Found Footage Friday: 1989 NJPW~!

2/8/89

George Takano vs. Hiro Saito

MD: Pretty solid match. Takano was being pushed more at the start of 89 (with his team with Super Strong Machine) than at any point since he dropped the Cobra gimmick. He looked good here in a singles against a very game opponent. He did take most of the match. Saito would try to get him in a hold and he had an interesting technical escape to everything (be it stepping through to set up a takedown or a headstand to get out of a headscissors). Saito had a nice escape or two of his own. Things really picked up down the stretch as they absolutely paintbrushed each other for thirty seconds. That led to a nearfall off of Saito's senton and Takano catching him out of nowhere with the spin wheel kick and then finishing him off with a suplex and top rope splash. You'll be glad to know they shook hands post-match.  

ER: This was good. Tight grappling, real force applied during submissions and lock ups and knuckle locks, real physics used in takedowns and near misses. Takano had some great stuff to steal, including a cool low kip up out of an armbar (going straight into leaning his weight down into Saito's legs to maneuver out) and a cool pendulum swing spinebuster takedown, shifting Saito's weight back and forth before slamming him. Saito's figure 4 headscissors is impossibly snug, and all of Takano's eventual escape looked well earned. Once he escapes he locks Saito into a disgusting leg-grapevined camel clutch that would have played as the finish. You know maybe someone shouldn't steal any of this Takano stuff as I don't know who would be able to apply it as well as he does. They work these holds until the 10 minute announcement and then get right up and go into the finishing stretch. I was getting used to these snug holds and suddenly we're getting suplexes, Takano going up for a high backdrop, Saito hitting his senton famously full weight. I think Takano is much more interesting working holds than he is doing actual running offense. All of his holds looked like he was stretching Saito, but his top rope splash finish looked like he was trying to avoid full contact at all costs. 

Bello Greco/Sergio El Hermoso vs. Hirokazu Hata/Naoki Sano

MD: When Hata and Sano came back from Mexico, they brought their sparring partners with them. There's a Fujiwara match with them that people should seek out. As best as I can tell, Greco was the real base and worker and Sergio was the flash and lead for the comedy. He kissed the announcer before the match and blew one to the ref, causing all sorts of havoc. Hata and Sano had some big climb up armdrags on Greco. And the kiss spot where Sano went flying the first time but Hata blocked it to tweak the nose/lips the second worked about as well as it could. Sano had a bit more style to what he was doing maybe, whereas Hata just played into what he was given more, but both looked good. Finish had Hata hit a dive to the floor off the top and Sano hit a German (but not able to hold the bridge) for the win. In context, a lot of these spots were repeated from the TV matches they were having, but they were all crowd-pleasers for the house show crowd.

ER: The exoticos' music is incredible. It's like someone doing a muted trumpet sound with their mouth doing a sexy Peter Gunn theme. They have a great act. You can tell it's a great act, because they got constant laughs for the full 14 minute runtime, while tons of wrestlers on this card couldn't buy a reaction. Matt Borne and Italian Stallion can't buy a single sound from the people of Sapporo, but they love every single thing Greco and Sergio do, with good cause. The fans love the silly rope running, they love the butt stuff (I wonder if Rick Rude ever saw Bello Greco and lifted an entire career of selling atomic drops), they love the accidents and the misdirection, just involved in every single movement both do. Their timing is great throughout, the absolute best bit being Greco running down the length of the apron to just miss Hata, running his own face into the turnbuckle. Sano looked like a guy clearly in the middle of his breakout year whenever he was in (his stepover armdrag early in the match was so fast and clean) and Hata looked like a guy who was not that, and I loved how they worked with the exotico tandem. They weren't guys being worked around, they were integrating nicely. I would have loved to see Greco and Sergio stick around longer than these few weeks of '89 and work with more opponents, see what the act could do in singles, but all the footage we have is so good in the way that I'm happy it never burnt out. 

Seiji Sakaguchi/Kengo Kimura vs. Matt Borne/Italian Stallion 

ER: This doesn't add up to anything big but has plenty of fun working parts. I have not seen much of Italian Stallion's 1989 New Japan run, and it's crazy how much time he spent there that year and only that year. Sakaguchi makes chopped liver out of him, swallowing him up whole and chaining judo throws while never letting go of his arm, which he caught when Stallion tried to throw one punch. One punch that doesn't land and Sakaguchi treats him like he's Seiji Sakaguchi fighting The Italian Stallion. Stallion isn't bad at all, but he is much better when he wrestles like a poor man's Matt Borne rather than his usual rich man's Joey Maggs. His dropkick hits like a truck and he throws Kimura with a cool belly to belly, but needs a better clothesline. 

I love how Matt Borne moves. He's just as unpredictable as Buzz Sawyer but keeps things more compact. He's a bulldog, goes hard after Sakaguchi and gets hit hard by the large man. I loved a double leg trip Kimura and Sakaguchi pulled on him, like they were actually trying to pull him apart like a wishbone. Borne really smothers Kimura whenever he's in with him, riding him on the mat and not letting him land anything until the finish. He even pulls some bullshit when the ref misses Sakaguchi's tag and Borne goes back to picking on Kimura, shutting down a hot tag. Crowd doesn't react in any way to his bombs away which is just cold. He eventually takes the pin when Kimura gets a piledriver, and I like how he sells the piledriver with confusion instead of neck pain. 

MD: Little bit of a weird one to me. Stallion (and Borne to a lesser degree) gave a bit to Kimura but mostly ate him up on the mat. Stallion would just roll around on top of him. As you can imagine, they'd give more for Sakaguchi though. Kimura did get the win with the leg lariat/pile driver combo so maybe he felt giving but it did seem like Stallion was going to assert himself as much as possible when given the chance (just not with one of the bosses). Maybe that's why he stayed around so much in 89? 

Super Strong Machine vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 

ER: This doesn't rise to levels of Fujiwara singles match greatness, but it is a Fujiwara singles match against one of my favorite New Japan 80s natives so it's obviously a great 12 minutes. Fujiwara is in house show antagonist mode and just trolls Strong Machine with annoying stuff all match. He breaks every lock up with a slap, in a way that's not meant to hurt but meant to rile up Machine into making mistakes. It's all mischievousness where he retains plausible deniability over being a troll but it's all there. Look at Machine finally make his first inroads and throw Fujiwara to the floor, only to see the insanely aggravating way Fujiwara casually walks back around the ring after hitting the floor. Fujiwara gets his head bounced off the turnbuckle bolt and just strolls away adjusting his trunks. I don't think there was a wink thrown to the crowd, but it was implied. Just a cool fucking guy catching eyes with a girl in a car while crossing the street. 

Things open up when Machine starts going after Fujiwara's taped up knee with an ankle lock, and you can tell it's getting to Fujiwara because he starts throwing backfists from his back into Machine's neck. Machine wisely maneuvers things into a single leg crab, much harder to throw backfists from that position. Fujiwara breaks free from it by fishhooking Strong Machine's mask with one hand and throwing punches with the other, gripping a handful of the bottom edge of his mask with his left while punching him straight in the jaw with his right. When he gets to his feet he throws half a dozen headbutts, still holding Machine by the mask, hopping on his bad knee while throwing them. There's a great moment where Machine fires up after Fujiwara kneels on his face, and demands Fujiwara punch him some more, like a man. Fujiwara happily obliges and buckles Strong Machine's legs. 

The finish sequence is hot as hell. Fujiwara catches a clothesline and puts his weight behind an armbar in one motion, but Machine rolls through, so Fujiwara tries to take him down again with a Fujiwara but Machine blocks it, so Fujiwara pulls an inside cradle. Fujiwara's greatest successes come from never wanting to finish a match a specific way, always willing to pivot to whatever might be available. 

MD:  Not top tier-Fujiwara, sure, but it was definitely chippy and snippy. They leaned on each other. Battering in the corner, etc. I'd say SSM had the advantage until he tried slamming Fujiwara's head into the post. Then he tried to stop the headbutts that would come (self aware in a very good way) but couldn't. He did pull Fujiwara out and post his leg and Fujiwara had to fight from underneath for a bit. Fujiwara came back with huge headbutts though and ultimately after two arm bar attempts (first rolled through) locked in a small package. Nice little self-aware bits in this, the sort of thing you'd be more likely to get from Super Strong Machine than a lot of his contemporaries.

Hiroshi Hase vs. Shiro Koshinaka

MD: This was really good. Super high on it. There's a rule for 1987-1989 NJPW Juniors matches: The best ones start with an immediate ambush/advantage, and Koshinaka got that, nailing Hase in the ropes on the first exchange and going after his taped knee. Lots of nasty little shots and bigger submissions. At one point he went for a suplex, and Hase's leg went out and his head just crushed into the mat. Koshinaka hit the butt butt, the top rope knee drop and even the power bomb. Then he shoved Hase out. The ref got in his face and that let Hase pull Shiro out to take over. 

I wouldn't have minded if Hase sold just a little more but I was generally ok with it. Most of his offense wasn't hefting Koshinaka up but slamming his head into the exposed post instead (the best kind of offense). Koshinaka bled. Hase stayed on the wound. The ref tried to stop him at one point and Hase pointed out that Shiro had been unsportsmanlike in going after his leg and this was warranted. 

Eventually he did hit the Northern Lights but couldn't keep the bridge given his leg. He ended up choking Koshinaka for the DQ, which is way better than it sounds on paper, trust me. Post match Hiro Saito came in and they beat on Koshinaka and anyone that tried to stop them. Honestly, as a finish, it's not something we saw much during this era in New Japan and it was grisly and effective for me. Really good match.  

ER: This was really good. There was a different Koshinaka/Hase match on the New Japan DVDVR 80s set that happened the next month, from 3/16/89. I was higher on that match than the consensus (I had it 25 spots higher than the final results) and I think this is the better match. Koshinaka goes after Hase's leg like a heel and works the first third of this match as Junior Heavyweight Tenryu. Hase's comeback goes on so much longer and is equally violent, so much so that it turns Koshinaka into a bigger babyface by virtue of Hase being such an asshole. Hase pays merely lip service to Koshinaka's knee work - had the knee come back in any meaningful way, instead of Hase occasionally shaking it out while otherwise not acknowledging - it would have been one of the best New Japan juniors matches of the late decade. Koshinaka throws sharp kicks at Hase's knee that do not look pulled, so much so that it seems absurd when Hase goes on offense for 10 straight minutes with no sign of slowing down. 

Until Hase just flipped the switch, his knee selling was great. There was this almost third wall breaking spot where Koshinaka went for a snap suplex and Hase couldn't make it over on his bad leg, so instead whips nose first into the mat in one of the more disgusting DDT bumps I've ever seen. It's such a fucked up looking bump that it looked like a blown spot or miscommunication. It hits this meta level of "Hase's leg is so bad that he can't take moves the way you all expect guys to take moves" and it was something that could have made this match legendary. But Hase messes that up to and actually treats the spot like a fuck up, not acknowledging the bump he took at all and kind of quickly getting to his feet. 

But he went so hard on Koshinaka that I think he overcame the lack of selling. I've never thought of Hase as a kicker, but he unleashes some hellish kicks on Koshinaka. At one point, Koshinaka on his knees, Hase is just kicking him right across the bridge of the nose and Koshinaka hangs in for more, so Hase kicks him in the back of the head. He's really merciless, and Koshinaka turns into this fired up screaming babyface while taking everything Hase brought. Hase's torso and legs wound up smeared with Koshinaka's blood and he looked like a deranged animal biting at Koshinaka's head. The DQ finish looked great as there really was nothing the referee could do to separate Hase's mouth from Koshinaka's head. That man looked like he was pulling with all his might to pull him off and it was not happening. I'm curious what the consensus would have been on this match. Enough DVDVR voters would have hated Hase's selling, but I think more would have loved the violence. 

Antonio Inoki/Riki Choshu/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Big Van Vader/Bam Bam Bigelow/Rip Morgan 

ER: A great house show main event that never quite settles into a structure but has the two biggest gaijin taking tons of big bumps for the freaking powerhouse native team. That's a star studded lineup and Vader/Bigelow treat them as size/power equals for long stretches. Bigelow takes a full flip for Riki's second lariat one minute in. Just a full backflip like he's Jeff Hardy. Fujinami isn't taking a flipping bump for Vader's clothesline, he's blocking it and getting a sick backslide instead. This is Riki's lariat though, so even Vader is taking a big leaping bump for it late in the match. Vader and Bigelow get rocked by suplexes and clotheslines all match, from all of them. Choshu even suplexes Vader in from the apron! Everybody was taking suplexes man.  

There isn't even really any hierarchy in this match, it's kind of strange. Going into it Rip Morgan feels like the most obvious Guy Taking Pin in Main possible but he's in there working big exchanges with Inoki and Choshu. He hits a kitchen sink knee to Choshu that Riki takes so well that it made my stomach hurt. Riki leans into his Scorpion Deathlock like he's applying it to Morgan as a shoot submission. Nobody felt like a bigger start than anyone else, it was just six stars working a main event that nobody outside of this sports center will ever see.

Bigelow was the one who worked this with joy. Everybody works with energy but Bam Bam was having fun. He's not a monster, he's the guy working with some color, a little whimsy. He shakes his fist out after punching Riki, bodyslams Inoki with force, breaks up a pin with a falling headbutt to Inoki's face. He's doing light axe handles off the top and throwing headbutts, but also looks like he's giving Vader ideas on how to wreak havoc. Vader had this amazing press slam hoist of Choshu, super impressive, made him look weightless. Bam Bam gets in the ring and directs Vader to throw Riki onto his knee in a gutbuster. It rules.  There's an awesome 1-2 where Bigelow breaks Inoki's octopus hold on Morgan by leveling him with a clothesline, and right when he hits it he gets wasted by a Riki lariat, great bookend to him getting flipped by one early. There are some little clips in this so we don't get a full feel for the finish, but this is six guys I loved watching run around each other. 

MD: 1989 starts with the Power Elite of Inoki/Choshu/Fujinami coming together against Vader and Bigelow. They do a bunch of these matches in January and the start of February, so it's a little overdone by this point, but the plus side is that they've been practicing and honing the match. That meant some spots like the Inoki kicking off out of the over the shoulder double team worked quite well. 

I really enjoyed the start of this one, with the heels ambushing and then Choshu ducking a Bigelow clothesline, hitting a lariat that just staggered him and then hitting the real one that Bigelow took a flip bump for (very rare for 89 in general and especially a guy Bigelow's size). In order to keep things fresh and prep for the Russians coming in, they had Rheingans join Vader/Bigelow as their American player/coach and he was at the margins of this one. 

This was fairly back and forth. You feel bad for Fujinami here. He's fine but he doesn't come off as the ace/champ when teaming with two of the most charismatic wrestlers ever. Vader was there to basically get control again. It boiled over (with a clip, and during that clip Inoki may have actually won it) to either the DQ or the post-match where heels controlled in the corner wouldn't stop double teaming and charging in. 

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Found Footage Friday: NJPW 85~! DANCING ANDRE~! CAPTAIN REDNECK~! INOKI~! BACKLUND~! SHARPE~! ADONIS~! HIRO~!

NJPW 5/18/85

Masked Superstar vs. Kim Su Hong (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbKieuAaBEQ)

MD: Kim is a South Korean wrestler who shows up on these NJPW cards now and again. I can't say that he stands out much. I love Eadie, love him, one of my favorites, but in New Japan he is so often a gatekeeper, just an incredibly credible wall for people to push off against. He takes 90% of this. Still some neat small things like losing Kim early and then claiming he was oiled up. That sort of being alive within the match. All of his stuff looks mean and credible with both a killer neckbreaker and then a twisting drop down into a front facelock. He also whacks him with something outside of the ring to big effect. Kim does come back late and his stuff is middling, some good, some bad. Superstar drops down on him and nails him with a clothesline to end it.

ER: We don't have Hashimoto/Sano, or the Canek/Enrique Vera tag, but we have Masked Superstar throwing Finlay level clubs to Su Hong's chest and killer knees to the side of the head. I liked how Superstar held the ropes to block a single leg and just went right back to clubbing. Superstar kind of jams Su Hong up on his small pieces of offense, running too hard into dropkicks that really shouldn't have moved him but looked worse with how he treated them. His clothesline looked like a match finishing clothesline and there's a good chance I won't watch a Kim Su Hong match the rest of my life. 

Super Strong Machine vs. Tony St. Clair (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pADWavSmgM)

MD: Just a credible back and forth match. I wouldn't say any of the transitions were particularly interesting but everything looked good. SSM is a tank and St. Clair can hold his own. They traded advantages and holds. Machine had a nice leaping headbutt off the ropes and a killer clothesline. St. Clair turned a headlock into a backbreaker (by slipping out, not a Robinson backbreaker). Good finishing stretch where St. Clair got a nearfall on a sunset flip in but Machine was able to get a German for the win. Wakamatsu got involved pre-match even though Machine wanted nothing to do with him and then tried to attack SSM post match only to get thrashed for his trouble. Added a little spice to what would have otherwise been a meaty but straightforward midcard match.

ER: This crowd is so fired up for Super Strong Machine. He was getting clapping Misawa-type chants during his entrance. I wasn't expecting Tony St. Clair to look larger than Strong Machine. My mental pictures don't always give me accurate reads but both are 15-20 pounds in the opposite direction I picture them. Made it look good when Tony started hitting Machine. SSM can work real tough and St. Clair looked like he was moving him good with his back elbow and uppercut, sharp front chancery. His dropkick pushes up under the chin and he makes a whip into the buckles look like it made all his limbs go briefly numb. I like the way these two hit each other. St. Clair is great at leaning into lariats while selling how much he doesn't like taking them. Strong Machine has one of my favorite German suplexes. Both of them work exactly how Bret Hart would have worked New Japan in 1994. 

Kengo Kimura/Seiji Sakaguchi vs. Adrian Adonis/Dick Murdoch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bqyZdnuwVU)

MD: Honestly, this is yet another all time Murdoch performance, and on a house show too. Granted, the stuff I loved here was stuff Meltzer wouldn't have liked anyway but what are you going to do about it. For instance, there's a moment in the middle where Sakaguchi's on a rampage. He takes out Adonis and then goes to the apron to get Murdoch and Murdoch moves to the other side of the post and the crowd cracks up. It's great. But it's such a tiny little wrestling thing. His reactions are great throughout. The way he takes the Inazuma leg lariat by covering his face like he'd just lost his nose is amazing. Dick Murdoch. Captain Redneck, or as they call him in NJPW, the Super Rodeo Machine.

This had a great heat on Kimura where he kept almost coming back and Murdoch and Adonis would just make a quick tag. Eventually, instead of going for a hold, he threw a dropkick instead and made it to Sakaguchi. They did another bit of heat on Kimura and then a big hot comeback. Everything ended up thrown out. Post match they had both a great bit with a chair and being afraid of it and an even better one of double elbowing the ref. Great stuff.

ER: Great Dick Murdoch handheld matches are the best, because not only do you get to see Dick Murdoch being the greatest pro wrestler, but it makes me think of DEAN. To take us back at least 15 years, the moment I always remember from Segunda Caida Radio - something I am not sure exists online anymore, but was loved by all the real SC Heads - was DEAN making fun of Meltzer for thinking Dick Murdoch was a guy who only worked for the cameras. By then we had a lot of handheld footage and had all seen Murdoch wrestling exactly the same as in all of his great matches. DEAN had seen Murdoch live. We were all talking about how great Dick Murdoch was, but DEAN was the one who saw him live and knew how good he was off camera. I always think about DEAN doing a bit as Murdoch, where he's dogging it in Korakuen and does a Don Knotts reaction when he sees a Japanese guy in the crowd with a huge 1985 camcorder.  

This is the only match on this show that doesn't have a listed cagematch runtime, and I didn't realize it would be the longest match of the show. And in that time, Dick Murdoch kept putting on a performance that grew in elegance the longer they went, arguably peaking two minutes after the count out when he got cheers for beating up the referee and then running shenanigans around a chair swinging Kengo Kimura. The match goes long enough that we get several momentum shifts and each one peaks the action and story and Murdoch grows with the story. I think my favorite part was when he had been worked over for awhile and got to tag out, and he stayed in the ring shaking out and rubbing his arm after tagging in Adonis, not participating in but watching Adonis lay a beating on Kimura. The cattle branding looked like a wild rapids ride, his punches matched the energy at all times, and he sold Kimura's like they were the stiffest punches of the match. The fans treated him after the match like a charming folk hero. 

The Cobra (c) vs. Hiro Saito (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIud5l0HlGc)

 

MD: I am not at all a Cobra guy. I think some of his Rocco matches are really bad, for instance, as he tried to fill a post-Tiger Mask gap and ended up with the worst of two worlds. A lack of substance and not even all that much style. Action for the sake of action and the action tends to frankly just be okay. This was great though, and so much of that was on the contrast. Saito is the prototypical cruiserweight bully and he gave everything weight and heft as the two of them threw everything they had at each other.

 

That meant that when Cobra was going to do an unnecessary backflip charging at Saito in the corner, Saito would come back and take his head off with a lariat. Or if he'd get pushed off after a kick and do another backflip within the ring, Saito would dropkick him out and crush him with a dive. They worked it like a title match starting with holds and going back to them, building to big spots and exchanges, with meaningful momentum shifts usually based around a big reversal/mistake/missed move. As time went on they traded some really great pile drivers and the dives you'd expect. Saito got a German mid match but couldn't put away with it and down the stretch Cobra finally escalated to a Tiger Suplex for a win. Very good lost Jr. Heavyweight Title match.

ER: We don't really talk much about how cool Hiro Saito is, and for how long he was cool. He's cool in all the eras. He was cool when I started getting New Japan tapes in 2000, and he was a bleach blond black beard surf punk with a tight bod, punk groupies and surf licks. Cobra feels like a throwback in 1985 by comparison, and it's punk scum vs. Mil Mascaras. Cobra's Mil hits hard, and Saito keeps spiking Mil with martinetes. The crowd was real into Saito's grounded piledriver when Cobra tried standing out of a headscissors, and they kept coming alive when they see how tough and well worked. I knew it was really good when Cobra's cravat into a stump puller and how Saito slowly powers out of it by eventually digging into Cobra's mask and hitting a GREAT fistdrop. Direct, hard. His piledriver after is perfect. Two kids in the crowd invent TomK's famous Dueling Chant 15 years before he did while Saito takes a crazy bump getting dropkicked to the floor. Cobra's kip up to dropkick is as beautiful as anything by our most graceful lucha legends. Saito hits a massive tope that is what you want a tope to be. I was going to write about how Cobra's flying offense isn't as good as his matwork and hitting but then he hits a piledriver so good that I felt I shouldn't harp on his lesser offense. Hiro Saito is so good. He's such a hard bumper, and strong, and fast. His forceful kickout just after 3 is the exact right energy. 

Andre the Giant vs. King Kong Bundy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kntbQ5SjUs)

 

MD: I wasn't going to cover this one since it was already out there, but it's pretty remarkable. My gut says that this was during the period where Andre was really breaking down, before his surgery and the switch to the singlet, but also before he really figured out how to work his late era style. So he was left in there against Bundy not entirely sure what he could or couldn't do. And what he ended up doing was being as entertaining as humanly possible. Yes, they did the bit where Bundy walks up the ropes to try to escape a hold and gets dropped, but Andre's mannerisms and little dance moves in this one are all over the place. Little shuffle steps. Hand motions. Weird faces. Outright dancing. He doesn't do the Fargo Strut but basically everything else you can imagine. And the fans do respond to it. I mean, who knows. Maybe he was just ribbing, maybe he was drunk, but I've only ever seen him do one or two of these little crazy finger motions or screw around like this, not build a whole match around it.

ER: I think every single Andre match I write about has me talking about some little thing I've never seen Andre do before, and I always mean it. But this Andre is an entirely new Andre. This is a house show taped by some saint, and without it I'm not sure we ever get to see Andre as a dancing babyface. It's incredible. I've seen Andre do something that could be considered sassy before but never a full match of him working as Dusty Rhodes. It's incredible. It doesn't start right away, but when it starts it does not stop. It feels like it's going to be your standard great Andre performance, smothering the humongous Bundy, muscling him into corners, hooking him in heavy sleepers, and I was excited about how he was going to sell for Bundy's comebacks. But when things take a turn, they really take a turn. I certainly was not expecting Bundy to walk up the ropes like Bret when Andre had a sleeper locked on, a real Dig Up mentality, and when Andre just drops the big man flat the crowd erupts. 

That's when Quirky Andre comes out. He makes the cuckoo sign, twirling his finger around his ear, and then does a kind of soft shoe routine, a little tap dance with a hard final step, like he's letting everyone in on his bit. If he'd had a cane and top hat it only would have made more sense. He keeps it up. While holding Bundy in another standing choke, he floats some butterfly steps, skipping in place in a movement that I have not once seen Andre do. He becomes Dusty Rhodes, flip flopping and flying. Bundy himself seems confused, he doesn't seem to understand the timing of the dancing and the strikes, leaning out of Andre's first punch after a perfect dance, so Andre has to catch him even harder with a backhand. This is truly an Andre I've never seen. Bundy takes a huge bump over the top to the floor and eventually just leaves, but not before more Andre dancing. How does history's greatest wrestler keep raising his stock? You think you've seen everything the biggest spectacle in wrestling history has done, but he keeps bringing out new tricks. This is no different than if a dancing babyface Stan Hansen match had just been discovered. It's bizarre, it's great, it's nothing you've seen. It's Andre.   

Bob Backlund/Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Antonio Inoki/Tatsumi Fujinami (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsW8GclZnt4)

 

MD: Honestly, I was here for Backlund vs Inoki and we really don't get that. What we do get is very good though. A lot of it is Sharpe being as vocal as humanly possible in a ring but entertaining and credible. Most of the rest, though, is Fujinami vs Backland and of course they match up so well. They matched up well years earlier and they match up even better now that Fujinami is a credible heavyweight. Right place, right time, smooth, slick, imapctful. And yes, they do a great short arm scissors sequence leading to the Gotch lift, just like you'd want. I just wanted a little bit more Inoki in here though. 

ER: I went into this wanting the most Popeye noises ever heard in one wrestling match. This was our chance. I wanted to hear Backlund and Iron Mike Oh-Whoa-Whoa-Whoaing all over the ring in the only time these two ever tagged. But we didn't get that. Backlund ceded the constant vocals to Sharpe and Sharpe ran with them. Backlund was shockingly silent. 1985 Backlund is interesting. It's his first year at sea after his long reign on top. I wonder what drove him to wrestle that year, seeing how much he pulled back for several years after. He surely could have been working regular Japan schedules had he wanted to, so he clearly just didn't want to. He only worked this one short New Japan tour and now we have another small piece of it. Sharpe vs. Inoki is an amusing footnote. You look at this tag and you've never seen a more obvious Taking the Fall guy than Iron Mike. Backlund's matwork with Fujinami was something I could have seen a lot more of. The crowd was so into Backlund's slow powerful reversals, but most of this tag felt like it was just about to kick into gear and never really did.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE THE GIANT

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Yoshiaki Fujiwara Will Gather All the Nations

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Seiji Sakaguchi/Kantaro Hoshino/Antonio Inoki/Keiji Muto vs. Akira Maeda/Kengo Kimura/Super Strong Machine/Riki Choshu/Tatsumi Fujinami NJPW 8/19/87- EPIC

These multi-man elimination 80s NJ matches are as certified as a wrestling match gets. At this point New Japan had shifted from the UWF vs. NJ feud, into kind of a generations feud, with Maeda on one side and Fujiwara on the other, and Choshu and Fujinami teaming up. Young Muto is a bit out of place repping the old school, which was a fun wrinkle to this match. The energy of these matches is always a standout, everyone is super charged and going at it with such intensity. Hoshino is always a highlight, this little sawed off batamweight getting into everyones face with great looking punches. Our guy Fujiwara gets some great match ups, throwing hands with Kimura, diving in and out of holds with Fujinami. Fujiwara is such a great slow paced technical worker, it is fun to see him thrown into a whirlwind like this. I love how Choshu is used at this time, that lariat is a game ender and the threat of it is always there.  There were some great eliminations, including Maeda calling Inoki into the ring squaring off with him, and eventually sacrificing himself with a headscissors which sent them both over the top rope. The match ended up with Muto against Fujinami and Choshu, and that is drawing dead, Muto had a moment or two, but eventually fell. 

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Masaji Aoyagi WDF 8/9/97-GREAT

A little minor key for a pair of guys who have the capacity to blow it out, but it had a lot of nifty stuff in there. I always dig kickboxer Fujiwara and it was fun to watch him square off with Aoyagi and realized that he didn't want the smoke. Similarly Aoyagi didn't want to be down on the mat with Fujiwara, to the point where he takes a bite of Fujiwara's leg while he is in a cross armbreaker. I really liked the finish with Fujiwara just dragging Aoyagi down to the mat, transitioning into side control, moving to his back and just sinking in a rear naked choke, it felt like the way a mid 2000s MMA fight with a  jujitsu black belt tapping a kickboxer who didn't train ground defense. Both of these guys are such great spectacle wrestlers, I was hoping for something bigger, but I dug what we got.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE AOYAGI

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Found Footage Friday: BABA~! LADD~! LAWLER~! NJPW BATTLE ROYAL~!

Giant Baba vs. Ernie Ladd AJPW 8/7/80

MD: This is slightly more Found than New. It was probably part of the big 1980 season set drop from 2019, but it was hard to figure out exactly what was new and what wasn't from that. Now that someone posted it to YouTube though, it's nice and easily accessible for everyone. This is more or less a spring between two brilliant, giant, lanky wrestlers. I think this was building to a bigger match later in the month at Korakuen. It hits all the marks you'd want for an eight minute match between these two. There aren't a ton of bumps, but when they come, they're giant and awkward. Given the size involved, Ladd makes taking a mare look like a car crash and obviously him eating a back body drop is all that and more. Likewise, the holds. Baba locking in a side headlock is like King Kong doing it to Godzilla. Ladd mostly stays in this with shots to the throat but Baba's quick to fire back and they brawl on the floor a couple of times, once with Ladd ending up tied up in chairs. The finish was pretty amazing as Ladd can take things from Baba that others can't, in this case, an actual Thesz press where Baba somehow landed on him like he was Earthquake. Of course, Ladd got his heat back after to set up the next match. Fun battle of the titans here.

Battle Royal NJPW 11/19/81

MD: This followed the opening ceremony to the tour and cagematch has it with a few extra guys that aren't actually there for the battle royal. Normally not a big deal but when those guys are Andre, Murdoch, and Hansen, it's a bit of let down. It means that the most interesting guys in the ring end up being Killer Khan and Pat Patterson, often paired up with one another. That's not too bad in and of itself, at least until Pat gets eliminated. It more or less settles down to some of the Japanese (maybe Sakaguchi, Choshu, Kimura, Yatsu, Fujinami?) on one side and a Samoan, Khan, and Tiger Toguchi (Kim Duk) on the other. Not bad but still not Andre, Hansen, and Murdoch. Even then, it was weird lopsided as the Japanese side (who had the numbers advantage to begin with) worked together and the other side didn't (Patterson did more for the other side from the outside than they did for one another). And then when Sakaguchi was put into positions to make saves, he had to force himself to be a few seconds slow and it was all very labored. Anyway, this wasn't nearly as fun as the Battle Royal we covered a few months ago from the middle of the decade.

Jerry Lawler vs. Big Bully Douglas USA Championship Wrestling 4/13/02

MD: Lots of new stuff from Bryan Turner's channel. I was going to write up a Tracy Smothers vs. Kory Williams brawl, but the merrily accepted "string him up" chants by the 1997 Cooksville audience made it a bit much to cover, so it's back to the paragon of virtue that is Jerry Lawler instead. And this was a pretty perfect bullshit 2002 babyface Lawler match. Douglas was a bald bruiser sort, a lifer in these Nashville indies. With Ernest T at ringside, he could play a proper foil for Lawler, having just enough credible power offense and able to stooge and feed enough to make it all work with Lawler doing the heavy lifting with his selling, strikes, and overall timing.

The opening of this was wonderful gaga, as Ernest kept slipping Douglas an object (horseshoe, knucks, chain) and Lawler dodged the corner shot, stole the weapon, distracted the ref by blaming Ernest, nailing Douglas, and then after the fact showing the ref the object that Ernest had slipped in. It got funnier each time he pulled it off and as Ernest and Dougls were getting more apoplectic. Eventually, he missed the fistdrop, though, and ate that power offense (suplex, side slam, etc) with a bit of help from Ernest on the outside and with Douglas pulling him up a couple of times at 2. The comeback was preceeded by Stacy slapping Ernest. The strap went down, the punches rained down, a stunner that we all want to forget about occurred, and Lawler lifted Douglas up after one pile driver to tease a second when Rapada ran in for the DQ. That opening sequence was pure distilled Memphis and the rest went down smooth.

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New Footage Friday: RUDGE~! KIDO! ANDRE! FELINO! CASAS! DANDY! FIERA! TEEN EXCITEMENT! WOLFIE! RIP JOCEPHUS!

Andre The Giant/Terry Rudge vs. Osamu Kido/Seiji Sakaguchi NJPW 10/2/76 - GREAT

MD: Unearthed gem where we get all but the first eight minutes, giving us around twenty as a whole. There's almost too much to cover here, and you should just watch it, but the two biggest elements to me were Andre's dynamism and the way Rudge grounded things and kept them along standard tag lines. That is, it'd be bad enough to have to face a heel Andre that would deadlift you from the mat, pick you up off the top and toss you of, or that made every chinlock look downright terrifying (especially when he'd lift you off the ground with it and just hang you there), but you were also dealing with Rudge who, working with Andre, would cut off the ring and draw Sakaguchi in to distract the ref. Basically, things just didn't get better even when Andre got out; I mean, they did, obviously, but not nearly enough. When it was time for Andre and Rudge to clown and stooge, it was Andre with huge, incredibly visual, incredibly engaged bumping. They even did an alley oop spot with Andre caught in the ropes. It's obvious how much we lost with Andre being a babyface distraction until the point where he was virtually immobile. He's so into everything he does here, so dangerous, so alert and active, and the perfect balance of terrifying (even to Rudge after he loses the last fall) and giving. Just great stuff.

PAS: Killer Andre performance, with the three other guys playing their roles. 70s heel Andre is about as cool as it gets. He is like a Grizzly Bear, tossing his opponents around the ring, and any second now looking like he is going to swipe down and disembowel everyone in the ring. His finish run in the second fall was awe inspiring, grabbing Kido by the wasteband, flinging him to the top rope like a porter with a suitcase, flinging him off the top rope and enveloping him in a splash. He had an easier time manhandling Kido then I do with my 4 year old son. He also was great at showing moments of vulnerability, the sport where Sakaguchi can't get him over with the headscissors, only to have Kido flying knee Andre in the back flinging him over, was one of the cooler tag team double teams I have seen from this time period. Rudge was a fun irritant, although he didn't pop in this match like he has in other stuff. 

El Felino/Negro Casas/Black Panther vs. La Fiera/Silver King/El Dandy CMLL 12/23/95

MD:A little bit short, but super talent all around, with a lot of the high spots and moments of personality you'd expect. The central narrative early was keeping Dandy away from Casas. Whenever he'd get him into a hold, one of Casas' partners would rush in to break it up. I argue, often, too often, that you see some new variation in almost every Casas match and here I liked how he rushed in on Fiera with a dropkick to the thigh during a test of strength engagement, keeping his hand up as a feint all the way into the dropkick. That ended poorly for him as Fiera ended up hitting this really cool bicycle kick style enziguri to basically end the fall. This cut off earlier than you'd like with a foul, but obviously it was building on to the next one.

PAS: This never got the big finish to push this into next level territory, but the work we got in the match was very good. I liked all three of the original match ups, Silver King versus Black Panther (Black Warrior) isn't a match up I have ever thought about before, but it was pretty great, and I wish they had a singles match up around this time. Casas and Dandy are of course excellent, and even minor works of theres are worth watching. Two great dives too, Panther's bullet tope, and Fiera's awesome over the top rope dive, which he did as good as anyone. So happy Roy Lucier is filling in the gaps of the 90s lucha we are missing.

Jocephus/Damien Payne vs. Wolfie D/Drew Haskins USWO 8/24/12

MD: This was an enjoyable Southern indy main event and a pretty good look at what Jocephus was up to in that era. Brian Lee wasn't there for some reason so Haskins, who worked earlier in the night, came out to tag with Wolfie. He took a lot of the match as a super dynamic, big bumping FIP, especially good for just propelling himself into the ropes off his opponents' offense. They protected Jocephus quite well here, I thought (Wolfie too, really), as he'd get staggered on blows but not go down easily. A lot of the babyface offense ended up on Payne. Wolfie worked the apron and the mic well and looked good the couple of times he was in there. Everyone came out of this looking better than they came in.

PAS: I remember really enjoying Haskins as a smirking big bumping pretty boy heel and he does a nice job converting those skills into a babyface in peril. He really flies around for Jocephus's offense flipping head over heels into the ropes with a punch. Wolfie and Drew had some nice chemistry for a make shift team, their vegomatic looked great. Payne and Jocephus were a nice slugging heel team which set up the hot tag nicely, and Jocephus's neckbreaker with a chain was an appropriately nasty finish. Hit all of the points you want from a hot Nashville main event tag.

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New Footage Friday: PATTERSON! VALENTINE! FUJINAMI! SAKAGUCHI! SCORPIO! MERCURY! BLACK MAGIC! VAMPIRO!

Seiji Sakaguchi/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Pat Patterson/Greg Valentine 1/1/79

MD: Obviously, one element of what we do here on Fridays as we delve into rare and lost footage is see wrestlers that not a lot of footage exists of. It's hard not to compare them against their reps. Sometimes they live up to the rep, sometimes they fall far short, and sometimes they far exceed it. Patterson's rep is amazingly high and he always lives up to it. He was great in the early eighties when he was obviously past his prime. He's fantastic in what bits of him we have in the 70s. You can only imagine were we to stretch back farther. I wouldn't say that's the case with the Ray Stevens footage we have, actually. You can see vague glimpses of the sort of heat he might have gotten once, before his body broke down from his in-ring style and his out-of-ring lifestyle. But with Patterson, there's just so much he brought to the table that everything you add on to the capabilities we see in his post-prime footage is just that, an addition to the greatness.

We come in at the 3 minute mark here. First half of the match is Valentine and Patterson getting advantages on Fujinami with Sakaguchi coming in to clean house. Second half, they take out Sakaguchi's leg and demolish it until the DQ finish and the continued demolishing post-match where they alternate bombs aways and elbow drops onto the leg. Valentine and Patterson make a really solid unit, both laser focused. Patterson is able to go from stooging and bumping to absolutely beating the crap out of someone on a dime. He was legitimate and tough while also being entertaining (lots of jawing with the ref or his opponent) and creative. Sakaguchi really used his size well here. Just huge presence which made it mean all the more when he played vulnerable towards the end.

PAS: The more I watch of him, the more Greg Valentine moves up my list of all time favorite wrestlers, what a vicious grinding killing machine he is at his best. Patterson and Valentine make a great team, giving when they need to give and taking all that they can take. Patterson could bring the violence as well, and had a more theatrical bumping style. The finish run where they destroy Sakaguchi's leg was some truly brutalizing stuff, it really looked like the kind of thing which would send Seiji out of the territory for six months. I am not sure how much Patterson and Valentine teamed, but man were they badasses, I could really see them running roughshod on a territory for a year laying out all comers. 

ER: This really gave us the look at an all time team that never actually was. Valentine/Patterson wasn't a team I've ever thought about before, but seeing them together here (and they didn't really team or face each other that many times other than this New Japan tour) and they are a really natural, vicious team. Patterson is just as savage as Valentine, which I wasn't totally expecting. I've seen plenty of Patterson, but he seemed especially mean here, coming off like a bigger bumping Valentine. When the match started I thought it would be Valentine throwing leather while Patterson took the bumps, instead we basically got two Valentines. Patterson did bump big, taking Fujinami's armdrags faster and harder than any junior heavyweight, and hitting back way harder. Patterson was really great at taking offense, loved how he worked under Sakaguchi (like running neck first into a strong chokehold), and I was really into the hell Patterson and Valentine unleashed on Sakaguchi's leg. Patterson's top rope kneedrop looked incredible, and I was really impressed by the go go go pace they all kept up. This felt like more of a modern indy tag structure worked by tough dudes, kind of anachronistic but impressive to see such a fast pace from some bruisers. We get 15+ minutes of tag team wrestling, but the tags from both sides come so quickly that it felt like we got twice as much action as we actually did. Patterson and Valentine also added Dusty to their team a couple of times on this same tour, and the thought of those three killer blonds on the same team makes my head spin. What a great find. 

Vampiro Casanova vs. Black Magic 10/93

MD: A rarity here, a lucha cage match where you can actually tell what's going on. There are basically two things going on here. One, young ladies love Vampiro. Two, Black Magic fills his time fairly well by beating him around the ring and slamming him into the cage. Look, Vampiro garnered a lot of support without a ton of talent. I think he's fairly good at writhing about in his selling here and he bleeds when he's supposed to, but his bumping is stilted and his offense more so. Smiley is a guy who disappoints me as much as not in 90s lucha matches, but overall, this worked. And full credit to Smiley, because he did the heavy lifting. He kept things vicious and compelling. He gave Vampiro hope spots that worked in the cage and then cut them off. The girls were going to pop for literally anything Vampiro managed to do, so that helped matters along. For the most part, they avoided big spots and kept it to Smiley laying things in (which looked really good half the time and less so the other half) and making use of the cage. When they went big, like Vampiro's bump off the top, it didn't go nearly as well. Vampiro should have built to using the cage more in his comeback too. That would have maybe made the finish - which was a little too opportunistic and banana peel for a cage match - probably work a little better. It's lucha, so the end goals could be different. If this was like a supre libre match on the road to a hair match, that'd be one thing, but I don't see any results along those lines. Still, as a stand alone experience, I'd put this in the "almost worked" category, mostly for Smiley. But don't short change the girls in the crowd.

PAS: I thought this was legitimately awesome, huge disconnect between Matt and me on this match. Vampiro isn't any great shakes as a wrestler, but he had a monster superstar presence and wasn't afraid to take a big beating and bleed a bunch, and what more do you need in a cage match. Smiley was really vicious pounding him with hard punches and kicks and grinding Vampiro's face into the cage. When it came time for Vamp to make his comeback, Smiley really flew around the ring bumping for him, he eats an awesome looking released vertical suplex (which may have just been Vampiro losing him on the move but it looked great), and we have a big triumphant Vampiro climb over the top of the cage. This was like the best version of a Bruno WWWF cage match, and it is wild to see Vampiro at his rock star peak. Might be my favorite lucha cage match ever, which is not a giant bar to clear but still says something. 

ER: I'm definitely closer to Phil than Matt on this one, I thought this was great. Lucha cage matches are some of the worst matches in wrestling, and this may be the only one I've seen that is actually better than its on paper potential. Often, lucha cage matches nearly eliminate the most interesting aspects of any luchador involved, but this match enhances both men. Black Magic's strengths are his strikes, Vampiro's strength is getting girls to cheer for him. It's a format that plays to their strengths and that's all you need for a strong match. Smiley is a known tough guy (basically anyone who worked UWF is clearly a tough guy) but you don't usually get to see him in ass kicker mode. Here he really kicks Vampiro's ass around the ring, push kicking his head a couple dozen times and throwing great right hands to bust Vampiro open. Smiley really kicks him around for 10 minutes, with my favorite being a sliding kick from his back right into Vampiro's jaw, looked like something cool Inoki would do. Smiley sells big for Vampiro's comeback, right after scraping Vamp's face across the cage (I might be reading too much into it, as Vamp had already been bleeding at that point, but his comeback had a fun "not the face!" energy to it). This really did feel like Pedro Morales working an MSG cagematch against Blassie, which was not a comparison I was expecting to make going in. The girls screamed as Vampiro tossed Smiley around (loved how Smiley took a teeter totter, flinging himself across the ring), and I don't recall a lucha cage match having a beginning/middle/end as satisfying as this one. 


2 Cold Scorpio vs. Joey Mercury PWU 9/15/07

PAS: The actual parts of this match that were wrestling, were pretty cool. They started off with some grappling, including an awesome spot where Scorp breaks a side headlock, by throwing an uppercut right to Mercury's knee. They also did some fun leverage stuff around a knuckle lock. Dan Severn is seconding Mercury for some reason, and the really lay in the interference thick in the middle of the match. Leading to a ref bump and run ins by DDP, Devon Moore and Sandman. These two have another match and I imagine with less mishigas it might be a lot better.

MD: A lot to enjoy here. Mercury just seemed very sure in his skin here. A lot of confidence, a lot of antics. I'm not sure I'd say he came off like a star, but he absolutely came off like a pro wrestler who really understood the power of his actions. Who wouldn't want to have Dan Severn out there as his hired gun/coach? He made the most of it, stalling to get advice, having him choke on the outside, utilizing some submission stuff he might not do otherwise, etc. Scorpio, like always, had the fairly unique ability to make offense that shouldn't work on paper look really good and make complete sense. Living in the late 90s/00s, it was really easy to get sick of finishes like this, but when you don't have to deal with them multiple times a month, you can appreciate them for their merits. It would have been even better if this set up a six man tag the next month.

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And Now These Three Remain: Faith, Hope and Love. But the Greatest of These is Yoshiaki Fujiwara

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Dick Murdoch NJPW 10/10/82 - FUN

PAS: One of the coolest things about this NJ HH trove is the chance to see early 80s Fujiwara. I guess this is young Fujiwara although he looks like he is in his mid 40s. Much like the Slaughter match this would have been better five years later, when it would have been competitive. This was more like a competitive squash, but as you might imagine the execution on the simple things in this match was off the charts. Murdoch is so great at working a simple armbar and wristlock, Fujiwara tries a bunch of different adjustments to get out of it, and Murdoch is constantly twisting the wrist in different ways, such masters at work. I also loved how Murdoch kept bionic elbowing Fujiwara's hard head and how frustrated he kept getting, only to get smacked with headbutts. Fujiwara is pretty overqualified to work as Rufus R. Jones, but he is a great Rufus R. Jones.


Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Seiji Sakaguchi/Keiji Muto/Nobuhiko Takada/George Takano vs. Riki Choshu/Tatsumi Fujinami/Akira Maeda/Super Strong Machine/Kengo Kimura NJPW 10/6/87 - EPIC

PAS: The treasure trove of NJ HH footage delivers us what seems to be a previously unearthed New Japan 10 man elimination match. The other Elimination matches finished very high on the NJ DVDVR 80s sets, and this might be a slight step below a MOTD level, it is still really awesome. This was worked at a super sprint pace which works well with all of these guys in this match, and with Choshu, Muto and Fujiwara we have some of the greatest sprint wrestlers ever. I actually really loved Takada in this, he was about as violent as I have seen him, he really kicks the shit out of Choshu and at one point mounts him and lays out some nasty ground and pound. I also love Sakaguchi as a big bruiser chucking people around, he kind of felt like a proto Akira Taue in this. Kind of an odd match structure as the Choshu team gets a four on one advantage on Fujiwara at the end. We get an awesome Stone Cold moment where the crowd in chanting for Fujiwara as he tries to fight everyone, but while he gets a near fall or two, it would have been cooler if he had gotten an elimination before going down. We did get a great Choshu lariat on the finish and Fujiwara sells a Choshu lariat better then anyone. Still that was a minor complaint for an otherwise awesome match. Had no idea this match existed until a week ago, and it was such a treat to have it show up.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

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