricity, the build and the payoff. That's what I want and that's what I got here.

PAS: This is one of the legendary holy grails of lucha libre, a huge drawing feud and one of the bigger mask matches of the 1990s. We have had highlights before, and this looked like it was going to be the most complete version. Unfortunately while we get the first two falls which were great, the third fall was basically clipped to incoherence. There were glimpses of cool shit, though. I loved Parka just slamming Pierroth in the temple with punches, and the big Parka enziguiri was incredible, looked like he beheaded Pierroth. But man this was such a mean tease, hopefully someday more of this will arrive.  

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New Footage Friday: ROCK N ROLLS! MX! DANDY! PSICOSIS! REY JR.! PANTHER! SUPER CALO!

Rock and Roll Express vs. Midnight Express NWA 9/7/86

MD: Pretty rare RnR vs MX match from WCW Sunday Edition featuring Dusty on commentary with Tony. It was what you'd want, flashy opening stuff that didn't at all wear out its welcome and a couple of heat segments with all of the roll-up hope spots you usually get from the RnR. Everyone looked great but Eaton looked like one of the best in the world, feeding big, hitting huge offense (the Alabama Jam here was used to cement the first bit of heat and really give the Express control, for instance), and doing tiny things like taking out a leg with a small kick to stop a block on a suplex. There were a couple of cuts due to commercial breaks but they didn't mess up the flow. We saw the transitions clearly, including them using the replay to take us back after a break. The finish was wonky with Dusty literally causing the MX pin to be reversed, but the post match with him sacrificing himself to a Bubba splash was good pro wrestling. It made me want to see a six man at least.

ER: Outside of the finish, I thought this was great, and a real strong Loverboy Dennis showcase. Everyone was part of this showcase, though, Dennis just had a performance that made him look like one of the toughest men in wrestling. A big chunk of this was MX taking apart Robert's leg in real sicko ways, and even though it didn't actually lead to anything, it was work I loved to watch. Condrey has a ton of fascinating work out of half nelsons and 3/4 grapevines, so good that I want to see the entire alternate timeline of Condrey working shootstyle in Japan once his stateside gigs dried up. Condrey's Alabama U Style, where are you? He really knows how to tie up Ricky and Robert on the mat, and the pins he forced them into with his leg grapevines looked impossible to escape. And when he wasn't tying up their legs to work headlocks and pinfalls, he was dropping his knees into Robert's thigh, into his shin, violently twisting his ankle, and then handing it off to that savage Beautiful Bobby! At one point Bobby is hyperextending Robert's entire leg over the edge of the ring apron. Robert is on his stomach, and Bobby is slamming the front of Robert's femur into the apron, then pressing and forcing his leg down over that edge, truly disgusting legwork. Cornette adds one of his all time great racket shots to the match, flying in from offscreen with the handle of the racket aimed straight at the jugular. HHH always looked like a dweeb for using the handle of a sledgehammer as his weapon of choice, but Cornette really looks like the master of making a short handle look like a deadly weapon. Hell, in the post match melee, Cornette even shoulderblocks Ricky Morton through the ropes to the floor, like a man tripping another man into a fountain display. Rock n Rolls looked great and matched strikes with the fierce strikes of MX, and even with the actually stupid Dusty finish, this whole thing was classic stuff. 

El Dandy vs. Ray Gonzales CMLL 8/26/95

MD: A lost Dandy title match. Interesting primera here. Gonazlez controlled with fairly simple armbars, with Dandy working from underneath with a few hope spots, only to get cut off and contained with the arm again. I don't know if they didn't trust Gonazlez to do more complex matwork or not but it still worked because Dandy was working so hard to sell everything. I know on paper, that doesn't sound like much, but you don't often see a primera in a title match worked like this and I'm not sure there are many guys who could have done it quite like Dandy, so it stood out. The segunda was quick with a short bit of revenge with Dandy working over the leg and then a beautiful Northern Lights Suplex. The tercera had some back and forth and chicanery but eventually settled down to them returning to what worked in the primera, Gonzalez working a bodypart (the leg) and Dandy selling. They rolled out of the ring on a figure four and both got counted out and it ended up pretty anti-climactic. If this was building to an apuestas match, it would have worked but it seems like this was the end of the program. Still, a good look at just how great Dandy was at selling.

PAS: A new Dandy title match on paper is really exciting, this was a miss though. Gonzales is a guy who got pretty great in Puerto Rico later in his career, but he looked way out of his depth here. There was one of the worst clotheslines I have ever seen and Dandy really had to dumb it down for him on the mat. His little heel struts and stuff looked bush league too, just a zero of a performance. Dandy had a nice moment or two, his selling of the leg in the tercera was cool, and I like the figure four roll to the floor spot, but you are hoping for a missing gem when this passes by your youtube feed and this wasn't that.

ER: I had no idea Gonzalez ever showed up in CMLL, even though just a few years after this he became the reason I started trading for Puerto Rico tapes. The Ray Gonzalez I traded tapes for was not the Ray Gonzalez here, and many of the flaws in this match look like they could be blamed on miscommunication. I think Phil tuned out early on once Gonzalez hit that flying "clothesline" but considering Gonzalez follows it up with a crossbody block using the exact same form he used for that "clothesline", I assume it was just a spot that wasn't supposed to happen. It's amazing how much poise Ray had just a few years later, that was mostly absent here. It was a mistake to work this as Gonzalez trying to fit into Dandy's lucha setting, as while he had a nice missile dropkick and a couple decent bumps to the floor, he couldn't facilitate the level or speed of work Dandy was capable of. The most interesting this got for me was the beginning of segunda, where we got a glimpse of what could have made for an excellent title match. Ray got rudo heat during the break between falls, and knew it. The fans were rejecting him and it looked like he was going to really run with that, approaching Dandy with an extended right hand, left arm tucked behind his back, and a telegraphed double cross kick getting caught. Bringing some Puerto Rico rudo bullshit into the elegance of a skilled tecnico lucha title defense would have made for a great style clash, like a southern US heel just punching his way through a match opposite Blue Panther. But almost right after that Gonzalez falls back into line, and the rest of the match is worked like the boring end of the Flair vs. Terry Taylor spectrum. Dandy really did a lot to try to make this work, but it's hard to deny that Dandy could have likely had a better singles match with any wrestler on the CMLL roster. Let's all just go back a few days and remember how cool "El Dandy vs. Ray Gonzalez" looked on paper. 

Misterioso/Rey Mysterio Jr./Súper Caló/Volador vs. Blue Panther/Heavy Metal/Piromaniaco/Psicosis AAA 8/11/95 - FUN

MD: Not your average atomicos. You had Rey as captain, Signo as Piromaniaco, maskless Volador, and Calo in hatless, sleeves-only shirt, dancing glory. The story was Rey vs Psicosis, first delaying it and then paying it off. As they cycled through the pairings in the primera, Panther made sure to intervene and rob the fans of that first Rey vs Psicosis exchange. After a mini-beatdown, Rey would mount a comeback and allow the tecnicos to take the primera. The bigger beatdown came in the segunda, and watching Heavy Metal toss Rey around made me really want a 95 singles match with them. In the tercera, Rey came back again and we finally got a killer little Rey vs Psicosis exchange with a spectacular finish. Piromaniaco looked good using his size to bully tecnicos and eat their stuff, but the gimmick had no legs. Panther didn't do a lot but everything he did (the aforementioned cut off, choking Misterioso with part of the ring, ripping up what I choose to believe to be an anti-Tirantes sign, stooging with Psicosis on miscommunication spots) was very good. At times this was fast and loose and all over the place. The camera work missed half the dives. It's really hard to go wrong with cleverly building a match around Rey vs Psicosis though.

PAS: I thought this was mostly pretty forgettable outside of the Rey vs. Psicosis stuff which was incredible. I kind of enjoyed Signo adding some 80s style bumping and brawling to more 90s style lucha, but it didn't really lead to any exciting moments or anything. Psicosis taking the segunda caida with a brutal top rope guillotine was great though. The tercera exchanges between Psicosis and Rey were the highlight. Rey at this point was as elusive and fast as anyone ever, Psicosis was his perfect dance partner, and the finish top rope spiked spinning DDT was awesome. Is that a move they only broke out once, or is there a WCW Pro match which ends in it too?

ER: I was really excited for this one just to see Signo as Piromaniaco - a hood I've never seen him under and one with next to no footage of - and he did not disappoint. In fact, most of the guys in this didn't disappoint, but none of this really turned into anything that felt like a full match. Things were a little disorganized and a lot of the threads got abandoned, but there were plenty of individual moments to make this an easy, fun watch. Obviously, with these names there are going to be some moments. Heavy Metal worked fast and a little reckless, lead to a few moments of clear miscommunication and awkward repeat spots with Super Calo, but when Heavy Metal ran into someone with that speed it looked great. Volador had this fantastic huge hair, like Stefanie Powers in Hart to Hart, and based on the crowd reaction we missed a big late match plancha and bump off the top from him (This is AAA, my friend). I liked Piromaniaco working like El Brazo was great, using his status as stockiest man in the match to absolutely run over Rey a couple of times. He even no sold a Rey missile dropkick by acting like a cartoon kissed him, then did a silly dance. We got a decent dive train with Calo hitting a high quebrada crossbody and Misterioso getting out quickly, and of course all the Rey/Psicosis moments were what you'd want. The tornado DDT with Psicosis on the middle and Rey swinging from the top was wild, with such a high starting point it landed them past the middle of the ring! 

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New Footage Friday: New AAA 4/30/95!

PAS: Roy Lucier continues to do yeoman's work uncovering lost classic stuff, including this AAA show which wasn't in circulation.

AAA 4/30/95

Mascarita Sagrada/Ninjita vs. Los Espectritos (Espectrito I/Espectrito II) 

MD: Fun, long minis match. I'm generally a stickler for the standards in lucha, 2 out of 3 falls matches, both parties getting pinned in tag matches, etc., but I probably would make exceptions for minis matches. This was standard structure and I'm not sure it helped things. The timing on the pinfalls didn't do anyone favors. The finish, instead of being dramatic with Mascarita Sagrada sneaking in a pin, had to be extended to Ninjita getting pulled back in by MS post-dive for the countout. Plus it was all more back and forth without that serene lucha moment of comeback (I could see them saving that for later in the card). Little things. That said, the match still worked, and a lot of that was due to the credibility of both sides. The Espectritos (especially I) were great bullies, great bases, able to take back over at a moment's notice or sneak in a well-timed bit of interference to keep the advantage. There was a power bomb in there where Espectrito I just picked up MS like he was nothing at all. And the tecnicos could believably take back over at a moment's notice, turning literally any physical contact into an arm drag just like that. For the first half of this we had a bunch of Ninjita when you really wanted MS in there, but halfway through the segunda we got what we wanted and he was spectacular. This took up most of the first quarter of the two-hour show and I can't imagine anyone complaining about too much it.

PAS: This was cool stuff, you don't normally see minis get this much time, and the Espectritos have plenty of stuff to fill that time. They just toss Mascarita Sagrada around like he is a wrestling buddy, Espectrios are both little people, but it looks like Rey vs. The Big Show when they are in there with Mascarita. Both technicos of course are armdragging and ranaing machines. Most mini's matches of this era have a pretty high baseline, and this doesn't push it pass that level but no shame in that. 

Aguila de Acero/Super Calo/Winners vs Los Diabolicos (Angel Mortal/Marabunta/Mr. Condor) 

MD: Fairly complete trios match here. I was definitely higher on the Diabolicos than the tecnicos. They were a well oiled machine, both feeding early in the primera and especially during the beatdown in the segunda. Some timing issues from the tecnicos, not getting up on the ropes at the right time, coming into the ring too early during the beatdown and having to stand around, Aguila de Acero coming into the ring too late for the fast count finish which meant the submission lasted way too long. I didn't mind the finish otherwise. When you're looking at this as a card instead of a bunch of individual matches, you need to switch things up and while it got over Pepe Casas more than any of the wrestlers, it's obvious the fans were pretty happy by it. Also, there were a couple of good dives to set it up and a nice tangible feeling of mild dread when post-dives, it ended up two on one for Calo.

Los Power Raiders (Power Raider Azul/Power Raider Blanco/Power Raider Negro/Power Raider Rojo/Power Raider Verde) vs. Heavy Metal/Juventud Guerrera/Karloff Lagarde Jr./Perro Silva/Picudo 

MD: Yeah, this was a mess. You knew it'd be a mess coming in but it wasn't as fun of a mess as I was hoping. The rudo side controlled most of the match, with little hope spots peppered in and there was a lot of talent there but they just didn't mesh. A long beatdown is fine, good even, if the rudos are on the same page and if they keep things moving and interesting. Here they kept Verde in there for way too long and there were a bunch of moments where Juvi just seemed at a loss. He was teaming with Lagarde and he'd hop up on the second rope to do something, and Lagarde would take things in another direction and he'd just have to hop back off. That sort of thing. The focus of the finish was on Perro Silva and Rojo but given the rules of the match, they were absent for most of it. I'm not saying there's not a situation where that could work but I don't think this was it. When things were moving, this was fine, but if this was going to be chaos anyway, I'd actually want more and not less.

La Parka vs. Jerry Estrada - FUN

PAS: This had been out there on a AAA yearbook, but I hadn't seen it before so I figured I would write it up. This was mostly a Tirantes match, which is about my least favorite kind of lucha. Most of the match was focused on Tirantes slow counting for Parka and fast counting for Estrada.  We did get three crazy Parka dives, an almost Sabuish flip dive off the top, a great tope, and a big plancha. Estrada hits a crazy tope into the second row, so we did get a lot of good even with all of the Tirantes. 

El Hijo del Santo/Octagon/Perro Aguayo/Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Blue Panther/Psicosis/Scorpio Jr/Shu El Guerrero

MD: The good stuff. As always, when you get this level of talent and experience and charisma in the ring, it really can't go wrong. Even Perro, who was more physically limited at this point, is such a character, so hard hitting, so spirited and fun that you just can't look away. He's such a folk hero, out there slapping hands on the way to the ring, and then mentoring Rey later. Rey's amazing, of course. What stands out the most to me is how comfortable and willing he is in his role. There's no sense at all of a Napoleon Complex. He doesn't veer in the least, leaning into all of his strengths and vulnerabilities (which are, of course, narrative strengths). Panther hammed it up against Octagon and showed flashes later, like hitting the double stomp or a huge slap on Perro as insult to injury. He was so broad and versatile in the 90s and doesn't get a lot of credit for that anymore relative to his maestro rep. Santo was smooth as could be. Shu was a great bully and Scorpio a perfectl y acceptable stooge, and even Octagon didn't bug me much. Of course, Psicosis was the guy I really wanted to see and he didn't disappoint. Just the perfect mix of basing (feeding and catching Rey) and attitude (shadow boxing on the apron) and flash (amazing twisting senton to end the segunda). It doesn't have a real finish but since it has an awesome and brutal surprise angle, it's hard to be too upset about that.

PAS: Just a murderer's row of legendary all time great luchadores (and Octagon, although he is fine here). I really loved the first fall, with tremendous exchange after tremendous exchange, including some great Rey vs. Psicosis stuff, ending with one of my favorite Star finishes ever, with Perro running around stomping all of the guys in the star. Rudo beatdown in the second and beginning of the third fall was nifty if a bit formless, and we get a wild finish run with tons of crazy dives, and constant switching of the camera from one bit of mayhem to another. Santo/Negro angle at the end was really cool, and pretty unexpected. Too bad Santo's family put a kibosh on the gimmick, because what potential that had. 

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New Footage Friday: EDDIE!! SABU!! REY JR.!! MOOSE MOROWSKI!! TAKASHI ISHIKAWA!! PSICOSIS!!

Takashi Ishikawa vs. Moose Morowski CWA 1980?

PAS: Takashi Ishikawa is a SC favorite, and this was a match more reminiscent of his epic WAR run, than much of his stuff on tape from the 80s. Lots of aggressive mat scrambling at the beginning leading into tempers flaring, and both guys unloading on each other with hard chops and punches. This was lunchpail stuff, two hard guys standing in front of each other throwing. There was some fun brawling on the floor, Morowski punching Ishikawa in mid air and a nice shoulder breaker finish. This was very much my kind of shit. This uploader has uncorked a fire hose of German 80s footage and we will be reviewing a ton of it in the upcoming weeks and months.

MD: For a thirteen minute match with the wrestlers being announced and round breaks, this didn't disappoint. Ishikawa came off absolutely special and Morowski showed quite a bit too. Things started fairly normally with Ishikawa getting the better of things on the mat, including at least one smooth as silk takedown. Towards the end of the first round, Morowski had enough, launched a cheapshot and started to bully Ishikawa including with a really nasty shot in the ropes. Definitely the wrong move against the wrong opponent. Ishikawa took the round break to stare Morowski down and sip some water, which he then shot right in his face as the bell rang before unloading with offense. That was the rest of the match, with the two of them launching blows at each other, including Morowski choking him and launching him onto a table on the outside. The only thing that sort of dragged this down is that Ishikawa's comeback, fighting out of a bear hug, was disrupted by the round break.

ER: If you had told me these two had crossed paths, I would have assumed that it happened in All Japan (which did happen, at least once), but I had no idea Ishikawa ever worked Germany. I'm a big Moose Morowski guy (if you want to spend 45 minutes of your day watching a bunch of cool short Moose matches, here's a nice primer I wrote), in the same way that I'm a big Col. DeBeers guy. They both bring the same skills to the ring, and I love their specific skillsets. Ishikawa worked this match like a fired up larger Kantaro Hoshino, and I liked how he battled back against the cheapshotting Morowski. Morowski tried to use his size to bully Ishikawa (think about how cool or stupid someone would have to be to bully Takashi Ishikawa!) and it actually works. But it feels like it works because Ishikawa opts to be honorable, and as Ishikawa sticks to his honor it just makes him more fired up as the match goes on. Morowski uses his size to intimidate Ishikawa, loved when he tried to tie him in the ropes and threw big right hands, tossed Ishikawa around (including onto a ringside table), and for me the match got really good when Morowski locked in a bear hug. The bearhug came late in the round, and as Ishikawa fought back with Baba chops, the chops kept hitting harder and harder the more he threw, like Ishikawa had finally had enough and he was taking everything out on the center of Morowski's head. The visual of Morowski completely laid out as we entered a rest period was great. Before, Moose had been so cocky, walking around and delaying the rest period by getting in Ishikawa's face, reaching past the ref to mess with him, and now here he is crumpled on the mat. The finish was cool too, with a fiery Ishikawa flying off the top neck first into a Moose punch, shot down out of the sky, and then put away with a nasty shoulderbreaker. This was short, but very efficient, and very cool.


Sabu/Psicosis/Damian 666 vs. Rey Mysterio Jr./Halloween/Starman AAA 10/1/95

PAS: What a randomly awesome match to run across on the internet. 95 Sabu and 95 Rey Jr. are the two most electric wrestlers in the world and it is really cool to watch them match up. We get the whole gauntlet of Sabu here, chair assisted leg lariat, table spot, blown spot where he potatoes his opponent, reckless spinning moonsault where he lands right on someones ribs. We also get Sabu doing the insincere rudo handshake spot which is pretty great. Rey is so fast and slick back then, there are multiple lightning quick ranas and headscissors, including a bunch of cool exchanges with Sabu. I would guess Starman is a local Nor-Cal worker, he clearly pissed Sabu off, because he was getting tatered during the entire match. Fun to watch Mexico's Most Wanted work against each other too. Sort of an off Psicosis night, as his timing seemed wonky and didn't bump as clean as he usually does. This was a house show lucha match which a bit of bumpiness to it, but it was awesome to watch as a 1995 time capsule for some all time greats.

MD: How has this thing been on the internet for a year and a half without us knowing about it? The match gives you a lot of what you'd want from this grouping. We get Sabu vs Rey exchanges. We get Halloween vs Damien exchanges including some real hamming it up. Tecnico Halloween is a lot of fun, by the way. We get Damien eating a really deep powerbomb pulled off the top by Starman. Sabu is as Sabu as you can get. At times he seems a bit unsure with the lucha flow, like during the initial rudo beatdown where he's stuck standing around waiting to get his stuff in or at the end of the primera where he's just a couple of seconds too late running in for the comeback, but he's still all over the ring bounding around and hitting his signature offense. Moreover, you get the sense the 95 version would have made an amazing singles match base for Rey. His crunchy but dangerous-seeming execution of everything is a perfect contrast for Rey's grace. I'm not sure if Psicosis was off so much as he had a hard time figuring out his role on a side that had both Damien and Sabu, who, combined, covered a lot of his usual ground. The match really didn't settle down into a narrative but the crowd was up for everything and there was always something to look at.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Mike Thunder EWF 1/26/02

MD: It'd get even worse later, because it would happen in front of big arena crowds in the midst of actual angles, but Eddy had to feel like he was constantly in the Twilight Zone during this run, and to a degree for the rest of his career with some scant exceptions (and having a babyface like Rey as an opponent). He goes heel early in the match, pulling a cheapshot off a handshake. He ultimately heels more and more, stalling with his valet, hiding behind the ref to launch another cheapshot, using the ropes as a weapon, jawing with the crowd, spitting at Thunder. The fans wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. Thunder was fine too. Eddy took a lot of it early but still let him get some good counters in, which obviously meant a lot given the pedigree of the opponent. He was fiery enough on his comeback, even if some of the hope spots (like a reverse whip into the post on the floor which led to Eddy just taking back over as if nothing had happened) were odd. Some of the crowd kept on chanting for Eddy. The rest sat on their hands. Despite that, he didn't slum it at all. He was completely on, increasingly so as the crowd didn't want to go along with the heeling. It was just the fault of the booking. No one wanted to boo Eddy during this run.

PAS: Thunder had the look (and the name!) of a power plant guy, and this was like a longer version of Eddy vs. Robby Rage from an episode of the Pro. I don't mean that as a diss at all, that is a good match, and every scrap of new Eddie footage we get is a mitzvah. He is going to play the hits on a spot indy show in Texas, but everything he does is so beautifully executed that I am not going to tire of the hits. Can't believe that Thunder went over in this match, but the missed top rope rana into a flying blockbuster was a fine finish. No frog splash, but we did get to see his gorgeous brain buster.

ER: Rehab Tour Eddie was a real treat, and was actually the era where my Eddie fandom really went into overdrive. Getting New Japan and IWA Mid-South tapes, seeing how hard he was clearly working in ring, and the perfect real life as pro wrestling story situation of a man getting his life together before our eyes, really jumped my fandom to new levels. Getting not just an unseen match from that tour, but a match none of us had probably ever heard about before now, is just an impossibly cool way to spend my Friday evening. It would have been even cooler to get a new Eddie match against any kind of worthwhile opponent, and that didn't happen here, but Eddie is a guy who is still going to be awesome no matter the skill level of his opponent. Thunder is slow to the draw on just about everything, and Eddie does something I've never really seen from him, which is basically shrug off every single piece of offense that he lets Thunder have. It's really weird. He takes a lot of the match (and looks great doing so), but he basically works a less violent Finlay/Lorenzo match only it's 4 times as long and Lorenzo wins. 

Eddie takes some big bumps off Thunder's offense, but ALWAYS sells it by just getting up immediately and going right back on offense. There were at least three times where Eddie beat Thunder to his feet after taking a move DELIVERED by Thunder, and Thunder was clearly caught off guard. Eddie gets rammed into the ring post? Responds by turning around and running right back at Thunder. Eddie takes a high backdrop in the ring? He's already up and charging at Thunder before Thunder even has time to turn around. Eddie takes a big bump to the floor that sends him flying towards the announce table? Right back on offense. It's such a bizarre way to work, and he never once felt like he was taking liberties with the guy, while at the same time making sure all of his work was getting treated as a joke. I loved all of Eddie's offense here, with my personal highlight being the nasty leg grapevine that he turned into a vicious lion tamer, kneeling between Thunder's shoulderblades while bending his legs back, then seamlessly transitioning into a cloverleaf and then single leg crab. I'm just left confused as to why Eddie worked this like he was Kurt Angle, telling Mike Thunder to not stay down and sell so much, so he could hit more moves.

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New Footage Friday: PSICOSIS!! FINLAY! HERO! CLAUDIO! ST. CLAIR!

Fit Finlay vs. Tony St. Clair CWA 11/22/94

PAS: Midcard Piratenkampf match which would have been better as a main event, still its 1996 Finlay. It is really fun to watch Finlay break out his signature spots and adding a chain to them. He lays St. Claire chest over the ring apron to slam it, but adds a chain wrapped around St. Claire's neck. He throws his amazing forearms and adds a chain to the thud. This also has a bunch of fun leverage spots with the chain, with both guys taking nice yanked bumps off the top rope. The finish is kind of a dud with a run in and interference finish which feels like a cop out. Just have someone grab the bag.

MD: We've seen our share of these matches by now and the very best of them are the ones that get mean and bloody with a big beatdown and a big comeback. In this regard, it's not that different from a bullrope match. Sometimes, you're going to get matches where the guys actually try to win instead of kill each other, and this one was more like the latter than the former. That said, if you're going to have the latter, this was a pretty good way to do it. Finlay and especially St. Clair kept going for the pole and the flag. That created an opening and the opening led to comeuppance. Finlay was the meaner of the two, choking and laying in nasty shots with chairs and on tables, but he ate some pretty brutal receipts on the floor late in the match. The one good thing about them going for the win repeatedly was that the finish was fairly exciting because of the frequent attempts.

ER: I thought this was great, acknowledging that it could have been a violent bloody war, but loving that instead we got a kind of exercise in Finlay minimalism. It felt like Finlay was trying to craft the most interesting match possible while spending most of the match acting like 75% of the ring didn't even exist. Finlay seems to create those kind of interesting problems or challenges in his matches, and for a match based 80% around climbing up one corner of the ring I don't know how much more interesting he could have made this. I like fluffy Garry Shandling hair babyface Tony St. Clair, and loved the big tumbles he would take as Finlay would yank him away from grabbing a...pouch? Grabbing a pouch of something that I assume is worth winning? Finlay is awesome at working tug of war moments, the kind where he plants his feet and really makes it look like he's pulling with all his might to desperately prevent St. Clair's climbing. It's weird seeing a chain match where the chain is around the wrist instead of attached to a dog collar, but I like how Finlay still wraps it around St. Clair's throat, and bumps to the floor with a chain attached to your wrist are still impressive as hell. All of the floor brawling looked really great, especially Finlay battering St. Clair with a molded plastic chair. Finlay even does an early version of hitting the ringpost when your opponent moves, hitting the post with the chain. St. Clair's fired up shots looked great, and really it was all betrayed by a needlessly stupid ending. You can't have a clean-ish finish in a "grab the bag off a pole" match? Just let one of the guys take the coin purse after the other gets yanked off the ropes. Silly finish, but the rest was great.


Ultimo Dragon vs. Psicosis AAA 6/2/96

PAS: This is a matchup we saw a bunch of on WCW syndie shows and twice on PPV, so it was cool to see them in a singles match in Mexico. I don't really think this worked though. There were individual cool moments: I loved Psicosis's baseball slide bump, and there was some very fast rollups and exchanges. However, I think the heavy ref stuff and random interference didn't work at all, and really kept the match from having much momentum. Their Bash match is still a way better example of what they can do against each other.

MD: This was a glorious little piece of lucha indy bullshit. Psicosis, to me, was hugely underrated at the time. Hugely. He was so good at stooging, at working to the crowd, at being an absolute jerk while on offense. He might be the best base there ever was (up there with Fuerza, who does so much of the same stuff well, just from a slightly different angle), because everything he does adds to the match and about two-thirds of it is wholly selfless in setting up stuff for his opponent. It's more than just catching someone. It's acting as contrast, acting so that your opponent can hit all of his stuff as a reaction and this match is full of that. My favorite bit in this was probably a sequence with Dragon on the inside and Psicosis on the outside, where he basically bumped himself three times to set up Dragon's plancha. In this match, he was also getting the ref over as big as anyone, which tells you the other half of what you need to know about this one. Still, super fun.

ER: I liked this a lot more than Phil too, as it played like an awesome Psicosis broomstick match. I don't think Ultimo brought anything to this, as every single Psicosis bump I could have easily pictured him doing in a ring with nobody else in it. The ref stuff was entirely stupid, as at this point we've all seen the exact same rudo ref shtick for as long as we've been watching lucha (I have seen this same shtick live in 2019, there aren't going to be new jokes or scenarios added and it's not going to get more entertaining), but that was just another burdensome load for Psic to carry here, only adding to his legend. This whole thing was filled with Psicosis missing Ultimo by *this* much, splatting face first into turnbuckles, the ring apron, the ringpost, everywhere. This had every wild Psicosis you've seen plus a couple more, with him taking one of the highest hang time Jerry bumps I've ever seen early in the primera, throws himself onto his head at least three times, just crazy how on this guy was every single show. He mixes that in with playing off comedy with the ref, while Ultimo basically stands in place half the time and lets Psicosis work around him. Seriously, so much of this match is Dragon basically getting moved around like a child while Psicosis tumbles and splats around him. Legendary Psicosis performance, while everybody involved was working against that happening.


Chris Hero vs. Claudio Castagnoli Toryumon Mexico 3/4/06

PAS: You could tell that Hero and Claudio were super amped to be wrestling in Arena Naucalpan. This was basically Hero showing off all of the fancy armdrags and headscissors which Skayde taught him, and Claudio showing off what a world class base he was. I especially liked Hero's front flip rana to the floor, and tope rope cartwheel armdrag. Hero wasn't as heavyweight as he would get, but it is still crazy to see a guy that big rip off Mascarita Sagrada spots. Really joyful match to watch, thrilled wrestlers, amped up crowd, awesome stuff.

MD: Very interesting match. It made me wish, more than anything else, that these two had a chance to work a few months together in Mexico in this style, because the end result of that would have been amazing. Even here, with a bit more of a draft version, there was a lot to like. I could be wrong, but you have to figure the crowd wasn't super familiar with either of them. Claudio was constantly working to the crowd, making sure to engage them in between almost every move and ensuring a connection. Hero especially was working big, throwing out the most complex armdrag variations they could manage, shooting for the high "difficulty" score from the judges. Put those together and Hero's flip dive into a frankensteiner on the floor drew an honest and earnest chant from the crowd. One other thing I really liked was how, during his come back, he used the springboard armdrag not just for the sake of doing a big spot, but to create distance so he could hit the boot, which was really the move that got him all the way back into it. A lot of the lucha we see is with guys who run the same spots again and again in front of crowds week in and week out, and they didn't have that luxury here. With that in mind, this was a hell of an effort.

ER: I knew there was one short Hero in Mexico stint out there but I'd never seen any of it until now, and I love it. I love that to the Coliseo fans they just looked like two young Skayde students going through and working a Skayde match, and who could want anything more? Hero is so good at that style and can throw out mirror perfect versions of classic Skayde sequences all while peppering in his own charms. I'm not sure what the crowd was expecting when they saw a couple of tall white boys get in the ring, but you can tell by the third gorgeous pendulum armdrag they were fully onboard. The early applause honestly felt like "okay they get what we're into seeing". Claudio is one of the greatest flyer bases of our time, the guy with freak strength who came up with a ton of tiny flippers, and Hero is one of the greatest style chameleons of all time. The whole match really played like a fun greatest hits showcase of what they could do for fun. These two probably at least a couple dozen singles matches and I've seen many of them, and this is easily the shortest and most worked like a cool showoff exhibition. And a cool exhibition between two guys with cool bags of tricks is precisely what I wanted. This was all joy, all the hits, in front of a crowd that wanted to see that. Hero's armdrags were perfect, but him breaking out the handspring dragon rana is just a whole different level. Claudio was there to base and that alone was impressive, but there was joy to be had in both small things he did (his excellent cravate snapmare) and big things (his running diving uppercut to Hero's back), all while holding firm for every flip Hero tossed his way. Love these two, glad I finally got to see them in Coliseo, although I wish we had any footage against any era luchadors.

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New Footage Friday: WCW Festival de Lucha

ER: This is one of those shows that I've heard about for 20 years, one of those shows that someone on a message board would pretend to have a copy of, cause a stir, and of course never actually follow through on getting the footage to anyone. It's one of those shows where people just wanted to see it more and more because they thought they would never get to see it, which is the best kind of Hidden Gems gift. And, excitingly, Super Boy is now officially on the WWE Network. Blessed. We get the fantastic mission-front set with traditional dancing, great pueblo set, ring valets all in traditional garb, and what sounds like a loud crowd who is into this. I'm there with them.

TOMK: It’s about time this showed up. You would have thought they would do this in September as some sort of Hispanic Heritage Month deal…but I’m not complaining about October.

MD: I'm dealing with some shifting watching situations that make annotations tricky currently (as in, I watched this show on a commuter bus over a few days), so the comments I provide will be general. Hopefully, Phil and Eric have the heavy lifting here.

I'm not going to say "Nitro lucha" is my least favorite lucha but it's certainly not my favorite. So many things that I've learned to love about lucha libre just aren't present. My remembrance with them is that you didn't really get memorable captain feuding or character driven pair-offs or momentum shifts with builds to comebacks. Clearly defined segments. Dives as means to a bigger end instead of ends in and of themselves.

It was distilled one-fall Lucha with some of the wrong things distilled.

That said, this entire show was a blast. So much of that was due to the setting, the dancers, the fact that they really just embraced this stuff instead of having it off to the side as a sideshow. On this show, these guys felt like stars. Top to bottom, too. You had Disco Inferno main eventing for maybe the only time of his career up until that point, and he felt natural in that role. Jericho felt larger than life, like a Buddy Rose type figure, and almost all the more charismatic or memorable luchadors felt like big deals.

And that was most of them. The talent pool here was great. You had a lot of the usual suspects: Villano III and V, La Parka, Psicosis, Juvi, Halloween and Damien, Hector Garza, Super Calo, Konnan and Rey, and the WCW contingent with Finlay, Smiley, Swinger/Lane etc. but you also had guys that didn't really show up in WCW like Felino, Pirata Morgan, Texano, Rey, Sr., and freaking Super Boy. Maybe coolest of all (not as cool as Super Boy, but...) we had new Blitzkrieg matches, and a bunch of unique pairings that you just didn't think you'd get.

Everything basically worked, from Jimmy Hart's Boricua first family to Jericho's foreign legion, to the fact guys seemed to trade between being rudos and tecnicos depending on the match. There was some sense of overkill or a lack of agenting. For example, I really liked the Juventud Guerrera, Pirata Morgan & Psicopata vs. Hector Garza, Konnan & Rey Mysterio Jr. There was a pretty key story in there with a big fight for the top rope rana through the pairings and ultimately, a bigger fight for the Juvi driver, but in the next match on the taping, someone hit a top rope rana almost instantly, like it was nothing, and then I think a match later, someone hit a Juvi driver, of all things, just as a move. Even if these matches weren't all taped in the order they'd be filmed, that would have been a long term problem. That's not to say the matches didn't vary at all. Some had more thorough beatdowns (Especially the Damien/Halloween ones, I think), and others more comedy, but the general tenor of Nitro style lucha is "good action" and that's a lot of what this was.

Other random thoughts: Psicosis might have been the best masked rudo of his specific generation (guys born in the early 70s). He's so emotive, such a dick, able to play to the crowd, but also able to base so well and hit so much stuff. Juvi just really got it too. He integrated a lot more of US heel mannerisms and it was a good mix. I'm not super familiar with Salsero, but I'm amazed he didn't get himself more of a job out of this. He was playing a unique role and would have probably gotten over on a weekly basis in WCW as a clowning, joke-spot guy that could still go. Lots of clotheslines and DDTs on the show. It's a joy to watch the differences in the selling though: Blitzkrieg folds in half, Hector sails across the ring, and yeah, Disco makes sure to flail sell for quite a few seconds. There was at least one VIII decapitation of someone too. I thought Konnan worked surprisingly well in his trios match. I don't remember him working nearly that spritely in the late 90s. He also gave a lot for Disco who was giving his all. Heel Big Wiggle era Norman Smiley was a lot of fun and Jericho as a corner man made it all the better. I've seen rudo Rey Sr a few times lately (had mostly seen him as a tecnico) and he's just a great stooging pug base. I wanted to see Finlay, Blitzkrieg and Super Boy against literally everyone else on the show. I'm glad we had a few more matches than listed because it would have been a crime not to see Finlay in this setting.

I guess my biggest takeaway from it all is that I wish it had gone on for a while. 


Silver King/Venum/Kendo vs. Super Boy/Villano V/Felino

PAS: This would probably land in the lower half of WCW lucha trios, but it was still a ton of fun to see different guys work in this environment. Kendo's stuff fit in great in the sped up WCW lucha style, and his big tope looked awesome. Super Boy and Felino both looked great too, Felino was fully in his fastest luchador in the world prime, and Super Boy is an amazing short fat agile revelation. I have no idea why this didn't at least get them both WCWSN filler gigs. Venum Black looked not ready for prime time, he was tentative, and awkward, and even his big dive felt unsure.

TOMK: The EMLL announcers used to talk about Felino as one of fastest wrestlers in the world but you kind of forget how fast he could make an exchange look. Not sure if he’s actually “stop watch fast” or just knows how to make every move look sudden. It is a blast to watch Felino and Silver King working their fast exchanges. I think Super Boy and Silver King tried to do a ridiculous exchange near the end that had a 1/50 chance of working but if it did it would have blown every one’s mind and they were completely prepared for it possibly not working. Venum Black may have blown his leg on his dive near end.

ER: The Felino/King sections of this were really hot, and if this match just had their cool trips and ankle picks it would have been worth it. All of the Felino stuff was really great, and then you have Super Boy coming in and being the fast flippy fat guy who looks even more awesome taking falls, because his beautiful round belly looks great on the mat and his shirt always exposes it. It makes him look like when you'd KO King Hippo by punching him and making his pants fall off. Venum looked a step behind everyone but he did hit a wild dive at the end (which Tom thinks may have wrecked his leg). I have no clue what King and Super Boy were going for at the end, but it doesn't happen, and it was fun to see them pick up the pieces. I saw Super Boy work a flea market in the early 2000s, and he did a huge dive, crushed the two chairs in the row in front of me, and landed on my leg. It was great. 

ER: I am LOVING the Jimmy Hart Festival de First Family. What a great bunch of weird dudes, with American Wild Child mugging the whole time, Psicopata dragging around a blow up doll, and Pierroth yelling on the stick. I love Pierroth, and this late 90s period of Pierroth was really great. This was a stable I would have killed to see go up against the LWO. I'm just picturing Pierroth whipping everyone with his belt and hitting hard lariats on everyone. This is great.  

TOMK: Jimmy Hart comes out with his stable, Ricky Santana, Fidel Sierra, Pierroth, American Wild Child and Psicopata. Holy shit why couldn’t this have been a regular WCW stable. Pierroth gets the mic and explains that he is going to wear the Puerto Rican colors. And fuck it Pierroth really is the guy who I didn’t get at first but now when I see old footage absolutely can’t take my eyes off of him in a ring.

La Parka/Super Calo/Salsero vs. Halloween/Damien/El Mosco

PAS: Total fairgrounds lucha match, lots of classic shtick you can see at any small arena around Mexico, except performed by masters of the craft like Familia de Tijuana and Parka. Great stuff by Salsero too, who turned every move into a shake of the hip, and threw out a crazy top rope quebrada to the floor. Loved everyone missing an in ring dive, all of the stuff with the Kendo stick and Parka making the rudos dance to his tune. Usually WCW lucha wasn't this traditional, so it was a fun look into some stylistic differences between the matches.

TOMK: Salsero? Salsero? Of all the guys they brought in Salsero. I guess Salsero and Kendo come as package. But why would you want that package? For a little dancing followed by in ring tope and slapping rudos confusion comedy spots, Rayo is right there. This is mostly a match made by Halloween/Damien heel miscommunication spots and pretty much they are absolute kings of building a match around that.

ER: Damn this was fun. You show me this list of 6 names and Salsero would not be the guy I'd expect to be featured the most, but here we are. This whole match was full of schtick, and it was super welcome. And the pairings were all real fun, starting with Mosco and Calo. Mosco has a big high spinning heel kick, and later takes an amusing bump over the top off a Salsero dropkick. Salsero got to work a bunch of classic schtick, getting the rudos to attack each other (loved FdT ganging up on Mosco and Mosco swinging a chair at them), and boy did I not expect him hitting a gigantic top rope quebrada (to seemingly no reaction, on a show getting loud ass reactions from everything, that's weird). Halloween and Damien looked as good as usual, loved them getting outsmarted by La Parka at nearly every turn, and La Parka was so great at leaning into every single strike. I loved Parka's long  dance evasion from Halloween, ending in a perfectly timed mean slap from Halloween, and Parka was running so fast into Damien's corner boots, catching them right in the neck. This really got to unfold in a great way, and while it didn't hit anywhere near the peaks of WCW lucha sprints, it had a nice traditional charm that was felt throughout. 

  

Rey Mysterio Sr./Villano III/El Texano vs. Blitzkrieg/Piloto Suicida/Raul

PAS: Damn is Villano 3 a beast in this match, just a violent lucha machine, hard shots, great looking DDT, internal organ flattening senton, just a monster. Your tecnico team felt like a green tecnico team being carried by awesome rudos, and we had awesome rudos. I am surprised Blitzkrieg was as subdued as he was in this match, my memories of him were always just a lunatic breaking out crazy highspots, here he wasn't much crazier then Raul (whoever that was). Excited about the run in setting up a killer rudo battle later on the show.

TOMK: Who is Raul? Is that Zorro? Facially kind of looks it. I thought Zorro was a tad taller than that. Anyways this is a fucking Texano showcase match as he just beats the fuck out of everyone and throws himself around bumping and setting up face comebacks. Jimmy Hart’s team runs in at the end attacking both faces and heels and we get an awesome tease of Pierroth vs. Texano. Is Psicopata actually Mando at this point? He doesn’t really move like Mando…If WCW only had been willing to air this show we might have gotten a WCWSN main event Psicopata/Bad Street vs. Psycho/Killer and that would have turned everything around.

ER: Damn check out this Rey Mysterio Sr. showcase, what a brute who knew how to make green fliers looks formidable. He's someone who throws in extras, fills time nicely, a guy who needs to be spoken about in the same sentences as other era workrate lucha gods. I like how he throws in an extra spin while getting into position for a Piloto Suicida armdrag, and on the floor he eats a rana and purposely throws himself into the legs of the guardrail to make the bump look better. Oh but then you had his excellent rudo partners looking like all time asskickers. Villano III gets Blitzkrieg a WCW contract by crushing his ribs with a top rope senton, and Texano was the most explosive guy in the match throwing strikes as hard as his bumps. The thing falls apart in absolutely glorious fashion, I mean three tecnico dives that all miss in increasingly spectacular fashion, terrible catches and botched dives and the most incredibly ugly trainwreck you've seen. Raul (yeah who the hell IS Raul?) slips and dives head first straight into the floor, Piloto apparently pilots the plane on the cover of License to Ill, and Blitzkrieg takes a flip dive into nothing when Rey whiffs. I was so damn into this rudo team, but this ending was too funny. Post match Pierroth run-in made everybody in the match look like a lesser luchador though. It's unfair to people in the match to let Pierroth come in and beat the shit out of people as the last visual. 

Juventud Guerrera/Pirata Morgan/Psicosis vs. Rey Mysterio Jr./Hector Garza/Konnan

PAS: Juvy/Psicosis/Pirata Morgan is a absolute killer rudo team, and it is really cool to see all three of them have matchups with Rey Jr., all great exchanges worked at a high level. Konnan is also working super hard on this show. This was his big opportunity to headline a show, and he was delivering at the peak of his abilities (admittedly a low peak). Run in was fun, although weird they had run ins at two different matches.

TOMK: You forget how amazing Juventud was. Just the entire fucking package, has the crowd in the palm of his hand, able to do the workrate midcard lucha spotfest that was asked of everyone while also just slowing it down to get little things across. It is WCW, so of course they are going to do two matches with invading foreigner heel teams attacking Mexican faces and rudos for a finish. The heel stable of Finlay, Lenny Lane, Jericho, Kaz, Norman Smiley, Chavo and Johnny Swinger is bizarre but would have also liked to see that as a regular WCW stable. Well maybe not Swinger.

ER: Damn now look at THIS rudo team! This is definitely the high profile main event of episode 1, because that's a big time tecnico team too. Tecnicos were fine but this was a rudo bump showcase. Psicosis and Juvy are among the greatest most explosive bumpers of all time, and this was them compressed and burning bright. The way Juvy takes whip snap somersault bumps looks so great, he rolls up tight like Samus and just bounces off that mat. Psicosis bumps to the floor, onto his head, onto his stomach onto the floor, onto his head again, just dude being who he is. Even Pirata takes a totally preposterous somersault back bump to the floor after getting dropkicked off the apron; the bump felt completely disconnected from the dropkick, sending him the totally opposite direction of where he should have bumped, but the dude somersaulted to the floor so who gives a fuck. No padding on the floor, no logic to the bump, but Morgan is here taking a hard bump to the floor on this taping.

The run in was totally badass and I LOVE the invading foreigners stable!!! What a kick ass gang of everybody-but-Mexicans. They're wearing light wash jeans with cuts ranging from "dad" to "Kaz Hayashi's Jncos", black sleeveless crop tops, woven belts, just throwing stomps and beating ass. This is what the stunt doubles would have looked like if there had been a Backstreet Boys Movie. It's so perfect. You can already see the hierarchy of the stable, with Lane, Swinger, and Kaz being the underlings who would actually get their asses kicked in trios matches before either Finlay or Jericho came out to cheat for them to win. Also Tom isn't excited for Johnny Swinger? Swinger is a guy who ate some of the worst beatings on 1997 WCW TV, he's the perfect guy to be the lowest totem pole guy in a stable. Somebody needs to take the ugliest beatings while the top guys escape. I hate that I never got to see this stable until now, and not more.


Juventud Guerrera/Felino/El Mosco vs. Piloto Suicida/Salsero/Raul

TOMK: Is El Mosco really wearing “Live Drug Free” on the back of his tights?” Really?

ER: This was pretty messy, and probably the weakest of the show so far. Felino doesn't vibe really well with Piloto, Salsero breaks out a nice tope con giro and STILL gets no reaction (his dives are like the only ones that get met with silence, it's like people enjoy his shtick but then get mad when he breaks out actual impressive highflying), but this is 100% a showcase for Juventud. Juvy is a genuine frontrunner for best chops in wrestling history. That sentence is not hyperbole. Juvy's chops are the fastest and feel like the best representation of the term "knife edge". His chops absolutely slice and hit harder than the chops of men twice his size. He does have the curse of overly visible frustration when things go wrong, and things can go wrong with a green face team, but there is still gold here. Juvy hits a real hard missile dropkick and Piloto takes a nice classic rolling lucha bump through the ropes, Juvy drops a great springboard legdrop, hits his great spinning rana off the top, basically Juvy on offense could do no wrong. But we do get a real bizarre finish, as Juvy calls for the Juvy Driver, picks up Piloto Suicida, and then drops him twice in a row. Maybe it was supposed to look like Piloto was blocking it? He did eventually get a kinda roll up nearfall, but it just looked like Juvy kept blowing the spot. I really don't think that's what they were going for. 

Kaz Hayashi/Psicosis/Ron Rivera vs. La Parka/Blitzkrieg/Kendo

TOMK: Why is Kaz in this match? He’s in the Jericho outsider stable but just a regular rudo here? They only had one taping and still couldn't keep booking straight? Kaz really leans into all of Kendo’s stuff nicely and the two RPW guys work match up and know how to work their spots together. Parka is over and kind of weird to see him getting this much of a showcase in all these matches when I don’t think he ever got this much of a taste at any other time in WCW. Wait, they were aware that he was super charismatic and can carry a face team on charisma? They knew?

ER: Parks was given a WCW showcase in several ways that other luchadors were not. On the WCW/nWo Revenge game - the highest selling wrestling game on the Nintendo 64 - La Parka was one of only a few luchadors included in the game (Rey, Psicosis, Juvy, Chavo and Eddie if you count them as luchadors), which had a really large roster for video games at the time. And Parka was presented as separate from the "cruiser" luchadors, the only luchador other than Konnan who was lumped in with the heavyweights in the game (tantamount to guys like Barbarian, Stevie Ray, and Yuji Nagata). He was presented separately and as a potential breakout star, and they seemed to know it was a good idea to feature him more in matches and give him side angles to work his gimmick...and yet they seemingly had the coldest possible feet about pushing him as an actual singles star. It made no sense. They knew, but they didn't know. Highlights of this match were Kaz really making all of Kendo's headscissors look great, a great Blitzkrieg dive followed by a big twisting La Parka dive, and Blitzkrieg hitting a big phoenix splash for the win. Blitzkrieg was a cool part of wrestling 1999, and I love that we're getting a little more added to his story. He's a total cult fave, indy white guy shows up as an out of nowhere unknown in WCW one episode of Nitro, gets over immediately when he's treated like a peer by Misterio, and has maybe 30 matches total on tape. He was a nostalgic part of my teen wrestling fandom, and now we get like 10% more Blitzkrieg appearances than previously existed. That's awesome.

Rey Mysterio Sr./Villano III/Villano IV/El Texano vs. Pierroth Jr./Fidel Sierra/Ricky Santana/Psicopata

TOMK: There was some nice Pierroth and Fidel Sierra stuff, but this wasn’t going to live up to my expectations. I was also expecting a big Hart bump, and instead Hart was subdued. He felt like a watered down Andy Barrow.

PAS: I loved this, it was rudo vs rudo and kept up a really killer pace. Pierroth is rocking an amazing Soul Glo Jheri Curl and every time he throws a chop activator juice flies all over his opponent. Psicopata was all over the ring and the outside, stooging, flipping to the floor, bumping huge, total barrel of energy. Really different from a normal WCW lucha match, and I dug that difference.

ER: This lineup is far and away the match I am most excited about on the show. Tom is right that it couldn't possibly live up to my expectations, but damn did I think this was just great. This was our Pierroth showcase match of the evening, and this was an evening that benefitted from a Pierroth showcase match. He was throwing the best punches of the show, kicks to dicks, and the best non-Juvy chops. He came off like a total boss against a very badass team. We got a lot of simple brawling, and it was satisfying as hell. Villano III gets some nearfalls that the ref keeps missing, including a gorgeous small package off of a delayed vertical suplex, and we get an actual powder in the face spot for the finish!! Hell yeah! There was so much powder!!

Rey Mysterio Jr./Silver King/Hector Garza/Konnan vs. Chris Jericho/Norman Smiley/Johnny Swinger/Lenny Lane

TOMK: I think there may have been a good Black Magic vs. Silver King exchange but this was messy.

ER: My god who is the Festival de Lucha girl accompanying Rey? Jesus. And this foreigners stable is so much gold. I love every single stable at the Festival de Lucha tapings!! Every single stable in this 75 minutes has been something I want to watch weekly!

Felino/Psicosis/El Mosco vs. Super Calo/Blitzkrieg/Venum Black

TOMK: Venum Black’s leg is fucked and he comes into this match hobbling. The whole match is just super impressive to watch this guy work a match on one wheel. Should he have worked this match? Should an agent have put someone else in? Whatever. Super Calo does my favorite Super Calo thing where he eats a clothesline by landing on the top of his skull.

Fit Finlay/Kaz Hayashi/Norman Smiley/Johnny Swinger vs. La Parka/Hector Garza/Kendo/Raul

TOMK: I really liked this match. This is hidden gem that you didn’t know you wanted. Kaz’s offense looks great and he sells and bumps to make Raul look like a bad ass. Eats a real nasty piledriver from Raul. Parka gets extended exchanges with Finlay and a dance off and exchanges with Smiley and hits a tope that takes Swinger’s head off. Garza gets some cool stuff in opposite Smiley as well, Swinger and Kendo keep each other occupied, and it’s a cool finish.

PAS: This was really fun, so awesome to watch Finlay and Parka beat on each other. I can imagine an alternate universe where this show was successful and these two had the greatest Apuestas match in wrestling history. Jericho was really fun as a douche on the outside heat seeking. Parka and Smiley had a fun dance off too, honestly Parka is so great he can have dope exchanges with everyone on this roster.

Super Boy/Halloween/Damian 666 vs. Rey Misterio Jr./Piloto Suicida/Salsero

TOMK: This I liked too. A bunch of Halloween/Damien stooging, miscommunication stuff, and you get to see the California guys match up and showcase what they can do together. I really wish Rey vs. Halloween was a WCW series at any point cause it is a cool match up…plus there was an ESTRELLA!!!!

PAS: Really fun stuff, Super Boy has to have some of the biggest missed potential of anyone in the 90s, and it is cool that we get to see a little more of what he could do. Halloween and Damian 666 are such pros and they make everything the tecnicos do look great.

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