Found Footage Friday: QUEBECERS EXPLODE~! CESARO~! GUNTHER~! LOS COWBOYS IN GUATEMALA~!

Los Cowboys (El Texano/Silver King) vs. Astro de Oro/Skeletor Guatemala 9/15/91

MD: There's a certain genre of match that I find fascinating. There's no good name for it but it's best described by the rudos/heels being visibly, noticeably concerned about the amount of heat they might get in front of a specific crowd and adapting their wrestling accordingly. I don't know what preceded this but there was nothing to make Texano and Silver King come off as particularly rudo in the early going here. They came out, they were nice to fans, they posed well with the belts and the anthems. They wrestled clean early. Texano worked really hard to get a handshake. And the trash was still coming and they seemed kind of alarmed and put off by it. For the anthem, there were a ton of kids singing which was always a good sign. Skeletor came out with a robe with Guatemala on the back. Astro de Oro was obviously beloved. 

So there wasn't any mask ripping here. Their win in the segunda was real quick. While they controlled in the tercera there was never really that sense of danger for the tecnicos. You always got the sense that even amidst the double teams Skeletor could PROBABLY make the tag if he really really wanted to. It was, shall we say, a ginger rudo performance. 

Instead, they flew all over the place. They missed leaps off the top rope and dives. There was plenty of heel miscommunication. Silver King was happy to fly out of the ring on a kick out. Skeletor was charismatic and hammed it up a bit with Texano. Silver King and Astro de Oro were really moving at times and mostly everything looked very good. There was a point in the tercera where Texano and Silver King did Tiger Feints instead of diving and one guy right in the center of the crowd shot let out a popper/firework thinking the dive was coming and that's a little bit of really interesting cultural information. It made me sad for him that they didn't get dives because his timing was perfect. Anyway, of course the locals won and everyone survived to see tomorrow. 

Jacques Rougeau vs. Pierre Carl Ouellet WWF 10/21/94

MD: This is about 80% of a perfect match to me. 75%, 75%. I was thinking structurally, but the thing needed blood too. It has parallels to MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana in some ways. And before you balk at that, think of the setting. This is Jacques in Montreal, in what was supposed to be a celebratory swansong. He's up against Pierre. He's got Raymond in his corner. Polo's out there with PCO.  

And Pierre cheapshots him before he can get his robe off. Raymond tries to break it up but the ref pulls him off which just lets Pierre stomp away. Jacques tries to fire back, but Pierre's younger, stronger, bigger. He lays in a beating, a nasty, brutal thing. Every time it seems like Jacques has an answer, he cuts him off. Jacques is able to outsmart him and back body drop him over the top. He lands on his feet. Jacques gets a flurry and he catches him in midair and puts him in the tree of woe. When the ref tries to stop things, Polo comes over to choke him. Pure heat. There's one moment where Pierre is whipping Jacques off the ropes and Jacques makes a sort of out of control bobbling motion, almost seizing, with his head as he's getting whipped and it's some of the best selling I've ever seen.

The thing is, Pierre can't put him away. So he starts to go with more and more high risk moves. He hits a flip dive. He goes off the turnbuckles, once, twice, and then Jacques catches him, crotching him on top. It's not quite the punch heard round the world but it's pretty damn satisfying, especially to this crowd. 

And it opens the floodgates for the ritual beating. And what a beating it is. When Jacques tosses him into the stairs on the outside, it's about as loud as I've heard stairs. After beating him around the ring, Jacques goes for a mounted punch (no puns). Pierre tosses him off and we get this great ref bump. Polo comes in to attack. Raymond hits him with a superkick.

And that's when they should have taken this thing home. Have it seem like Pierre was going to get the advantage, have Jacques mount one last comeback, go to the finish. They don't though. They just sort of meander with some nearfalls and momentum shifts and they don't lose the crowd, but once you see Polo back on his feet rooting for Pierre, you realize that the match went just a little long in the tooth. The finish is amazing, Pierre going for a tombstone and Jacques turning it around for this gnarly sitout variation and then slowly, fatefully draping a hand over for three. There's just no reason why that couldn't have happened almost immediately after Polo got taken out. And blood. Blood would have been good. Still, 75% perfect is pretty damn good.

Cesaro vs. Gunther WWE 11/8/21

MD: This is a house show match between Cesaro and Gunther. In Leeds. It is definitely. That's nothing to scoff at. It's just not transcendent like Cena vs Reigns or even the parts of Jacques vs Pierre that were transcendent. 

It had room to breathe. It managed the crowd well (and a crowd like that needed managing). It didn't get ahead of its sails. It didn't go off any rails. It was measured and focused and did what it had to. Instead of having the crowd go for dueling chants or ironically entertaining themselves (or shouting 2! a lot or whatever), it got them to clap up three times, early on in a test of strength, then during a surfboard (the one with the head in; Cesaro got out of it with some headbutts of his own after he turned it) and finally once in the heat as he was building to the comeback. 

It got them to chant for the swing right before Cesaro got it down the stretch. They hit hard, both early on and right before the finish. And yes, they built to that swing and they paid it off. They worked things fairly even up front. Gunther would go for cheapshots and deviate from the wrestling first but Cesaro generally had an answer. I liked the big comeback spot as Cesaro was able to catch Gunther in midair and turn him, strength outdoing strength, and the finish was good, with a near-miss with the ref before a cheapshot and a thudding top rope splash. This hit marks, and that's admirable. A good match. A good house show match. And good for the crowd for letting it guide them.

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: Wrestle Yume Factory~!

Wrestle Yume Factory 8/11/96

Pick this up from @itako18jp on Twitter, he is doing god's work

The Madness vs. The Wolf/Cosmo Soldier

MD: A handicap match. Madness is a huge guy with a skeleton mask that he adjusts all the time. Wolf and Soldier start well with Soldier drawing him in with a test of strength challenge and Wolf attacking from behind. They have a flurry of offense but get tossed off on a double pin and really this is just a matter of time until he catches them, and catches them he does. Some of his stuff looks great. He has this suplex into a bodyslam of sorts which is brutal. Some, like his strikes, just kind of look ok. There's a great moment of Soldier bursting off from the side of the screen to break up a pin at one point, and another great one of a roll through pin out of nowhere which almost works. It goes on a bit too long after that though and even though they get one more flurry including a tornado DDT, it's inevitable and after a power bomb, Madness drops one on top of the other for the pin. This had a pretty good balance of protecting Madness but having Wolf and Soldier chip away at him effectively, I thought.

Basara vs. Masakazu Fukuda

MD: I'm not sure we've ever written about Basara here but he had a mask with a big white mustache coming out of it and hair on top the head. Fukuda was mid 20s here and died tragically in 2000. Basara controlled early. He had an answer for everything Fukuda tried and Fukada didn't have an answer. Fukada would take Basara down and try strikes but get his arm caught. They'd get in a headbutt war and Fukuda would get crushed and bump across the ring. When he took over it was by getting in and under and hitting a uranage, first a throw which opened up the match, and then the rock bottom version to win it later. In the middle Basara asserted himself as they ended up hitting bombs to a degree. Basara had a second rope senton and power slam and Fukuda got under him to take him over in a sort of Beach Break. They both threw dropkicks (Basara's surprisingly good). I'm not sure this kept the same narrative focus once it opened up but in general it was fun just to see them throw things at one another. 

Shinichi Shino vs. Shinigami

MD: Shino is later on Fukumen Taro. Shinigami is a blast. He's got caked on grey/green makeup like a ghoul and it's honestly a great look that no one really uses. Plus the gloves and the black coat/pants that makes him look as much like a Castlevania monster as a movie monster. He lumbered down to the ring upsetting chairs and driving fans away. Shono was all pluck and fire. Powerslams and clotheslines but he threw himself into all of them. He capitalized on a missed dropkick and took it to Shinigami, including tossing chairs on him on the outside, but nothing really worked. Shinigami turned it around, buried him under a row of chairs, and then splashed the chairs. Looked like a great bit but it was on the wrong side of the ring so we only had the sense of it. His big move was a claw-assisted uranage and frankly, it's a wonderful piece of business. He dragged Shino into the ring with the claw before hitting it and then down the stretch hit a top rope one before pulling him up and hitting a bridging one. Post-match he went after the timekeeper for no reason and I quite enjoyed the time I spent with Shinigami.

Hector Garza/Silver King/Onryo vs. Masayoshi Motegi/Super Crazy/Kamikaze

MD: All action trios with some great names. I'd say everyone looked pretty good here (Crazy maybe the most dubious if I was pressed), but Silver King looked like one of the best in the world. He was matched up with Kamikaze early and that was the best of the pairings. Everything broke down and we had some very loose rudo beatdown structure on Onryo a couple of times especially, but this was the sort of match where Silver King was just going to super kick someone in the face and take over. Dive train was sensational and Garza looked great in the final pairing. You knew what you were going to most likely get here, but they gave it to you, and that's the important thing. There was also this great bit where Silver King went for a powerbomb onto Garza (his own partner) and alley-ooped him into a splash which looked so smooth that people should reverse engineer and steal it. Variety is the spice of life and this absolutely fit into such a weird and varied card.

Horiyoshi Kotsubo vs. Hirofumi Miura

MD: (EDIT: According to Sebastian I got Kotsubo and Miura confused, so just flip them in the below. I haven't done that in a while). Horiyoshi Kotsubo is Tsubo Genjin. Here he has a karate gimmick with a black gi, the sides of his head shaved, a goatee, and nunchucks. But it's Miura who's fun here. It's scrambly to start, but Miura goes to the slaps first. Then he hits a great spinning backfist and later on a very quick tree-of-woe/short dropkick combo. Kotsubo has some nice pokey punches in a mount at least, and he wins it with a submission that is very hard to explain but certainly novel, starting with a STF but then barring the other leg. Not a ton to say about this one but I need to watch that Aoyagi vs. Miura match Phil covered here now. 

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Shinichi Nakano - GREAT

MD: I've spent a lot of time with 1989-1990 Shinichi Nakano, and quite a bit with him from the years prior, and there isn't a whole lot there, let me tell you. He was fine. Absolutely fine. Inoffensive. Sometimes could show some fire. He wasn't the guy you wanted in a Jr. Title match (not relative to Fuchi or Momota or Inoue or Joe Malenko) or in a tag, except for maybe if that tag was against guys like Hansen and Tenryu. Then he could take a beating and come back with a bit of fire only to get beaten down once more. Actually, 1989 Fujiwara vs 1989 Nakano would have been a blast.

Thankfully, this was pretty good along those lines too. Nakano was older, more grizzled, but a ton of this match was him doing something, paying for it, and getting beaten and stretched by Fujiwara, which really, is exactly what you'd want. Early on, he tried to push Fujiwara into the corner. That didn't go well for him. Fujiwara turned him around, punched him in the face, and then played to the crowd that he slapped him instead, all before goozling him in the ropes. Later on, Nakano tried again to stomp Fujiwara in the corner and the greatest defensive wrestler of all time, snatched his foot midstomp and hit a rare dragon screw leg whip, just like that.

At one point, he did have some success with things Fujiwara had less defense against, armdrags, leading to a cross arm breaker and Fujiwara escaping to the outside. He then got some nice clubbering in with Fujiwara on the apron stretched over the top rope. All well and good if he didn't try for a posting, but he did, and you can't slam Fujiwara's head into the metal connector obviously. Headbutts ensued, followed by Fujiwara doing his own mirrored clubbering and then hilariously teasing a dive. 

What else did Nakano try? Oh, a leglock. Went ok for a bit until Fujiwara snatched a leg of his own and slowly and patiently worked things all the way around so that Nakano was on his stomach and Fujiwara was bending a leg back. And then down the stretch, he hit a power bomb and a suplex and locked in a half crab, but he couldn't put Fujiwara away and when he went back to the well for another suplex, everyone watching knew exactly what was going to happen. Fujiwara jammed it and jammed Nakano down right into the armbar. While I may have hoped that Nakano had become some sort of secret master over the 90s, what I can say about him instead is that he was still a good sport, and that gave Fujiwara lots of room to stretch (figuratively, literally, metaphorically, however you want it).

PAS: This was pretty much a Fujiwara one man show, Nakano was a fine sparring partner, wrestling chicken stock but Fujiwara bought all of the spices here. Of course those are incredible spices, countering everything Nakano tried, backing him into the corner and working him over. I have written time and time again about how Fujiwara is the greatest defensive wrestler of all time, and here he is again throwing up another countering masterpiece as easy as a Nikola Jokic 40/14/12 stat line. The kind of thing that would be legendary for anyone else is pedestrian for him.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: PUNK~! LOD~! DANDY~! SILVER KING~! SHU~! PANTHER~! SUPER PARKA~!

IWRG Retro 7/27/00

El Dandy/Silver King/Black Dragon vs. Shu el Guerrero/Mosco de la Merced/Hijo del Diablo

MD: VQ is tough with a lot of freezing but you can tell what's going on and the talent is so much here that you want to see it through. No real signature pairings here. I'd say that this was driven by the talent, energy, and star power on the tecnico side and structured accordingly. That meant in the primera, each tecnico got a chance to lean into rudo miscommunication and entertainingly fight them all off at once. There are things you'd note, like Silver King sliding across the ring or Dandy's punch or Black Dragon's crave dive at the end of the caida, but it was all good.

Rudos took over in the segunda after they teased pairings and they did the bit where they flip their opponents over and toss them into a kick in the corner. This could have probably used a couple more minutes, for once they hit the tecera, it was a quick reset and into in and out submissions and break-ups and really overall chaos with things breaking down. Finish had Dragon roll forward into a tapitia which you don't see often and Dandy hitting a jumping DDT for the win. Rudos did their job but this really was the tecnicos show, and even with the freezing, it was a good show.

ER: It's a shame this has so many freezes and bits of missing action because everything we get is really great. Everybody got their own moments to cook and I love a trios like this where everyone tries to take over the show the longer it goes. Mosco de la Merced and Hijo del Diablo were the real standouts to me but every brought something big. Silver King is so good at pushing pace and guys like Mosco and Diablo rise to that pace and it makes their bumps even crazier. The Segunda opening with King and Diablo really cooked, Diablo early on looking like the one guy in the match who was going to hang back and let everyone else handle things, building to him stooging and bumping as big as anyone. Mosco took at least four big bumps and worked comedy into half of them, including a great bit where he kept removing pieces of clothing while ramping up for a one on one confrontation, whipping his shirt and bandana into the crowd and firing up by almost removing his pants. Black Dragon is a guy who I literally only remember because of his incredible tope over/past the ringpost into the corner, which he hits beautifully here after pulling off a super smooth rana. His tope is one of the great lucha topes in history, one of those spots like Super Calo's slingshot senton that makes a luchador's career seem bigger than it really was. Shu el Guerrero is a total tank of a luchador, or dream build Valiente, but Mosco and Diablo handle all the toughest basing and catches. Shu's best bit of basing is sliding across the entire ring for a frankly breathtaking Dandy headscissors, Dandy getting full glorious extension and not tucking early, really making it look like he flung Shu 10 feet with his ankles and leverage. It would have been great to have the full uncut action (and crowd noise, and the actual screen presentation instead of the annoying TV screen aesthetic) but there's no denying the action we did see. 

Blue Panther vs. Super Parka

MD: WWA Title match. Parka's the champ. It's worked like a title match with just a bit of the dancing/histrionics from Parka, which he tends to pay for whenever he does. I liked the primera a lot. Nothing too tricked out but they kept close body contact for a lot of it in a way you don't always see in lucha matwork. It was all up tight and combative. Parka had advantage for a lot of it working over the arm. When they got moving towards the end of the caida, you had no idea who would get the ultimate advantage but Parka took it with a snap 'rana. 

Segunda was super short, but Panther won it with the old French Catch standard waistlock into a leg nelson (no roll). Not something you see every day, even from him. Then the tercera had all the bells and whistles and drama. Parka took out Panther's leg early and worked it over. Panther sold big on his comeback attempts. There was another 'rana for a nearfall and a long Cavernaria. Parka hit this amazing tope sending both of them over the barricade. Then Panther went for a submission and then pinned themselves. Only a couple of spotty moments VQ wise with the freezing, thankfully, as this was a very good title match to be unearthed. 

CM Punk/Doug Delicious vs. Legion of Doom WWE 5/13/03

MD: As WWE Vault stuff goes, this is better than something we already had, worse than if they had given it to us in full, and especially worse than giving us Omni shows or something. But it has its novelty and we should cover it, clipped as it is. Punk explaining that he had been on the banned list for doing a hammerlock DDT the night before gives his performance here color. Obviously, just in general facing the Road Warriors in this setting, he's going to do everything he could to stand out and bump and feed and stooge for them.

Since he was in hot water, however, he really went above and beyond, on from the get go. The fans absolutely loved seeing the LOD as a surprise and popped huge for them as Punk covered his head in shock in the ring. They cut out a lot of the stuff with Delicious and only give us Punk but I don't really mind that too much. He screamed as he went over for Animal's power slam and went sailing for the belly-to-belly throw. Hawk was totally on too, hitting his shoulder first post-bump to the floor. He even ate a Punk snap suplex. This isn't the first or hundredth thing I would have wanted, especially not clipped, but I was still smiling despite myself as I watched it, so I'll certainly take this sort of thing over nothing. 

ER: I was not actually expecting this to be really good but I have a feeling the full uncut match was actually quite good. I'm a big fan of 1998 LOD even though history says they were totally washed. Well, they were pretty washed, but Washed Legends is one of my favorite kinds of wrestler. 1998 Hawk was a particular favorite of mine. He wasn't lifting much anymore so he wasn't working as a power wrestler, so he just leaned into being a puncher with a couple of surprising big bumps. Hawk was a great puncher and a guy with great bumps, so it really felt like a super vulnerable version of the Road Warrior Hawk, boiled down to his most basics; still dangerous, now beatable. I loved it. It's a shame they were stuck feuding with DOA for most of the year during their final real run. I have a feeling that some good Hawk stuff was cut from this tag in cutting the Doug Delicious work, and that's a shame. I don't know much about Doug Delicious so maybe they were right to cut most of his work out of this, but I sure stood at attention when he lit Hawk the hell up with chops on the floor. I cannot imagine someone chopping either Road Warrior the way Doug was chopping Hawk in 1986 but this is 2003. That's the kind of things that makes vulnerable legends so compelling. They're on the way down and now fucking Doug Delicious is doing things that would have gotten greater men killed. 

Punk was great in this, reminded me again of why I liked him so much during this era. He bumped huge for everything the LOD did and even sold their entrance music. He fed really well for them both and I was pretty shocked at the amount of offense he got. The snap suplex on Hawk was a real surprise, but I liked how he worked the match as a guy who really belonged in the ring with the Road Warriors and not just a stooge who just lied on the mat in between moves. He set up Hawk's ringpost bump perfectly, moving out of the way at the last second so it made it look like an actual miss and not a set up bump, and Hawk spills past the apron to the floor as well as any of those times a missed western lariat sent Stan Hansen tumbling to the floor. I thought Animal looked good here too, taking on the bulk of the match (well, at least the way the match was edited) and I thought his movement looked strong. That leaping elbowdrop was fire and they each seemed real pumped at the crowd's loud reaction and chanting for them. WWE always hated the idea of bringing back older legends to work undercards but I wish we had years of All Japan old men matches on the undercards of house shows, it would have been incredible. They only viewed people on what they could potentially add to the top of the card but any time they brought back an older name and just plopped them in the third match it worked perfectly. I needed more runs like the Tatanka or, well, Road Warrior Animal mid-2000s Smackdown run. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: SANTO~! PARK~! MIL~! GARZA~! DAMIAN~! AGUILA~! CEREBRO~! FELINO~! SILVER KING~! FUERZA~!

IWRG Retro 28 IWRG Retro 3/8/2001

Halieen/Ryo Saito vs. Siky Ozama/Bestia Rubia

MD: Undercard lucha made fun more for the visuals of Halieen and Bestia Rubia clashing than anything else. Halieen is a little green man gimmick, like nothing I've ever seen, just really leaning into the notion, including some sort of weird Power Rangers collar. Bestia Rubia has a wolfman mask, but it'd be as if Bowie did Thriller instead of Jackson and turned into a Wolfman at the end, or if they made the Ron Perlman Beauty and the Beast ten years earlier and it was the people making Buck Rogers that did. They need to make more masks like these.

Saito and Ozama are fine and do simple straightforward stuff well enough. Saito has fire. Ozama's a bit of a jerk. But you spend the whole match waiting for the wolfman and the alien to get back in there and see lucha sequences you've seen a thousand times, but never from a wolfman and an alien. Pretty solid finishing stretch (this was 1 fall and went around 16 minutes) with the teams trading falls and trying for Last Rites style pin attempts. This was more of a novelty than anything else but you can't imagine these guys didn't get over just on their looks alone.

Hijo del Santo/Dr. Cerebro/Felino vs. Silver King/Fuerza Guerrera/Cirujano

MD: Star-studded, talent-packed trios here. Rudos ambush to start. At some point, Cerebro really gets opened up. I wouldn't say any rudo particularly stands out here. Fuerza's going to sneak in low blows as you will. Cirujano brings a bit more heft. Silver King looked sharp even post-prime (he had a very smooth figure-four in the primera, for instance). Things picked up in the segunda as Santo ran right through Fuerza for an initial comeback. I loved Cerebro's selling here as he was fumbling about punch drunk even in the midst of the comeback. The tecnicos got swept under again and Santo had to mount a second comeback before Felino was able to hit a moonsault on Silver King to set up Santo's big tope off the top and the caballo on Fuerza.

The tercera was short gave us a little bit of the pairings we had missed in the primera but was primarily cycling through until the big finish. Santo hit an absolutely mammoth tope suicida onto Silver King, just a head-crashing, head-crushing impact. It was so good that they reshowed it in super slow motion so that the action missed the finish (Cerebro getting a submission on Cirujano). I don't usually say that something's worth just seeing for the dive, and this has other things going for it too, of course, but people should see the dive.

Hijo del Santo/Mil Mascaras/LA Park vs. Hector Garza/Damian 666/Mr. Aguila Monterrey 2/3/07

MD: Very odd one on paper. Perros del Mal vs. three of the biggest stars ever, in 07 Monterrey. It's a night show and you can see their breath. Park's in blue. Mascaras has a matching bengal body suit and mask. We come in at the start of the segunda after what seems to have been a Perros beatdown. Garza immediately crashes and burns in the corner allowing Santo to pull his pants down and send him to the floor. Chaos ensues. Park is the guy to watch here, hitting a jumping body slam off the apron onto Damien, putting him through a table. Then he hits a suplex on Aguila on the floor splitting a plastic table. Finally he hits a huge dive through the ropes. Meanwhile, Mascaras hits a couple of ginger atomic drops and things and Santo more or less does his "vs the world" routine against everyone. The finish of the fall is Damien creating motion for Mascaras and ending up in an abdominal stretch.

The tercera starts with almost seven minutes of shtick, and it's Hector Garza shtick, and LA Park shtick, and your mileage is going to vary on this, but for me, it goes real far. It all hit. Garza gets funnier and funnier as the decade goes on but even in 07, he had a lot of the act down. They run a minute or two of Park trying to pull his tights down and Damien saving him until Garza accidentally kicks Damien and Damien pulls Garza's tights down and it's unapologetically hilarious. Then they get the ref in on the act with him doing dual spots with Park and the commentary say he looks like "a crazy panda from Chapultepec" and for a spotlight match like this, it absolutely works. Things broke down pretty quickly after that with Mascaras pinning Aguila and Park clowning Damien before Garza, a cooler lid in hand, chose to attack Park instead of Santo. Santo got it from him and threatened but Park turned around and thought Santo had gotten him and attacked Santo who was quickly pinned before Park laid down for Garza as well. It was a little silly, but Garza was the perfect guy to be in the middle of all this and I'm sure it set up something great (or didn't, because Monterrey). What a show. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: KACE~! CRAMMER~! LOS COWBOYS~! HAMADA~! BABE FACE~! INDOMITO~! M-PRO 8-MAN~!

Johnny Kace vs. George Crammer NWA Chicago 1961

MD: I was doing so well with the Monterrey footage too, but I just can't resist going for the matches that people are showing interest in with this old US footage. People were describing this as a Regal vs Finlay archetype and I can sort of see it but it almost comes off as a proto-UWF match in some ways. These are two guys that get very little discussion overall. We have maybe two or three other Kace matches, for instance. The 60s are just a black hole relatively, unfortunately. He was the NWA Midwest Heavyweight Champion here and the title was on the line. 

And this was just fifteen minutes of mean, dogged, pro wrestling. Kace charged right in to start with a top wristlock and worked the nastiest hammerlock you'd see. That was the thing with both wrestlers. They constantly worked every hold on both ends. That could mean constantly torquing a toehold or driving down and in with a hammerlock or trying to get some sort of leverage to escape only to have the opponent topple your bridge with a tiny movement. It was constant shifting, constant pressure, constant selling. Constant motion in a way that made the match feel competitive and ramped up the stakes and consequence for everything that happened.

There was always the sense that each wrestlers was one well placed punch away from a reversal. Kace controlled early but Crammer would take over with some gut punches and a hammerlock of his own. They'd work up to slugging one another and then back down into a hold and back up again. Kace was obviously a mean bastard with a mean mug and Crammer had the fans behind him through ruthlessly and mercilessly giving Kace everything he deserved, making him choke on a poetic taste of his own medicine. There was no semblance of shine/heat/comeback here, just constant pressure creating implicit storytelling. Crammer would eventually shift to the leg but Kace snuck out and hit a few backbreakers for the win. Even though he came off as entirely credible in victory, it still felt more like he survived the challenge by the skin of his teeth than anything else. That's how hard they were going at one another.

Gran Hamada/Silver King/El Texano vs. Dr. Wagner, Jr./Indomito/Babe Face CMLL 1991

MD: Good and heated.. The central pairing was Texano and Indomito. If you're not familiar with Indomito, he was a Black Power in UWA and a Payaso (Coco Amarillo) in AAA. In the middle he was dressed in a powder blue Zardoz type gear with poofy Ronnie Garvin hair. He had a boxing background but wasn't really going to compare to the punches Babe Face and Hamada (a secondary pairing) were throwing at each other. This started with a rudo ambush and he was good at directing traffic and keeping things laser focused on Texano, who I think, ended up bleeding. The tecnicos did an unusually good job at rushing the ring time and again to try to take back over, only to get beaten back. Usually it's all just beatings and churning until the actual comeback. My favorite bit in the primera was right at the end; Wagner and Babe Face were getting the submissions in the ring and Indomito just slammed Texano's head sideways into the board around the ring again and again and again. Truly the violence we need in this world.

Rushing the ring did work at the start of the segunda and we got a nice bloody bit of revenge. Indomito's bleached blonde hair was made for it. Tercera settled down to exchanges and a lot of Silver King/Texano's usual double teams which were all ahead of their time and smooth and effective. Finish was novel. Instead of clearing the ring for the final pairing, Hamada had Babe Face in a submission in the corner. Indomito redirected a charging Texano into the ref and took advantage with a foul. Nice little twist on the theme to cap off a good one. I have nothing to say about Wagner here except for how striking it is how little he stands out for basically the first third of his career considering what he becomes later. He's in the right place at the right time doing the right thing mostly, but it's sure not ever interesting.

Jinsei Shinzaki/Gran Naniwa/Hideki Nishida/Kazuya Yuasa vs. Kintaro Kanemura/Dick Togo/Tomohiro Ishii/Macho Pump Michinoku Pro-Wrestling 8/14/02

MD: Tough fan cam angle for this one as we miss the early crowd brawling and then have the babyface corner right in the center of the shot for a lot of the rest but these characters are so larger than life you're never at a loss for what was going on. They spent the first six minutes or so (once they got back into the ring) beating up on Macho Pump. Nishida lit him up with chops. Naninwa stomped all over him. Shinzaki walked the ropes. As with these big M-Pro tags, the section maybe wore out its welcome a little but really, who doesn't want to see Macho Pump get mauled? The heels take over on Yuasa and Kanemura, unsurprisingly, stands out. We really haven't covered enough of his stuff on the site but it all seems so self-evident. Just a big scummy, scuzzy, agile, charismatic, guy who comes at things from unique angles and who isn't afraid to crash and burn. Things eventually break down to Kanemura vs Shinzaki before cycling into pairings and finally landing, after the ring gets cleared, on Naniwa vs Pump, with Pump hitting or trying to hit all of his Rock offense and Nanina always a half step ahead. Structurally this was probably the proper balance but I probably would have liked it a little more if they had cycled through pairings to start as opposed to just having the faces beat on Macho Pump. I felt like we didn't get enough Togo in this one, for instance. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: LA FAMILIA SCORPIO~! EDDY~! TEXANO~! SILVER KING~! SOLAR II~! LENADOR~!

Scorpio Jr y Sr/Tigre Blanco vs Matematicos I y IV/Angel Azteca (Monterrey 1991)

MD: In looking at all of this footage, you sometimes come across gems like Scorpio Jr. beating Batman down pre-match in the backstage area for no reason and then the commentators monologuing about how sad it'll be if the white tiger were to go extinct. Announcers seem to indicate that this as Matematico IV and not II. He actually looked pretty good int here paired with Scorpio Jr save for a wild but well recovered cazadora out of the ropes into a rowboat to end the segunda. Matematico I lost his mask in 89 so it made things a little bit even. Rudos ambused to start. Tecnicos came back at the start of the segunda. There was an underlying tension between Tigre Blanco and Scorpio Sr but it never went anywhere. I wouldn't say there were clear pairings either, especially a central one. Azteca chased Scorpio Sr around the ring at one point but at the end of the tercera it was Matematico and Scorpio Sr. paired off for the big foul/fake foul spot that the tecnicos got the best of. During the beatdown, Scorpio, Jr. successfully got a dropdown trip, which is always fun to see in the wild. In the comeback, Matematico had a crowd pleasing exchange with Tigre Blanco and Scorpio Sr. Overall, this was pretty standard stuff though. I thought it might go a few places but it never quite got to any of them. La Familia Scorpio had a pretty good act, which is good since I'm about to roll into another match with them.

El Texano/Silver King/Centurion Negro vs Mongol Chino/Scorpio Jr y Sr (Monterrey 1991)

MD: This had more of the heat I was looking for. The rudos ambushed at the start but the tecnicos fired back, including faceplanting Scorpio Sr which led to some color. That just incensed the rudos and they came back strong with an awesome primera beatdown around the ringside area with Centurion Negro hung upsidedown multiple times and Los Cowboys ending up tossed into the chairs. There were no fancy spots here just organic violence. The rudos looked at where the tecnicos were in the ring and figured out how to portray brutality in the moment. Great tecnico comeback at the start of the segunda too with Centurion Negro lifting the rudo ref up onto his shoulders almost in an Atlantida to get him out of the way so that they could charge the ring. That led to all the revenge you'd want, with Silver King lawn darting Scorpio Jr. into the seats and Texano gnawing upon Scorpio Sr's wound. That built to Mongol Chino losing his match and the big spots finally getting unleashed. Crowd-pleasing and blog-pleasing both. The tercera had all the exchanges but they had more oomph to them given that the heat had been ramped up. Silver King and Texano hit all of their big tandem stuff, but it felt like it was built to as opposed to cycled in after a reset. Finish had Centurion Negro and Mongol Chino paired after some Los Cowboys dives and they left me wanting a mask match. Basically everything worked with this one.

Eddy Guerrero/Centurion Negro/Solar II vs Lenador/Javier Cruz/Alarcan (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Pretty straightforward match bolstered by the Cruz vs Guerrero stuff. I had wanted Eddy to be matched with Lenador because Lenador is a great over the top character, but it made sense for Cruz to run him through his paces. While he might have been a tecnico in years prior, Cruz was a great "cruiserweight bully" sort of rudo at this point. I see that he feuded with Apolo Dantes a couple of years later and that makes a lot of sense too. So while Lenador got to make his faces against Centurion Negro and Solar and Alarcan took to the mat with solid stuff, this was mostly Cruz vs Guerrero, first with spirited chain wrestling, and then through a hugely sympathetic beatdown and fiery comeback. Eddy could play the part of the underdog tecnico with a big heart certainly. Finish in the tercera was a huge Guerrero springboard dropkick which I haven't seen in any of the other Monterrey footage as of yet. While we didn't get as much Lenador as i would have liked, this was a good look at young Eddy and a nice notch on the belt of Cruz.

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: CASAS~! CHARLES~! SIGNO~! DANDY~! HAMADA~! AZTECA~! TERRY~! FELICIANO~! SILVER KING~! BATMAN~?!

Batman/Chuy Escobedo/Ausente vs. Halcon de Oro/Mongol Chino/Astro Negro (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Some great names in the next couple of matches, but we have to see what we have here first. Astro Negro looks like a guy who never had a chance at recovering from losing his mask. Apparently he lost it to Mongol Chino so he's a forgiving sort. He is a mask maker of some renown ("El Pony") too. It's possible that Batman is a young Mr. Niebla but I couldn't say one way or the other (he had the swagger at least). The central story of the match was Batman vs Halcon de Oro.

I do have to admit that watching these six a month, it's nice to see the structure change up a bit. This was about Halcon dodging Batman. They cycled through Chuy vs Astro Negro (which was fine if slight) and Ausente vs Mongol Chino (nice and flowing; Ausente looked pretty good throughout) before teasing that third pairing between the prime combatants. Halcon took a powder, however, and upon reentering the ring, staged an ambush and started the beatdown. I haven't seen that sort of disruptiveness in a primera in a bit with these matches.

I'm not going to say that these were the smoothest guys we've seen in the Monterrey footage, but the segunda and tercera had the sort of wild abandon that's found in the best of these matches. The segunda started with a comeback and a lot of quick exchanges. Here we finally got a taste of Batman vs Halcon and they worked well together but it was just a taste, as Halcon got run off to the back to draw a count out. The tercera had a pretty brutal second beat down and an even more brutal comeback, wrought with mask ripping, before they cycled through submissions and break-ups and went for the ring-clearing dives: Chuy got all caught up on the ropes in a dive so that was brutal in its own way. Still, that left Batman and Halcon and from there it was a clear, crisp and direct tecnico triumph. The talent wasn't a high as it could be here, but the effort was admirable.

Negro Casas/Emilio Charles Jr/El Signo vs. El Dandy/Gran Hamada/Angel Azteca (Monterrey 1991)

MD: We lose some of the beginning, I think (my guess is an initial Signo vs Hamada pairing). We lose a lot of the tercera. It's still 22 minutes of these guys being absolutely amazing. The level of talent, commitment, trust, confidence is just off the charts. You have matches that follow a certain structure, that might be one dimension or two dimensional, moving this way or that on an axis or two. With these guys, there's a new dimension added. At any point they can deviate from what seemed to be going on in the match, take a side journey, but never, ever lose the true north of where they need to return to and their destination for that point of the match.

Look at the primera. We come in on Dandy and Casas doing their thing, sweeping movements, counters and counters to counters, all building to Casas putting his head down and getting kicked backwards and the two brawling out of the ring. Then it's Azteca and Charles, with tighter holds full of struggle. It breaks down after that, with the rudos having an advantage on Dandy, only for him to flip the switch and make a rolling hot tag. That allows Hamada to come in and crush everyone with headbutts. That entire mini beatdown segment was a deviation and they managed it flawlessly before heading back to where they would have been going without it. It adds drama and a sense of organic believability in the match. So much of lucha is ritual and meeting expectations, but these guys were good enough to switch partners and weave in whole bits without ever losing the plot or confusing the crowd. It could be something as simple as a Hamada/Signo strike exchange or Casas rope running with Hamada, eating an enzuigiri and stumbling right into Dandy's fist.

With lesser talents, the match would leave the ground, devolve into chaos or endless spots, and would never come back. These guys, though, could take moon leaps and always move in the right direction and land and sprint before leaping off again. There's talent and then there's mastery and people like Casas, Dandy, and Charles are in that rare, rare group of the latter.

Jose Luis Feliciano/Black Terry/Mr Terror vs. Silver King/Asterisco/Centurion Negro (Monterrey 1991)

MD: Great to see two thirds of the Temerarios here, but man is Mr. Terror ever not Shu El Guerrero. Moreover, the focus on this match was Terror vs Asterisco. There were pros and cons to that. I'm not going to say Terror brought nothing to the table. There was some mask ripping, some decent enough battering during beatdowns (though Feliciano and Terry were kind of edging him out to get shots in), and he took an entirely admirable bump on a back body drop on the floor to set up the finish to the primera, but his big move tends to be a clothesline (in a match where Silver King's was way better) and there's not much else there.

The flip side is that we got to see Terry and Feliciano go up against Centurion Negro and Silver King for a lot of this and all of that was great. Terry started with Centurion with all of the little movements and earnest openings you'd want from lucha matwork. Feliciano and Silver King brought the motion and all of them hit hard when it was time to do so. This one had too much heat on the ref too. That wasn't uncommon for the Monterrey footage but here it played too much into the finish and the ref got his comeuppance instead of Terror. Usually when watching a match with a singular focus like this, you come off annoyed that the apuestas match either never happened or we don't have it. I could probably live without seeing Asterisco vs Mr. Terror mano a mano though.

Read more!

Espectáculos Promociones Panama: Silver King! Mascara Negra! Sergio Galvez! Cirujano de le Muerte!

Silver King/Máscara Negra vs Sergio Gálvez/El Cirujano de la Muerte 5/15/87?

MD: This one had a lot going for it and a couple of things working against it. Galvez was, of course, an absolute bastard in all of the best ways. There is a category of scuzzy heel wrestlers from the annals of time that would make amazing terrible uncles to any kid. Mocha Cota is one, Chris Colt another, Bobby Bass a third, and so on and so forth. Inca Peruano was that guy on the French set. Sergio Galvez is here. He can stooge and beg off, can get in a slugfest, can base and feed, but he’s at his very best when he’s swarming an opponent, as he does with Silver King towards the end of the segunda, just forcing him out of the ring and following with a hundred mean shots. The good Cirujano is of the line of thematic Médico Asesino descendants, with white gear. He reminded me of Gran Markus, Jr. as much as anything. He hit hard enough, big hefty shots, but I have some, shall we say, concerns about his overall basing.

That made the primera a little dodgy. Silver King (who still had his mask and boundless energy) tried a few things like walking the ropes and none of it went quite as well as you’d have hoped. It came off as two guys who maybe knew what they were doing, but hadn’t drilled together? Mascara Negra worked with him a little better. I liked this guy a lot. He had a real sense of rhythm and a unique style, able to throw some interesting kicks but also hit a bound up leaping ‘rana off the turnbuckles (taken a bit askew by Cirujano). And when he was up against Galvez? Very quick to hit an awesome straight punch to the gut and follow it by tossing him around by the beard. He impressed.

You can’t fault the structure here, dubious basing aside. The tecnicos one-upped the rudos early, living through Galvez stalling and refusing to get in with Silver King at first, with the fall ending with a big quebradora and tiling slam by Silver King. He looked best there and with the work against both rudos at once that started the segunda. The rudos took over quickly thereafter, however, though the tecnicos got some hope, including Silver King handspringing into the ropes a little too exuberantly. It all led to the rudos playing the numbers game and Galvez’ swarming of Silver King and a really great caballo where the partner stood behind and yanked the poor victim’s arms back. I’d never seen that particular tandem submission variation before. The tercera kept the beatdown going, with Galvez ripping Silver King’s mask. It led to a rousing comeback, but one that quickly spiraled through Cirujano’s interference and the ref getting distracted, allowing for a Galvez low blow. Obviously this led to something more and we, and the fans, were left unsatisfied by the comeback on this night. You have to appreciate how well they ramped up the pressure for it though.

GB: It’s always a good day when we get to watch Sergio Gálvez, especially versus a foreign talent. There’s something more primal, almost xenophobic, in the way that he wrestles if his opponent isn’t Panamanian. With his trusty choice of plunder, he made sure that the only warmth foreigners felt on their way into Panama was the blood coagulating on their skin.

Silver King would be no exception here in what I presume to be his debut into Panama. I’m not entirely confident on the date but it does go somewhat according to how King described things in the sitdown interview alongside el Barón. Silver King was the clear fan favourite here, despite this being his first outing. He was most certainly coasting off his father’s coattails but you can’t really blame him for that. Papa Wagner was a beloved star across South America and saw numerous successes in apuestas wherever he went with his most notable feud culminating in him retiring the Guatemalan legend José Azzari in September 1976.

It’s interesting, then, that Silver King would make his first mark out in Panama, considering his father was less than a year removed from still taking names in Guatemala. Either way, Wagner was a household name and a surefire way to get yourself a nice little booking fee as his kid. Despite playing second fiddle to the bigger names in Anibal and Rene Guajardo, Dr Wagner Sr was a formidable opponent whose fight and technical skill won over the people of Panama throughout the 1970s, most especially in the Panama/Mexico tag tournament in mid to late 1977. His partner, Septiembre Negro would go on to much bigger things (and much bigger losses!) but the people of Panama still fondly post about their memories of the triumphing Dr Wagner.

It was undeniable thus. Wherever he went, Silver King had big shoes to fill and he couldn’t let a bully like Gálvez get the better of him. Perhaps a little too quick off the mark, Silver King would take this match as a personal insult to him and an attack on his pride. Though, as for the reasoning behind the feud, I’m unsure what Gálvez had against the young Silver King here. King’s father beating up Gálvez’ partner (Panther) a decade earlier would be a little too much detail even for Don Medina to book out so I’ll just point to exhibit A above that Sergio Gálvez is simply a psychopathic human being. Where this feud goes, well, we’ll find out if things get posted again. There’s rumour of a mask/hair match but that’s all I’ve found it to be so far. Rumour.

As for Silver King’s escapades throughout Latin America, he, along with Texano, would finally travel to Guatemala at the turn of the next decade. Considering how formidable his father was, Guatemala would see fit to not have the next lineage run rampant, too. With their hopes laid on the backs of two very unlikely allies in Astro de Oro and Skeletor, Los Cowboys would drop their WWA world tag titles to the Guatemalan heroes after a hard fought match on the 12th of December 1991.

Embarrassed by a “fluke”, Texano and Silver King anted up their hairs in exchange for a title shot, again losing to the would-be duo of Skeletor and Astro de Oro. The latter would go on to successfully defend against, in order, Los Villanos IV & V, Tony Arce y Vulcano, El Signo y El Negro Navarro, Scorpio Sr & Jr and Los Crazzy Boys I y II before losing the titles to La Ola Blanca; Doctor Wagner Jr and Rayo Láser (who substituted for an injured Angel Blanco Jr).

Speaking of mystery men in white, the El Cirujano de La Muerte gimmick is dime-a-dozen so you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s someone else. It most certainly could have been anyone under a mask here. Well, almost anyone. It definitely isn’t *that* El Cirujano de La Muerte from Guatemala, he’s too big a national star to be stuck in low-card matches working Mascara Negra whose better days were a decade earlier. Though, if it was, there’s an almost ironic twist to Matt comparing them to Gran Markus, considering he was expelled from Guatemala for “unpatriotic” comments about their people. I guess the Guatemalan government never got the memo that wrestling was fake. People give Tony a lot of grief for watching Punk nuke his money out the window but imagine the horror as a promoter after flying in someone from Mexico, giving them a mic, and watching them go scorched earth for heat only for the programme to be cut before it could ever begin.

In all seriousness, our Cirujano here is, in fact, Dominican so it’s almost surprising that there isn’t a note of them in the Dominican Republic groups I frequent. I assume they underwent a gimmick change or two along the way, with this pitstop to Panama falling into otherwise obscurity.

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: LAWLER~! GILBERT~! FREEDBIRDS~! R'N'R~! SILVER KING Y EL TEXANO EXPLODE~!

Fabulous Freebirds (Roberts/Gordy) vs. Rock 'n Roll Express Mid-South 6/24/85

MD: Unique pairing that you'd think we have more footage of than we actually do, at least with this particular iteration of the Freebirds. This went closer to fifteen than ten, but not by much, had a hot crowd, and was an all time Gordy performance. Everything was good, but he was such a beast in this. I want to talk about how well Roberts stooged early, but Gordy just overshadows all of it. Once Roberts finally was able to tag into him, he just bullied Gibson over in a rough German Suplex, just deadlifted him over. That wasn't the start of the heat, but it was jarring enough that I thought it would be. Shortly thereafter Roberts was back in and let Gibson make the tag, leading to Morton posting himself, which was far less unnerving since that's how you expect the heat in an R'n'R match to start. Gordy leaning on him was just nasty though, a running punch in the ropes that took his head off, fist drops, a super athletic cut off where he turned a reversed whip into a leap onto the second rope and dive back off. Morton was finally able to make a hot tag after reversing a Roberts piledriver attempt (which felt suitably dire), but Gordy asserted himself again. Gibson hit a roll up on Roberts, even though he wasn't the legal man and Gordy just walked up, casually lifted Gibson off of it, and ganso bombed him for the pin. Pure brutality. You watch this and what feels most surprising is that it took a whole eleven months after this before Watts put his main singles title on Gordy. Again, I'm sleeping on Roberts' performance here, sleeping on how good Morton was at peppering little shots in from underneath to keep the fans behind him, the ways the Freebirds worked around the ref, etc., but Gordy was such a looming presence that he deserves 90% of the copy here.

ER: Had I been asked about it, I would have thought Ricky Morton would have crossed paths with Terry Gordy a lot more than he actually did, but most of the matches they had were from early career late 70s Memphis that we surely don't have. Prime New Orleans crowd Mid-South Rock n Rolls vs. Freebirds is a great thing, Hayes always seen strutting in silhouette on the floor, Roberts and Gordy - shockingly - separating Ricky from Robert. One thing I like about writing about wrestling with Matt, is that we often land at the exact same conclusion on a match but get excited by different things within the match (and a lot of the same things, we're not special) but I try not to read what he wrote until I've watched the matches, just to see what jumped out to each of us. It's a rewarding way to sync up on wrestling, and it was rewarding here because he was enamored with Gordy, while I couldn't take my eyes off of Buddy. Gordy was great. He was Gordy. I lost it when Gordy hit this huge body press off the middle buckle, but a lot of this seemed like the same great Gordy that we always get. Buddy Roberts felt like the man running the show. 

Buddy out bumped (or at least tried to out bump) Ricky and I thought he had the most vicious offense in the match. He hit this jawbreaker on Gibson that had a little hitch in it, and that hitch really made it seem like a real connection had been made, similar to how Harley Race's hitch on his kneedrop always gave it that split second emphasis that made the connection feel more real. He threw Regal-sharp elbows in the corner, and Ricky sells them like his face is suddenly searing hot. When it's time for Buddy to bump and sell, he's a freak, going hard into the buckles and rebounding into a hard back bump, leaping into a big bump after recoiling from an atomic drop, comedy bumps that look like they really really hurt. Morton's selling in the match is really incredible. There's this great moment where he takes a hot shot, springs off the top rope, staggers to a different side of the ring, and winds up draped chest first across the bottom rope. Morton also gets launched over the top to the floor on a hiptoss behind the ref's back, and knows how to sell a huge bump like that just as well as he sells something like having his eyes raked across the top rope. Morton might sell his eyes being raked over the top rope better than anyone else. Robert's hot tag felt a bit rushed a lead immediately to the finish, but the finish really was beast mode Gordy. Earlier, Buddy had prevented a sunset flip with a well timed punch. Well, when Robert successfully gets Buddy over on one, in the middle of the count, Gordy just lifts Gibson up directly out of his sunset flip and just drops to his knees with a disgusting piledriver. There was no attempt to protect Robert on this one, this just looked like Gordy breaking up a bar fight, shutting that damn match down. Awesome. 

Jerry Lawler vs. Eddie Gilbert USWA 6/17/92

MD: Some all time goofing by Eddie as Lawler more or less sits back and watches. There's a match in here, but of the 26 minute video, less then ten minutes have the wrestlers making contact. That doesn't mean it's not great. The first ten is all about Eddie leaving the ring at any opportunity, stalling, jawing on the mic, causing all sorts of havoc. Once they finally get going, there's a three minute segment of pure pro wrestling perfection where he tries to sync his ideal of a three-count with the ref's, both of them going down one after the other to time it out. Of course that leads to the ref counting too slow for him and too fast for Lawler. Obviously Jerry's an all time pro but I'm kind of amazed he didn't break during all of this. That's your shine here, with Lawler barely having to move a muscle. Eventually Eddie takes over, including a sleeper until he misses a fist drop. Lawler drops the strap and hits a nice bulldog before the second sets up a ref bump (and Gilbert getting his pound of flesh by stomping the hell out of the downed ref to make up for previous indignities). The last five minutes of footage is the screwjob finish, it getting reversed after Jarrett comes out, and Gilbert launching another monologue at the injustice of it all. I couldn't tell you what the crowd felt that night but thirty years later, all the bullshit aged like fine wine.

ER: This is one of the more backseat Lawler matches I've seen, with Lawler clearly hanging back and letting Gilbert work a long routine. It's incredibly entertaining, and I especially loved how Eddie was bragging to the crowd about his Global title, telling them, "I'm the one you see defending my title on ESPN every day...oh wait, I forgot that everybody here is so poor that they can't afford ESPN." This is 85% bullshit and 15% incredible Memphis wrestling. The punch exchanges were tremendous, and I had to watch Eddie punching out Lawler in the corner several times. It's not just about great all of Gilbert's punches were, it's also how perfectly Lawler whips his head in reaction until the KO punch rocks and slumps him in the corner. Gilbert's missed fistdrop off the buckles looked so good, and I love how it lead to the strap coming down and Lawler unleashing his own punches, big bulldog, and a perfect dead drop DDT. The bullshit was so all-consuming that I was actually surprised when they settled down and wrestled for awhile, and I'm not sure I would have minded if they ever did. Of course, we're lucky that they did, but we're just as lucky that some guy was recording Eddie just jacking around for 20 minutes. 

Silver King vs. El Texano IWA Japan 5/23/94

MD: Hell of a sprint between partners here. There were a lot of the spots you'd expect given the audience with tricked out armdrags and Silver King springing forward, but it was all punctuated with hard shots, be it the Texano punch at the beginning, just how much Silver King threw himself into his spin wheel kick and dropkicks, or the chop exchanges. Silver King might get an advantage on an exchange just for Texano to come back with a really sharp leg kick and power bomb, just like that. They did sell in the back third and let things resonate but some of that might have just been exhaustion. If you wanted to distill a story here it was Texano's strength advantage vs. Silver King's speed advantage, but a lot of it was just two partners really going at it. You could feel the trust between them, as Texano had to base for some spots that were getting away from them and wouldn't have worked otherwise, or just in catching some of the dives. They could have done 20% less and probably had a better match for it but since this is basically a one time match, I'm certainly not going to fault them for putting it all out there.

ER: Los Cowboys Explode! I don't think I actually knew that we ever got a Texano/Silver King singles match and this really delivers. This is an insane gas tank match. Both guys are shaped like Jake Milliman but go go go for 13 straight minutes, no letting up, hardly any recovery time after a ton of big bumps and a lot of motion. Silver King has the hair of an early 90s stand up who got his own sitcom, the kind of mullet Richard Jeni would have had if he was born in Torreon. Texano looks so great here. He works the way Silver King would eventually work in 2001. That's nothing against King, but it was clear that Texano was basing and keeping this train running, and it allowed both to shine. Texano's strikes all hit with a thud. He looked like he actually buckled King's legs on a kick (hey I know we have 10 minutes of rope running left, how about I belt you in the hamstring?) but his clotheslines were incredibly impactful. Texano had two different clotheslines that would have broken my chest. The arm and leg drags were cool, and I think the coolest was Texano going up for an electric chair but only getting one leg over, so kind of improvising into a kind of freaked out Robert Gibson style headscissors. King's moonsault press was gorgeous, and his tope con giro was fearless. The visual on it was amazing, as Texano had just taken a sky high bump over the top to the floor, and King followed it right up with that tope, just the best bodies in motion pro wrestling. This had the feeling of a lucha version of a Jay vs. Mark Briscoe match, just two guys who know each other front and back throwing out some of their craziest stuff with full trust and no backing down.  

 

 

Read more!

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.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: CASAS! AJA! MEIKO! SANTO! PANTHER! TARZAN!

Máscara Mágica/Olímpus/Silver King vs. Guerrero de la Muerte/Negro Casas/Rey Bucanero CMLL 6/29/96

MD: I love dropping into a moment in time like this, even for a mid-card feud with some great window dressing. This set up a Welterweight title match between Mascara Magica and Guerrero de la Muerte which would then set up their apeuestas match, and I have to admit, this actually made me want see all of that. They worked well together, with Guerrero standing out as a particularly effective clubbering bully that could still turn it up a notch. That's to say I didn't mind that the focus of this one was on them and not Casas and Silver King, not that we didn't get some great stuff from each individually and together. They played Sharp Dressed Man for both sets of entrances and Negro Casas had fun with it. He danced and hugged the ref with the expected audacity and familiarity so the pre-match is great. There are certain wrestlers you don't want to take your eye off in a match, no matter what is happening. Terry Funk is one. Casas is another. For the primera, they paired Olimpus with Casas and Bucanero with Silver King, which made sense. Young Bucanero, as always, was ambitious but not always entirely smooth. I loved how Casas reacted to basically everything Olimpus did (even when in a simple hold, as Olimpus would go for the chin or the hair or an arm, etc., Casas just was totally on all the time in his complaining and reacting). We did get some good Casas and Silver King time in the segunda and tercera, with the usual rope running trip spots that no one did better and some fun brawling through the ropes to clear the ring for Magica and Guerrero at the end.

ER: Great match, I loved this. I haven't seen much Guerrero de la Muerte, and I'm not sure I've ever seen Olimpus, and that already helps make it a great on paper match for me. It has two of my all time favorites in Casas and Silver King, two guys I've seen a ton and like in Magica and Bucanero, and two guys who are new or relatively new to me, one of each category on each side. The guys I loved did things that I loved, it's fun seeing the elements of Bucanero that stayed as he matured and the small things that didn't, I loved the rope work of Olimpus and the overall rounded professionalism of GdlM. Everybody fit into their cog nicely, the pairings all looked good, and we got a couple of things I've never seen. Casas and King were the highlights, with King especially moving blisteringly fast. I love seeing these two move, and they both looked excellent. King broke out this cool looking spot, where he and Bucanero had been working a nice sunset flip sequence. King kicked out of one and Bucanero went for another one, and King just tried to run away during the flip. The spot looked minorly blown when Bucanero nudged by him, and the spot became something unique and special. If it started as Bucanero slightly missing his mark and sunset flipping King after a delay, the moment Bucanero was sliding down King's back to pull him down by the legs, King starts to move with Bucanero on his back! So Bucanero was being blocked by King while King basically held him in position for Omori's Axe Guillotine Driver. It was a cool visual, pulled off quick, and felt like something innovative we'd see in French Catch. All I see now is 50s French Catch in wrestling, even if there is zero chance those wrestlers ever even heard of French Catch.

Bucanero wrestled more like a junior (and was sized like a junior), and he still had his lunatic fast spills to the floor. Bucanero was a longtime favorite of mine for the many ways he knows how to get to an arena floor, and is still capable of surprising. The peak of his powers was around 2001, when he and Christian were having weekly TV contests to see who could take the most bumps over the top to the floor in a match. Here he is not taking high bumps to the floor, but fast beautiful lucha rolls to the floor, the way a veteran luchador knows how to kind of back handspring through the ropes to the floor after taking a dropkick.  Young Bucanero, wearing gorgeous plate glass tights, had veteran level bumps to the floor at age 21. Olimpus had a couple of great ropes moments with a couple of nice tricks. I loved the moment at the end of a caida where Casas ran in to break up a pin, and Olimpus ran in the ring behind him to spring off the middle rope with a dropkick to the back of Casas's head. in ring springboard senton to a standing opponent is a fun signature spot, and it was hit and reversed in satisfying ways here. I don't think Olimpus has much of a rep, but he has few enough matches that maybe I should go through an under 10 match Olimpus run, while also doing an under 10 matches Babe Richard run, since there is some overlap with each in the same match. Is it stupid to go through and review the 20 or so available Olimpus and Babe Richard matches before I go through and review 20 or so available Javier Llanes matches? Almost certainly! Will that make a difference? Of course not. Casas made Olimpus look plenty good in their exchanges, and King worked fast with all the rudos. Seeing King try to actually take out Casas's feet with dropdowns during a sequence is just one of those signs that guys are taking their best shot at making this match a good one, and I grinned the whole time.

Aja Kong vs. Meiko Satomura GAEA 12/15/01

MD: At the 22 minute mark here I turned it onto 2x speed so I could just get through this. I was pretty much done after the fourth death valley bomb. I was probably done a minute or two before that. It's a me thing as much as anything else. What I post on the blog is basically what I watch: old French wrestling and what we find for NFF which is basically lucha, German Catch, old Japanese TV and handhelds and occasional territory stuff. The other guys watch things more broadly and much more modern wrestling. The point is that I am not at all mentally prepared for twelve minute excess-laden finishing stretches that end up being more than one third the total length of the match anymore. Wrestling isn't math, but I think that's probably my rule of thumb: while there can be exceptions like anything else, a finishing stretch should be a lot closer to 1/6th the length of the total match than 1/3rd. If anyone wants to engage me on this, I'm happy to write a couple thousand words somewhere. Otherwise, let me just talk about the rest and not drag down NFF.

What I love about Aja, especially Gaea era Aja is that her matches tend to be like thought experiments. Like Hansen and to a degree Brock, what makes them so fascinating is watching how her opponent tries to handle the unstoppable force that she presents. Meiko, obviously, was presented as a force unto herself, but she came in prepared for and experienced against what she was going to face and that let them work in some more early counters. Even so, Aja took most of this on the notion that if she can get her hands on you (and that means running into her hands as well), she's going to cut you off. Her opponents are always working from a point of disadvantage, which with a normal monster heel would be a perfectly fine narrative point, but with Aja means even more. She can attack from all sorts of different angles: my favorite here was when she just sidestepped Meiko and tripped her to cut off a comeback corner charge. I also liked how opportunity-driven Meiko's comebacks were. After getting battered around the ringside area, Aja placed her back on the apron and she used the higher ground for an axe kick in a way that felt perfectly strategic. Later on, Aja dropped her onto some metal with a brainbuster, but the ref demanded the object leave the ring before counting the pin, letting her come back with another Pele kick. She went to that well once too often and the finishing stretch (overextended as it was) was entered by Meiko realizing she didn't have the right distance/angle and jamming herself on launching another which let Aja clothesline her instead. The match was full of little touches like that which kept things both believable (human) and interesting for the first two-thirds. And I'll just leave it at that.

PAS: I agree with Matt, this match really could have used an editor. We only had a clipped version of this match before, and I imagine it might have worked a bit better as a clipped match, as it might night have felt as bloated. Still Joshi has a maximilist style and this is a pair of great wrestlers to watch overeat. Awesome Aja performance as she demonstrates again why she is one the greatest monster heel wrestlers of all time. Violent and brutal offense, mixed with perfectly timed moments of vulnerability.  Meiko is awesome in this match too, she has such credible offense, and is great at finding and taking advantage of openings. She has really good boxing for a pro-wrestler who doesn't throw punches. There were awesome moments where she uses head movement to evade shots, and she fires in these killer fast combos to the face. There were lots of moments when this would have have been an all time classic if they had ended there, and there were just too many of them. I did love the actual ending though, Aja's one count kick out is the best one count kick out I have ever seen. Total hubris, like a fighter who stands up too quick from a knockdown, instead of taking the moment to clear her head she bolts back up, only to get put back down. We just needed less nearfalls before that.


El Hijo Del Santo/La Mascara vs. Blue Panther/Tarzan Boy Monterey 1/1/06

MD: If we were going Epic/Great/Fun/Skip on this, it'd be Fun. Mascara was, not unexpectedly, the weakest link, but that's not to say he didn't carry himself well given who he was in there with. You'd get a 'rana that looked a little off but it'd follow three or four exchanges that hit perfectly. My favorite bits in the match weren't the perfectly smooth Panther vs Santo exchanges or the usual joy in seeing Santo's signature spots, but instead his interaction with Tarzan Boy. They had been on the same side of trios and at least one tag back in 98-00 when Tarzan Boy was much younger and after the tecnicos took the first fall here, Santo patted his cheek and shook his hand only for Tarzan Boy to return the favor. That felt like it really paid off with Tarzan Boy catching Santo with a powerbomb for a pin later on. My other favorite bit was Blue Panther using the drop down double leg nelson move we've been seeing from France so often lately to submit Mascara. The tercera was a little loose and free, feeling more like a local show than something for TV, but there were a bunch of tecnico dives and everyone went home happy. A good match with flashes of excellence from two of the best ever, and we're never going to complain about something like that popping up.

PAS: I love formula lucha libre, as a wrestling style performed well it has the highest floor. A basic househow lucha match is better then any other kind of houseshow wrestling. This is a match with two all time greats, a solid young wrestler and a competent hand, so it is going to be super entertaining. Santo and Panther are two of the most perfectly matched dance partners ever and we get some gorgeous exchanges between the two, some classic Santo dives and nifty interactions between Tarzan Boy and Santo, which had a bit more roughness then the smoothness of Santo and Panther. Mascara was pretty replaceable, but didn't do anything giant to drag down the match.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: REY JR.! JUVENTUD! FINLAY! CASAS! SOLAR! PARKA! ATLANTIS! DANNY BOY!

Rey Misterio Jr/Solar/Volador vs. Fuerza Guerrera/Juventud Guerrera/La Parka AAA 10/30/93 - GREAT

MD: What a moment in time this was. Everyone knew what they had in each other here. The vets knew what they had in Rey and Juvi. So much of this match was set up around highlighting them or using them as foils. There are a ton of examples: Parka catching Rey and marching across the ring with him, then Volador catching Juvi. The replay of the leap up 'rana off the top from Rey to Juvi. Fuerza slapping Juvi than being proud when they had him hit the splash across the ring to win the segunda. Obviously, Volador getting down so Rey could jump off his back with his dive onto a Juvi that just ate floor. Rey was the most dynamic entity in the world, with Juvi a game partner who already had working the crowd down. Everyone else more than kept up too. Parka was a rudo but got the chants right from the start. Solar and Fuerza had a great exchange to start the match. The spot where Fuerza hiptossed Volador off the apron and into a perfectly catching Park on the floor was probably the spot of the match and maybe one of the spots of the year. It had a little too much set up but the impact was great. And the character work was just so crisp. Everyone was well-defined, and there was a mini novella within the match between Fuerza and Juvi (With Parka coming out to comfort Fuerza, despite him being in the wrong, and to get them back into it). It's amazing how much they fit into such a short period of time.

PAS: Our boy Roy Lucier is unearthing Lucha TV which hadn't been out there before and found an early Rey Jr. match and a super early Juventud match. That is an all-time great pair and it is so fun to watch them dance their dance. In addition we get Fuerza at peak Fuerza shtick, some cool Solar mat work, a couple of nifty Volador spots and dancing La Parka. I especially loved the Fuerza and Juvi interaction, it has always been one of my favorite parings, the physical comedy between the two is always so great and Fuerza is an all time pantomimer. We got a couple of big time cool spots and just a ton of enjoyable lucha.

ER: This is the kind of match you know you're going to watch the moment you see the lineup. Obviously you are going to watch a match with these six guys, no matter what year it took place. This is one of those lineups where you have no way of knowing which one of them will deliver the hottest performance of the match, just a constant battle of cool wrestlers. Volador was my favorite guy here, but it's a tough choice. I love how tight he throws monkey flips and headscissors, not leaving any kind of space, making it really look like he's the one controlling his opponents' momentum. His monkey flip on Fuerza was textbook, and he played around with a couple of Super Calo like rolling headscissors that look as impressive in 2020 as they did in '93. I really dug him taking a wild Fuerza hiptoss off the apron into Parka, his match climax tope was world class, and his back boost alley oop that tossed Rey into a killer plancha to the floor on Juvy was so damn good. La Parka is a tremendous base for everyone, a guy who could take complicated ranas as good as anyone. Fuerza is a total jerk who might have had the greatest ball kicks in all of Mexico (Satanico would be his primary competition), and he really split Volador's uprights here. Fuerza is such a good mask actor, and it's cool to see he had such in-ring chemistry with Juvy from this early on. I love them as a team and seeing as this is among the earliest matches I've seen with Juventud, it's cool to know that was a thing they had from go. This might not have gotten to the peaks it could have (considering the names involved), but there is zero chance anyone could watch this and have a bad time.

Atlantis/Shocker/Silver King vs. Dr. Wagner Jr./Emilio Charles Jr./Negro Casas CMLL 12/29/95

MD: Just good lucha libre. The rudos were out wearing holiday crowns, one of which Shocker stole in the initial melee. They got the beatdown done in the primera, after some initial tecnico advantage and stalling. Talent level was through the roof here and it was almost all action once the segunda kicked in. The combo of Charles and Casas were made to stooge for tecnicos and Wagner based well (especially for Silver King). An underlying story here was Casas vs Shocker (setting up two singles matches in January), with Casas playing coward, especially whenever he got knocked out of the ring. He was always quick to run away and avoid a dive possibility. He also slowed down the tecnicos' comeback momentum by diving across the ring and out of the fray. The payoff here, wasn't a dive but instead the two of them being in the ring for the final moment where Shocker got the best of him. That was set up not by dives but by a chaotic series of wrestlers being pulled out of the ring to prevent the possibility of them, but it was still unique and exciting. The very best part of the match was the end of the segunda, most especially the sheer velocity that Casas soared into La Reinera. Those two Shocker vs Casas matches (1/19 and 1/26) are the only two singles matches between the two of them in the Match Finder, the second being a Welterweight title match. If they're not already out there, I hope they show up.

PAS: This was quality by the numbers lucha, full of guys who are amazingly talented. Casas and Shocker is a fun match up, and I really want to see those singles matches Matt mentioned. I loved how fast Shocker put him in an Atlantida (which is weird with Atlantis right there) and their back and forths were done with such speed and precision. Shocker is part of that lost generation of late 90s luchadors who never lived up to their potential (Black Warrior, Niebla, Lizmark Jr.) but at his best he was electric to watch, and being matched up with a GOAT like Casas is going to be something. I liked the minor key stuff between Wagner and King too, those guys have been working each other since they were toddlers and you can really tell. Nothing that will be remembered a week later, but man was the day by day quality of this stuff incredible.

ER: Just like that AAA 1993 tag up above, this is a match that I'm going to want to watch just seeing the on paper lineup. I love Wagner and Silver King on opposite sides, I've always loved Negro Casas and Shocker matching up in trios, and I love Emilio Charles stooging around Arena Mexico. Wagner had a bunch of funny walk shtick to sell Silver King kicks, Casas and Shocker had the quick sequences I wanted, and I love Charles' opportunistic rudo. This is the kind of high floor match that comes from having nothing but pros in there. Watching these guys all do their thing while not taking a ton of risks is really fun, because you're dealing with some all timer charisma. Negro Casas moves with such snap, watching him throw a hard kick or take a big flipping bump is so precise and so clean, it really makes Shocker look like a star. It's cool seeing Shocker as the smallest guy in a trios. he looked like Shockercito looks now, and moves as quick as him. This was obviously going to be a win, a classic lucha trios to warm the evening.


Fit Finlay vs. Danny Boy Collins ASW 6/1/12 - EPIC

PAS: The Finlay indy run was such a treat, and it is awesome that another match from that run has popped up (Finlay vs. Dave Taylor in an Irish Street Fight is the coolest looking on paper missing match). This was high end Finlay, and worked pretty interestingly. Collins was working a lot like mid 2000s Finlay, landing cheap shots on the break, using the ring as a weapon, working really stiff. Of course Finlay working as a traditional Finlay opponent is pretty perfect and of course delivered as nasty as he got it. Parts of this felt like Regal vs. Finlay which is about as big a compliment as I can give a match.

MD: This one was a bit of a mindtrip. I can see why you'd have Finlay be the face during this run, and obviously the kids were very familiar and into him in that role as shown by the way they celebrated with him at the end, but this was not what I expected on paper, especially for a nostalgia show of sorts. They called upon Collins to play the bad guy and he did with enthusiasm. I thought they could have been a bit more consistent with the rules; it felt a little like lucha on when the ref made Finlay break things relative to Collins, but that was a minor issue in the grand scheme. The best part of Finlay as a face, of course, is that he works just as mean as he would as a heel, and when it was his turn to give back, he was just as stiff as you'd like.

ER: Collins has been showing up fairly frequently on our New Footage Fridays, which makes sense as he's a guy who essentially wrestles like Fit Finlay. This was practically Finlay vs. Finlay, which is the exact kind of match that will be written about by us. This whole thing was a clinic on hard loud bumps and perfect execution on moves that have been kind of washed over. After seeing Collins and Finlay each throw a couple of gorgeous snapmares, the kind where you have a firm grip around your opponent's neck and jaw and give them a throw while you're leading with their head, you realize just how perfunctory most snapmares are in modern wrestling. The snapmare is treated as an afterthought, a thing to do to get from point A to point B, except point B is typically a lousy thigh slap. Here they treat the snapmare as an actual piece of offense, the way it should when you're throwing a man by the neck, and the follow up cravats and chinlocks were highlights on their own. I love how hard they would lean into Irish whips, the loud PONG when Finlay bumped into the ringpost, and Collin's dropping a knee to Finlay's temple that looked so good that I thought "damn Finlay should steal that kneedrop". Finlay's standing Bombs Away is a treat, and it's a constant joy running throughout a match where you can tell they are treating each piece of offense as important. Finlay is going to sell a short uppercut to his bridge as well as he is going to sell being thrown face first onto a table, and when you treat your offense with this kind of respect it just makes everything come off as important. This was a real gem from a months long tour that saw several Finlay gems. And it might be time for us to break Danny Boy Collins reviews away from NFF and into a regular series.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FIT FINLAY

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LA PARK

Read more!

New Footage Friday: FUCK ITS! SUPER DRAGON! NEGRO CASAS! EL DANDY! SILVER KING! FAMILIA DE TIJUANA! EMILIO CHARLES JR.!

Felino/Emilio Charles Jr./Dr. Wagner Jr./Negro Casas vs. Pantera/Silver King/El Dandy/El Texano CMLL 12/16/95

PAS: This was an elimination 8 man tag with eight all time great wrestlers going out there are just flowing for 30+ minutes. We open with Negro Casas and El Dandy ripping it up on the mat and just go from there. Matches like these are always going to be more about the rhythm then any real story, although I did dig it coming down the Wagner boys. Fun Wagner performance as he was just planting people with powerbombs, and of course Dandy and Casas were both tremendous. As I have said a million times Casas is the master of minutia, little reactions or sells or execution on moves, everything matters and counts, and it is fun to watch him flit in and out of a match with so many other all timers.

MD: It's a 4x4 Cibernetico with some of the best talents of the era. What's not to like? According to the old WON I looked at, this was billed as "for La Copa de altra rendimiento which basically means the Cup of high-class submissions," and Dave was baffled at the pinfall finish. Anyway, it was interesting how this flowed. You didn't get a lot of clear pairings with defined beginnings and endings but instead transitions between one wrestler and the next. Of the pairings we did get, Silver King vs. Negro Casas stood out. I always love the little trip spots they work into their exchanges. Very few dives but lots of great exchanges and big moves. Maybe Casas kicked out of one or two more things than he ought of, especially when there were still enough guys around to allow for interference, but that's a small issue, as was the botch on the Felino elimination. Wagner came out of this looking like a big deal. And yeah, while it's cliché for us to say it, Dandy's punches were sure great.

ER: I love having a collection of these types of matches, the kind of match I can throw on in the background if a friend or two are over and everyone in the room gets their own level of enjoyment out of it based on their individual concentration level. The person concentrating the most gets the benefit of seeing small sequences or individual movements, but someone dicking around on their phone will still look up and see Silver King stomping the hell out of Emilio Charles' knee or Dandy getting Casas out of the way with a breathless magistral. They'll see fast moves done by men they don't know who have large perms. It's worked at such a pace that it's perfectly entertaining for every level of involvement. I thought the major standout here was Texano, looking like the stiffest and most aggressive guy in a match filled with stiff strikes and fast aggressive sequences. Everyone was lighting up everyone, like Emilio Charles throwing skeleton rattling corner clotheslines or Wagner crushing Pantera with a sitout powerbomb. Casas is the perfect kind of glue for a match like this, and Dandy comes off so plucky and punchy. I get why Dandy didn't translate to southern American wrestling crowds, but seeing him in his wheelhouse and basking in his enthusiasm is infectious. He looks like the coolest version of Barbra Streisand in A Star is Born. The first three minutes of this match are just Dandy and Casas tearing through brisk mat sequences and really its all you need. This is the kind of thing you can play through a couple times and notice new stuff each pass.

Super Dragon/Rising Son/Pantera vs. Damian 666/Halloween/Nicho El Millonario Rev Pro 11/30/02 - GREAT

PAS: This was Super Dragon really clearly excited to work a Familia de Tijuana match. Most of Dragon's career was fitting people into his formula, so it was fun to watch him fit into a formula. We get some early lucha comedy, some pratfalls, an awesome somersault rana through the post by Dragon and a killer finish. Really enjoyed Rising Son in this as he was ripping off high difficultly ranas with true pros there available to base for him. The kind of match which must have sent the crowd home on a real lucha high.

MD: Whatever I was doing in the early 00s, it wasn't watching RevPro. I guess I was focused on the East coast scene? I have no idea. That made this pretty fresh for me. The biggest problem was that La Familia de Tijuana was just too over as cool heels, getting more cheers by far, to the point where I was sort of embarrassed for Pantera at one point. They didn't adapt the match for the crowd. That said, everyone seemed to be having fun, especially Damien who was goofing a bit more than usual. They did a lot of groin based offense accordingly. Nicho based beautifully but there's nothing new with that. Super Dragon was in there less than Rising Son but his flipping tope out through the corner to set up the finish was breathtaking. The timing of the dives at the end felt a little off to maximize the moment, but I doubt anyone in that crowd cared.

Nasty Russ vs. T-Money vs. Jay Donaldson vs. Samson Walker NWF 8/15/15

PAS: This was a four-way cage match with our boys the Jollyville Fuck-Its against each other along with two other Kentucky area indy guys. It was a spotfest cage match and the Jollyville boys are guys with huge spots, and Donaldson and Walker were right there. Walker is a big guy, even bigger than T-Money and he does some chucking around including catapulting Donaldson into an ace crusher. We don't get a Nasty Russ cannonball, but we do get a crazy moonsault off the cage into Walker's feet, and several nasty cage bumps including one where he goes forehead first into a steel post. Finish was absolutely psychotic and one of greatest cage finishes I have ever seen. Total blast and a great look at some Segunda Caida favorites earlier in their careers.

MD: If you're going to have four guys in a cage, fatal four-way style, this is a pretty good way to do it. This gave everyone time to shine. When guys had to lay around, it was generally warranted. The characters were well-defined. Walker was comedic yet powerful and explosive. Donaldson had the hype man, the step-up kicks, the attitude, and the opportunism. Russ carried himself like a champ, tenacious, with fighting spirit and an easy charisma, and T-Money was an unquestionable force. The setting felt like an indy lucha match that just happens in a public square, which added to the ambiance. The big spots were sufficiently big (killing your own knees by landing on a moonsault from the top is insane and the finishing stretch worked really well). The gaga at the end (Walker faking an injury in a cage match to get the door open; Donaldson dismantling the ring, a unique use of a wrench to say the least, with the ref going above and beyond to cover for how long it was taking, the friends having victory and the belt between them at the end) was fun, even if you don't usually want gaga in a cage match. You definitely felt the stakes throughout, which is what you want in a match like this.

ER: This was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to watch on my lunch break today. A loose cage with four guys willing to die, with a finish so doomed that if I hadn't seen these guys wrestle at a later date I would have just assumed that this did actually end with two of the guys dying. Russ and T-Money have seen a lot of praise from Segunda Caida. Those Boys from Jollyville are really the two that got us into AIW proper, and they're the team that has probably most often been referenced by us as a dream match tag opponent over the past couple years. I loved seeing the ways they acted as a team here, and even more excited for the gigantic moment where they were not together. I am not familiar with Samson or Donaldson, but came away especially impressed with Samson. As Phil said, he's almost like an even bigger version of T-Money, and had insane pop up strength. He shot Donaldson so far into the air a couple times that his body cleared the top of the cage, once for a super high backdrop and once for a fantastic looking cutter; but he also hoisted T-Money up for a sit up powerbomb like it was absolutely nothing at all, jerking him up sky high before bringing him down. I also loved how Samson basically stopped the match with an injury, waited until everyone was otherwise occupied, then dove for the cage door to attempt escape. That feels like Chris Hamrick Cage Match 101 and I love it. Donaldson had one dodgy strike exchange, but did a lot of things I liked. At one point he broke up a move by hitting an enziguiri right into Samson's armpit (intentionally targeted) and hit another enziguiri that really landed. He also ripped apart the ring ropes and strangled Russ with the rope, beating him with a wrench and buckle. Russ always flew into action with his awesome big punch, everyone took big bumps (Russ moonsault into feet was wild), and the finish was spectacular.

Everything about the finish was great, with T-Money about to escape but getting lured back in when Donaldson threatened to brain Russ with a chair. Money gets back in and just destroys Donaldson with a Pounce, sending him flying sideways into the cage. As Money is about to exit, Russ grabs his ankle, and we get a great bit of friendship when Money looks down and says "come on man". He already saved Russ from getting his face rearranged by a chair, and now the guy won't even let him win? Well, he certainly solves that problem, picking Russ up in a bearhug and running him straight through the cage door, sending both crashing to the grass in brutal fashion. T-Money looked like he went straight down, Russ crashed and burned underneath. Money had to leap, holding Russ, over the top rope and through a cage door, so both of their trajectories were beyond fucked. I can't think of many match finishes more spectacular than this one. I would have lost my mind live, then calmed myself down to make sure I didn't witness a death, then lost my mind again.

Read more!