Found Footage Friday: RIP BART SAWYER~! VOLS~! WOLFIE~! FLASH~! ISHIKAWA~! JAGUAR~!

Lucy Kayama/Mimi Hagiwara vs. The Young Pair (Rimi Yokota/Seiko Hanawa) AJW 1979

MD: This one had been out there for a while, but never complete. The first nine minutes were always missing. Yokota is pre-Jaguar here. Those first nine minutes seem essential to the overall match; after a bit of feeling out with dueling foot stomps, Yokota and Hanawa lean in hard on Hagiwara. This includes some nice roll back guillotines and a rolling headscissors by Hanawa and Yokota, a lot of arm stretch surfboards, and tying Hagiwara to the tree of woe. It's a pretty brutal mauling, that lasts into the footage we did have, with a southern tag bit of the ref missing the tag before Kayama is able to finally get in. They steady revenge that followed (highlighted by the Kayama using the seated bodyscissors with roll-back and slam-forward we saw so much in the French footage) for the next many minutes doesn't resonate nearly as well without the lengthy initial beatdown.

We miss the Pair's transition back to offense (maybe just an off camera slam by Yokota) but the back half of the match is them demolishing Hagiwara's leg. Hagiwara is already an emotive seller, always active, always engaged and engaging the crowd and to be fair Yokota and Hanawa give her a lot to work with, just tearing it apart with targeted offense on the inside and outside of the ring. The comeback isn't as clean and focused as I'd like but it's still clever, with Hagiwara snatching a flying octopus hold out of nowhere and Kayama coming in hot. They go to that old southern tag standard of the FIP wanting back in too soon to set up the finish. Good match made better by the restoration of the missing footage.  

Yuki Ishikawa vs. Isami Shinkiba Tournament 12/25/2018

MD: It's old man Ishikawa vs a kind of tubby karate guy in a gi. Pretty self-explanatory really. Ishikawa controlled early by not allowing Isami to strike. Isami would have to occasionally use a rope break (and Ishikawa smacked him on the butt afterwards for his trouble). In the stand up, despite Ishikawa throwing some mean headbutts, Isami had a clear advantage. It was just once he got him down that he wasn't quite sure what to do with him. Ishikawa could absorb most of his seated blows and he almost needed to let him back up so he could get his full body behind his strikes. That opened him up for Ishikawa to snatch a limb though and it tired him out, making that possibility all the more likely. Finally, Ishikawa was able to move around him, getting a mare. Isami tried to escape with a nice roll through into a hammerlock, but he wasn't in his striking world anymore; once he left it, Ishikawa put him away with a nasty no-give arm trap.

ER: I thought this was going to be much more of an exhibition based on how things started, with Shinkiba looking like Sammo Hungover and Ishikawa grinning like a goof while playing Inoki leg kick games from his back. Shinkiba really doesn't look like he can do much of anything for the first few minutes, like Ishikawa is essentially working an exhibition with an easily takedownable tub in a gi. He takes him down and easily locks in a couple submissions while Shinkiba puts up about as much fight as I would against Ishikawa. Yuki even swats him playfully on the butt after Shinkiba quickly lunged for the ropes after a smooth Ishikawa rolling kneebar. Maybe that swat on the butt is what set this guy off, because then he starts throwing inside leg kicks and high kicks from both sides, Ishikawa leaning into all of them, and even starts open hand chopping Ishikawa in the arm to get access to his ribs. Shinkiba does a really great solebutt to the intestines, with a smack that sounded like a thigh slap but I saw no thigh slap in sight. When Yuki starts throwing headbutts, he hits an even louder one so I guess this guy just throws great kicks to the stomach. I loved him teeing off on Ishikawa's body with punches, pinning him to the corner with short closed firsts aimed at the torso. But he can't KO Yuki, and because of that, Yuki is going to find a way to tap him. 

Bart Sawyer/TN Vols (Reno Riggins/Steven Dunn) vs. Wolfie D/Flash Flanagan/Ashley Hudson MCW 12/25/98 (Aired 1/2/99)

MD: I wanted to do a Sawyer match since he passed away recently. I can't believe that we've never covered this one before (I had to take it back to the center to ask) because it's wild. Almost book worthy. Maybe book worthy. It's fifteen minutes of absolute chaos, ten of it being the match. This is the master footage so there's no announcing over it and you hear everything. The camera and even the crowd have no idea who to focus on since the violence is all over the building. You can be focused on Sawyer and Wolfie brawling off in the corner and hear sounds of impact from off the screen. It was back and forth. I won't say it was full of brilliant transitions or even a heroic comeback but it was full of memorable moments and lots of blood, most especially from Dunn.

There's crazy, heated stuff in here. Chairshots galore, including a battle between Wolfie and Sawyer. Riggins lawn darting Flanagan into the fourth row. Tons of Australian flag shots. The set piece where Sawyer climbed up some sort of roofing. The post-match beatdown where the heels got their heat back. And of course the crazy finish where Riggins shoved Wolfie off the balcony through a table and then Sawyer tried to leap down after him for the pin and had his foot jam on the concrete as he landed. These were a bunch of pros who knew how to handle a match like this, to keep it moving, to keep the crowd into it, to build to some very big spots, and then to keep the heat up to try to get people back for the following week.

PAS: The Nashville Fairgrounds has seen a lot of blood spilled in matches just like this over the years. From Jackie Fargo through the Moondogs through early TNA. Just a really cool example of the kind of main event all over the fairground brawls which have been mostly lost to history. No really structure, just a bunch of bloody brawling in every nook and cranny. Flash Flanagan is well known for taking insane stunt bumps, but Wolfie took it on this day, falling recklessly off the balcony and awkwardly nuking himself on the table and the hard concrete. I really prefer this kind of stunt to what we see now. Not only was there no crash pad, there was no athleticism. It really felt like a guy zooted out of his mind falling off a roof, which fit well with the chaotic atmosphere of the entire match. Sawyer wasn't the focus here (not sure this had a focus) but you could see how well he fit in this kind of Tennessee street fight.

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Found Footage Friday: SAVAGE~! THUNDERBOLT~! FABS~! VOLS~! CHAIN WAR FROM BRAZIL~!

Randy Savage vs. Thunderbolt Patterson ICW 1983

MD: Bryan Turner's posting great stuff from the late 90s and early 00s, but he had an episode of ICW TV here that we seem to not have had and from 83 that episode had footage of a Randy Savage vs Thunderbolt Patterson match that Patterson commentated over. This isn't complete by any means. We get about five minutes of action, but it's still gold. A couple of minutes of that is Randy choking Patterson over the ropes and just staying on him. Patterson starts to come back and Savage is just great feeding into his shots and creating the motion for him. From there, it's typical thought out Randy stuff with Patterson jamming him on a suplex and then a pile driver and getting near falls. Patterson's description of how to stop a pile driver ("spread my legs and shake my stuff") is awesome. Savage heels it up by trying to get himself intentionally DQed by tossing the ref around but the ref is on to him and tries to keep it going until Randy just tosses him out of the ring. From there Patterson gets the DQ win and a phantom pin after an atomic drop and has to clock the ref too with him commentating that he shouldn't have done it but he hasn't had many opportunities in life and it was just a great piece of territory TV overall that we hadn't had before and a great look at what made both 83 Savage, on the way up, and 83 Patterson, on the way down, special.

Mr. Argentina vs. Aquiles Brazil 1980s?

MD: This is found, not new, but we've never covered it before. Depending on who you talk to, it's a pretty legendary match in Brazil, but it previously was online with worse VQ and in three parts. It's been put up a couple of times in one complete whole this year and everyone should watch it. It's a chain match in the country's traditional round system, which is kind of wild when you think about it. They take off the chain at the end of each round and then put it back on afterwards. We lose part of the last round and everything ends as a chaotic brawl after a draw, as well it should, and maybe that clip/finish keeps it from being an all time bit of footage, but it's unique and wild and very distinct. Argentina, despite any country-to-country animosity you might expect is the clear babyface, though the fans seem to at least respect Aquiles' guts as he absorbs blows in the back half.

Round one was Aquiles trying to use the chain as a weapon and Argentina out wrestling him. Round two started with Aquiles catching him with a choke with the chain and then nailing him with a haymaker with it wrapped around his head, changing the trajectory of the match. Everything's bloody from there as Argentina gets beaten around the ring throughout round two and after a brief respite, Round 3, where Aquiles uses the chain to tear apart his leg. Round 4 is the comeback and it's wild as Argentina refuses to get chained and just rushes in with big babyface offense. The chain's not part of the match after this, even with the round system, as things are just too heated. He drives Aquiles' face into the post opening him up huge and it's just a gloriously bloody mess through the final rounds. Violent, heated, bloody wrestling is universal and we're always glad to see another country's offering. This one stands well aside its counterparts from around the world.

PAS: Way of the Blade 2 contender for sure. I love the look of this match, wrestling is best when it feels like there is a film of grease over the whole thing. Hard violent shots, tons of blood and Argentina looking like an all time great babyface. His Round 4 comeback is top tier stuff, great looking headscissors, big right hands, just drives the crowd wild. When he opens up Aquiles on the post it is just toe to toe violent stuff from there out, reminded me of a great Perro Aguayo lucha match. Highest reccomendation!!

TN Vols (Reno Riggins/Steven Dunn) vs. Fabulous Ones MCW 1999

MD: This was the build up to the Lawler/Dundee vs Fabs tags we reviewed a few weeks back. My guess is that it's late April, early May of 99 as Cagematch has Lawler/Dundee working the Fabs in Memphis in April of 99 and the announcing mentions a big show on May 4. It starts off very much face vs face and it ends that way in the post-match, but the Fabs go de facto heel hard and without remorse to give the thing some structure down throughout. It's a bit of a shame as it was shaping up to hold up well against some of the better face team vs face team matches I can think of, like Martel/Santana vs High Flyers, with some solid opening exchanges and holds and overall oneupmanship. Around the first commercial they take over on Dunn and after that it becomes a lot of drawing the ref's attention, missed tags, cutting off the ring (especially after hope spots), and the occasional snuck in cheapshot. It's all effective stuff though I don't think the fans really wanted to boo the Fabs given how they were overall presented. You got the sense their heart wasn't in it even if they were entirely professional and merciless about it. Dunn made for a strong face-in-peril, believably going for the tag and believably getting cut off at the last second. The comeback was a bit stilted, probably due to time constraints, as after he jumped across the ring with a great hot tag, he was almost immediately back in there to lock in a sleeper when all the heels in the back came out to ambush him. The Fabs made the save with a chair and that was that. Strong TV southern tag but I kind of wonder what it might have looked like if they had been bold enough to try to wrestle it face vs face the whole way through. 

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Found Footage Friday: PIPER IN LA~! ROCK 'N' ROLLS VS. TN VOLS~! 83 EL DANDY~!

Elimination Tag: Roddy Piper/Ron Bass/Moondog Mayne vs. Black Gordman/Alex "KO" Perez/Tommy Sawyer LA 1977

MD: A massive tape of Spanish Language TV LA/SF went up a few weeks ago. It's timestamped to a degree but don't look too closely at that or else you'll think there's a Piper vs Race match we've never heard of before; it's just the set up. This, however, we do get in full and it's a lot of fun, another good look at West Coast 70s heel Piper and especially Moondog Mayne, and it also gives us babyface hero Black Gordman which is not a role we usually think of with him. Perez was a legendary puncher for who I don't think we have a lot of footage and Sawyer is not Buzz Sawyer but a territory babyface from the late 70s. At this point, Bass and Piper were the Americas Tag Champions and Mayne was positioned as the centerpiece. The VQ is terrible. The sound's off. It's still history and worth watching.

Piper got it already, feeding into armdrags and then keeping the face in his corner at first opportunity. We only see a minute of Perez in here but Piper eats his punches perfectly before making him slip on a banana peel to eliminate him on a roll up out of a slam attempt. Mayne was running from Gordman throughout here. It was hard to get a great sense of Sawyer but he had decent fire. Piper managed to eliminate him too by tricking the ref into thinking he tossed him over the top. After that, Mayne had a great moment of getting his partners down to the mat and drawing out strategy to his finger now that it was 3 on 1 but the 1 was a guy that none of them wanted to face. Gordman is sort of a reverse Ricky Steamboat, someone I've pictured as a lifetime heel but he was pretty great destroying everyone here until the numbers game got the better of him. There's a straight up Piper/Bass vs. Gordman/Sawyer tag in this footage too and I want to check that out later if this was any indication.  

El Dandy/Rey David vs. El Climax/El Modulo EMLL 9/20/83

MD: 17 minutes, a little clipped, and without a finish, but think of what we do get instead! Young experimental rudo Dandy matched up with a very game Modulo. Climax's cool gear. An obviously dangerous granny on the outside who is going to jump up out of her chair with the promise of unfilled violence multiple times. I'm not kidding about the experimental bit either. Climax was in one or two matches on the DVDVR 80s set, if I remember correctly and here he and Modulo have nice, flowing exchanges, but they're not who we're here to see. 

Dandy and David worked a little tighter. I'm fairly certain Dandy wasn't even twenty here but he had a real slickness and precision in how he moved from one hold to the next and a ton of agility and flexibility. They did the hold where both guys end up on their head facing each other with their legs tied up. Sometimes you get punches out of that but here Dandy rolled out of it in way I don't think I've ever seen. When things broke down, there were some double spots with David taking down both Dandy and Modulo that didn't look quite right but that popped the crowd anyway, so either they were novel for the time or the crowd just wanted to go along with whatever. And to be fair, there were other spots that seemed a few years before their time that absolutely worked as they were meant to.

This gets cut off but not before we see Dandy get tossed all around the ring, taking turnbuckle bumps like a champ. It's pretty obvious that he was a special talent even so early into his career.

Rock 'n' Roll Express vs. TN Vols (Reno Riggins/Steven Dunn) MCW 1997

MD: The advent of DVD burning allowed for a shift in how we watched wrestling. It became easier to collect and share whole swaths of it. With that, there was a chance to reevaluate instead of just follow along or cherry pick the very best. The DVDVR sets are a great example of this, driving reevaluations of Brody or Tiger Mask or Crusher Blackwell or Greg Gagne, sometimes negatively, sometimes positively. The WWF set was the first and one thing that came from that was a reevaluation of the previously lionized 80s tag scene. It still pokes at the edges of conventional wisdom, the idea that the Hart Foundation and British Bulldogs and Rougeaus and Rockers and Killer Bees and Can-Ams and Strike Force were a part of some sort of golden age. Instead, around the time of the set, the phrase "heel-in-peril" was pretty easily thrown about. If you spend the first half of the match (or even longer) making fools out of the heels and constantly keeping them on their toes, there's far less relative time to get heat and build to the hot tag and the comeback. The fans in the arena might have found it entertaining, but they wouldn't be emotionally invested like they should be. The balance is all off for that. One could argue that the point of these matches on their placement in WWF cards was actually to drive that level of entertainment, but it certainly didn't match up with the conventional wisdom that remained twenty years later. And the worst guy in the world when it came to this sort of structure was Dynamite Kid, especially, as you might imagine, post-injury.

So what does all of that have to do with this? I don't think any of the teams listed above could really make it work. I've maybe only ever seen one team that could, and that's the Rock 'n' Rolls. They had fun, quick, offense, tandem in the set up if not the delivery, but a lot of teams can be entertaining in a shine and a lot of teams had a connection with the crowd. Really, it comes down to Morton's ability to sell. One minute of him getting beat on, fighting for a hope spot, getting cut off, getting beat on some more was worth three or four minutes of almost anyone else. There's a moment in here where he is just reaching out towards the camera as if asking everyone at home for help; we see it on that camera just for a second before things switch back to the wide shot and you can watch him working and garnering sympathy like no other. And he could manage both that and playing to the live crowd at the same time, because he's Ricky Morton in a tag match. 

That's not to say the shine wasn't a lot of fun and that the Vols didn't stooge like crazy, because it was and because it did. They were nice and measured with it, setting up a spot, playing on the fact the Vols had only recently formed, paying it off with some miscommunication or just getting outquicked or outwrestled, having them take a powder and sell what happened, then set up the next spot and repeat. The Vols did their power: For instance, Riggins hit a big shoulder block showing off his strength and then ate an inverted atomic drop and sell it all around the ring. The shine lasted about two-thirds of the match, but Morton, after he missed a corner charge, more than made time with his selling with Gibson helping things along by working the apron. When it was time for the hot tag, the fans went up for it and things petered out to a non-finish because this is a TV match after all.

I only wish we had some of these old R'n'R vs Nikolai Volkoff (which happened early in their Mid-South run but weren't taped) or Ivan Putski (which didn't at all happen and were just a baffling suggestion) matches that Michael St. John and Billy Joe Travis were inexplicably talking about as they got confused about former opponents. (I also hope someone filmed one of the Wolfie D vs King Mabel matches that were advertised for live shows during the break). Still, no one's going to complain that we got an 18 minute 97 R'n'R match against game opponents.

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Found Footage Friday: MISAWA~! FUCHI~! SLAUGHTER~! BUNDY~! GANG~! PG-13~! DOUGIE~! TN VOLS~!

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Masa Fuchi AJPW 3/24/92

MD: For the first 4/5th of this, Fuchi really had Misawa's number. He started out by bullying on the mat, so Misawa stood up, but he pressed him into the ropes to lay in shots. Misawa started to fire back as he would, so he picked at a leg and never looked back from there, spending the next ten-plus minutes just dismantling a limb as only Fuchi could. Every time Misawa started to come back, Fuchi would cut him off with a quick kick to the knee. He kept it moving and interesting too, using a tree of woe followed by a dropkick, a shin-breaker onto a table on the outside, and an STF. The fans were behind Misawa and took serious umbrage every time Fuchi went too far. He couldn't quite put him away, but I like how Misawa couldn't use his first choice of moves to come back. He couldn't hit a suplex so he had to shift to a DDT, that sort of thing. A lot of the comeback and stretch was about him just grounding Fuchi and hurting him however he could. I wouldn't have minded Fuchi getting a nearfall towards the end, but this instead portrayed a much clearer and cleaner momentum shift and that was probably a story worth telling in and of itself.

ER: If the idea of Masa Fuchi savagely attacking Misawa's knee for 15 minutes sounds appealing to you, then you are going to love this match. I don't know who out there would be reading Segunda Caida and also not be into Masa Fuchi punching someone's knee as if were pizza dough, but I'm sure they're out there. I don't think there are that many wrestlers who can make 15 minutes of leg work as interesting as Fuchi, and I think a big part of that is the pure joy Fuchi derives from it. This is not a man mechanically working over a limb, this is a man who is doing his favorite thing in the world and is unable to hide that it is his favorite thing. All of the work before the leg work was really good, with Fuchi locking in a super tight side headlock and Misawa dishing out sharp elbows whenever he had some space. But before long Fuchi is kicking Misawa with some downright evil straight kicks to the inside knee, throwing low dropkicks that are clearly aimed at the patella and not the lower thigh, and you can see Misawa starting to flounder. 

There is an amazing spot where Misawa misses an enziguiri, and Fuchi hops in place with his arms extended, knowing he has a sitting duck, before connecting with one of his own. It's the closest I've seen to a native All Japan wrestler pointing to his head after out-thinking his opponent. Fuchi does some brilliant work around the turnbuckles and ringpost, placing Misawa in a tree of woe and DIGGING his elbow into that knee, then dropkicking it some more for good measure. When Fuchi drags him to the ringpost, I'm not sure I've seen a man slam a leg more gleefully into a ringpost. Fuchi even takes a running start to do it! Fuchi slams Misawa's leg into the post like he's trying to slam his front door as hard as possible after an argument with a neighbor. I like how the legwork affected Misawa's abilities to perform some of his offense, making him adjust his offense to use more leverage throws and just try to flatten Fuchi out to stop him. That knee does not stop Misawa from hitting a top rope elbow suicida and a big frog splash, but the man took all that damage and if he wants to hammer his kneecaps a little bit more on a house show, who am I to judge? 

King Kong Bundy vs. Sgt. Slaughter USA Pro Wrestling 8/22/97

MD: I have a lot of faith in Eric's ability to write this one up, but a few things did stand out. Slaughter was billed as the new WWF Commissioner and a 5-time World champion, which is pretty interesting math. Just having the WWF title one time is impressive enough and it's not like being a former US champion isn't, in 1997, more impressive than having the AWA America's Title or whatever they made for him. Bundy, in a back and forth in the ring, said that people were saying he got the commissioner's position in an unsavory way, which feels quite timely actually. They led off with a good battle over a top wristlock. I was kind of disappointed Bundy didn't end up pulling the hair because with guys of his vintage/era/style, I want that Studd-like dissonance of the huge guy resorting to cheating. Sarge got an advantage but hit his signature corner bump to the floor which looked particularly good onto the Newark ballroom carpets. From there, Bundy basically leaned on him with one hope spot until Sarge pulled him out, rolled back in for the countout, and rolled right back out to toss chairs at him until he retreat away. I'd call this a very competent Bundy performance. He'd interact with the crowd and mock Slaughter with a salute and even moved quickly once or twice when it meant something. The brawling on the floor was pretty good which was a little disappointing because they could have done more with that. Anyway, let's see what Eric has to say.

ER: It is true that I'm the one who pushed to include this match in NFF this week. Slaughter wasn't exactly working a ton of dates by 1997 and the idea of him working a Holiday Inn conference room in a year where his only other match was a long PPV match against HHH was far too compelling to pass up. I also loved Bundy's pre-match mic work, deftly tossing off two major insults in two sentences, one taking down the city of Newark and the other a sly takedown of Slaughter. Every heel is going to insult the local town, but some insults are better than others, and Bundy grabbing the mic to say, "I come from SOUTH Jersey, GOD'S country, not this god forsaken nuclear wasteland NORTH Jersey." That would have been a perfect win on its own, but following it up by implying Slaughter did morally ambiguous acts to earn his WWF Commissioner job was pleasantly unexpected. 

The match played well to each of their strengths, with Slaughter backing up Bundy with nice right hands and doing his best to stick and move. A year ago I wrote up a transcendent WWF fundraiser show from 1992 that was among my favorite things I watched all of last year. This was a show that was unlisted in official WWF records, with a Berzerker/Sgt. Slaughter match the main selling point for me. I was shocked that Sgt. Slaughter did his signature bump on that show, a show that was only being recorded by some dad with a camcorder. Well, here we are 5 years later and Slaughter - nearly 50 years old - is taking that bump as fast and dangerously as ever, crashing and burning across the unpadded Newark Holiday Inn carpet. Slaughter's corner bump is often majestic, and the one he takes here is one of the greats, not even accounting for age and venue. It's a nice turning point in the match, with Bundy keeping Slaughter down for a bit (and Slaughter taking a nice brick wall bump for Bundy's back elbow), and I liked how Slaughter hit three shoulderblocks on his comeback, knocking Bundy down on the third but missing a big elbowdrop to give the control back. I also agree with Matt the the floor brawling was really good and they easily could have done a couple more minutes of that and sent the fans home with a truly memorable main event. Bundy took a nice ring posting and they threw a couple of those rigid hotel ballroom chairs at each other, ending with some nice chaos before a post-match highlight reel makes me want to see some 1997 Cousin Luke matches that I didn't know existed. 

Doug Gilbert/PG-13 vs. One Man Gang/TN Vols (Reno Riggins/Steven Dunn) MECW 1999

MD: If the last minute or two went a little different this would have been just about everything you could want from a 10 minute match. Gang felt like an attraction and got to knock around JC Ice early, with Jamie doing sort of an Akeem dance mock and then paying for it. Midway through the ring broke and they used it to beat Dunn to a pulp. They had a ref distraction to miss the hot tag to Gang, and Dutch Mantel was on commentary so that was fun. The hot tag was good but it went to Reno instead of Gang which was the cardinal mistake in the match. I thought they might do a little bit more heat and turn it around and then have Reno tag Gang but he just came in. There was also some interference around the finish that was probably unnecessary and Dunn made the pin as the illegal man, which was what it was. Plus, the match could have used just a little more Doug. All nitpicks though because what we did get really did work both for me and the crowd. The finishing sequence was brutal with the Vols doing a double slingshot belly to back set up into a facebuster and then Gang hitting the 747. Pretty much an all time way to put a guy away. It's kind of exciting to think what other matches like this will turn up as Bryan Turner keeps going through his tapes.

ER: A very fun match, pretty much exactly what anyone going out of their way to watch this match would expect, only with a truly confounding ending that goes completely against what the entire match was building towards. It started out a bit shaky, with Wolfie having to do all the work to cover up all of the work that Steven Dunn was not doing. PG-13 are two guys that could work a great armdrag bump against the Invisible Man, so it's no shock that Wolfie is able to cover for Dunn. I swear, Dunn does the loosest, ugliest sliding legdrop I have ever seen. The camera angle didn't help, but I don't think there was a single angle you could have shown that legdrop to make it work. The match everyone (me included) wanted to see was Dundee vs. Gang, and Dundee did his usual chop suey cartwheel routine that ends with him being laid out by Gang's nice clothesline. That was the pairing I was most excited to see, but the best pairing of the match was easily Reno Riggins and Dougie. The two had the best punch exchange of the match, and Doug sprinted like a crazy man into an armdrag, and then took two insanely high backdrops. I didn't realize Dougie had Todd Morton backdrop height in him, but doing it twice in one match shows that it sure ain't no fluke. I dug the PG-13 heat segment on Dunn, choking him with the snapped middle ring rope and repeatedly getting the ref to get Gang back on the apron (nice work by the referee getting actually physical with the mammoth Gang). Gang got sent back out to the apron three of four times, and it was clear the entire thing was building to Gang, unleashed, decimating PG-13, Dougie, and the man wearing ICP paint on the floor. Wolfie sets up the hot tag in wild fashion by vaulting up to the top rope (remember, no middle rope) and whiffing on a corkscrew moonsault. It is unfathomable that Gang wasn't the hot tag here, no matter how decently Riggins handles a hot tag. I wanted to see Gang flattening everyone, no matter how strong the crowd was chanting for the Vols. Ah, nevertheless. 

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