Found Footage Friday: RYUMA GO~! BARR~! BRUISE~! HAMADA~! SCORPIOs~! ESTRADA~! ARANDU~! SUPER PUNK~! DIFUNTO~!

Super Punk/Kendo Star/Milo Caballero vs Sultan Gargola/Ulises/Difunto CMLL 1992

MD: I thought this would be uneventful since we only get ten minutes of in, but we come in during the segunda right at the comeback with Difunto's masked ripped to shreds by Super Punk (Luciferno?) and the tecnicos getting some serious justice on the rudos. Super Punk's mask had been ripped as well and between the segunda and tercera they continued to really go at it.This got a little silly with the tercera exchanges (though I ended up kind of wanting to see more Caballero and his unnecessary flipping) before settling down to Punk and Difunto smacking each other in the face again. The finish was great though. In the midst of the brawling, Difunto ended up on one of the refs. Super Punk tried to leap off the top on him and landed on the ref. That let Difunto get in a foul. Pretty creative stuff. Just at a glance, I don't think we get the undercard apuestas match that this hopefully led to. That's a shame. As for the match itself, who doesn't want to watch ten minutes of goofy chaos, right?

Gigante Warrior/Scorpio Jr y Sr vs Solomon Grundy/Gran Hamada/Centurion CMLL 1992

MD: Pretty out there attraction match. I think that Gigante Warrior is Butch Masters who I've spent a bit too much time with in late 90 AJPW. He'd been around a bit by this point and could contribute in a match like this, even if he'd never be your first choice. Scorpio, Sr. always comes off like the world's best possible Rey Mysterio, Sr. opponent in size, shape, and temperment, so take that as you will. Hamada is there to give this a weird WAR feel. Honestly, I almost had the vibe of one of those matches with Porky and Marco Corleone in them, just with less charisma. Hamada, even in 92, still had bursts of explosiveness and some solid strikes. Scorpio, Jr. could match up with anyone on the other side, which says something, I suppose. Centurion didn't exactly impress, however. Grundy was there to get hit by Warrior and splash people in the corner. I'm never not going to have at least some fun with a matchup like this, but your mileage, gentle reader, may vary.

Jerry Estrada/Arandu/Angel Blanco Jr vs Blue Demon Jr/Panterita del Ring/Transformer CMLL 1992

MD: Pretty straightforward match here. Up front, the biggest things to note are how well Estrada and Arandu fit together visually  and that Panterita continued to feel like a big deal locally. Demon did not impress for the most part, but I'm not surprised there. It did surprise me a little how he let Angel Blanco kind of eat him up on the mat (even with simple things) in their initial exchange and had to goad him back for another go around so that they could at least feign evenness before tagging out. Transformer is Super Kendo, I think, and he's got fun gear but didn't stand out a ton otherwise. Estrada's stooging and selling had the announcers proclaim he was out to get the Oscar for Best Actor. Arandu still wasn't afraid to bump out of the ring.

They went around a couple of times in the primera with Demon looking a little better on his second exchange with Angel Blanco. He did have his timing down on the punches on the outside at least. The beatdown in the segunda was solid but probably not long enough in the grand scheme of things and then the comeback and finishing stretch in the tercera was blink and you'd miss it though Demon did hit a tope to set up the finish at least. Nothing egregious but not super interesting either.

Bruise Brothers (Ron and Don Harris) vs Ryuma Go/Jesse Barr Orienal Pro-Wrestling 12/3/92

MD: As best as I can tell, they'd been feuding both in general and over the tag belts and otherwise off and on since July. This was the big blowoff, a Texas deathmatch in a cage, but one that otherwise followed tag rules for the most part, and Ryuma Go's last match in the promotion.

There was a lot going on here but most of it really worked for me. Bruise Brothers were more apt to break the rules and double team while the faces tended to wait for tags though there were a lot of transitions based around the partner having enough and intervening. The Texas Deathmatch rules allowed for any number of big impressive bombs from Ron and Don (assisted powerbomb, double suplex, Slaughter Cannon with a double axe-handle, top rope power slam, etc.) which would lead to the three count and then the drama of whether Go, or for a huge chunk of the match, Barr (who took the broader heat), would be able to beat the count. Mostly everything else would lead to a somehow still dramatic two count.

The Harris Brothers were good at imposing themselves and solid at clubbering even if they were never quite as wild as you'd want. Maybe they made up for it with the big power moves. Early on the cage was the equalizer for Go and Barr (that and Go's headbutts and Barr's fire) but between it and the Deathmatch rules, it never became quite the force I would have wanted. It wasn't a huge part of the beatdown on Barr for instance, just there as part of the connective tissue at times. That's not to say the beatdown and the instances of just barely making the count after some big bomb wasn't compelling, because it was (gushing blood or no; here it was no). I thought it was so well done that my biggest criticism of the match is that he recovered way too soon after the hot tag to set up the finishing stretch (wherein they did this neat belly to back/high angle side slam combo). It also ended on an Octopus Hold, and I get the idea that surrender is probably valid in a Texas Deathmatch but you want to see the count come into play at the end, just like you do the cage; that said, it was really novel to see it used as it was, to ramp up the drama during a face-in-peril segment of a tag match. I can't think of many other tag team Texas Deathmatches and I can say pretty safely that as a proof of concept, there's more there to mine.

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New Footage Friday: Moondogs, Aoyagi, Mr. Fuji, State Patrol, Can Ams, Matsunaga

Moondogs/Mr. Fuji vs. Pedro Morales/Ivan Putski/Tony Garea WWF Kuwait 1983

ER: I loved this! I loved it so much I wound up watching it twice, back to back. That is the first time that has ever happened with any match involving Garea, Putski, Fuji, etc. But here it is and it's totally great. These Kuwait shows seem like an absolute blast from the wrestlers' perspective, as every old gag gets a gigantic reaction. The crowd responds huge to every single thing they're supposed to respond to, so we get a simple match with a ton of heat and rabid excitement for the simplest exchanges. Fuji is fantastic in this playing a great stooge. He gets his salt knocked out of his hands by Putski, pinballs around so he can get punched by all the faces a couple times, does some funny misdirection, scrambles on his knees to tag out, all the exact things this crowd wants to see. The faces don't need to do much, the fans are reacting to Fuji and the Moondogs (if that doesn't sound like a cool as hell Hanna-Barbera crime solving show I don't know what does) reacting to the faces. Putski has a lot of energy and the crowd rightfully reacts huge to all of his headlock punches, and I cannot imagine what they even thought of the round hairy Moondogs. Garea comes in and does a lot that one headlock that you've seen Garea do, but soon you got Rex holding him in a long as hell bearhug, building to that tag, and Kuwait warms my heart by getting so damn into this bearhug. It's beautiful. We get the Moondogs cutting off the ring and it's satisfying as hell, because you know the roof blows off the place when Garea finally tags in Putski. It wraps pretty quickly after this (all of the Kuwait matches we have end very suddenly on things that weren't typical finishers), but honestly they could have kept this up for 30 minutes. This was simple, insanely effective wrestling, and instantly became my favorite match I've seen of several of these guys.

PAS: Pretty fun to watch the crowd go absolutely bananas for really simple wrestling. Every time Putski throws hands they totally lose there shit. Moondogs and Fuji are fine as foils, and everything was executed well (outside of the finish which looked botched) This exact same match wouldn't work well in the Boston Garden, but in front of a crowd that hadn't seen all the shortcuts before it was a total blast.


Ryuma Go/Masahiko Takasugi vs. Masashi Aoyagi/Mitsuhiro Matsunaga Pioneer Senshi 1990

PAS: This is exactly what you want it to be. Go throws the prematch flowers at Aoyagi and gets met with a big spin kick and we are off. It feels ragged and unprofessional like the best Karate Gi matches do. Go bleeds early and Aoyagi bleeds in the middle of the match, and blood all over a Gi is still one of the coolest visuals in wrestling. The Go/Takasugi team is perfectly willing to deliver dangerous looking stomps to the back of the head. Really fun to watch young lion Matsunaga working as a Aoyagi dojo boy, what a weird career he had.

ER: I dug this, as I am going to do with a loosely constructed karate gi guys vs. trad pro wrestlers match. It took a little while to really get percolating, overcame some stumbliness from Matsunaga, and blossomed into a great mix of blood and shoot throws and unprofessional kicks. Go and Takasugi were the owners and headliners of Pioneer, and I love when a couple of karate goons kick the tar out of authority. I didn't really see how Aoyagi got busted open, but it's a real gusher, sending rivers down his chest and covering his face, and around this time Aoyagi and Matsunaga start really taking things out on Go. I really liked the Aoyagi/Matsunaga dynamic, with Matsunaga throwing off balance kicks and kind of getting in over his head, occasionally getting his leg worked over or picked up and slammed hard, with Aoyagi always coming in to save him by kicking Go or Takasugi in the head, and Go especially takes the messy end of these kicks. I love those moments in Aoyagi matches where he violently kicks someone to the floor, always landing one of his hardest kicks in the match and then shoving someone unceremoniously to the ground with both feet.


State Patrol vs. The Can Am Express AJPW 6/4/91

ER: This was a good match, but not as great as the match I had built up in my head. This didn't quite have the cohesion or build that the greatest AJ tag discoveries have, and doesn't seem to ramp up as much as it should. It's a 18 minute match that feels more like they were pacing out 27 minutes, so we somehow get a ton of action while also feeling that we got things cut short. We don't have a lot of State Patrol in All Japan even though they did several tours. They were a team I always loved in WCW and feel like part of a whole wave of WCW guys who got overshadowed at the time by people who liked Benoit, Regal, and Malenko, even though undercard guys like Buddy Lee Parker or Gambler or even Vincent were working similar, or complementary styles at the same time to much less acclaim. So here's the State Patrol against one of the thee tape trading teams of the 90s. Kroffat/Furnas were an incredible on paper team who didn't always deliver their on paper potential, but always had a high floor due to the unique athletics of both men.

Tom Magee is a guy getting talked about a lot now, which is funny for several reasons, one of which (that I haven't seen discussed) is that Tom Magee's ceiling was Doug Furnas. We have 10-15 years of Furnas footage out there that was hot at the time but nobody cares about now, where you can see every positive Magee trait executed by a guy who was as good as he was gonna get. Furnas got effortless height on leapfrogs and could snap off a few press slams like it was nothing. Tom Magee was never going to be Hogan and it's foolish if anybody ever actually said that. It's unfair and stupid when current baseball prospects get compared to Mike Trout. There is zero chance of that happening. But Doug Furnas was cool and he's the best possible Magee. State Patrol are two guys who can work stiff and dish back, and so are the Can Ams, so at minimum you knew you were gonna get a couple hard forearm shots, a couple tough suplexes, and a couple nice double teams. We got it all and it was good.

James Earl Wright is a fun guy who got even less exposure than Buddy Lee Parker, as he never had that "Power Plant Trainer" fame like Buddy Lee. But Wright was damn good and threw himself into offense really well (always taking high backdrops and fast suplex bumps) but also committing to his own offense. He throws low fast clotheslines and I love the State Patrol's forearm/German suplex spot. Both guys do nice elbow drops which is a favorite move of mine that has been slowly phased out without anybody noticing the past decade. Kroffat throws a mean sidekick and fastest possible snap suplex, Furnas hits hard pivot belly to bellys, we get a cool misdirection into the finish with State Patrol hitting a top rope shoulderblock to each other when Kroffat flips out of a suplex, and the crowd did keep getting louder. But I think these teams have even better in them, so I'm left merely smiling that I got to see them fight at all.

PAS: I actually think Eric is underrating this, which is surprising because this is the sort of thing I would expect him to overrate. This was just a tightly worked powerhouse tag match, the kind of thing you might expect from a great Stieners match. State Patrol landed everything with a thud, especially great work from James Earl Wright, who was throwing heat, great looking lefty lariats, big elbow drops, nice forearms. That forearm/German suplex double team was completely awesome and should be stolen by a half a dozen indy wrestling teams right now. Loved watch Furnas stretch out and show off, and his Frankenstiener finish looked about as good as that move has ever looked.

MD: This is from a stacked show, stacked enough that I thought about pressing us to review the whole thing. Instead, we'll fill in gaps with the five, or so, key matches over the next year. The context matters. On the one hand, yes, this is part of the AJPW handhelds, and part of a great show in specific. On the other hand, this is the State Patrol. I don't think it could ever live up to what was in Eric's head, unfortunately.

This is a really cool Worldwide main event about five years before its time and with twice the room to breathe. All the little things worked well. Kroffat and Wright had an especially good bit of matwork. The State Patrol moved in and out of the ring really well, just somehow always in the right place at the right time against two opponents they probably hadn't faced off against too often. They cut off the ring well, allowing for a very effective face-in-peril run for Furnas.

We knew a lot of that already though. What the match has as well are some crazy State Patrol double teams (that German/forearm looked great), rapid fire elbow drops, Buddy Lee Parker rope-walking successfully, and some fairly complex bits of positioning on tandem spots. Where I'm with Eric is that I was left wanting more.

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Now The Earth Was Corrupt in the Sight of Yoshiaki Fujiwara

Pete over at PWO unearthed a bunch of previously unseen New Japan HH which includes some previously unseen early Fujiwara jams. Because there is all of this Fujiwara handheld stuff, plus a couple more new PWFG shows, I am going to intro a Fujiwara advent calendar. New Fujiwara review every day until Christmas!


Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Riki Choshu vs. Roland Bock/Micha Nador NJPW 8/6/81 - GREAT

Neat chance to look at baby Choshu, young Fujiwara (who still looked 45) and a couple of Euro dudes with very little footage. This was an undercard tag, so it didn't have a lot of big dramatic moments, but it had a bunch of nifty smaller ones. Loved the opening Nador v. Fujiwara sections with Fujiwara doing a bunch of spots holding on to a hammerlock. There was also a cool fast reversal section between Nador and Fujiwara later in the match. Bock was fun as a steamroller, he looks like David Crosby but he portrays a powerhouse well, he comes in with some big shoulder blocks and finishes the match with a couple of violent Irish whips into the corner and a nice butterfly suplex.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Kengo Kimura/Osamu Kido vs. Animal Hamaguchi/Isamu Teranishi/Ryuma Go NJPW 8/29/82 - GREAT

This was sort of a Choshu's army style six-man before the Choshu's army was a thing. The IWE boys really brought the pace, Go especially was a workrate machine for 1982, he must have really had some demons for his career to end up where it did. Fujiwara isn't a guy you think about as a workrate sprint guy, but he was unsurprisingly awesome in this, throwing cool looking snap suplexes, hitting these cool open hand chops to the head, and isolating Hamaguchi and blasting him with headbutts. Finish was cool with Animal hitting a nifty airplane spin into fallaway slam on Fujiwara for the pin. I also liked how they kept brawling after the bell. I imagine they ran a variation of this trios every show and I imagine it was always great.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

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