New Footage Friday/Fujiwara Family UWF 4/23/85

PAS: A whole new UWF 1 handheld got unearthed, lots of British guys worked the early tours, but not much of the footage is available. Finlay and Rudge in UWF is still the holy grail, but it's cool to see guys like Singh and Martin as well.

Ray Steele vs. Osamu Kido

MD: I'm fairly high on Steele generally but I like him most in matches with contrast, him vs a scoundrel. Here, despite doing a fairly solid visual John Saxon impression, the actual work was sort of lacking that. It came off dry and exhibition like, with fair struggle but no real fire. When they built to something, like the Scorpion Deathlock, it ended up really not mattering. The finish of Steele grabbing a late headlock and getting suplexed felt pretty lazy for the setting too, even if they twisted it slightly with the submission after the suplex.

Caswell Martin vs. Nobuhiko Takada

MD: I had seen the Steele vs Kido match before this one and I was sort of wondering if it'd just been a while since I'd seen UWF undercard footage and things were just more laconic than I was remembering. No, no they were not. This was top notch. Right from the get go, it had a different sort of aggression, even with Martin's first press into the ropes. Martin really stood out here. There was the sense that Takada had him on holds, on strikes, maybe even on leverage and trickiness, but Martin came off like a true powerhouse with a ton of throws, including this great spin out deadlift gutwrench. My favorite Takada moment here was him slapping Martin in the face on a reset and then drawing him in to stand up striking through it which wasn't at all to Martin's advantage. Just a dynamic match all around. This felt like a real find.

PAS: This was really excellent, Martin fit this style perfectly and I am not a Takada guy, but he was great too. Martin had some killer throws, just popped his hips deadlifted and threw. I also thought he had some fun nifty tricks from the bottom, including grabbing and turning the arm. I liked Takada targeting Martin's gut with spin kicks and whip kicks which really looked like they sucked. He had some nice throws as well, and had his moments on the mat, and never really sat in kneebar which can be the downfall of Takada, in fact his one kneebar attempt had Martin working hard to twist out and counter and was a highpoint of the match. Real gem of a match.

Super Tiger vs. Masami Soronaka

MD: In my head, this was about Sayama being incredibly dangerous and explosive and Soronaka mainly trying to contain him as Sayama worked from underneath. The work mostly bore that out. Sayama just came at you in so many differnet ways. He had the kicks, the lethal headlock suplex, a nasty headlock takeover that took Soronaka's face off, a lightning cross arm breaker, and the northern lights style throw that set up the finish. From underneath, he struggled a bit but could still all but flip out of things. Soronaka put up a pretty solid effort and might have come out close to even on points, but it was just a matter of time before Sayama took him down.

PAS: This was structurally very similar to the all timer Tiger vs. Fujiwara series, with the wily mat wrestler attempting to subdue and ground the explosive striker. Soronaka is very much not Yoshiaki Fujiwara, and I mostly ended up resenting him stifling Sayama and all that he can do.When Sayama gets him in the corner and finally unloads it was very cool, and Soronaka had a trick or two, but I needed a bit more pop.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Akira Maeda vs. Omar Atlas/Tiger Dalibar Singh - FUN

MD: Interesting dynamics here. There was a solid Atlas/Maeda exchange to start, smooth but competitive. Singh was clunkier but his stuff had impact. Fujiwara seemed fairly content to feed for him. On the other hand, he leaned on Atlas a little more. For instance, when Atlas didn't quite hit him hard enough in the corner, he turned it around and smacked him on the face. This faded off towards the finish with Fujiwara and Maeda firmly in charge, with crabs and countless great Fujiwara headbutts, which is as good a final image as any if you're going to have a tape abruptly end.

PAS: Definitely a bummer that this gets cut off, because I would have liked to see where it was heading. I as usual am going to focus on Fujiwara and what he brought to the match. I really loved his section with Atlas, he really dominated the standing grappling, locking in the double underhooks and not really letting him go anywhere, shifting and countering any attempts to escape. When Singh gets the hot tag he really puts over those uppercuts and the big suplex, something which meant more considering how tough Fujiwara looked before. It did feel like it was building to something, which we didn't get, but what we got was pretty neat.

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New Footage Friday: Rudge, Steele, Fantastics, Goldens, Kawada, Fuchi, Tenryu, Kabuki, Jumbo, Hara

Terry Rudge vs. Ray Steele WOS 7/25/87

MD: This is eight three-minute rounds. We get all but round two. You don't even notice due to the sheer consistency that these two wrestle with. It's exactly what you'd expect. Rudge is the world's best imaginable Barry Darsow, mean and grimy and grinding, quick to throw in an uppercut or a clubbering blow. Steele has the height advantage and looks like some sort of aging vicar, with the stiff upper lip, but a righteous meanstreak if you get him mad.

It has the sort of escalation you want from a UK heavyweight match, a lot of struggling over specific holds (they spend the fourth-round almost entirely fighting over a double knucklelock/test of strength), but Rudge's tendency to sneak shots in leads to Steele firing back, then they're right back into it. I loved how the height advantage played into things. Steele could come over the top to gain advantage on holds, but Rudge would grapevine the leg and turn it into a trip. He'd also come in from underneath with cheapshots now and again.

Ultimately it's a draw, so while we get that escalation, we never quite get payoff, just the two swiping at each other in exhaustion at the end. In this case, I actually think the payoff would have been as simple as a Steele bodyslam. They tease it twice in the match, once in the end of the fourth and then once in the fifth as a counter attempt to a Rudge cross body. Because they make the struggle matter so much and because it never even pays off, it means the next slam that this crowd sees, no matter the match, ought to matter all the more. It's good stuff in the way that most classic UK wrestling with solid wrestlers is; a bit long, a bit daunting because you really have to pay attention to value the connective tissue, but worth it in the end.

PAS: Remember when British wrestling was cool instead of embarrassing? This was the kind of thing which made Euro wrestling great, a pair of past their prime Thatcher voters with fag ash on their trousers having a mid day pub dust up over a five quid cricket wager. Rudge is an all timer, he is in that Finlay/Regal phylum, world class wrestlers who would smash in your teeth as soon as they would put on a leg lock. I loved how he kept throwing these little cheap shot headbutts, where he would grind his sweaty bald head against the cheek and eyes of Steele. Steele was great too, he would use his height to really lean into holds, and threw some nice kidney shots, and an awesome diving in ring tope which looked like it cracked Rudge's cheekbone. I would have liked a real finish, but the match ending with both guys exchanging dental surgery level uppercuts is a great way to ease into a draw. Class stuff.

ER: Fans of modern New Japan would likely just complain about how nothing happened in this match, and it's a match that goes the full 8 rounds with no pinfalls, a 0-0 draw, with big strikes that don't really happen until the home stretch. But I was hooked the entire time. Rudge is just so cool, England's answer to Australia's Roger Ward. He does this great act here where he's a clear asskicker who's playing coy. The entire match was worth seeing just for the post-bell interactions between these two after every round has ended. Rudge does all these annoying little things begging to be hit illegally without outright begging, practically rubbing his big toe into the mat while going "Who meeeeee?". He kept rubbing and pressing his head into the larger Steele, avoiding eye contact the whole time as if he was somehow coming off innocent. Eventually Steele does finally slap him late, and Rudge goes into this great drama routine, holding his face and staggering, really playing it up to the ref while the announcer knows exactly what he is doing. It was all beautiful. But I also loved how Steele came out to start the next round with a handshake, and Rudge reluctantly accepts it as he assumes it's a trap, as he was being a total shit and knew he had it coming. But it was just that, a handshake. It's amazing how "little" can happen in these matches but the style is so engaging to me that suddenly we're through 8 rounds and I'm still excited like it was the first round. Steele is a big guy and gets a couple of great leverage chokes on Rudge, really forcing Rudge to lift up his weight to get out of them, and we get a couple of great long moments of struggle and balance. They both work each other's necks in a way that give me flashbacks to weeks of chiropractor appointments, blocking snap mares with their neck muscles. Those European uppercuts down the stretch look like they would have dislocated my neck from my body. I love this stuff.

Jumbo Tsuruta/The Great Kabuki/Masa Fuchi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Genichiro Tenryu/Ashura Hara AJPW 2/24/88

PAS: All Japan six man tags are pretty consistently great stuff, and this was a murderers row trios which hadn't made TV or tape before. Look at this line up of badasses and they beat on each other like you would expect. I loved all of the nasty rear naked chokes we got early, both Kabuki and Fuchi look like they are trying pop Hara's head off his shoulders, and Kawada throws a nasty one on Fuchi too. Kawada had some awkward moments of flying, and it was clearly a good move for him to ditch all of his Tim Horner offense later in his career, he gets down to asskicking later and is the Kawada we all love. Everyone in this was great, Tenryu and Jumbo were killing people with saves, Kabuki was throwing his awesome uppercuts and thrust kicks and Fuchi was doing some torturing. We get a frantic finish run full of big bombs and the whole match was a joy.

MD: Totally agree with Phil here. This was good stuff with guys just crushing each other. Of course Kawada was going to end up as good as he was, sharing the ring with guys like this. They gave him a surprising amount of the match. Kabuki, on the other hand was heavily protected, but that let him come in and decapitate people with his strikes and then head back out, never harming the match. There was a good ebb and flow here, with limb-based control segments. I absolutely love that they used the crab both to target the leg in one and then the back in another. When do you ever see that in a single match? My favorite thing about the finish is that it was set up with a shot from the outside from the opposite corner. It was visually jarring but in a good way. There are a lot of late 80s/early 90s AJPW six-mans at this level but that doesn't mean we're not better off for having one more.

Fantastics vs. Eddie Golden/Jimmy Golden SSW 8/5/93

PAS: SSW is a Beau James run indy in Kingsport TN, which has been running for over 25 years. They have had a bunch of southern wrestling legends come through the fed and they just launched a subscription service. This is an early card in the feds history (so much that at this point James, sort of the Lawler of the fed is still working as a ref) and we got a chance to see early Eddie Golden and Jimmy Golden in the tail end of his prime (he was pretty old, but the Buckhouse Bunk run was still in the future) against the Fauxtastics (Jackie Fulton is replacing Tommy Rogers, which is a nice sized step down). This had some really great moments, I really liked Eddie faking a cheapshot punch, and a lot of the heel miscommunication stuff (I am a mark for an over the shoulder arm ringer spot). Bobby Fulton can really milk a hot tag, he isn't Ricky Morton but he is close, but this match went 35 or so minutes, and I think that is bloated for a southern tag. A 20 minute edit of this match would be really great, you could keep the early heel stuff and the long beatdown section on Bobby, but at 35 the seams started to show. I am excited about this service, there have been some great matches in the little bit of SSW I have gotten my hands on over the years, and I imagine their are some classics which will show up here.

MD: This had all the pros and cons of its setting. It was an indy match in 1993 on a fairly big show for the promotion (at least as best as I could tell). That meant it had all the time in the world and could press the southern tag stylings to their full potential. It meant that they could have an extended shine broken up by heel stalling and shtick after payoff-laden set pieces (often involving heel miscommunication). It's amazing how giving Jimmy Golben was in these moments given his size and that he could have put all that weight on Eddie. It meant that they could still build a double heat with comeback attempts and cut offs, and focused limbwork. Having Bobby Fulton in there always helps because he's one of the best at milking moments. It also had a 20 year old scion of a wrestling family, who was a total natural at some things, like the opening match shtick, but also had to hold up his end of a fairly long match. There were some baffling moments, like when Jackie didn't bump on a forearm miscommunication spot (it'd be repeated a few minutes later in a different context) or Jimmy breaking up a pin that should have won his team the match because it wasn't the finish, or even the ref just spending a bit too much time with Bobby on the distraction spots (though it's Bobby so you sort of buy it anyway). If you like the elements of the southern tag style (and if you don't, I feel bad for you), this had deep dives into those, so there was a lot to like.

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New Footage Friday: Kroffat, Kawada, Pat Roach, Ray Steele,

Magnum TA/Randy Savage vs. The Mongolians 11/24/83

PAS: This was more of a cock tease then a match worth watching. Clearly they have raw footage Omni shows (including the rest of this tourney, the finals was Butch Reed/Pez Whatley vs. Savage/TA which I am sure was better), which is exciting, but this was kind of a dud. The Mongolians brought nothing to the table outside of silly haircuts, they were a plodding forearm and punch team, who didn't have good looking forearms and punches. TA and Savage control early with headlocks and front face locks, and there was some interesting stuff there, including TA rolling through a front face lock into mount. We get a couple of dull sections of the Mongolians in control, a hot tag to Savage, who only hits a second rope elbow for the pin. All this really made me want to do is organize an Oceans 11 style heist of the WWE footage vault.

MD: I'm not going to spend ten sentences griping that we didn't get basically any other match on this card. Still, this was a waste. It's a great look at the potential of 1983 Magnum. I don't know who told him to rush across the ring and attack the Mongol on the apron but he owed whoever it was a beer. The crowd loved that and therefore the crowd loved him. He came off like a star with an abandon that completely overshadowed Savage. Randy's best moment was realizing the incompetent Mongol tossed him into his own corner during a short FIP segment and bumping his way back to the center of the ring. This was the first match of the tournament and was paced as such: headlocks during the shine, a couple of hot tags without the time put in to earn heat, amorphous clubbering heel offense. Really it was enough to make me want to see Magnum/Savage vs the Bruise Brothers or Whatley/Reed from the same show but that's about it. This did what it was supposed to do but it wasn't supposed to do much.

Ray Steele vs. Pat Roach WOS 4/87

ER: I'm hardly familiar with these two, but I like Roach on sight as he's in his 50s, burly, and looks like a British version of Randall "Tex" Cobb. He also is the guy who boxed his way into a propeller blade death in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I wager you've seen him in far more movies than you've seen him in wrestling matches, so I'm happy this showed up. And it was a nice, satisfying, minimalist match with a lot of attention paid to simple bodyslams and wristlocks and the way it built to one big running forearm felt like this was happening in World of Muga. Roach has a few different cool neck bridges and I love how he weaponized a snapmare by turning it into more of a throw than a takedown. I don't believe I've seen it done or taken that way before. Steel was good at wrist control and grinding Roach down with a couple knees dug into the back and I loved how much of a big deal the bodyslams turned into. Roach started hitting release slams on Steele and each one kept him down for just a little longer, no pinfalls, just letting that slam soak into the bone. By the time we got to the ending running forearm (which looked like it shook Steele right out of the sky) it felt huge. Classic Muga mixed with World of Sport, meaning there was a backslide, a few bodyslams, a couple uppercuts, a forearm, a couple snapmares, and approximately 35 somersaults, and it was cool as hell.

PAS: This was a really good example of the power of simplicity when it looks good. Much of the first part of the match was based around working a top wristlock, but it was a great looking top wristlock and both guys had a bunch of small adjustments to make it look violent and impactful. I loved how size was used in the match, Roach is a lot bigger, and he menaced over Steele and had the slightest bit more sizzle on all of his shots. That running forearm was awesome looking, it looked like a KO blow and Steele sold it like he had his lights turned off. That is so much more effective then a dozen KO elbows or kicks which are shrugged off.

MD: There are a few other matches between Steele and Roach out there but I'm pretty sure this one hasn't shown up before. As it only goes a few rounds, it's a good starter match for anyone interested in British heavyweights, especially later era stuff (this is from 87). The atmosphere is everything that makes this style stand out: that "real sport" feel, the struggle for every hold, the shift between potential and kinetic energy where any increase in intensity might lead to a fall, the difficulty in switching momentum once someone gains an advantage. Everything is earned, but once something is gained, it's worth every bit of that effort. And despite all that, just like life, it can all end in a moment (in this case, by the means of a killer forearm). We don't review nearly enough of this stuff here. There are far worse things we could do than a C+A Pat Roach.

Dan Kroffat vs. Toshiaki Kawada AJPW 4/2/92

PAS: I really loved this, Kroffat jumps Kawada during the streamers and low blows him early, for the rest of the match we get pissed off Kawada and Kroffat fighting for his life. Kawada really lays in the kicks to the face in this match trying to kick Kroffat's eyeball to the back of his head, Kroffat to his credit doesn't get eaten up, but keeps firing back, including landing a big wheel kick and a molar loosening superkick. Kawada actually works over the leg during the last part of this match, which isn't something I remember him doing. He does it in a very Kawada way, with these brutal leg sweeps which look like he is recklessly trying to tear Kroffat's MCL, ACL, all the CL's. The finish was awesome as he slaps on a nasty looking high angle single leg crab, and when Kroffat taps, Kawada just stomps out of the ring, like "Fuck this guy and this whole stupid wrestling thing."

ER: The way Phil described it I thought this would be a little more of a mauling, but I thought Kroffat had almost as many dickhead shots at Kawada as vice versa. But in Kawada's defense, Kroffat totally starts it. Kawada grabs his head and starts firing off those low kicks to the temple, and Kroffat responds by basically flopping to his back while sneaking in an upkick on Kawada's balls. He plays innocent but when Kawada gets up pissed, Kroffat knew what he did. Kroffat is pretty crafty throughout, and I always love how he hooks that crescent kick right around a guy's ear, but he sets up Kawada's stuff in nasty ways too, like crashing hard into Kawada knees on a senton attempt. And Kawada certainly is a beast, really looking already like prime Triple Crown level Kawada here, that confidence is there and he does punish Kroffat nicely. We've seen matches where Kroffat and Furnas eat guys up, so we know he's no pushover, but seeing Kawada tee off on him in the corner with whipping shins into Kroffat's head just feels like Kawada knows exactly what kind of wrestler he is. Kawada breaks out something I don't think I've ever seen from him (and I don't think I've seen done by anyone this well) as he hits this front legsweep on Kroffat, and not even a typical Inoki legsweep, more like a diving kick to Kroffat's knee and shin. And the finish is brutal as Kawada grabs a high single leg (think a Liontamer but with a half crab) and just starts stomping face until Kroffat is all "Dude, fucking FINE, I quit" and then Kawada just storms out like "Fucking GOOD just quit then". The fans filming this were clearly huge Kawada fans, as you can hear them the whole match giggling with glee at this awesome professional wrestler.

MD: This is the AJPW Kroffat I want. In a land where the heel/face divide is sort of murky and often underplayed, Kroffat's the heel that we hope for. It's not enough that he does one nasty, underhanded thing from the get go. He does three, utterly unleashing Kawada. It's still Kawada though, so this isn't some sort of firebrand vengeance. It's pinpoint precision. Kroffat knows what he did and tries to stay on top (small thing, but I really liked how he stops short on the headlock-shrug off, refusing to be whipped and just comes right back at Kawada again), but one caught kicked and the meanest shove down possible later and Kawada's totally honed in on the ankle. It's not enough that he kicks the leg out from under Kroffat a couple of times. Somehow he manages to specifically kick the ankle out. It's fairly back and forth from there, with Kawada trying to kill Kroffat and Kroffat more than holding his own, including some fairly cool stuff like Kroffat riding a back body drop reversal to a tiger-driver over into an armbar and the finish where Kawada stomps Kroffat's face off in order to lock in a vertical half crab. Great stuff. We're lucky this one got unearthed.

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