SLL's All-Request Friday Night...on a Tuesday

Super Muneco, Robocop, & Gran Houdini vs. Los Thundercats (Monterrey, Late 1980's)
Requested by Tim Evans

Fuck Sting. We've got Robocop.

Primera caida is mostly mat-based. After only knowing them for their bloody apuestas match with Trio Fantasia for so long, it's pretty cool seeing more of the technical side of Los Thundercats here. Tygra starts off with Gran Houdini. Houdini should be escaping from a lot of complex submissions. He doesn't, but he doesn't really get put into any in the first place, so I'm not sure I can blame him for that. Whatever. That's not what you're here for. This is what you're here for: Panthro and Robocop are up next, and man, you haven't lived until you've seen Robocop go to the mat. Seriously, he's actually pretty slick, I liked his nifty armdrag takedown, and he'd probably be the star of the match even if he wasn't fucking Robocop, but the fact that he's Robocop just makes it all the sweeter. Then Muneco and Lion-O square off, and now things gets wild. Honestly, Muneco is kind of a bastard. Everyone else seemed like they wanted a nice clean fight, and here he comes lolling his head around as he does and starting shit with people. Lion-O with the mask ripping. What would Jaga say? Still, this mean streak seems to work out for the Thundercats, as they take the first fall. Presumably, in the second fall, they tried to find a drug dealer to make into Monterrey Robocop 2 and sic on our hero, but the technicos evened the score pretty quickly, so no dice.

And oh, holy shit, this third fall. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Robocop match falls down in it's third part. Muneco immediately starts fouling all three Thundercats in full view of the ref, and apparently, even in the 80's, the Monterrey officiating staff was composed entirely of match-ruining assholes, because this guy just lets it go for some reason. He gestures like he's thinking about giving the match to the Thundercats at one point, and he holds his arms out a lot as if to say, "Come on, Super Muneco, cut it out! You know I hate having to actually do my job!" For his part, Robocop does have the decency to be disgusted by his partner's behavior, and then there's a bit of decent brawling, but then it just turns into an orderly match again, and I really don't care about that. I want to see Robocop throw Super Muneco through a bunch of windows while reading him his Miranda rights.

In conclusion, despite the match having kind of a lame finish, Monterrey Robocop is awesome, and the perfect companion to Robert Cop.

NEXT TIME: A non-Meiko, non-Kana modern joshi match that doesn't suck? The gods must be crazy!

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SLL's All-Request Friday Night 3/27/2015

An unforeseen pasta emergency has abbreviated this week's edition of All-Request. Fortunately, the fact that I have a few other half-written reviews should mean a king-sized outing next week. Unfortunately, it only means I have this one completed this week...but it is a doozy of a match.

Kana vs. Meiko Satomura (Kana Pro, 2/25/2014)
Requested by donsem43

One of the most unusual and fascinating matches of last year, played under blue lights with Kana in one of the trippier wrestler get-ups this side of Alebrije and some dude jamming on a traditional Japanese string instrument throughout the whole match. Seriously, what's it's closest relative? That Jarrett/Mantell match with the percussion orchestra? Kana should be NXT's next hire as a dual worker/producer. I wanna see the weird shit she and Jimmy Jacobs come up with together.

First part of the match has the girls trying to match the trippy setting with equally trippy matwork. Meiko with the reverse figure four breaker? Kana chains the stretch muffler into an ankle lock? Is everything about this match delightfully weird? Eventually, we transition into the "Meiko killing the fuck out of people" phase of the match. Meiko, as always, is great at dishing out a beating, and Kana is great at eating a beating and sneaking in comebacks and hope spots, including a really big German suplex.

Uh oh, the music is getting intense! Their health bars must be low! Seriously, they've both been kicked to shit by this point in the match - even though Meiko has been the big aggressor, Kana has chipped away at her enough that you buy her being worn down, too. Meiko with the cartwheel that ends with her kicking a downed Kana in the head, because Meiko even makes cartwheels devastating. I am glancing at the index of nominees for PWO's Greatest Wrestler Ever project, and I'm noticing Meiko hasn't been nominated. I should probably amend that when I'm done writing this up. I have no idea what my ballot for something like that would like right now, but pretty much single-handedly making an otherwise dead genre of wrestling still somewhat worthwhile for 15 years seems like a resume worth considering for something like that.

They start fighting over sleepers. Manzerman is thrilled, I'm sure. In all seriousness, though, it's really well-done, the sleepers are impressively varied, and most of all, this is the rare three-act match where all three acts are very different from each other, but all seem to fit together regardless. In summary, you want all this.

NEXT WEEK: Los Thundercats vs. Monterrey Robocop. If that doesn't bring 'em back for more, I don't know what will.

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SLL's All-Request Friday Night 3/20/2015

Ron Starr vs. Leo Burke (AGPW, 1980's)
Requested by Mr. Lacelle

We kick off the lean, mean, new-look All-Request with my attempt to court the important "Dave Musgrave" demographic. This is actually my first exposure to Leo Burke. I'm looking forward to him being more than just a running gag. Actually, I think the thing I ended up liking most about this match was the commentary of Buddy Lane. He sounds very grandfatherly, and describes the match in much the same manner I imagine most people would describe fly fishing. This took a few minutes to get into gear, but Starr really started laying into Burke. Still, despite the excellent beatdown, I do think the highlight of the match is the announcers' discussion of Starr's valet Peaches.

Rod Trongard-Sounding Guy: Question I have right now is...why does Ron Starr even bother to have a manager? Peaches has contributed nothing to this match!
Lane: Well...maybe she looks after his out-of-the-ring activities, such as, uh, airline tickets, negotiating matches...uh, his investments all over the world....
RT-SD: Are you saying she has brains as well as beauty?!
Lane: Well, he obviously has her around for some reason.

My main observation of Burke is that he has a funny way of bumping and eating offense. It sort of reminds me of when Chris Masters was first starting to get really good, and message board dullards would try to shoot him down by - amongst other things - bitching about how he bumped or ate offense. "Oh, he fell off the apron and landed on the concrete like this. Sure, it still looked like it hurt, but he was supposed to do it like this." Leo Burke seems like a guy who people with shitty taste in wrestling would hate. "That DiBiase bump Burke did was really ugly. Oh sure, he looked like he really fucked up his neck and shoulder doing it, but everyone knows wrestling is about grace and delicacy!" After taking a chair to the head, Burke reaches his breaking point, and heads to the ring with a chair of his own, looking he's about to channel Buzz Sawyer. Badass. Of course, Peaches cheats to win. I guess that's what she was there for.

Masa Takanashi vs. Yuji Hino (DDT, 5/4/12)
Requested by Brandon-E

The pre-match video package is set to "Desperado"? Well, I hope this ends with Terry Funk and Sabu wrapped in barbed wire. Also, is it wrong that there's a woman interviewed here who, before she spoke, I just naturally assumed was a man? Not because she's really manly in any way, mind you, but because it's puro in the 2010's. I literally had no reason to suspect that a cisgendered woman wasn't Hiroshi Tanahashi on his day off.

Man, Takanashi is one scrawny dude. He's a guy I've seen a bunch of times before, but I always forget about him, because I always forget about everyone on the DDT roster unless they're an inanimate object. Although I do remember Takanishi last year having a great match with HARASHIMA (and I remember HARASHIMA, but that's a story for another day) built around him as this weird lamprey eel who latched onto HARASHIMA's body and kept turning into submissions and pin attempts. That's not what happened here. This was more about HARASHIMA as your scrawny guy doing American heel schtick. Think a watered down, fifth-rate SUWA, and you're not far off the mark. He loses a test of strength. He gains a momentary advantage and then commits the cardinal sin of pointing to his forehead to indicate intelligence before losing it. The ref gets bumped, and he almost wins the match when he pulls an Eddy Guerrero-style fakeout where he tosses his belt to Hino and pretends that Hino hit him with it. This is an act I usually like in puro. Hell, I stuck up for Kotaro Suzuki when he was doing it. Kotaro Suzuki, people! I don't know...maybe Takanashi just doesn't have the conviction? Or maybe it's just that I've seen this enough times that you can't just trot the shtick out and expect me to pat you on the back for it.

Anyway, Afro GM says "no dice" to Takanashi's chicanery, and that's when Hino starts to turn things around. Thankfully, "things" include "this match", because Hino really smacks the shit out Takanashi here. Seriously, ouch. I read earlier today that Hino and Yuji Okabayashi are going to be wrestling the Twin Towers late tonight. If nothing, this match succeeded in really making me want to see that, because I imagine he'd be a lot of fun teeing off against those two. Takanashi makes a comeback and starts working over Hino's knee. It's alright, and Takanashi has a neat standing STF in there. Hino catches Takanashi with a pair of really nice looking deadlift throws, though I kinda question the wisdom of doing them right after having your knee worked over. And then, not long after that, they go into the finishing stretch, which really is just a bunch of finisher and nearfall exchanges that has nothing to do with the rest of the match. It's not bad, per se. There was some cool stuff in there, like Hino's splash and his super CB4 driver. But the rest of the match did seem like it was building up to something, none of which really paid off here, and instead, we got a finishing sequence that really could have been preceded by anything. And then there was this really weird part at the end after the aforementioned super CB4 driver, where Takanashi slowly climbs to his feet and tries to fight back, all while making faces and gesticulating like a graduate of the Adam Copeland School of Wrestling Theatrics. He had been acting kinda goofy the whole match, but I was OK with it, since he was playing a kinda goofy character. Here...I think they wanted me to take him seriously. Instead, I kinda just said "fuck this match", and fortunately, Hino ended it soon afterwords. In hindsight, that was slightly harsh of me. This match wasn't bad, but in the true Websterian sense of the word, I have no desire to ever see it again.

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SLL's All-Request Early Saturday Morning - 1/10/2015

For over a year now, Segunda Caida has been delivering at least one new piece of content daily...and precisely none of it has been mine. Let's fix that, shall we?

Welcome back to SLL's All-Request Friday Night (which, as per tradition, ran late, and is being put up early Saturday morning), wherein I review five matches as requested by YOU, the Segunda Caida reader. It's been entirely too long, folks, but it's good to be back, and I can think of no better way to kick things off than by awkwardly explaining why I like watching a murderer wrestle.

Invader I vs. Hercules Ayala (WWC, 1987)
Requested by DylanWaco

So, I've seen some Puerto Rican wrestling in my time, but it is, generally speaking, a blind spot for my fandom. Fortunately, we've seen that island and it's bloody, bloody history explored a bit more in the last few years, and it's become more visible on the radar. We have Dylan Hales to thank for that to a large extent, as he's probably been the most vocal champion of 80's Puerto Rico and the guy most likely to sell you on the stuff. Naturally, this sort of thing leads to wrestlers getting rediscovered and reevaluated, the most obvious one here being Carlos Colon. Somewhat less obviously, and somewhat more controversially, has been the rediscovery and reevaluation of Invader I, the man found not guilty of - but still generally acknowledged as having committed - the murder of Bruiser Brody, and since it's kind of an elephant in the room, I guess I should probably address it up front.

The obvious reaction is, of course, to dismiss Invader and his body of work, because he is a murderer and a monster like Chris Benoit, Jerry Estrada, and Jimmy Snuka. Then, you realize all three of the guys you just listed were good-to-great workers at some point in their careers, and you're kinda fucked. It doesn't help that while Invader's crime was unquestionably terrible, when you put it next to those of the three guys I just listed, it strikes me as pretty easily the least outrageous. Obviously, if you don't feel comfortable watching the work of a killer, Invader I is not for you, anymore than Benoit, Estrada, or Snuka are, and I'm certainly not going to judge you negatively if you hold that standard. But my heart is black as coal. I was able to watch a Chris Benoit match the day after his crime was revealed. I'm not gonna have a problem with with this guy.

So, the match. Hercules Ayala hits the ring to take on Isaac Rosario, but he's not having any of that. Fortunately for me, El Boricua over at Pro Wrestling Only was able to provide some context for this, so I know that the recently heel-turned Ayala's issue was that he didn't see Rosario as real competition. He airs his greivances to Hugo Savinovich and his glorious mullet until Invader hits the ring to give him a real challenge. The two are scheduled for a match that Saturday, and Ayala tries to blow him off on those grounds, but Invader isn't going anywhere, so they have at it. Meanwhile, Hugo consults with Puerto Rican Walt Frazier about whether or not this is all kosher.

I think this is actually my first time seeing Ayala. He's not someone I had much reason to actively seek out, since his reputation is shit, but he actually looked pretty damn good here. He was all big and mean and clubbery, and he laid his shots in nicely. This may have been an above average performance for him, but yeah, no complaints. Invader I've seen a handful of times before, once as an old man against Ray Gonzalez, once in an 80's WWF tag match against Roddy Piper and David Schultz. I don't think I ever gave him much credit before, possibly because...you know...the murder thing, and 80's WWF tags and matches as an old guy against a really talented worker in his prime are not really the places where you're going to overcome a lousy reputation. This is more of the kind of showcase where you can't really ignore the talent of the guys involved, and, well, Invader I is really talented. He's great as the super fired-up babyface brawler. He has the best battering ram I've ever seen. That's a spot that almost always looks stupid, but Ayala knocks Invader back, and Invader whips right back at him head-first at top speed, and it looks totally awesome. The match has a really great finishing stretch, starting with Ayala bashing Invader with the ringbell, and Invader doing some really great groggy selling. Ayala wails on him, but Invader hangs in there and makes his comeback, getting some ringbell comeuppance in exchange. The two continue to fight it out as the TV time limit expires, and I'd really like to see the match they had that Saturday.

Mascarita Dorada vs. Mini Psicosis (AAA, 5/19/12)
Requested by Grimmas

You know what, I'm gonna say it - The Imperial March? Not really a good choice for technico theme music. This is the kind of bold honesty that has made me so respected amongst my peers.

Anyway, this match is awesome. It's a pretty simple speed vs. power match, and both of these guys are really good in those those roles. Dorada (the current El Torito, for those of you who lost track of the Mascarita Doradas) is so ridiculously slick. He's not setting the bar low for himself, either. Over the course of the match, he goes for some pretty flashy high flying offense, and he executes it all perfectly. I think my favorite was the escape of the wheelbarrow into the springboard headbutt near the end. Yes, that's a thing that happened. Don't doubt that Dorada can make things like that happen. Mini Psicosis, meanwhile, is a really nasty little bruiser. He's quite a bit larger than Dorada, and they did fail to deliver the "larger mini mocks the smaller mini for being short" spot, which I always love in these matches, but he was still great overpowering Dorada, tossing him around the ring, and even busting out a nifty lariat at one point. Mini Histeria is seconding Mini Psicosis, and he does get involved a bit in the match. I didn't really have a problem with it, and it did lead to Octagoncito busting out an awesome dive on Dorada's behalf. There's a screwy finish, too, with Psicosis swiping Dorada's mask, but don't worry about that. This is a ton of fun.

Bob Esponja, Patricio Estrella, & Lady Maravilla vs. Buzz Lightyear, Sky Kid, & Chelly Rock (ACM, 5/12/13)
Requested by Tim Evans

Are ya ready, kids?

You know, I've seen a lot of things in professional wrestling over the years, and I think I can safely say...this is one of them. Lady Maravilla and Chelly (or Shelly...Cubs Fan says "Chelly", so I'm going with that) Rock start this out. They're not that bad. They're not that good. They're not that interesting. Look, we all know what we came here to see: Spongebob Squarepants and Buzz Lightyear throwing down. These women and their perfunctory matwork are just getting in my way. Maybe if Maravilla were dressed as Sandy and Chelly were dressed as Jessie, but as is, no dice. Really, even Sky Kid looks out of place here. You're telling me you couldn't rustle up some cowboy gear for this guy? Plus, I figure once you have your Toy Story trio established, they're set up pretty naturally for a mascara contra mascara match with Trio Fantasia, which I assume is the ideal career trajectory for everyone in this. Anyway, Sky Kid and Patricio have a pretty spirited exchange, but the technicos take the fall before Bob and Buzz can mix it up. Primear Caida ended so fast I thought I was watching CMLL.

Second fall opens up giving me exactly what I wanted. Buzz decks Spongebob with a slap across the mouth. He has a pretty nasty forearm, too. Buzz Lightyear is kind of a crowbar, which I wouldn't necessarily have guessed from the movies. This fall stretches it's legs a bit more, and it's mostly built around a rudo beatdown. At one point, Spongebob gets fouled after getting hit not where the wrestler's crotch actually is, but where it would be on the baggy costume he's wearing (though if we're being that technical, Spongebob is an asexual being who reproduces via budding and should be invulnerable to foules, but I think I'm gonna let that slide). Buzz takes the fall for his team with a top rope splash, presumably after shouting "Hasta el infinito y más allá!" to the crowd.

So in the tercera caida...you know, should I even bring up the fact that the costumed characters are not the most mechanically sound wrestlers you'll ever see? Because on one hand, I probably should, but on the other hand, does it really matter? This is a match that very much works upon the dancing bear principle - that is, the marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all. This isn't a great match by any means, and the talents on display here won't make you for get Los Thundercats or some of the better wrestling Ninja Turtles, but if you ever wanted to see Buzz Lightyear and Patrick Star in a dive train - and you know you wanted to see that - this match definitely delivers.

Kengo Mashimo vs. Hiro Tonai (K-Dojo, 9/14/14)
Requested by Brandon-E

Well, if we're going to bring back All-Request Friday Nights, we've got to bring back that old staple, the modern puro match that I kinda dread watching, but that YOU requested, so I'm gonna suck it up and review it. Besides, watching things from outside my comfort zone is how I expand my horizons as a fan, and one of the things I like about doing this is that it's a great excuse to watch stuff that I never would've watched otherwise. On the other hand, Kaientai Dojo burns me pretty much every time I've ever watched it, so I'm apprehensive here. That said, if there's one guy who might deliver in that setting against all odds...well, it's TAKA Michinoku. But if there's ANOTHER guy who might deliver in that setting against all odds, I'd wager that it's Kengo Mashimo, the ace of K-Dojo and certainly the best trainee they've ever produced. He's a guy I took notice of in 2010 when he started hanging out with the FUTEN crew outside of his home promotion, but that never seemed to translate to any swell of quality in it, possibly because he couldn't find an opponent in K-Dojo half as competent as Takahiro Oba. He seems to try when I watch him, but usually, his opponent lets him down, so I really want to believe in this Hiro Tonai character right now. He's wearing Kuniaki Kobayashi's pants. That's a good start.

So I place my faith in Tonai, and is it rewarded? Well, yes, actually, and from pretty early on in the match, too, when he crosses Mashimo up during a straightforward feeling out section with a nifty cradle and a shining wizard. From there, he tries to press the advantage, but Mashimo cuts him off on the second rope and dropping his leg on the turnbuckle. Most of the first half is built around Mashimo working Tonai's leg, and while it isn't as violent as his FUTEN stuff (how could it be?), he still makes for a great bully, kicking and stomping the shit out of his leg and then working him over on the mat with submission holds once he's been grounded. He starts daring Tonai to take shots at him, and I know Mashimo already had a run with New Japan as part of Suzuki-gun, but watching this, I really wish they'd bring him back for something a bit more substantial, because he's a guy who does a lot of what we think of as the "strong style" routine better than most of the hyped New Japan guys. He's actually kinda reminiscint of Tomohiro Ishii in that respect, though he's obviously not on that level as a talent. Anyway, this backfires on him, and Tonai starts to fight back, injuring Mashimo's arm in the process. Tonai's comeback is spirited, though he does seem to be blowing off the leg selling a bit too much at times. I've seen much worse, though, and it wasn't enough to take me out of the match, though I could see some people disagreeing with me on that. Then again, I could see some people thinking his selling was perfectly fine, too, so whatever. Just thought you should know that was there and that I docked a few points from the match because of it. Still, there's too much good here for me to let that get me down. I totally dug the stretch run, which had some really tight and intense work from both guys, including that most elusive of creatures in modern puro: the back-and-forth strike exchange that felt like it was actually earned by the match, and not just thrown because it's supposed to be there to make the match seem more epic than it actually is. I can't guarantee this will be to everyone's taste, but fuck it, it was to mine. Give it a look. You may be surprised.

Alexander Otsuka vs. Takashi Sugiura (Z1, 4/18/01)
Requested by Curt McGirt

Hey, my first week back, and I go five for five with matches that I actually like! I haven't watched this match in years, but really, what are the odds of it not holding up? It's an Alexander Otsuka match. In my years as a fan, I've seen wrestlers who are better than Alexander Otsuka, but I've seen very few who are more fun than Alexander Otsuka. Alexander Otsuka is professional wrestling comfort food - a man proficient in a wide array of styles, and who will gladly demonstrate all of them during a single match for your amusement. Wrestling is many things to many people, but more than anything else, it's a good time, and there ain't no party like an Alexander Otsuka party.

Sugiura had only been wrestling for a few months at this point, but he was already showing a ton of promise here. I can't say he ever became a huge favorite of mine, but I always liked him well enough, and he has some very strong performances under his belt. In this match, he makes good use of his amateur background, grappling with Otsuka early and throwing him around later on. Always something I appreciate with amateurs-turned-pro.

Then, about halfway through the match, Otsuka hauls off and headbutts Sugiura, busting himself open hardway in the process, which looks just nasty. It gets even nastier as the match goes on, probably due in no small part to the fact that they keep trading headbutts for a while after that. Again, Otsuka is not afraid to just change the style of the match on a dime if he feels like it, and what's great is that it never feels wrong or out of place. It feels like a guy with a bottomless bag of tricks who likes to keep his opponents - and the audience - guessing, and it's a joy to watch every time. And just as seamlessly, he follows up a headbutt by slipping behind Sugiura and German suplexing him, transitiong to the "hosses throwing each other around" segment of the match. Beautiful.

These two guys actually wrestled each other again this past November at a Dradition show in what I'm told was billed as a rematch of this bout. I don't know if that made tape, as Otsuka's matches rarely do these days. That's a real pity. Still, watching this match does make me wanna go find what little recent Otsuka is available. The sun always shines a little brighter when that man steps into the ring, and brighter still when I can actually see it.

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Time Has No Meaning to SLL's All-Request

Randy Savage vs. Bret Hart (WCW, 5/17/1998)
Requested by Lacelle

You know, much is made of that one time Michael Buffer called Bret "Bret The Hitman Clarke". Off the top of my head, I can't remember if that was before or after this match happened, so I don't know if Buffer calling him "The Hitman Bret" and omitting his last name entirely is an improvement or not, but there you have it. Anyway, Bret is a member of nWo Hollywood and Savage is a member of nWo Wolfpac at this point, and well, that angle was really one of the more underappreciated stupid things that WCW did in this period. Once upon a time, WCW trying to fight off the nWo was a really, really big deal. And then, the nWo became sort of an inconvenience that WCW just had to live with (and constantly lose to). Now, we have the nWo fighting amongst themselves, so really, we don't need to give a shit about WCW's involvement in this at all. Still, if there was any good at all to come out of this angle, this match was it.

Roddy Piper is the special guest ref for this, and as special guest refs go, I think he gets a passing grade, though not a perfect one. There's a mentality amongst a lot of people that special guest refs are almost universally bad because they draw some degree of attention to themselves in a way that refs normally aren't supposed to do (I'm looking at you, Slick Johnson), and they usually don't call matches the way refs normally are supposed to. But that seems to me to completely miss the point - why would you book a special guest ref if they weren't supposed to come off as special? Not acting like a normal referee and drawing attention to themselves is the whole point of a special guest ref, otherwise you'd just have a regular-ass ref. And no, that doesn't mean special guest refs can't screw up a match big time. They can draw so much attention to themselves that it detracts from the wrestlers. Their reffing style can be so far afield that it becomes jarring. I'm just saying when you bring one in, it's usually for a reason. As far as this applies to Piper...well, he said he wanted a fight in the promos leading up to this match, and his character is a well-established wild card. If anything it would be dumber for him to play this totally straight, because that's just not who he is. In terms of how he calls this match, he mostly avoids the major pitfalls of the special guest ref - he gets his character across while keeping the focus on Bret and Savage, he calls it down the middle, he plays fast and loose with the rules, but not to the point where it seems far-fetched. I think he gets a little too hands on with the wrestlers at points - there's a bit early in the match where Bret is stalling on the outside, and Roddy gets fed up and throws him back in the ring. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but it keeps him from reaching Michael Hayes/Jackie Fargo/Ken Shamrock levels of quality special guest reffing. But he knows his job, and overall, he does it well.

So yeah, the match. I think the big thing that stands out to me here is that, off the top of my head, this may have been the stiffest performance I've ever seen from the Hitman. All of his strikes looked really hurty, including some nasty shots to the face and the back, as well as his usual hooks to the gut which he actually appeared not to be stomping for. I mean, there probably was some stomping in there, but he was throwing hands so hard that I couldn't really bother to notice. Mike Tenay epically misses the point, pointing out that Bret considers himself the best technical wrestler in the world and "hopes to use Randy Savage as a proving ground". But clearly Don West was the problem with the TNA announce team. Randy Savage isn't one to take this lying down, throwing some great shots of his own, but Bret regains control quickly, and they end up on the outside, including a cool moment where Bret tries to drop the ringsteps on Randy's head. Bobby Heenan picks up the slack for Tenay's earlier dopeyness, saying that Bret probably realized he had to turn up the heat just to combat Savage's wildman tendencies. Savage avoids having his noggin crushed and fights back, leading to a low-point in the match where Bret kinda struggles with an axehandle off of the guardrail into the crowd, followed by some shitty ECW crowd brawling that I can't really follow. They get back in the ring, and Bret starts working after Savage's injured knee, as well as busting out a particularly snappy Russian leg sweep and a big piledriver. The ending gets...weird. Bret has Savage in the Sharpshooter, but doesn't have it totally sunk in, so when Elizabeth runs out, Savage powers up and gets Bret in a Sharpshooter of his own. At this point, Liz runs into the ring and argues with Piper for no really adequately explained reason, which leads to Savage breaking the hold, and getting low-blowed by Bret. Bret would then attack Piper from behind with knux (which he later planted on Savage), allowing Hogan to run out, take out Savage's other leg, and when Piper comes to, Savage is back in the Sharpshooter and is forced to tap. Liz, what the hell were you doing? I mean, it's late-90's WCW. She might have been setting up a heel turn, but I can't be expected to keep up with that shit. Still, really good match, and Hogan sneakily crawling away from the ring afterwords was amusing.

Randy Savage vs. Ron Garvin (ICW, 1982/83)
Requested by Tim Evans

So, what did I write about the match during the 80's Memphis Project, again?

"I know this isn't a huge revelation or anything, but damn, was Garvin not afraid to kick a dude's ass or what? Potential top 30 pick."

Well, that's not very enlightening. And where did I actually end up putting this on my ballot....#22? Wow, that's surprising. Usually "potential top 30 pick" coming from me just means "it probably won't be in my bottom third", but this was one of the few that held up. Anyway, what I wrote wasn't especially informative, but it sums up my thoughts on this match pretty well. Garvin kicked Savage's ass. A lot. And it was awesome. The early jockeying for position was pretty cool, too, with the dueling front facelocks and Garvin's super-smooth looking schoolboy, but then Ronnie starts laying in the shots, and that's when shit gets real. All these punches and kneedrops and stomps...no wonder the Garvin stomp developed. This dude's stomp was unreal. Are there still people who think the Garvin stomp was a stupid move? Cause those motherfuckers were dumb as shit. Garvin lays in everything full force, and it rules. Savage, meanwhile, eats the beating like a man, bleeding, selling it great, and taking some nasty bumps into the cage. His comeback has him throwing some hard shots of his own, and both guys just come off as total badasses. Fun finishing stretch with ref George Weingroff (I've heard of blind refs, but this is ridiculous) getting bumped just long enough for Garvin to steal his belt, and both guys get to make use of it. Right now, I'm feeling like if I redid my Memphis ballot, this probably would drop, but hell if I know how much. It's still an excellent match, regardless. The quality of the link does this no justice. If you don't have one already, hit up Will about the Memphis set, because it is solid gold.

Daisuke Sekimoto & Yuji Okabayashi vs. Manabu Soya & Seiya Sanada (AJPW, 3/21/2011)
Requested by ダニエル

OK, so Seki & Oka vs. Soya & Friends is a match-up that's gone one for two for me so far. To be fair, the one I didn't like is empirically great, and I only bashed it because I bash everything that is highly praised, but that's besides the point. The important thing is that I've seen a good take on this match, and I've seen a bad take on this match, so this one could've split either way for me. And....I hated it. Actually, "hate" is a strong term. This match had it's moments, moreso than their February match. But there was also more actively bad than that match, and ranking the three, I feel comfortable putting this last. There isn't a lot of new criticism to offer that you can't find in my reviews of the other two reviews (and other recent-ish puro reviews, since those problems are emblematic of the genre as a whole right now), so en lieu of a traditional review, here's a list of things you can blame for my dislike of what very well may have been another empirically great match.

Blame it on Daisuke Sekimoto.

I've reviewed a disproportionately large number of Sekimoto matches here, and I think I've told the same story in all of them. The relevant part is that I used to not like him, and now I do. In the February match, he was the guy doing the most to keep me from totally hating it, and in the April match, he was a big part of why I totally loved it. I put my faith in him twice, and he rewarded that decision twice. In March, however, he comes up short. This really felt like a regressive performance for him, like this was more of the lame old Sekimoto of a few years ago than the more dynamic wrestler who's developed recently. In matches built around beefy guys hitting each other a lot, Sekimoto can usually be counted upon to be both beefy and hard-hitting, but his offense really lacked it's usual punch, and he just came off as another guy going through the motions. I will give him this much: he busted out a tope near the end of the match that totally caught me by surprise, and I dug that. He wasn't terrible, he wasn't even the worst guy in the match, it's just that he's usually the most reliable, and this time, I couldn't rely on him.

Blame it on Manabu Soya.

He was the worst guy in this match. Without the great layout of the April match to guide him, he's still stuck in February's "let's put on a show" mode, more blatantly than anyone else. And at least in the February match he ate offense really well. Here, with the Big Japan guys falling down on the job offense-wise, he's not going to be bothered to make their stuff look any better. MORE FOREARM EXCHANGES RARRRRRR!!!!

Blame it on Ryota Hama.

Seeing a guy actually dedicated to having a good wrestling match rather than a shitty simulation of what a good wrestling match is supposed to look like kinda spoils me here. I mean, not that I was willing to accept the substitute to begin with, but Hama's presence in the April match makes a world of difference, and gives me all the more reason not to waste my time on this.

In spite of the above, don't blame it on Seiya Sanada.

He's actually the best thing about this match. Noticeably smaller than the three other sides of beef in the ring, he seems to realize he can do something different with his role in the match and runs with it, being all energetic on offense and taking big bumps off of the Big Japan team's power moves. For that matter, don't blame Okabayashi for this, either. He doesn't have a great showing here or anything, but he doesn't embarrass himself like he did in the February match, either. His double team spots with Sekimoto like the double rack and the double German were neat, and I liked him throwing around Sanada a bunch. I think if they had booked a ten-minute Sanada/Okabayashi singles match here instead of a 32-minute tag, I probably would've dug that.

Blame it on the booking.

Seriously, who was the genius who thought it was a good idea to give this turd 32 minutes? I don't care how much Sekimoto has improved, he does not have 32 minutes of material, and neither do any of these other guys, and believe me, it shows. It's not surprising that they failed to book an epic here, but they even failed to book a wannabe epic. There's a little sense of build here, but not much, and this match just takes a very long time to say very, very little. If Punk vs. Hero spent 90 minutes doing what could have been done in 30, this spent 32 minutes doing what could have been done in three, and that feels like a far bigger crime. The finishing stretch is pretty uninspired, too. Normally, this is the kind of match that will drive me crazy with a shitty, overblown, unearned "epic" final stretch, but here, they switch it up and give me a stretch run so unremarkable that it feels wrong to even call it a stretch run. Again, very little sense of build, and you'd think in 40 minutes they'd have built to something. Instead, the match ends the same way it started: blandly.

Blame it on the crowd.

Outside of Cena/Punk from Money in the Bank, the crowd for the April match might have been the hottest crowd I've seen for a wrestling match in 2011. Again, maybe this spoils me a bit, and I don't expect every match I watch to have a crowd that hot, but man was this crowd every bit as bored as I was by this or what? Dedicate 32 minutes to these guys, and the crowd really doesn't treat it any differently than any other undercard match. Polite applause, scattered bits of cheering for the cool parts...that's it. I don't need a crowd telling me to care about a good match, but they certainly weren't encouraging me to care about this.

Blame me for watching these out of order.

So in the April match, I made note of this bit:

"Sekimoto and Soya grabs each other by the hair, and Soya manages to push Sekimoto in the corner. Neither man will break, and Kyohei Wada actually has to step in between them, and when he can't break them up on his own, Okabayashi comes in to pull his tag partner off of Soya. Then, when Kyohei is admonishing Sekimoto, Soya pushes him aside and bum rushes Sekimoto."

It's a great "flip the switch" moment, signifying the match kicking into a higher gear than it's predecessors. Well, it turns out they did it first here, only without the ref shoving and bum rushing, and I have to ask myself, is the fact that this spot looks forced and completely out of place here because I had already seen it in the April match, or is it because that match really did it that much better and got that much more mileage out of it? I'm pretty sure it's the latter, but I'll throw it out there for consideration.

Blame it on Savage, Hart, and Garvin.

If you're going to do 21st century strike exchange-heavy fighting spirit puro bullshit, at least lay that shit in. You're giving me literally nothing else. This was downright tame, and the fact that I'm watching it in the shadow of two matches where guys really looked like they were kicking each other's asses, that's not good.

Blame it on the rain.

OK, it's not actually raining, but the weather is pretty dreary, and I think my seasonal affective disorder is starting to creep in. I'm sure that didn't help, but I'm guessing this stunk regardless.

Kendo Nagasaki vs. Greg Valentine (BJW, 7/6/1995)
Requested by Cobra Commander

Well, that's something I wasn't really ever expecting to see. Then again, it's not like Valentine hadn't been in his share of bloody brawls before this one. Yes, folks, this is Greg "The Hammer" Valentine circa 1995 working a Japanese Death Match. Specifically, it's a no-rope barbed wire match, which is actually pretty tame by '95 Big Japan standards, but still not necessarily something I expected The Hammer to show up in. Still, Valentine could go pretty late into his career, and I think he acquits himself fine here. The bigger question mark is Nagasaki, whom I have never really gone out of my way to see before. My findings are...inconclusive. The guy throws hands really well and bleeds a ton. His crowd brawling is really fun, dumping chairs and tables onto Valentine's head. But when he's not on offense, his selling can create some problems. There's a lot of him lying around on the mat, not so much selling as awkwardly looking around for the next move he has to take. There's a Valentine elbowdrop with an extended windup that's especially frustrating. Still, the rest of the match is an entertaining brawl. It passes my first major test for barbed-wire matches - do wrestlers suddenly gain the ability to resist Irish whips - with flying colors, as they forego that move entirely and mostly try to just push each other into the wire. Also, Greg taking it to the mat early to avoid dealing with the wire altogether was a lot of fun. And the finishing stretch, built around a race to piledrive your opponent onto the chair, was brutal and well-executed, with the actual piledriver finish being fittingly nasty. All in all, I got a kick out of this despite it's more flawed moments.

Kengo Mashimo vs. YOSHIYA (K-Dojo, 6/12/2008)
Requested by Brandon-E

Somebody who was watching Kaientai Dojo in this period more regularly than I is going to have to explain YOSHIYA to me, because as it stands, I don't know that I'm really equipped to review this properly. I guess the big question is is this guy a comedy act, or am I actually supposed to take this seriously. Because if he's a comedy act...well, he's not an especially funny one, but the match at least makes sense. If not, he is a spectacularly shitty wrestler who kills this thing dead within seconds of it getting out of the gate. Basically, he is a really schlubby looking guy who gets booked as a super-powered badass, and it just takes me out of the match immediately. And I do mean immediately - the first spot of the match is a really overblown test of strength that YOSHIYA wins handily despite Mashimo being built like a brick shithouse and YOSHIYA being built like me if I let myself go a bit more. And there's a lot more nonsense where that came from. He also sells really weirdly. I don't know if I can properly describe it. When Mashimo hits him, he sort of groans loudly and starts staggering a little and staring wide-eyed off into space. Mashimo does look really good here, and at this point, he really strikes me as someone who had all the tools, but just needed actual good opponents to use them against, and he sure as Hell wasn't getting that here. I'll give YOSHIYA this much: he did work really stiff here. At least they gave the asskicker gimmick to a guy who could actually kick ass convincingly. But everything else about it...yeah, I'm not entirely sure this isn't just some joke that I'm not getting.

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SLL's All-Request Thursday Night

Daffney vs. Mickie Knuckles (ACW, 2007)
Requested by Jingus

I always found it a little strange that Daffney did so little for me in...certain regards in WCW but did so much for me afterwards. I guess Vince Russo really can ruin anything. Anyway, this is a good little match, and I thought Daffney gave a good performance in it. She is a fun, hammy villain who bumps, sells, and stooges well, and can throw a punch. That's a performance choice I won't really argue with. She's like the kind of wrestler some people wanted me to think Victoria was, but wasn't. Her early "smaller guy trying to lift Andre" spots were cool, and for her own part, Mickie was a pretty good Andre, standing there nonchalantly with her hands on her hips while Daffney struggles to suplex her. Then Daff punches her in the gut, and that throws her off-guard so she can whip off a northern lights suplex, which was pretty cool. When that doesn't get a pin, she tries to smother Mickie in her sizable chest, which gets treated as a sleeper. Really? Because that seems like an air choke. Daffney has her in the clinch...is she applying a sleeper with her forearms while just pressing Mickie's forehead/bridge of her nose into her cleavage to hold her in place? Mickie escapes and tosses Daffney across the ring by her tits as revenge, and we laugh and laugh and laugh and look around the room uncomfortably to make sure no one else is watching and laugh. What keeps this match from really kicking into a higher gear is that - booby toss aside - Mickie really isn't that impressive offensively here. She carries herself well as a big, tough broad, but when it's time to bring the hammer down, she doesn't really come across as the threat she's supposed to be. The announcers build her up as someone who is going to beat the shit out of Daffney when she gets the chance, but then Daffney ends up working stiffer. Also, this has kind of a weird finish with Daffney ducking a Helms-style shining wizard, but Mickie still recovers first and grabs an Oklahoma roll for the pin. Still, this was pretty solid.

Tigers Mask, PSYCHO, Kota Ibushi, & Shanao vs. Makoto Oishi, Katsuya Kishi, Shiori Asahi, & KAGETORA (Indy Summit, 12/9/2005)
Requested by Brandon-E

You know, if I watched Osaka Pro more often, I'd probably be bored stiff of Tigers Mask's baseball shtick by now, but this was actually the first time I've ever seen it, so I got a kick out of it. I wish I could say the same about the rest of the match. This is spot-fu, and not even particularly exciting spot-fu. I know interpromotional stuff has been run into the ground in Japan, but you'd still think that this is the place to crank things up, not dial them back. Shanao/Yoshitsune/a gajillion other names is the one guy who kinda comes through on that front, and even he has cringeworthy moment where he tries a springboard double backflip double back elbow on Oishi and Asahi that ends up falling way short of it's intended targets. In the words of Don West, "it missed, but boy, was it smooth". Depressing current IWGP Junior champ Ibushi probably takes the prize for shittiest guy in this thing, being the subject of one of the more heatless heat segments I've seen recently, and generally looking like an ineffectual dweeb. There was also a weird part in the stretch run where Tigers Mask did some fighting spirit no-selling, and man, if you're a comedy worker, you really need to earn the right to do that shit. I just don't get this at all.

John Cena vs. C.M. Punk (WWE, 7/17/2011)
Requested by Kostka

Seeing as how this is the most hyped and talked about wrestling match to happen in a long, long time, I'm not sure there's really much clever new analysis I can provide here. That's probably a good thing, because I'm running way behind schedule on these, and I can speed things up a bit, but there is at least one thing I should say about it. Last All-Request, I wrote about how the Savage/DDP match from Spring Stampede '97 represented a microcosm of what WCW should have been at that point, but ultimately wasn't because the company was run by morons. This match, more than anything from any of the other failed summer angles WWE has run the last few years, represents a microcosm of what WWE should be right now, but ultimately isn't because the company is run by morons. I mean, I was as psyched by the initial Nexus angle as anyone. But let's be honest, even before Danielson got pseudo-canned, even before Barrett got completely exposed as a guy not ready for prime time, we all kinda knew deep down that this crew could only accomplish so much. Even considering that, it was fumbled embarrassingly, but we knew that angle could only go so far regardless of that. But Cena/Punk shows a WWE where anything and everything is truly possible. John Cena...well, hell, I've been saying the same damn shit about Cena since 2007, and very little has changed since that time, but never has that been more apparent than it was here.

"What does Cena believe? What does he do? What does he represent? Cena's character is that of a basically good, well-meaning wrestler who would have belonged in Hogan's world, but was placed by cruel fate in Austin's world. His general good nature and drive to win endears him to children and women, while the adult males distrust him the way they distrusted every other "moral" figure from the Attitude Era. It's kind of hard to make the show reflect that kind of character without casting a good chunk of your fanbase as heels. His equivalent story is a passion play: the virtuous, hate-free Cena being crucified by a lecherous mob who would rather do away with the man challenging their warped views and continue heaping unearned praise on "heroes" like Shawn Michaels, Triple H, and Kurt Angle, than reconsider their current ways. It's a good story. As Kevin Cook pointed out, it produced one of the finest matches in wrestling history. But I'm not sure you can turn it into episodic storytelling. Not sure you can build a TV series around The Passion of the Cena."

I wrote that days after Mania 23, when the future of mainstream American wrestling was actually looking pretty bright for a moment. A lot of the stuff I wrote in that post blew up in my face, but this still holds true, and I bring it up because, at long last, Cena got to play Casas in his take on the Santo/Casas '97 super classico. Obviously, it's not the first time Cena was getting booed out of the building while playing face, I'm not even sure it's the most Christ-like performance he's ever given, but it's up there. But just as - if not more - importantly, this was Cena finally getting to play Casas against a wrestler worthy of playing Santo. Punk isn't trying to bury Cena like some of his other opponents have. Punk is playing a great heel in front of a crowd that just happens to love him, and that he loves in return. The acknowledgement on commentary that "Cena is in enemy territory" says it all - the face/heel dynamic remains clear cut, only the setting has changed, and they adjust appropriately without forgetting who their characters are.

The three-way conflict between Cena's world, Punk's world, and McMahon's world is the story of WWE today, and the exploration of that could have been just the thing WWE needed to reignite the spark that's been missing for so long. And once again, they fucked it up. But we'll always have Chicago.

Bret Hart vs. Jim Neidhart (WWF, 10/29/1994)
Requested by douchebag

This was the only singles bout between these former tag partners, and I can see why. Mind you, it's not a bad match. I'm quite a bit higher on Bret than my Segunda Caida compatriots tend to be, and I think he does enough to keep this one watchable. Still, Jim Neidhart circa 1994 is only gonna give you so much. He doesn't really do anything to embarrass himself, but he's pretty much just dull as dirt here. There's some good brawling around the ring at points, and I'll maintain that Bret's stompy punches are the best of all stompy punches, but this is not one of the highlights of Bret's awesome '94 run.

Steve Veidor vs. Al Hayes (WoS, 11/8/1975)
Requested by FLIK

As a guy who grew up watching early 90's WWF, the late Lord Alfred Hayes brings back many a fond memory, but most of them open with the phrase "promotional consideration paid for by the following". Between that and his goofy as all hell color commentary appearances, I have enough to get a warm, fuzzy feeling when I think of him, but as is often the case in these situations, I can't help but be intrigued when I get the chance to see if there was more to the guy than just nostalgia. And thanks to FLIK, I now know that there is. Turning the clock back from the days of our crazy old English Lord telling us that Mr. Freeze freeze pops were as much fun to freeze as they are to eat, we go to 1975, back to his Lordship's homeland, and back to the anything but gentlemanly Judo Al Hayes.

Of course, it might be a bit of a misnomer to call England his homeland. This is Hayes' first match back in the UK after a four-year tour of duty in the States, and he's now billing himself as being from the U.S., sporting red, white, and blue wristbands, and wrestling more of the American "all-in" style, much to the consternation of all involved. Forgoing classic British technique for fisticuffs and repeatedly trapping Veidor in the ropes illegally (and trying to take advantage by swinging wildly at Veidor when he doesn't do the same), he pisses off the crowd, flusters the referee...even the always unflappable Kent Walton makes his displeasure known, even slipping in a comment about how "if he wants to wrestle all in, perhaps he should go back to the United States". I can't tell you how happy I am that jingoism is a universal wrestling trope. Veidor is a cool, Britastic matworker, but he starts losing his temper, too, and isn't afraid to take a few wild shots at Hayes to put him in his place. He takes control of the match with more sportsmanlike methods, but Hayes escapes a cravate with a hard forearm to the gut. He follows that with a nasty right hook to the face, earning him his first public warning. He tries to press the advantage, but Veidor cartwheels around a double thrust chop attempt and pastes him with a forearm. Hayes bails to the outside, and god damn does this crowd hate his guts. There's some fun stuff with him jawing with an old fat lady in the aisle, distracting him while Veidor comes out and blasts him from behind with another forearm. Hayes turns back as Veidor gets back in the ring and just stares in disbelief. Cute spot when Hayes gets back in the ring, as Veidor tries to corner him, but Hayes keeps begging off every time. Veidor seemingly gives up on it and starts to walk away, and Hayes charges in to attack while his back is turned, but Veidor quickly turns back and Hayes backpedals again. Hayes does retake control of the match, but he's really pushing his luck, using a sleeper/nerve hold at the base of the neck that looks an awful lot like a chokehold, and throwing a lot of hard clubbering forearms. Walton also starts intimating that one of Hayes' wristbands (worn in part due to injury) may be loaded, and in the penultimate round of a one-fall match where Hayes already has one public warning, he reasons that the match will either end via a draw or via Hayes getting DQ'd. Meanwhile, Hayes repeatedly tries to score a knockout with boot scrapes. Boot scrapes for nearfalls? I approve! Veidor gets saved by the bell, but comes out of his corner guns ablazing in the final round. Hayes has no answer for him, and out of desperation, chucks him over the top rope. This leads to our cooler than cool finish, as Hayes keeps attacking Veidor as he tries to re-enter the ring. The ref tries to hold him back, but with a DQ all but imminent, Hayes shoves him aside and charges Veidor once more...who slingshots over Hayes and grabs him with a sunset flip for a clean pinfall victory, "the way he likes to win". Great, great match, and an amazing look at Hayes when he was great for non-ironic reasons.

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SLL's All-Request Something Something

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Randy Savage (WCW, 4/6/1997)
Diamond Dallas Page vs. Randy Savage (WCW, 6/15/1997)
Diamond Dallas Page vs. Randy Savage (WCW, 10/26/1997)
Requested by DylanWaco

Dylan suggested I do all three of these as a group, since they're all really good on their own, but if you cobbled the best pieces of each together, you'd have a great match. Personally, I thought they all stood on their own just fine, though maybe the third less so than the first two, and, for that matter, the second less so than the first.

The first was actually about as good of a WCW main event match as you were going to get in that period. More than anything, this really struck me as a microcosm of what should have been happening with their main event scene but never really did because WCW was run by the dumbest motherfuckers in wrestling history. Two dudes who hate each other having a brawl is maybe the easiest match in the world to set up and execute, and probably the one WCW was bested suited to at the moment. Here, we get that from two really great brawlers, and they know not to stray too far from that as the base of the match. These are two guys who were notorious for the thorough planning of their matches, and this one in particular really comes off as a match that they nailed structurally. But a lot of what makes it work is that, until the finish, it's very stripped down. It's an epic, but it's not, as some of the net might call it, a "self-conscious epic", and these are two guys who did tend to be very self-conscious about their work. This was No DQ, they had a lot of tools at their disposal to fool around with, but they kept it simple, and that's really exactly what the match needed. Before the finish, the big "moments" that stood out to me were Savage attacking David Penzer and Mark Curtis. Hey, remember when the nWo were a major threat that WCW had to fight off instead of a permanent fixture that WCW had to tolerate? This match does. Even Michael Buffer remembers in probably the best non-ironic moment of wrestling career as he kneels beside his fallen comrade in ring announcing, looking like he now genuinely understands the true horror of the struggle. After years of not caring about this dopey little sport, he now realizes David Penzer is a man just like him, trying to find his way in this crazy, mixed-up world of ours, and that no man deserves the indignity that he - and by extension, all of WCW - has been put through by the nWo. Then he'll drink that all away and come back fresh and ready to introduce Bret "The Hitman" Clarke and tell us how Karl Malone is going to deliver the mail as it has never been delivered before, but it was nice we had that moment. I also want to give props to Tony Schiavone, who had his game face on tonight and did a great job putting over the story of the match, DDP's scrappy underdog status, and how vile Savage and the nWo really were. There's one point after Savage has whipped and piledriven Mark Curtis where Tony is describing the action and asks "what have we become?", which really feels like it belongs next to "Hulk Hogan, you can go straight to Hell" as one of your great Schiavone moments. He's also doing this in spite of Bobby Heenan completely shitting on the match with an out of place heel routine. He snaps at the Brain every time he tries to force some unneeded levity into the match, and I think it's really effective at keeping a serious tone throughout. This is the Schiavone I would have liked to have seen all the time, but it was WCW so...you know. At that brings us to the finish, which was the most "booked" part of the match, so to speak. But man-oh-man, was that a great fucking finish. Curtis gets taken out, nWo favorite Nick Patrick gets brought in with Kevin Nash coming out to supervise. DDP is beaten to within an inch of his life, Savage drags him to his fe-BANG! Diamond Cutter! Patrick - looking his Kenny Powersest - watches as DDP slowly crawls over Savage, shoots the half, and semi-official faction membership be damned, he goes down, and with as fair of a count as you'll ever see, gives DDP the win. A decisive, middle of the ring, clean as a sheet win against one of the biggest stars in modern wrestling history, and one that solidified him as a legit main event player. Did you see that WCW? That was called "creating a new long term star". It wasn't that hard, was it? WHY WERE ONLY ABLE TO DO IT TWICE IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS OF YOUR PITIFUL FUCKING EXISTENCE?! Post-match, the nWo loses their shit. Kevin Nash Jacknifes Nick Patrick. Savage freaks out and tries to attack Kimberly. Eric Bischoff desperately tries to get cooler heads to prevail so the team can regroup. There was a war here. Something happened. It was important. And the crowd wanted Sting. You knew that the crowd wanted Sting, right WCW? You knew that they wanted him to lead the charge and drive off the nWo once and for all, right? Not just to gain a pathetic non-victory over Hogan that would be completely undone in a matter of months before he settled into the new routine, right? Fuck you guys. You deserve TNA. THIS was what professional wrestling looks like.

The second match is a step down, but not a very big one. Loved the opening with Kimberly distracting Savage at the entrance so DDP could rush out of the crowd to attack. Really great, out-of-control start to the match, including a crazy DDP pescado as he pushes the advantage. Notably, we are now into the "taped ribs" phase of Page's career (which was really the last piece of the puzzle he needed to put together to become completely awesome), and he is selling the after-effects of the pescado appropriately. Savage also attacks the ribs appropriately. We need more guys with visible injuries in wrestling so clueless dudes can have an easy hint about what to do in a match. Most wrestling promotions are basically M*A*S*H units, anyway. It shouldn't be that hard. Anyway, this match is largely more of the same in terms of style and structure, and that suits me just fine. However, they do start to stray into out-of-place shenanigans a bit more here. In the late goings, they brawl towards a "VIP area" (do they even have a clear view of the ring from there) made up to look like a picnic area. As much as Dusty yelling "Right behind ya! There's a bar-be-cue pit!" amuses me, the silliness really felt unwelcome after they had done such a good job keeping the tone serious in the previous match.

This continues in the third match, and while it's still high-quality brawling, it's not quite as dynamic as it had been the first two times around. This time, we have a really great crowd brawling segment that leads into Halloween Havoc's graveyard set. It actually feels less silly than the picnic set brawl, I don't even really hold it against the match that much. I just feel like if that's the route you want to go, take it to the concession stand. Having a great brawl amongst a bunch of prop tombstones just isn't the same, especially when compared to the simple beauty of the first match. Also, all of these matches feature heavy use of glass (?) serving trays as foreign objects. That seems just plain odd to me.

Minor grievances aside, you can't go wrong with any of these matches. WCW's main event scene was shit for the most part, but this feud is a great look at what could happen when things actually went right.

Randy Savage vs. Andre the Giant (WWF, 8/13/1988)
Requested by Victator

I have a lot of Savage matches left over from when the All-Savage Friday Night requests. I can't complain too much about the lack of variety, though, Savage fucking ruled. Andre also fucking ruled, and while this is older, broken down Andre, he was a guy who would often find ways to take what little he had left and make the most of it. He wasn't getting anything the level of his Hansen or Killer Khan matches anymore, but Andre can put a smile on my face more often than not. This is one of the better examples of that, and when you're in the ring with Savage, that's to be expected. Andre in this match is all about trying to keep Savage trapped, trying to negate the speed advantage, choking him out with his hands and the strap of his tunic. His way is not very sportsmanlike. Savage rallies, and bless Andre's heart, he can still fall backwards and get his arms trapped in the ropes. Savage goes to work, but just as soon as the giant gets free, he backs Savage into a corner and starts wailing away. He may not be as offensively dynamic as he used to, and he may be struggling a bit to stay upright, but if nothing else, Andre is still a huge motherfucker, and he still looks like a legit threat when he's pounding on some dude in the corner. When Savage finally fells him, it feels like a real accomplishment, but even after the elbowdrop, Andre still powers out at two. They brawl outside, where Savage continues to press the advantage, but when he gets back in, Elizabeth gets on the apron, and Andre grabs her ankle, causing her to collapse in pain. Savage goes back out to deal with it, causing a double count-out, which is weird since Savage had pretty clearly broken the count moments earlier. Whatever. I still had a lot of fun with this, dopey finish aside. The post-match makes up for it a little, as Savage carries a seemingly injured Liz in his arms backstage while Andre parades around the ring triumphantly with the WWF Title.

Low-Ki vs. Sami Callihan (JAPW, 3/26/2011)
Requested by Mando > Eddie

So I guess this is the last great JAPW match, huh? Shame. Still, this is a good note to go out on, one of my favorite indy matches of the year so far. After the awesome bit earlier in the night with Sami attacking Ki at the concession stand, the match opens with Ki doing his fancy slingshot roll into the ring and Sami just pouncing on him. Of course, Ki isn't going to give any quarter, either. He comes back quick and sends him out of the ring, and then dives out feet first into Callihan's face, which was just hideous. He spends most of the rest of the match beating the shit out of him, including one of the hardest slaps you will ever see in a wrestling ring. Callihan has a ton of nice offense of his own, including an out-of-nowhere backdrop driver. Still, the real story with him is the way he eats all of Low-Ki's shit and keeps sticking it out. Scrappy heel fighting from underneath is a weird role, and a tough one to pull off, but Sami is more than up to the task. When on offense, he is a violent monster you want to see get brought down. When he isn't, he's spitting in Ki's face, a constant reminder that he hasn't been put away yet, and you still want to see him brought down. The crowd didn't react to this the way you'd think they would, but I sure as hell did.

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I Do Like SLL's All-Request Monday

Randy Savage vs. The Ultimate Warrior (WWF, 8/29/1992)
Requested by Jingus

Hey, it's that other Savage/Warrior match, and I tend to think there's a good reason it's the "other" one. This is a fine example of a match that's very easy to like, but hard to love, a lot of which is down to the angle surrounding it, which I'll get to in a second. The work itself is strong enough to enjoy, and certainly higher-end than your average Warrior match, but not particularly impressive for a Savage match, and overall, not enough to make this really stand out from the pack. If nothing else, Savage deserves credit for eating Warrior's typically shitty offense really well. I've written before about the nature of a good carryjobs, and whether or not a carryjob where you draw all the attention to your own performance while your opponent still looks like shit is really a carryjob. This is a match where Savage actually makes Warrior look like a competent - albeit flawed - wrestler. This is a good carryjob. Still, it is the Warrior. You can polish that turd a lot, but not often, and while this was a game effort from all involved, there was still some classic Warrior suck shining through. Most notably, there was his selling of the neck when Savage was working it over. I guess I should be impressed when Warrior sells a body part at all, but it was mostly him lolling his head around like Stevie Wonder, which just looked goofy. Speaking of musical references and Warrior looking goofy, I hadn't watched a Warrior match in a while, and I had forgotten how silly his no-selling comebacks looked. I had remembered him doing no-selling comebacks. I had forgotten he did them by dancing like Jennifer Beals did to "Maniac". He also blows a top-rope axehandle. I know Warrior didn't come off of the top rope regularly, but I seriously don't get how you blow an axehandle. He released his grip before it hit Savage, and essentially turned it into a tomahawk chop. I don't know how you fuck up in that specific way. On top of all of this, this was the period that Warrior was wrestling in his proto-Giant Gonzalez flesh singlet...ewwwww. Still, the match is pretty solid overall, with Warrior's problems present but minimal. Then the angle kicks in, and this is where they lose me (well, Savage drops Warrior with a sweet piledriver around this point, so it doesn't lose me completely). In case you missed it, Mr. Perfect had been telling everyone that he was going to be in either Savage or Warrior's corner, but wouldn't say who, getting into both guys' heads and making them paranoid (as if either of them needed help with that) over who had sold out to Perfect. So far, so good. Now, as I have heard it, the plan was that Warrior was going to be the one who would sell out, and that he would win the Title as a result, but Warrior nixed it and didn't get the belt as punishment. I can't recall how much of that is fact and how much is bullshit Scott Keith made up, but it seems like a believable story in light of what actually happened: neither man sold out to Perfect, and the match ends with with Savage coming off of the top rope to Flair on the outside with an axehandle, only for Flair to dodge and hit him in the leg with a chair. Well, that's what was supposed to happen - Savage actually appears to be pulling right of Flair, and Ric seems to stay in place as he hits Savage with the chair. Savage gets counted out (Hebner is really awful down the stretch here, too, with his bit where he gets hit and basically regresses to infancy, conscious and crawling around, but unable to stand upright and deliberately crawling as far away from the match as possible...this is not him unable to see what's happening because he's out of it, this is him actively trying to avoid involvement in the match), and Flair and Perfect work over his leg, and that does lead directly to Flair regaining the Title from Savage, but it seems like you don't need to stage this elaborate ruse to achieve that. "Flair playing mind games" was a shitty excuse for the Black Scorpion angle. I'm not sure whether or not the fact that this was a better angle until the payoff and that the blowoff match was better makes "Flair playing mind games" a more or less shitty excuse here. Either way, it's still a shitty excuse.

Tito Santana & Tony Atlas vs. Randy Savage & Jesse Ventura (WWF, 12/7/1985)
Requested by Lacelle

I don't know that I really had any clear expectations here, but I come away feeling disappointed regardless. We have Tito (who I like), Savage (who I love), Atlas (who is one of my favorite bad wrestlers of all time), and Ventura (who is one of my least favorite bad wrestlers of all time), so we have enough going on here that this could be really good, really bad, or some kind of mixed bag. I wasn't expecting boring, and that's what I got, so yeah, I guess that explains disappointment. Savage really didn't show up for this. Atlas was bad in all the ways he's usually bad, but with none of the enthusiasm that makes me enjoy him despite myself. Ventura was bad, but his stuff with Atlas wasn't as big of a train wreck as I kinda hoped. Tito was probably the best guy in the match. The Paso del Muerte looked really good. But he was the guy in the match the least, as they inexplicably booked Atlas as the face-in-peril, and Santana only gets to show up at the very beginning and very end of the match. There just wasn't a whole lot going on here worth noting.

Jun Akiyama, Yoshihiro Takayama, & Jun Izumida vs. Akira Taue, Takeshi Morishima, & Takuma Sano (NOAH, 3/6/2004)
Requested by ダニエル

This is a lineup that promises some clubbery fun. It doesn't really deliver on that promise to the extent I had hoped for, but still ends up being really enjoyable, largely on the efforts of another one of my favorite bad wrestlers of all time, Jun Izumida. Izumida is like the poor man's Masao Inoue. Not really gifted in any traditional aspect of wrestling, he is a guy who became watchable by wholeheartedly embracing suck. He never elevated it to a high artform the way Inoue did, but he at least made otherwise bad performances fun, and that counts for something. Akiyama and Takayama waste no time going on the offensive, and it's pretty fun, but nothing to get too worked up over. But then they start taking turns dropping elbows on Sano, and Izumida comes in, looking for a piece of the action. He gets completely ignored by his teammates, and I crack a smile as the poor dope stands there, waiting for the opening that isn't going to come. Then Akiyama makes the cover, and Izumida counts the fall, much to the bafflement of his partners. Izumida continues his zaniness for a while before Taue gets tagged in, and he actually has a really nice, energetic little run here, wiping out the opposition with kicks, slaps, and nodawas. Morishima also has some fun smacking Izumida around before Izu turns the tables and goes after Morishima's knee, which had been attacked earlier in the match, leading to him procuring a half-crab for the win. Afterwords, he grabs the mic and challenges Morishima to put the WLW Title on the line against him, while the audience applauds his teammates, who walk away without him. Awwww....

Kamui vs. MASADA (FREEDOMS, 12/25/2009)
Requested by Curt McGirt

Curt seemed to intimate that this match wasn't very good when he recommended it. I don't know why, because I thought this was off the hook. I don't think I've ever seen Kamui before unless it was under a different gimmick. He was solid, but nothing to write home about. But I do dig MASADA, and this is one one of the better showings I've ever seen from him, both dishing out and eating beatdowns. He throws some some shots with a cinderblock into Kamui's back and ribs early on that look suitably mean, and there's a lot of fun brawling through the crowd and into the concession stand/parking garage area. MASADA enthusiastically charges into a garage door when Kamui dodges an elbowsmash, and for whatever reason, the folks at the building decide to open said garage door, which allows Kamui to jack a car, drive it through the crowd to ringside, and into MASADA. Kamui's second attempt at vehicular homicide is foiled when MASADA chucks his cinderblocks into the front windshield, breaking it, but Kamui just continues the fight outside, throwing MASADA onto the trunk of the car and hitting a nice running splash off of a chair onto him for a nearfall in this apparently falls count anywhere match (in fact, every pin attempt in this match happens on top of the car...groovy). MASADA recovers and hits a running powerbomb that sends Kamui through the rear windshield, but that only gets two, and Kamui is able to fight back, knocking him onto the roof of the car and coming off the top rope with a roof-denting somersault senton. His top-rope rana gets countered into a borderline Sid-in-WarGames '91 powerbomb on the roof that's absolutely horrifying. It only gets two, as does the almost as horrifying brainbuster onto the roof that follows. And then there's a piledriver onto the roof that leaves it completely concave, which gets two...because MASADA pulls him up? Wha? Why would you go for the win twice in a row and then pull the guy up on the third attempt? He does a death valley driver on the roof for the win, and I know that's actually his finisher, but of the four moves he pulled in the final stretch, it was very much the least impressive. It was kinda odd, and a flat finish. Also, there was a little bit of blatant positioning done by MASADA to properly eat some of Kamui's flying offense onto the car. But fuck it, he looked great otherwise, I really dug the gimmick here, and this was a lot of fun to watch.

Shingo Takagi vs. Daisuke Sekimoto (Buyuden, 5/10/2008)
Requested by Brandon-E

This is a little tough for me to sort out my feelings on. Shingo is the one Dragon's Gate guy distinct enough for me to hate, and Sekimoto is a guy who grew on me, but hadn't done so yet when this match happened. I had pretty low expectations here, but this match...well, I didn't like it, but I didn't hate it, and I found things in it that I liked, and most of what I expected to go wrong didn't. This is a grudge match, and it is actually wrestled like a grudge match, with both guys really going after each other and putting some emotion behind it. You can tell that they both wanted this to deliver, and they went about it the right way...but while I appreciated the thought and the effort, most of what they did fell flat with me. This was structured like a match I would like, but they weren't bringing much to that structure to keep me interested, and they ended up losing me. About half-way through the match, Shingo turns up the dial, and I start to care a bit more. His lariats had some real force behind them, and I could get behind that. Sekimoto follows suit, busting out some really snappy German suplexes. One of the problems I always had with Sekimoto is that he is a guy who uses the German as his big move, but they tend to look really low-impact. Not here. He really planted Shingo with a few of them. But the finishing stretch is a really generic finisher kick out pop-up scream etc. fest, and my worst fears about the match were finally realized. They waited until the last moment to realize them, though, and the two Last Falconries that Shingo finished Sekimoto off with looked suitably nasty. Overall, not as bad as I expected, and something that I can see people getting into, but it wasn't really for me.

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SLL's All-Request Last Friday Night, Phaze Three

Wow, I genuinely was not expecting the Frank Zappa joke to play to it's conclusion. Hopefully, you'll find these were worth waiting for.

Virus vs. Guerrero Maya Jr. (CMLL, 6/7/2011)
Requested by Wrestling_KO Mike

The list of guys who have been as consistently great as Virus or greater over the last couple of years can probably be counted on one hand (Black Terry, Navarro, Rey, Danielson, Ishikawa...yep, that's one hand). Guerrero Maya Jr.? Well, the only thing I know is that he's the son of Guerrero Maya, AKA the aforementioned wrestling God Black Terry. He also was the original Multifacetico, and had a neat match with his dad a few years back. What he's been doing lately, I don't know. But all I need to know is that he's in there with Virus, and I feel we're in good hands, as well we should, because this match rocks. Earlier this year, I dropped by Daniel the Katakana Man's forum to talk about the WKO 100. Daniel is a guy who hasn't been exposed to a lot of lucha (I think) and seems to have a slight aversion to the stuff, but I promised him that if I found some 2011 lucha that I thought might have some crossover appeal, I'd let him know. Well, this match seems to have inadvertently taken dead aim at the lucha neophytes. As much as I don't believe in the need for "lucha eyes", I do realize most people can't be thrown cold into Navarro vs. Solar and be expected to get it immediately. I mean, that kind of match is as alien as E.T. landing in your backyard. You have to be eased into that shit (though once you are, you will look down your nose at everyone else who doesn't get it, but I digress). But this seems like it has real potential as a lucha gateway drug. There is a ton of matwork here, and while it isn't as technically elaborate as your IWRG maestro stuff, the execution is really tight, and I think that makes up for it, and it can hook people who might otherwise be turned off by elaborate lucha matwork. And it's not like the matwork here is dumbed down or anything. It's done in a way that I think would be more accessible to the lucha novice, but it's still very rewarding for long-time fans like myself. We also get some really nifty highspots mixed in, including an awesome Maya tope and a Virus slingshot somersault senton to the floor which has to rank high on the "Dives of the Year" list so far. Top it all off with a luchafied 90's All Japan finishing stretch (Maya busts out what could be called an Air Raid Crash onto his knee...if Go Shiozaki started using that tomorrow, I would not be surprised to see it), and you have a real winner of a match. I don't think I need to sell anyone on Virus. Maya more than proved his worth here, looking great on the mat, in the air, and eating all of Virus' offense really well. I was a little bugged by the reffing here, which surprised me, as I tend to be pretty tolerant of idiosyncratic lucha referees. The super-slo-mo counting felt wrong, and there is one spot where Maya has Virus in a rana-style pin, and they are literally bouncing across the mat while the ref counts. Virus is actually forcing his entire body off of the mat and across the ring in order to get Maya off of him, but the ref thinks his shoulders never leave the mat? Phil and Mike are talking about this as a legit, high-end MOTYC. I am not quite so gung ho about this. It didn't really hit me as strongly as the Terry/Navarro vs. Apache/Mortal stuff, this year's Navarro/Solar match, Panther/Casas, Miz/Morrison, Miz/Lawler, Lawler/Linder vs. Dundee/McCarver, Moxley/Jacobs, the Cena/Punk matches, Ki/Callihan, Cerebro/Comando, and a bunch of other stuff, but it was still a blast and something I would highly recommend to everyone.

Franz Schlederer vs. Gil Breihöder Cabanas (CWA I'm guessing?, 8/12/1986)
Requested by Jetlag

Well, it's German, and it's the 80's, and CWA was a German promotion in the 80's. It seems like a safe enough guess. I don't really have a lot of context for this match, which makes reviewing it a little difficult, so I have to try my best to pick things up as I go along. The one thing I know for sure from poking around this guy's YouTube channel is that Schlederer is the babyface who looks like a lankier Magnum T.A., and Cabanas is the Marc Rocco-looking heel. I also conclude that while it's a safe guess to say this is the CWA, it's not a lock. I mean, I've seen a fairly limited amount of CWA in my time. I'm no expert. There are knockouts, and the ref is carding wrestlers. There seems to be a round break at the end of the second of the three videos this spans, but that's the only one shown. On the other hand, there is some degree of clipping going on. I'm not sure how much, but let's be honest: I have very little idea of what is going on. The filming appears at first glance appears to be fancam footage. But over time, we get shots from multiple angles, and even some crowd shots peppered in. The editing isn't frequent or professional enough to suggest this is pro-shot (keep an ear out for the bit where the audio is suddenly replaced by what sounds like a German commercial break, and the video cutting out altogether at one point followed by brief, flashing blue screen accompanied by some weird sci-fi sound effect). All in all, I feel like the picture I'm getting of this match is a strange and incomplete one.

That said, it's also a really good one. I don't totally understand the circumstances behind the match, the rules, how much I'm being shown, or even how the match ends (it really feels like a coin toss between a time-limit draw and Schlederer getting DQ'd). But I do know what I like, and I like this. Cabanas is rudo-riffic, yelling at the crowd, pasting Schlederer with forearms and kicks, and cheating like crazy. Then Schlederer comes back with this great offensive run, popping Cabanas with these half-forearms/half-European uppercuts, some groovy uppercuts including one where he actually drags Cabanas backwards, and what I'm inclined to describe as an inverted powerslam bomb (basically, envision the powerslam Samoa Joe did to Necro Butcher, but with Necro's back facing Joe's body). That's the initial feeling out section of the match, and yeah, I could bitch about them throwing out too much, too soon, but they keep delivering at a pretty steady pace throughout this thing. Cabanas takes control and mauls Schlederer with hard forearms, punches, kicks, and stomps, all while constantly choking him and gouging at his eyes. Schlederer fights back, and not only does he look like a lanky Magnum T.A., he kinda works like one, too, all fired-up, pissed off brawling, and not taking shit from anyone who gets in the way. That includes the ref, who's armed with a whistle and isn't afraid to use it. He gets in Schlederer's grill a little too much while he's standing on Cabanas' throat, and Schlederer pushes him back a little. This leads to Schlederer getting shown the yellow card, which would be totally understandable had it not been for Cabanas' rampant cheating in full view of the ref for the entire match up to this point. But don't worry, there's a method to the madness that we'll see soon enough. Well, at least I saw it. Anyway, Schlederer doesn't let this keep him down, as he chucks Cabanas to the outside and pounds on him with forearms before they end up back in the ring and work a really fun not-quite-jujigatame segment (you know, it's the one they always did in the 80's where your feet are pushing against the guy's body like you're trying to pull his arm clean off of his torso) before the one clear round ends (I guess). When we come back, there's a funny test of strength bit. Cabanas is great stooging here when Schlederer overpowers. Schlederer powers Cabanas' hands to the mat and stomps on them, but when Cabanas locks up again and powers Schlederer's hands to the mat, Schlederer pulls them away when Cabanas tries to stomp them and floors him with a dropkick to the face. Cabanas works his way back via extensive cheating, but when Schlederer tries to turn the tables by gouging Cabanas' eyes, he gets another yellow card from the ref, despite Cabanas having done the exact same thing moments earlier (and throughout much of the rest of the match for that matter) to the referee's disinterest. At this point, I can only conclude we're dealing with a heel ref, and apparently Schlederer does, too, giving the ref a public warning of his own when he rips the cards out of his hands and chucks them out of the ring. Schlederer resumes chucking Cabanas around - and occasionally out of - the ring, culminating in an awesome spot where he ties Cabanas up in the ropes and then dives head-first into him with an in-ring tope. The match ends immediately after that, and as mentioned it's not clear how (the ref was clearly trying to untie Cabanas when Schlederer charged him, and Schlederer backed him into the corner when he tried to lecture him afterwords, but I don't know that I actually saw a DQ signalled...any German speaking readers who could help me out with this one?). This wasn't quite as big of a revelation as the last time someone on Segunda Caida watched an old match from continental Europe between two guys no one had ever heard of, but it was still awesome. It was a really intense brawl. If I had to guess, I'd think these two were feuding with each other at the time. Not only was it really heated, but I don't think there was a single pin attempt in the whole thing. Both guys were going for a knockout, though considering how many times each guy pulled the other one up when they were down, they were really just trying to punish one another, and I can always get behind that. Also, as a guy who is really down on modern German wrestling crowds, I wanted to note how much I liked the atmosphere for this match. It appears to be held in a tent at a carnival, with rides visible through the entrance in the background, and a lot of people seated at tables eating and drinking beer, and they were all really hot in the organic way that I like my wrestling crowds to be, rather than the nauseating way wXw crowds tend to be. Granted, this was a crowd of families and working class schmoes, which tends to help, but maybe it would help if you sat the wXw fans down and put something in their mouths.

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All-Request Friday Night Phaze 2

Bryan Danielson vs. Teddy Hart (MLW, 1/9/2004)
Requested by Jingus

The commentary here is a little less notable. Color commentator Julius is severely undermiced, which seems like a hard production mistake to make, and the play-by-play guy makes reference to Teddy Hart using a "waKEEtaGAMee", which irritates me more than it realistically should. The match is basically fine, if underwhelming. It goes a little over eight minutes, and I have seen guys do a lot with eight minutes. This had a lot of stuff in it, but still ended up feeling short and sparse compared to, say, some of your more pimped sub-10 minute Superstars matches. Also, Danielson really looked like he was just along for the ride on this one. Didn't look bad by any means, but it is weird to see Danielson in a match where he is not actively excelling or trying to excel. He is a guy I have developed abnormally high standards for, and he didn't really meet them here. But again, he didn't look bad. Teddy Hart was both the best and worst thing about the match. All of his big, spectacular offense looked big and spectacular, particularly his springboard into a hurricanrana position which he rolled off into the...*sigh*..."waKEEtaGAMee". Then there's the matter of his pants. There's a noticeable rip in the seat from the beginning, and I wonder if he just tore it, or if that was by design. And then at about the half-way point of the match, I think I get my answer, as Danielson rips Teddy's pants off, which would be strange to begin with, but gets even stranger when you realize it's being played completely straight. It's not even a comedy moment. The announcer is going on about what a serious insult that was to Teddy's pride. It's kinda weird. The main problem with the match, though, was the finish. Teddy comes off the top rope with the Open Hart Surgery, but appears to fuck up his arm on the landing, with the announcer suggesting that he may have separated his shoulder. I've already reviewed Savage/Tenryu, where we saw how the last-minute tweaking of a body part can lead to a kick-ass finish. This is how not to do that. Teddy sells it to the back of...wherever it was MLW was shooting on it's deathbed. I wouldn't have been surprised if he starting shouting "heavens to Murgatroid" at some point. But then he guts it back up to the too rope, but guts his way through...his pre-move taunt where he raises his arms to to the side. Two seconds prior, he was clutching his arm to his chest in agony. Now it's instantly healed to the point that he can do his pre-move taunt. I mean, it was a less dynamic taunt, but come on, man. Priorites. He goes for the Hart Attack (shooting star press...not the double team move, obviously), but Danielson moves and locks on the Cattle Mutilation...which horrifically injured Teddy can somehow hang on to long enough to not only escape, but procure another "waKEEtaGAMee" - which required the use of his possibly separated shoulder - to make Danielson instatap. Well, what the fuck was the point of that? Still, this was a basically enjoyable little match, with Teddy bringing the fun highspots and Danielson being solid if unspecatcular.

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Terry Gordy (AJPW, 6/1/1991)
Requested by TimLivingston

Looking at Misawa vs. Gordy on paper, you get a certain image of what it might be. And well, this match is exactly that, and by extension, it's the probably the best match I've reviewed on All-Request to date. This is two bomb throwing guys throwing bombs, and every shot is super nasty looking. Gordy is a lot less bump happy here than he was in the States, but I think that works to the match's favor. He basically approaches this like he did his matches with Brody, where he is all about toe-to-toe brawling with his opponent. But Brody was a really big guy who didn't bump or sell a whole lot. Going toe-to-toe with him was almost a necessity for a good match (though Brody's final World Class run was probably the least shitty run of his massively overrated career, but that's neither here nor there). This is Misawa we're talking about. Specifically, this is Misawa in '91, still one year away from his first Triple Crown win, two years away from establishing himself as "The Man" in All Japan, and three years away from achieving wrestling immortality. He's still the scrappy youngster chasing after Jumbo at this point, but uh-oh, here's a big-ass Georgian roadblock that he's about to run headfirst into. So whereas Gordy vs. Brody is compelling because neither man will give an inch, Gordy vs. Misawa is compelling because Gordy won't give an inch, and Misawa will repeatedly be knocked down, but will keep coming back giving as good as he gets. The punches, elbows, kicks, and lariats thrown by both men are absolutely brutal. The tide turns when Misawa lucks into an enzuigiri that busts Gordy open, and they both end up spilling to the outside soon after. Misawa goes for a Tiger Driver on the floor, but Gordy back body drops him and goes for a Powerbomb on the floor, a sore point for Misawa stemming from a prior tag with Kawada against the Miracle Violence Connection. Misawa won't go up for it, so Gordy lets him go and then knocks him out of his boots with a lariat instead. From there, the second half of the match is Gordy trying to hit the Powerbomb vs. Misawa trying to hit the Tiger Driver (back when the plain old Tiger Driver could actually win Misawa a match), and both of them are unafraid to punish the other for not going along with their plans, including Gordy dropping Misawa with a nasty DDT when he blocks the Powerbomb. Gordy eventually manages to stuff him with it, but Misawa grabs the rope, so Gordy returns to lariating the fuck out of him before Misawa turns it around and drops him with the Tiger Driver for two. He then procures that odd facelock thing that he's used as a resthold in a billion matches, but in '91, it constitutes a legitimate nearfall (What was the timeline on All Japan taking submission holds seriously, anyway? Gordy breaks out the scorpion deathlock a couple times in this match, too.). The final stretch is actually Misawa's facelock vs. Gordy's lariat of all things, but it works quite well. Gordy looks like he's trying to decapitate Misawa 18 years early, and Misawa is just doing the best he can he wear the monster down. He actually gets a really big nearfall after trapping him in the facelock for a while. Gordy kicks him in the face from his back, sending Misawa tumbling into the corner, but as he makes it back to his feet, Misawa comes roaring out with a huge "fuck you, whitey" elbowsmash that puts Gordy down just long enough for Misawa to score the pin. Gordy recovers pretty quickly after that, and the ring crew rushes in to hold him back, while Misawa is still splayed out exhausted on the canvas and Fukuzawa starts going hoarse screaming on commentary. It really comes off as a big win for our new hero, which I'm guessing was the entire point. The match itself really feels like a lost classic. I got my copy from Ditch's site, so if you're in the know, you definitely want to track this down.

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