Found Footage Friday: HOGAN~! JYD~! ORNDORFF~! ADONIS~! BABY TAKA~! TERRY BOY~! SASUKE~! DELFIN~!

Hulk Hogan/Junkyard Dog vs. Paul Orndorff/Adrian Adonis WWF 8/27/86

MD: Very interesting match from the very first Challenge taping (including Lord Al doing the ring announcing). Both Hulk and Orndorff came out to Real American, though they had very different people to come out with. Hart, Heenan, and Orton were with Orndorff and Adonis though Heenan really was subdued for most of this. 

I saw some people saying it was sloppy, but to me, it was wild and out of control. There were bodies going everywhere at the start and if people seemed out of position at times, that just added to the feel and it certainly kept the crowd going. This didn't feel rote or rehearsed. It felt like it was all over the place because people kept coming at Hogan and JYD from every direction and they just threw fists and anything that moved. I'm not sure you'd want that every night for every match but here it clearly worked. 

Adonis bumped all over the place, including into the corner multiple times in interesting ways. Orndorff stooged like a maniac. After one punch he wobbled around the ring for long enough for Hogan and JYD to switch so he could finally eat a shot and fall down. They ended up working over JYD after some chaos with everyone getting involved again (with Hogan being choked with a cord on the outside so he couldn't stop it).

They had a nice bit where Adonis held down JYD so Orndorff could leap off the top on him, a sort of nothing axe handle type move. Later on Adonis help cut JYD off and got a shot in but didn't hold him down so when Orndorff went for it he met an outstretched fist. That set up Hogan getting back in, Hart getting involved, and the leg falling nonetheless. Chaotic and enjoyable. I'm glad this one showed up. 

ER: I'll trust Matt that people were saying this was sloppy, but I wouldn't trust anyone saying that because this felt much more like an out of control fight, with Orndorff and Adonis cutting off JYD and Hogan getting absurdly loud reactions the whole match, especially when he wasn't in the ring. The Hartford Civic was packed and loud, because these people had sat through three Challenge tapings and were finally getting a real match with a megastar. I'm sure the Moondogs/British Bulldogs tag had something memorable, but this tag was on another level. Great Hogan performance throughout, and a reminder that my favorite kind of Hogan match is when you can tell he's having fun, and it would be impossible to not have fun with this crowd behind you. 

Orndorff and Adonis were real assholes. Bobby Heenan was at ringside as a red herring, seemingly out there to do nothing but make people think he would be getting involved in the match when actually it would be Jimmy Hart doing that. I don't remember Heenan getting involved in any way, but as Orndorff attacked with the kind of elbowdrops and fistdrops that made me say "THAT'S a wrestler" aloud. Adonis bumped all over, to no surprise, but this was all about Hogan and his massive reactions. He started the match punching everyone around the ring and ringside, but this match gave us a great look at an underrated Hogan: Apron Hogan. When I say it looked like Hogan was having fun, watch him on the apron as JYD is being cut off. He is fueling this large crowd, building the anticipation, playing into distraction spots, before giving them all release when Dog makes the tag. Hogan relishing the hot tag on the apron before slamming the door shut gave me a huge smile, a jacked goofball giving everyone in attendance exactly what they wanted to see. Great tag. 

Super Delfin/Terry Boy vs. Great Sasuke/Taka Michinoku Oriental Pro 1/20/93

MD: This was very early into Teioh and Taka's career and it's definitely an interesting look at their early development. They were matched up for a couple of exchanges before switching dance partners with a few minutes left in the match. I'd say Terry Boy was further along maybe, though some of that might have been that he was framed as the aggressor and had the gimmick to fall back on. Their first exchange was primarily young lion matwork, but it got more interesting from there. I do think Teioh was more explosive and just struck at things a little harder, with Taka a bit more reactive. The punches were over and the spinning toe hold was definitely over (even if Sasuke hit a springboard dropkick to break it up).

Delfin and Sasuke worked well together, very quick matwork exchanges which had a lot of headsprings and kip ups but that still felt competitive. There were a couple of teased dives until they switched partners, at which point Sasuke hit a couple of moonsaults and Delfin crunched Taka with a plancha. Sasuke flew into no man's land on the outside at Terry Boy to set up the finish. Really, them working with Taka and Teioh was mostly a chance for them to hit stuff more cleanly and sharply than against one another, but it was effective nonetheless. Just a fun, well-balanced tag all around even if it was clear that Taka especially was working it all out.

ER: Oh my god if someone can get me an Oriental Pro logo shirt, with that gorilla wearing a singlet, I will pay them real American dollars. Please. It's incredible to me how formed these guys were in this incubatory period. One year later they'd be creating tape trader gold, but they were all already so far along. The flow got better, exchanges got tightened up, but everything was there in earlier forms. I came away so impressed by Terry. He's surely the most underrated of this Mpro group, and that might be because his highs are less consistent than the others. I think, at his best, he might rank as the actual best of the group, but I also think that Taka, Togo, Kaz Hayashi, maybe even others had highs they hit more consistently, but on any night Terry could look like the best of them. Early in his career he was much more blatantly lifting from every great Mid-South worker. He's doing Junkyard Dog headbutts in a way that shows he studied every frame of JYD's delivery (since we just watched and wrote about a JYD tag before this, it was incredibly easy to see how accurate his was) and all the Funk aping, but it was his gorgeous Dibiase fistdrop that made me react out loud, the same way you'd react to taking the first bite of a really great meal. If it's possible to learn to throw a fistdrop so perfect so early in one's career, then it's an indictment against every wrestler today than none have. My reaction to his piledriver was similar. 

Everything was much more clean than I expected. I mean, Sasuke's occasional clumsiness is baked into the overall charm of Sasuke, as he may stumble but he will always see something through, but the overall tightness impressed me. They didn't all have the same speed or snap as they would, but their mastery of the basics stood out and elevated the craziest spots. Look at how perfect Delfin/Terry's vertical suplex/crossbody combo was. No two Armstrongs ever hit one finer. This match was incubatory for what was to come, but you really could see everything that was coming.  

Yoshihiko Abe vs. Katsumi Hirano Oriental Pro 1/20/93

MD: They say styles make fights, and Katsumi Hirano's style was to get kicked in the face. That sums this up pretty well. It went two rounds before Hirano's corner literally threw in the towel and it was a minor miracle that he survived the second round. His great hope here was to catch Abe's kicks and take him down and do something, but every time he tried either the bell rang to end the round or Abe ended up in the ropes or it just didn't work and Hirano ate more strikes. Really a mauling with Abe coming in at every exchange guns firing and Hirano having no answer. Abe wore a gi and he lost it between the second and third rounds. That was a prelude to him just pressing Hirano in the corner with strike after strike until his corner gave up. Post-match was almost more interesting than the match itself as everything got chippy with the seconds and Abe but even that petered out pretty quickly. 

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Loosely Formed Thoughts on WWF Over the Edge 5/31/98

The Propaganda-style intro to this PPV is fucking insane. It's all World War II footage of tanks and soldiers and fucking Stalin and Mussolini and actual Nazi footage and it's all interspersed with They Live CONFORM and OBEY block fonts but also video of Stone Cold doing shit like turkey tapping Vince from several angles. Best possible start. 

 

1. LOD 2000 vs. DOA

It actually feels impossible that LOD 2000 didn't become the biggest tag team of the rest of the decade with Sunny as their manager. I don't think I'm being overly horny here either. I don't think the fact that Sunny looked like this while I was 17 years old matters here, as I don't think this is a matter of bias. I think I'm being a very reasonable and appropriate level of horny in a way that the eyes of history agree with. 

This is Hawk and Animal vs. 8-Ball and Skull but Droz and Chainz are there. Up above I only wrote "LOD 2000 vs. DOA" and I didn't want anyone to get confused about what members of each group of friends was actively involved here. 

Skull throws a nice ugly big man swinging neck beaker and an actual good legdrop. It does not bring me great joy that 8-Ball and Skull's work from '98 is probably better than we assessed at the time. 

Animal is in strong style mode and does a dragon screw and I don't think I've seen that from him before or since. How much of his BattlArts work is available? 

8-Ball vs. Hawk is better than Skull vs. Animal. They did more punching and elbowdrops and an ugly piledriver that Hawk gets to ignore completely because that is Hawk's spot. 

Hawk has a way of looking off balance while also having this incredible balance and sturdiness on all of his clotheslines. He looks wobbly, but takes this incredible bump all the way across the ring off a missed top rope shoulderblock, flying out of the ring into an almost Halloween style sliding bump to the floor. Hard. I liked Drunk Hawk when I was a teenager but I don't think it was because I thought he was GOOD good. Accidentally, time has only proven me right. Further proof of how good he still was on fumes in '98: the 1-2 punch of his  neckbreaker -> fistdrop combo. 

The 8-Ball/Hawk punch exchange is good and should have gone three times as long. It's worth it for Chainz punching Hawk in the balls from the floor in a way that didn't even seem planned. Cameras weren't focused on it. You can see Chainz pop him in the nuts from the floor and Hawk reacts like a guy who just realized he got tapped hard enough in the balls to react. 

Nobody quite knew how to get to the finish, but Animal clotheslining his way through a hot tag and hitting a great powerslam for the finish plays well with any lead up. 

There is a Faarooq! Faarooq! Faarooq is on Fire!! sign and folks, that's a good one. 

2. Jeff Jarrett vs. Steve Blackman

Fuck I hope Steve Blackman tries a piledriver here but I have a parlay on Jarrett doing one. You see, in between matches backstage, Faarooq hit The Rock with the Piledriver To Beat tonight. We're 20 minutes into this show and we've had two piledrivers and we still have over 2.5 hours to go.  

Blackman is really fun to watch during this stretch. We don't get Reformed Musclehead Karate Guys Working Every Pro Wrestling Spot He's Ever Seen anymore. Blackman doing a baseball slide dropkick to start but then press slamming Jarrett back into the ring but also doing Ricky Steamboat double chops but also looking lost and kind of dangerous is just lightning in a bottle. I think he would get a lot less interesting the more he learned, but this is still in that magic window. 

Blackman hits a thrust kick on the floor that looks like the the most violent version of Chuck Norris kicking Jarrett down the aisle. 

Jarrett does a really good job icing this down the right amount while there's an Al Snow angle taking several minutes too long at ringside. Jarrett works Barry Darsow chatter like "He ain't going nowhere now!" and "Ring the bell he's done!" and is able to do essentially nothing for a few minutes, really well. 

They do a preposterously slow 9 count after Jarrett hits a back suplex. Jarrett had been working over Blackman in a chinlock for a minute so I have no idea why Jarrett was as knocked out as Blackman. I thought they would explode a bit more after the Al Snow angle, you know, to get everyone back involved in things, but they kind of do the opposite for no reason. They've turned the entire rest of the match into "every move keeps both of us down for too long" and it sucks.  

Steve Blackman is at his absolute beautiful best when he is doing moves with full commitment without looking as if he's ever even practiced doing the move before. It's only a detriment if a couple of miscues happen back to back, but has a remarkably high ceiling as a style. His elbowdrop is not thrown like any other wrestler has thrown an elbowdrop. It's like he was born with the knowledge but without memory of where the knowledge came from. He knows it's right, but it's informed by something beyond him. He is not inspired by anyone else who came before. 

Steve Blackman is Backyarder Doug Furnas and we didn't know what we had. We didn't know, and he didn't know how to continue giving that to us. 

3. Loser Leaves WWF: Sable vs. Marc Mero

I'll say it again: Mero and Sable were really great during the first half of '98. Neither ever did it better. Maybe when we get into Jacqueline Era Marc I'll determine that it has aged even better than his Sable Forced Separation arc but I'm not expecting it to be. Honestly Sable and Mero are fucking GREAT together. They really seem like they dislike each other, like their marriage was really already over instead of merely being on the start of a 5 year slide towards being over.  

Marc Mero is so good during this entire segment. "Sable what happened to us? This business ruins relationships... It ruined ours."  

Marc Mero pulling a small package after doing the honorable thing and lying down for Sable, then jumping around the ring in celebration is one of those things my sister will bring up unprovoked 25 years later. 

4. Bradshaw/Taka Michinoku vs. Kai En Tai

Bradshaw press slams Taka into everyone within the first 30 seconds. He's so massive, they look like Lilliputians wearing Miller's Outpost jean shorts. 

I remember this being a lot better, with a lot more heat. Crowd really isn't as into it as I remember. I'm not into it as much as I remember. The Kai En Tai stuff doesn't read as fluid or unique today. There are a lot more seams with 2024 eyes. Bradshaw is not actually reckless at all. Did we all have false implanted rose colored memories of Bradshaw recklessly fucking up everyone in the match or was that just me? This Wisconsin crowd doesn't understand a single fucking part of it. Arms are crossed in Milwaukee, politely not understanding any of Dick Togo's excellent senton variations. 

Jim Ross makes an extended Gulliver's Travels reference and then explains it and I feel like a stupid asshole who's only read three books in my life out here making the same similes as Jim Ross. JR and I each watched the Ted Danson Gulliver's Travels Two Night Television Event in 1996 and now we use it to describe pro wrestling when big man fights small men.   

Okay it gets good when Bradshaw finally tags in and that's when he starts throwing them around. It's still never unprofessional in the ways I remember it being. In fact, Bradshaw was actually a good sport believably taking Kai En Tai's offense, leaning into dropkicks and struggling really well while the Lilliputians tethered his legs with rope. He does polish Funaki with a clothesline and choose Teioh as his Only True Victim by throwing him - really throwing him - with a tiger suplex, but you could watch this match and have no actual idea that Bradshaw is a miserable prick.  

5. Faarooq vs. The Rock

I think Faarooq looked like a real badass (before the match started). This match was the best his Faarooq gear ever looked on him. Fuck how cool would Jacqueline have looked in Faarooq's exact gear? Faarooq looks like a lean cut Masa Saito, or the most bulked up Bernie Casey. He looks perfect, in other words. He looks like a guy really giving a beating to a guy he dislikes. A beating he's been waiting to hand out. His sparsely African-patterned gear looked great with the straps up, and even better when he takes the straps down. Someone who's good with computers, put Jacqueline in Faarooq's gear. 

I hate how guys like MJF or Austin Theory or Ricky Starks move like 1998 The Rock. It sucks. They all flop the same and walk around with their butts out the same and it's all theater kids goofing around doing People's Elbows. The Butt Out Walk must be the first thing they teach at Brahma School. 

I don't know why the crowd isn't more excited for Faarooq dishing out a beating. The Rock wore a big neck brace after Faarooq piledrove him earlier and takes a fun beating, and that combination of things deserved a reaction. His elbows on the apron looked good, Rock is acting like a real punk doofus, yet nobody cares. 

Real flat finish. This feud never had a chance. There was a weird 3 count that got a silent reaction and the camera shot it in a way where you couldn't see Rock's foot on the rope. This whole thing was only 5 minutes and felt really incomplete. Blackman/Jarrett got twice as much time without even being based around an actual feud, so this whole thing was just set up to fail.  

When DX runs in after the match to ambush The Nation they look like the 4 Horsemen of Rape.

6. Vader vs. Kane

Vader was getting real reactions in 1998. There was a powerful machine working against 1998 Vader. He does the Vader flex, he flashes the V's, a ton of fans have Vader signs. The People believed in Vader in 98 and the people in charge didn't want them to. Vader was done wrong. We all know it. The man was 43 years old, which is not an old age at all. I know this because it is my age and how could I possibly be old? I understand why they instinctively didn't want to get behind a 43 year old Vader, but you see things a couple decades removed from the original context and you realize just how mammoth a star Vader would have been in WWF had they just treated him the same way they treat Nakamura at the same age. 

Kane's punches were better in 1998 - better, not good - but his straight rights are not good. There is a reason he never threw them for most of the rest of his career. They have no weight behind them. His uppercuts don't look good either. He threw a bigger variety of punches then, not just uppercuts, and their form is good but the weight is absent. Kane's strikes look shittier the longer the match goes. He would go on to phase all of these punches out other than the uppercut.  

Vader's offense looks good against a big guy like Kane. His bear attack runs him over, but he smartly did one bear attack that stunned Kane, then a second bigger one that flattened him. Nobody was flattening Kane in 1998. Vader knew we build to that. "Vader using his mass now" fuck yeah he is JR. 

This match should be getting a bigger reaction. Vader is making this look like a big fight. He's swinging arms into all sides of Kane's head, even throwing them to the back of his head. Kane is in retreat! Vader sent Kane into retreat which is a thing that has never happened and nobody is reacting to it. Nobody is reacting to these beefy arms and it doesn't make sense. Nobody thinks it's cool that Kane scoop slammed Vader? Vader is a really big guy to take a scoop slam! He lands completely differently than you've seen because you just don't see 400 pound men getting slammed. 

This has not been a night of good matches, which often hurts a crowd, but I don't know why this crowd was not reacting to this match as if it was not Good or Big. It was both, but the crowd reacting so indifferently and Kane just not being that good limited how good it could get. 

I don't know why I haven't mentioned how ridiculous the mask stipulation is but it really didn't need to happen. It didn't make anyone care more about the match than they would have. Vader getting real red-faced revenge would have been cooler. A match built around "first to grab and use the large comical wrench" would have been cooler, probably.  

Kane's top rope clothesline is the softest contact Signature Clothesline of the modern era. It's a terrible clothesline and it never got better. It was only ever good if used in No Mercy. His running clothesline, which he stopped using, looked like a clothesline that would run Vader over and is the loudest contact of the match. 

Vader bumps to get Kane over but they react more to Vader on the attack than Vader bumping around. If Kane had the energy of Bradshaw it could have been a real fight, but Vader has to create his own energy off Kane's Lesser Jason Voorhees body acting. Vader knows how to build a reaction when going for the Vader Bomb, and he knows how to peak it by pausing briefly on the middle buckle before deciding to climb to the top, Milwaukee swelling as he leaves his feet and deflating when he crash lands. The Vader moonsault is a flat out insane and incredible spot for a man his age and size to be using. Vader understood PPV and They resented him for it. This man got up for a goddamn Tombstone and yep, it looks cool as hell when a guy the size of Vader is Tombstoned. 

I don't actually know how I feel about Vader calling himself a fat piece of shit. I think it's a raw promo, and his delivery is note perfect. I guess the problem is that I don't think they ever did anything other than kind of reflect on how sad it was that Vader called himself a fat piece of shit. I don't know if we needed to see vulnerable, sensitive Vader but I do think it was so memorable because of how real it was delivered. We've all been down on ourselves in our lives. A lot sometimes, for any little thing. Vader felt real, and maybe we didn't need Real Vader. Maybe, if it led to something of substance, a renewed energy and fight, it would have allowed people to reflect on themselves when they get too down on themselves. I don't think WWF was or is capable of writing that kind of character. Whatever. It felt like actual, real frustration, the kind we all go through. We don't get that kind of insight into athletes. They're insulated. Taught what not to say to the media. Me, personally? I do not think Vader is a fat piece of shit, but I believed in that moment that he did, and that's affecting. 

I forgot this was the PPV they did that weird Lawler/Crusher/Mad Dog Vachon angle. The Crusher, in his early 70s, kept looking cooler the more undressed he got during his segment with Lawler and Mad Dog Vachon. He looked cool the entire time and got a great big reaction from Milwaukee. He looked like such a badass grandpa in his brown Wrangler Wranchers throwing his bolo punches. This was such a weird thing for WWF to do. They had already used Mad Dog's wooden leg in a match and the idea of WWF honoring a local hero who had nothing to do with them is such a non-Vince move. 

7. HHH/New Age Outlaws vs. D-Lo Brown/Owen Hart/The Godfather 

If your friend had never watched WWF programming before, you could convince them pretty easily that Owen Hart was working some kind of hacker gimmick in his caution tape singlet and, well, hacker sunglasses. 

Owen tags in and runs straight into a Billy Gunn clothesline, Gunn punches and press slams him, Gunn goes up for a backdrop for him, really two of the only guys trying to make this work.

Helmsley's running jumping knee and his tilt a whirl backbreaker (!?) looked good. He always really looked like he enjoyed working Owen. 

Why was the Billy Gunn/Godfather pairing so good in this? They worked kind of fast against each other, and Godfather looked like he was throwing his kicks and missed clotheslines with different pep.

New Age Outlaws working over D-Lo is really good too, though not as good whenever HHH tags in. It's wild how much HHH really kills all the pacing and vibe of this match any time he's involved.

More Owen Sucks chants than I remember but his perfect piledriver to Road Dogg brings no reaction at all. Philistines. 

This match is going a lot longer than anyone could have reasonably expected. The fans get real restless whenever anyone considers doing any kind of hold. This thing is dying the longer they go, nobody is doing anything to bring it back to life even if a lot of the work looks good. It's crazy how bad HHH makes the DX act in-ring. He is actively hurting their vibe and wrestling image. 

8. Steve Austin vs. Dude Love 

Pat Patterson is so fucking funny introducing Gerald Brisco as the guest timekeeper. He has his readers on and a stack of at least a dozen 3x5 cards. He actually said that Gerald Brisco's heart "beats like the tom tom drum on the reservation, like the Heartbeat of America." I mean whoever wrote that line was onto something next level. "Some call him the reincarnation of Jim Thorpe. We call him...A Friend." This is incredible. I did not appreciate how amazing his intro was when I watched this as a teen. All my friends and I just wanted to see Austin beat everyone's ass. 

Vince looks like an impossibly hulked up Robert Carradine. A real geek, and a real freak in his flap pocket black chinos and sleeveless ref shirt. Incredible posture, but a freakish build sculpted onto that wealthy flawed Connecticut skeleton and Kennedy hair. He has a million facial reactions and it's incredible how good literally every one of them are. It's a real Gotta Hand it To. 

Foley sells a back elbow like Austin really spiked him in the nose, running himself into the ground like Terry Funk but more real. The longer the match goes, the more I know that each man was really taking these shots. I just didn't realize they were roughing each other up from go. 

Foley takes such a great bump on a clothesline to the floor. Austin really timed it well and collided with him well, but Foley went over so fast, in that way that Foley sometimes does where you don't know how controlled it actually is. Man would just throw his body to the floor with more speed than he used for anything else. Shouldn't really be a shock anymore that Foley took some crazy bumps, but his heavy lower half really whips him over the ropes. Nobody else has really been able to duplicate that. 

Austin throws Foley onto Brisco and then stomps on them both and punches Foley in the back of the head too many times before clotheslining him ass over elbow onto concrete over the guardrail. I probably haven't watched this match since the early 2000s (I bought the Over the Edge VHS from a video store in Healdsburg that was going out of business) and remember it being built around tons of bumps onto concrete, and that is exactly what it is, and they keep escalating. 

Austin taking a backdrop onto the hood of a fucked up old style Honda Civic, boot going through the windshield 20 years before Zona 23. Is Zona 23:16 anything? Austin gets thrown onto and over a tilted old Mercury and Foley sunset flips him off that Mercury's hood, it's awesome. Foley's body makes a wet splat as his weird torso and wide butt land perfectly flat. It's a sound you never hear and Foley has made it like three times in this match alone. 

Austin is bleeding and is always an incredible looking bleeder. The blood doesn't keep up but the initial color is strong. When he bleeds he always gets the best deep red color on his tanned bald head. For a match built around big bumps on concrete I forgot how many hard back bumps Austin takes onto concrete in this match. My man is out here taking backdrops and suplexes in parts of the entrance that at least 7,000 people can't even see. It's insane. This man broke his damn neck 10 months ago and he's bumping on concrete for himself. 

Also, Steve Austin is great because he manages to bounce a chair off the ropes and into his own face and makes it look like a complete accident. It's a spot that a lot of men have tried and few have made work well. I think there needs to be a level of alcoholism involved to make it work. Sandman was good at it too. 

Pat Patterson throws such a punch into Mike Chioda's lower orbital bone. There's no way any of these Patterson/Briscoe matches from 1999 are any good but damn they should have been using Patterson in more physical roles this whole time. He takes one of the best chokeslams of the year through a damn table. This is a man pushing 60 who retired four presidents ago and hasn't done physical stuff on screen since the mid 80s. How did he even prepare to take this? How did Vince psych himself up to get brained with a pre-Chris Nowinski research chairshot? No idea. 

I don't know how well this holds up as an All Time Great Brawl, but it's differently great for its big stunt show feel and old man bullshit that was at the center of a fight. It was messier than I remembered and was more about getting to specific areas and moments, but this is still a standout 1998 WWF match and surely the best WWF match of the year to this point.   

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE 305 LIVE

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Found Footage Friday: MACHO PUMP~! KOMACHI (MISTICO)~! TOGO~! ORIHARA~! SABU~! TAKA~! SASUKE~!

Masao Orihara/Macho Pump vs. Sabu/MIKAMI Michinoku Pro-Wrestling 10/16/03

MD: We come in a little JIP here but you get the idea quickly. Orihara and Pump grind down on Mikami and it's ok. It's consistent and competent but it's lacking the pep of havint Togo in there. You're just sort of waiting for Sabu to get in. That's the point though, because once he does get in, it's electric. They try to double team him and he just is having none of it. Then he puts the chair in the center of the ring and hits a jumping knee into Macho Pump in the corner; Pump immediately falls throat first onto the opened chair and it's brilliant. Eventually Mikami ends up back in and this turns into an Andre tag where the partner keeps getting dragged down to build up the anticipation for a little bit of Andre. After the second Sabu showcase we get the finishing stretch which has Mikami finally getting to shine with a ton of interesting and seemingly physically impossible roll up attempts on Orihari before Sabu has his final burst and wins the day. Pretty fun stuff once it got going. 

Dick Togo/Masao Orihara/Macho Pump vs. Kesen Numajiro/Hayate/Komachi (Mistico) Michinoku Pro-Wrestling 10/19/03

MD: We've got people kicking and screaming and begging to see a sparring content in front of no crowd between Malenko and Mistico and they can instead watch baby Mistico get beaten on by Togo, Orihara, and Macho Pump. People's priorities are all messed up. This was very good. Bad guys ambushed right from the start and took the first three-fifths before things broke down for the rest. It was a near-perfect balance enabled by the lack of a shine or a feeling out process.

They started on Komachi (who was in matched gear with a matched act with Hayate), and he had one good bit of hope towards the end of this with a handspring but generally just got beat on and screamed. He was figuring it out though his natural instincts were pretty good. They spent longer beating on Numajiro though. Sharp stuff from the rudos though they didn't have a lot of tandem offense. It was more one guy setting up the next for something nasty. As always Togo stood out but everyone carried their weight.

Eventually Numajiro ducked for a heel miscommunication spot and Hayate and Komachi came in hot with big offense and dives. They cycled through a bit after that with everything feeling earned and most things having a little twist to them before Togo finally flattened Numajiro for the win. This went down smooth. Just real easy wrestling to watch and enjoy.



The Great Sasuke/Jinsei Shinzaki/Hayate vs. Dick Togo/Taka Michinoku/Macho Pump  Michinoku Pro-Wrestling 12/16/03

MD: The great thing about heel TAKA is that not only is he a total dick, but he makes everyone around him more of a dick as well. That means that you don't just get him paintbrushing Sasuke in the corner, but you also have Macho Pump playing with Sasuke's mask tassel at the same time. The match was full of stuff like that, but counterbalanced by the fact that the other side, most especially Shinzaki, weren't going to put up with it.

So you got that great mix of the bad guys being really bad and then getting justified and satisfying comeuppance, stooging and bumping and flying around the ring for the other side and taking all of their signature stuff. The video goes around twenty and is a little more back and forth than the other matches we're covering this week but doesn't feel nearly that long at all. Things would build to chaos and calm back down and build back up again until finally boiling over into a hot finishing stretch. We ended up with three different variations of the theme this week (as you might expect) but all three were very watchable. It's so easy to just drop into this stuff and visit for a bit.

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Michinoku Pro Jerry Lawler

Jerry Lawler vs. Taka Michinoku WWF Raw 12/15/97 - GREAT

ER: Since Lawler was an absolute nobody in Japan, we missed out on a ton of potential Lawler in Japan. If Thailand had any kind of wrestling scene I'm sure we'd have a bounty of Thai Lawler matches. When I think of cool matches Lawler could have had with Japanese wrestlers, my mind automatically thinks of heavyweight opponents or ass kicking juniors like Fuchi or Otani. But thinking about Lawler versus the 90s Michinoku Pro roster is something different entirely, and this very cool almost anachronistic 5 minute match shows us what that might have looked like. Lawler bullying his way through the M-Pro roster is the stuff of dreams, taking a cocky and dominant stance as he punches out Masato Yakushiji or gets flustered by Gran Hamada. Think about Lawler vs. Dick Togo! Think about Lawler vs. Super Delfin! Think about Lawler vs. Gran Naniwa!! 

There just aren't many matches where Lawler has to take juniors offense of any kind, and it's a special thing when you can find a Jerry Lawler match - a man with no shortage of taped matches - that gives you something completely different. One thing this does, is remind you how cool it looks when Lawler bullies someone. He lifts and throws Taka to break a headlock like he was Nikita Koloff throwing Tully. When Taka backs him into the corner and throws a knife edge chop, Lawler gives him a 555 Come-On-Now look after a knife edge chop and holds the ropes on an Irish whip, then grins as he shows Taka how to throw a proper knife edge. Since Lawler has at least 8 different elite level punches, it's easy to forget how strong his chops are. He hardly ever uses them. You probably could have guessed that you would get Lawler doing fake karate against Literally Any Asian Opponent (even though that feels like more of a Brian Christopher thing as I type it out) and of course he works a karate exchange as good as any Tracy Smothers routine. He rakes Taka's eyes and does not entirely ridiculous karate poses before hitting a Great Kabuki-like sidekick to the stomach (something he never does), but gets instantly surprised by Taka getting up throwing leg kicks and a spinning heel kick.

Lawler is in his late 40s and is tasked with basing for Taka's springboard plancha, which still looks like one of the most spectacular pieces of pro wrestling flying. I thought Roddy Piper and Ric Flair were still great wrestlers in 1997, but could you imagine either of them catching another man flying at them on a leaping run from the top rope to beyond the ringside mats? I can't. Well, Lawler leans into the whole thing while also making it one of the greatest catches of all time by screaming in terror when he knows he won't be able to avoid it. When Lawler comes back with a running dropkick, Taka hits one of his own - thrown similarly to Lawler's - and when they both hit the ropes and throw them at each other...well, let me tell you just how much I love a mirror dropkick spot in this match, directly after the running plancha no less.  

There's one weird moment where Lawler doesn't really roll out of the way of a moonsault but acts like absorbing it with his back instead of his ribcage is something that would hurt Taka more than it would hurt him. That really doesn't seem like a Lawler thing to do. He's a master at selling offense that hits or misses in a way it's not supposed to, but the only way I could see this spot working is if Lawler visibly sold that it didn't hurt due to Taka's smaller size. I don't think that's a great idea if the idea is to get over your opponent as effective, but I could see that drawing real heat in Japan. Lawler as a guy who just doesn't sell flyer offense but could get flustered by Mochizuki or Hoshikawa. But this is Bully Lawler, so he shows off how easy it is to toss this little guy with a vertical suplex, and for once it's not Lawler, but his opponent, who is being thrown with a backdrop. 

I can't stop thinking about Lawler twisting Gran Naniwa's head with a cravat, introducing the fistdrop to Sasuke's boys. Here he measures up a beauty of a fistdrop into Taka's throat that Taka's sells by holding his head like he's in an Excedrin commercial. He sells the piledriver the exact same way, but it's an appropriate way to sell a piledriver. The finish is far too abrupt and doesn't pay off anything done in the match, as a missed kissed fistdrop off the middle rope leads directly to the Michinoku Driver. Great timing from Brian Cristopher running down to the ring in time to pull Taka off before the 3 count though. Lawler needed to be kept strong for his Kaientai DX run, so this makes sense. Find me another match where Lawler takes a Michinoku Driver. Lie to me and tell me Lawler worked Super Boy. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LAWLER

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Loosely Formed Thoughts on WWF WrestleMania XIV. A Strong, Easy WrestleMania

1. 15 Team Battle Royal

I miss this. I miss getting way too many men in the ring at one time so that even the smallest action stands out. It makes punches and facial selling mean so much more, when you're working to stand out in a crowd of 30. We don't have that. We don't have situations where guys like Bull Buchanan and Recon are in between gear and on shaky gimmick ground. The audacity to run a 15 team battle royal when you only had, generously, 11 teams on the roster. 

Remember the BRADSHAW/CHAINZ team!!?! They gave us a Bradshaw/Chainz team because they needed 4 teams, which meant we got a great moment where Dirtbag Windham ran in just to blindside Chainz and eliminate Bradshaw without having to touch Bradshaw. Dirtbag as Crafty Spurned Lover. 

Sunny is wearing the least amount of clothing possible. In a better world she would have been wearing this flame bikini throughout 1998 and beyond. 

Ultimate Dark Horse: Jose Estrada

Scott Taylor earns points by picking a fight with Henry Godwinn. Taylor punches him in the face and gets his eyes raked instantly. 

Ricky Morton, Scott Taylor, and Hollywood Tatum Bob Holly took high backdrop eliminations. The New Midnight Express was a go nowhere idea but the tights really were fantastic. That rich blue with the gold lightning is so aesthetically pleasing. 

Brian Christopher stands out among 30 men with his bright lime greens, one of the few guys in the match who understands the importance of standing out in a crowded WrestleMania ring. Henry Godwinn and Bart Gunn also felt like they got it. 

Mark Henry hits a great press slam on Christopher, dropping him on his stomach and then just watching while Christopher flops like a fish in the ropes. 

Henry Godwinn in a giant worn Confederate flag shirt vs. a Nazi biker in front of 19,000 Boston males feels like a Where's Waldo of finding a specific type of racist in every frame. 

But I mean Jesus this Sunny outfit really is incredible

 

2. Taka Michinoku vs. Aguila

Let me tell you how many times I watched this match when it was my turn to borrow the WrestleMania XIV tape that somebody's dad's co-worker at Marin Municipal Water taped for us. It's six minutes long and all highlights. Here is one highlight per every minute of the match: 

~That Aguila moonsault off the top to the floor, a beautiful arc

~Taka's no hands running plancha that holds up as one of the most iconic highflying spots in wrestling history. The Insane speed and distance plus the impossible hang time haven't really been duplicated since Taka, and there has been no shortage of wrestlers in the US, Mexico, and Japan who have tried to innovate something as impressive. The camera angle on this one also couldn't have been better, which only adds to this specific plancha's majesty. 

~I'm not sure Aguila's corkscrew dive ever looked as good as it did here. His 10 match WWF run as Aguila, pre-Papi Chulo, long before Essa Rios, was as exciting as anything Blitzkrieg did, but we reacted to Blitzkrieg as something we'd never seen before. Were we that entranced by a standing corkscrew splash? 

~Taka's fast flipping bump off the top turnbuckle, directly onto his hip

~Aguila's slick leaping rana off the top

~Taka had the most gorgeous belly bounce on all of his missed moonsaults. Full commitment, full extension, no idea how it didn't completely rearrange his bones and organs. 

WWF were so proud of themselves for landing Gennifer Flowers. I hope she landed a great payday. I'm not going to pretend to know what a great payday for Gennifer Flowers looks like, but I think I'd know it if I saw it. WWF was really giving the greater Boston area a lot of credit for following presidential scandals. 

3. HHH vs. Owen Hart

The Chyna/Slaughter are handcuffed together and they do a chin to chin showdown and it was one of those moments that WWF loudly said We Know What We're Doing. They knew what we wanted to see when these two were cuffed together. 

Owen's "sledgehammer hitting an anvil" guitar shredding music should have stuck around. His "Enough is Enough" intro became one of the worst intros of the era. 

Owen has a nice nice standing rana, HHH has a killer bump jumping off the apron into the guardrail

HHH trying to go into Flair mode and I guess I still kind of like it here? It felt more earnest. His high knee was a move that would have played in 1998 All Japan. I would have liked to see HHH's work on a Patriot-level All Japan tour, maybe form a Wolf Hawkfield team. Lose a couple matches to Giant Kimala/Jun Izumida. Get his hairline fucked up by a Tamon Honda headbutt. Lose to a Masao Inoue clothesline. There are a hundred wrestlers today who I wish had never seen an All Japan match, but I think HHH could have actually pulled some positive influence from working tours there. 

Owen gets a cut on the bridge of his nose and I'm not sure where it comes from but it looks good

HHH does some legwork that is interesting enough. JR had a bunch of cheesy pro wrestling bullshit about Owen's leg. Things like "He just got the cast off today!"

I hate Owen Hart as a babyface comeback so much. He is so unimaginative in so many ways. Here he gets worked over so much, building to a big comeback, fighting back and finally making HHH show ass, which had hardly happened. And when his big spotlight came, he just kind of blandly punched HHH across the ring with zero conviction. Just a total boner.  

The best part of the match is Sgt. Slaughter taking bumps over the guardrail at age 50, a true Mt. Rushmore Bump King candidate. 

They made Owen look like such a weenie. Just a dumb babyface with a little baby dick. It felt like that's how he looked for essentially the next year and then well. I wonder why I liked this match so much when I was 17. What was the allure? What appealed to me? Then, I thought this was one of the best matches on the show. Now, I think it's arguably the worst match on the show. Shamrock/Rock is the worst, but I could argue this one there if I wanted. 

4. Marc Mero/Sable vs. Goldust/Luna 

Every single Goldust punch in this was great, and it made Mero's punches look even better..Goldust's punches were more clobbering shots to the side of the head and face, while Mero responds with some of his best worked amateur boxing, including some of his best uppercuts. All of the Mero/Goldust segments rock.

I need to see a list of every backdrop from 1998 higher than Goldust's in this match. Any fed, any wrestler, let's see any that went higher than Dustin in this damn match. He does a tight tuck and gets launched straight up by Mero, manages to look super dangerous and also incredibly safe. It makes sense for Goldust to do a big backdrop early in a match as it makes his dropdown uppercut spot make more sense later in the match. You need to establish that your opponents have a good reason to duck their head, show that you're susceptible to rafters-reaching backdrops, then that dropdown uppercut just makes your opponent look like he's chasing that backdrop dragon. 

You'd have to call Sable's first hot tag - and her first match as a whole - a tremendous success, right? It didn't matter how raw she looked, her energy was perfect the entire match. Her apron work was really strong, which is something that plenty of actual wrestlers don't ever get. I thought it was great during the Mero/Goldust segments when she would be annoyed that Mero wasn't tagging out. "Come ON Mark," in an irritated voice, managing to come off not like a nagging wife but as a woman who wanted to beat their asses. 

When Sable does tag in it really doesn't matter what her offense looks like, because she's screaming and breathing heavy through clenched teeth and all of her body language and energy reads like a girl who just beat her enemy's ass and is now being blocked from doing further damage. You already ripped out her weave, you don't need to damage the girl's bridge work. 

This all built really well and you can tell everyone treated it like a big deal. Mero broke out his big moonsault press for the first time in ages, and there were a few very strong nearfalls down the stretch that all felt like the actual finish. You wouldn't think a match that was hyped around Sable finally getting her hands on Luna would actually need false finishes, but the ones here are great.

When Goldust accidentally charges into and knocks Luna off the apron? Marc Mero's inside cradle on him felt like a real finish. Great two count. 

When Luna splashed Goldust, after Sable moved out of the way, and then Sable only gets the TWO COUNT with her powerbomb!? That's a huge nearfall. People flipped out about Sable doing a powerbomb so loudly in the arena, and that pop stuck with me so much that before this match I would have bet on my memory and said the match ended with that Sable powerbomb. That they actually did such an excellent late kickout shows how serious they were about this match. You didn't need false finishes to give this crowd what they wanted. 

When Sable did win, with the TKO, I love the little piece of drama around Mero raising her hand. Mero staring her down, about to flip out on her for taking the pin, but instead giving her a brief but sincere arm raise was handled the precise correct way within character. This whole thing was really great, really well done, and looking back I'm kind of in shock at how well they executed it. Everyone played exactly the role they should have played, and there wasn't a better mixed tag match in WWF until the Beulah/Funk/Dreamer match the next decade. 

5. Ken Shamrock vs. The Rock 

How many years did The Rock take off Ken Shamrock's life with chairshots in 1998? How many years did The Rock take, collectively, off every wrestler, over the years 1998-1999? Rock swung his chairshots directly at the soft spots of heads and faces, and he brains Shamrock with an all timer straight to the face. Rock hits Shamrock in the face harder than any chairshot used in any ECW music video. I remember watching this match while eating breakfast before school, and when Shamrock started going wild eyed, JR was going into histrionics with all of the "DOES HE EVEN KNOW WHERE HE IS!? HE'S LIKE AN ANIMAL!" My dad looked over his paper, looked silently at the TV for a moment, and then said "Stupid" as he raised the paper again.  

6. Cactus Jack/Terry Funk vs. The New Age Outlaws

Finally we get Funk's first actual appearance as Terry Funk. This guy is amazing. Any 50+ year old that gets a regular wrestling appearances in WWF has had a great career, but none of them got to come back to wrestle in their 50s and wear pantyhose and the weirdest fitting jeans while swinging around a chainsaw. Finlay just came back and started beating the shit out of people, but he did it while dressed like a man, not like a scarecrow. Terry Funk left a note about a horse over a decade earlier and then got paid money to stumble around in pantyhose for a couple months, then gets to look like an old badass action movie star as TERRY FUNK at WrestleMania. Funk came off like the toughest guy in WWF in this match, and it turns out the match is the best WWF match so far this year. 

Funk starts the match by punching Billy Gunn in the side of the head a ton, then headbutting him, right in front of the ring. 

Cactus Jack runs his whole body into the dumpster just to knee Road Dogg in the face and then hits a somersault senton off the other side of the dumpster. It's a sick bump, off the side of the can and onto the floor in a heap. But an extra brilliant part of the spot is Cactus hit the dumpster - and not Road Dogg - because Billy Gunn had done a baseball slide to KICK Road Dogg out of the way after Cactus had already begun his senton! That's a really incredibly timed and executed crash. 

Funk hits the guardrail full speed in front of a bunch of kids, then gets backdropped into the dumpster. These guys are all firing off an amazing amount of creativity working within and around the confines of this dumpster. Every time either Funk or Cactus are in and around the dumpster it's total brutality. 

Billy Gunn pays Funk back for all the chops and this suddenly turned into a violent southern brawl and one of the great brawls of the year. Road Dogg holding Funk prone while Gunn rips his Funk U shirt off him, slapping his chest, punching him in the forehead. These guys are all so good at brawling that they're making cookie sheets look downright evil. I feel the stinging obnoxiously stiff rubber of the dumpster lids slapping off my back, because Funk and Cactus are taking these beatings. 

I don't even think the match needed a ladder, but the work they did with the ladder only elevated this already great match. Cactus and Mr. Ass saved their best brawling for their climb up the ladder, which was brisk. They walked quick up that ladder and punched each other in the head the whole time, and the second they got to the top they got knocked into the dumpster by Funk. Funk got punched into the ladder and flew back into it like he was telling his story of climbing Mt. Everest. 

Everybody's fall into the dumpster looked great, but I don't know if they topped that Cactus/Ass ladder spill. Or, maybe it was topped by old ass legend Terry Funk getting powerbombed off the fucking apron, into the dumpster, onto his old ass shoulder like he was working an FMW show in a baseball stadium. 

After this spills to the back and every single man falls into a bunch of concrete and wood and giant plastic Powerade bottles, and after every man gets hit in the head with a chair or equivalent, Terry Funk gets to use a forklift to move bodies in real time. I'm proud to be among the percentage of people who have had a forklift job. I have used a forklift to unload and load trucks at two different companies in my life, even if I've never actually had a job where I realized I would be using a forklift at the time of my hire. Two different companies trusted me enough to use a forklift. One of the forklifts was a stick shift. I can't even drive a stick shift car, but I knew how to unload expensive pumps and engines off a flatbed with a manual forklift. Two companies trusted me with a forklift, and Vince McMahon trusted Terry Funk to use a forklift at WrestleMania. 

7. Undertaker vs. Kane

I remember at the time this felt like a big deal to me and my friends. I am not as excited by it at age 42 as I was at age 17. Who could have guessed we'd see dozens of these matches. 

Kane does a Tombstone/Oklahoma Stampede and it's at least an interesting idea. 

This is kind of a tough match for Undertaker, as Kane has to stand perfectly still and no sell all of Taker's strikes, so they all kind of look like shit. Meanwhile he makes Kane's punches look excellent at times and throws himself into bumps in cool ways. His corner bump on an Irish whip looked great. 

There's an electric chair spot that is cooler than it should have been. Undertaker gets up on Kane's shoulders like he's Robert Gibson doing a headscissors, and Kane sits down fast and sends Taker kind of toppling down headfirst. 

The match starts to feel a bit long in the middle. Kane was an unmovable object but also an object that would lie in a long grounded chinlock. Two brothers sharing a small bed. Too old to be in the same room, let alone sharing a bed. 

Undertaker takes an insane bump on a tope, flying over the ropes and getting sidestepped by Kane, basically doing running dive into an empty swimming pool that had a big table and Spanish commentators at the bottom of it. 

Even after the big dive, the fans stay pretty cold. It gets quiet down the home stretch and it's really odd. You can argue whether the match layout is to blame: Did the match go too long even though it was the semi-main and at worst the third most anticipated match of the night? I don't think so. Kane's heaving wind sucking stomach might think otherwise. Maybe Undertaker made his comeback too suddenly after 13 consecutive minutes of Kane taking no damage? It felt like they were doing the right things down the stretch but the reactions were not there. The three tombstone finish is a good finish for this match, and the tombstones all looked like the tombstone that Hogan pretended he had taken to break his neck in PRIDE in 1973.

Kane worked singles matches this long against Bret, but that was a different style, and three years before. This man was tired and after 15 minutes of a physical match suddenly Undertaker had to pick up his dead weight into three different standing 69s. Kane was going to get dumped on his head. It was inevitable. 

I thought this delivered what it should have, but was surprised by the cold reception for the biggest moments. What matches are even considered the best Undertaker/Kane matches? Is there a consensus? 

8. Steve Austin vs. Shawn Michaels

God there were so many years I'd die to have an Austin/Michaels match. We got a big one at King of the Ring 97 and we got this one. Both ruled. Both could have been incredible in 1992, or 93, or 96. 1997 and 1998 were great and I bet if we had any of their house show matches from 96/97, at least one of them was bound to outshine their big stage PPV matches. These are two guys with house show work even stronger than widely seen work, because they were that good. 

This has a great chase to start, ending with a killer Austin Polish hammer. Michaels takes the Hennig bump in the ropes and stooges around with his tight little ass 2/3 out of his tights. HHH is such a coward. HHH spent the worst years of our mainstream American wrestling fandom aping the most boring stretches of Flair matches, but he was too much of a puss to literally show ass. HHH had a complete aversion to any type of ass showing. A pathetic pro wrestler. Shawn Michaels would hang his tight set out there for us all and it's a shame we didn't get more footage of 1998 Michaels. He was still on one. 

His high speed upside down bump in the corner landed his body in such a painful way, jarring his entire skeleton off the turnbuckles, a brutal bump no matter the condition of his back. This would throw any body completely out of whack. His bumping in the opening half is nothing but painful spills and extra leaps. He wrecks his balls on an atomic drop, goes chin first into the announce table off the apron (gorgeous bump). He finds great ways to get run into every single one of the turnbuckles.

Austin throws perfectly worked Hitman-style falling elbow smashes. His huge swinging punches look fantastic.  

Home stretch builds to a series of different great bumps, an incredible back and forth. The best of them were: 

~Michaels aiming to wrap Austin's legs around the post, but Austin yanking him chin first into the post instead. Michaels was an incredible ring post bumper in the early 90s and is somehow still best in the world in his retirement match. It's so infinitely more valuable than making funny faces on 2 counts. What the fuck happened to this guy? How did going cross eyed and born again make him shy away from sick turnbuckle and ringpost bumps and into goofy never had sex o-faces.  

~Michaels taking an in-ring backdrop that would have stood out on any house show match in Memphis in any year

~An even better backdrop bump: Austin going breakneck fast over the guardrail, onto concrete, inches away from fans

Do we actually know if Michaels' selling during the final minute or two of this is his back just seizing up, or is this dude just a perfect carny worker in his final match ever, working a back injury in one of his greatest selling performances of his career. 

This match was the literal LAST of the best era of Shawn Michaels. I don't know if there were 5 of his matches from 2002 to 2010 that he made better. It's one of my least favorite runs in wrestling history. 

He never returns after WrestleMania XIV, he's Barry Sanders. 

Best Matches: 

1. Terry Funk/Cactus Jack vs. New Age Outlaws

2. Marc Mero/Sable vs. Goldust/Luna Vachon 

3. Shawn Michaels/Steve Austin

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Dirtbag Barry Windham Dispatches Milksop Michinoku

Barry Windham vs. Taka Michinoku WWF Raw 2/23/98

ER: What a great Barry Windham look. Taka is already waiting in the ring, Windham comes down the ramp flanked by his boys, points at Taka the way a man points when he knows he has somebody's number, while perfectly swathed in his vest, chaps and bandana. He goes on to wrestle the entire match wearing the vest and chaps, and it's a look I love on him. I do not like that they did this match, and I did not like how they worked this match, even though it was probably the best Windham showcase of the last several month's of his final WWF run. This was the first time - since introducing the Light Heavyweight Title - that they went out of their way to show that the best light heavyweight would get absolutely run the fuck over by anyone on the roster who weighed 50 lb. more than them. The whole match was presented as a real travesty, that poor defenseless, tiny, weak, overmatched, frail  Taka Michinoku was tricked into signing a contract to a match he had zero chance of winning, probably because he is stupid and doesn't understand the language of contracts. And, since the poor little light heavyweight champ has zero chance of winning, he just works the match like he is scared and tentative and the entire thing is Windham showing off all of his awesome offense. I don't think people on the roster were even acting this scared of Kane, but here's Taka knowing he has absolutely zero chance of defeating Barry Windham.

AT LEAST all of Windham's offense looked great. He throws his right hand from his hip, tosses Taka way up into the air with a gutwrench suplex, is always doing eye rakes and back elbows, and even throws a Bruiser Brody style high one-armed bodyslam (don't remember anyone else ever doing a bodyslam like that in WWF). Taka hits two total moonsaults as the entirety of his offense: one quebrada and one moonsault press off the top, but he hits them in a way where he barely grazes Windham...yet it seems like that's how he intended to throw them?  He connects with each of them the exact same way, with his right arm connecting with Windham's left arm. Barry is there to catch them, but Taka appears to do them to intentionally graze him. I can't explain why. Windham's superplex looks awesome and the diving lariat is about to be the sure finish before the lights go black and Kane comes out. Lights out means the ref has to legally cease all counting, even if he's already counted 2 and his hand is coming down for 3. Lights go out, everyone inside the ring ropes has to freeze. Refs don't work in the dark, thems the rules. Don't like it? Take it up with the union. 

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Loosely Formed Statements on WWF's No Way Out of Texas 2/15/98

 

1. Marc Mero/Goldust vs. The Head Bangers

Marc Mero is a 1998 Rising Stock. Always on. Endless energy. 

Marc Mero's high back elbow and precise elbowdrop. Stocking Rising. 

Marc Mero's ass over crown bump to the floor for a Mosh lariat. Heat Seeker. 

Goldust working dropdowns and leapfrogs and a high backdrop bump in black lingerie. Picturing him working 2000s AAA. 

Marc Mero draws real heat. His bumps for Thrasher's shoulderblocks are real. Online Mero Discourse will swell. 

We get real blood 10 minutes into No Way Out of Texas. Thrasher takes a real manly bump when Goldust snake eyes him onto the ring steps. Blood spidering down his face. Match at a new level. 

Mero - the worker of 1998 WWF - immediately targets the cut whenever he is in, including stomping Thrasher all over the cut to spread the blood. 

We'll see if any chant will be louder during any other match than this MERO SUCKS chants. Scotching heat in February. That's before he unwraps some wrist tape and chokes Thrasher until the tape is red, and then the chants resume. 

Mosh has four sincerely great punches on his hot tag. 

2. Pantera vs. Taka Michinoku

Pantera has the greatest offense. Multiple rolling armdrags, THAT running swanton to the floor, a tricked out headscissors that felt more World of Sport than lucha, and a fast flipping bump to the floor. 

Taka's springboard plancha flies 4 feet past the guardrail into the entrance.

Pantera's rolling headscissors from the top rope to the apron is in the discussion of Greatest Headscissors in History. The tope diagonally past the ringpost was triumphant garnish. 

Well Brian Christopher called Taka Michinoku "slant eyed" on commentary. Jesus. 

Cools down a bit when Pantera is working over Taka's back, but I like it. 

The cooldown burst into flames when Taka took one of the highest bumps over the top to the floor that I've ever seen, moments before Pantera leapt over the top rope with his running senton, the most incredible move on 1998 wrestling TV. 

The cool back work stretch is paid off many times over when Pantera fills every bit of space with elbowdrops aimed with precision at Taka's lower back, and two different backbreakers that looked...backbreaking. 

Pantera pulls off an effortlessly accurate top rope moonsault, the way I might take a bite out of a sandwich, then snaps off a hurricanrana with both of them jumping off the top rope just as easily. 

Brian Christopher was a...real presence...on commentary. The entire match. You have never heard louder slurs on commentary. 

3. The Quebecers vs. The Godwinns

I'm not sure why they even brought in the Quebecers in 1998. They brought them back to Raw with no re-introduction, just the two of them wearing the blandest and worst gear of their respective careers. Still a good team, but out of place and oddly presented. 

Rougeau keeps ducking Phineas's lock ups and then yells "How about those Canadians, eh?" to the crowd like a prick. 

Jacques is out here getting mowed over by shoulderblocks, and when Pierre tags in he starts working wristlock exchanges with Henry. It's kind of silly, but those big boys did really yank the hell out of those arms. 

Phineas works really vicious with Jacques. He hits a full on Glacier front kick into Jacques's stomach and tries to pull his arm off with a single arm DDT. 

Henry drops his head and Jacques kicks him hard right across the chest. Pierre is the only guy not throwing leather so far. 

They're working this as a classic WWF heel in peril match, the crowd completely silent as the Godwinns cut Jacques off from Pierre. For some reason, the fans do not cheer for Rougeau's sunset flip nearfall, and I have no idea what crowd reaction they were expecting when Henry held Jacques in a chinlock that could only build to Jacques fighting back to his feet. 

The match is actually really good but the role reversal fucks everything up. 

The fans do not want to see Jacques make a hot tag to Pierre. The cannonball that they hit is not triumphant. 

Jacques hits a pretty crazy plancha off the top to the floor, crashing into Henry. 

Everything was completely backward and the crowd was icy but it was a good tag if you pretend it was in Montreal with a poorly mic'd crowd. 

4. Bradshaw vs. Jeff Jarrett 

Say what you will about Cornette being given a dead in the water idea, but I loved the short-lived NWA stable. What a bunch of weirdos. Windham, the Rock n Rolls, and Jeff Jarrett with my favorite gear and hair of his career. Robert Gibson is wearing a duster with county fair sweatshirt art of him and Ricky on the back. 

The opening is really well worked, just Bradshaw swinging arms and chaps and boots at Jarrett and Jarrett taking all of it. I loved when Bradshaw ducked down and Jarrett finally landed something, a stiff kick to Bradshaw's chest, and Bradshaw just straightened up and booted Jarrett in the face. 

It's funny when they exchange strikes, as Jarrett is doing these nice worked right hands but Bradshaw is just hauling back and smashing Jarrett with the edge of his elbow. 

I appreciate JR pushing the story that Jarrett knew to target Bradshaw's knee because Barry Windham told him about Bradshaw's knee in secret, because I guess it's better than telling the story of Jarrett targeting the two foot long braced kneepad that covers most of Bradshaw's left leg.

All of Jarrett's kicks to Bradshaw's leg look good, but none of it leads to anything. 

This was a lot better when it was Bradshaw laying waste to Jarrett and the NWA. It loses steam once they went into more of a back and forth. 

When the NWA runs out after the match, Robert Gibson takes a really fast, pretty crazy bump to the floor. I have to remind myself that Gibson was only 39 during this run and was really busting his ass. 

5. Faarooq/The Rock/Kama Mustafa/Mark Henry/D-Lo Brown vs. Ken Shamrock/Ahmed Johnson/Chainz/Skull/8-Ball

I remember watching this PPV a couple days after it aired, getting the tape from a friend whose dad had a co-worker who taped the PPVs. Something something the kids will never understand what we went through. If your parents didn't let you actually order PPVs, that's how you got to see a PPV in 1998. 

I remember watching this match before school, and my dad getting actually offended by them clearly running a team of militant black people opposite several white supremacists. My parents already hated pro wrestling because of its stupidity. I don't think my dad had ever even considered that there would be angles with white supremacist good guys. I remember him reading the paper and putting it down, saying "It's VERY clear what they're trying to imply here" and being mad about it. 

This match was set up by The Rock hitting Shamrock in the face with one of the most disgusting chairshots in history. 

Does anyone actually know any differences between Skull and 8-Ball? Is one of them better than the other? Does anyone actually know which one is which? Did they themselves actually keep track of which was Skull and which was 8-Ball? When JR tells me that Skull is in against D-Lo, should I trust him? Should I trust JR to know the separate identities of Skull and 8-Ball, even though this is a War of Attrition match and JR very clearly did not know the definition of "attrition" when Lawler asked him to define it, and JR had to use schoolyard tacts like "*I* know what it is, do you?" until the moment you can tell someone came on the headset and told him the definition. You can tell someone came on, as JR was *floundering* and fucking seething at Lawler for pressing him on this, and after 20 agonizing seconds suddenly JR blurted out 6 synonyms for "attrition". (Skull has a slightly rounder face, FYI)

Shamrock dumps himself on his head doing a Japanese armdrag to D-Lo. 

Chainz drops several fast elbowdrops but I'm not sure if any of them are good. His big boot is better. 

Mark Henry looks like a total badass calling for Ahmed, and the crowd really comes alive when he and Ahmed start wailing on each other. 

D-Lo does a frog splash onto Ahmed's ass and legs, committing to the splash even as it looked like Ahmed was a man not expecting a frog splash. 

It is wild how much smaller Shamrock looks than everyone else in the match. 

Who could possibly give a shit that D-Lo Brown is a Certified Public Accountant, JR? How would that be interesting to any person watching D-Lo Brown in this War of Attrition? Talk about his nice Hitman elbowdrop.

Jesus now JR is talking about The Rock's degrees. JR tanked this match. They're fucking fighting JR, stop talking about everyone's fucking GPA. 

6. Vader vs. Kane

The cameras cut away just as Vader was about to do some V-hand crab dancing and shit this company hasn't known how to film wrestling in 25 years. 

Vader is throwing punches straight at Kane's forehead and then swinging his whole arm into the side of Kane's head. 

Vader gets a rear waistlock and grabs Kane by the hair with his left hand so he can punch Kane in the back of the head a bunch with his right, including one shot from behind that snuck up and under into Kane's temple. 

Kane isn't bad in control, but things are much better whenever it is Vader punching Kane in the head. 

Vader has taken big bumps for clotheslines. 

My dad would have made such a good Paul Bearer, if he was someone who ever dressed up in a costume for any reason (I have never seen my dad in any costume for any reason). My dad is more handsome than Paul Bearer, but the body shape and parted brown hair are too similar. 

Kane does his uppercut but he hadn't learned how to arm slap yet. 

Vader tests just how sturdy Kane's mask is by punching him directly into the face six times until Kane literally responds as if he's being swarmed by bees. 

Kane is wearing some insane Boris Karloff lifts, and whenever Vader rocks him with a standing clothesline you can really see them throwing Kane off balance. 

Does Vader have the best standing splash? It's up there. 

Kane's strikes don't look great, his top rope clothesline doesn't look great, but there's absolutely no denying how awesome it looks seeing Vader get tombstoned. 

7. Savio Vega/HHH/New Age Outlaws vs. Steve Austin/Cactus Jack/Chainsaw Charlie/Owen Hart

Savio Vega sure makes a lot of sense as a kayfabe partner and as a guy who would be able to work this match, but when a teenager hears Mystery Partner and that Mystery is replacing the World Heavyweight Champion, well...

All of the Austin/Gunn exchanges are really great. Gunn scrambling out of the ring to avoid a Stunner, then bashing Austin with the edge of a trash can on the floor, Austin running him the hell over with a clothesline, beating him with 1998 chairshots

Billy Gunn is doing all of Hunter's Flair bumps better than Hunter

Funk is in there taking nothing but damage, beaten by trash cans, getting powerbombed through a pair of chairs, taking a piledriver on a trash can lid, back suplex onto a lid, also threw a trash can into the air and taking the hit when it comes back down.

Billy Gunn has that Paul Koslo weave

Cutting Funk off from everyone else is a cool way to work this 8 man

Austin throws a mashed up trash can so hard at Billy Gunn's head, and again, Gunn bumping for Austin is perfection

Nobody backstage told Savio and Funk that they were wearing the same thing? Both got that big ol dad butt denim 

Owen Hart's best role is running in from the apron to back off DX, and then returning to the apron. He hits a great missile dropkick into Savio and later runs across the ring to hit a big dropkick and take swings at all of them. 

Ending is a bit abrupt, with Austin tagging in, wasting everyone quickly, and then just hitting a Stunner on Road Dogg, but the match was a really fun brawl. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

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Taka Michinoku and Jesus Castillo Had An 8 Minute Match on WWF TV

Taka Michinoku vs. Jesus Castillo WWF Shotgun 1/31/98

ER: Not only do we get Sunny doing the ring announcing in a skirt so short that she tugs down the hem while making funny faces to the camera, but we get the FULL Boricua four part rap entrance. Every Boricua has a microphone, and they rap all the way into the ring. Miguel Perez is wearing a big white Fubu jacket, Jose Estrada looks like Puerto Rican Angus Bethune, and for whatever reason Jesus goes into this with blood in his eyes and hate in his heart. And if you thought that full boy band entrance was as good as it could get, for whatever reason we get gifted with a near 8 minute Taka/Jesus match. All of the Boricuas get tossed early when Savio snags Taka's foot, so this match is almost fully one on one for all that time. What a great choice. Jesus is so good, maybe the most underrated asskicker on the entire 1998 roster. He was like Buddy Lee Parker with lucha bumping ability, a great guy to take faster and faster armdrags and bigger bumps, go over smoothly for Taka's beautiful hurricanrana takeovers, and lean chest first into knife edge chops loud enough to surprise the crowd. It's always a treat when cruiserweights wake people up by hitting someone really hard.  

Jesus was in control for a lot of this, taking over by ducking his shoulder down into Taka's stomach to stop a charge. Once I made the Buddy Lee Parker connection it's all I can see. He hits a slow lift chickenwing suplex and a stiff southern lariat, and we get to come back from commercial break with Jesus paying Taka back for those earlier chops. Jesus throws two of the absolute loudest chops you'll see all year. They were good at paying things off all through this, giving the match more purpose. Castillo has a hard bodyslam thrown like Finlay or...Buddy Lee Parker, but when he tries it too much Taka gets a convincingly close inside cradle. All of Jesus's offense look good, but he has a couple of inventive bumps too: He misses a running torpedo shoulderblock in the corner and bounces off horizontally, like a big husky Jun Izumida bump. They made every exchange look so good, and the sudden hurricanrana roll up finish worked really well. Taka needed to hold Castillo down quick and his rana has such nice physics that Taka snapping it off and quickly hooking the legs forward made it look impossible to kick out from in less than 3 beats. This was a gem. 

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Found Footage Friday: TAKA~! ISHIKAWA~! WARGAMES 2x2~?! SLIM J~! SHADOW JACKSON~! CONCRETE GORILLAS~! NWA ELITE~! DEVIL'S REJECTS~!

Yuki Ishikawa/Kurashima vs. George King/TAKA Michinoku BATTLARTS 2003

MD: If George King wants to post BATTLARTS matches on Instagram, we're going to watch them. King was the odd man out in some ways, but you can't say he wasn't game. Whenever TAKA was in, he was shouting encouragement from the corner. He wasn't afraid to slap and chop hard and he had a lot of feats of strength that felt labored in a way that added to the struggle. Occasionally, you questioned the timing or positioning maybe, but Ishikawa was going to be able to work him into holds and make things look great with just a bit of feeding. That's all he needed anyway. It was a lot of fun to see Ishikawa and TAKA square off, as TAKA threw some nasty kicks but spent a lot of his time twisted and contorted in a crossface chicken wing or outright getting dropped on his head by Ishikawa. Kurashima was in there to take suplexes and throw them, but it was mostly Ishikawa's show. King and TAKA layered in just enough cheating to keep things interesting and help rationalize the finish. 

Slim J/Shadow Jackson vs. Jay Fury/Nemesis 2x2 War Games NWA Anarchy 7/19/08 

PAS: Slim J has seemingly gotten a spot in AEW/ROH which is awesome, he is one of the most underseen and underrated wrestlers of the 21st century, and it is great he is getting a bit of shine. Most people remember him as a high flyer workrate guy, and he is very good at that style, but he truly excels in a bloody ugly brawl like this.

This was a four person War Games match, which conceptually seems a bit silly, but worked fine. It just ended up as a quick tag team I quit match. Nemisis and Shadow Jackson together were the Urban Assault Squad, a long time Cornelia tag team, and this was the apex of their post break up feud. There was a trophy involved in the break up, and the sharp trophy was used as a stabbing implement to open up all four guys. Slim J started the match and took a nasty beating throughout, including getting German Suplexed while both he and his opponent were standing on the top rope, and getting hung with a noose from the cage. There was a lot of battling on the top rope, and at one point the fence started peeling away from the cage, which gave the whole match this chaotic, razor's edge feel. Like any minute this whole thing is going to collapse. Jackson had a real connection to the crowd, but I didn't think his offense looked that great, the heel team was fine, if a little unmemorable, but this was another great example of what an all time deranged psycho Slim J is and was.  

MD: I loved the layout on this. It was like a War Games Lite or a Sprint War Games. Slim J started with Fury for the first five minutes, wrestling from underneath to really dominate towards the end. Nemesis came in and they began to just demolish him. Jackson came in three minutes later to even the odds and they had a big comeback. It was particularly interesting though as Slim J had to earn his part of it like he would have to in order to set up a hot tag. Nemesis had been holding the cage to keep Jackson out and it was only when Slim J was able to fight away from the noose and take over on Fury that Nemesis had to help his partner and Jackson was able to come in. The faces then slipped on a banana peel and we got a really brutal beatdown, tons of shots into the cage, and the insane visual of Slim J eating that German from the top of the cage all the way across the ring. It was an amazing distance to travel on it. Anarchy is so good at booking big moments in these matches and here it was Slim J coming back again as he was about to be hung and Jackson rising up to get his revenge as the crowd lived and breathed with his every movement and the triumphant victory. It was real folk hero stuff which is what you want in a War Games. I agree that specific things could have looked a little better in practice at times and that probably would have put it further over the top, but I'm completely behind the theory of this one.

Devil's Rejects (Azrael/Shaun Tempers/Iceberg) vs. NWA Elite (Abomination/Phil Shatter/KIMO) NWA Anarchy 7/19/08

MD: There was a moment right at the midway mark of the match, even as the announcers were laying out the stakes again, where I thought to myself "This is actually a pretty conventional tag." Of course in that moment Iceberg decided to take a bite out of Shatter's skull, so obviously it's all relative, but this was a different sort of match for these groups. It was titles vs the chance to ever challenge again, where the Elite were trying desperately to wrest some gold, at all costs, from the Rejects after a six month reign from Azrael/Tempers. What you got on one side was a fairly oddball group with KIMO's unconventional strikes and Abomination's size, but with Shatter doing the brunt of the work from underneath as the Rejects worked like a well oiled machine. Shatter had a lot of time working with these guys and taking their stuff and, to some degree, to be able to get Iceberg up when needed, including to set up the hot tag. Unexpectedly, Iceberg took huge bumps in the process. They had a great moment at the end where the managers were taken out on the apron and everyone crashed into each other to set up the finish. Ultimately everyone worked to put over KIMO which was a choice in time, I guess. The Elite's team never really seemed to gel here (Abomination was really just there, an absence in your vision in his all black gear), but Shatter held up things well considering he had the Rejects to work against.

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Heel Tommy Dreamer: It's a Joke!

Tommy Dreamer vs. Hardcore Holly WWF Metal 9/15/01

ER: This was a bunch of stiff violence packed into about 3 minutes, and seeing a match like this makes it clear that Bob Holly is the guy that should have been sent to ECW instead of Aldo Montoya. If Holly came into ECW in 1997 with the same attitude he was carrying to 2001 late night syndicated WWF TV matches, he would have been huge. Bob Holly in 1997 ECW would have been like Jon Moxley on AEW TV now. Dreamer is the heel AND larger, but Holly somehow comes off meaner and stronger while also connecting with the crowd as a babyface. Dreamer goes for a cheapshot and gets his ass handed to him for it, with Holly swinging his full arms as hard as he could to smack Dreamer across the back and face. Dreamer even takes a vertical suplex on the floor after just trying to get away from Holly. Holly is this amusing combination of ugly strikes that clearly land hard, and he works a quick aggressive pace different than the quick paced matches now. Holly fills voids with kicks and punches and maximizes time. Dreamer gets a couple bits of nice offense (a heavy backbreaker and a Russian legsweep he really yanked Holly into), but this was mostly just beating Dreamer's ass. Dreamer misses that Naniwa elbow and Holly commences with hard bodyslams, clotheslines, and a gorgeous dropkick under the chin (gorgeous and pinpoint even in comparison to Holly's typical dropkick). The finish is a super smart way to work into the Alabama Slam, with Dreamer getting a small opening and trying to hit a piledriver, only for Holly to effortlessly stand up and plant him dead center. I wasn't expecting Holly to be such a tsunami in this, as it came off like the kind of match you see someone lose on their way to being out of the company. 

Tommy Dreamer/Chuck Palumbo vs. Taka Michinoku/Funaki WWF Metal 9/29/01

ER: This was the kind of match that made Metal my favorite weekly show around this era. It's incredibly fun, and worked with far more originality that I'd expect a similar tag to be worked in 2021. Taka and Funaki evade Palumbo with their speed, then start working over Dreamer's arm, even hitting a nice tandem vertical suplex on him. Dreamer and Palumbo are good at plausibly selling for their much smaller opponents, never making it seem ridiculous that Kaientai are keeping them on the ropes. Dreamer is nice and vindictive when they gain control, as he starts punishing Funaki for working over his arm by working over Funaki's arm! I haven't really seem something like that, where one guy takes arm wringers and axe handles to the shoulder, then when he gets his chance starts doing the same thing. "You remember this? How do YOU like it?" Dreamer hits a bodyslam with Funaki's arm pinned behind his back, throws him into the ringpost, not planning on working the arm over for the finish, just punishing Funaki for insolence. 

The Kaientai comeback was really good, and Dreamer's timing really made it click. Funaki hit a really awesome reverse DDT, swinging into the position after Dreamer got him in a fireman's carry. It was a super slick reversal, someone needs to steal that. Taka is a great house of fire, nailing Palumbo with uppercuts, and I loved his cool running knee into the corner on Palumbo, flipping over the apron and nailing Dreamer with a springboard spinning heel kick. Dreamer gets knocked to the floor while Funaki holds Palumbo in a camel clutch while Taka slaps him, hits a baseball slide on Dreamer (as he's trying to get back into the ring from the floor), then runs back and dropkicks Palumbo in the face. Funaki goes for a pescado on Dreamer, who dodges and sends Funaki crashing to the floor, only to get kicked off the apron by Taka when he again tries to get into the ring. Dreamer takes a great bump onto the apron to the floor, but Taka kicking Dreamer distracts him just enough for Palumbo to lay him out with his excellent superkick. Palumbo angrily sells his nose and face during the whole pin, still smarting from Taka's dropkick. This match was a super smooth, super smart way of getting from A to B to C, and a style totally absent from WWE TV today.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE HEEL TOMMY DREAMER

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WXW Gary Albright Memorial Show 4/19/00

Full Show


Too Cold Scorpio/Sugaa vs. Tommy Suede/Mark the Body

ER: This wasn't great, but had its moments. The American Hunk Society were both really green, and it would have been cool to take advantage of Scorpio's presence and giving him a singles match against Sugaa or one of the other pros on the card. Tommy Suede would get quite good within a year of this match, but here he was a guy still getting crossed up and accidentally stepping out of the way of offense, making Scorpio look like a dummy a couple of times and somehow not getting his eye socket caved in as a receipt (although perhaps handing out receipts on memorial shows is bad business). Sugaa is a guy who would go on to work WXW for his whole career, and here he was dressed like a shock jock making a wrestling appearance in 2000 (pleather pants, chrome silver button up, wraparound sunglasses), but was clearly jazzed to be teaming with Scorp and took some big risks. He hit an awesome no hands tope con hilo and looked like a guy who you'd be excited to see at your regular indy in 2000. Mark the Body (who they also called Mark the Hunk and a couple other variations) didn't look great hitting offense, but looked great missing offense, including a great missed elbowdrop off the middle rope (I thought UPW trainees were the big bumping, bad offense guys, not WXW?). Scorp's tag ins were highlights, loved his flipping legdrop, and he finishes things off with a heavy ass 450.

Jimmy Snuka vs. Jak Molsonn

ER: When you're getting a 2000 Jimmy Snuka match, it's really up to the opponent how good or bad that match is going to be. From the mid 90s indy Snuka matches were already made up of a heel clubbing away at Snuka for a few minutes, followed by him throwing some chops, a bodyslam, and a Superfly Splash. I would guess by 2000 that it had been at least 5 years since he had worked a match that wasn't laid out that way. Molsonn looks like Scott Norton if Scott Norton didn't lift and was just more of a fat guy. He's really soft on his clotheslines, axe handles, and forearms, but he's also wrestling a near 60 legend so it's very possible he looked better than this in other matches. Snuka takes over with some bad chops but good headbutts, and puts Molson to the mat with a really nice flying headbutt attack (like a nice Tito Santana forearm) and lands an impressive, fully unprotected Superfly Splash. 

Doink vs. Showtime Shane Black

ER: A show like this is going to have a lot of matches that start with 3-4 minutes of heel control, before moving immediately into the one minute of "name" control to finish. Shane Black is a Quiet Storm type ponytailed Little Buff Boy, who doesn't wrestle at all like Quiet Storm, and actually seems like a guy with some nice tight basics. This match could have been good with a couple extra beats, as the 3-4 minutes of Black control were good enough, and Doink's 1 minute comeback was good (this was Ray Apollo, who is an underrated guy who throws a good elbow drop and a nice whoopee cushion), but a match layout of 80% Black/20% Doink taken in that order is the least interesting way for all of these events to happen. An extra kickout, some kind of unexpected beat, this gets suddenly good. 

Samu/LA Smooth vs. Big Dick Dudley/Hungarian Barbarian

ER: This kicked about as much ass as something on the lower parts of this show are going to. When there are 11 matches to get to on this show and the file isn't close to 2 hours long, you know you're getting a ton of 3-5 minute matches. So, watching four big guys throw mostly punches and chairshots for 5 minutes is going to be towards the top of the class. Samu is Rikishi size here (thus even better) and LA Smooth is his size equal. Hungarian Barbarian is a guy you'd think would be much worse given he's a guy with genuine size and a good look, totally unsure why he never went anywhere. This has a lot of Samu throwing potato shots, and the other three have no problem leaning into strikes. Chair and stair shots don't get swung at full strength, but the punches look good and that's more important. There are few moves beyond punches, but the big one is a BIG one. Hungarian Barbarian does a gigantic Undertaker style no hands plancha that sends him into everyone and into the front row. Insanity. How did this guy not get used on late 90s ECW house shows?  

Stevie Richards vs. Scotty 2 Hotty

ER: This is daisy duke Stevie, not the then-current Right to Censor Stevie, and at one point he even strips off the cutoffs and threatens to wrestle in his blue briefs. This is the first time these two wrestled, and it's kind of surprising they weren't matched up more often in WWF (they only worked a couple house shows and an international Heat) with at minimum a TV story where RTC wants to censor Rikishi's ass. Stevie vs. Scotty over the Light Heavyweight Title feels like a program most people just think they remember actually happening instead of ever actually happening. It's kind of a funny pairing, as Stevie isn't a guy with offense and Scotty during this era was also a guy with way less offense. Scotty was a great bumper who weirdly had better offense when he was a job guy than when he was peak of stardom. Scotty 2 Hotty filled up 30-45 seconds of his matches with Worm buildup/Worm, dancing, climbing turnbuckles for crowd reaction, and other things to stretch time (like a corner 10 count punch every match). 

Scotty 2 Hotty is the Wrestling Dream, where you put in the years and bruises as a big bumping job guy, and a few years later you're a guy getting insane reactions while working a high school gym Jimmy Valiant act on the biggest shows of the biggest money era of all time. After the first 3 minutes of this match were all about getting crowd reactions from different sides of the ring, I was actually convinced they would go out and work a juniors match using only headlocks and bullshit. I think that match would have been tremendous. This was fine, but not that. They do work headlocks, Scotty does get HUGE crowd reactions for every piece of Too Cool bullshit he does, Stevie hits a nice vertical suplex and excellent Stevie kick, takes a great bump when Scotty flips him into the ring from the apron, then does an incredible sell of an uppercut to the balls. Stevie sells that punch like a Shakespearean stage death, arm extended skyward while his other hand clutches his balls. The Worm is so over that Scotty soaks in literally 30 seconds of reaction before he even takes on hop. Good for them. 

Gillberg vs. Afa Jr. vs. Lucifer Grimm

ER: This did not need to be an elimination 3 way, but this was a very fun short Afa Jr. showcase. I've always been kind of fascinated with the Afa Jr. career, a guy who hardly spent any time in WWE developmental before being brought to the Raw roster, only to be gone 3 months later immediately after having his biggest TV singles match. I really liked Manu in those 3 months, a guy I was weirdly viewing as a someone to be excited about during the grim "everybody looks like Ted Dibiase Jr." 2008 WWE. I don't think "Manu is a cool WWE TV guy" was a real common talking point in 2008, but I always like a guy with a nice bump over the top to the floor. Afa was even more of a big bumper in 2000, because he is literally 15 years old. He gets fantastic height on a monkey flip and double backdrop, hits a big guillotine legdrop, a plancha over the ringpost to the floor, and a huge splash. Gillberg throws several nice uppercuts, nice headbutt, doesn't take a bump, and really smashes into Afa with a spear. This would have been a very fun Gillberg/Afa match, but I don't think we get big Afa bumps or flying offense without Grimm in there to help catch it all, so in that regard Grimm was a necessary presence. A 7 year old Lance Anoa'i does a People's Elbow on Grimm after the match. 

Crowbar vs. Judas Young

ER: The commentary guy who sounds like Sebastian Gorka is trying to figure out why Devon Storm went crazy and became Crowbar, and he hilariously comes up with "I imagine he waited so long to be signed by WCW that he just went crazy." He's joined by Little Jeanne, who lost several times to Mona on WCW TV over a several month period around this time. Crowbar was really generous with Young here, giving him a ton of this match, a ton of time that Young arguably wasn't prepared to fill. This felt like a 4 minute Worldwide match stretched out to 9 minutes, on a show where almost everything has been kept right at that Worldwide match length. Young has a decent elbowdrop and a nice top rope elbow, but he weirdly wrestled the match as a heavyweight peer of Crowbar and Young couldn't be over 170. Crowbar hits his slingshot splash and a nice flying crossbody on the floor (while Young was sat in a chair), gets a good nearfall off a northern lights, but this was just too long. You had Jeanne doing a mid match turn on Crowbar (leading to him taking an unexpected bump over the top to the floor) and then he has to get his revenge back on her, and I don't think they really even established their partnership anyway so it was just time spent that we didn't need. 

Taka Michinoku/Funaki vs. The Head Bangers

ER: I'm sure these teams had better matches on WWF Metal, but this was fine. You hope to see some cool Taka stuff in a match like this, and he is really great at bumping for Head Banger lariats. Take is great at just running in neck first and then getting hooked quick to the mat. He hits a nice rana on Thrasher and then goes for another one immediately after and gets planted by a kneeling powerbomb. Taka does his sick as hell seppuku taunt before appropriately missing a huge moonsault. The Head Bangers spent a good portion of their time making kung fu jokes or doing bad crane kick poses (got their asses for being Asian!), then just win with a flapjack. 

Johnny Smith vs. Maunakea Mossman

ER: This was one of the main reasons I went out of my way to watch this show, as we hardly have any footage of Johnny Smith wrestling in the states. There's some ECW shows and this, basically. And Mossman is being managed by Nicole Bass for...some reason, I suppose. And my time would have been MUCH better spent just watching the match or two on this show I really wanted to see, as this match delivered everything I was hoping it would, and actually got the time to deliver it. Seeing a 10 minute match on a show filled with 4 minute matches stands out as a downright epic, but these two also really expose how much everyone else on this show has either gone through the motions, or just has none of the dedication to making small exchanges look legit. Everybody else on the show had treated their match as an untaped house show obligation, which makes a lot of sense. And then Smith and Mossman come out bending limbs and snapping tendons with dragon screws and really laying it in. Their mat exchanges are super tight, the same kind of fast mat stuff that is popular today, only here none of the steps are skipped. 

Here you can see WHY Mossman had to turn a certain way to ease pressure off his arm, you can see WHY Smith had to roll the way he did to shake Mossman's grip on his ankle. They weren't just working the sequence they rehearsed and thinking about their next beat, they looked like they were naturally working to those beats. Smith whips over so fast for Mossman's armdrags, really everything they did made me expect a joint dislocation. Smith has such cool body control on his matwork, that kind of tripped out Regal wrist control spiraling out of a feinted kip up. Mossman goes after Smith's leg, Smith goes after Mossman's arm, and all of it is great. Mossman beats Smith up with a couple kicks, Smith hits a great bridged German (Smith is one of wrestling's great bridgers) and catches him in a great death valley driver, hits his fine middle rope dropkick, all of it looks great. This was a simple touring match but with expert execution, and that execution makes all the difference. They worked go behinds, wristlocks, and takedowns the same way Bret Hart would work them, and that kind of dedication to simply "making the moves look like what they're supposed to be" can be really exciting. 

Eddie Guerrero vs. Chris Jericho

ER: This was disappointingly only 5 minutes, keeping with the theme of most of the matches on this show, but both had just worked a week of house shows, and this show was the literal day after they had just taped a Raw on Monday and Smackdown on Tuesday. So they're good enough dudes to work a memorial show on what surely would have been a well earned day off. And Jericho responds by doing some Y2J mic work and that's about it. Because these 5 minutes are the motherfucking EDDIE GUERRERO show. Small show Eddie is really special, as I've yet to see any evidence of this guy not putting on a show. This was bigger than any indy show Eddie worked during his rehab tour the next year, but this show came the day after working a show in front of 20,000+. So here he comes out just scowling at the fans, looking at these memorial show fans with real disgust. He lets Jericho run through his catchphrases, and then, for 5 minutes, Eddie hams it up. 

He gets thrown onto his face twice after trying to lock up with Jericho, and immediately starts playing some greatest hits. He runs on his knees to the ref after getting embarrassed, he complains of hair pulls, and - and I've never seen him do this - he then starts trying to trick Jericho into locking up, only to pose. Was Eddie ever doing pose down stuff during heel exchanges? I have no memory of Eddie ever working Narcissist poses, and I love it. He tries to get a knucklelock, then flexes a bicep, then keeps doing it with a new flex each time. It's the best. He spends the first 70% of this match entertaining the crowd as only Eddie can, then of course hit a low dropkick into Jericho's knee, running around the ref to hit it. It was a short match, so it didn't get to go far, but I loved the (abbreviated) finish, with Eddie running up the ropes to hit his whipping headscissors, only for Jericho to catch him in the Walls. I wish we got more, but this was 5 special Eddie minutes I'd never seen before, and that's a great thing.  

Road Dogg vs. Rikishi

ER: This was a punch out until they gave every fan the exact thing they wanted to see that night: Rikishi grinding his ass into Road Dogg's mouth. I liked the kick-punch stuff a lot, with the match peaking around a fantastic punch exchange. Road Dogg dropped his knee and smashed Rikishi into the railing outside, and back in threw a few great right hands in the corner, really knocking Rikishi's head back, and Rikishi popped him with on solitary right hand after. Road Dogg sold the punch the way one might sell a punch to their nose/cheekbone, then took a couple of really hard whips into the turnbuckles before dropping to his seat, mouth open, head leaned back, fans dying to see his nose buried into Fatu's ass. And they got it. After, Road Dogg danced in the ring with Rikishi, Too Cool, and Jericho. Jericho didn't know the Too Cool dance moves so started doing Thriller Zombie instead. 

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