Found Footage Friday: OMNI 2/5/84~!

GCW Omni 2/5/84

Jesse Barr vs. Johnny Rich 

MD: Usually these shows have one long match early, either a draw in the first or second match. This went long with the first two and it was done purposefully. The second match went to a draw, but the crowd was primed by the first ending in a pinfall when it felt like they were working towards a draw (at least that's what it felt like to me). We can't know for certain what a 1984 crowd thought, but given it was booked this way, the idea was almost certainly to introduce the idea that a match can end at any point to keep the interest strong for a second match worked long in Thornton vs Armstrong. As much as the crowd liked Rich, and they really liked Rich on this night, Armstrong was the one going for Thornton's Jr. Heavyweight title, and because they wanted to keep Brad strong, that's the one that had to go to a draw. Did it work? I think, as best as we can tell from crowd noise, it did.

The matches were fairly similar. Long holds worked in and out of. Barr vs Rich had more shtick and I probably liked it more accordingly. They did a great bit early on where Rich worked out of a headlock, Barr did a dropdown, and Sawyer elbow dropped him, only to invert the sequence a minute later but have Barr miss the elbow drop. They did another bit where Barr tried to press Rich's hands down in a double knucklelock so he could step on them only for Rich to move his hands and punch him. Or they'd escalate to rope running and Rich would get one on Barr and then when Barr tried it a few minutes later, Rich would drop to his knees and punch him instead. Then a couple of minutes later, they'd have Barr stop short and try a falling punch only for Sawyer to move. Crowd-pleasing stuff. Barr finally had enough and roughed Rich up a bit, but Brett came back big and Barr stooged all over the place for him. Finish had Barr try to toss Rich off the top but get rolled up. 

ER: When I fired up a new Omni show I was not especially seeking out a Young Boys style opener where Jesse Barr works side headlocks while Rich gets kickier the longer he's in them, building to shoulderblocks and knucklelocks. New Japan Young Boys have much better timing on rope running spots but Rich and Barr's timing gets better the longer they do the shtick and it starts to get actively good by the time they're pushing to the finishing stretch. Our Donald Sutherland coffee drinking swinger who is fast becoming the Straw Hat Guy of the Omni is not impressed, chewing his gum the whole time, but it gets good when Barr works the knucklelock into a hand stomp, but Rich is a beat ahead of him and punches him from his knees. Rich has a lot of good working punching from his knees, and things get even better when they work a great fistdrop sequence into it, where Rich lands a nice one after stopping short, and when Barr tries the same thing he punches mat. Barr draws real heat when the 10 minute mark is announced, with only 5 minutes remaining, and he starts picking Rich up at 2 counts, smiling to the crowd like he doesn't give a damn if they go to a draw. A heel not actually interested in winning is hilarious and the crowd rejects his indifference. I love the trick of announcing the 5 minutes remaining, announcing each remaining minute, setting things up for a clear time limit draw, before the babyface escapes with a quick roll through win. I started this too dog tired to turn it off, and wound up completely into what they were doing. 

Les Thornton vs. Brad Armstrong

Thornton vs. Armstrong had much more of Thornton leaning on Brad, especially with a headscissors. Brad would find his way out with headstands and all sorts of other techniques but Thornton would get him right back into it. Eventually, after beating on Brad in the corner a bit with European Uppercuts, Thornton ended up into a hammerlock and they switched to having Brad control that way for the next part of the match. Thornton got him out and started playing king of the mountain, and following up with a headlock as Brad got back in. Brad was able to turn it around and get him out, getting some revenge on the floor. Then as the time was ticking down they wrestled fairly even, both going for opportunities where they could get it and fighting towards the draw. Thornton vs. Brad was harder hitting with meaner holds and maybe tighter work, and still had the crowd going, but I had more fun with the shtick in Rich vs. Barr.

ER: I'm so tired of Good Hand Brad. It's 15+ years of documentation of a guy who refused to take anything to the next level. Act like it means something to you. It has to mean more than how well you can execute a hammerlock, right Brad? Does it ever interest you to take a ring posting in a cool, memorable way, instead of "the right way"? I was born into pro wrestling. My daddy is a legend, my brothers all wrestle. I want to be a better version of Tony Garea. That's my pro wrestling dream. Les Thornton throws a ringpost bump into the aftereffect of an atomic drop, so even among great physique guys who couldn't break out of the undercard, Brad wasn't front of the line. Thornton's butterfly and back suplexes looked like they were trying to actually get the match to a finish as time expired - nice aggression after taking nothing but scenic routes - and I wish they had committed to getting Thornton that inside cradle win at 19:30. 

Ron Garvin vs. King Kong Bundy

MD: Not a ton to say here. We come in JIP. and maybe lose the first ten minutes or so of it actually. We come in with Bundy leaning on Garvin but they build towards these great, great Garvin flurries, first in the center of the ring and then in the corner. Bundy's able to push Garvin away but he keeps coming at him. Just as Bundy really has him in the corner, Ellering comes out and Bundy chases him to the back so Garvin wins it. I assume this was mid-turn for Bundy and Garvin was just sort of there as a babyface to fight along the way. The good stuff here was good but we didn't get quite enough of it.

ER: I was hoping for a big slug out as the only remaining footage, but we get instead a fun build to Garvin throwing punches, working his way closer to Krang with eye pokes and foot stomps and frustrated the largest man in town, before triumphantly teeing off on him. Bundy takes punches like he's being swarmed with bees, and what's even better is he gets his hands on Garvin instantly and beats the shit out of him. Paul Ellering is contractually obligated to appear in 75% of the matches so Bundy just chases him off after beating Garvin's ass. We deserve to see this as a real match. 

Jake Roberts vs. Jerry Brisco

MD: As always, 83-84 Jake is the Jake we were promised: a slinking, long-limbed psychological master. This doesn't go nearly long enough. Brisco outwrestles Jake early causing Jake to slither around the ring trying to escape. Jake uses his reach advantage to cut him off and control. Brisco starts outwrestling him again on the comeback. Jake takes a great corner bump as he runs in and gets tripped. As he's going for the figure-four, Ellering gets on the apron. Jake then gets the ref between them so he can hit a cheapshot and hit the DDT. It was stylistically different than the rest of the card but I would have liked a bit more. What we did get here was very good.

ER: I don't even need to write much about it, I just love the way Jake Roberts moves. This 1984 Omni has given us the slinkiest dirtbag Jake Roberts. He looks and moves like a giant spider version of my cool Little League coach Tom Menghini, who coached us to a title in 1991, smoked, and often wore no shirt. This is six minutes of Jake movement from what might have been his best year of moving. Jake moves so compellingly that Gerald Brisco may as well have been Les Thornton or Brad Armstrong. He could have drawn believable stories with near upsets with any of those men. His powers were larger than life. His is one of our great necessary wrestler looks, a nightmare drunk fan sitting in the cheap upper deck Candlestick seats. His sprawling upside down out of nowhere corner bump isn't enough to rouse a single emotion from our emotional black hole Ordinary People Omni front row regulars, but the cheap seats thunder. I love how Jake sells his annoyance at Brisco's tenaciousness with his entire body. Jake could have been John Tatum if he didn't look so dangerous and so cool. The dismissive way he shoves the ref into Brisco, kicking Brisco in the balls as he does it, is done with the precision of a prison hitman. We've seen a career of Jake giving long limbed perfect DDTs, and we may have just found the purest one. This is how it looks, how it moves. 

Mr. R (Tommy Rich) vs. the Spoiler

MD: Chaos from the get go. More often than not, when we get a new Spoiler match, it doesn't disappoint. He was well into his 40s here but he still moved incredibly well for his size. Very fluid and active. They brawled to start including, Spoiler tossing in the little wooden ring steps and then Rich threatening him while he was on the top. Spoiler was incessant, using the claw, pulling at the mask, teeter tottering Rich in the ropes. When Rich would come back, Spoiler would go high and come down upon him, including just casually walking up the ropes in the middle of the ring to hammer down. He took a huge bump in the corner as Rich got out of the way allowing Rich to come back and work the mask himself. That would happen a few times honestly. Spoiler must have taken three bumps in the corner. This had a crazy feel as they fought around ringside, with Spoiler going for the bell only for the ref to stop him. Towards the end Ellering ran in and Rich was about to tear him apart until Spoiler nailed him with a chair. Babyfaces made the save. Just a great high energy brawl with perfect chemistry. 

ER: We are so over the moon for The Spoiler. Where were we, as a blog, before we wrote about Spoiler matches? He's such an Our Guy kind of guy, a real weirdo, who wrestled as a man inspired by nobody. Tommy Rich is also Our Guy but this isn't a Mr. R match, this is a Spoiler match. Every second of this is a Spoiler match. Even when he's doing something you've seen before, he's doing it in a way that is truly his own. Jardine's rope work is an incredible trick. Nobody else was walking on the ropes like that. Why is such a large man climbing and walking around on the ropes like that, and how does he make it look so easy. He'll use the ropes like he's cornered in a cage, and exploiting a loophole by climbing the cage and still attacking from the top of the cage, as if he's thinking of the ring as a bowl shape and the top rope around the ring as the top of the bowl. But while his rope walking is a cool trick - leading Tommy around by the head as he takes way bigger strides than you'd think possible - I love it even more when he is standing still up there. There's a moment where he knocks Rich to the floor and quickly scales the turnbuckles, then just stands there on the top, lording over Rich on the floor, looking like he was primed to plancha to his death, but just keeps standing. The visual is so odd, he's facing away from the ring but leaning his weight back towards it, defying physics with no respect before leaping off with an elbow. 

He cheats in fun ways that must have been a joy to see live. I loved him throwing the wooden ring steps into the ring before the match even starts, felt like something Terry Funk would do on a northeast indy show in the 90s, just to get the crowd buzzing while he stalks the ringside. My favorite bit was also before the bell, when he pretended to adjust a weapon in his tights just to piss off one small corner of the arena, a small magic trick only meant to be seen by some. His bumping was so dangerous for an old man (one year younger than I am). The way he got hung up by the knee missing a corner charge was something that Chris Hamrick stole and used with a much smaller frame, but I gotta know...is Don Jardine our first flying ringpost bumper? The Great Ringpost Bump has been a thing for ages with several ways to do it, but is Jardine the first guy to fly through the turnbuckles and nail the ringpost? I've seen him do it earlier than here, but it wouldn't surprise me if Spoiler was the one to invent the Cassandro/Super Dragon wrap around ringpost bump. The man had a gift for taking something you thought you'd seen and presenting it in a whole new light. This is a 1984 Omni show so naturally Paul Ellering was required for the finish, but that doesn't take away from this gem of a performance. 

Road Warriors vs. Sweet Brown Sugar/Pez Whatley

MD: Fun first few minutes here as the Roadies stooged and bumped all over the place in a way that would have seemed ridiculous two years later. I enjoy seeing them early on because they feel so different but this was obviously the genesis of what would make them into what they were. Once the extended heat started, the match sort of slowed to a crawl. We've seen this crowd go up huge for Pez but it wasn't happening on this night and they weren't really going up for Young either. It wasn't the most compelling heat in the history of the world but usually that didn't matter so much. Not sure what was going on. Maybe they were just ready to get on to the next program. Sugar and Pez had gotten close with a double headbutt but Hawk broke up the pin and the ref had to toss the match out as it devolved into chaos. But the crowd got to go home happy as Sawyer and Bundy came in to clear house post-match. 

ER: This was worked completely differently than I was expecting and was so much fun in the way it defied expectations, until it just became very boring and lost all energy. This did not go the way you expected it to go on paper, in three different ways: You wouldn't expect Pez and Sugar to control for as long as they did, you wouldn't expect the Road Warriors to be so boring when they went in control, and you wouldn't expect Pez or Sugar to be so boring working from underneath. What an odd match. It's weird (but very fun!) when Pez is in control and Hawk is bumping around for him, and then it's as if everyone forgets how to work a crowd. Suddenly there is no underneath fire from Pez or Sugar, and there is no energy from Hawk or Animal. Some of the loud reactions for Pez in this Omni footage have been revelatory, but here it's like everyone forgot who he was. However, for several minutes, we got to see Pez Whatley smothering Hawk and not let him get any offense in, and that's hilarious. Hawk looks as intimidating as ever, and he just can't get anything going against Pistol Pez...until he does, and opts to do nothing. Such is life. This is the ONE match on this card where Don't Look Now Donald Sutherland fan in. a sad Ordinary People marriage had the correct, bored reaction. 

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El Deporte de las Mil Emociones: Strong Punch

Week 57: Strong Punch

We saw Carlos Colon get the win against the savage Polynesian Prince in a barbed wire match and TNT regain the TV title against the man who put him on the shelf, one King Kong. We do have one other match we need to mention from the June 1 house show in Bayamon. Invader #1 faced Ron Garvin in a special challenge match and the match ended up going to a draw. Throughout the match there were a couple of instances where both Invader and Garvin looked to have the match won but circumstances caused the match to restart and then the time limit ended without a winner. As a result of this challenge match having no winner, the two wrestlers agreed to a rematch at Aniversario 91. To make it official, a contract signing aired on TV and things got heated when each man brought up the moment they had the match in hand.. The back and forth got a bit heated and then talk turned to who had the better and stronger punch. Again, the back and forth got a bit heated, leading to both men standing up. At that moment, Garvin surprised Invader with a punch right to the face. Invader went down and his nose was injured from the blow. As a result, Invader will have a bandage around his nose as he recovers from the damage Garvin's punch did. This has only added more fuel to the newly signed match for Anviersari 91. And there’s one more stipulation that will be added as a result of all the arguing over who has the better punch. In order to prove who has the best punch, Invader will be allowed to show up with his fist taped for the Aniversario match. The taped fist heart punch is the most dangerous move in Puerto Rico wrestling, so the stakes are high for that encounter.

Do we have any other updates for Aniversario? Let’s go to what's either the June 8 or June 15 west coast version of Super Estrellas to find out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRMBHXeS91w

We join this episode in progress, as Eliud Gonzalez is in the Road to Aniversario control center. He’s just finished talking about Invader #1 (looks like he has a match for Aniversario) and then talks about the revenge match between Bronco and Skandor Akbar. They replay the fireball incident and aftermath. There’s also the match between Monster Ripper and El Profe, and we go to a recap of how this all started at Noche de Campeones. And if that’s not enough, we also have the feud between Billy Joe Travis and Hugo Savinovich, where we get the recap of the brief altercation and then Hugo getting Carlos Colon and Giant Warrior to agree to help him train for the match. Back in the control center, Eliud tells us that more matches will be announced soon and remember that you can get your tickets at Thom McAn (a shoe store chain) in the western region starting this Thursday. If you pay attention to the clips shown in the segment outro, you’ll see Ron Garvin decking Invader during the contract signing for their Aniversario match, which is what leads to Invader wearing a bandage around his nose for the next couple of weeks.

The control center is followed by an El Profe promo, where he again runs down Monster Ripper by saying that here in Latin America women are objects for men. We cut to a card rundown for the Aniversario show in San German and we can confirm that Invader #1 with his taped fist will face Ron Garvin. Also added to the card are the Caribbean Express defending the Caribbean tag titles against the Samoan Swat Team and Super Medico #3 defending the Caribbean title against Rod Price. Tomorrow (either June 9 or 16) they will be in Guanica with the following lineup: Invader #1 & TNT vs Polynesian Prince & Dick Murdoch; Giant Warrior vs. King Kong; Ricky Santana vs Rod Price; Miguelito Perez vs Action Jackson; minis in action; Huracan Castillo vs Billy Joe Travis; and Mr. Ito vs. Galan Mendoza.

Since this is the last we’ll hear of King Kong, I want to mention a memory I have that has to be from around this time period. It was a TV match taped in Miramar where Invader #1 faced King Kong. In a rarity, Invader #1 was wearing his mask in a singles match, so it's likely he was protecting his injured nose from further damage. The reason I remember this match is for the finishing stretch. Invader hit Kong with the heart punch, leaving him staggered but still on his feet. Invader then went to the middle turnbuckle and jumped off with another heart punch, knocking Kong down. Invader gets the pin and leaves the ring, but Kong remains down on the mat and you have the ref  and Akbar checking on Kong. The ref starts panicking and they have to revive Kong with chest compressions since he had sustained two heart punches. Kong is successfully revived and then leaves the ring normally under his own power, likely on his way out of the territory.  

MD: They start this episode recapping Akbar vs Bronco, Profe vs Ripper, and Hugo vs Travis. It’s wild that this is how they’re doing Aniversario this year. As we get there, I’m hoping Esteban can dig up some details about just how successful it was, because it is a bold strategy. It looks like, a month out, they’ve added Invader 1 vs Ron Garvin, Caribbean Express vs SST, Medico IV vs Rod Price, and Giant Warrior vs Murdoch. With Colon vs Bravo on top. It’s an interesting card to say the least. 

Meanwhile, the house show for the week had Invader/TNT vs Polynesian Prince/Murdoch, Warrior vs King Kong, Santana vs Price, Perez vs Jackson, Midgets, Castillo vs Travis, and Ito vs Mendoza, so that’s not really a bad card either all things considered. 

Invader IV vs. Ronnie Garvin

EB: We go to a JIP Ron Garvin vs. Invader #4 arena match and it wouldn't surprise me that this was signed after Garvin punched out Invader #1. If you'll recall, Invader #4 is the younger brother of Invader #1, so it stands to reason he is looking to get some revenge on Garvin. Hugo and Eliud on commentary say that you have to be very careful of Garvin’s punches. Invader #4 is the one in control when we join the match, having backed Garvin into a corner and getting some punches on him. It doesn’t last long and Garvin takes over with some punches of his own. A Garvin hip toss gets a two count, but Invader #4 quickly gets up and hits Garvin with some punches. Garvin is whipped into the ropes and is able to hold on to them, causing Invader #4 to miss a dropkick. Garvin immediately goes for the Garvin Stomp and then knocks Invader #4 out with a right hook to the face. Garvin gets the win and shows off his punching prowess in the process.

After the match, we go to taped promos from Garvin and Invader #1. Garvin wants it to be known that all he needs are his bare hands, he could probably kill a bear with his bare hands. Garvin promises that he will dismantle Invader in front of all the fans at Aniversario. Invader (with the bandage on his face) follows by saying that Garvin should be embarrassed for what he did at the contract signing. Invader understands why Garvin did it, Garvin was angry about the time limit draw and not being able to defeat Invader. Garvin asked for 5 more minutes, Invader gave it to him, and still Garvin could not beat Invader. When we signed the contract for Aniversario, you punched me and hurt my nose,but come Aniversario you'll have to show that you have the strongest punch. Remember, I'll have my fist taped and when I hit the heart punch on you Garvin, you will not get up.

MD: Despite being greyscale, I think this is new footage. Garvin doesn’t have a manager and Invader IV only showed up during the run of our footage, I think. At least with the gimmick. He pummels Garvin in the corner, really taking it to him. Garvin comes back with a headbutt but he can’t keep Invader IV from firing back on him. But Invader misses a dropkick, and it’s Garvin Stomp followed by Hand of Steel for the definitive and anti-climactic win.

Garvin cut a great promo about how while Invader will be coming for revenge (I have no idea what for but his nose is sure bandaged) and will have taped fists, Garvin will have bare knuckles and he could punch out a bear with his bare knuckles. Then Hugo translates while he shadow boxes and I am excited for this match already. 

EB: Hugo Savinovich is in training for his Aniversario match against Billy Joe Travis and here we have video of him being trained by Carlos Colon. At the end we get some words from an out of  breath Hugo where he thanks Carlos and promises to continue getting ready for Travis in order to teach him a lesson

MD: There are more than five minutes of this! Why is this so long! There’s a whole minute of just Hugo stretching. On the other hand, I can’t wait for part two of this if he’s being trained by Giant Warrior next.

Dino Bravo vs. Armandito Salgado

EB: Dino Bravo is taking on Armandito Salgado in Manati. Hugo apologizes for the black and white picture, this is how the match was filmed apparently. This goes as well as you would expect for Salgado, with Bravo making quick work of him and winning with the full nelson.

MD: Pretty effective squash here. He charged right in, punching him in the corner, pile driving him, hitting elbow drops. He was using the full nelson instead of the side slam so he couldn’t just finish him off. He instead tossed him out and had a nice entry point to the full nelson where he starts to whip Salgado out of the corner and put him right in it after a few steps. As effective as I can imagine from Bravo.

EB: Next is Billy Joe Travis with El Profe, and they just spend the time making fun of Hugo. It cuts to Profe’s closing remarks about how Dino Bravo will be the new Universal champion at Aniversario. Then Carlos Colon (from the track where he is training Hugo and with one of the Colon kids) has some comments, saying that his goal is having a convincing win against Bravo at Aniversario.

MD: Travis was sure having fun and Profe seemed to be having fun with him. He mocked Hugo, his training, his wife, all within the span of less than a minute. 

Rod Price & Action Jackson vs. Tito Carrion & El Corsario

EB: We go to another JIP match as Rod Price and Action Jackson are in the middle of facing Tito Carrion and El Corsario. Price and Jacksna are getting the better of Carrion and refusing to cover him for the pin, even after hitting a Doomsday Device. Price finally gets the merciful pin after a shoulder tackle. 

MD: I made the mistake of looking up Price and Jackson’s association because they were both GWF guys and they had this wild looking SPWF tour in 1996 against Yatsu, Teranishi and Poison Sawada. ANYWAY, this was brutal. A Price belly to belly (lifts up the opponent). A doomsday device (lifts up the opponent). A Price flying lariat (doesn’t lift up the opponent). 

EB: SkandorAkbar has some comments where he is incredulous that Bronco is daring to come back here after having been burned. Akbar warns Bronco to stay in Santo Domingo, because he has a plan to finish him off. We then get an interview from Bronco sent in from Santo Domingo, where he says he is recovering nicely although some burn marks still linger. Bronco urges the fans in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico to see some of the burns still on his face, so he covers up with a towel to remove his mask. We then get a still shot of the burn marks Bronco wanted to show. Bronco says he is returning at Aniversario, even if he is not fully healed by them. And he warns the president of CSP to make sure he has medics and emergency services on hand, because they are going to need them for Akbar once he is done with him.

MD: Akbar tells Bronco not to come back to Puerto Rico and that he has a back up plan, as always. Bronco looks cool as always (whether he’s lounging here or running in from the back in a suit). They do a deal where he takes off his mask but shields his face with a towel so they can zoom in on the burn. 

EB: The Caribbean Express have some words about defending the Caribbean tag tiles at Aniversario against the Samoan Swat Team. Pretty standard comments where they say they are training hard and promise to keep the belts. They also have some comments about their singles matches for tomorrow in Guanica.Hugo says he cannot be unbiased and he hopes Castillo teaches Travis a lesson tomorrow. 

MD: They were theoretically able to get over both the Profe and the SST matches here but they seemed to focus on the SST match more as Ripper didn’t talk.

EB: The episode closes with video of the barbed wire match between Carlos Colon and the Polynesian Prince. Hugo closes the show by hyping up the Friday Aniversario card in San Germana and tomorrow’s house show in Guanica. 

Now let’s go to the June 15  episode of Campeones, it's a cut down version of the episode with some repeat matches but let's see if there is any new news about Aniversario.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfCgFiiu8p8

Hugo and Profe welcome us to another edition of Campeones. Hugo immediately starts getting on Profe’s case about Anciersari saying Profe is going to lose against Monster Ripper. Profe plays it off saying that he will be the one doing the beating. Hugo says that women are to be respected, Profe responds with ‘What lady?’ Hugo mentions what we'll see on today's program, while also reminding viewers about the upcoming Aniversario 91 on July 6 in Bayamon. Tonight they will be in Carolina with a main event of Carlos Colon vs the Great Kokina (looks like they’ve brought in another monster to try to derail Carlos before Aniversario). Profe reinforces that point, saying he doesn't care if Kokina wins tonight, Kokina is here to destroy Carlos Colon. Profe warns Carlos to not show up tonight and laughs when Hugo says they better be careful, because El Ejercito de la Justicia is ready and may decide to send them to the hospital instead. Also tonight we have Dino Bravo vs. TNT and Invader #1 vs. Polynesian Prince. With that let’s get to our first match (courtesy of El Profe’s magic finger).

Rod Price vs. Mr. Ito

Rod Price is taking on the newcomer known as Mr. Ito, who you may better know as Akira Nogami. Mr. It looks good in the early going, hitting some nice dropkicks that send Price to the outside of the ring. Price tries an armbar and Ito works out of it. Price turns the tide by hotshotting Ito on the top rope, allowing Rod to control the next portion of the match. Ito is not easy to put away, and a missed change in the corner gives Ito an opening to come back with some nice kicks. Some mounted punches and a spin kick follow and it looks like Ito has momentum on his side. Akbar gets involved however by grabbing Ito’s leg when he’s coming off the ropes. The distraction is enough for Price to attack Ito from behind. One shoulder tackle later and Rod Price gets the win.

We then go to the Aniversario 91 control center, but it unfortunately is edited off the version we have video for.

MD: Ito is Akira Nogami of all people and this was a solid TV match. He’s babyface here and controlled early with dropkicks. Price stalled until he was able to take over with a cheapshot and as always has a lot of “stuff.” Belly to belly suplex, press slam, vertical suplex, with punches and occasionally cutting off hope chopping from underneath. Ito kept kicking out and was able to get out of the way of a corner charge to take over with kicks in the corner. Akbar caught his leg off the ropes though, letting Price hit a flying shoulder tackle for the win. A good way to spend five minutes or so.

EB: The rest of the episode’s matches are ones we do not need to cover since they are the Garvin vs. Flair cage match from JCP…

MD: I guess it’s nice we now have a version of this match commentated on by Hugo?

EB: And the Colon vs. Murdoch barbed wire match from early April. We also have a promo from Skandor Akbar with the Polynesian Prince, whose opponent tonight is Invader #1.

MD: Prince is definitely committed to the gimmick. You can’t say he’s not. He’s biting at the air and making faces as Akbar talks and it’s quite the scene. 

EB: We also get a brief clip of Eliud Gonzalez in the control center that is in between segments of the Colon vs. Murdoch match. Eliud runs down the matches signed for Aniversario 91 and mentions there is a change to one of the matches. The match in question is Giant Warrior vs. Dick Murdoch, it seems that TNT has asked Warrior if he would team up with him to face… and the clip cuts off there. Guess we’ll have to wait until next week to find out what the match is instead. The real reason the Warrior vs. Murdoch match was changed is due to Dick Murdoch having signed with WCW. Hugo and Profe close the show by hyping tonight's card in Carolina with a main event of Carlos Colon vs. Great Kokina.

We'll finish off this week’s post with footage of the Dino Bravo vs. TNT match from June 15.

TNT vs. Dino Bravo - June 15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY8RsFYAYgE

It's only a short clip of the match since this is taken from a  TV episode that aired some months later. They show TNT hitting his shoulder on the post when missing a corner charge and Bravo takes advantage by working over TNT’s shoulder. TNT gets a hope spot with a sunset flip, but Bravo knocks TNT down with a clothesline and continues attacking the arm. TNT gets another comeback, but a missed spin kick allows Bravo to lock in the full nelson. TNT submitted due to the hurt shoulder and a big win for Bravo on his way to Aniversario 91. . 

MD: We get the last four minutes of this. TNT misses a corner charge and Bravo works over the arm. It’s not exactly impressive armwork but it’s fine. Varied even if none of the holds look great. TNT comes back and Bravo feeds well for it. He misses an elbow drop as well. But TNT misses the spin wheel kick and he gets a clean win with the full nelson. I get putting him over so strong going into Anversario but usually this would have a distraction or interference. That made me realize I don’t know who TNT is actually facing at Anversario.

EB: Next time on El Deporte de las Mil Emciones, we are in the final stretch of the road to Aniversario 91. Giant Warrior helps train Hugo, we’ll cover some matches that happened during the latter half of June such as Invader #1 teaming up with Mr. Ito and Carlos Colon vs Great Kokina in a steel cage, and the final hype for Aniversario 91 as we get some feud recaps to make sure we know how we got there.

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Found Footage Friday: OMNI 8/14/83~! PIPER~! BUZZ~! ZBYSZKO~! GARVIN~! SHEIK~! TOMMY~! IRWIN~! ROAD WARRIORS~!

GCW Omni 8/14/83

Arn Anderson vs. Joe Lightfoot

MD: Interesting to place this one. This was Arn's second to last match in the territory. Borne had flaked out before this leaving Arn on his own and aimless. He drifted over to the babyface side and was mainly used for putting over the Road Warriors in various ways before heading to Alabama as Super Olympia. So this was more or less a babyface match. Arn was the aggressor maybe and ate a whole bunch of chops leading up to the finish but this was really just on the mat for the most part. Anyway, Lightfoot was a solid hand, a guy I know mostly for being Youngblood's little buddy to set up a program in Portland. This was five minutes in and out, and certainly didn't wear out its welcome before the double pin finish and Arn getting his shoulder up. Post match he shook Lightfoot's hand and past one Tony Zane match a couple of weeks later, that was it for Arn in Georgia.

ER: This got really entertaining when they transitioned out of the ground work and Arn was staggering into Lightfoot's chops, and that was the last 10 seconds of the match. Arn was 23!!

Fake Mr. Wrestling I (Jesse Barr) vs. Rick Rood

MD: Yes, this was Barr. I'm not sure if he was trying to work like Woods or not. I do know that he'd feud with Mr. Wrestling II after this and Wrestling II would take his mask in October. This went ten minutes as a draw which may have been surprising but Wrestling was supposed to be a bit of a fraud and he got his heat back after the match by attacking Rood. He had pretty solid armwork throughout with some big comebacks and revenge armwork by Rood. Rood had good fire and it was funny to see him do things like a headstand to get out of a headscissors which was very not Rood. Ten minute draws are far more palatable than 20 minute ones and this made me wonder what a babyface Rood might have looked like later in the decade.

ER: This was among the earliest Rick Rude matches I've seen, and it's very early. This is like 30 matches into a 1,500 match career early. It's impressive how far along he was this early while also wrestling like a completely different guy. This early on he still had elements of who he would be a thousand matches from now, in how he moved and how he sold while feeding. He already had an honest use of physics in his basics like dropdowns and shoulderblocks. He was already delivering his offense in a way where you could tell he knew what the goal of his match was. He also of course did a few funny things I have never associated with Rude, like a headstand escape out of Mr. Wrestling's great headscissors. I didn't actually know it was Jesse Barr until after I watched this. I was real confused when he beat Rude's ass after the loss after working an entire 10 minute draw without ever trying to beat Rude's ass. The crowd was really pissed off and I thought there was this great 50 year old Tim Woods heel run. 

Brett Sawyer vs. The Iron Sheik

MD: Brett was really good. Obviously there was a ceiling to him as a drawing card (Flair match from Portland and teaming with his brother vs. the Road Warriors aside) but he was just a great mid-card presence, very down home and folksy in a way that would never make it to TV today, not without being more stylized like a Mark Briscoe. But he just came off as a guy down the street with a lot of fire in his heart. 

The first third of this (after getting under Sheik's skin with the patriotic chants) was all headlocks and rope running and Sheik really was pretty lithe stooging his way into these and keeping up off the ropes. Brett eventually got caught and then Sheik jammed his face into his boot (with his boot on the top rope, which was a nice bit that he may not have been flexible enough to pull off in later years). That started the blood and with it came the woundwork and it was pretty glorious. A bloody Brett would wave his fists and try to power up and fight from underneath and the crowd ate it up. Sheik cut him off and did more damage right until the banana peel finish where Brett fell on Sheik on a suplex attempt and the place became unglued. Post match Ellering and Sheik pounded on Brett until Rich and Buzz (certainly not aligned) ran out for the save. Pretty electric stuff. This was third match on the card and it inspired so much emotion. Beautiful pro wrestling.

ER: There were at least five other matches on this show I was more excited to see. I don't know if I even registered this match when my eyes skipped past the bottom of the card to where the Valentine, Tommy Rich, Buzz Sawyer, and Road Warriors matches. I'm so glad I didn't just skip to those other matches as this match is a condensed gem. The fans really like Sawyer, hate the Sheik, and you get to see a vicious quick Sheik that would be a completely different wrestler in less than two years. Sheik is one of our great weird body wrestlers, and it's not a coincidence that so many of our great weird body guys were high level amateur wrestlers. Gary Albright's small arms and hunched shoulders and powerful belly, Tamon Honda's full long upper torso with his short sturdy legs glued to the canvas, and Iron Sheik's shredded distended belly with small arms and close shoulders, all weird amateur grappler bodies and all great. Sheik moved so weird and here he moves really well...while still moving the weird way Sheik moves. He has the same stiff old man posture as he did when he was ruining indy cards in the late 90s, but he has this cool unexpected quickness. When Sheik did a hindu squat splits dropdown into a leapfrog to set up a fast Sawyer sunset flip, I yelled aloud. 

Putting your boot up on the top turnbuckle and slamming someone's face into your boot is a real Lost Great Spot. Think of the last time you saw it. I saw Barry Horowitz do it 20 years ago and maybe it was something FTR pulled when they were The Revival. Tag partners should also yell at their partner on the apron to give them a boot more often. The boot eyelet raking made a comeback at some point, somebody needs to bring back the boot smash. Sawyer gets busted open from biting and Sheik pushes it well past biting when he throws a gorgeous belly to belly that started with him picking up a bearhug. His missed cannonball that gave Sawyer some fight was so unexpected. It's so weird watching Iron Sheik do a huge front flip. I love how it didn't lead to Sawyer's actual comeback, it just gave him a little time to fight to his knees and get the crowd believing. The finish coming right after as its own surprise was a great way to triple that reaction just as it was dimming. 

The post match was great with Buzz Sawyer and Tommy Rich coming out to save Buzz's bro from one of seven or eight Paul Ellering fueled beatings. Tommy looked so loyal, standing over Sawyer wanting to fight anyone who got near, but Buzz had this unreal aura. It's so unmistakably bad ass, a guy you don't want to cross who keeps this dangerous cool composure. "I know people don't like me but I'm not a total asshole" big brother energy. The way he carries himself with his hands in his sweatpants pockets, that torso in a tight 50/50 blend blue t-shirt, the fucking bandana essential to the look, sending calm threats to Ellering as he walked up to him. An unemployed adult older brother who stays at home all day coming out to the front yard to tell his teen brother's bully how he's going to cut him. 

Larry Zbyszko vs. Ron Garvin

MD: The TV title was on the line for the first ten minutes here. I'll be honest that there are single matches i want more or less out of the Omni footage, but if we're talking a run, then I want as much as Larry's run as possible. We have bits and pieces but it's right down my alley on paper. I think it ages better than a lot of heel Dibiase footage for instance.  

Anyway, this was the panacea to Larry's usual tactics as he only had ten minutes to try to take Garvin's title. Yes, he got punched out of the ring early, but he couldn't linger. He had to be more aggressive than usual. Tons of great punches in this one, especially in the corners. There was one comeback by Garvin where he knocked Larry down and then held on to the arm after he fell and the crowd realized it, realized that he was going to pull Larry back up to hit him again, and were elated about it. Larry was able to fire back out of the corner using the ref as a distraction and took about half the match pretty soundly. He had an advantage at the end as Garvin missed a knee drop and it seemed like he might have a chance of taking the title with a pile driver but Garvin turned it into a pin and got the win. This was a nice subversion of the Rood match which did go to a ten minute draw. It seemed like it would here too or that Garvin was going to lose and then he snuck out the win at the last moment. 

ER: I love this era of Zbyszko. Yeah Garvin looks like a jacked up super tough brat pack era Judd Nelson and hits with his trademark up close short range power, but Zbyszko man. Zbyszko sells the impact of Garvin's strikes better than maybe anyone. I love the tough guy sturdy gravity Valentine sells them with but Zbyszko is so moveable, a wiggly guy who bounces off ropes and uses body movement the same way Tully did, recoiling fast but being punched and physically reacting to those punches exactly the way 9,000 people wanted to see. He knows exactly how I want to see Larry Zbyszko reacting to being hit. He also punches exactly how I want to see a man punch. All the punches were great for the whole match, but Zbyszko's tight, straight reared back rights looked perfect. The finish of this was incredibly done and I didn't see it coming. We had our 10 minute draw already and every single piece of wrestling language made this look like a frustrated Zbyszko unable to win within 10 minutes. I actually but when Larry pulled off a sweet and smooth inside cradle to block a bodyslam in its infancy, but the actual finish was a great surprise. Zbyszko looking like he was going to cave in Garvin's teen idol 'do, with all the execution of Zbyszko lifting up the way you do just before you sit down, Garvin shifting his weight at the peak of lift off to tip the weight. Great finish, great match. 

Road Warriors vs. Mr. Wrestling/Mr. Wrestling II

MD: I really enjoy 83 Roadies. They were raw but they hadn't quite settled into what they'd become a year or two later. They wrestled much more vulnerably, more stooging, more backpedaling, while still being monsters both aesthetically and when they were doing damage. We've been hearing it for the last few matches but it's so great to have the crowd make that primal guttural noise whenever a babyface threw a shot. It was chaos to begin and chaos to end with Mr Wrestling having to fight from underneath in the middle. Wrestling II came in hot and it was rousing stuff but Zbyszko nailed him from the apron out of nowhere after a couple of kneelifts. All of this felt larger than life especially to this crowd.

ER: Man I LOVE the way the Road Warriors sell for two 50 year old man throwing big arm swinging punches. The Road Warriors sell so well for the Wrestlings that I want to see 1983 Roadies against 1989 Baba/Rusher. I couldn't get enough for Wrestling's big swinging punches that are thrown like nobody else threw punches and the way Hawk perfectly knew to throw his head back for them, just enough. We know the Road Warriors were not yet the monsters they would become just a year or so later, but it's still wild seeing Hawk taking multiple back body drops. This had another spectacular finish, with action so good I had to keep rewinding to watch what each individual was doing. Wrestling II was fending off Animal in the top corner, Hawk was roughing up Wrestling in the foreground. Wrestling gets thrown over the top down onto a table and almost into a front row before charging back into the ring by stepping up onto that table and getting back into the fight. Animal keeps charging into Wrestling II in the corner and keeps catching knees, until he charges in and catches two boots shoved squarely into his chest and gets bumped back hard. Zbyszko sneaks in and bashes II in the back of the head and staggers him into the greatest This is the End powerslam from Animal. This was not the structure I expected going in but now I want more Hawk and Animal selling for great old man strikes.  

Greg Valentine vs. Pez Whatley

MD: Pretty remarkable Pez performance here. He came in hot, even while Greg still had the title in hand and had Valentine rocking and falling over the place with headbutts early. Greg took over with a nasty kneeling piledriver and started on the arm. Pez came back with one arm with some great silly in his hope spots, using the head when he could, really solid stuff. They dropped the arm selling for the most part as it went on but you almost didn't mind because Pez was so good at working from underneath on a chinlock, just constant motion fighting up and engaging the crowd. Transition was another pile driver attempt which was a little like the Garvin/Zbyszko match but they had Valentine go into the corner again. Things got out of hand and it ended up as a DQ with him using the belt repeatedly, but Pez drove him off so the crowd got at least some satisfaction out of it. Very good match overall though, even if the arm selling went nowhere. 

ER: Every heel in this territory knew exactly how to sell the strikes of every top babyface and it's all so beautiful. Valentine makes Pez Whatley a god and Pez wiggles his way up to it, and once again, this rules. Valentine is on the Found Footage Friday Mt. Rushmore as we've now been uncovering unseen classics of his for nearly a decade, every one of them broadening his case as one of our greatest workers. Here's another for the pile. I'm so used to seeing Valentine take strikes from fellow tough guys and hitting them back. I've seen that Valentine more than I've seen the Valentine who sells for smaller ethnic babyface, and this one is great. With Valentine's selling, his head whips and stunned cobweb shaking, Whatley's headbutts looked peerless, the culmination of decades of black wrestler headbutts. His perseverance and big time style and charisma through his comebacks were getting reactions louder than any part of the Dog Collar main event, and it was such infectious babyface energy that played incredibly off the tough guy champ. Whatley's reversal out of the piledriver was such a cool spot, upending Valentine into and off the turnbuckles. It's one of those spots where, no matter how much wrestling I've watched, there's always something like that waiting to show me something new. 

Bullwhip on a Pole: Tommy Rich vs. Bill Irwin

MD: I've always been pretty high on Irwin. Great body language. Big lanky guy who was willing to throw himself into everything he did, and there was so much to throw himself into here. Every time either guy went for the pole, the other was on top of him instantly. Really gripping stuff. People don't understand today just how compelling these pole matches could be when the wrestlers put forth so much care towards whatever was on top of the pole. 

Here they had to really incapacitate the other. Irwin kept escalating things, hitting a gut wrench suplex, tossing Rich out of the ring, knocking the head against the post. Rich on the other hand got out of the way for Irwin's corner charge and he bumped huge over the top knee first, etc. Just more and more until finally Irwin started working the leg, a necessity since Rich wouldn't stay down. Even that didn't quite do it but it allowed for a hotshot and Irwin to finally get up the pole. One thing I wish we had were more pole matches from the 70s when there probably WASN'T an inversion of the finish. By the 80s, whoever first got the weapon tended not to be the one who got to use it and to see that once could be satisfying but to see it in every pole match gets a little frustrating. Sometimes you just want that nice clean feeling of something happening how it's supposed to. Still, Rich grabbing it mid swing and firing off on Irwin was a greater level of enjoyment for the crowd and this was really good stuff overall.

Dog Collar Match: Roddy Piper vs Buzz Sawyer 

MD: Pull this back up. Just watch a minute of it, any minute. Watch Roddy. Watch him move. Nothing specific that he does, though if you catch a bump or some selling or a punch, that's all the better. But just the in-between. Did you see it? Go look out a window or down the street. Find a neighbor, a spouse. Hell, look in the mirror. Watch yourself move. Whatever you see, it's not as alive and vibrant and vivid as this forty year old footage of Roddy Piper.

The anticipation early here, both of them six feet apart, the chain between them, a rabid game of chess to decide which would rush first to strike. At the start it was Buzz but when it was Piper's time, he became a man possessed, cutting the distance with wide eyes and a wild snarl. Buzz scored first blood but Piper's comebacks on the floor were things of myth and legend.

Matches like these, from this era, often end shortly after that first huge comeback, after the turn of the tide, after revenge is grasped. This one, however, went around one more time, as Buzz was able to sneak in a low blow. Things spilled back out to the floor but Piper fired back once more, moving the guardrail and basically punching Buzz back into the ring. Gripping, satisfying, refreshing stuff. In some ways a prototype for what would come later in both of their careers and something that almost impossibly lived up to the picture we had in our heads.

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Found Footage Friday: 1989 Copps Coliseum WWF Show

1/16/89 WWF Copps Coliseum Toronto

MD: This is another Richard Land find and you should be checking out his stuff at (@maskedwrestlers) since he provides about 1/3 of the new footage coming out today.

Red Rooster vs. Danny Davis

MD: This made me feel like I have to check out a lot more Danny Davis, honestly. He got on the mic at the start and said Heenan was paying him for this but he would have done it for free. Then he shoved Taylor and ran around the ring from him, got chased in, did some rope running, stopped, taunted, and walked right into a punch before taking a powder, all before his ring jacket was off. Great stuff to begin. Then came the real stalling as he just pressed himself in the corner and covered his head. When Taylor finally did get him he begged off until he could turn an arm wringer into a clothesline and then he looked pretty solid in control. There was just a spring to his step. He had some nice stuff (a weirdly balanced shot off the second ropes, a throat cross chop when Taylor started to come back) and then begged off again towards the finish where Taylor got him with the Scorpion Deathlock. I enjoyed this one.

ER: Imagine what a crushing day it was when Terry Taylor was told he had to get the top of his hair dyed bright red. I can't imagine, but it's a conversation about your career as a top pro being over and done with. Look at him here, with his blond locks and no red, a man existing as a man and not as a rooster. But I am much more of a Heel Terry Taylor man. Let me see that evil Mark Harmon unleashed, like you find out the guy running your goof around summer school is actually a real hard ass who will probably assault more than one of the students. No, this match is owned by Heel Danny Davis, and I agree with Matt that more Danny research must be conducted. Fans hate this man on sight, even before he gets on the mic to say, "Bobby The Brain Heenan paid me a lot of money to come to this god forsaken place! But brother, he didn't pay me a dime because it's gonna be myyy pleasure." Then he one-handed shoves Taylor.  

Davis has great movement and plays to the crowd expertly, the kind of guy who you'd want to keep as a heel house show undercarder. How he punches Taylor over the referee, that stiff quick short arm clothesline to break an arm wringer, those great running short kicks to a downed Taylor's jaw, his very good short right hands aimed straight at the chin - including a fist shake out after one, thus cementing Davis's status as a Great Puncher - all of it is stuff that Danny Davis performs far better than we've ever given him credit. If you were doubting his Great Puncher status, he also throws nice corner 10 count punches and dropped a hammering fistdrop from the middle buckle, and if that's not the trifecta then man I don't even know what we're doing here. The thing is, even better than his corner 10 counts? His shoulder shrugs in the corner. You remember how Batista always had real awful shoulder shrugs, coming in way too light and making it obvious just how much he was holding back? Soothe yourself by Danny Davis going hard into Taylor's stomach and ask yourself why we don't demand better. Demand Danny Davis. 

Curt Hennig vs. Rick Martel

MD: This was a draw that did air but was clipped in half or so. I can't speak to that version. I will say that the good stuff here was very good. The feeling out process where Hennig won the first few exchanges only for Martel to turn it around and toss him around with all the babyface fire anyone might want was just as good as you'd expect. Martel's one of the only guys I've ever seen that was so into the flow of what he was doing that he'd do flat back dropdowns to set up an armdrag. After that rope running they went into extended controlling of the arm by Martel and they kept it interesting enough, with lots of escape attempts by Perfect, before building to an elaborate bit where it looked like Perfect might get him three times before finally dropping him with a belly to back.

Perfect's control started out engaging (especially as he was still selling the arm) but they went into a long front face lock. Obviously, these are two guys that could work that, and Martel was going to work from underneath well, but it was also clearly eating up a bunch of time in a twenty minute draw. The payoff was good though as again Perfect was going to rush right in to all of Martel's fire. Once he cleared the ring of him that was the time limit so it didn't really even build to the sort of nearfalls you often get with a draw. It more felt like they were just calling it a day (even if Martel tried to invite Hennig back in).

ER: This did not need to be a time limit draw, and it didn't need the moments you knew they were working towards a time limit draw, but I also thought Hennig was fantastic throughout all of it. Look at black trunks Perfect in '89. It's easy to talk about Hennig the bumper but it's really all about Hennig the ball of energy. It's going into every exchange with real aggression, real purpose. You see how hard both men are leaning into a collar and elbow and you see how Hennig throws everything - armdrag, hop toss, fireman's carry - with real purpose. His punches look like he's really trying to mess up Martel's pretty face. This era Hennig was going to come in hard and then feed even harder, making his opponents' bodyslams and hiptosses look more violent than his own. Before things settle down into arm work and front face locks, he takes a great bump off a light dropkick, flying out through the ropes and off and over the ringside table, then faceplanting all around the ring while Canadians lose their minds. 

I love how hard he pushes all the rope running that leads to him eating shit. He pushes Martel fast, like he's trying to get him to mess up a sequence, but it always ends with him on the mat kicking his legs in a hold. He does two different missed charges into the turnbuckles that lead to long series of him eating bigger bowls of shit. The arm work is long but Perfect makes it look so convincing that I heard two different people - women! - yelling for Martel to break his arm. He's good at timing how long to keep the crowd engaged while kicking in a hold, and knows when to start breaking out match ending fireworks. Curt Hennig is perhaps our finest wrestler ever at bumping like a heel who has his shoelaces tied together. A lot of the Minnesota guys were great at that. Was it common practice to work 2 a day drills while pantsed or something? Hennig gets kicked around hard before fleeing at the sound of the bell, and every fall is that of a man escaping a ransomed kidnapping. We act like it's a foregone conclusion that this was "just another match clearly worked as a time limit draw" but this was the first time limit draw that Hennig worked during the Perfect era. This wasn't just a thing he and Martel were doing around the horn, this was a Copps exclusive where some tag specialist took Perfection to the limit. 

Rockers vs. Brainbusters

MD: This had Billy Red Lyons interview the Busters (no Heenan) before the start. Nothing notable but nice to see. The match itself started great with Michaels looking like a huge star outclassing Arn (Arn feeding for it perfectly) and then escaping to slap the hands of the fans like he had escaped with the crown jewels. Then, he, being Michaels, doubled down on it and no sold all of Tully's stuff (Tully still bumped huge for him), and it wasn't until Jannetty came in that they even started the false transitions. Just another case where this would have been better if Michaels took that first win, gave Tully a tiny bit, and then overcame. Ah well. Jannetty looked great as he overcame (including fighting out of the corner and hitting a backflip to reverse a double top wristlock.).

Really a never ending heel in peril (though one full of entertaining individual bits) until Michaels ducked a Tully clothesline on the outside only to run into an Arn one. Thankfully the Busters were great at making the most of their time on top. Michaels knew how to be a star already and was constantly trying to fight back. I think a babyface should be doing that but maybe he didn't quite have the proper escalation in it. Arn crotched himself on Michaels' knees to set up the hot tag and things got chaotic but the Busters fairly quickly snuck one out. The great stuff was absolutely great but in part due to Michaels' tendencies and Arn and Tully being happy to just go along with them, this didn't come together like it could have.

ER: This really did feel like a 15 minute match where Tully bumped and stooged and made narrow misses for 13 of those minutes, and I did not mind that layout one bit. I was wildly entertained watching the Rockers punch through Tully for a long tag, as Tully is wildly entertaining at getting run over by punches. He cannot just walk a straight line to a destination and it's perfect. When he's punched, it's a turning drop to the knee before getting punched in another direction; when he misses, it's a quick turn back to his target to take his medicine. He finds several safe and less safe ways to fall to the floor and continue his constant motion and I loved them all. I loved the theatrical slow mo Sgt. Slaughter bump to the floor and the ways he would fall off the apron into a back bump. He treats every punch from each Rocker as something worth bumping for, and it makes his eventual tag out moment even greater when he turned a near tag out into an inverted atomic drop. The Brainbusters really didn't have a lot of offense here - that Arn clothesline on the floor that the camera missed, Tully's atomic drop to set up his tag, and Arn's spinebuster after ducking a clothesline - but the Rockers didn't really have any offense either. Even when Michaels goes up top after they hit tandem superkicks, he only comes flying off with a punch. And I'll take it. The finish is fantastic, even if uncommon. Marty goes for his first flying headscissors but it's too close to the ropes, and Tully pulls his head down from the apron and slam dunks his head over the top rope.     

Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Paul Roma

MD: I'm honestly a little astounding how good this was. (Eric will not be, but he is a Mike Sharpe truther). It was 80% shtick and 20% Roma hitting dropkicks, but the shtick was really good and Sharpe was incredibly entertaining. He's one of the most vocal wrestlers ever and there were times where I could shut my eyes and still know exactly what was going on just from hearing him stammer. Mainly when he was begging off but not always. And he did a lot of begging off. A lot of stalling. They got tons of mileage out of a handshake bit at the beginning, out of him threatening to leave, out of Roma catching his foot on a kick attempt. Just one bit after the next after the next with Sharpe throwing himself into it completely and Roma being a perfectly fine straight man. It's the sort of match the sheets would have grumbled about in 89 but that plays a lot better in 2025 when there's nothing like it in the world anymore. You can see the value so clearly now. Honestly just a great show for stooging up til this point, and from guys that don't get the credit for it like Davis and Sharpe.

ER: We get an honest to god Iron Mike Sharpe ring entrance and the fact that he is in his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario and announced as such does not give him a single second of goodwill from his town. These are his people, and the people of Ontario fucking hate the mirror that he is holding up for them. The women scream for Roma as he removes his jacket, but when the match is over I will challenge those same women to tell me anything Paul Roma did during the match. They won't be able to, because this is Iron Mike Sharpe's town, and Iron Mike Sharpe's match. To use an already dated out of existence joke format: Mike Sharpe is the Tully Blanchard of Barry Darsows. He has the size and sound and lack of offense of Darsow, but watching him directly after a Tully match you really see what a large adult son Tully Blanchard he is. He is not as hateable on sight as Tully (few men ever have been) but how much of an instant turn off does one have to be within pro wrestling to be booed on sight in his own hometown? 

I love how quickly Sharpe takes armdrags and how it's the only bump he really takes differently than his standard arm waving back bump that he uses for everything else. His swinging arm into Roma's stomach looked excellent and the man gets tied up in the ropes more efficiently than any wrestler other than Andre. But where Andre was always a temporarily inconvenienced giant, Sharpe has a way of making it feel like he just might be stuck in those tangled ropes for the rest of the evening. The finish is outstanding and probably something that no wrestler other than Sharpe would even want to do: Sharpe loads up his cast and swings it at Roma, but Roma catches it and throws Sharpe's loaded arm back into his head. It's so stupid and so hapless that it can only be a Mike Sharpe finish. We didn't know how good we had it, and as Matt points out, it's because nobody comes close to being a Mike Sharpe any more. We didn't recognize how essential different workers were to a roster. 

Greg Valentine vs. Ron Garvin

MD: Another awesome match in their feud. What can you even say about this really? They lay into each other in the corner. Garvin's great at firing back out of it just when you think Valentine has him. Valentine's great at stumbling about and getting a sneaky advantage right until he doesn't. There were some really brilliant specific moments which shows you they weren't just hitting each other blindly. At one point, Valentine's about to do the flop and Garvin catches him so he can hit him one more time first. Valentine takes over with a shinbreaker but when he goes to the second, Garvin nails him before he collapses so they both go down. Finish had Garvin wanting to use the shinguard as a weapon and getting distracted by the ref so he got rolled up but post match he hit a punch version of the Garvin Stomp to a prone Valentine and nailed him with the shinguard anyway. The world would have been better off if we had whole promotions based around this style instead of whatever else we got in the 90s and after.

ER: It would be a good idea if we just kept getting new Garvin/Valentine matches every couple weeks. Every single one we have has been a real gift, and while there are a lot of similarities among them there are always new ideas and ways that certain sequences can be extended. This was, I think, the shortest one we have, and I think going less than 10 actually made their strikes play harder. The first two minutes is just them shoving each other in the chest with both hands and I would have been happy if we never even got to the punches. I could have watched them shove each other and burn out their arms for eight minutes, just to see who would be the first to fall. 

But I do like the strikes. 

Valentine always takes more punches than he gives in the Garvin battles, but I think this one takes the cake. He just gets battered. There is often a corner punch out stretch of their match, and Valentine's selling made this stand out from the rest. Garvin kept punching and chopping him and Valentine kept getting knocked to his ass, hitting the bottom buckle and getting pulled back to his feet only to be punched and chopped some more. When he finally can no longer stand and begins pitching forward into a Flop, Garvin actually holds him up with both hands on his chest. Garvin looks like a support beam propping up a leaning building in the Philippines, and it's all so he can just punch him in the head one more time.  

When Valentine does flop, there is no rest to be had. Garvin starts raking his back and Valentine sells multiple back rakes so well that it made me think of how Tenryu might've sold a back rake if that had been something that any wrestler in WAR ever did (they did not). But it's all back rakes that Valentine sells incredibly, punches to the nose (that Valentine sells incredibly), a fantastic headbutt, and one of those sleepers that starts like a violent clothesline. Garvin is a monster and I don't think there was anyone else on the roster who would have put up with this. Garvin has his own great run of selling when Hammer turns a side headlock into a knee breaker, then does it again. Garvin is limping around on one leg, and after he takes the second knee breaker he landed one big punch that knocked Hammer to his back while it spiraled him into the mat. 

I think calling Garvin's punches after the bell a punch version of the Garvin Stomp kind of undersells how nasty those punches were. Garvin just got into mount and threw disgusting punches while Valentine was on his back. He threw eight of them, and Valentine couldn't really move to absorb them, so Garvin just stood over him raining down shots that built into even more disgusting hammerfists, both fists held together like an ape attacking his handler. Hammer can barely move and has to take a rapid succession of wicked punches and man....is this the best of the Garvin/Valentine matches? I think this one packs in the most action, and it felt like they went even more violent with the shorter runtime. 

Randy Savage vs. Bad News Brown 

MD: This has been out there before but I'm not sure I've ever seen it. It's a street fight. Bad News is out with a Mets shirt. Savage is out with a white shirt with a Gold's Gym tank top over it and grey Zubaz type pants and pink elbow pads so it's a look. Liz looks like Liz. That feels like a missed opportunity. It's basically ten years before its time. You give it a couple more minutes and some more goofiness around the finish and it could have been a 1998 Austin No DQ main event. Brown started with a chair but then missed a punch on the post outside. Savage used the timekeeper's table and kept on him. Then he took the weight belt off and used that. Brown came back with a chair. They set up a table and but the ref got crunched in between it and Brown. That's when we got the Ghetto Blaster and the visual pin, then a hilarious second one as Brown got the ref up and slammed Savage but the ref did a face first bump as he passed out again. When he came to Savage rolled up Bad News for a quick pin and that was that. Post match they went at it with Brown getting an early advantage and Savage fighting back as the locker room cleared. Pretty bizarre to watch overall, but it worked well for what they were doing especially if they went back to it.

ER: This was on the very first DVDVR 80s set, the one that was assembled and arranged differently than all the other eventual sets because this was the very first time we were doing this and nobody had any idea how large this project would grow with subsequent sets. "Controversial" is not the correct word for it but I remember some people wondering why this match was included at the time. There were a lot of imperfections and missing matches on that first set, and I still can't believe that was 20 years ago now. 2005? Impossible. It was not well received by the people who participated in that first ballot. It finished in the bottom 10 out of 100 matches, and it almost surely wouldn't have been included were the set put together with the same method that all subsequent sets were assembled. From the very next set (Other Japan Men's) we were watching every single match from the territory/fed and picking among the very best. There were plenty of matches that should have been included in a WWF 80s set, and we sadly never got to re-do that one. I can't find my initial ballot either, so I have no idea how high/low I ranked it 20 years ago, when I was a 24 year old man, but now I think it's pretty safe to call this pick ahead of its time.  like a pretty ahead of its time fiat pick (that I believe was made by David Bixenspan, credit due).

Maybe it belongs just for the gear. Nobody shows up for a fight like this and they're idiots for that. I loved Bad News in his 50-50 poly-cotton Mets tee and Savage just went over the top with gear. The Golds tank top and Zubaz would have been enough but the tight undershirt and pink elbow pads that looked like knee pads he was wearing on his elbows make it insane. It's possible Big thought it belonged on the set because it was a unique match for 1989 WWF. Savage was the World Heavyweight Champ and it's not like he and Bad News were working Harlem Street Fights around the horn. This was the first (and only one that exists on tape) and they worked just eight total over the next couple months. It's short, it's a tough fight, Savage takes some tough spills - including getting thrown hard over the railing to the concrete, a girl in her neon green sweatshirt helping push him back over the guardrail so he can go after Bad News. Bad News punching the ringpost felt like a novel spot in 1989, and him setting up a table in the corner and running a ref straight through it feels even more novel. That ref got crunched man. The bullshit finish is incredible, with Bad News getting a real long visual pin over the champ, then reviving the referee just for the man to collapse again just as Bad News re-secured the pin. Maybe people disliked it 20 years ago because it was too short? It's less than 8 minutes long, which feels more like a snack than a World Heavyweight Title match, but I'm glad I watched it again now that I'm sliding down the other side of the mountain. 

Jim Duggan/Hercules vs. Ted Dibiase/Virgil

MD: This was already out there as well so I'll keep it quick. Herc and Duggan team up very well. Two versions of the same sort of visual idea with big shots and driving motion. Duggan constantly moving forward especially on his hope spot punches is something I didn't appreciate enough for a lot of my life. Honestly, Dibiase is fine here, feeding and stooging, but he doesn't give himself over to it in the same way a lot of the people earlier in the card. Everything is technically sound but it almost feels more like him putting himself in the right place at the right time in a more modern way as opposed to that sense of total abandon that we got from Davis or Sharpe or (in different ways) the Brainbusters (or in a different way) or Valentine (in a different way). Virgil is interesting here as he never really does much, mainly just plays interference and holds someone for Dibiase. It's actually a clever use for him. This was ok, and fit well on the card. I just don't think Dibiase stood up well to his predecessor heels.

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FOUND FOOTAGE FRIDAY: OMNI 2/26/84

 

Jesse Barr vs. Pez Whatley

ER: A match made completely worthwhile by the finish. Up until the finishing stretch I was prepared to write "Yep this sure is some undercard wrestling. Well Barr did work his chin lock fairly effectively and I appreciate that" and be done with it. But then we go on an excellent one minute run to finish on a perfect high note: Barr throws Whatley through the ropes to the floor, fast, and the cameras pan to Whatley and what appears to be a ringside security guard facing away from the ring while eating popcorn and literally reading a fucking magazine. When Whatley tries to get back in the ring he's greeted by Barr's legitimately great kneelift - the best piece of offense all match - and I love how Whatley's reaction is to get obliterated by the kneelift and desperately try to roll back to the floor before being dragged back in. All of that is made worth it by Barr taking one of the greatest banana peel bumps I've seen when Whatley sweeps his leg. Barr made it look like he had no idea the football was being pulled. 

MD: Nice way to get acclimated to 1984 here. The ref, especially does a great job in both checking Barr before the match (showing Barr that if he doesn't agree, then he'll declare Pez the winner) and then catching the hairpull on the top wristlock cutoffs the second or third time Barr does it. Barr was maybe 25 here and you had to wonder what his ceiling might have been at this point. He looked good, high energy especially on a kneelift catching Pez on the way in and then bumping big for Pez's finishing stuff, and Pez, of course, knew exactly what he was doing and played to the crowd well between it. Ok opening match but I'm glad they didn't decide it needed to be a time limit draw. 

TKG: Fuck all that, this ruled and was ridiculously hot for an opener. Pez Whatley backdrop driver may be the most impressive suplex on a show with great throws. Just holds Barr up in impressive lift before perfectly dropping him. Whatley just looks like a hoss throughout this dominating on mat. Why wasn’t Whatley in the Varsity Club? Why didn’t he get a Triple Crown title challenge. You watch that suplex and shocking that it wasn’t finisher. Barr actually hits a desperation knee to get straight back on offense. And really the high knee lift is Barr’s only move. Was Barr doing a loaded knee pad gimmick? Barr refuses to let ref Scrappy McGowan check his kneepads before the match until Scrappy threatens him with DQ, all of his offense and comebacks and signature bump built around knee lift. Hits a knee lift for control and then slaps on a chinlock. Whatley wins with this high neck yolk move (instead of a bulldog from behind he yolks opponent down from the front), Whatley goes for it several times and never quite gets it till the win. First time, I thought it was a crossbody that he got too much height with, second time I thought it was a Mil style in ring tope and when he finally hits it clean, clear that is what he was going for and match is over. The moves based match structure had a real first round of a early 2000’s Super Eight feel to it, and you could totally see Ketner booking a Billy Fives, Scoot Andrews, Barr, Pez 4 way dance for the next month.

The Spoiler vs. Johnny Rich

ER: Spoiler standing on the top rope looks like a magic trick. It looks like an illusion. He's standing so still, like he's not even standing on anything at all. Don Jardine is a man the same age as me and twice my size, yet he stands effortlessly on the ropes with the grace of El Hijo del Santo. Watch him. Watch his entire body. At one point he appears to be only standing on one leg, right leg on one set of ropes, left leg on another, until one of the legs lifts...and the rest of his body doesn't move. His entire body is still, no part of him looks like he is countering weight to maintain balance. He looks like he is standing on solid ground. He looks incredible. You've never seen anyone walk the ropes like Spoiler. Fenix, Komander, Elix Skipper, any name, none are comparable to what Spoiler does. 

I could go on and on about the unreality of his rope work - if this wasn't a full card and only this match, I would write several paragraphs on him standing on the ropes - but maybe the greatest thing about it is how he uses his rope work for heel heat. I don't think there has ever been a heel who has used "look how well I balance on the top rope" as the basis for his heel heat, but there is Spoiler on the top rope, striking and holding a pose like a large buccaneer, showing off his balance to a bunch of husbands and wives out on a Sunday. The Spoiler draws heat from standing still on a very high point, and the crowd starts coming alive for Rich's comeback because of it. Johnny Rich does this thing where his punches keep looking better the deeper into the match we go, and it makes the crowd louder and more responsive. And then my man hits the blade for Spoiler's claw, and we get this incredible, violent, wrenched in claw that Spoiler made look like he was breaking Rich's entire upper torso. The shot of Rich, still standing, body being contorted while held in the claw, blood covering his face quick, made me go from "Man Spoiler matches always deliver" to "oh wow they did something special in just 6 minutes". 

MD: Great look at the Spoiler and I'm glad people will see him that are unaware. Hot start to this as he clubbers right away in the corner only for Rich to fire back. But then the size advantage takes over as he just hefts him up and then tosses him into the corner. The rope walk elbow drop is just super striking because he does it with ease and without hesitation and he followed it up by draping Rich in the ropes and kicking the ropes and they made it look great and painful. Someone needs to steal that. 

Rich eventually rolls in (and to the other side of the ring so he can recover) and fires back with jabs, but pressing Spoiler into the corner is no good. He'll just grab your head and use it to steady himself as he walks the ropes. From there, he started utilizing the claw, getting Rich out of the ring with it and then immediately catching him on the way back in, leaving him a bloody mess. I'm happy people will get introduced to Spoiler this way (And Rich was perfectly fine in his role with fiery but futile comebacks).

TKG: The Spoiler putting Rich in a cat’s cradle is the greatest yo-yo trick ever done with a wrestling ring..

Ted Dibiase vs. Mr. R

ER: This was not designed to be a great match, but instead was worked like the first six minutes of a bigger match, all basic Mr. R side headlocks floated over into Dibiase pin attempts and then back again. I had never seen any of the Mr. R angle and my favorite part of this was Rich avoiding Jesse Barr and Spoiler's attacks as he rolled out of the ring and jumped the rail. The fans were into this and all they did was headlock shoulderblock stuff, showed how over the full angle was. 

MD: We had maybe 25 seconds of this previously. I imagine those might have been the 25 seconds we needed but we have so little actual Mr. R footage, this is still interesting. They worked the first five minutes of a very conventional match with the usual chain wrestling. Dibiase was very into it and this was fine, but it's interesting just how normal and conventional it was. After about five minutes, Dibiase calls his cronies in and the heels all try to get Mr. R's mask, but he darts out of the ring like a trickster and hops the rail and wins by DQ. The energy at the end with the angle bit was very good but this was really all just a tease.

TKG: There was some cool fighting for top wristlock stuff here but this reminded me of a lot of the Mid South Dibiase technical fussbudgeting with no direction killing time before the loaded glove finish. I kind of need to feel like you are stealing a win for me to get mad at a DQ.

Les Thornton vs. Tommy Rogers

ER: My God Les Thornton is a little tank. Tommy Rogers had a real credible side headlock and he really cranked it in a few times, especially on one spot where Thornton tried to push off, but just when I thought I knew what snug was, Thornton made me say "whoa" aloud (in the bathroom at work where I was watching this) at how violent his reversal to headscissors was. Thornton pulled off the headscissor with such speed and force, in a way I haven't seen. Rogers couldn't have stopped this if he wanted to. Made me want to see a Thornton/Finlay match. Every headscissor looked great and Rogers sold his frustration in them so well. His hair pulls are done with such a quick snap that it made me smile when Rogers finally broke a headscissors with a knee straight to the head. Rogers has a clean sunset flip that looks like an actual pin, and Thornton really thunderclaps his ears with his legs to break. Love the bounce Rogers got on Thornton's butterfly suplex and how both men made every headlock exchange look like actual struggle and applied pressure. The finish had a couple things that didn't quite work. Thornton has a way of taking Rogers dropkicks that makes Tommy look like a chump, and Rogers tried a back suplex that saw him dropping Thornton's full weight onto himself. Thornton's pin reversal win looked like it didn't even have half the leverage of any of the headlock/headscissor exchanges. Basically I loved the first 13 a lot more than the last 2.   

MD: I thought this was going to be wrestled straight but as it went on Thorton leaned heel. There was a lot of ref interaction early. I liked him the first match but he got a little too involved here turning holds over, kicking the arms off when they were holding the ropes, etc. They did some really neat things with headscissors right after pins including a transition into a takeover from Rogers i'm not sure I'd ever seen.

The match opens up midway as Thorton starts to introduce heel tactics. It leads to a really big extended comeback by Rogers where Thorton keeps trying to cut him off but can't. That played more to Rogers' strengths so it was better than if this was just wrestled clean. The fans were pretty into it by the end and when Thornton holds onto the tights to win, they are very much not happy with him.

TKG: Meltzer wrote about Malenko v Benoit from Road Wild that it would be a great match with a different audience and I was like “fuck that, they would have worked it differently for different crowd”,,,the best part of that match is how hostile the work was making the crowd. I was joking with Phil the other day about a Les Thorton v Scott Mcghee match which the WWF had booked to kill heat and send crowd to concessions. I assume Vince Sr was getting percentage of concessions and built into his card formula were these log technical draws that were intended to get a hostile crowd response and send people to concession stands and my memory of Thorton v Mcghee was that crowd started “boring” chants from moment they came to ring but actually never left their seats for concessions, transfixed; just couldn’t take eyes of one guy has a headlock which other guy counters with a leg scissors and just got more and more hostile about the idea that it was holding their attention. Match had a bunch of same elements while that one was built around egging on hostility while this is built around the pops for the face and encouraging the cheers. We don’t build matches to kill crowds anymore and kind of miss it as an art….but this was really cool too

Wahoo McDaniel vs. Nikolai Volkoff

MD: Basically a slugfest. Volkoff had big over the top punches. Wahoo had straight shots and chops. Volkoff did do this one shot to the face that I thought was amazing and Wahoo, as he was firing back, did a chop where he just ran through Volkoff in a way that I hadn't seen him do too many times before. Volkoff did get one bearhug in there but it was functional and led to a wild clap escape by Wahoo. He hit both of his backbreaker variations (including the press slam one). Things got wild on the floor with Wahoo dodging a chairshot. This was one of those matches where it was just interesting to see how they made the noise for their strikes. Not stomps so much as recoil jumps, things like that. Eventually the ref, who had been all over the show as noted, tried to get in the way of a Wahoo choke and both guys ultimately tossed him for the no contest. Wahoo tried a bunch of elbowdrops to crush Volkoff but he kept on rolling to safety.

TKG: Crap, was Nikolai Volkoff always this bad? It is Wahoo, you can hit him. He won’t cry. Volkoff’s lift before backbreaker is always impressive but c’mon. Wahoo keeps on leaning into strikes and Volkoff pulls them even more. Aways a joy to see Wahoo tee off on someone but Volkoff is a shitty guy for him to be stuck against.

ER: Damn, was Nikolai Volkoff always this good? Do I like Nikolai Volkoff now? Wahoo is Wahoo and the chops (more than one to the face!) are great and his comeback had the heaviest shots of the match, but has Volkoff been good this whole time and I just haven't sought out any of it? Is the Don Muraco Eastern Championship Wrestling Title match good? Is the '94 WWF run good? Volkoff was a big weird guy here and I loved the way he kept awkwardly kicking at Wahoo's forehead like he was Bad Taue. Imagine how great Volkoff could have been had he just been Bad Taue? He throws his kicks up with the same awkwardness of Taue, but with normal body proportions so his legs aren't as long. He does two great backbreakers to Wahoo. Well, one good back backbreaker and one incredible backbreaker. Volkoff is one of our few wrestlers to make gear a part of his backbreaker. It must be so humiliating to not only have your back broken, but to have your singlet or trunks stretched and wedged and rearranged during the lift. Volkoff kept lifting higher and Wahoo's singlet kept stretching further, an insult I think worse than mussing someone's hair. He bumped bigger than I expected when Wahoo started firing back, getting upended by a running chop and pinballing all the way across the ring for Wahoo's excellent shoulder shrug to the jaw. 

Jake Roberts vs. Ron Garvin

MD: Just an exceptional match. With these GCW Omnis, we see the Jake Roberts that we were always promised, the master of psychology, of bringing the crowds up and down and using every dirty trick. He was good later on but was too much a babyface and without the room to breathe like he had here. His ribs were taped coming in so we had his reach and leverage and dirty tricks and Ellering at ringside against the promise that at some point in the match, Garvin would get free and use the hands of stone to punch those ribs. 

They built it and built it and built it, Roberts leaning hard on the ref disallowing punches and utilizing every hairpull, tights pull, piece of rope to choke, distraction from Ellering, everything he can manage. At one point he goads Garvin into the corner (with Garvin having the advantage) only for Ellering to pull the leg out. So much of the match is just a seated armbar, but they work it so well, with hope spots like Garvin pulling Roberts' shirt up to expose the taped ribs, just that. It's so good. He gets him once but Roberts' escapes, and then when he finally gets him and ties him up in the ropes, laying in shot after shot, the place comes unglued. The ref takes a great bump and while Garvin's able to stop Ellering from using the chair, Jake blindsides him and DDTs him on the chair. When the ref comes too he hits a couple of insult to injury elbow drops for the pin, keeping the program going and getting huge heat. Just a brilliant match, maybe even a perfect one for what they were trying to accomplish.

TKG: I think of Garvin as a guy who is relentless on offense, and less of as a guy who is really great at selling but he is…he isn’t bumping for strikes but somehow by standing tall and selling the toughness of not going down, he makes the strikes look far more legit. Also I am so used to TOUGH manager Paul Ellering, that exasperated throwing hands in the air freaking out Ellering was super fun.

ER: 1984 t-shirt Jake is such an amazing era of Jake Roberts. He never looked more like the most dangerous Molly Hatchet roadie. The load out guy who everyone fears but everyone knows is the guy who can get you crank...and beyond. He did not look like a wrestler or move like a wrestler and it's what made him one of the most compelling wrestlers. He did not throw his uppercut like a wrestler. When he throws five downward punches at Garvin's face when Garvin has him by the leg, he punches like a carny. When the throws cross chops at Garvin's throat they're...maybe the best non-punch strike you've seen. Jake is wearing a t-shirt to cover up his taped ribs, and this might be the only Garvin match I've seen based around him throwing body shots. Once he starts teeing off on Jake's ribs, even tying him up in the ropes like Andre, the crows loses their mind. The whole thing is incredible. Roberts stifles Garvin for so long and escapes at the right moments, and it all burns down as Roberts is finally getting his ribs battered while he sells it like he's doing kabuki, bent at the waist on tip toes. The finish is dynamite, with Garvin being spiked right on Ellering's chair with a DDT. You can't fake the way Garvin takes this DDT, that's a man going vertebrae first onto that chair. The best past is Jake doesn't pin him after that. He rouses the ref by shoving him the way a big brother would shove his little brother after calling him numb nuts, then when the ref is watching he falls onto Garvin with an elbowdrop. He grabs at his ribs on impact, totally worth it. Had this been on one of the DVDVR 80s sets, we would have called it one of the greatest Jake matches. Now we can. 

The Road Warriors vs. Stan Hansen/King Kong Bundy

PAS: In my mind this is an insane Kaiju battle, a tag version of Andre vs. Hansen. It wasn't that, much more of a traditional tag match, but it was delightful. I am going to leave Eric and Matt to rhapsodize about the initial lock up, but man was that beautiful stuff. We don't have a ton of Road Warriors stooging and bumping, and they do a great job of that early, I can't remember seeing Stan Hansen working face in peril, and we get a nice spoonful at once, I have definitely not seen hot tag Bundy, and hot tag Bundy was incredible. I wanted a bit more of an explosion at the end, it felt like this was a match setting up a huge gimmick blowoff, which never happened, but man what a treat.

MD: Finish or no finish, the fans got their money's worth on this one. It was, in some ways, very weird in the entire history of wrestling. GCW Roadies were still raw, were very willing to stooge and show ass in a way that they really wouldn't later. Bundy was a big towering babyface, and Hansen played face-in-peril. We don't have a ton of performances like this out of him. 

When they did finally take over on him, it was by focusing on the arm, the old Hansen standard, but his hope spots were great and rousing, just big booming attempts to fire back, with the fans getting behind him, before he'd get cut off. There were only so many teams in the world that could believably keep him down like this but the Road Warriors in 84 were on that list and they really made it work. Bundy coming in at the end was like a wrecking ball and yes, this broke down with Ellering grabbing Bundy's leg and all four guys firing off until the ref called it. It's great that the Road Warriors became what they did, but I do wonder what I would have looked like if they stayed on this road instead. Just a tremendous Hansen performance overall and a new piece of a puzzle that was already feeling complete. 

TKG: This was way more a standard tag than I was picturing but a pretty great standard tag. I assume most of this will be covered by everyone else but I really loved all the Hansen face in peril trying to make sure that he still was getting blood flow to his fingers while the Road Warriors working over his arm.

Ric Flair vs. Brad Armstrong

MD: This went how you'd expect it to go except for that maybe it stayed clean (though with Flair still strutting when he did well) for quite a while. I loved Brad's energy on his hope spots/comebacks. The bit where he climbs the bottom rope to start firing back on Flair was great and I want to see Daniel Garcia implement that as part of his act ASAP. Just super, balanced pro wrestling with a little something for everyone who might be watching in 1984. More of this please, and soon.

ER: I want to know more about the Donald Sutherland/Kurt Vonnegut led couple who left at the same time with the cool younger leather jacket couple. Leather jacket guy had his hand on his girl's inner thigh and they had just found out this Brad Armstrong headlock had hit the 10 minute mark. They made a look before both getting up at the exact same time and I didn't see a single solitary second the rest of the show where it looked like they even know they were there. A bunch of kids take their place and the 13 year old on the end is wearing a sleeveless Union Jack and has his arms crossed the entire time. He's the fucking coolest 13 year old I have ever seen at a wrestling show. 

TKG: The weird thing about the “traditional long slow build Flair main event” is how fucking fast paced it is. Like this is the fastest paced match on show. In theory Flair is trying to slow it down but it never slows and just builds. I also really like the way it feels like 2/3 falls match where it has parts, an initial technical fall section, a brawling section and a quick running exchange section that feel like they build off each other. At one point Flair does his first set of chops during the technical section to regain control and those are completely different than the type of chops he does during the actual brawling section.

TKG: Referee Scrappy McGowan worked this entire show solo and it is a real impressive performance. HE is neither a tough ref who is completely in control nor a ref in over his head struggling to assert himself but instead just a perfect medium. Guy who gets manipulated by heels but also stops heels from cheating. Of the Georgia refs, he isn’t one that I think of as getting talked up but he was really great throughout this show.

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