Found Footage Friday: 1989 AJPW~! MALENKO~! FUCHI~! ABBY~! BABA~! KAMALA~! MIGHTY~! RUSHER~!

Mighty Inoue vs. Shinichi Nakano AJPW 2/23/89

MD: Another set of Classics drops as we go down the list of new footage. This one is probably one I wouldn't have gone out of my way for in general, but it was good overall. A Jr. Heavyweight Title match. We've gotten pieces filled in for this lineage and defenses and the matches hold up quite well against late 80s NJPW title matches really. You have guys like Fuchi, Inoue, and Momota carrying the division with people like Joe Malenko popping in.

I don't have a lot of time for Nakano in general, but this was set up to be almost impossible to fail. For one, he ambushed right from the start, giving things early direction and not forcing them into feeling out matwork he might not excel at. He slapped Inoue out of nowhere and then hit his signature power slam before tossing him to the floor and destroying him on the rails. Back in the ring, it was a seated chinlock. He at times had a sense that he wasn't sure how to best capitalize on the moment. 

None of that from Inoue. First chance he got (grabbing the head out of a Nakano toehold) he focused right in and chained three or four things together perfectly. As the match went on and they went back and forth, he wouldn't let things meander much either. At one point, Nakano was hitting shoulder thrusts in the corner with not enough pepper behind them, so Inoue asserted himself and started shin kicking him in the face. 

They had an exciting finishing stretch where Inoue got him down for the flipping sentons but missed the second. That allowed Nakano to hit his fisherman's suplex but Inoue got out to win with a very cool headscissors roll up out of a side slam. This overachieved, but it was entirely because Inoue is so good.

ER: I love Matt's specific, targeted dislike of Nakano, but I'm not sure I agree. I thought this match was great, but because of both men, and how easy they made it to buy in to an All Japan juniors match based around stiff work and snug holds. When I first started trading tapes, traders were not fans of the All Japan juniors division. If you wanted "Juniors Wrestling" there were so many other options: Michinoku Pro, New Japan, WAR, lucha, all filled with small guys working fast and flying, building to big highspots. All Japan's juniors division had none of that. It was permanently understocked with talent, AJPW never used it to showcase a future star, gaijin imports mostly focused on heavyweights (meaning you might get at best Rex King in a juniors match), and the matches were mostly worked like Kings Road undercard matches. It was not the style people associated with juniors wrestling, and now I'm far enough removed from that, that I can see the style for what it is and love it. 

Nakano tried to get the drop on Inoue and wear him down with holds, but since he is just a lesser version of Inoue it only worked until Inoue got fired enough to put him back in his place. Nakano came out hot, staggering Inoue good with a slap across the face and trying to secure a quick surprise title win with an awesome powerslam, knowing Inoue would be favored the longer the match went. When he moved into wearing down Inoue with holds, I bought all of them, because every submission felt like Nakano was working it to specifically finish the match. He believed in this firmly held submissions, and it made each one matter. His camel clutch, late match Boston crab, his single leg crab, all felt like something he was locking in to force a submission, never just to kill time. I bought into the struggle on every hold, and especially got into Inoue's long escape pulling a chinlock out of a deathlock, stretching Nakano until breaking. It all led to organic advances. Inoue's grounded headlock was snugly pulled into a swinging neckbreaker, the way he fanned Nakano's legs while locking in a butterfly stretch looked punishing, and when he locked in the tightest headscissors possible it was nice foreshadowing for the headscissor cradle he used to retain his title. 

If I'm talking about guys pulling snug submissions that look like they could get a tap, none looks better than Nakano pulling Inoue into a bow and arrow and holding it firm. How many bow and arrows subs have you seen fall apart at the seams? The legs come uncrossed, the knees aren't pressed firmly into the back to hold the sub taut, it's almost as common to see someone inadvertently slip out of the hold while rolling onto their back than it is to see a firm successfully applied lock, and Nakano puts the work in on every part of the sub. He put in the visual work of digging his knee into Inoue's back while securing the deathlock, worked through every bit of securing the hold at both ends of Inoue's body, leaving no wriggle room when he rolls to his back with Inoue stretched. 

Does Inoue "look better" as a wrestler? Yes, probably. His fast and weighty crucifix pin was so good I thought it was the finish for sure, and the way he makes cradles and backslide attempts feel threatening in general means there's always a sense he can surprise with a finish, which made his cradled headscissors work so well. He gives weight to opponents' with good selling in holds and fast bumps. His flipping bump through the ropes to the floor is one of my favorite signature bumps. I love how this man exits a ring. But, All Japan Juniors matches were never about crazy bumps or building to big highspots, which was why the division never got acclaim 30 years ago. I'm not even sure what the biggest highspot of this match was - the crucifix pin? Inoue's somersault senton? - and that's why people weren't seeking out this work. Viewing it outside of its Juniors framing you can see how tight the work was. 

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala AJPW 3/8/89

MD: It would be easy to dismiss this, to just say some fun things about Baba's cool trip on Kamala, how Kamala fought out of the corner, or how great Rusher's strikes against Abby looked. Or we could play into the amusing bits here, the amazing look on Baba's face when Abby got a cheapshot on him on a rope break and then did the whole martial arts hand waving shtick. We could go on about how they were like a married couple having a spat and how delightful that was. And that'd be valid. We could talk about how into this the crowd was, how they buzzed for Kamala's big moments or Abby asserting himself or Rusher making a comeback or whenever Baba came into the ring. 

And on some level, I am going to talk briefly about the sum of all of that. But I just don't think I can do this justice. I'm not even sure I want to do this justice. This match, ten minutes or so until the countout, is its own sort of magic. It's delightful. I was smiling the whole way through, out of delight, and I rode the same wave as the crowd, decades later. I could argue that we were taught and trained and conditioned not to enjoy matches like this and then I'd feel dumb, because of how stupid that sounds, but also because how stupid it makes me feel that at one point in my life many years ago, I would have denied myself this sort of joy, would have tried to hide behind a sort of self-important sense that wrestling had to be something else. 

Sometimes wrestling should be this. Hell, most wrestling should be begging to be this, because this clash of characters, of timing, of conducting a crowd, of heart and humor and misfit, monster, mythic heroism and villainy... it's just so different than we can hope to find out of most other forms of entertainment. There's nothing in the world quite like this. Watch this. It's ten minutes plus some before and after. Let yourself feel what that crowd was feeling. Smile along. Be delighted. It's okay. The world is a dark place, but there's light to be found in the least likely of places.

ER: I get so excited whenever Matt and I get to write about Abdullah the Butcher and Kimala 2 teaming in All Japan, that I went into this having no idea it was actually Abby teaming with the real Kamala. I've seen so many Abby/Kimala 2 matches, several matches where both Kamala's team with Abby in a trios, but I've seen little of Abdullah and original Kamala as a team. I think it only happened on this one tour. Also, it's important to note that I don't think Real Kamala is an upgrade overall, but it does make the team more threatening and less beatable. Kamala in Japan is weird. He looks like he'd be a natural fit, because his size and appearance makes him stand out more than at any time he was in WWF, it's just that his work does not fit in with Kings Road style at all, and at times he comes off like a total first year fat guy who isn't sure how to work with any of the old pros he's in with. He throws his overhand chops somehow worse than he threw them in 1993 WWF, but at least he tried throwing spin kicks like 1986 Kamala. His early match spin kick into Rusher's chest was easily his highlight of the match. 

So, with no Kimala 2 to work the heel in peril role, it is down entirely to Abdullah to create all the match's intrigue, which he is great at doing. His work against Baba and Rusher is always worth seeing, regardless of what current freak is teaming with him. Abby's aura lifts other, differently fat ships, because there is no other situation where Kamala would have grabbed Rusher to headbutt him if he wasn't headbutting him with Abby. I was impressed by Baba's work with Kamala, how all his chops looked like they were moving the large savage, knocking him down to build to the big Abby/Baba showdown that everyone was dying to see. Abdullah looked like he had so much fun working with Baba, just try not to smile as Abby is doing his karate posing. He looks like he's having a ball, and while I think it is very silly that Abby gets busted open by Kamala's tribal mask, it leads to Baba straight kicking Abby in his forehead grooves several times and Rusher opening those cuts with headbutts, so the silliness leads directly to violence. The karate chops and backhands Abby throws at Baba's neck to stop the onslaught are one of the things that make their showdowns worth watching no matter the year. 

I take it back, maybe Kamala's best contribution to this was when Rusher swarmed him with chops and punches, Kamala selling the swarm by backpedaling in fear while flailing his arms to keep hornets away from his face. Kamala feels so out of place in Japan, that there can be awkward moments...but when a moment like that plays into his fish out of water placement, suddenly it all makes sense. 

Joe Malenko vs. Masa Fuchi AJPW 10/20/89

MD: I can't help but think about this match in context. 1989 All Japan is defined by the war between Tenryu and Jumbo, between Hansen teaming with Tenryu and tearing through people, by Footloose having spotfests, Rusher and Eigen and Okuma doing comedy, guys like Shunji Takano and Kabuki scrapping and holding down the midcard against both Revolution and foreign monsters. And yet, here is a an absolute throwback to both the sort of 70s hold-driven matches Jumbo had made his name on and the sort of Junior Heavyweight technical battles we'd expect out of Fujinami at the turn of the 80s before Tiger Mask changed the paradigm in New Japan. It feels like the pinnacle of the Denny Brown/Nelson Royal style of NWA Junior Heavyweight Title matches that riddled the undercards of certain territories for years. 

I also can't help but think of Newborn UWF, a native monster that was threatening all traditional ways of doing business in Japan. To watch Maeda, Takada, Yamazaki, Anjo, and all the others is to feel a constant sense of danger. One mistake could bring a fight to an end or allow for severe punishment. There's a tension that leaves viewers on edge the whole time through. It's exciting but it's also exhausting. There can be narratives. There were always narratives. But they were based on an incessant pressure. This is different. It's a slow unlocking, a game of chess instead of a perilous tug of war. Damage had to be done, joints had to be weakened, effort had to be put in. It required a different sort of investment, both for the wrestlers and for the crowd. The struggle is somehow more simulated but also richer and broader for that simulation. It may not feel quite as real but it feels just as true. The wrestlers struggle for every inch, sell every twist of a joint, and react emotionally to consequences (such as Fuchi retreating from the ring, arm damaged, after it seemed like Malenko had an answer for everything he tried). If UWF was constant sudden death, this was regulation soccer, where the ebb and flow of shots on goal and ball possession would add up over time.

And of course, I couldn't help but think about Fuchi. He's the most versatile wrestler I've ever seen. He could go from comedy, to a title match like this, to mauling younger wrestlers. You see wrestlers manage that over their career, but for him that might all be within the same week. I think about him destroying the knees of the Super Generation Army on tables, brutality on top of brutality. Here though, it was a chess  move. It opened the match up, turned everything on its head, gave him a lever to pry on for the rest of the match, and pry he did. Malenko was constantly off balance and every subsequent move he hit was full of desperation. Fuchi could, would, and did throw little pokey kicks to the knee to take back over whenever the opportunity arose. It was the same move, even the same brutality, but it was used in an entirely different way than those Tsuruta-gun trio matches of a year or two later. 

It all built to a spectacular finishing stretch. Malenko's desperation paid off for him as he caught Fuchi in a bridging blockbuster fallaway slam. He followed it up with a northern lights suplex and then a clutch armbar. With leg damaged, he couldn't put Fuchi away. Fuchi, arm possibly still hurt, went with leaping enziguiris instead, and then was able to jam Malenko's final attempt to slip around him for a bridging butterfly suplex and the title win. So while I thought back, forward, and laterally to 70s Jumbo, to Denny Brown, to 1989 AJPW, to UWF, and to 1991 six-mans, what I thought about most of all was how this match stood on its own, and just how good it all was. History might show these late 80s AJPW Juniors matches to be a last gasp of an older tradition in some ways, but it was a gasp that showed how much vital, vibrant, and worthwhile life might have still been left to be found in the style.

ER: I wrote about the maligned/unregarded All Japan juniors style up above as we were breaking down Mighty Inoue/Shinichi Nakano without realizing that Matt went into different detail on the style in this review down below. Denny Brown is an interesting style comparison for this type of match, and it's interesting because at one point that would have been considered a pejorative and now it's clearly being used as a positive comp to something that we both miss from modern wrestling. This match is nothing but excellent, honest work, both guys gluing themselves together to craft something tough and true while making my own joints and ligaments scream out in pain. 

They build this around increasingly torqued holds, no traditional "highspots", no strike exchanges of any kind, just one blunt attack that leads to a long full match of superglue. The blunt attack comes when Fuchi begins smiling and taunting Joe with a couple of head fakes, a couple of lunges that weren't ever leading to anything, but Joe sees the evil behind Fuchi's smile and just headbutts him in the face when he gets his hands on him, wrestling him to the ground and beginning the always satisfying wrenching. Joe's holds all look like the finish: his cradle, grapevining one leg while concurrently forcing Fuchi into a painful half nelson, using all his limbs to manipulate Fuchi's body, not going for a pin just going for pain; a camel clutch with no pullback on the chin, all focus instead on hooking both arms and pulling back on them as he sinks into the hold, leaving Fuchi wincing and rubbing out his shoulders after he escapes to the floor.

Joe Malenko is someone who can make a Fujiwara armbar takedown look like a hold that damages the entire body. The way he takes Fuchi's arm and drives him down with his full weight sends Fuchi's head, face, and shoulder into the mat, like he was using the arm as leverage to do something more sinister. He uses that same leveraged arm to do a Russian legsweep when Fuchi eventually fights to his feet, holding the arm the whole time and using that as the point to pivot into attacks that folded in other limbs. 

Fuchi makes no inroads working the mat with Joe so eventually involves his tried and true friend Ringside Table to smash Joe's knee into. Joe's knee selling is real and escalates the match instantly. I love an injury coming into play late in a match, rather than give someone a memory exercise in the first couple minutes that makes it near impossible to do an actual match without conveniently forgetting your injury. Once Fuchi smashes Joe in the knee, Joe's strategy changes entirely and you can see in his eyes that this was the worst thing to happen to him. Fuchi is now in kill mode and Malenko is bringing out the big guns. The way Joe swings his leg away from Fuchi's single leg attempt before swinging him over with a front face lock takeover, catching a high crossbody and floating over with Fuchi's momentum into a bridging pin, and a clean northern lights that I'm sure he wished he had pulled off earlier with a sturdier knee. Fuchi doesn't so much as wear Joe down as he does hold him down long enough to win, the same thing Joe had been doing all match long. Excellent work all around, showcasing a style that really wouldn't be hard to integrate into any modern work, you just have to be honest and actually put in the work. That's the thing I don't see happening.  

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FOUND FOOTAGE FRIDAY: BABA vs. RUSHER~! BRET vs. SID~! PANTHER~! CASAS~! UG~! ATLANTIS~!

 
Giant Baba/Hiroshi Wajima vs. Goro Tsurumi/Rusher Kimura AJPW 3/27/88

MD: Classics drop from a while ago but no one else is going to cover this stuff at length. It was a lot of fun too. Tsurumi got in Wajima's face early and they honestly really went at it. I don't know if Wajima was just a bit further along in his development by this point or if Tsurumi brought the best out of him but they were slugging. Eventually Rusher got in and Wajima walked him to the corner and the crowd went nuts at the idea of Baba and Rusher (even in 88) facing off. Baba was so slick and self-aware too. He just dropped on his back and picked an ankle. Then he did the headlock > hammerlock > go behind and dropped on his back and did it again. Awesome stuff. After that, Rusher didn't break clean and just blistered him.That just pissed Baba off and he soon blocked a chop, hit the head chop, and was on the mat choking the life out of Rusher.

It wasn't until later on, a few exchanges and tags later (and after he hit the Bulldog on Wajima), that Rusher was finally able to chip away at him and knock him down. Baba mounted a big comeback though, turning a whip around into a neckbreaker drop. Tsurumi tried his luck and got headbutted for his trouble, and then Rusher made saves for him until Wajima was finally able to put him away. I had a lot of fun with it certainly. 

ER: We've been working our way through the entirety of All Japan's 3/27/88 show the last several months, like we're reviewing one song at a time from a Grateful Dead Hampton Coliseum show. We reviewed Big Bubba vs. Shunji Takano last month, we reviewed Isao Takagi vs. Tom Magee and Tommy Rich/Austin Idol vs. Great Kabuki/Tiger Mask II around Thanksgiving. Maybe we'll do Masa Fuchi vs. George Skaaland this summer. 

This is most exciting to me because it's Baba and Rusher Kimura on opposite sides of a tag. I've seen so many Baba/Rusher tags, so many visions of brotherhood, two men who always showed how much they cared for each other during their tags. Once they started teaming they never stopped. Rusher was always on Baba's side during their old man trios, so 1988 would be the last era to see any kind of Baba/Rusher interaction opposite each other. They love each other and don't want to hurt each other, and Rusher shows this by wearing a Giant Baba shirt to the ring!!! The looks they exchanged all match made this so special, and every look and exchange between them is special. On top of this dynamic, you have Goro Tsurumi shit talking Wajima during the ring intros, firing up Wajima to such temperature that he attacked Goro before Baba had even been announced. You could see faces of fans disappointed they wouldn't get to use their Baba-colored streamers. 

Rusher being the one to throw chops at Baba was inevitable, loud open slaps that Baba sold by folding cross-armed at the waist after finally blocking one and chopping Rusher. Baba vs. Rusher was more about gamesmanship, Goro vs. Wajima was hubris and irritability. Goro distracts the ref before mule kicking Wajima in the balls, pulling an inside cradle that Baba breaks up with a disdainful shoving boot from the apron, a real "knock it off, goofball" demeanor. When Rusher breaks up a pin by lightly pulling on Baba's leg, Baba rolls to his back and just looks at Rusher like his boyfriend just playfully pretended to trip over him while he was doing yoga. Wajima palms Goro's face and face slams him to the mat, and when Rusher comes in to save him, he turns right around and leaps through the ropes to the floor when he sees Baba is in position to stop him. I love them. I love what they had. 

Sycho Sid vs. Bret Hart [Cage] WWF MSG 3/16/97

MD: Great Sid bit coming out as he was startled by his own pyro, not afraid of it, but looking like he might lash out at it. Say what you will about thigh slapping, but Bret was the best damn strike stomper that ever struck. He stomped on his punches. He stomped on his kicks. He stomped on his headbutts. There's a sort of purity to it, a beauty, that wrestling can be this too, and it would not just be accepted, but seen as an immersive ideal. Almost instantly, it means that Sid's shots, though bigger arcs, don't feel quite as punchy because he's not stomping on every shot, just some. And of course, when Bret gets whipped into the corner (even back first), he's somehow able to hit in a way that makes the post crash into the cage to make a satisfying noise. Someone could write even more about the SOUND of Bret matches. But it's notable in passing for a paragraph here.

What Sid did do amazingly, however, was frame his action. At one point, after pulling Bret off the cage after he'd been trying to climb out, Sid lifted him up like he'd hit a fall away slam or backbreaker. He looked to the left abruptly, then to the right, these little stilted motions that brought you into the moment by taking you out of it. Then he ran Bret into the cage. He was so big and so strong he didn't have to do anything like that, but that's what made him not just a giant but a star. 

Finish of this was clever enough (if still bullshit like most escape the cage matches that involve the door). Bret had the Sharpshooter on, but that doesn't get him the win in a WWF escape the cage match. Sid was still able to get up and cut him off while climbing, but Sid sold the leg well when he tried to climb. That let Bret hit the huge superplex but Sid, despite being unable to climb, was able to crawl out the door just before Bret could drop.

ER: Cool blue bars MSG cage match just a week before WrestleMania, with something of note happening at all times. Bret gently stumbles during his entrance in a way you can tell really pissed him off, throwing off his entire walk to the ring. He tried to slap hands with a security guard and then ran into a guard on the other side of the aisle, completely rattled. Sid, meanwhile, is in control. Wet as hell, fist bumping everyone, entrance theme perfection. He reacts to his own pyro not like someone startled, but like someone who wasn't expecting pyro and had also never seen pyro before. Mystified, not rattled; curious, but upset. Sid wrestles like Cool Iron Mike Sharpe. Their movement and offense is identical. Body Glove elbow sleeve instead of forearm cast. The more you watch both the more undeniable it becomes. Their offense is thrown the exact same way. Sharpe was Vocal Sid with brown curls, Sid is wide eyed stoic Sharpe with blond curls.  

I've talked before about the audio on these Vault releases, and it really is like seeing wrestling from this era presented in a totally new way. Not having to mic down the crowd to hear any announcers is a marvel in itself, getting to hear individual fans through a full match, hearing how loud and heavy Sid is breathing after they did the first stretch of climbing, how LOUD the turnbuckles sound the three different times Bret gets run into them (two back first, the third his classic chest first), how the ring barely moves but explodes in sound when Bret is pressed off or Sid is superplexed. All the new revelations in sound leap out the entire match. When we wrote about a Goldust/Shawn Michaels ladder match last year, the sound of the ring was so incredible that it added to every bump and strike they did, and that was just as magnified here. A lot of this was arm strikes, Bret throwing his worked punches and Sid throwing his Iron Mike Sharpe arm swings. After Sid's first escape attempt, while Bret is fighting with him on the top rope, Bret's punches to Sid's body look outstanding. As Matt said, Bret is a stomper, a striker totally unseen in modern wrestling, but there's no stomping up top. 

After the match, after the big superplex, after Bret's sharpshooter failed and Sid was still able to crawl to the door that Bret must have forgot about (that stupid psychology wrinkle in every single WWF escape the cage match), there's an immaculate bridge and tunnel girl with her hair done up, trying to take a picture of Bret. He walks right past her on the aisle, and she reaches out to touch his shoulder. As he passes her and her hand makes full contact with him, all she can do in the aftermath is stare at her hand, no expression on her face. In her first physical brush with fame, she got to experience how oiled up and slimy pro wrestlers are, and her brain had no idea how to process this new information. 

Ultimo Guerrero/Atlantis vs. Negro Casas/Blue Panther CMLL 12/4/07 (?)

MD: This was a title match, worked like a title match, and it was refreshing to see in 2026. Primera had Casas vs Guerrero and they did fine, but the pairing of Blue Panther vs Atlantis was just great. Atlantis looked like a million bucks and some of that was on him and some of it was on Panther. Things built to everything breaking down and the tecnicos (Casas/Panther) won with simultaneous submissions (Scorpion by Casas, and a sort of Navarro inverted leglock by Panther). Segunda opened up when Panther went for it again on Guerrero only to get cut off. UG hit the senton de la muerte in the corner on both at once and after tossing them around a bit, Guerrero and Atlantis locked on a tandem submission on both at once (a sort of camel clutch on one while tied to the other and into an Octopus) that looked like a lot of fun.

Tercera had all the bombs you'd expect. There was a slight sense that the refs weren't allowing Casas to punch them because it was a title match and they were the tecnicos but once things went to the floor Casas unloaded. There was another great comeback moment where Guerrero missed in the corner and did his big knee bump over. Panther hit a tope on Atlantis while Casas hit his seated senton off the apron. Then he went and rubbed the head of some kid at ringside with a poncho, which is pure Casas. They followed it with nearfalls (including tandem power bombs) until GdA locked in tandem Atlantidas for the win. They celebrated big afterwards and it did feel like a big deal. Very good tag title match.

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Found Footage Friday: ABBY~! KIMALA II~! RUSHER~! INOUE~! ORTON~! TAKER~! OMNI~!

Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala II vs. Rusher Kimura/Mighty Inoue AJPW 12/1/90

MD: Big IWE stars vs. monsters energy here, even if Rusher and Inoue were up in the years. This overachieved from my expectations, which were set in part for seeing Abby in so many short, abruptly ending tags from this era and from seeing Rusher in so many comedy matches. I love those matches by the way, but that wasn't going to work here.

What we got instead was pretty gruesome actually. Rusher bled early and they worked over the wound with headbutts, chops, and Abby just sticking his finger in the wound awesome. When Inoue got in, he turned the tables, sitting up on Abby's shoulders and poking him repeatedly with the fork until he dropped back. Then he kept it going with a bunch of awesome headlock punches until Kimala broke it up. The kept things rolling with a couple of chairshots from the outside in. Pretty valiant stuff.

Even the finish had one or two more rotations than I was expecting as Abby hit his cool Angle Slam type suplex but Inoue survived it only to get crushed with the throat shot/elbow drop combo. Post-match, Abby and Kimala bowed to all four sides. Not a lost classic but I'd say still well worth your time.

ER: This was disgusting, extremely violent, not far off from Great. Matt said gruesome and that's a good word for it. This wasn't a Fork Stabbing Abby match, this was built around punching and bleeding and digging into cuts. The match is helped by the HD of these new episodes of AJ Classics, as the second Abby is stabbing his fingers into Rusher's head I knew they weren't going to hold back. Abdullah's stiff fingered thrusts and jabs looked so painful, and it is 50-50 whether or not he had some kind of blade in his finger tape, because Rusher's head bled quick and Abby's fingertips were soon soaked red. Kimura's blood ran in rivulets down his chest and Abby dug his fingers into Rusher's cuts and the rest of his face. It was disgusting and the cameras zoomed in close on it to show the savagery. 

But these IWE guys are tough, so when Rusher finally tags in Might Inoue, Inoue shoot punches Abby in the head a couple dozen times and it's incredible. Inoue enters the ring climbing onto Abby's shoulders and just punches and stabs away at his head. Did we know Inoue was hiding a sharp object that he was going to use to scrape and stab at Abby's head while throwing shoot hammerfists? Abdullah the Butcher doesn't stab a single soul in this match with a fork, but Mighty Inoue introduces a weapon with no warning? Maybe this match is actually greater than great. When they both go down, Inoue grabs him in a headlock and throws sick blood wet splat punches repeatedly as the camera is again right on top of these slasher movie visuals. Every time Inoue ran and flew at Abby with a headbutt, you could hear his head actually smacking into Butcher's chin! He hits one in the ropes to knock Abby to the floor, and more in the ring. Great spot. Inoue's flipping senton is always so cool. It hits with impact but has the flourish and showmanship of French Catch. Abby rolling just out of the way of a senton and leading to him massacring Inoue's throat was a great late match sudden turn. Abby's Angle Slam is a really great spot and I love when he breaks it out. Using his bulk to perform weight physics is an Abby we don't get to see as often as Stabbing Abby. 

Kimala II was the odd man out in this, and he usually is, which is why I always look forward to Kimala II matches. He is the weirdest All Japan regular during their extended run of high expectancy ring work. He is clumsy, he doesn't work anywhere near as stiff as the style demands, he falls weird on offense, and despite being in his mid 20s he moves about as well as Abdullah the Butcher. But he torpedoes into the action at fun times, including a big bump thrown through the ropes to the floor. He's probably the thing holding this match from being legitimately great, but you can't deny the crowd excitement when he started slapping his belly. 

Dustin Rhodes/Ricky Steamboat/Shane Douglas vs. Steve Austin/Brian Pillman/Barry Windham WCW 2/7/93

MD: We get the last eight minutes of this and then a big post-match brawl. On the one hand, it's a shame we lose out on the elimination match because it sounds amazing on paper, but we're better off for what we do get here than nothing at all. Part of that is because Steamboat looks like the best babyface in the world here. Some of it is the way this is shot with no commentary. It just feels closer up, right in the midst of the action, and Steamboat working from underneath here is just transcendent. The way he moves his body, expanding and contracting, hanging on to the ropes, finding strength within, expressing pain and writhing emotion, is just over the top great. 

And Austin, in his own way, is almost as good. He's put upon, frustrated, aggravated that Steamboat refuses to quite, that he paints himself as so sympathetic a figure, that he dares to appeal to his humanity. At one point, Steamboat ... it's not begging off, I wouldn't say he's begging off, but he does seem to call for some level of mercy, maybe just to get things back on a more even playing field, but Austin, framing it perfectly, timing it as dramatically as possible, cinematically in a way that would only work in footage like this, that would be overwrought or overproduced on TV, literally spits on the effort. That makes it all the more poignant when Steamboat, in the midst of his big comeback, blows a mist of spit himself later on. Just really primal stuff.

That stays through into the chaotic post-match, bodies flying and violence ebbing and flowing and ebbing again. Weirdly enough, Shane Douglas might have stood out the most here, as he came off as a real powerhouse. Still, this post match, as good as it was and with a real sense of consequence for matches to come, comes off a little like a consolation prize for the elimination match we didn't get. Still, what a look at Steamboat and Austin.

Kurt Angle vs. Undertaker vs. Randy Orton vs. Mark Henry WWE 3/3/06

MD: House show match from the vault from Australia. I was expecting to see Henry assert himself. That was the draw, but really this was all about Randy Orton, especially but not only him reacting to Undertaker. It's a bit clipped and we come in after entrances with him preening in the corner only to turn around and find Taker there, going for a handshake before he gets rocked with punches. It's easy to joke about the Kyle Fletcher parallels but he was around 26 here and they're clearer here than at almost any other point of his career as best as I can remember.

This is not a version of Orton I remember well, but he was pretty effective even if I did see the strings at times. Plus it was a house show so they really played into it. There was a bit where he teased getting knocked into the crowd three or four times before finally landing on a fan's lap and thanking her after the fact. It was all pretty funny stuff. Plus he was flying around as a menace throughout, including dashing from one opportunistic pin to the next.

Angle was a bit of a non-factor overall, in part due to his current persona, I think, but just because Undertaker and Orton were taking up so much air. And then Henry just seemed there to cut people off at times. He did it effectively but his role could have been much more interesting. Still, this was fun for what it was, but it would have probably worked just as well as two singles matches. 

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Found Footage Friday: TAJIRI~! HHH~! BABA~! EIGEN~! FURNAS~! MVC~! SPIVEY~!

Dr. Death Steve Williams/Terry Gordy vs. Dan Spivey/Doug Furnas AJPW 10/19/90

MD: I like Kroffat as much as the next guy, move even, but Spivey being in there instead increased the hoss level considerably. This was heated from the start too. Doc had it out for Furnas for some reason. He gave him the middle finger before the match. Furnas returned the favor by swinging a kick at him as he was squaring up with Spivey. Doc wiped his sweat in Furnas' direction. Furnas gave him the finger. Doc told him to kiss his butt. You get the idea. It's a good way to start a match. 

It doesn't let up from there. Furnas uses the three point stance to knock Gordy down, but Doc's able to grind Furnas down well enough that he makes sure to rush over and smack Spivey around a bit too, before mouthing off and maybe even spitting at him drawing Spivey in and it's just an absolutely chaotic feel early on.

What follows is about five minutes of the best wrestling you'll ever see. Doc catching Furnas in mid air and bringing him to the top rope, the two of them trading slaps and Furnas leaping over him to hit a belly to belly. Doc and Spivey smacking each other all the way out of the ring. Spivey hitting a bossman slam on Doc and boos ringing through the air as Gordy breaks it up. The place absolutely exploding as Furnas press slams Gordy only to eat a lariat. It's a hell of a five minutes before everything settles down to holds.

They take it down before building it back up and the overall effect is a hell of a thing. Gordy and especially Doc get a ton of heat. Furnas is able to clap up Spivey. There are a bunch of great nearfalls down the stretch before an extremely definitive ending but one that took that bit of extra effort. These are the sort of lost matches we hope to find.

ER: I love All Gaijin matches in All Japan because it's interesting to see how they can organically draw heat and interest without any kind of Nativism at play. No side is necessarily more loved or hated, only more established. Dr. Death understands that and leans into the MVC's established rep and for seemingly no reason goes hard on Doug Furnas. I have zero reason to believe there is any kind of animosity between Dr. Death and Doug Furnas, but everyone in this match made me believe there was. Doug Furnas was fairly established at this point. Not at the level of beating teams like Doc and Gordy, but already a two time All Asia tag champ who had beaten big teams. Doc quickly turns him into an underdog babyface which leads to a more spirited wild eyed performance from Spivey and some incredible payoff when Furnas finally starts throwing them around. 

Everyone was so good in this match that I fully bought into Doc and Gordy as two guys who actually hated Furnas (they didn't), Furnas as a guy out of his depth (he wasn't) and Spivey as a guy fearlessly telling MVC to back the fuck off and stop taking liberties with Furnas (they weren't, but at times it didn't seem like Spivey realized that). Doc was doing some performative middle fingers and phony baloney heat drawing across the ring while Furnas looked like a guy making the universal face of "Hey man I didn't do anything to you do you have the right guy?" You could tell Doc had the right guy when he sat Furnas on the top rope and slapped Furnas so hard to break. Furnas looked like Allen Covert and sold the slap by making the face that Allen Covert makes when his girlfriend leaves him in one of the few Sandler movies where that happens. Doc is great at bullying Furnas to rile up Spivey, and Spivey is that great combination of large and reckless and Just Getting Real Good so that he always gets too amped up on his first punch of an exchange and throws some potatoes before dialing back a little. He always looks ready to pop off, and it's a killer distraction from Furnas finally popping off. 

Doug Furnas gorilla press slamming Terry freaking Gordy - and the scared face Gordy makes while being held up high in that press - is an incredible spot. It would have been an amazing press slam anyway, but once Furnas added a pump it became an all timer. The crowd lost their minds at that press slam and that hyped Doug up so much he did a backflip and then ran as fast as he could into Gordy's biggest clothesline of the match. Doug finally suplexing Death was so cool. I love the way Doc bumps when he's reeling, just as I love when he decides one turnbuckle isn't enough for a stampede. MVC made damn certain that they were the bad guys here and were so convincing that the fans bought them as bullies against two of the toughest dudes. Terry Gordy out here getting booed over and over for breaking up pins and picking on Mega Athlete Doug Furnas.   

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura/Akira Taue vs. Harkua Eigen/Motoshi Okuma/Masa Fuchi AJPW 10/27/90

MD: This is a recent Classics drop and a Baba 30th Anniversary match. Jumbo gives him a plaque before the match and everything. This gets a ton of time, 20+ it feels like and it's just packed full of character and comedy. It's hard to do justice to it all or even half of it but I'll point out a few things.

First, Eigen, amazing as always, really shines at the start. He faces off against young Taue to start but then darts to the corner and slaps Baba before running out. They reset, he does the same thing but this time teases Baba and slaps Rusher. Then when facing off against Rusher, he ducks and slaps him twice before leading him to the corner for a long heat segment. They kick away at him forever before we ultimately get some goofy stuff with Okuma and headbutts. There are a ton of headbutts in this match and while Rusher gets some in, a lot of them are eaten by Taue.

Taue's a lot of fun here. I've seen every bit of 1990 footage we have of him and he wasn't there yet, but here he's got this sense of wild abandon, limbs flying and flopping about, that would soon be gone from him. He looks like he's going to become an entirely different wrestler here between his selling of the headbutts and a sort of physical recklessness.

This refuses to end, a lot of the normal things you think might end it getting broken up. They run some of the best Eigen spit spot stuff ever, as both Taue and Baba get to do it, with Baba getting it on his hand and everyone almost cracking up (and Kobashi cracking up decades later on commentary). Then Rusher goes for it, but he's blocked, and Baba comes in from the other side with a chop and it's pretty hilarious let me tell you. The finish is a fun combo of Taue hitting an atomic drop sending Okuma into Baba's foot and then right back into Taue's belly to back. My only regret is that they didn't repeat the atomic drop/boot sequence a couple of times first. Great fun that no dirtsheet would have appreciated at the time but that we can absolutely appreciate now.

ER: This is one of those Wrestling Heaven situations for me. I love my King's Road, and I love my boys. Give me 20 minutes of VILLAIN SHOKAI up to their old bullshit and the nuanced twists that come with every new 20 minutes. It's crazy how many ways they found to do their same bullshit slightly different over the years. You recognize the behaviors but there are always things they do different, things I've never seen, or realistically perhaps things I've seen a million times but don't care because they all work so well together that I don't ever get tired of them. All of these old men matches (Masa Fuchi was 36 lol) were written off unfairly by morose tape traders, so now everything in them is ripe for discovery. Nobody was talking about how great Haruka Eigen was when I got into trading, none of these guys were getting any kind of acclaim. We're long past that now.

Now, before this even starts, you just know Eigen is going to get up to shenanigans before Villain Shokai starts bringing headbutts and hamstring kicks. Eigen starting the match with a slap and run routine on Baba and Rusher is so classic, celebrating in the aisles with young boys you barely recognize, knowing he was going to get paid back down the stretch. A lot of these start with long heat on Kimura, eating boots and headbutts and selling the headbutts so believably (that happens here), but that's not where the match stays. I thought they did a great job integrating everybody and keeping Baba's involvement short and exciting. Villain Shokai made quick tags and this settled into me being excited watching an Akira Taue who didn't wrestle a single thing like my favorite wrestler Akira Taue. 1990 Taue is so cool as can see hints of the Taue that would be there just a couple years later but you'd only notice them if you were familiar with them. For the most part, he's a totally different guy with totally different offense and movement. 

His most important characteristic that he apparently always had, was his realistic approach to bumping. Watch how he sells an Okuma headbutt to the mouth, watch the way he falls with limbs flopping around and not in a controlled wrestling school back bump. The realistic bumps and selling were the things that instantly drew me to Taue at the end of the 90s, and with all the '90 Taue we have as evidence we can see that it's just who he is, a thing that would be near impossible to teach someone. He also has completely different offense and I love "elbowdrop Taue who doesn't use his giant feet in any way" but maybe I only love it because I know we're not far away from "big feet to face and the best chokeslams ever" Taue. 

You get so much tough guy sneaky prankster Eigen that you forget they had already started honing the Spit Spot this early. It's still early, as the front row all knows what's happening when it's happening, but nobody is holding up newspapers. People are fleeing, which only draws attention to one woman who is not moving at all while every other woman around her scurries to safety. Baba getting involved in Eigen's Spit is a thing that does not happen in most of these, and his involvement here brings two incredible moments: Baba clutching Eigen under the chin and clubbing his chest, only for Eigen to spit all over Baba's hand, leading to Baba wiping off his hand all over Eigen's head; then when Rusher is winding up to club Eigen, Fuchi intercepts his arm. While the two are locked in struggle, Baba creeps in from the other side and just knife edges Eigen. Taue's back suplex drops like a damn anchor. These 20 minutes always feel like 5 to me, something I never say about Modern Epic Wrestling. 

HHH vs. Tajiri WWE 1/25/03

MD: This is the sort of Vault drop that we're looking for, Hunter reign of terror match or no. Previously we only had a few minutes of this. With the introductions and post-match this is 30+ minutes. The biggest takeaway, past maybe how good Tajiri is here and how it's a shame we don't have a bunch of other 20+ minute matches with him from this era, is that Hunter consciously worked it differently than almost any other match of the period. Maybe even almost any other match of his career.

There's the whole bit about Hogan doing two extra bits of chain wrestling in his Japanese appearances (when it's more the reckless energy and Axe Bomber people should be looking at). To me, this was more about Hunter getting to work the sort of classic NWA Title match style that he didn't think the current WWE audience would appreciate. The problem was that he just didn't have the reps with it (which isn't really his fault). It meant he did the sort of stuff you'd expect him to be good at (feeding into headlocks and other holds) well, but when he tried some fancier escapes, it didn't quite click. The headstand escape to the headscissors was cute and all but people haven't clipped him basically comedically putting himself back into the hold to set up the positioning for it.

What did work were the transitions, the hope spots, the cutoffs. Hunter took over by clipping Tajiri with a clothesline on the handspring and that looked great. They worked a lot of hope spots given the time the match had to breathe and it meant when Tajiri did comeback, it felt momentous. Lots of moving parts and hoohah on the finishing stretch but the fans certainly got their money out of all of it. I loved hearing Earl talking up close too. That's something you'd rarely get in the heavily produced WWE, even in the early 00s. This just felt very different and refreshing in a sea of 2002-2003 Hunter matches I have memories of but really don't want to revisit.  

ER: I remember being 21 and reading about this match in the Observer and DVDVR but now I'm twice as old as I was then and my wants and priorities have changed. How far away, the post college years where my friends and I split an Observer subscription for several years and my friend Jason would use his work photocopier to copy even double issues for all of us. If this match had been taped, I would have traded for a tape to see this match. The 2025 version of doing that is me making 30 minutes of time to watch a HHH match. I'm glad I did. It closed a loop and lived up to its release. I love that it's shot handheld, I love the format, and I loved the story.  I always love the story of a guy who isn't World Title level getting a lengthy main event title match. If it exists, I'd be equally excited to see Brooklyn Brawler getting a long Shawn Michaels title match on a house show after winning a battle royal. 

HHH works this much more like a heel Bret Hart match and shows that he's better at that than when he's working his touring champion Flair match. Thank god this isn't his touring Flair match only in Japan. He's more execution focused than when he's in his Flair Entertainer mode and while I don't think he's anywhere near Bret as an execution guy there were several moments that I thought he looked a lot tighter than expected. He's better at bump as Bret than he is bumping as Flair and it made the match come off harder hitting than theatrical. Tajiri's kicks were great ways for him to storm back into the match and I liked how he would use them as unpredictable combos thrown at different body targets. HHH is bad at standing still making an "I'm waiting to be hit face" but much better at taking strikes that are less expected. We didn't have to see him hold his head a certain way as he waits to hair whip react to a punch, instead we just got Tajiri throwing kicks up and down his body. 

HHH as a guy working over shoulder back breakers is one of the coolest versions of HHH. Do more of that. Less Irish whips and more backbreakers! When Tajiri finally slips out the back of one of the backbreakers it's this great spot that looks like it's going to fall apart entirely and end in an awkward tangle but it somehow bumbles expertly into a clean sunset flip pin away from ropes. I thought for sure both men were falling and going to wind up in an ugly heap of blown spot but instead it made it all look like HHH was struggling to stop Tajiri's momentum. Tajiri using the Tarantula while the referee was out seemed like the one time where it would have been acceptable to let HHH Act. Just let him scream and NXT sell for a full minute while completely stuck, no ref to save him. I was disappointed that Tajiri maintained the 5 second rule. We didn't get enough of Tajiri maniacally refusing to break Tarantula. 

Tajiri kicking out of the Pedigree was something we all read about in 2003, but it plays far crazier than it reads. This is a detail I remember reading about. It was shocking to hear that Tajiri had kicked out of a Pedigree, but the details at the time actually downplayed what really happened. When it was reported, the reporting made it sound like the Pedigree was hit and Hebner - blinded by mist - took an eternity to make the count. That makes sense and it still sounded surprising that Tajiri kicked out. In actuality, the whole thing happened in under 10 seconds. Tajiri kicked out of the Pedigree less than 10 seconds after it was hit, which nobody else was doing in 2003. 

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Found Footage Friday: EIGEN SIX MAN~! PARK~! BANDA~! ESTRADA~! REYNA~! MIGHTY ATOM~!

Harry Monte/Farmer Spatts vs. Billy Curtis/Cowboy Clatt NWA Hollywood 5/23/53

MD: This was a midget's match that goes about 25 minute. It was announced at the start as "the miniature mastodons of the mat, the mighty midgets." These guys all had gimmicks upon gimmicks. On one side was Farmer Georgie Spots from Hogwash, Arkansas, and "The Mighty Atom" Mr. Harry Monte. The other side had Cowboy "Pee Wee" Paul Clatt and Hollywood Billy Curtis. And of course, the Kansas Whirlwind, Olympic Champion (1932) Pete Mehringer was the ref. This was a little bit a tale of two matches. When Clatt and Spatts were in there, there was more comedy. Spatts was barefoot, for instance, and that came into play with stomps. There were bits where they ended up on top of the ref or accidentally on his back giving him a chinlock. While not exclusive, when Monte was in there, it did feel a little different. He was the champion apparently and seemed pretty skilled. Look, I'm never going to say no to an old midgets match. 

A lot of the time the comedy hits and they show a ton of commitment. I've seen a lot. This looked different than most. I'd almost explain it like with this analogy: when Monte was in there, more so than any US midget match I've ever seen, it felt like a minis match relative to the lucha of the day. That is to say, it was faster, sprintier, sprawlier. When it was Monte and Curtis in there, it had a wild energy of them going for holds and advantages. It lacked the precise technique of shootstyle, maybe, but had the same feel of jockeying for openings. There were moments of levity but in practice they were presented with more dignity than you'd expect, especially given the slew of gimmick names that started the match. Even the post-match interviews were more like what you'd expect from any of the other names of the time, talking about issues with the ref and recovering from injury and vying for the title. I like comedy spots as much as the next guy but much like some of the women's matches from this era show us a potentially different path, this did as well. There's some alternate reality out there where guys like these paved the way for a division even snappier and more exciting than junior heavyweights. 

Kenta Kobashi/Mitsuo Momota/Rusher Kimura vs. Haruka Eigen/Isamu Teranishi/Motoshi Okuma AJPW 10/20/89

MD: All of the Eigen/Okuma stuff is fun but it's especially fun when Rusher's in there. You end up seeing this dynamic so many times that you cherish the familiar and appreciate the variation. This had both being a six man with Teranishi hanging out with the shitheels. I've seen Teranishi on the other side as someone who would put Eigen in his place, but it was nice to see him as part of the problem, not part of the solution. And of course, you have Kobashi, one who's ever closer to finding himself, on the other side. That said, there was plenty of familiar here. It started with Eigen shaking Teranishi and Kobashi's hand but refusing to shake Rusher's. Then when Rusher took offense, he pushed him. They locked up, immediately got in the ropes, and Eigen slapped him before taking him back to his corner and getting out of there. Being an AJPW six-man, there was the usual cycling. You'd rarely see a guy get tagged in before everyone else on his side had their turn. 

The pairings were more situational than hierarchical. Rusher eventually tagged out but Okuma could take back over at a moment's notice with a headbutt. There was plenty of headbutt fun in general, whether it be Eigen running someone in to Okuma's head or all the bad guys recoiling in fear as Rusher's indomitable head overcame them. My favorite bit was when they kept laying them on until Okuma finally got him from behind and knocked him down and did a little dance in victory. Eigen's crew were very good at pulling things back into their corner and they even pulled out the triple clubber at times. When Kobashi got in there, he came in hot and got to do a bunch of things before Teranishi got to smack him down enjoyably. Teranishi is a guy who just hits a little harder despite his relative spot on the card. Eigen got to hit the spit spot shots on Kobashi and never got comeuppance along those lines, though Kobashi did toss him off the top and then set the stage for Rusher to come in and mow him down for the win. This is just some of the most watchable wrestling imaginable, guys who were credible and dangerous and could go but that were just having fun out there with themselves, each other, the crowd, us thirty-five years later.

ER: I knew how much I really truly loved wrestling when I consciously noticed how much I love old man All Japan matches. I love them. I've always loved them. I loved the first old man match I ever saw, a concept I had never heard of before but understood and fell in love with instantly. I was a teenager buying All Japan tapes in the mail within my first two months On The Internet because Mitsuharu Misawa was #3 on the PWI 500 that year behind Steve Austin and Goldberg, and I owned Steve Austin and Goldberg shirts that I purchased from Millers Outpost, but had never heard of Mitsuharu Misawa. Or Kenta Kobashi, who was just a couple spots behind Misawa. I clearly needed to see All Japan Pro Wrestling, without actually knowing how to see it or what specific matches to seek. But I found someone selling AJPW Comm Tapes - whatever those were - and sent them an honest to damn god money order for them. I went to the post office to get a money order to buy Acclaimed Japanese Wrestling over the internet. The first All Japan tape had clips of old men spitting at the crowd while people covered themselves with newspapers, and then all of those old men headbutting each other. This was not the wrestling that I expected, but I was so surprised by All Japan old men that I loved all of them, and there has not been a time since that my love for them stopped growing. 

I call them old men, but they seemed a lot older when I was a teenager. Now I am the same age as Haruka Eigen in this match, and only a few years younger than Rusher Kimura and Motoshi Okuma. These are much younger versions of the old men that I saw, but the Old Man All Japan match is a style as much as it is a literal description of a match. This was men, peers of mine now, working a match in the style of Old Tough Men and it just always looks like a 4 star match to me. The pace goes quick, there's never any kind of slow down in the action, the pairings cycle through constantly (outside of an extended beatdown of Kimura, when you think the entire match might be building around cutting him off from his team, as many of these matches went), and you have the cool element of a 22 year old Kenta Kobashi who was nowhere near who he would be in just a few years. 

As these things tend to, it all just broke down into old men headbutting each other harder than you or I could handle. Okuma has been a real revelation for me over the last couple years, here at the end of his career and never cooler. He brings the headbutt thunder to Rusher and doesn't let up, headbutting him from the apron and then running back to his corner to tag in so that he can continue headbutting Legally. Everybody headbutts in this match. Eigen comes in to sneak attack guys with headbutts and keep momentum on his team's side, Okuma headbutts any time he gets the chance, Teranishi and Momota throw headbutts of their own to keep with the spirit, and eventually everyone gets silent when Okuma headbutts Kobashi right in the nose and mouth. Momota as a fired up babyface is beautiful, tagging in and going nuts on the heels with open hand chops. "You want to headbutt my fucking friends? You want to hit people? I'll fucking hit people. I'll hit all of you!" Eigen bends Kobashi back over the ropes and hammers away at his chest, setting up his own spit spot before the spit spot existed. Men headbutt each other in the back of the head, Okuma runs harder into clotheslines than he runs his own head into other skulls, and Haruka Eigen might be the greatest shit stirrer in wrestling. Another low card old man classic. 

Remo Banda/Rudy Reyna/Mano Negra vs Principe Island/Meztizo/Jerry Estrada CMLL 1989/1990

MD: The opening interview mentions Christmas just happening and there's some mention of 1990 so I wonder if this was just in January maybe? Again, there are some great guys in here. This is Park pre-Park teaming with Jerry Estrada in all of his glory against Super Parka/Volador pre-those things, exotico-turned-tecnico Reyna (who remains awesome in all of this footage) and they get a ton of time to have a very complete match. My biggest complaint is that it was just a little unfocused, but it was a lot of great things that maybe never came together; there was still plenty to like. For instance, the opening pairing (and posturing beforehand) was Remo Banda vs Estrada, which made a lot of sense given they had similar teased out hair and style. They worked well together. The other pairings were good, though I would have rather seen Reyna and Principe matched up. Mano Negra was just sort of there and I don't have a good sense of Meztizo even after watching this. 

The second round of pairings gave us Principe vs. Remo Banda which is a rematch from Panama and just like there, they came off like sparring partners who trained so hard against each other they could to an extra gear with wilder stuff. Even just for a minute or two it was great to see them do their thing against each other again. Likewise, the bit we got of Estrada vs Reyna was very good and full of motion and shtick. The segunda started with some really wonderful, imaginative work where Remo Banda fought off all the rudos, full of a bunch of clever spots you don't see all that often. The beatdown, once we got there, was gnarly stuff, with Principe dragging Remo Banda around the ring or stepping on his hair and pulling his arms up, and Estrada just beating Reyna around ringside with great punches. That made it all the better when Reyna started to come back with the best punches that you'll see this week. It devolved into chaos, leading to Estrada exiting the ring with one of his insane signature bumps and the tecnicos finishing off the remaining rudos. This didn't become a bloody war but as fairly conventional matches go, it had a lot of what I usually look for.

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Celebrating All Japan Veterans on Veterans Day

Haruka Eigen/Masa Fuchi/Motoshi Okuma vs. Giant Baba/Mitsuo Momota/Rusher Kimura AJPW 2/26/90

ER: We don't always appreciate every blessing that life hands us, but it is a real gift that someone used nearly 30 minutes of camcorder battery to film an old man match curtain to curtain, entrances and exits. If the man recording this had children then you can guarantee he never accidentally missed a recital. He almost surely did not have children because he wouldn't be filming entire All Japan house shows if he knew the touch of a woman, but we thank his life choices for giving the Battery Life knowledge to get this gem. We've been going through a big batch of All Japan handhelds - which are my favorite thing - and when Matt saw there was a 20+ minute old man match he let me know that it was "an Eric kind of match". Not something that we would do for Found Footage Friday, but an Eric match. And so, I oblige.  

Because the thing is, 1990 was an incredible year for old man All Japan matches, mostly because they weren't all that old yet. Being an old man in these matches was more of a vibe than an actual number, because everyone except Baba was still in their 40s. Masa Fuchi was only 36, but he was someone who was always facially a 60 year old Salary Man with the crotchetiness of an 80 year old. Momota was my age, Eigen a bit older, and Rusher Kimura only 48. These men are my peers at this stage of the Old Man Match, but I don't think anyone would ever mistake Rusher Kimura for my peer as he was already spiritually an old man. 

Everyone in this match could still go. All of them were actual workers and the comedy was a bonus that was perfectly integrated into the stiffness instead of leaned on as a crutch to avoid taking too many bumps.  Their bodies may have been more stiff, but they could all still kick ass and lean into strikes. And this match had a lot of stiff strikes. 

Okuma, Fuchi, and Eigen come out in matching black tank tops, and the black tank crew starts the match by putting the damn boots to Rusher. Fuchi chokes Rusher over the ropes and goes after his ribs with a Bob Barker-like run of 20 straight hard kicks. Okuma comes in for some kicks, then Eigen comes in and adds 15 or so, then Fuchi comes back and starts it all over. Kimura does this amazing bit the entire time he's getting beaten to death, as he keeps slumping slightly farther and farther over with each kick until he was completely slouched in the ropes. That's the key to a lot of the comedy in this era of Old Men, where the joke is the result of actual stiffness and violence, their old man reaction to a real ass kicking. It's the way Baba would break up pins or submissions by walking slowly across the ring to throw a hard kick into someone's spine. It plays as physical comedy the entire time while also delivering a size 34 boot into Fuchi or Okuma's shoulder blades. Baba gets laughs by selling Okuma and Eigen's headbutts with exaggerated grimaces, rubbing his head like a bear who ran into a tree branch. His physical selling is very funny, but also very accurate, and also he is taking real headbutts from two guys who can throw headbutts. 

There is a headbutt exchange between Rusher and Okuma that starts out getting laughs, with Kimura doing silly little bunny hops into hands-free headbutts, but keeps progressing until it ends with Okuma headbutting him in the teeth three straight times. Eigen and Rusher might make funny faces while chopping each other, but Eigen is chopping the hell out of Rusher. You can see how hard Eigen's chops are landing thanks to the nice framing by our childless bachelor cameraman. Eigen isn't swinging through Rusher, he is swinging into Rusher, and since Rusher never moves at all while taking strikes he is just absorbing all of the impact. 

Speaking of good camera angles, we get a head-on view of Eigen when he inevitably spits onto the fine people and derelicts of Kashihara, right towards our lonely but fulfilled cameraman. Isn't it interesting that almost all the handhelds we have show the side view of Haruka Eigen spitting into the 2nd row. We don't get one head on nearly as often, and we almost never get one facing away from the camera. This gives us a new data point to add to our Eigen Spit pie chart, which is heavily dominated by stage left spitting. 

Momota and Okuma really up the speed, going at an unexpected juniors pace through some spirited quick exchanges, kind of quickly running through some bigger offense that you don't get in Old Man matches even just two years later. We're talking an Okuma piledriver leading into Momota doing a back suplex just a moment later, and all of that coming in the middle of other hard quick bumps. Momota was still a spry 42 - a young guy exactly the same age as me, a very young guy in his prime - but even I was surprised by some of his agility. He had a really smooth sunset flip out of the corner, and then an incredibly slick backslide to reverse a hiptoss. Wrestling in 2023 is all about athletic guys doing the same offense in athletic ways, but I don't think even the best of the modern quick Athletic Guy wrestlers (Ricochet, Mustafa Ali, any of the 40 AEW guys who work that style) could have made this backslide look as good as Momota did. Mitsuo Momota had a finisher worthy backslide that looked cool enough that I watched it back several times just to see his body physics. 

Everybody bumps big for Baba, of course. You're an incurable idiot if you do not run as fast as you can into Baba's giant boot and every member of the black tank crew knows this. We get some great moments around that boot, like Fuchi dramatically holding onto the ropes to avoid running into one, or Eigen doing the exact opposite and getting a full head of steam to run directly into it with seemingly no other plan. But nobody bumps bigger than Rusher Kimura, who absorbs a real impressive beating over the course of a long match which saw him involved more than anyone. Okuma and Fuchi and Eigen all hit him hard the whole match, but Okuma takes it up a level when he throws him through the ropes to the floor - a big bump for anyone but a bump Rusher shouldn't have been taking - and then throws him into and over the guardrail and beats his ass in the crowd. My boy Rusher eventually hobbles back to the ring holding his shoulder, and his body had to have been bruised up like a running back's. 

This was the best era of Old Men: the perfect mix of actual funny comedy and actual good wrestling, and when we get over 20 minutes of that it needs to be celebrated. These veterans are the true heroes. 

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Found Footage Friday: TERRY~! DORY~! ABBY~! KIMALA II~! KONAKA~! NORI DA FUNKY~! RUSHER~! EIGEN~!

Dory Funk Jr./Terry Funk vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Kimala II AJPW 12/7/90

MD: On paper, this played out pretty much how one would think it might. Actually, even on paper, it had a little more to it than a lot of the Funks' matches on these 1990-1991 tours and the Abby/Kimala ones around the 1990 RWTL. I like almost all of those matches but so many are handheld so you don't quite the full smack of Dory's uppercuts or the fully joy of Terry's antics and they usually have a bit of a ceiling to them. Still good, still full of mastery, but they don't push it quite over the top.

This goes over the top and we get to see it in jarringly crisp video quality. The first third of it was back and forth. Dory's uppercuts were brisk. Terry's punches were amazing. Even just seeing them do a spinning footwash onto Kimala 2 looked gnarly giving the sheer size of his head. They were even able to double slam him. Kimala always had just enough "stuff" too, coming off the top with a headbutt as Abby held on to a poor victim, that abrupt dropkick that could change the trajectory of a match. And then Abby's throat shots or clothesline drop looked great in this VQ. Amazing moment here to end that first third as they set things up for Terry vs Abby, only for Abby to give a maniacal smile and tag out to Kimala once again.

It was the prelude to blood and panic; Terry would almost immediately get the spinning toehold on Kimala only for Abby to rush in for the fork and go right after his ear. What followed was a beautifully symphony of Terry Funk, blood running down the side of his head, flailing, bumping, writhing, and menacing a poor cameraman as he convalesced around the ringside area. Also lots of crazy, wild punch combos that were pure Terry. This, of course, let Abby and Kimala have the advantage (including bloodying Dory up too) until we rolled into the third act with Terry getting the fork and the fans going nuts for the Funks' revenge. We've seen some of this act before: Abby with the fork, Abby getting comeuppance from it, he made a career partially out of it, but the Funks had a way of making it weightier and more visceral than anyone. At a time where they felt a little more like an attraction in their All Japan matches, they still do a match like this whenever they wanted.

PAS: Man I loved this! Chaotic Terry Funk is one of the true treats in pro-wrestling, he is the greatest wrestler ever and his true mastery is when things go off the rails. When he gets stabbed in the ear and everything goes pear shaped, we get some awesome out of control Terry including him roughing a poor innocent cameraman and bleeding all over his shirt. Terry and Abby is as great a match up in 1990 as it was in 1979, Abby isn't as mobile, but mobility isn't his calling card anyway. I am a low voter on Dory as a technical wrestler, but have always enjoyed him in brawls, and he was super fun here, throwing thumping uppercuts, bleeding, and even doing a spot where he propelled Kimala over the top rope with a legscissors. Kimala 2 is a guy with a lot of bounce and was fun as sort of a hyperactive brother to Abby's more slow moving menace.  Still this is special because of the GOAT, and anytime we get to see him add another page to his novel it is a blessing.

ER: Man I could watch exclusively All Japan matches to the very end of my days. I loved every man in this tag, all doing the exact things they do best. But of course, the most exciting thing to all of you is the fact that none of us have ever seen Terry Funk square off against Kimala II before. Kimala works a lot of this match and seemingly has zero issue getting the shit beaten out of him by Funk. It's hilarious that Terry appeared to be throwing worked punches at Abby - even after Abby started to slice the man's ear off with a fork - but appeared to actively hit Kimala as hard as possible. When Kimala misses an avalanche, Terry hits a BEAST of a standing lariat, making some of the hardest contact you can make from a flat footed swing, then drops the full weight of his knee on Kimala's face with a very much Not Worked kneedrop. When Kimala gets to his feet after that kneedrop, Terry shoot punches him in the face in the exact same spot he just dropped a knee. Later on when the square off again, I was shocked to see how excited Kimala looked when Terry tagged in, slapping his belly and running in place as if he couldn't wait to walk out with a shattered orbital bone. And sure enough, Funk almost instantly overwhelmed him with punches to knock him to his back, then threw more pounding fists from his side while Kimala lay motionless. 

But while Funk/Kimala was the unique unseen match-up, the Terry/Abby interactions were legendary. When Abby pulled out the fork for the first time on the apron he did it with the showmanship of a magician, turning to the crowd and wiggling his fingers and making lil' stinker faces. "You know what I'm getting out!" before just walking into the ring and stabbing Terry straight in the head. Abby stabs the fuck out of the Funks, and when he starts stabbing Terry in the ear Terry goes nuts at ringside, sprinting at and then getting tangled up in a camera guy, then falling over a table like only Terry Funk can fall over a table. Not one fucking person can ape Terry's body movement, and his falling glacier bump onto and over a table is Uncut Terry. I love the first full reveal we get of Terry's badly bleeding ear, that realization of "Oh yeah obviously Abby was just stabbing him as hard as possible in the ear with the fork" leading directly into him forking the hell out of Dory's bald head. 

Abdullah's fork work here was incredible. The reaction he gets pressing it into Dory's fucking eyeball was real, and I loved the sicko fucking way that Kimala kept tagging in and going mouth first after every fresh fork slicing that Abby opened up. Kimala and Abby were such a fun team, as aside from Kimala licking and chewing up all the Funk's blood we got two different moments of Abby running full speed into Kimala as he had a Funk pressed into a corner. One of the most special things in pro wrestling is seeing one of the fattest men you've ever seen, running as fast and hard as he can into another one of the fattest men you've ever seen, for the sole purpose of squishing a third man. Terry gets a Stone Cold level reaction when he finally wrests the fork away from Abby and starts stabbing and punching him around ringside, and Kimala takes a flat out instant bump tumbling headlong over the top to the floor from a Dory low bridge headscissors, and his screams as Dory locking in the spinning toe hold made that hold feel as dangerous as it ever looked. Men Kimala's size aren't built to fall that fast onto concrete, and him fucking up his leg should be almost expected from such a fall. Hearing him yelp while Dory pulled on his leg added realism I was not expecting from a match that already had a fake Sudanese man stabbing two men hard enough to get 8 years for assault, had he done it anywhere other than in a ring at Budokan. 

Rusher Kimura vs. Haruka Eigen AJPW 1/27/91

MD: This was the last show of the tour so they were in a singles match instead of a tag. It amazes me that these two would still be going at it ten years later in NOAH, but it really was a timeless act. In the months that preceded this, Baba was teamed with Andre in the RWTL. At this point, he was out with an injury I think, and wouldn't be back til June. That meant Rusher was captaining the comedy for AJPW and Eigen was a perfect foil for him, just a total shitheel. From around this period, we have a few tags with rough vq as they're HHs and an even tougher singles encounter that you can barely make out. With tags, they usually did a good job of delaying the gratification of Rusher getting his hands on Eigen. It was trickier with the singles match but still worked out pretty well here. It started with Rusher chasing him around the ring to get a handshake, Eigen shaking, and then Eigen immediately slapping Rusher to a big reaction. 

Following that were a few unclean breaks by Eigen and then some real advantage. He was even able to position Rusher on the apron, facing the crowd to hit the smack to the chest (like Sheamus') which were his own signature spot to take. Eventually, he started chopping the heck out of Rusher and Rusher went from wincing in agony to powering back, flooring Eigen with one shot and taking over, never to look back. He'd smack him on the apron twice; Eigen always spit into the crowd when taking this and we have two good shots, first of the crowd grossed out by it and then all of them running from the impending spit like they were at a Gallagher show. Post match, we even can translate a bit of what Kimura was saying (hopeless on old fancams). He ended the show and his part of the tour by reminding Eigen that it was cold out there and telling him not to catch a cold, cracking the crowd up. I love watching these guys do their thing.  

ER: I'm sure it's easy to see the names Haruka Eigen and Rusher Kimura and write this off as comedy, but you'd be missing out on one of the most savage Eigen matches you've ever seen. Haruka Eigen's All Japan/NOAH run is one of the best comedy runs of any wrestler ever, maybe the funniest comedy worker of my life not named Super Porky. And he is plenty funny in this match, he just decides to segue from comedy to outright ass kicking in a way that he rarely did once he hit his mid-40s. When Rusher offers him a handshake at the bell, he accepts it and then slaps Rusher, skipping away and running behind the referee, then slaps Rusher again when they finally lock up. I laughed hard, and was fully expecting a match filled with his cherubic face making pleading faces as Rusher softly punched and shuffled after him, but instead Eigen begins throwing stiffer and stiffer strikes until he is hitting Rusher harder than I've seen him hit anyone during any part of his 15 year King's Road career. Rusher chimes in with open hand chops directly to Eigen's throat (which Eigen sells with alarmed screams), but Eigen is the one throwing headlock punches, hard flat boot kicks into Rusher's ribs, and graduates to caving in Rusher's chest while turning his own legendary comedy spot on its ear. 

"You guys think it's funny to splay me out on the ropes and have me spit on the fine Korakuen attendees? Here's how it feels. You think I'm a joke? Am I a joke to you? Here's what it feels like you motherfucker." Eigen clubs Kimura in the chest as hard as I've ever seen him hit anyone, forcing the ref to hold him back by the shoulders as he kicks at Rusher from the apron. In a world where Eigen typically uses the referee as a shield, we have now seen the referee forced to hold him back from furthering a beating. I love him. And when it eventually all catches up to him and Rusher throws him to the floor, you know he turns the tables and makes Eigen spray spit into the 6th row. Haruka Eigen is a man who tried to break free from his comedy roles and make his way into action dramas, only to be dragged back into comedy. The finish is excellent, as both men start wailing on each other with punches and chops, and Eigen gets up steam to elbow Rusher right in the ear. Rusher's selling is excellent as Eigen hits the ropes to comeback with a killshot elbow, but Rusher hooks him with a clothesline hard enough to put down any man. I have waited far too long to start a Haruka Eigen Complete & Accurate.  

Konaka Pale One vs. Nori da Funky Shibiresasu Sportiva 10/3/18

MD: There will always be room for Japanese warehouse nightclub wrestling here on Segunda Caida. Sebastian tells us that Nori da Funky is a guy who was in a Japanese hip hop group that did the opening song of Naruto and who wrestles like a powerhouse. Konaka we've seen before with his white face paint and ghost look and awesome combo of tiny close-up adjustments to get in and out of holds and abruptness in putting things on. The video's 30 minutes but the match itself is more like 15. It's a war though.

Konaka has Nori da Funky's number early, able to twist him about in hold after hold. Nori's able to at least put up a fight and just power his way through and into certain things. They go into strike exchanges a couple of times and I appreciate the way they sell each and every shot. There's no standing and taking everything. It all has weight and consequence. Every hold, every shot, every suplex. Even the roll-ups and kickouts seem grueling. Konaka's abruptness plays into his mid-match strategy as he keeps locking in a sleeper hold out of nowhere with Nori having to use all of his strength and savvy to escape, never the same way twice. In a test of strength Nori's going to win. In a game of chess, Konaka has the advantage, and the finishing stretch roll-ups leans more towards chess, ending with a clever spot that Yuta should steal. There's stuff on the mic after and entrances to start so don't be daunted by the time on this one. It's well worth watching.

PAS: We are in the glory days of weird Japanese indy footage shaking loose. Mutoah is selling their stuff and other micro indies, guys are finding tapes over in Japan, and digging into weird archives like this. Pale One is pretty cool, he really wrestles like the ghost of Shu El Guerrero or something, and I love the fact that the Japanese version of Shaggy 2 Dope wrestles like a WAR trainee in 1995, and the strength versus technique part of this match was really nifty. Love the final roll up, such a cool way to get a pin when you are out matched physically. Really looking forward to digging in to this stuff further. 

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Found Footage Friday: MISAWA~! KAWADA~! THE LAND OF GIANTS~! CHRISTIAN~! JOE~! DYING DAYS IWE~!

Rusher Kimura vs. Carl Fergie IWE 6/6/81

MD: It's always fun to see a journeyman overachieve in another country. You can think of Jim Dillon in the Maritimes (not that we have that footage) or the Rock 'n' Roll RPMs in Puerto Rico (that we do have and it's fun). Here, it's Carl Fergie - fresh off a midcard run putting guys over in Mid-South and on his way to do the same in Crockett - in a main event with Rusher Kimura. I was going to say that he was well prepared for this one by wrestling Lawler, but he doesn't wrestle Lawler until 1982, so it was somehow the other way around.

You need somewhat similar skill sets against both, mainly being able to snap your head back at the sight of a great worked punch and take a back body drop. With Rusher, however, you also had to deal with nasty chops in the corner and headbutts.  That gave the match a more visceral feel; when Fergie snuck in a kick out of the corner and tried to assert himself, he was probably forcing a break for the sake of his forehead and poor chest. Rusher was in a hybrid phase here: not the wrestler he'd been in the 70s, not the comedy statesman he'd be a few years later. It meant he'd try for things like a stretch out of a Russian Leg Sweep or the bearhug into a butterfly submission he won with, but no longer had the flexibility he once did. This set up other matches on the tour as much as anything else, with Gypsy Joe interfering to mercifully (as he was trying out that first submission) cause the first fall. I thought Fergie looked like he belonged, for the most part. Some of that was the state of IWE, but enough of it was Fergie himself.

ER: King Carl Fergie the Wicked, wearing a Nazi helmet for his dying days IWE main event. King Carl Fergie, conqueror of Goro Tsurumi and Atsushi Onita, partner of Gypsy Joe. Rusher Kimura's takedowns look so impossible to stop. Rusher had lost some speed but this man moved and manipulated the larger Fergie like a real shooter. When he pins Fergie's arm and grapevines the leg, you can see him using all of his weight to effortlessly drop Fergie to the mat. It's the way Fergie keeps trying to push Rusher off him from his back, but Rusher won't let go of that boot for anything. The shoulderblocks hit hard and Fergie gets tossed immaculately by a backdrop, then gets punched directly in the face, taking a tremendous floundering back bump with windmilling arms that almost catches the back of his neck on the ropes. Fergie took that punch like he was a heavy getting knocked out by Rick Simon. This is really fucking good. Fergie walks right up to Rusher Kimura because he's the man, and he punches Rusher in the face and shakes his fist out angrily after punching him, and every man in Korakuen knows that Fergie is the man. His elbow strikes to Kimura's collarbones only reinforces that feeling.  

I loved every headlock in this match. 

Carl Fergie takes an even higher backdrop than he did earlier and Rusher locks him into a killer butterfly mid-squat bearhug like he was a Negro Navarro T-1000 sent back to send Carl Fergie back to Memphis. Who was the human (?) who, over 40 years ago, knew how important it would be to document the time crimes that were happening in the final three months of the 4th most popular wrestling promotion in Japan. 

Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada vs. The Land of Giants AJPW 11/20/90

MD: Eric already covered the hugely entertaining 11/21/90 Land of the Giants vs Dory/Terry match (amazing Terry performance) so I'm poking at the guts of this thing instead. And on paper, it's kind of interesting. Misawa and Kawada had spent most of the last many months against Jumbo, Taue, Inoue, Fuchi, Doc, Gordy, Hansen and even occasionally stablemate Kobashi and Ace. Those are all guys you can do a lot against. Here, they were up against the sort of challenge rare to AJPW, two absolute lugs with size, no mobility, terrible clubbering strikes, little presence. That's the sort of thing you expect out of post-WWF talent 80s NJPW maybe, where they'd just trot out Mad Maxx and Super Maxx managed by Wakamatsu to face Fujinami and Kimura, but it's a lot less of an AJPW thing.

And, yeah, it goes ok. The real testament to Misawa, Kawada, and the crowd, was that there was a legitimately hot tag to Misawa towards the end and the crowd went up for it; I don't think it was entirely warranted, but they went with it anyway. After that, there was a great American tag moment of Misawa and Kawada whipping the giants into each other too. Otherwise, the big appeal here would be the Super Generation Army throwing really high kicks at really tall guys. Nitron took them pretty well too. That's about the nicest thing I'm going to say about Land of the Giants here, unfortunately. The blows didn't look great, crummy knees in the ropes, weak sweeping clubbering forearms, a couple of slams that didn't have much mustard behind them. There was stuff that worked in theory but not execution, like Nitron catching Kawada with a cheapshot clothesline from his spot on the apron to cut off a flurry. Their finish at this point was an assisted legdrop (from an atomic drop position) and Masters pumping his arm before going up with it was sort of entertaining. The finish worked too, with Kawada getting Nitron out of the ring so Misawa could throw some magic forearms and duck a clothesline to hit a pretty beautiful bridging German on a giant of a man. But like I said, that they got the crowd back was the most impressive thing here.

ER: Yeah, this wasn't great. It merely existed, and was worked surprisingly straight forward for being a couple of Faux Warriors vs. the two hottest young studs in the company. Misawa and Kawada didn't go after them any differently than they would have gone after Dynamite Kid and Johnny Smith, so that was kind of disappointing. I either wanted to see two giants with bad offense hold down two elites, or two elites absolutely lace into two bad giants, and we got something much less risky and much less interesting. What *is* important to note, is that the team of SKYWALKER NITRON and Butch Masters is not "Land of the Giants", which I suppose makes more sense than their actual name. No, their name is THE Land of Giants. Their team name makes sure to place the focus on the Land rather than the Giants who inhabit this Land, much like hit the hit Sid & Marty Krofft series The Land of Lost. 

In This Land of Giants, the Giants do not hit very hard. Of all the future X-Men, I imagine Misawa or Kawada could have worked a more compelling match with Kelsey Grammer or Alan Cumming. SKYWALKER NITRON throws two of the piddliest clotheslines, even though Kawada mostly saved one of them by just running neck first into it. Running into an actual clothesline in the backyard would have provided far more resistance that NITRON's long noodle of an arm. I do like how Misawa came in and kicked at him, actually liked his kicks more than Kawada's here. Lighter on form, harder on impact. Butch Masters is really good at stepping over the top rope, which is not a thing that every tall wrestler can say. SKYWALKER NITRON can't say it. But Butch steps over it straight, an optical illusion that makes it look like he's just stepping up onto a curb while he's actually clearing three ropes. NITRON meanwhile looks like he's trying to get into a ski boat from the water. Each man who hails from The Land of Giants did their own bearhug, and Misawa broke up SKYWALKER's by walking in and just elbowing him straight in the kidneys. Kawada hits a cool pescado into NITRON, and I do like the finisher of the team who hails from The Land of Giants, a man-assisted legdrop. What other Giants come from this Land? Were they sending their biggest and best Giants to the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium? Was this merely a work placement program, or a study abroad kind of situation? What is the Giant Exchange Program in The Land? Are these two as good as Tall Rick or Thomas Big Boots? 

Christian vs. Samoa Joe NEW 4/21/07

MD: I love Christian's WWECW work. He was an amazing week to week TV wrestler, someone who could work his own spots and his opponent's spots into a match in clever, believable, varied, and interesting ways to deal with the grind of televised match after match after match. A sort of neo-Bret Hart for a different era with different demands. I've never really had any indication that he worked it out much before that though. Some of that is on me in that I didn't chase down his TNA run. Unfortunately, I do think some of it might be on him too.

It's a little off-putting how much of this match is rote heel champion vs. local dominant attraction house show fare, actually. It's not that the stalling isn't fun and the antics with the ref aren't good and the cheating isn't effective. It just doesn't stand out as special like you'd expect a Christian vs. Samoa Joe match to be. In fact, even though he hits some of his big offensive moves, it's the least "Joe" match I've ever seen. He's so submerged in the formula that he comes off as just another guy lacking his usual aura. Because it's such an aberration, I'm leaning towards Christian not quite being there yet and my gut says that this would have been a lot better a couple of years later or even right now. Again, there was nothing bad or wrong about it and the stuff that was good was very good; it just was less than the sum of its parts should have been. That's all.

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Found Footage Friday: IWRG RETRO~! LAWLER VS DUNDEE~! INOUE~! RUSHER~! EIGEN~! OKUMA~!

Mighty Inoue/Rusher Kimura vs. Haruka Eigen/Motoshi Okuma AJPW 11/20/90

MD: We've covered the Andre match from this show but it's pretty overlooked otherwise. I'll go through most of it in the weeks to come. It was right during the RWTL and weirdly we have a chunk of HHs from this month so we get to see a lot of the different pairings. This match was not actually part of it, I think, as Inoue and Kimura were in it but Okuma an Eigen weren't. One fun thing about this, however, is because Baba was in the RWTL with Andre, these aren't the usual six mans. That means that all other non-Baba parties get more chance to shine and show individual personality. 

For instance, this match is all about Eigen and Eigen's pretty great in it. It starts with handshakes, and Eigen goes so far to bow to Rusher (drawing light applause) before smacking him in the face (popping the crowd big). He then dashes out of the ring and raises his hands in victory. Then, right as he was about to lock up with Inoue, Eigen turns and smacks Rusher off the apron before running away and raising his hand in victory once more. Then, once they've isolated Inoue and Okuma has him in an armbar, Eigen runs across the apron to stand on the top and taunt Rusher and after a tag and a double chop, he dashes across the ring to smack him again, drawing him in so they can double team Inoue some more. Just great heatseeking from a place not known for it. 

The initial comeback is Inoue slipping around to hit a belly to back on Okuma, so when Rusher comes in, he can't get his hands on Eigen. Then, they take over on Rusher so the gratification of it all is even more delayed. Okuma's fun in here, running all the headbutt spots with Rusher, even as they're beating him down, but this is Eigen's show, right up to the point where Inoue holds his leg as he's trying to come off the top on Rusher and he gets everything that was coming to him (which means he does his big trademark spit spot on the apron as Inoue and then Rusher and then Inoue smacks him in the chest). What an underrated jerk. 

Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee Memphis Power Hour 2/25/06

MD: This is a four and a half minute segment but we're contractually obligated to watch all Lawler vs Dundee matches and this was a fun three minutes which could have been an uproarious ten if they gave it the time. It's 62 year old Dundee vs 56 year old Lawler, who happens to be wearing these triple high Stacks boots. They work about two minutes based around the boot, Dundee having the fans mock him, Lawler mocking the even more severe height difference, Dundee selling a kick like death, Lawler falling on his ass with an over the top trip by Dundee. They could have milked this forever and it would have been endlessly funny, but after a few minutes they play to the interference and the match gets thrown out. At least Dundee got to punch Lawler a lot and trip him again though. Very much 1990 heel Lawler with a different gimmick every week but that probably felt refreshing in 2006. It's just a shame there was only a couple of minutes of this.

Freelance/Tortuguillos I y II vs. Los Oficiales (AK47, Fierro y 911) IWRG (Retro) 11/10/2007

MD: This is from the 4/6 IWRG Retro, which fell through the cracks due to being around Mania, I think. There's another match on there we'll cover later. This was one fall by design but also by necessity. We start out with Tortuguillo Azul and 911 and they have some loose but flowing matwork. There's some of that anticipation where they end up where they should be a half second too early (especially 911), but it all comes off like baiting our turtle friend in by the end with the next counter, so it's ine. We get just a bit from Fierro and Tortuguillo Rojo and that's quite a bit more struggle laden. Before we can even get to Freelance and AK47 though, it all breaks down with the rudo swarm. AK47 decides it's a good idea to do the Sid style leaping kick off the apron to the floor. This is pretty horrific mistake as it was for Sid a few years earlier and that's the last we see him for the match.

Los Oficiales are good at pressing their advantage, however, and Freelance is very good at reaching for the ceiling while eating a double back body drop. They make short work of the the Turtles without much incident even being down one partner. Maybe if that hadn't been the case there would have been a spirited tecnico comeback, but as it was, this was a pretty satisfying mauling. 911's crane kick stylings and clumsy fall off the top splash weren't nearly as good as Fierro's way of asserting himself with his size and power but combined they were better than the sum of their parts. Hopefully AK47 was ok.

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