Found Footage Friday: R'N'R VS FOOTLOOSE~! BENITO GARDINI~! FALK~! HOUSTON~!

Benito Gardini/Al Williams vs. Cyclone Anaya/Walter Palmer NWA Chicago 5/26/50

MD: This was a delightful 27 minutes, with some clipping, but you get so much of it, you hardly care. My buddy Ohtani's Jacket got here first and said I'd love Gardini, and guess what, I do. He likened him to a 1950s Porky, and I can see that on appearance and over the top antics, but, of course, with a deep Italians stereotype. He was great at getting driven down on his face (at one point the commentary said his nose would soon be like a wet donut), at getting caught up in the ropes and on top of the ropes, jiggling along with them, at making faces, and most of all, at getting caught in crowd-pleasing heel miscommunication spots. Meanwhile, he's one of the only US based workers I've ever seen do the headspin escape out of a headscissors. Legitimately funny, great left handed body shots so he could lean on his opponent when he needed to, big bumps. Definitely a fan.

Williams was instantly credible, if only because he had tons of tattoos (commentary said he was a member of Rough and Ready, Inc. or Grief, Inc., just a real nasty character). He was game for feeding into all of the babyface offense and playing into all of the comedy spots, while still keeping a mean disposition and hitting hard, especially with forearms in the ropes. Palmer looked good with his escapes and a big forearm off the ropes but we probably saw more of Anaya who was flashy and fiery and had an abdominal stretch/cobra twist with a few variations that he'd use as a finish. This moved quickly and never wore out its welcome and I'm eager to see more Gardini.

Ricky Morton/Robert Gibson vs. Samson Fuyuki/Toshiaki Kawada AJPW 10/28/88

MD: Pretty sure that the match that has been out there previously was the 5/24/88 one that ends in a count out. This is not that. This is pretty hilarious. We've heard stories of what happened backstage between these two and I don't know about that one way or another. What I do know instead is that Morton and Gibson used their powers for evil on this night. They worked this thing like they were Jr. Versions of Brody with a little 92 Freebirds built in (the former eats the match; the latter eats the crowd). They took and they took and they took.

They really dominated for the first half, quick tags, winning rope running exchanges 80% of the time, constant appealing to the crowd with claps (which worked; the crowd was into them, Rock and Roll chants and all). More than that though, whenever Footlose did get something in, they were quick to fire back. In the second half it was somehow worse even though it should have been better. There was some nominal heat on Morton; he was always so good at using roll ups for his hope spots. He'd eat some offense, some beat down, and then give you hope of a win out of nowhere. Here, however, he used those roll ups but after every single spot done to him. It broke the flow completely in a way that made it seem like it was 50-50 and that he was never in any real trouble. The finishing stretch had some nice nearfalls but the finish itself was a bit of a banana peel with Fuyuki getting a hand up from the outside and one of the R'n'R basically running into it. They were ahead ten to one on points. Just a masterfully selfish performance. 

ER: This is the Rock n Rolls last ever match from the only Japan tours they did in the 80s. I thought this match was clean, man. I watched this match in a Portland Air BnB basement on a TV that had motion smoothing turned on (or off, whatever the bad one is that every single girl in her 30s has on the TV at her place, so when you go over and they're watching Heat or Below Deck: Australia it looks like a fucking soap opera) and I don't know if I've ever watched wrestling this way but it just might make handhelds even better. My sister watching Mandalorian and it looking like people wearing cosplay gear hanging out in a western saloon TV set didn't work for me, but feeling like I'm smack dab in the middle of this crowd on a hot tour closing night of wrestling. It's crazy that the Rock n Rolls hardly went to Japan. For a team I love more than almost any team in history, I guess I assumed Ricky was a guy working Japan more than a couple AJPW tours here, a couple FMW show there kind of guy. Because they seem perfect for Japan and now I understand why the Youngbloods and Fantastics had such sustained (and good!) runs as AJPW gaijin. 

Also, I had no idea what kind of backstage altercation there was between these teams until Matt told me something happened on one of these tours and Robert Gibson kicked Fuyuki in the face, so I thought this match was going to be worked in Bad Blood...but instead I thought this match was most notable for Robert Gibson working the entire match visibly using only one leg. Is Robert Gibson okay? Robert Gibson looked like he got roughed up and forced to wrestle one legged as humiliation, because every time he moved he was dragging his left leg straight behind him while hopping on his right. I remember seeing a 2000s AAA match where Pimpinela drug his leg the entire time and wondering if these guys are just psychos or they're the greatest salesmen in the world giving themselves a Jorgen Leth/Lars Von Trier  Five Obstructions Dogme 95 task of working a match within a personal challenge. Whatever was happening, this handheld, motion the smoothest it has ever been, had me feeling every shoulderblock and every bump, every kick, every perfectly downward angled Ricky Morton punch, the fucking 11/10 suicide dive Ricky does where his body truly feels like a weapon, this handheld had real live impact. And there was Robert Gibson, shaking his leg on the apron and trying his best not to put weight on it during his (much briefer than Ricky) in-ring interactions. That it was so exaggerated and not gone after in any way by Footloose makes it all the more jarring. Was his leg hurt and they were instructed to stay away from it? Kings Road is a style famous for exploiting shoot injuries of opponents. Years later in 2002 NOAH it felt expected that Kenta Kobashi made a big comeback after his knee injury only to have Jun Akiyama go after his knees so hard that Kobashi missed several more months with knee injuries. Is Gibson doing some kind of Teddy Hart phantom knee injury? To what gain and for what cause? Whatever, he kept it believably up for entire match without seemingly anyone else talking about it, and the match was still somehow the perfect 9 minutes of constant hard contact and no stopping for breath. The heat was up bell to bell with stiff work free from Bad Blood. Handheld wrestling is our greatest treasure. The purest presentation of the best eras of wrestling. 

Tony Falk vs. Barry Houston NWA Worldwide 5/11/00

MD: I came into this expecting Houston to bump all over the ring for Falk. We've seen enough of this Worldwide stuff to know that they didn't give away a ton on TV because they wanted people to come to the shows. Most matches didn't end in a finish. This went around ten minutes though with a commercial in the middle, and it was really Falk bumping around the ring for Houston. He'd rope run with him, would take armdrags and mares and back body drops. Of course, it was Tony Falk, so after every bump, he'd milk it, hang out with his manager, whine to the ref or the crowd, stall, and it was all highly entertaining stuff.

He'd complain about hairpulling too, which was heat-garnering since that was most of his offense through the match. Post-commercial he was in charge with a top wristlock, going to Houston's ponytail again and again. Eventually, after a Falk DDT (again nothing with a big bump), Houston started to fire back and hit one of his own. That set up a frog splash where he almost hit the ceiling. "Basket Case", being Mark Jindrak came in to take out the ref. I thought Houston was saving his bumps for Jindrak to get him over, which would have made sense, but he really only take a press up pancake before Falk leaped off the second rope at him. This had all the Falk I was expecting and more, really, but not nearly as much of those Houston bumps. From the bit of 2000 Houston I've seen, I do wonder if he wasn't working quite like he had a few years earlier.

ER: We have limited amounts of post-'99 Houston available so every match is a gift, and while I thought Houston looked like Barry Houston in this match, this was a Tony Falk show. Houston looked his most professional: His gear and body were the best he'd looked, but the window was already shut for whatever reason. He should have been given some kind of real TV role in 98/99 but it never happened to the degree we wanted, and here he is in Tennessee getting shown up by a Tony Falk who is in his early 40s, looks like he is in his late 50s, and moves like he's in his late 20s. Houston looks good, but it's also one of the few matches we have where he works "on top". We grew so accustomed to Houston bumping bigger than Kidman and leaning into beatings, that he's like a whole new wrestler when we see him work dominant. It's not bad, it's just different. 

But Tony Falk is the one who looks like a star. Well, let me rephrase that, because he looks like absolute shit. He looks like Eddie Marlin in the Cowboy Boot match had Eddie Marlin showed up really out of shape. Falk is wearing a singlet and you can tell he has just an awful body under that singlet. And yet, I was consistently surprised and impressed by how quickly he got up for everything. Falk was a real bumper here, body as bad as I've seen but speed undiminished. He took armdrags the way 1995 Barry Houston would take armdrags, went up for a backdrop, and sold punches perfectly. Houston has nice punches and Falk would bump every one of them as a one shot kill. I loved this great telegraphed missed punch Falk threw, holding up his fist, kissing it, and then of course sending it right past Houston's head. His begging off was great because it was less heel and more Tired Man. Gypsy Joe was at ringside for Houston and when Joe got involved we got our meanest punches of the match. Time to find more fat big bumping Tony Falk I guess. 

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Found Footage Friday: HANSEN~! SPIVEY~! KOBASHI~! ACE~! PUTSKI~! FUJI~! KUWAIT~! SMOTHERS~! EATON~! ROCK 'n' ROCKERS~!

Ivan Putski vs. Mr. Fuji WWF (Kuwait) 1982

MD: The Rex match might have been technically better and even more primal and straightforward in some ways, but this had astoundingly glorious bullshit. At the two minute mark of the video, Fuji starts to play "hide the salt" and they milk it for another three and a half minutes before locking up, with the fans getting more and more into it as the ref can't catch him. Fuji eventually gives up with it and they start cycling through holds that Putski can power out of. Fuji gets an advantage on an armbar by pulling the tights to get Putski down but he ultimately gets a hyper noogie for his trouble. The crowd is loving every second of this so far, much like the Rex match; Putski just has a special relationship with them and Fuji isn't at all afraid to make goofy faces and flail about. Around twelve minutes after the goofiness with the salt started, Fuji finally gets it in Putski's eyes. This triumphant moment earns Fuji a bit of karate and a nerve hold before Putski shakes it off, hits two back body drops, and chases a retreating Fuji to the back. Another good time had by all. I don't know what this says about me, but I can watch Fuji hide salt in front of an irate crowd all day.

ER: People cannot get enough of Kuwait superstar Ivan Putski, and they show nothing but confused indifference for Fuji's salt ceremony...until they clearly see that Fuji is saving salt for Putski's eyeballs. I wish I knew more about the average Kuwait wrestling show attendee's familiarity with classic wrestling heel tropes. I want to see Bobby Heenan hiding a weapon for 20 minutes in Kuwait, slipping it in his boot and back in his trunks and even standing on it. Imagine Lawler hiding a weapon that doesn't actually exist and getting these men (No Women Allowed in the Kuwait Wrestling Club) to lose their minds, tearing their keffiyehs from their heads. Fighting Ivan Putski is like fighting a person in one of those inflatable dinosaur costumes. Much like the Moondog Rex match this week, there are some tremendous strength spots. 

I could see a lot of these spots done by a skinny fat super indy undercarder and played for hack laughs, but the exact same spots done by a completely gassed 5'4" man in early 80s Kuwait play like the pinnacle of the genre. Fuji breaks Putski down to his knees with a nerve hold, both hands digging into Putski's armpits while clutching his pecs, and in an incredible moment Putski rises to his feet and begins loosening Fuji's grip by flexing his large pectorals, Fuji's eyes growing wider, hands still gripping Putski's fleshy muscular breasts, Putski going through every posedown challenge to break the vice, a Most Muscular pose with unbroken eye contact finally freeing him. Putski's strikes get better the longer the match goes. His headlock punches have more intensity than Nolan Ryan's, and his elbow strikes to Fuji's chest in the ropes bounce him wickedly. But when that salt finally comes back into play, it's glorious. Fuji sneaks it into Putski's eyes and Putski swings his short T-rex arms blindly at him, while Fuji stays just out of arms reach throwing throat thrusts and headbutts. But Ivan Putski is the Most Powerful Man in the World and, much like the Philistines blinded Samson and still felt his full wrath, Fuji is soon tossed hardway by two backdrops, and flees the building before it all gets pulled down on top of him. 

Stan Hansen/Dan Spivey vs. Kenta Kobashi/Johnny Ace AJPW 11/20/90

MD: Pulling this back from the middle of the handheld card as it's the last major match we haven't covered yet (there's a Ricky Santana/Doug Furnas vs. Dick Slater/Joel Deaton match which isn't all that interesting and an opening match Teranishi/Kikuchi vs. Fuchi/Ogawa match that I don't promise I won't cover in the weeks to come). It's always fun to hear Kobashi come out to Kickstart My Heart. The contrast here is good. Early Kobashi/Ace (the All-Asia stuff) can be frustrating if they're up against a small, quick team and you get a lot of action and not a lot of weight to anything. But there is nothing but weight when you're in there against Hansen and Spivey. Obviously, Hansen is the real muscle, but Spivey starts this match out by catching Ace off a cross body and just SOS-ing him over his head and shortly thereafter, when Kobashi tries to get technical with him with a leglock, just jams his leg down upon Kenta's face in the nastiest way possible. Spivey wasn't a bad Hansen partner by any means. He was big enough and had some presence but it was also believable for Kobashi to bounce back off the ropes and drop him with a heart-filled shot.

Whenever this hits the outside, it gets great. Hansen just uses the rail and a chair and even this big wooden table. He was better smashing Ace with it than going for the lariat against it, though, as he took out his own arm opening up a fairly lengthy "contain the beast" bit from the two of them. You can't keep Hansen down (in 1990) for long though, and they rotated about until they were beating Kobashi down, with him surviving despite the odds and some nasty shots (including the aforementioned chair shot). At one point Ace broke up a submission by running in and bounding off the ropes with a clothesline but he got absolutely nailed by Hansen the second time he tried it (which was happening more and more in AJPW at this point and was always a great spot). The comeback was wonderful and imaginative, with Kobashi ducking a double shoulder block that sends both Hansen and Spivey to the floor. A dive on Spivey and a suplex on Hansen followed and Ace and Kobashi got in some hope that they might, maybe, steal this one. But of course it wasn't to be. Hansen got fed up and lariated one after the other in quick succession to end it. At this point in their development (where they may have won the secondary titles but were still losing to Jumbo/Partner and even Misawa/Kawada), Kobashi and Ace just hanging as well as they did meant something to the crowd.

ER: I'm not sure how many things in wrestling make me smile wider than Stan Hansen running to the ring through a parting see of fans, chasing after some, swinging his bullrope at others. Danny Spivey looks huge here, like the World's Largest Wings Hauser. He's several inches over Hansen whenever they're next to each other. Did Stan Hansen gift every touring gaijin tag partner his own set of chaps, like a leather goods Ribera Steakhouse jacket? Underneath his Gifted Chaps, Spivey is wearing Daisuke Ikeda's future ring gear, larger. There's a woman in the crowd who loves him and yells SPIVEY all match long. For her, he leans into a strong Ace clothesline and bumps big for a Kobashi back suplex. I love the precision and speed that Spivey and Hansen used to get Kobashi to the floor, slammed face first into a table, and rolled back into the ring. It was like 5 seconds flat. Hansen just threw Kobashi's body like he was a bag of autumn leaves. Stan Hansen was the first guy I ever saw do the Ringpost Chop and I thought it was incredible. Here he tries to take Johnny Ace's head off with a lariat and instead Western Lariats a thick table as hard as he would lariat a man. Hansen was a genius at hitting offense into inanimate objects, thrown as if he never once expected he would miss. 

Nagoya, in one night, got to see over 10 minutes of Stan Hansen and Abdullah the Butcher getting cut off decisively from their tag partners, and I love whenever Hansen is the Man in Peril. He is both great at selling while in offense, and also a constant threat. Kobashi and Ace are like two cops trying to take down a guy on PCP, just swinging chops and feet, always a second from lashing out. Hansen is great in peril, and he's even better getting his revenge. Cower at the ease with which he throws Kobashi with a head whipping bodyslam, or the way he and Spivey launch Kobashi with a backdrop and Stan is already falling on top of him with an elbow. Hansen and Spivey miss a tandem 3 point tackle into the ropes like two men who weren't expecting to hit the ropes, because Stan Hansen tis a man who has considered the concept of object permanence. Kobashi's pescado into Spivey hits flush. Hansen just beats the shit out of him. There's a really great sunset flip nearfall, where Ace does an unconvincing sunset flip and Hansen balances himself and starts knuckle punching Ace in the head, but Kobashi does a mountains-moving dropkick to send Hansen flying back into a close pin. He shuts that shit down swiftly and suddenly, putting Ace down hard on his back with a shoulderblock, backing into the corner as he calls for the Lariat. Kobashi screens into frame to save his dude and takes the absolute worst swinging hell arm to the nose, a fool of a man for startling a large blind man who never chooses Flight. Ace loses the match, but absorbs a comparatively polite lariat. 

Tracy Smothers/Bobby Eaton vs. Ricky Morton/Marty Jannetty Wrath Pro 2/18/07

MD: Speaking of glorious wrestling bullshit. This had Smothers on the mic to start (of course), with the usual threats to leave to get the fans chanting and then a great bit about having no heat with Morton. Tracy graciously said that if Ricky turned on Marty, he'd not only give him the right to ride with them, he'd give him five whole bucks. Morton didn't take the deal. That and Smothers making a show out of taking his shirt was the first ten minutes of the video.

Of all the various ways to watch and enjoy wrestling, there's only one that is unquestionably wrong: you can't quantify wrestling; if you're counting the number of kickouts or punches, you're doing it wrong. But you can speak about things more broadly in terms of time, especially in a narrative sense, sure, and with that in mind, I'd like to report that the next six minutes were Jannetty and Smothers goofing. Jannetty would get a takeover or reversal; Smothers would complain about the tights or the hair even if it made no sense given what actually happened; Jannetty would then do the move to the ref slowly to show him it was impossible. At one point he even had the ref do a counter on him to show him. It was six minutes well spent.

After some more stooging and clowning from Eaton and Smothers, they got about a minute of heat on Morton, before he came back and they went right to a double roll up and some more Smothers jawing including the singsong promise never to come back and yelling at everyone to go home. The entire video was around twenty-five minutes; 35 with ten more minutes of heat would have been preferable, but it's hard to complain too much about what we got given the venue and the age and filled out bump cards of the wrestlers involved. 

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Found Footage Friday: GOLDUST~! KASH~! MORTON~! KASH~! MICHAELS~! KASH~!

Goldust vs. Kid Kash Crossfire Wrestling 8/4/12

MD: This was the first round of a tournament to crown the company's first heavyweight champion. Cagematch says they went 25 but I think it was more like a fake fifteen. It was solid though. They're right about the same age, but were in great shape. Kash was still more than happy to stall but he had plenty of heat for it. The Fairgrounds was packed for a show with Brian Christopher, Shane Williams, Harry Smith, the Hotshots, David Young, Mad Man Pondo, Jillian Hall, etc, and Goldust was probably the biggest star. It's a good venue with the right crowd and right wrestlers. So, Kash was happy to stall, but went when it matters. The first real exchange was Dustin running over him multiple times, and he certainly threw himself back for the punches to help them look great (not that they needed a lot of help). He snuck in low blows and worked the leg, including a long figure-four, and would go to the eyes for his cutoffs. Dustin eventually fired back but couldn't capitalize on the bulldog (we'll say due to the fact he landed on his ankle but the camera angle didn't help us there) and they worked it towards that draw, with Dustin getting something of a moral victory since he had the advantage at the end even if he couldn't score the win and move on in the tournament. They'd worked in TNA back in 05 but they were different wrestlers here, in a different place, at a different time, and this was a perfectly enjoyable first round draw for an upstart promotion, the kind you might have seen in Southwest in the 80s or Global in the 90s. 

Ricky Morton vs. Kid Kash Crossfire Wrestling 9/1/12

MD: Yeah, I'm a fan of 2012 Kash's act. The Goldust match was a good mix of action and bullshit, but this leaned hard into the latter. It was billed as teacher vs student though it's not like the age gap between these two was that massive, just ten years. Kerry, who had to be around 10, came out with Ricky and hyped the crowd up. The kid got it. It was funny too: Kash was, again, all about the stall here, though he utilized it differently (more on that in a second). At one point he started berating some kids at ringside, pretty brutal stuff but it got him a ton of heat. Even though Kerry was right there, he didn't go after him instead. He picked some bystanders, probably because he knew Kerry would get right up in his face and the crowd would cheer for Kerry instead of boo at Kash. In the Goldust match, he stalled to counter Dustin's early advantage and because he didn't have an answer for him, annoying the fans with his cowardice and refusal to engage. Here, he had the advantage, but kept heading out after a successful shoulderblock, making it seem like he wasn't showing Morton respect, building and building the anticipation for him to get his comeuppance. The best wrestling is all anticipation and payoff and the crowd went up for Morton finally taking him over. He again resorted to low blows and after Morton went back, even went for a chair. They built right to the next card as Jerry Lynn came out to stop him, causing the distraction that let Morton roll him up. I could watch heatseeking stalling all day and obviously over-50 but still spry Morton was the perfect foil for it.

Chris Michaels vs. Kid Kash SAW 9/15/13

MD: Roles are reversed a year later. Michaels is the heel, and TV Champ of SAW, and he's got "Uncle" Reno Riggins with him with a newsboy cap. I kind of love the idea of Riggins as the medium sized fish in the small pond over the span of decades and he's effective in this role on the outside. Michaels does a bit of stalling, some eye poking, uses Riggins to ambush Kash. He doesn't seem to have it in him to generate the sort of heat Kash was the year before, though. Kash played a lot of this as a stoic sort of babyface, pushing forward at every point. He lost his cool and went low a couple of times which let Michaels do the same later on. This felt like a TV match leading to a bigger one at the next show where Kash would get five minuets with Riggins if he won so it was all a little understated, even if it got decent time. Good range between the two years by in-his-forties Kash but I definitely got more of a kick out of the heel act.

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ECW Crossing the Line Again 2/1/97

I've spent the last year (and will continue to spend this coming year) watching all of the 1997 WCW for my book. I've been spending other time in 1997, listening to music and watching movies released in the year, as well as watching other pro wrestling from the same period. If it happened in the year I learned to drive, then I am spending some time every day consuming it. I thought this 1997 ECW show was really choice, with an absolute classic first time ever meeting between Terry Funk and Tommy Rich, a killer Dr. Death/Raven match, heel Ricky Morton, a terrible Eliminators match that goes 20, etc. 

1. Lance Storm vs. Balls Mahoney

ER: Balls Mahoney would have made a really great Bluto, and he throws two nice punches (an overhand right and a long uppercut right) and also wastes Storm with a short arm clothesline. His Foley-esque bump over the ropes (where his head almost got wrapped in them but instead he tumbled hard to the floor) looked really great, and he leans into every piece of soft offense that Lance Storm threw at him. Storm never hits hard, ever, but he makes up for it a bit by throwing his whole body into attacks. His spinning heel kick and tope and top rope clothesline at least ended with his whole body crashing into Balls. His leaping back elbow and flying shoulderblock actually hit really well, and it felt like he was making harder contact with those moves the longer it went on, like he was learning to throw harder to knock this guy down. Was Balls Mahoney actually this good in 1997? It feels like he might be. Am I going to go on a Balls Mahoney rewatch? I already am. I wish Storm had sold Mahoney's piledriver longer, but Storm's top rope spinning heel kick helicoptered right into Mahoney's head so whatever. I liked this. 

2. Ricky Morton vs. Big Stevie Cool

ER: Ricky is wearing his red tasseled confederate flag tights with glittered flares and folks he looks incredible. The red tights are the brightest, perfect color of red, the stars and stripes cross perfectly diagonally past his knees. It's so pro wrestling and so trash 

Morton hits a low knee and a snappy headlock punch, and throws a missed clothesline with the best form. I love when Ricky fights like an asshole. Morton punches more when he's an asshole and Morton always uses his punches in cool ways. Here he broke a wristlock with a straight right and then missed a fast follow-up fistdrop. Morton is so much of an asshole here that he soccer dives knee up into Stevie's nuts, and then drives his knee into them on a snug inverted atomic drop. Stevie looked good taking Ricky's offense, and the Stevie Kick is a good finish, but I wish this got a chance to keep going where it was going. Instead it was Ricky looking like a switchblade asshole for 5 minutes and then Stevie quickly going home with a Jackknife and kick. Great look at how good 1997 Ricky Morton was. Who has the Ricky Morton FMW footage? 

3. Dr. Death Steve Williams vs. Axl Rotten

ER: This is a 2 minute match, and when you hear that you probably assume it's going to be Dr. Death killing Rotten with a couple big slams and a neck breaking suplex or two. It got to that, but before that we got to see Dr. Death take a nice bump into the turnbuckles and sells Rotten's decent strikes, and then we get to see Doc punch Rotten right in the face and throw him with a backdrop driver. 

4. Dr. Death Steve Williams vs. Raven

ER: Man they go right at it and it is great. Doc continues throwing stiff jabs and then takes a sicko bump running full speed face first into the top turnbuckle on a missed charge. This man has a well paying All Japan gig and he's in Philadelphia taking unprotected chairshots and hitting a gusher. Dr. Death's sweat soaked shag is one of the great haircuts in wrestling history, and it swings over his face as he rolls off a table, just before Raven crashes through it off the top. Doc cashes in the receipt on those chairshots and Raven hits a far great gusher. Raven was an incredible bleeder and needs to be talked about more as such. He's one of our great bleeders. Dr. Death does get to throw Raven around, hitting a high powerslam and German suplex, and there's a great fight over a top rope suplex that ends in a sick snap Raven superplex. The bWo involvement is used well, as most of them are just crash pads for Doc to press slam Raven through. While Raven writhes around with Hollywood Nova, there's a perfectly done showdown between Dr. Death and Stevie. Dr. Death keeps taking Stevie Kicks and getting up for more, and you kept waiting for it to lead to Stevie getting snapped in two with a backdrop driver. When Doc caught a kick, you knew you were about to see a man die, so I dug that Stevie instead spun out of it and busted him in the chops with a great Stevie Kick. It was a really great sequence and both played up their characters perfectly, Stevie tuning up that band like a maniac and Doc knowing exactly what to sell and not sell. Williams was a really good bumper and good at taking offense, and Raven's DDT looked like it would finish a guy like Dr. Death after those three kicks. 

5. The Sandman vs. D-Von Dudley 

ER: There are too many great shots of Sandman's entrance here to count. His forehead his bleeding when he comes through the curtains, hair slicked back, dangerous eyes. You'd avoid this man in literally any public space you saw him in. And yet, carrying a beer with a cigarette hanging from his lip, he looks like undoubtedly one of the coolest dirtbags in history. D-Von Dudley had great punches in this match, because he just threw several potatoes at Sandman's pre-existing cut, giving every side of the ring a close up look at his knuckles hitting Sandman's crown. Sandman's offense has this artless Drunken Master flow to it. All of it looks like it would hurt, and a lot of it is among the ugliest version of that move you've ever seen. It's beautiful. The whole match jumps up a level when Sandman suplexes a table edge first into D-Von's leg and fucking ends him with the most drunk dead accurate Philadelphia Jam with a chair on D-Von's face. It's 5 minutes and goes out on a high pitch, segueing into a strong post-match. D-Von joins up with Bubba and they mess up Spike with what I assume is the first ever 3D, but New Jack comes out and wreaks havoc. Bubba smooshes him with a perfect blindside avalanche, Bubba takes a Flair Flop face first on an open chair, New Jack drops D-Von mouth first on an open chair and then makes the most charming little smile to the camera. Simple, hot segment that made a ton out of like 8 total minutes. 

6. The Eliminators vs. Rob Van Dam/Sabu 

I'm just going to assume that everybody had the exact same Eliminators experience that I did: we were all in our late teens when we traded for a 4 hour Eliminators comp, and then after watching about an hour of the Eliminators comp we all pretty much realized exactly what the Eliminators were and had no desire to watch any more. This match was 20 minutes long, and felt longer. The Eliminators can do cool things but they are cold in there, and the crowd reacts coldly to them. Nobody makes a real effort to connect with the crowd, but running through flipping moves used to be enough to get some clapping at the Arena. They just do not care, and it takes RVD's energy to finally snap people awake. This was icy cold and disjointed with that silent crowd, but Van Dam came in with the energy of a guy whose party tricks always connect with any room. There's a confidence they respond to when he comes in, a response he gets by getting obliterated by a double spinning heel kick or folded in half when Saturn suddenly knows how to throw a slicing clothesline. Sabu hurls his body at men more and more as we creep to 20, landing that triple jump plancha three rows deep, falling on the back of his head when Saturn sweeps his legs off the top rope, missile dropkicking Saturn off a damn ladder, and it all peaks with some horridly constructed mess with a ladder set up on a table and Sabu whipping his shins into everything/everyone in sight. 

My favorite part was when Kronus sold a big Sabu top rope splash/RVD top rope Jam, by just standing up to his feet at the same time they did and throwing a stomach kick. Kronus has the mental energy of someone wandering their way through a battle royal who doesn't actually know he's in a battle royal. It's like he had no clue that he had just taken any kind of offense, and it's kind of amazing? He'll take a wild backdrop bump to the floor and almost land on his head doing a corkscrew senton, but there's no chance this man every thought for one second about what a quality match layout would look like. I did love them doing Total Elimination to a ladder that was holding both RVD and Sabu, with them hanging in the air before dropping straight to the mat when the ladder is swept away. It's a perfect overly complicated dumb ECW spot. 

7. Terry Funk vs. Tommy Rich

ER:  Tommy Rich everyone. While Terry Funk is being clapped on the back, as Joey Styles was going on and on about Funk's singles run to the World title as if he was a kid with progeria who was graciously going to be allowed to score a soccer goal, here's Tommy Rich looking like such a fat asshole in the ring. The fans call him a fat fuck, he looks like a goon asshole, the perfect heat magnet. Rich starts the match by storming clumsily into the crowd to get RIGHT into some dude's face, letting Terry Funk sneak up on him and start the fight. Getting distracted by some guy in a hockey jersey and letting your opponent find and fight you is so much interesting than two guys meeting in the ring and then walking each other into the crowd, and Funk just started throwing left hands that made Rich bleed more with each shot. Rich is a full on menace in this, just a disgusting looking stuck pig of a man stumbling through the ugliest people you've ever seen. He hits such a perfect messy bladejob, sending streams of red everywhere down his face while the parts of his face that are untouched by blood have a sick purple hue. 

Rich wrecks his body in a few ways that would have looked cool from any man, but look incredible from a big fat slob. A sweaty guy spilling over his tights running knee first into a guardrail just looks better, and it lead to Funk taking apart his knee in ways that would cripple younger, fitter men. It's one thing for Funk to not work his left hands at this point, but there has to be a way to work hitting a guy's knee with a chair. If there is, Terry pretends to not know about it, and just bashes the shit out of Tommy's knee, then kicks his hamstring all around ringside. It's fucking great. The whole time - and the whole match really - Rich is reveling in the You Fat Fuck chants, spitting blood out through a cartoon grin. He shoves some dude off him in the crowd and almost accidentally hits his small girlfriend, presumably the only woman in the entire arena. Rich grins the entire time, except for those times when he would get suddenly unstoppably angry, the way a real asshole would behave. 

The man is thirsty for DDTs and hungry for hate. DDTs for Funk, DDTs for Jim Molyneux; he slowly hitches up the front of his tights while making full eye contact with some creeps. Tommy Rich looks like absolute shit while he spits blood up into the air and bashes at Funk's knee, still grinning and acting like an asshole. They're two of the only guys who have ever made kneeling and fighting ever look good. Nobody makes the sitting-in-chairs-throwing-punches look good, it's tough as hell to make kneeling and punching look good, but this is great. The spinning toehold finish would have worked in most settings, but it felt beneath the rest of the match because everything else was so legitimately violent. But this is one of the greatest ECW matches of all time, hands down.  

8. Shane Douglas/Chris Candido/Brian Lee vs. Tommy Dreamer/The Pitbulls

ER: This starts really great and then eventually goes on too long. Probably didn't need nearly 20 minutes from these guys, turns out. But when Candido starts things by baseball sliding THROUGH Brian Lee's legs just to kick Dreamer in the nuts, that is a fucking hilarious way to start things. The crowd brawl and bullshit in this was really good. The match settling into an actual match was fine, but the bullshit kept it high. Pitbull 2 took a lot of gnarly shots to the head while standing right next to the smelliest fans, then came roaring back into the ring throwing just as hard punches at Douglas. They bring a guardrail into the ring and do a bunch of great stuff with it. Candido gets thrown into it and springs off it straight a back elbow that bounces him over the top rope like a volleyball. Douglas gets tossed through the guardrail and then press slammed onto the busted railing. Holy shit. These guys taking some dumb bumps out here and it rules. 

As his contract states, Dreamer is dropped crotch first on a guardrail, just railing his balls the exact way he demands in every single match. Dreamer takes a lot of abuse in this. Douglas really drops him with vertical suplexes, with a big one through two chairs. Candido gets rocket launched onto Dreamer and does that thing where he bounces right up to his feet on the recoil. Pitbull 2 is bleeding real good and getting hanged with his own chain, and really this whole thing just gets derailed by the Rick Rude involvement. The one good thing - and it is an admittedly pretty big great thing - is that Rude comes out in a mask wearing a patchwork denim on denim pantsuit like something Richard Pryor would have owned. I'm stunned that he didn't also have a big floppy hat adorned with beer cap toppers. Rude looks walks out wearing a ensemble too garish for a Vince McMahon 1991 Prime Time Wrestling segment, and a man wearing this outfit in 1997 is far more shocking than any of the ways ECW tried to be shocking on any given show. I remember what people wore in 1997, and nobody was dressing like a pimp from a Fred Williamson movie. I don't know what Rude's involvement was supposed to be in ECW, but everyone in the ring hitting shitty Rude Awakenings seems like a lame way to peak this. 

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Loosely Formed 1998 WWF: Rock n Rolls! Aguila! Pirata Morgan!

Rock n Roll Express vs. The Head Bangers WWF Raw 2/23

This is continued proof of Rock n Roll Express busting ass during this too brief WWF stint. The first half of this was made up of Rock n Roll misdirection spots where they kept accidentally hitting each other while getting more and more frustrated about it. Morton and Gibson's timing looked excellent and some of the spots were complicated enough that I'm not sure there's another team on the roster that could have done them. Actually the other team that could have done them would have been Jarrett/Windham, so that's just more testament that the made-to-fail NWA stable actually ruled for two months. 

Ricky did a great version of the spot where he's running over Gibson and Mosh's dropdowns before colliding with Gibson, Gibson accidentally punches Morton off the apron, Ricky snapmares Thrasher into the ring and whips him across the ring which bumps Gibson off the apron, just expertly set up and executed misdirections from Ricky and Robert. 

Cornette expertly hooked Mosh's leg while looking away and Gibson hit the damn cleanest kneedrop right to the side of Mosh's head, then kneels down with one onto Mosh's forehead, then another onto his shoulder. 

Gibson sure took a lot of great bumps to the floor during this run, and he takes big one to set up the finish. What's the other late 90s Gibson I need to seek out? 

Pirata Morgan vs. Aguila WWF Shotgun 2/28

I had no memory of Pirata Morgan doing a two match WWF stint in 1998. Morgan/Brian Christopher vs. Taka/Aguila from the 2/16/98 Raw is insanely fun and an incredible visual representation of Pirata. He IS Pirata Morgan in that match, and it's great to see. He is not as great here, as this match is more about letting Aguila show off his surprisingly deep (especially for 1998) flying moveset. Pirata was here to be a base, and he's great at being a base. I wish he could have also beat the shit out of Aguila in between being a base. 

Pure unfiltered Aguila was some insane stuff. The height he got here on flapjack bump and a truly insane moonsault press to the floor were wild, just incredible hang time, and his springboard armdrag to send Morgan to the floor was some Juvy level shit. And brother, if you're talking hang time, he took a backdrop bump so high that, were there some kind of database that were actually tracking this, would almost surely rank towards the top of the All Time Most Hang Time on a Backdrop list. I wish I had been keeping a list like that, with to the hundredth of a second stop watch times next to all of them. 

Pirata's premier piece of offense is actually amazing, a tilt a whirl sitout powerbomb that is so damn cool, like something I've never seen. We have so many complicated fast moving big crash landing spots now and I don't think I've seen anyone break out a kick ass sitout powerbomb like this:

Pirata, in this match, also does maybe the laziest waistlock takedown I've ever seen, moving to a rear waistlock by just walking around Aguila, then lifting him waist high and just dropping him. They're not all going to be sitout powerbombs. 

Pirata takes a big bump off the top off an armdrag and puffs his chest out to take a missile dropkick, and the victory roll huracanrana roll up looked like something that would win a match. 

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Loosely Formed 1998 WWF: Rock n Roll Express! Brian Christopher! Head Bangers!

Rock n Roll Express vs. The Head Bangers WWF Raw 2/16/98

As half-hearted as this "angle" actually was, it was really cool that WWF brought in Tommy Young to ref some of the NWA title matches

Robert Gibson worked much harder during this run than was probably necessary. Just watch how fast he bumps for armdrags and how quickly he feeds offense!

Ricky does a back rake to Mosh, and then does a second one underneath Mosh's shirt

The punch exchange between Ricky and Mosh was far better than I would have guessed it would be. Mosh tightened those rights up when working Ricky the God

Thrasher has a nice powerslam on Ricky

Ricky takes a humongous flapjack, coming one minor rotation away from looking like a Beverly Brothers victim

The Stage Dive was timed incredibly well here and rarely looked this good

Right after Mosh hits the powerbomb portion of the Stage Dive, he throws Gibson over the top to the floor. Gibson really flies, taking that bump like it was 1986, and hilariously that lets the Rock n Rolls win by DQ since getting thrown over the top draws a DQ under NWA rules. This could have/should have continued as a very fun lower card angle, if Cornette was allowed to constantly change rules to gain advantage, under the guise of "Classic NWA Rules". Sorry clowns, you can use tasers if your NWA license is up to date!

Brian Christopher vs. Tony Williams WWF Shotgun 2/21/98

Tony Williams is Memphis worker Kid Wikkid, making his only WWF appearance

Christopher has really great short right hands that he throws exactly like his dad, and I have no idea when exactly he stopped throwing punches like that

also like his dad, Christopher takes a nice backdrop bump

Kid Wikkid has a cool somewhat uncontrolled pescado

Great spot where Christopher ducks a low running crossbody and Wikkid flies right over him and under the ropes to the floor

You know what? Sure Brian, I think you should do a sunset flip powerbomb to the floor and then throw a missile dropkick to the back of this guy's head

Did Brian Christopher have the best bulldog on the roster? Almost certainly. Dustin had mostly stopped using it at this point. Matt Hardy had a good one but Christopher's was better because, as a heel, he could also use the bulldog as a transition for his opponent shoving him off into the turnbuckles

The finish is a real weird one, as Wikkid does a rana takeover and must have smashed the back of his head into the mat (even though it didn't look like a terrible landing) because he comes up with some of the rubberiest legs I've ever seen, completely unable to stand without leaning his weight onto Christopher. He somehow manages to fake his way to an Irish whip but he's a man drowning out there with nothing to lean on. I think he was supposed to get one more piece of offense off that whip, but the man literally couldn't stand on his own, so Christopher called an audible and spiked him with a gross DDT and then dropped a guillotine legdrop to an unmoving Kid

I pointed out Kid's obviously rubberized legs during the finishing sequence, but there were several smaller moments in the match where he looked wobbly. The pescado, the way he moved before tossing Christopher up with a backdrop. 

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Found Footage Friday: LAWLER~! GILBERT~! FREEDBIRDS~! R'N'R~! SILVER KING Y EL TEXANO EXPLODE~!

Fabulous Freebirds (Roberts/Gordy) vs. Rock 'n Roll Express Mid-South 6/24/85

MD: Unique pairing that you'd think we have more footage of than we actually do, at least with this particular iteration of the Freebirds. This went closer to fifteen than ten, but not by much, had a hot crowd, and was an all time Gordy performance. Everything was good, but he was such a beast in this. I want to talk about how well Roberts stooged early, but Gordy just overshadows all of it. Once Roberts finally was able to tag into him, he just bullied Gibson over in a rough German Suplex, just deadlifted him over. That wasn't the start of the heat, but it was jarring enough that I thought it would be. Shortly thereafter Roberts was back in and let Gibson make the tag, leading to Morton posting himself, which was far less unnerving since that's how you expect the heat in an R'n'R match to start. Gordy leaning on him was just nasty though, a running punch in the ropes that took his head off, fist drops, a super athletic cut off where he turned a reversed whip into a leap onto the second rope and dive back off. Morton was finally able to make a hot tag after reversing a Roberts piledriver attempt (which felt suitably dire), but Gordy asserted himself again. Gibson hit a roll up on Roberts, even though he wasn't the legal man and Gordy just walked up, casually lifted Gibson off of it, and ganso bombed him for the pin. Pure brutality. You watch this and what feels most surprising is that it took a whole eleven months after this before Watts put his main singles title on Gordy. Again, I'm sleeping on Roberts' performance here, sleeping on how good Morton was at peppering little shots in from underneath to keep the fans behind him, the ways the Freebirds worked around the ref, etc., but Gordy was such a looming presence that he deserves 90% of the copy here.

ER: Had I been asked about it, I would have thought Ricky Morton would have crossed paths with Terry Gordy a lot more than he actually did, but most of the matches they had were from early career late 70s Memphis that we surely don't have. Prime New Orleans crowd Mid-South Rock n Rolls vs. Freebirds is a great thing, Hayes always seen strutting in silhouette on the floor, Roberts and Gordy - shockingly - separating Ricky from Robert. One thing I like about writing about wrestling with Matt, is that we often land at the exact same conclusion on a match but get excited by different things within the match (and a lot of the same things, we're not special) but I try not to read what he wrote until I've watched the matches, just to see what jumped out to each of us. It's a rewarding way to sync up on wrestling, and it was rewarding here because he was enamored with Gordy, while I couldn't take my eyes off of Buddy. Gordy was great. He was Gordy. I lost it when Gordy hit this huge body press off the middle buckle, but a lot of this seemed like the same great Gordy that we always get. Buddy Roberts felt like the man running the show. 

Buddy out bumped (or at least tried to out bump) Ricky and I thought he had the most vicious offense in the match. He hit this jawbreaker on Gibson that had a little hitch in it, and that hitch really made it seem like a real connection had been made, similar to how Harley Race's hitch on his kneedrop always gave it that split second emphasis that made the connection feel more real. He threw Regal-sharp elbows in the corner, and Ricky sells them like his face is suddenly searing hot. When it's time for Buddy to bump and sell, he's a freak, going hard into the buckles and rebounding into a hard back bump, leaping into a big bump after recoiling from an atomic drop, comedy bumps that look like they really really hurt. Morton's selling in the match is really incredible. There's this great moment where he takes a hot shot, springs off the top rope, staggers to a different side of the ring, and winds up draped chest first across the bottom rope. Morton also gets launched over the top to the floor on a hiptoss behind the ref's back, and knows how to sell a huge bump like that just as well as he sells something like having his eyes raked across the top rope. Morton might sell his eyes being raked over the top rope better than anyone else. Robert's hot tag felt a bit rushed a lead immediately to the finish, but the finish really was beast mode Gordy. Earlier, Buddy had prevented a sunset flip with a well timed punch. Well, when Robert successfully gets Buddy over on one, in the middle of the count, Gordy just lifts Gibson up directly out of his sunset flip and just drops to his knees with a disgusting piledriver. There was no attempt to protect Robert on this one, this just looked like Gordy breaking up a bar fight, shutting that damn match down. Awesome. 

Jerry Lawler vs. Eddie Gilbert USWA 6/17/92

MD: Some all time goofing by Eddie as Lawler more or less sits back and watches. There's a match in here, but of the 26 minute video, less then ten minutes have the wrestlers making contact. That doesn't mean it's not great. The first ten is all about Eddie leaving the ring at any opportunity, stalling, jawing on the mic, causing all sorts of havoc. Once they finally get going, there's a three minute segment of pure pro wrestling perfection where he tries to sync his ideal of a three-count with the ref's, both of them going down one after the other to time it out. Of course that leads to the ref counting too slow for him and too fast for Lawler. Obviously Jerry's an all time pro but I'm kind of amazed he didn't break during all of this. That's your shine here, with Lawler barely having to move a muscle. Eventually Eddie takes over, including a sleeper until he misses a fist drop. Lawler drops the strap and hits a nice bulldog before the second sets up a ref bump (and Gilbert getting his pound of flesh by stomping the hell out of the downed ref to make up for previous indignities). The last five minutes of footage is the screwjob finish, it getting reversed after Jarrett comes out, and Gilbert launching another monologue at the injustice of it all. I couldn't tell you what the crowd felt that night but thirty years later, all the bullshit aged like fine wine.

ER: This is one of the more backseat Lawler matches I've seen, with Lawler clearly hanging back and letting Gilbert work a long routine. It's incredibly entertaining, and I especially loved how Eddie was bragging to the crowd about his Global title, telling them, "I'm the one you see defending my title on ESPN every day...oh wait, I forgot that everybody here is so poor that they can't afford ESPN." This is 85% bullshit and 15% incredible Memphis wrestling. The punch exchanges were tremendous, and I had to watch Eddie punching out Lawler in the corner several times. It's not just about great all of Gilbert's punches were, it's also how perfectly Lawler whips his head in reaction until the KO punch rocks and slumps him in the corner. Gilbert's missed fistdrop off the buckles looked so good, and I love how it lead to the strap coming down and Lawler unleashing his own punches, big bulldog, and a perfect dead drop DDT. The bullshit was so all-consuming that I was actually surprised when they settled down and wrestled for awhile, and I'm not sure I would have minded if they ever did. Of course, we're lucky that they did, but we're just as lucky that some guy was recording Eddie just jacking around for 20 minutes. 

Silver King vs. El Texano IWA Japan 5/23/94

MD: Hell of a sprint between partners here. There were a lot of the spots you'd expect given the audience with tricked out armdrags and Silver King springing forward, but it was all punctuated with hard shots, be it the Texano punch at the beginning, just how much Silver King threw himself into his spin wheel kick and dropkicks, or the chop exchanges. Silver King might get an advantage on an exchange just for Texano to come back with a really sharp leg kick and power bomb, just like that. They did sell in the back third and let things resonate but some of that might have just been exhaustion. If you wanted to distill a story here it was Texano's strength advantage vs. Silver King's speed advantage, but a lot of it was just two partners really going at it. You could feel the trust between them, as Texano had to base for some spots that were getting away from them and wouldn't have worked otherwise, or just in catching some of the dives. They could have done 20% less and probably had a better match for it but since this is basically a one time match, I'm certainly not going to fault them for putting it all out there.

ER: Los Cowboys Explode! I don't think I actually knew that we ever got a Texano/Silver King singles match and this really delivers. This is an insane gas tank match. Both guys are shaped like Jake Milliman but go go go for 13 straight minutes, no letting up, hardly any recovery time after a ton of big bumps and a lot of motion. Silver King has the hair of an early 90s stand up who got his own sitcom, the kind of mullet Richard Jeni would have had if he was born in Torreon. Texano looks so great here. He works the way Silver King would eventually work in 2001. That's nothing against King, but it was clear that Texano was basing and keeping this train running, and it allowed both to shine. Texano's strikes all hit with a thud. He looked like he actually buckled King's legs on a kick (hey I know we have 10 minutes of rope running left, how about I belt you in the hamstring?) but his clotheslines were incredibly impactful. Texano had two different clotheslines that would have broken my chest. The arm and leg drags were cool, and I think the coolest was Texano going up for an electric chair but only getting one leg over, so kind of improvising into a kind of freaked out Robert Gibson style headscissors. King's moonsault press was gorgeous, and his tope con giro was fearless. The visual on it was amazing, as Texano had just taken a sky high bump over the top to the floor, and King followed it right up with that tope, just the best bodies in motion pro wrestling. This had the feeling of a lucha version of a Jay vs. Mark Briscoe match, just two guys who know each other front and back throwing out some of their craziest stuff with full trust and no backing down.  

 

 

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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: LAWLER~! WILDCAT~! BUCHANAN~! MORTON vs. EATON~!

Jerry Lawler vs. Bull Buchanan NWA Worldwide 1999

MD: I get that he had Lawler in here, but my initial thought was that Buchanan looked very good hitting his stuff. I went back through the archives to see if we've said much about him and I think I've found Eric twice over the years saying he looked better than he remembered, so maybe there's something to that. Granted, it helps when, during the comeback, a guy has Lawler wildly slamming his own head back into the turnbuckle to sell punches. Likewise early on when he really went up for Bull's slams and then stooged by being unable to slam Bull himself. Regardless, Bull came off looking like a big deal here and like someone who could really be molded as a dynamic monster. Even when Lawler was in charge, it was mostly by having Stacey choke him on the bottom rope or by using an object. Bull actually hitting stuff was a bit more dubious but the money was just in how fluidly he hit a whip into the corner or moved around the ring. Overall just a very giving performance by Lawler, though I'd say that the fans were more anti-Lawler than they were pro-Bull and they never quite got behind him despite it all. If I saw this in 99, I'd think Bull would be WWF champion in 2003 maybe. I guess he was tag team champion for a cup of coffee. His AJPW run doesn't hold up, right?

ER: I'm forever curious about checking out and re-establishing opinions on guys like Bull Buchanan. Following my nose has lead to some pretty great wrestler re-evaluations for me personally. I wouldn't have known just how great the Berzerker was had I not followed it. Bull Buchanan isn't a guy I've thought about re-evaluating, which makes him a perfect kind of guy to look back into. It's just fun to check back on certain things the older you get. You never know which music or director or wrestler your current self is into if you never dip your toe back in. Let's find those great Truth Commission matches someday! This Bull Buchanan was much different than the Recon that has last appeared in WWE 18 months prior. The main difference? Buchanan is so jacked in this match that I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to recognize him if I hadn't known who we were watching. You can tell he'd been putting in a lot of time in OVW, as he now had the biggest biceps and the stupidest haircut of his life. 

Honestly Buchanan looked more like a rookie a couple months in, than a guy who had been all over WWF TV and PPV for a few months the prior year. He looked like the kind of lummox that Lawler had been pulling great matches out of for over two decades. This was basically Lawler vs. Snitsky, and Lawler is really good at working that. I love when Lawler is a heel in Tennessee. Lawler as the controlling cheating heel is a much more interesting match than babyface Lawler selling the entire match for Bull Buchanan holds. This was a great Lawler performance, peaking with him putting on a master class of punches before immediately reminding every viewer that not only does he have the best punches in wrestling history, but he also sells punches better than anyone else. Buchanan's three corner punches are his highlight of the match, with Lawler whipping his body among ropes, turnbuckle, and fist. Lawler sells a punch to the body by running on his tippy toes and falling to his seat. Lawler added a lot of color to a minimalist Buchanan performance, taking high bumps on hiptosses and screaming in the corner when he was about to be socked. Kat choking Bull over the bottom rope was almost surely some kind of sex play between the three of them. Lawler wins with a perfect right hand, with what looked like a wadded up receipt as the weapon. Perfect. Somebody sell me on Bull Buchanan in NOAH. 

Ricky Morton vs. Bobby Eaton ASW 2002

MD: The bane of my pro wrestling footage existence are those silent 8mm footage clips. Those, and when we get 3 minutes of a match from Florida. There's something to watching two absolute masters without sound, however. We have a moral obligation to watch this, sound or no. It's fun here to just watch Morton and Eaton and imagine how the crowd would react. You end up focusing more on how Morton puts on a headlock or Eaton's body language as he's about to try to pull something tricky while pressed back into the corner. This one really doesn't have any high spots, but it doesn't need them. They were fairly deep into their 40s at this point, with plenty of bumps punched on the card, but they also knew what to do when and how. Eaton was slow to enter and threw a cheapshot punch when they finally made contact. When Morton came at him, he went to the apron to avoid contact. He tried it again, this time in the corner, but Morton blocked, fired back, and hit a stunner that Eaton sold like a mare. Always keeping up with the times was Ricky Morton. That opening exchange was probably the highlight of the match, as it's probably more fun to watch Morton's shine without sound than him fighting from underneath without it, but you could still see the mastery at every point in the remaining six minutes or so. Turner, when he uploaded it, said that this crowd had no idea how lucky they were. Without the audio, we probably don't know if that's true or not, but it's good to see how these two would put together a match in front of a crowd this size in a venue like this in 2002.

ER: I love watching wrestling with the sound off, and I'm surprised more don't take advantage of it. If you really want to focus on a guy, I always notice things I don't know if I would have otherwise with sound. It's a skill that I had to learn sometime around 2003-04 WWE, and it's a skill that I continued to use almost exclusively when watching guys I like in WWE. Remember when everyone was complaining about how awful Heel Michael Cole, and how much he was dominating broadcasts? Well guess which guy still managed to watch his favorite WWE workers without experiencing Michael Cole? Everyone has this power, and too many are afraid to wield it. A match like this forces our hand, but honestly, what could we have missed out on from this little venue in a short match? I thought Eaton looked so good here. I loved what a pill he was being about starting the match, and how he popped Ricky and even used a couple of sick thumbs to the throat. Eaton throwing one punch in one corner, and then casually walking to the opposite corner to lean through the ropes was some classic small town asshole heel business. Eaton's bump into the middle rope is one of my favorite punch sells (not sure I've seen anyone do it better than Eaton other than maybe Big Boss Man), and it looks even cooler in a dingy little building. We might need a tiebreaker on this one, as I'm pretty sure Ricky was indeed going for a flying mare, not a Stunner. I don't think Ricky really got the grip and he definitely didn't get the jump, but seeing how Morton landed I'm confident Eaton made the right bump. This didn't really feel like a full match, but Morton did take a decent bump to the floor, and I loved when he flustered Bobby with a flurry of punches. You already know if you're the kind of person who gets excited by a broken audio incomplete Eaton/Morton match, you don't need us. But you're probably here because you are the kind of person excited by this kind of match. 

Jerry Lawler vs. Chris Harris USA Wrestling 2005

MD: Fun for the whole family in this one, as Eugene was in Harris' corner, mimicking everything happening in the ring and having someone for both wrestlers to play against. Let me put it this way: the finish has Lawler getting pinballed from one to the next and the crowd couldn't be happier. The early going here is so minimalist, with Lawler losing an exchange and then milking it for two minutes, but I kind of live for that stuff. It's so effective and so artful so I'm not going to complain. He takes over with an object that may or may not exist and Eugene makes for an excellent cheerleader; there was a dodgy moment where the crowd was chanting for Eugene to do something instead of Harris but what Eugene did was start clapping and hitting the mat so that everyone would create a more neutral rallying reaction which Harris could play into. It was a smart moment by Dinsmore. The potential ceiling on this was relatively low if you compare it to all time Lawler performances but it was a huge amount of fun. 

ER: Lawler is so good at this. You couldn't call this a no bump or even low bump appearance, but this was 15 minutes of Lawler making the most out of the least, another match where Lawler's selling is at the forefront. Early on he takes a big swing and miss at Harris in the corner, and Harris hits him with an awesome left hand that Lawler sells immaculately. All of his selling here is great, all of his stalling is great, and the man even takes a big ass backdrop bump, and gets run into the turnbuckles a lot. He finally demands the ref do something about Eugene, and when Eugene is being dealt with he reaches into his tights to actualize a weapon that hadn't been there a second before. With a loaded fist he finally gets in his first offense of the match, peppering Harris with left jabs and right hand payoffs, dancing a little Lawler shuffle in between punches. I loved his backdrop bump, but his missed middle rope fistdrop bump is so damn good. Sometimes he sticks it knees to mat, but here he hit with knees and fist and immediately rolled forward, like Low Ki rolling through a missed double stomp, only here Lawler comes up holding his hand. Chris Harris throws punches a lot better than I remember (and he's also against the best punch seller here so that has to help), and there were a couple good nearfalls where Lawler got his foot on the ropes at the last minute. That was all paid off by Eugene shoving his foot off when he tries it again. It's nothing but punches, a couple of big bumps from a guy in his mid 50s, and bullshit. That's Segunda Caida, baby.  

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Found Footage Friday: TULLY~! BUDRO~! HARDY VS HARDY~! GANG~! PITTMAN~! FANTASTICS~! BUSHWHACKERS~!

New Dimension Wrestling 7/18/98

MD: This was a show at a racetrack with Chris Cruise and John Hitchcock announcing and Bruce Mitchell in the crowd. The announcing was as insider as it could get for 1998 as Hitchcock spent the whole night trying to pop himself and his friends. It was a moment in time, so there were crotch chops in about three matches but they still put on a good show overall. 

Ring Masters vs. Rikki Nelson/Colt Steel

MD: I'll move through this one quickly as there's a lot to cover here and I'm not outright skipping anything but Abby vs Ric Link (bloody but not much to it, no great Abby cutoffs and there's a better brawl on the card) and Iron Sheik vs Jimmy Snuka (coolest part was to see Sheik with his giant belly still able to do the club gimmick). Nelson could get great heat. Steel had some good looking takedowns and knees. They were working a gimmick where they were rivals that were teaming for the belt. Ring Masters came in on motorcycles and both kind of looked like Jimmy Jam. Crowd didn't want to back them but they were de facto faces and willing to bump. Colt and Steel were the sort of guys who could carry an indy when the big stars weren't there and this was pretty good accordingly but no one's reading for this one.

Ricky Morton vs. Manny Fernandez

MD: At one point this was supposed to be Manny vs Willy Clay and Ricky vs Sheik, because Snuka got there late, but they shifted things back when he arrived. That would have been morbidly interesting but this was far better. Manny based well and gave a lot early (he was going over). The heat was mostly a chinlock with cut offs but if you're going to do that to anyone in the world, Ricky Morton's the guy. Finish had shenanigans. Manny could have a pretty good ten minute match in 98 but I would have liked a bit more imagination when he was leaning on Morton.

Willow the Whisp vs. Surge

MD: The young guys match where they did everything under the sun. Cruise said that they'd be still watching these guys in twenty years so we weren't quite at the "Matt will be world champion and Jeff will be in a wheelchair" mindset yet. What's funny is that you can absolutely see who Jeff would be in Willow, just in the way he moved and in the dives and bumps, but Matt wasn't close to being who he would be yet. He instead did every move he knew, a bunch of stuff he wouldn't be doing in a couple of years, while Jeff's stuff (like the whisper in the wind) was more unique and would stay with him forever. This served its purpose, being spot after spot that let the announcers say that they weren't just a nostalgia act but on the cutting edge as well.

ER: This was so awesome. This was basically the exact kind of match all of us were hoping to see in 1998 when we traded tapes. When I traded for my first FMW tape around this same time, I was blown away by Hayabusa doing things no more crazy than what Jeff Hardy was doing here, only one guy was doing it in the middle of a literal Olympic swimming pool and the other guy was doing it in the pit area of a southern race track. I love these kind of brother vs. brother showcase matches, two guys who learned together and honed their impressively different styles, unleashing everything they know. Just a few years later we got a match with two under 18 year old Briscoes doing 2 count kickouts after top rope sitout powerbombs and that circle of life continued. I think this kind of match showed good reason why both Hardys sat so high up on DVDVR rankings, that for the time were based on matches that some people had seen live. Had I been seeing this kind of thing in rectory basements or bar backyards in 1998 I would have thought it was the best wrestling in the world, too. I think it was more than just big moves and moving from one spot to the next, as you can see the build and escalation throughout, the big guns coming out the longer the match went on. 

The Hardys were just a month or two away from actually getting wins on WWF TV, and now it's 25 years later and both are still in great matches (Their tag against Private Party earlier this year was one of my favorite TV tags of the year so far) but there's an undeniable melancholy to them still wrecking their bodies, no matter how much I love these two for doing so. Jeff was on the cusp of stardom, and here he is stumble walking his way down the bleacher seats looking no different than any VHS video you've ever seen of a teenage backyarder making a dramatic appearance around the corner of his friend's side yard while Mudvayne blared through someone's JVC Kaboom Box. Jeff brought yarder tendencies to the mainstream and became one of the biggest wrestling stars of the 21st century, 100% deserved. I also like how he still throws stomach kicks the exact same way as he did back then, and how Matt knew how to throw several great punches just as well in 1998. Matt had the kind of punches that made a bunch of us fall in love with worked punches. He has a tornado punch that catches Jeff under the chin, two perfect - and I mean perfect - fistdrops, and the longer this goes the more he starts unwinding his excellent overhand rights. 

This has some fantastic spots and some pro wrestling culture that only those of us who were up to our eyeballs in green board would ever understand. Matt is just tossing off moves like he's flipping through a CAW list, and damn does he make it work. He's just casually tossing out a high lift hotshot, Michinoku driver, middle rope legdrop, and missing a top rope springboard moonsault while Chris Cruise is talking about what a great wrestling fan Mike Lano is. Let me tell you, as a Bay Area wrestling fan who had Mike Lano's gigantic sweatpants-covered ass bent over in my direction far too many times as he took intrusive photos at an indy show, I miss those days of making fun of that dude and his huge ass. Jeff is a total lunatic, breaking out things that most of us just weren't seeing in 1998. He lands a superfly splash right on Matt's head and it was 100% on fucking purpose. This man didn't slip and land on his brother's head, he intentionally leapt onto his face. They duplicate a Rey Mysterio spot and make it look as good or better than Rey, when Jeff gets alley-ooped onto the top rope, sticks the landing with no hands, and flips back into a corkscrew moonsault. Some goober on commentary actually drops a JUSTIN Thunder Liger when making a comp to Japanese wrestling. I had to skip back multiple times to hear a Justin Thunder Liger reference in the wild. I remember my friend dying when he was showing his now ex-wife some Liger matches 20 odd year ago, and her asking where the other guy was. "The other guy?" "Yeah. If this guy is Juice, where's Thunder Liger?" Jeff does a big Sabu flip over the top off a chair, crashing them both onto grass, and Matt hits a gorgeous Asai moonsault, landing perfectly vertical with Jeff's chest. After Matt wins, he turns to the camera and says "I'm getting way too old for this," and it plays with the same wistfulness and past begets present wisdom as Johnny Knoxville hopping and limping and laughing through crash footage from 20 years ago.

Fantastics vs. Bushwhackers

MD: An inversion of the classic feud, though this was Jackie and Bobby with no Tommy. I don't know if I've ever quite seen this version of Bobby, in a red full body suit with dark hair and a complete stooge. He came down to the ring with a huge Buff Bagwell style hat and cut a promo about how they were northerners from Ohio and so on. Then the Bushwhackers came out and talked about southern pride, so that was an aesthetic choice. It did draw "Yankee Scum" chants. First third of this was them running a spot and the Fultons running out to get heat, including apparently taking Bruce Mitchell's chair. Then they did the longest "pumphandle my own partner's arm" spot I've ever seen. I was curious if the Bushwhackers would throw back at all to previous iterations of this match up but if anything, they went the other way with the Fantastics stooging to the utmost. It was still a lot of fun to see once but I'm not sure I'd ever have to see it again. 

Craig Pittman vs. One Man Gang

MD: If this was a no DQ and they let it go, it could have been pretty great actually. Pittman was a replacement for Tony Atlas who was the only no show on the entire card. Probably a big step up in 98 too. After the entrances and the push-ups there wasn't much to this in the ring, with the best part being Pittman taking Gang down. Once it spilled out though, it became a pretty great brawl, with tables flying and a brief time in an enclosed cage-like area by the racetrack. they were just laying in chair shots one after the next at one point. It kind of made me wish that Pittman had gotten a 98 ECW run.

ER: After seeing the mildly amusing ways that OMG stalls for time in the first two minutes of this match, I was not expecting this to devolve into such a spirited ringside brawl. I know how much of a fan Matt is of stalling bullshit era John Studd, so I would have expected more love for Gang demanding Pittman remove his belt before starting the match, lest it be used as a weapon. Gang himself devolving things into a weapons brawl a couple minutes later is the kind of dumb heel stuff I love. Just the visual of Gang - the largest man in Concord, NC at the time of this match - demanding an even playing field is great. Pittman hit his peak as a pro wrestler in 1997, when he returned to WCW TV working a much more overt heel style. Due to his military background he spent most of his career with that hanging over him as a babyface, but his punishing style fit so much better as a heel. I can only imagine how well he could have integrated that into Inoki's early 2000s New Japan. 

When this spilled to the floor we got some fun bits of magic, including both Pittman and Gang taking bigger than expected bumps on grass, Pittman spilling painfully over the announce table (Chris Cruise getting upset about his spilled drink in the process), Gang bumping painfully over a chain link fence, and both delivering some hard and some not hard chair shots that still looked painful. Gang even hit Pittman with the metal bar of a camping chair, which I don't think I've seen. I particularly liked when the referee tried to get Gang's chair away from him, and Gang held it up for him to take, then just punched him in the stomach. They punch their way to the exit, Pittman torpedo headbutts Gang in the back, and a shirtless fan holds Pittman back from attacking further. 

Buddy Landel vs. Tully Blanchard

MD: This went 30 and I think there was a high spot at the 20 minute mark and another around the 25 minute mark, but it was still pretty great. They spent a huge chunk of this just trading toeholds with each other, one guy taking down the other, jockeying for positioning, working the escape and then turning it around, up and then down, but never really shifting to rope running. Instead, there were little flourishes like leaving the ring or the head games of a clean handshake or jawing with one another. All of the takedowns looked smooth but competitive and it had a title match feel, leaning even further into that mat-based style than usual. I'm honestly surprised that Landel wasn't stooging more because he was more than capable but maybe Blanchard, who was more of a de facto babyface than anything else, didn't want to play into it much. He did one strut at the beginning but that was about it.

When they did pick up the pace, it was just for one spot that would clearly gave Landel the advantage for the last third. Tully taking out his own leg in the corner looked great, and his selling was spot on as he tried to punch his way back on one leg at times, and otherwise survive the figure-four and continued toeholds. It led to a moment where Tully's leg gave out and he dropped Landel on his own head and on Landel's all at once and both guys sold the impact all the way to the roll up out of nowhere finish. It wasn't the match I was expecting, but in a lot of ways it was just as good if not better.

ER: I thought this was excellent. Tully barely worked post-WWF and any time he would show up anywhere he would look like he's barely lost a step. The only weird thing about retirement Tully is that seeing him was such a rarity that his appearance would always turn him babyface, so we had these weird glimpses of a natural heel working babyface-by-default matches once a year in front of 100 fans and occasionally 3,000 fans every 10 years. It's a weird career and I've yet to be anything but impressed by retirement Tully. This match has to be the peak of what I've seen. This goes an actual 30 minutes and I loved it. It's as minimalist as you can get, but the up close camera work really benefits two guys who are great close-up workers, making a match with hardly any "moves" into something special. Also, we should take a second to appreciate how great Buddy Landel's hair looks here. Usually you don't see such healthy well-conditioned bleached hair, which only lends credence to Buddy really being all natural. 

This was a mat-based match and would have fit right in on the Muga card Tully worked a couple years prior. The stooging was kept shockingly sparse. I say "shockingly" because when you go into a 30 minute main event on a card utilizing a 1/2 mile stock-car track as a backdrop, you'd be right to expect a lot of bullshit. The bullshit was quick and always built the match a bit more, usually it was something as simple as a long hold finally broken up in the ropes, and Buddy rolling to the grass to throw a chair down in a little micro-tantrum. There wasn't a ton of crowd work although both guys were in tune with the crowd. No, the bulk of this was leg work and it was tight, focused and entertaining leg work with interesting interludes. It was a match filled with great small moments, like Buddy Landel's punches or Tully running right at Buddy's leg with a straight kick. Both sold the work well and never skipped steps. Tully was a bastard about how he attacked the leg - kicking it in the ropes, even swinging at it with a clothesline from his knees - that when Buddy turned the tables he dialed it up even more. 

I loved Buddy working a toehold and egging Tully on, getting Tully to throw punches from his back while Buddy kept asking for it right in the chin and pulling his head back. Tully's missed running knee into the buckles looked really nasty, and his staggered selling and unreliable base was really compelling, still swinging at Landel but a step slower. Landel had some classic asshole stuff when he he knew Tully was wounded, even doing a hilarious bit where he held an Indian deathlock while smoking an invisible cigarette. For a match that had basically a couple physics-based Tully armdrags as the major highspots, Tully's knee buckling on a suplex and turning into a spike brainbuster was a helluva a thing to happen. The spot was so crazy that whoever edited this tape showed the brainbuster in slow motion three straight times right after it happened. And yet, Tully and Buddy sold it so perfectly that these dudes might have just meant to do that crazy damn spot. I can sometimes be a high voter on heavyweight minimalist wrestling, but I watch a match like this and can't help but think of all those Ric Flair/Terry Taylor matches that so many people loved on the 80s Watts set, and I know that those matches felt like a weak version of Blanchard/Landel. 

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Tully vs. Ricky...in 2004

Tully Blanchard vs. Ricky Morton NWA-Bluegrass Boogie Bash 2004

ER: Blanchard come out of another several year retirement on a Jimmy Valiant tribute show, in a main event oddly and very specifically announced as having a "16 minute time limit". Don't ask me, the time limit never factored into the match in any way. Blanchard is 50 here, looks to be in great shape (probably much easier to stay in great shape when your body is not beaten up from wrestling), and it's pretty stunning how good he looks in ring after such a long layoff. He is clearly faster than Morton, but Morton is no slouch here. Blanchard really runs into Morton on a shoulderblock, and they both show off how quickly they can both snap off an armdrag, and bump for an armdrag. Tully's rope running is really impressive, and both bump nicely for each other. I'm talking about them like they're total dinosaurs (Ricky is only 47/48 here) but this felt a little more inspired than some other legends main events we get on convention shows. Tully is a great heel, really animated, and his execution on any move he does is excellent. I loved how he tossed Ricky to the floor, loved how he would screech at the ref whenever the ref made a call against him. We did get into a long series of chinlocks, but get this: Tully Blanchard has a really good chinlock. Did the match need three different chinlock sequences? No it did not. But Tully worked all three of them differently, including a great one where he got extra leverage by leaning into Morton's back with a knee. Morton had a nice fiery comeback and threw a couple of great right hands, and Tully's stooging and swinging at air was as great as it was in 1984. The finish is a bit of a mess, with a series of small package reversals where neither guy really looks like their shoulders are down, and then the ref does a distractingly fast count to give Morton the win. The best part of the finish was Tully acting like he won with a small package, and then screeching WHAT!?!? when Ricky was announced as winner. 

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New Footage Friday: Ricky Morton Week

Rock and Roll Express vs. Buddy Landell/Doug Somers ACW 6/89

PAS: Really fun short TV tag with a great heeling and stooging pink booted Buddy Landell performance. I loved how he backed Morton into the corner and gave him a contemptuous little tap on his cheek, only for Morton to pop him in the jaw which Buddy sold with a Valentine flop. We got the heels working over the Rock and Rolls only to get the hot tag, match ends weakly with Landell and Somers getting DQed for tossing Morton over the top, we never really got the full payoff although I enjoyed the journey.

MD: This is from Atlantic Coast (Nelson Royal's late 80s promotion) TV and is just a really fun eight or nine minutes. Landell's an all time stooge to start, disengaging, snapping his fingers, pinching Morton's cheek and then taking a slow, overwrought timber bump when he gets pegged for his troubles. After Gibson wipes out on the post, Somers and Landell put on a master class in ref distraction, underhanded switches, and cutting off the ring. It's only a few minutes of control but they make it feel longer and weightier in the execution, which is always what you want in a match like this. The transition to comeback made sense for a short TV match (the double-teaming backfiring as a second rope axe-handle knocks Gibson across the ring to make the tag) and the finish was the sort of thing that kept the program going and got people to head out to the local shows to see something more decisive. It was what you'd want from a sub-ten minute TV match with these four and I bet the house shows were really good.

Ricky Morton/Beau James vs. The Battering Ram/Justin St. John SSW 10/21/95

PAS: This is a Hell before Halloween match, a tornado tag with weapons in the corner. Really fun short Memphis style main event brawl. Never hear of the heels before, but they had nice punches and a willingness to be hit by a bullwhip which is pretty much what you need for these types of matches. Beau bled some, although not a full Beau James gore fest. Match had commentary but not crowd noice, which does hurt it a bit, so much of these types of matches are about building to a huge crescendo and while we could tell it was happening we couldn't actually hear it.

MD: We wanted to close out the Morton theme week with a SSW match and first gravitated to an 09 match vs Eaton but it only went a few minutes. This was a weapons in every corner match, so there was all sorts of things involved, from a staple gun to a bullwhip. The story was that Beau got taken out on the post early and Morton had to fight off both guys. Once Beau got back in they worked over the wound a bit, but after a shot from said staple gun, it devolved into a lot of back and forth weapons shots. Morton using the bullrope was especially fun and the heels stuff looked good enough, even if Battering Ram seemed to meander about now and again, though that added to the chaos as much as subtracted. If they were going to go with color and woundwork in a match like this, you'd hope for a bit more flow and having it spread around a bit. Battering Ram's mask was white and stayed white, for instance. It felt like a match of its time, an odd port into SSW, but it was an interesting relic to see mid-90s Morton in the midst of something like this.

Ricky Morton vs. Bam Bam Bigelow MEWF 10/23/97

PAS: This was not would you would expect at all. Bam Bam is the babyface defending the ECW title on a Baltimore indy, and Morton is working as a Memphis heel. Small heel against giant babyface is kind of a weird dynamic, and while Morton is fun complaining about a hair pull and bumping around, I don't really think Bam Bam had the type of charisma needed to work as an overdog babyface, he isn't Hulk Hogan getting his hands on Bobby Heenan, just too subdued. Finish was an eyeopener, Bam Bam catches a Morton bodypress and hits a disgusting looking sit out piledriver, stood Morton straight up and looked like he broke his neck. Completely separate bit of horror from the rest of the low stakes match. Interesting, but ultimately a failure. 

MD: A rare, as in I think it only happened a handful of times, look at traveling ECW Champ Bam Bam Bigelow. You'd probably want the roles to be reversed here, as Morton was a heatseeking, stalling and stooging heel, and Bigelow was the brick wall, dominant champ, but we take what we get. Morton ran into the wall well to start. Even when things turned, after Morton brought out Hamrick to help him, Bigelow never really seemed in too much danger. It's not that Morton's stuff didn't look good, as it was fine, but you didn't really get the sense he was putting a dent in Bam Bam. That wasn't to say that you couldn't imagine a world where Morton might somehow cheat to win though, so it still worked well enough, and he was scummy enough about it and Bam Bam dynamic enough in his high octane hope spots, that you were happy to see things turn around. We miss how Hamrick's taken out of the equation, but the finish, with Bam Bam catching Morton off the top and planting him with Greetings from Asbury Park worked really well. I don't know if it was the indy ring or Morton's sell or what, but Bam Bam bumping himself on the impact was just resounding. I think I'd feel better about this one if we had dozens of traveling champ Bigelow matches or another five or six face Morton vs Bam Bam ones.

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