New Footage Friday: KIDO! IVAN GOMES! VILLANOS! LOS DESTRUCTORES! DEVILS REJECTS! NWA ELITE

 Ivan Gomes vs. Osamu Kido NJPW 8/14/76

PAS: Gomes is a legendary Vale Tudo fighter who both fought and trained with Carlson Gracie. Very little footage of him exists and this is a Different Style Fight with Kido. This was a worked shoot, and more of an interesting bit of historic footage then a great match, with Kido eating a lot of head kicks and eventually getting choked out with a guillotine. I would love to see Gomes in some actual Vale Tudo fights and I have to keep an eye on this youtube page.

MD: I don't have much to say about the specifics of the match. It's more that it exists at all, and of course, the general sense that if something like this does exist in the 70s, what else happened that we haven't seen along these lines and that might exist on tape? It's a whole style of wrestling that we barely have any of until years later. Some of the shots that do land were pretty great, at least. Hopefully we get more along these lines.

Villanos (III/IV/V) vs. Los Destructores (Tony Arce/Vulcano/Rocco Valente) AAA 3/5/95

PAS: These are a pair of great lucha rudo trios and on paper you would expect a brawl, but this was a title match and was worked mostly scientifically. We get some cool matwork exchanges and rope running in the first couple of falls, Villanos are super skilled and it is fun to watch Los Destructores try to match them hold for hold. At the end of the segunda Villano IV hits this fast northern lights suplex and damages his neck. The third fall has the Destructores working him over angering his brothers and heating up the third fall. It never really breaks down into a total brawl, and I really hate the double pin ending in lucha, however this was a cool chance to see great luchadores do something a bit unexpected.

MD: Just about everything you could want out of a trios titles match. Just understand that it's a title match and it's worked like a title match. Therefore, it's not even close to everything you'd want from a Villanos vs Destructores match. The primera was technical and sound, very smooth, with that sort of escalation from pairing to pairing you like to see. Everyone got time. While nothing was breathtaking, everything worked. It ended cleverly with the bottom dropping out and Villanos pinballing into one another, allowing for a triple team. For such a logical sort of spot, it felt pretty fresh to me. The segunda kept that escalation going and was full of motion, with things never wearing out their welcome. It ended with the Villanos working like a well-oiled machine only for disaster to strike as Villano IV crushed his own head on a Northern Lights suplex, which is again, not a specific spot that I can think of seeing too many times, but carried the narrative for most of the rest of the match. He fought on but had to start the tercera and just got crushed by the Destructores, a great selling job as the fans more and more desperately wanted him to get out of the ring. Eventually it happened and they rolled into a big comeback until he was recovered enough (though still sluggish and selling) to move into a lot of finishing stretch near-falls, a few dives, and a final pairing with a really good visual on a double pin (which feels like a consolation prize, but what are you going to do?). It was a title match so it never became an over the top brawl (though the Villanos were pretty heated in their final comeback, for good reason), but it was loose enough that the Destructores really got to rudo it up in the back half. Otherwise, like I said, it was pretty much everything you could want from a title match that played it mostly straight, clever in multiple places and overall well-executed.

Devil's Rejects (Iceberg/Shaun Tempers/Azrael/Tank) vs. NWA Elite (Kory Chavis/Jeff Lewis/Phil Shatter/Abomination) NWA Anarchy 6/23/07

PAS: I wrote a long review of this match in my book Way of the Blade (buy it now on Amazon),  and have recorded an upcoming podcast on this match for my Way of the Blade podcast with both of the evil stewards of these teams Rev. Dan Wilson and Jeff G. Bailey. So I have said my piece. It was super hard to track down, and Rev. Dan has placed it on Youtube for all to see. NWA Anarchy is a real footage blind spot, it is clear that there are plenty of classics to be excavated. This is a heel versus heel War Games, with two psychos leading their respective crew of lunatics into battle, it has blood, huge uncalled for bumps by enormous men, a showdown between two untrained monsters, Phil Shatter looking like prime Scott Steiner and much more. It is a goddamn delight and everyone should watch it, buy my book to read me praise it more, and keep your ears peeled for the podcast. 

MD: This is one I've heard about and read about but never actually had the chance to see. It's just a perfectly balanced War Games, the mix of story and moments and spots and blood and violence and spectacle. More than anything, it creates a sense of mood, which is what you want from every match you see, but something you absolutely need in a match beyond. Multiple times in this thing, you get a sense of inevitability or dread or awe. Case in point, the first five minutes with Chavis holding an advantage over Tempers. It's unquestionable, but you know it's fleeting, on borrowed time. Likewise, later on when Lewis is kept out of the ring for long seconds; when he flies in around the barbed wire off the top of the cage, it's a great moment since it's full of daring and surprise, but you can feel the encroaching futility because the numbers game was about to be restored. The match succeeds at so many things: Tank's return, an absolute Shatter showcase, Abomination destroying everyone in the center of the ring, the escalation of weapons (fork, weapon of destruction, sword of screams) and blood, and of course, Wilson and Bailey getting involved, which is visceral and satisfying (the whole world seem to shift on that missed dropkick), but also doesn't distract from the wrestlers when it came to the finish, which is honestly some of the most restraint ever shown in a match like this.

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MLJ: Misterioso/Volador 5: Misterioso, Rey Misterio Jr., Volador I b Rocco Valente, Tony Arce, Vulcano

1993-04-30 @ Plaza de Toros Ciudad de México, Ciudad de México, Distrito Federal
Misterioso, Rey Misterio Jr., Volador I b Rocco Valente, Tony Arce, Vulcano

(This is all of TripleMania: Match starts at: 37:45)

So this is Triplemania I, or at least part of it. I've tended to avoid this stuff because it's well-trodden. I'm not saying that people new to lucha immediately gravitate towards it now, but there's certainly a history of that. This was an under card match, third of eight, and I think it was very well received at the time.

I don't have a lot to say about Valente, Arce, and Vulcano right now. They were Los Destructores and as best as I can tell, they were very good at what they did. Amongst other things, they were the rudos that Rey cut through early on in AAA. They're also really hard to tell apart in the ring, this being my first time seeing them. When I watch these matches, I often find things that I want to delve deeper into later. They're one.

So, Rey, Volador, and Misterioso apparently teamed enough to be called La Tercia Del Aire. I'm not sure how many matches they had together but they'd been teaming since September (and feuding with Los Destructores for about that long it seems). Rey was a good addition to their act, since he could take a beating but also be a spark that could help light up a comeback. He was still billed as a "super nino" here.

Pairings here were Volador and Arce, Misterioso and Vulcano, and Rey vs Valente. Of the three, I thought Rey's was probably the weakest, just maybe a step off in some of the execution, without the higher level of difficulty I was expecting. It wasn't bad by any means, but I've seen better from him from around this time. I'm not sure if he was nervous or what. My favorite spot in this initial feeling out/quasi-shine was Volador doing that armwrench/backflip thing that sometimes goes along with a rocker-dropper fake out, but flipping backwards into a headscissors/arm drag combo onto two rudos. I'd never seen that before and it was well done. It's amazing how many spots you see in matches from twenty-plus years ago that you don't see at all now.

Rudos eventually had enough, swarmed, and took over. Rey took some nasty shots here, especially face first into the turnbuckles, just lawn darts, and a pressed-up spike super powerbomb. It didn't last long, however, as the tecnicos came back on the wings of this great run up moonsault press (as in Volador ran up the chest of one rudo and moonsaulted another). With spots like that, you can see why people praised this match so much at the time (the time being the much more spot-starved 1990s). This led to a triple tandem tope and a few tecnico-vs-the-world exchanges and a fun finishing stretch of cutoffs and action until the tecnicos rolled through for the win. Enjoyable match that, once again, seems to highlight the feeling of an era. I need to cehck out more of Los Destructores.

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