Found Footage Friday: BATTLE OF THE BAM BAMS~! Los Cadetes Del Espacio~! MARTINELLI~! JARQUE~!

Tony Martinelli vs. Gregorio Jarque New Jersey 1959

MD: New Wrestling Films find. Jarque was from Spain and I imagine if he was in there against Tony Oliver in Barcelona around this time, we would have gotten something special but there wasn't a ton to see here. This was a Bill Stern reel entitled "Rasslin' Ref" and the match was pretty much built around the ref getting rolled on top of during pins and then jawing with Martinelli. Solid stuff but nothing spectacular and a pale imitation of what was happening (even the comedy work) in France at this time, obviously, but I liked the consistency of what they were trying to do at least. They had a nice bit of trading mares towards the end until the ref got crushed one last time and just called it a draw.

Terry Gordy vs. Bam Bam Bigelow TWA 1/27/90

MD: This was a third Battle of the Bam Bams that we didn't know was even filmed but here we are. They had a strong sense of just what they had here and made every lock up feel like a clash of the titans. I expect Terry Gordy in 1990 to bump around and create motion a lot more and he did but only when he was charging towards Bam Bam in order to knock him down, just that extra oomph. He worked a little bit bigger than he did elsewhere in the year to signify the titanic struggle for the crowd. Bam Bam met him equally, as he's another guy that you expect to move around a bit more, and I don't just mean the cartwheels. But they kept this grounded for the most part, selling every knockdown as a big deal and working up to the next piece of contact accordingly. Despite this video being almost twenty minutes with very little before or after the match, there were some annoying cuts that made it hard to tell how thing went from Point A to Point B but you definitely got the overall idea. They worked in a chair battle at the end which gave everything a nice crescendo before the inevitable non-finish. 

ER: This is really exciting for me. We finally got the best version we're ever going to get of the Battle of the Bam Bams. 1990 was the only pre-coma year they fought and thus was the best time for them to ever cross paths. The best possible Gordy/Bam Bam match would probably have been either 1993 or 1987, but we know those don't exist and this is the best it's going to get. Also this match was not at all what I expected. I did not expect these two behemoths to go into Philly and work a slow-paced (not in a bad way) minimalist heavyweight clash. It goes on a bit too long but there was weight behind everything they did, and what's wild is it went on so much longer. There was a "20 minutes have elapsed" call at the 12 minute mark of the video meaning the 2-3 cuts to that point meant 8 missing minutes of footage (depending on how much the ring announcer was kayfabing the time call). At 12 minutes in, the match was already feeling a little long, but I love the majesty of the two largest men lumbering through a minimalistic 28 minute match at Temple University, an unlikely great wrestling venue. I love this venue as a Wrestling Venue, with those steep bleachers climbing up so high I don't think we ever saw the top. Both men took some great bumps, spread out well through the long run time. 

I loved Gordy's counters to Bammer's kicks and enziguiris, catching his leg and making him hop around, shoving him off into off balance out of control stumbles. Gordy takes a big back bump through the ropes to the floor and Bam Bam saves his biggest for the end of the match when Gordy head of steams his way through him for a clothesline to the floor. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that Gordy made more interesting bump choices than Bam Bam but I am. The match peaked when the two giants squared off with chairs. Bam Bam swung a chair around more compellingly than almost any wrestler I've ever seen, in a way I have never seen him do. Bigelow was like an expert sign spinner, decades before that job existed. Bam Bam swung his chair around like a balletic Leatherface, a dangerous visual spectacle of a spot done as well or better than the ECW chair duels that came nearly a decade later. What an awesome showdown at a very good American college. I love these two daring to work a 30 minute clash of the titans, sending larger than life magic to the back row of a wrestling venue I'd never known before but now adore. 

Super Astro/Ultraman Jr./Solar vs. Divulios Negros I + 2/Sergio Romo, Jr. Arena Solidaridad

MD: A handheld match. I'm sure someone knows the dates and whether this one is found or new but it's new to us and it was a lot of fun. Very much what you'd expect from the Space Cadets, but worked well and balanced even better. They did pairings and matwork to start, fed right into rudo clowning (Super Astro with his little jump, etc.) and the tecnicos taking the primera. Pretty solid rudo beatdown in the segunda with Romo hitting from odd angles and a nice triple team submission and corner succession attacks. Plus some working over the mask. They had swagger. The comeback in the tercera came on a missed charge the tecnicos got their revenge, did some more clowning, and they built to the (very solid) dives and Solar tying up a Divulio for the win. Nothing revolutionary but getting to see these guys do their thing one more time is always a joy. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: TAJIRI~! HHH~! BABA~! EIGEN~! FURNAS~! MVC~! SPIVEY~!

Dr. Death Steve Williams/Terry Gordy vs. Dan Spivey/Doug Furnas AJPW 10/19/90

MD: I like Kroffat as much as the next guy, move even, but Spivey being in there instead increased the hoss level considerably. This was heated from the start too. Doc had it out for Furnas for some reason. He gave him the middle finger before the match. Furnas returned the favor by swinging a kick at him as he was squaring up with Spivey. Doc wiped his sweat in Furnas' direction. Furnas gave him the finger. Doc told him to kiss his butt. You get the idea. It's a good way to start a match. 

It doesn't let up from there. Furnas uses the three point stance to knock Gordy down, but Doc's able to grind Furnas down well enough that he makes sure to rush over and smack Spivey around a bit too, before mouthing off and maybe even spitting at him drawing Spivey in and it's just an absolutely chaotic feel early on.

What follows is about five minutes of the best wrestling you'll ever see. Doc catching Furnas in mid air and bringing him to the top rope, the two of them trading slaps and Furnas leaping over him to hit a belly to belly. Doc and Spivey smacking each other all the way out of the ring. Spivey hitting a bossman slam on Doc and boos ringing through the air as Gordy breaks it up. The place absolutely exploding as Furnas press slams Gordy only to eat a lariat. It's a hell of a five minutes before everything settles down to holds.

They take it down before building it back up and the overall effect is a hell of a thing. Gordy and especially Doc get a ton of heat. Furnas is able to clap up Spivey. There are a bunch of great nearfalls down the stretch before an extremely definitive ending but one that took that bit of extra effort. These are the sort of lost matches we hope to find.

ER: I love All Gaijin matches in All Japan because it's interesting to see how they can organically draw heat and interest without any kind of Nativism at play. No side is necessarily more loved or hated, only more established. Dr. Death understands that and leans into the MVC's established rep and for seemingly no reason goes hard on Doug Furnas. I have zero reason to believe there is any kind of animosity between Dr. Death and Doug Furnas, but everyone in this match made me believe there was. Doug Furnas was fairly established at this point. Not at the level of beating teams like Doc and Gordy, but already a two time All Asia tag champ who had beaten big teams. Doc quickly turns him into an underdog babyface which leads to a more spirited wild eyed performance from Spivey and some incredible payoff when Furnas finally starts throwing them around. 

Everyone was so good in this match that I fully bought into Doc and Gordy as two guys who actually hated Furnas (they didn't), Furnas as a guy out of his depth (he wasn't) and Spivey as a guy fearlessly telling MVC to back the fuck off and stop taking liberties with Furnas (they weren't, but at times it didn't seem like Spivey realized that). Doc was doing some performative middle fingers and phony baloney heat drawing across the ring while Furnas looked like a guy making the universal face of "Hey man I didn't do anything to you do you have the right guy?" You could tell Doc had the right guy when he sat Furnas on the top rope and slapped Furnas so hard to break. Furnas looked like Allen Covert and sold the slap by making the face that Allen Covert makes when his girlfriend leaves him in one of the few Sandler movies where that happens. Doc is great at bullying Furnas to rile up Spivey, and Spivey is that great combination of large and reckless and Just Getting Real Good so that he always gets too amped up on his first punch of an exchange and throws some potatoes before dialing back a little. He always looks ready to pop off, and it's a killer distraction from Furnas finally popping off. 

Doug Furnas gorilla press slamming Terry freaking Gordy - and the scared face Gordy makes while being held up high in that press - is an incredible spot. It would have been an amazing press slam anyway, but once Furnas added a pump it became an all timer. The crowd lost their minds at that press slam and that hyped Doug up so much he did a backflip and then ran as fast as he could into Gordy's biggest clothesline of the match. Doug finally suplexing Death was so cool. I love the way Doc bumps when he's reeling, just as I love when he decides one turnbuckle isn't enough for a stampede. MVC made damn certain that they were the bad guys here and were so convincing that the fans bought them as bullies against two of the toughest dudes. Terry Gordy out here getting booed over and over for breaking up pins and picking on Mega Athlete Doug Furnas.   

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura/Akira Taue vs. Harkua Eigen/Motoshi Okuma/Masa Fuchi AJPW 10/27/90

MD: This is a recent Classics drop and a Baba 30th Anniversary match. Jumbo gives him a plaque before the match and everything. This gets a ton of time, 20+ it feels like and it's just packed full of character and comedy. It's hard to do justice to it all or even half of it but I'll point out a few things.

First, Eigen, amazing as always, really shines at the start. He faces off against young Taue to start but then darts to the corner and slaps Baba before running out. They reset, he does the same thing but this time teases Baba and slaps Rusher. Then when facing off against Rusher, he ducks and slaps him twice before leading him to the corner for a long heat segment. They kick away at him forever before we ultimately get some goofy stuff with Okuma and headbutts. There are a ton of headbutts in this match and while Rusher gets some in, a lot of them are eaten by Taue.

Taue's a lot of fun here. I've seen every bit of 1990 footage we have of him and he wasn't there yet, but here he's got this sense of wild abandon, limbs flying and flopping about, that would soon be gone from him. He looks like he's going to become an entirely different wrestler here between his selling of the headbutts and a sort of physical recklessness.

This refuses to end, a lot of the normal things you think might end it getting broken up. They run some of the best Eigen spit spot stuff ever, as both Taue and Baba get to do it, with Baba getting it on his hand and everyone almost cracking up (and Kobashi cracking up decades later on commentary). Then Rusher goes for it, but he's blocked, and Baba comes in from the other side with a chop and it's pretty hilarious let me tell you. The finish is a fun combo of Taue hitting an atomic drop sending Okuma into Baba's foot and then right back into Taue's belly to back. My only regret is that they didn't repeat the atomic drop/boot sequence a couple of times first. Great fun that no dirtsheet would have appreciated at the time but that we can absolutely appreciate now.

ER: This is one of those Wrestling Heaven situations for me. I love my King's Road, and I love my boys. Give me 20 minutes of VILLAIN SHOKAI up to their old bullshit and the nuanced twists that come with every new 20 minutes. It's crazy how many ways they found to do their same bullshit slightly different over the years. You recognize the behaviors but there are always things they do different, things I've never seen, or realistically perhaps things I've seen a million times but don't care because they all work so well together that I don't ever get tired of them. All of these old men matches (Masa Fuchi was 36 lol) were written off unfairly by morose tape traders, so now everything in them is ripe for discovery. Nobody was talking about how great Haruka Eigen was when I got into trading, none of these guys were getting any kind of acclaim. We're long past that now.

Now, before this even starts, you just know Eigen is going to get up to shenanigans before Villain Shokai starts bringing headbutts and hamstring kicks. Eigen starting the match with a slap and run routine on Baba and Rusher is so classic, celebrating in the aisles with young boys you barely recognize, knowing he was going to get paid back down the stretch. A lot of these start with long heat on Kimura, eating boots and headbutts and selling the headbutts so believably (that happens here), but that's not where the match stays. I thought they did a great job integrating everybody and keeping Baba's involvement short and exciting. Villain Shokai made quick tags and this settled into me being excited watching an Akira Taue who didn't wrestle a single thing like my favorite wrestler Akira Taue. 1990 Taue is so cool as can see hints of the Taue that would be there just a couple years later but you'd only notice them if you were familiar with them. For the most part, he's a totally different guy with totally different offense and movement. 

His most important characteristic that he apparently always had, was his realistic approach to bumping. Watch how he sells an Okuma headbutt to the mouth, watch the way he falls with limbs flopping around and not in a controlled wrestling school back bump. The realistic bumps and selling were the things that instantly drew me to Taue at the end of the 90s, and with all the '90 Taue we have as evidence we can see that it's just who he is, a thing that would be near impossible to teach someone. He also has completely different offense and I love "elbowdrop Taue who doesn't use his giant feet in any way" but maybe I only love it because I know we're not far away from "big feet to face and the best chokeslams ever" Taue. 

You get so much tough guy sneaky prankster Eigen that you forget they had already started honing the Spit Spot this early. It's still early, as the front row all knows what's happening when it's happening, but nobody is holding up newspapers. People are fleeing, which only draws attention to one woman who is not moving at all while every other woman around her scurries to safety. Baba getting involved in Eigen's Spit is a thing that does not happen in most of these, and his involvement here brings two incredible moments: Baba clutching Eigen under the chin and clubbing his chest, only for Eigen to spit all over Baba's hand, leading to Baba wiping off his hand all over Eigen's head; then when Rusher is winding up to club Eigen, Fuchi intercepts his arm. While the two are locked in struggle, Baba creeps in from the other side and just knife edges Eigen. Taue's back suplex drops like a damn anchor. These 20 minutes always feel like 5 to me, something I never say about Modern Epic Wrestling. 

HHH vs. Tajiri WWE 1/25/03

MD: This is the sort of Vault drop that we're looking for, Hunter reign of terror match or no. Previously we only had a few minutes of this. With the introductions and post-match this is 30+ minutes. The biggest takeaway, past maybe how good Tajiri is here and how it's a shame we don't have a bunch of other 20+ minute matches with him from this era, is that Hunter consciously worked it differently than almost any other match of the period. Maybe even almost any other match of his career.

There's the whole bit about Hogan doing two extra bits of chain wrestling in his Japanese appearances (when it's more the reckless energy and Axe Bomber people should be looking at). To me, this was more about Hunter getting to work the sort of classic NWA Title match style that he didn't think the current WWE audience would appreciate. The problem was that he just didn't have the reps with it (which isn't really his fault). It meant he did the sort of stuff you'd expect him to be good at (feeding into headlocks and other holds) well, but when he tried some fancier escapes, it didn't quite click. The headstand escape to the headscissors was cute and all but people haven't clipped him basically comedically putting himself back into the hold to set up the positioning for it.

What did work were the transitions, the hope spots, the cutoffs. Hunter took over by clipping Tajiri with a clothesline on the handspring and that looked great. They worked a lot of hope spots given the time the match had to breathe and it meant when Tajiri did comeback, it felt momentous. Lots of moving parts and hoohah on the finishing stretch but the fans certainly got their money out of all of it. I loved hearing Earl talking up close too. That's something you'd rarely get in the heavily produced WWE, even in the early 00s. This just felt very different and refreshing in a sea of 2002-2003 Hunter matches I have memories of but really don't want to revisit.  

ER: I remember being 21 and reading about this match in the Observer and DVDVR but now I'm twice as old as I was then and my wants and priorities have changed. How far away, the post college years where my friends and I split an Observer subscription for several years and my friend Jason would use his work photocopier to copy even double issues for all of us. If this match had been taped, I would have traded for a tape to see this match. The 2025 version of doing that is me making 30 minutes of time to watch a HHH match. I'm glad I did. It closed a loop and lived up to its release. I love that it's shot handheld, I love the format, and I loved the story.  I always love the story of a guy who isn't World Title level getting a lengthy main event title match. If it exists, I'd be equally excited to see Brooklyn Brawler getting a long Shawn Michaels title match on a house show after winning a battle royal. 

HHH works this much more like a heel Bret Hart match and shows that he's better at that than when he's working his touring champion Flair match. Thank god this isn't his touring Flair match only in Japan. He's more execution focused than when he's in his Flair Entertainer mode and while I don't think he's anywhere near Bret as an execution guy there were several moments that I thought he looked a lot tighter than expected. He's better at bump as Bret than he is bumping as Flair and it made the match come off harder hitting than theatrical. Tajiri's kicks were great ways for him to storm back into the match and I liked how he would use them as unpredictable combos thrown at different body targets. HHH is bad at standing still making an "I'm waiting to be hit face" but much better at taking strikes that are less expected. We didn't have to see him hold his head a certain way as he waits to hair whip react to a punch, instead we just got Tajiri throwing kicks up and down his body. 

HHH as a guy working over shoulder back breakers is one of the coolest versions of HHH. Do more of that. Less Irish whips and more backbreakers! When Tajiri finally slips out the back of one of the backbreakers it's this great spot that looks like it's going to fall apart entirely and end in an awkward tangle but it somehow bumbles expertly into a clean sunset flip pin away from ropes. I thought for sure both men were falling and going to wind up in an ugly heap of blown spot but instead it made it all look like HHH was struggling to stop Tajiri's momentum. Tajiri using the Tarantula while the referee was out seemed like the one time where it would have been acceptable to let HHH Act. Just let him scream and NXT sell for a full minute while completely stuck, no ref to save him. I was disappointed that Tajiri maintained the 5 second rule. We didn't get enough of Tajiri maniacally refusing to break Tarantula. 

Tajiri kicking out of the Pedigree was something we all read about in 2003, but it plays far crazier than it reads. This is a detail I remember reading about. It was shocking to hear that Tajiri had kicked out of a Pedigree, but the details at the time actually downplayed what really happened. When it was reported, the reporting made it sound like the Pedigree was hit and Hebner - blinded by mist - took an eternity to make the count. That makes sense and it still sounded surprising that Tajiri kicked out. In actuality, the whole thing happened in under 10 seconds. Tajiri kicked out of the Pedigree less than 10 seconds after it was hit, which nobody else was doing in 2003. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: HANSEN~! GORDY~! PARK~! FAKE KONNAN~! KENDOS~! MOCHIZUKI AND FRIENDS~!

Terry Gordy vs. Stan Hansen AJPW 6/8/90

MD: We only had around seven minutes of this previously and those seven minutes are pretty much what you'd expect, a super hardnosed finishing stretch between two monsters with gold on the line. I went through every single match we have on tape for 1989 and 1990 All Japan over the last five years or so, and, of course, we keep getting more, both in this format and with handhelds, but it's always enjoyable to push at the conventional wisdom and see how it holds up. I may have mentioned this before, but one of the biggest surprises of 1990 AJPW was how Baba dealt with the loss of Tenryu. This show obviously has Misawa vs Jumbo, right? And yes, there is a push throughout the year to promote Super Generation Army vs Tsuruta-Gun, but that often wasn't the main title scene for the back half of 89. When it came to the Triple Crown and the tag titles, it was foreign hosses up and down, Hansen, Doc, Gordy, Spivey, and even a bit of Bigelow thrown in for good measure. Off to the side you had Land of Giants and Abby and Kimala II, and even Andre. Big dudes. They couldn't present the larger than life force that was Tenryu, so they compensated with more conventional giants on top, all the while giving time for Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi to develop and become more and more credible. It was a giant bandaid and the flip flopping of the Triple Crown is a great example of it.

With the full footage, what we see here is a title match style fight between two absolute monsters. They work it like Jumbo would often work his title matches, on the mat and with holds, but with these two that meant wrenching of necks and grinding of faces, just brutal stuff, power against power, with technique only utilized to open the door for more rough and tumble hurting. It's twenty minutes of the two of them throwing every imaginable strike at one another, just laying it in and meeting each other half way. On some level, every time they dropped down to a hold felt like a momentary mercy, because at least they weren't absolutely smashing each other, but then you saw the hold and just how hard they were struggling against one another to put on the pressure or how to escape and you realize that there's no mercy in a world where there's a title between Hansen and Gordy. It all escalates towards moments of opportunity, Hansen hitting a lariat out of the corner as Gordy goes to the well one too many times, Gordy (who survived that lariat only by rolling out of the ring) ducking another wild flailing arm to sneak in his DDT. Ultimately, Gordy couldn't hit the powerbomb. It was never a case of a simple block though. It was Hansen going up and getting squashed in his attempt at self-preservation, bodies clashing and crashing in unique, visually striking ways. Gordy decided that the only way he could really get an edge on Hansen down the stretch was that corner clothesline, turning his body into a freight train thundering across the ring. Hansen hit that first lariat out of it, and then later on he got an amazing roll up nearfall, and in the end, stopped it just long enough to duck and create distance for a second lariat and the win. This was the sort of program that had to carry the company though, so post match Doc rushed into prevent the celebration and to destroy Hansen. Really an amazing title match now that we have all of it. People should go back for this.

PAS: Holy hell what a war, on first impression this felt on the level of the absolute best Gordy matches ever, and in the same tier as the Hansen All Japan bangers. It felt like these guys were both taking things personally almost from the beginning. There are some really grinding collar and elbow tie ups, and Hansen took Gordy into the corner and popped him hard right on his ear, and from that point on it felt like a series of escalating receipts by each guy, getting uglier and uglier. Every facelock, kneebar, stomp and punch felt like it was getting out of hand. The little stuff was awesome, and the big stuff was huge and incredible. Hansen takes an incredible bump and sell on Gordy's DDT and we get a couple of incredible Hansen lariats. Post match was awesome too as Hansen may be the only person on earth who can look momentarily credible brawling one on two against the Miracle Violence Connection.  This feels like as good as a discovery as we have ever had in this project, an all-time great match in a way which is just completely missing from pro-wrestling these days. Loved every second.

ER: It's wild to find out this late in the game that Misawa/Jumbo might not have been the best match at Budokan on 6/8/90. Getting the missing two-thirds of a Triple Crown Title change 35 years later makes me think that All Japan was suppressing the footage of the better match that night so as not to overshadow the then-biggest moment of Misawa's career, because now we know how special Gordy's transitional Triple Crown loss really was. Somehow, we are still finding matches that raise the stock of two different legends. This is one of the greatest Stan Hansen singles match performances of all time, and it might be the actual greatest singles match performance of Terry Gordy's career. The full footage gives us such a captivating fight between two killers, Gordy coming off as a man who has no plans on losing his new title, forcing Hansen into one of his finest ever vulnerable performances. Hansen sells more in this match than any match I've seen, and he is amazing at it; Gordy comes off so mean and so punishing that it gives us the gift of a Stan Hansen match where he's working from underneath for longer stretches than you've seen. What a gift. 

We never got to see all of the matwork in this special affair. That's always the first thing that goes. But Gordy and Hansen work the mat in a way we will never see again, and rarely saw then. This was not two men going for guard passes, this was two huge men shoving each other around on the mat, a constant struggle lock-up turning into fight from their bellies, both men laid out but applying full pressure to the other. Every quick headlock turns into more super heavyweight mat resistance, any attempt to pick up the other man turns into both men falling on top of each other and fighting more from a horizontal position. Te best part of the matwork? Each man punching the other's downed body from their knees, in a way that looked more like a alley mugging gone murder. More matwork should have Terry Gordy punching down from his knees like he's stabbing an intruder. 

Hansen flattens out on a Gordy attempt at a double leg, Gordy pancakes Hansen when Hansen's body goes out from under him blocking a powerbomb, a Gordy DDT spikes Hansen and drops his full weight on Gordy; Gordy can use Hansen's size and aggression against us, and it leads to Hansen more desperate than we ever get to see. How many times have you seen Hansen get slumped in a corner, resting on the bottom buckle to hold himself up. How many times have you seen Hansen absorb an impact and drop to his knees or stomach, fall on his face, fall over the bottom rope. Terry Gordy makes Stan Hansen fight like a desperate man and I can count on one hand the number of men who have effectively done that. Stan Hansen desperately pulls Gordy by the trunks from his knees just to bury his head in Gordy's stomach, behavior you never see Hansen need to ever entertain. Look at the way Stan Hansen scrambles for three different cradling leveraged pins, and how they're three of the best pins in any title match. Hansen was using his off balanced weight and trying to force and keep Gordy's shoulders to the mat in ways he never has to do with anyone else. Terry Gordy was one a higher plane and never flying higher, and we get to see a Stan Hansen who is actually coming up against something dangerous. 

But also? Stan Hansen rocks Terry Gordy's shit on multiple crowd gasping occasions. There might be nothing I love seeing more in pro wrestling than Stan Hansen kicking a downed man with his entire lower leg. Every Hansen kick to the length of any man's body gets the exact same celebratory reaction from me, a Guaranteed Oof. I revere Guaranteed Oofs. Their durability provides consistent comfort in ways we shouldn't take for granted. I would scream the ugliest scream of my life if Stan Hansen had kicked me in the chest or kneed me in the cheekbone the way he did Gordy, and I would be left with neck pain for life with either of his Out of Nowhere/Always There lariats. Any match that has a surprise Hansen western lariat that doesn't lead to the finish, is swung blindly, at eye level, making Budokan jump to its feet, it's a guaranteed great match. 

Stan Hansen doesn't work the lariat into any match for the hell of it. He has plans in store when the lariat works as a mid-match reset, a way to slow his beating and stop a hungry zombie. Terry Gordy loses his Triple Crown - he looked so fucking cool and convincing carrying those three belts, that a Japanese man was holding a large Confederate flag at ringside. How fucking weird is that? - three days after winning it, but he beat Stan Hansen so bad that Hansen had to use a Desperation Lariat. This was one of the greatest matches of the 90s, and of two guys who had eras of great matches. 

It will never be like this again.  

Kendo Star/Kendo/Monarca vs. Principe Island/Konnan/Hombre Bala CMLL 1990?

MD: Another week, another young Park match. These really do help the guy's already stellar case as he's fascinating to watch here. First of all, tho3 ugh, this Konnan el Barbaro, being not the Konnan but instead some tree trunk like big lug, was kind of just there. It was funny towards the start of the segunda where he was jumping up and down to feed all of Kendo and Kendo Star's flourishes but with no life to it. He did take a crazy bump that we barely saw upside down into the chairs during the comeback so good for him there. He also had a pretty swank furry jacket, so that was something. Hombre Bala matched up well with Kendo Star to start, and may have been a central pairing though it was hard to tell.

Really, we're watching this for Park though, and he was paired with Kendo and the two of them meshed perfectly. Kendo was a guy who knew how to be theatrical, knew how to play to the crowd, knew how to come off like a Star, and he knew how to get the most out of a petulant bastard like Park. They were able to rope run and feed for each other and everything else, but they had a great bit where they just got in each other's face, escalating from stares to slaps to pushes to a dropkick from Kendo with Principe Island charging back in only to slump in a fit of unreleased angst. The beatdown was fine, but Principe was outside for a good chunk of it. I did like the double stretch they took the fall with, like a rudo version of la estrella. The comeback came when they were really laying it in on Kendo with a triple team and saw some big bumps like the one from Konnan. Finish was clever, as the refs were tied up with the other four doing some spots in the corner and Principe slipped in a brutal foul on Kendo. It got overturned post match but everything stayed chippy and hot. The Kendo vs Principe Island rivalry was prime for a hair match. Again, he was just so emotive and seething with upstart energy in these matches. It's crazy to think that he had most of the rest of his career as a mask and didn't lose a bit of the charisma.

Masaaki Mochizuki/TARU/Takashi Okamura vs. Masakazu Fukuda/Kamikaze/Hiroyoshi Kotsubo WYF 3/20/1997

SR: This was the first match between these 6 guys. All their matches are great, and this is in Korakuen Hall and feels especially wild because WYF fans hate the karate guys at this stage, so it feels ultra heated.  Match was pretty much the perfect mix of shootstyle and WAR-esque potatoes/scrappiness with that trademark WYF levels of unpolished, dirty fighting. Early goings were really good as WYF guys kept their opponents grounded in scrappy fashion. Even Kotsubo looked really good as he kept taking downs with explosive shooting takedowns, at one point even leading to both guys tumbling outside and brawling on the floor.  Kamikaze is impeccable in these matches, kicking people in the face, hammering a guy with punches and taunting the karatekas further. Fukuda also looked great - just hurling dudes with suplex that looked insanely forceful, and trying to crush peoples face with dropkicks and stomps. Buko Dojo guys started breaking out their kicks later and it's everything you can ask for. There's a pretty great dive sequence, Mochizuki flying at people with kicks, Buko guys breaking up pins and submissions with nasty kicks etc. Even the Kotsubo vs Taru matchup which is really shit on paper ends up being good. WYF was striking gold with  this feud in 1997, and I'm so happy we get the beginning of the feud, really heated and violent from the get go.

MD: As familiar as Sebastian is with this stuff, it's a stretch for me. It's good to stretch though. If this is new to you, here's a cheat sheet. On one side, Taru has the shinier black vest. Okamura has the mullet. And Mochizuki has the white letters on his back. On the other, Kotsubo has the singlet, and Kamikaze has the frosted tips for his hair. That's about all you need along those lines. What I love about this is that it seems to encompass just about every style of pro wrestling except for hiding the object. It's presented, more than anything else, as shoot-style adjacent, with a lot of strikes and struggles for holds, but the fact it's a six-man (and I love tag wrestling in this setting) forces pro wrestling nonsense on it right from the get go; I'm talking controlling in corners and coming in to break up holds or even to join them. You'll have guys rolling around on the mat or throwing kicks and then immediately Mochizuki will be training slaps with Kotsubo or doing dropkick/spin wheel kick spots where they crash into each other. It takes itself seriously and treats everything with weight and respect while still building up to over the top stuff before dragging it back down to more fundamentally sound grappling or sparring. Fukada will toss people around. Things will spill out to the floor. The crowd pops for just about every piece of impact. And it all builds to dives, top rope moves, and bombs. They're able to layer it throughout the match and put weight behind the impacts, underpinning it all with animosity, so it never quite feels like excess no matter how much they squeeze into twenty minutes. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: ABBY~! KIMALA II~! MVC~! PUTSKI~! REX~! LAWLER~! DEAN(SIMON)~!

Ivan Putski vs. Moondog Rex WWF in Kuwait 1984

MD: We sort of have to watch all of this Kuwait stuff, just for the novelty. Thankfully q8wrestling reposted the Piper/Orton tag from Kuwait that's been offline for a few years and that we covered all the way back on October 26, 2018. Yes, 2018. We're a couple of weeks away from 5 straight years of doing this weekly, without missing a single week. More on that at the end of the month. 

Here, it's Putski and Rex, which is admittedly not as exciting, but did the Kuwait crowd ever love Putski. It made for some really beautiful minimalist stuff to start. A lock up and push off by Putski would pop the crowd huge. Putski slowly powering his arms down out of a full nelson as Rex's expression goes from confidence to terror to agony (as somehow Putski has was trapping and squeezing his hands under his armpits) made them elated, with the Putski chant starting after Rex made it to the ropes. The rest of the match goes how you'd think. Whenever Rex tries for a hold, Putski powers out. The most motion in the match is him scurrying out of the ring to regroup. He gets over with a cheapshot but never for long. If Rex gets a pin attempt, Putski pushes him off so that he goes flying (to a pop, of course). Putski comes back quickly to the crowd's delight and plants Rex in the end with the Hammer. It's simple and straightforward stuff, but with the body language of guys who really knew how to connect with a crowd, and when they have an appreciative crowd, it's an enjoyable way to spend ten minutes. 

ER: This is so great. This is why we write about this dumb shit. Ivan Putski getting a superstar reaction in Kuwait, every single man in attendance (there are only men allowed to attend WWF Kuwait tour wrestling, sooo...) reacting to Putski like he was Hogan, and every one of them fully bought into Putski's strength. This man was treated like a mythological character and Moondog Rex knew how to play into all of it perfectly. I loved all of this. I have zero clue what the Kuwaiti peoples' relationship with WWF or pro wrestling would have been in 1982. I don't know if they were getting WWF TV, I don't know what kind of pro wrestling they were consuming, I don't know their relationship with combat sports, I know nothing. But they had a special connection to Ivan Putski, and I thought it made this match incredible. 

As importantly, Randy Colley made this match incredible. The Moondogs' WWF run is one of the more neglected runs in WWF history, based on what's been written about it after the fact. The WWF DVDVR 80s set was the first one of those 80s sets that we did, and every subsequent version of those sets (Memphis, Mid-South, New Japan, WCCW, AWA, etc.) had a much more vast and comprehensive selection process for what was included as the true best of their respective territories. The WWF set was the only one that was not comprehensive. There was no Terry Funk, not enough Andre, not enough Valentine, etc. There were zero Moondogs matches and since those sets, every time I've seen Larry Latham and Randy Colley I thought they were both among the best workers on the roster of their specific era. This match is a great illustration of that. As Moondog Rex, Colley sells Putski's strength so realistically and so believably that he perfectly feeds into the Kuwaiti frenzy surrounding this short and absolutely JACKED Polish man. It goes beyond Rex getting thrown far across the ring on every lock-up, and goes all the way into Rex selling everything Putski did as if he was facing the strongest man in pro wrestling history. 

We got an incredible full nelson escape, where Putski slowly broke the hold while the crowd swelled, ending when Putski clamped Rex's arms down to his sides, trapping the poor panicking Moondog in a dick to ass position, Rex running in place because of his hurt arms pinned to Putski's side by his World's Strongest Arms, causing only more friction between his dick and Putski's ass. Every single man in Kuwait BELIEVES in Polish Power and so every single slow squeeze knucklelock gets a huge slow burn reaction until people are losing their minds when Putski is squeezing Rex's shoulder. Rex sells his shoulder like it got run over by a truck tire, and if this was broadcast across the country in any way, every child watching would fully buy into Putski as the strongest God, all due to Rex's impeccable selling of every single show of strength.  

When Rex is in control, he has to believably muscle around the World's Strongest Man, who is also the World's Most Inflexible Man. He throws great full arm extension punches with his good arm, incredible aim for such a long release point, knocking Putski down to a knee in the corner. Ivan Putski takes a snapmare even worse than Scott Putski, and until know I thought Scott Putski took a snapmare worse than any man I'd seen. Ivan Putski's body is so rigid taking a snapmare, that it looked like Rex accidentally knocked down an expensive vase at a museum and was trying to slow its landing. Rex has to do all the lifting on a back breaker, and just the act of maneuvering Putski into a neckbreaker looked like Rex had to move an extremely large, cumbersome rolled up rug all by himself, up stairs. Moondog Rex went to Kuwait and moved mountains. For the finish, he made Putski's punches look actually good, better than they really were, bouncing and recoiling off the ropes into them. He runs into the Polish Hammer and gets stopped dead by it, making it really look like a guy getting hit in the chest with a big hammer. As Matt said, we've been finding and writing about unseen matches for 5 years now, and 5 years in we're still getting surprised by everything that exists. Randy Colley went to Kuwait and helped a man become a local legend. That's a sentence we get to write now. 

Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala II vs. Steve Williams/Terry Gordy AJPW RWTL 11/20/90

MD: You never knew that you wanted face-in-peril Abby having the ring cut off on him, with these amazing king-sized hope spots (neckbreaker drop, all time block and throat shot, etc.), and the fans chanting "Butch-ahh." That's what we get, followed up by hot tag Richard Morton Giant Kimala II hitting a World's Strongest Slam. When you look at how Baba dealt with the loss of Tenryu (and Yatsu and Kabuki and Takano and Fuyuki and), everyone thinks about the pillars, and yeah, they got there. Before that, however, we had the 1990 superheavyweight division around the Triple Crown and the Tag Titles. Doc, Gordy, and Hansen ruled the roost during the back half of 1990 and you got your share of larger than life matches. That was true with this RWTL too, where you had teams of Baba/Andre, Hansen/Spivey, and Jumbo/Taue on top of these two. 

The first few minutes of this were exactly that, with Gordy and Doc being super giving and stooging big for Abby. That meant Gordy falling all over the place for repeated throat shots or Doc selling his own head after headbutting Abby. It all lead to a huge Doc no-sell of one of Abby's headbutts to a huge Road Warrior Hawk style pop as he just stared him down. All great stuff. until Doc leaned into the illegal double-teaming and they were able to isolate Abby on the outside and clobber him. That's when the full on southern style face-in-peril stuff started. After a lot of clobbering, some woundwork, and a couple of unlikely hope spots, cutoffs, and a beautiful almost-tag, they veered towards the finishing stretch. Even though Kimala came in strong, Abby was hurt and MVC knew how to press the numbers advantage. While we didn't get the stampede, we did get a huge power slam and Doc and Gordy racking up a few more points on their way to topping the rankings. Post match? An awesome brawl as fans run around in a panic and I Love It Loud plays over the speakers. Wrestling perfection right there.

ER: We wrote about an incredible match from this same show, and Andre/Baba vs. JumboTaue tag that was one of the truly wondrous 1990s Andre performances. It's the biggest bumping 90s Andre match I have seen and we would have no idea had some man not gone to Nagoya that day and made sure he had enough camcorder battery. This match is not as great as the Andre/Baba match, but it's its own very important documentation of something else entirely, which is the absolute longest face in peril Abdullah performance I've ever seen. Now, before the match began I could have told you Kimala II would be the one getting pinned. That doesn't take an All Japan expert to figure out. But I would have never guessed how they actually got to that pinfall, because I don't think "Doc and Gordy getting 6 minutes of heat on Abby" would have made a lot of sense as an answer. 

It took a bit to get there, as Abby got to wreck Doc and Gordy with throat thrusts. Terry Gordy sold those hits to the throat as well as any selling I've seen, and Abby made them look really easy to sell (because they all looked violent). Every shot to the throat would send Gordy into a big hair whip recoil, and he's got that virgin never-been-dyed-in-his-life hair that just flows differently when whipped. Terry Gordy - somehow not yet 30 - has the hair of a 16 year old, and his full arm swing into Abdullah's neck is just a wicked clothesline. Doc staggering himself with his own headbutt was beautiful, and the no sell that followed was even better. I loved their face off, their stare down, revealing that Abdullah the Butcher and Dr. Death are the literal exact same height without a centimeter of difference, and when Doc decides to run off the ropes to collide, Abby throws a railroad spike of a thrust into his throat that bumps Doc like Psicosis. The heat on Abby comes when they drag him to the floor and start wailing on him, and Terry Gordy throws a dozen of the most perfectly aimed boot soles directly into Abby's bleeding forehead. I loved hearing the crowd chant for Kee-Ma-La to make the save, and I love the way they built this heat around Abby. 

Abby took a bump in such a weird Specifically Abdullah way that I am positive I've never seen anyone take it. It starts off super silly but then gets super cool, with Doc doing a low dropkick to roll Abby out of the ring. Well, the dropkick doesn't totally hit and Abby is positioned over halfway across the ring from where he's actually rolling out, so Doc kinda hits him and then Abby steamrolls his way all the way out to the floor. Silly. But when he gets to the floor, he does this trust fall bump backwards into the guardrail, his body rigid, and it ends with him falling into the rail like someone tipped a table on its end. Abby looked like Homer getting punched over the fire hydrant, just falling back diagonally into the railing. Abdullah's flash nearfall on his diving clothesline was excellent, like a real version of a Fast & Furious spot where Vin Diesel flies through the air to catch someone into a windshield. His Almost Tag out is legendary, perfectly timed and perfectly executed, with Doc baaaaarely grabbing Abby by the hooked boot, just in time to swing him around inches away from the reaching tag of Kimala. I wish we got more from Kimala's hot tag. It felt like he went down really easily, and it didn't need to go down that way. However, Doc's powerslam on Kimala was incredible. No cheapie in any way whatsoever, getting him up overhead really really high and actually controlling his weight on the way down! Who has the strength to control Kimala II's weight on a full rotation powerslam!?

Jerry Lawler vs. Simon Dean NEW 3/25/2006

MD:  Pre-match promos (sort of a necessity for a Lawler indy match) are here. I sort of wish there had been a throwaway Lawler vs Nova match in the late 90s. That would have been more conceptually interesting with Lawler having to constrain a guy who thought his path to the top was having a section on his website about all of the moves he created. By this point, Dean had already gone through the phase of deciding his path to the big time was by working on his body instead, followed by realizing that his limit was going to be as a stooging heel. Of course Lawler can work with a stooging heel and Dean wasn't afraid to stooge here, throwing his head back for punches, running out of the ring, slamming his hands on the apron, kicking the steps and then selling it, etc. In 2023, it'd probably be pretty refreshing. In 2006, it felt a little rote and by the books maybe. On second thought, even though Dean was committed to the act, it came off as a guy playing a character as opposed to something more natural and organic. They went through the right steps (wrestling as a balanced equation; Dean armdragging Lawler and slamming him leads to Lawler one upping him by doing the same, etc), but the immersion wasn't quite there. I'd love to know what the best Lawler stunner ever was, because it always ends up looking terrible, an amazing fact for a move almost entirely dependent on the guy taking it. The finish (a missed fistdrop but Dean walking right into the pile driver) worked for me, but the rest topped out at fun.

Read more!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Read more!

The Oldest Giants Take on Miracle Violence Connection

Andre the Giant/Giant Baba vs. Steve Williams/Terry Gordy AJPW 11/21/90 - GREAT

ER: I loved this, a great Broken Old Giants performance, a manic Dr. Death performance as the smallest man in the match, and a great disrespectful young punk MVC performance. I love the Andre/Baba team: two kindred old broken giants, the only sympathetic team of giants I recall seeing. Every stage of old Andre has different distinctions and different joys. Here he was still "limber" enough to enter and exit the ring over the top rope. I've said before that Andre, even at his most broken, understood how to use his current physical condition to tell small stories in a match. Baba was still limber enough to throw a fast side Russian legsweep and get dropped on his shoulders by a crazy Gordy brainbuster, and seeing the novel ways that Baba and Andre use their declining physicality is always impressive to me. Opposite them was Dr. Death, opening the match getting his leg worked over by Baba (you try not smiling when you see Baba throwing leg kicks while Doc hops around selling them), and I appreciated the combination of overly reverential selling and asshole behavior we got from MVC. 

Doc and Gordy develop a pretty great strategy midway through and kind of trick Andre into expending a lot of extra energy, making him get into and out of the ring to save Baba and dragging Baba to the floor for a beating far across the side of the ring Andre was stationed. It's great psychology to work around the Giants' physical limitations, and it only played into the sympathy when they wisely realized how long an Andre rescue would take. Williams was really fun against Andre, squirting past him like a man escaping The Mummy and getting knocked around when he gets snared. Andre threw hard chops, a ton of headbutts, and those cool short right hands that look like getting hit in the head with a telephone. 

There's an incredible moment where Williams escapes Andre's corner onslaught and gets a slick go behind, and we get to actually think that we are about witness the craziest German suplex possible. Andre is holding onto the top rope for dear life while Doc is pulling and pulling with all his might, arms locked around Andre's waist in a deep squat, butt nearly touching the mat. Later Doc snags Baba in a bearhug, and it's one of the most bizarre pro wrestling visuals I've seen. Dr. Death was just holding Baba in a bearhug without Baba's boots touching the mat. The coolest, weirdest shaped man in pro wrestling was being held like a long fragile baby, size 19 boots just dangling over Dr. Death's' legs like a comically large ventriloquist dummy's. The moment goes from surreal to Great Pro Wrestling as Baba starts pulling at Williams' hair and throwing hard overhand Baba chops to break the hold. The hold does start to break, and we realize that if the hold breaks then Baba still goes crashing to the mat. And he does, and Williams falls into his guard. 

As gracious as Williams and Gordy were on selling, there was still a lot of doubt about who was winning this match. It's possible to show ass for a couple old guys while still being a threat to those old guys. Andre and Baba went on to win every match of the Real World Tag League, which rules, but man Baba took a brainbuster so who knows how these old Giants might get wrecked. I thought the end was coming when Andre got tangled in the ropes, and I don't know if we have tape of anybody knocking Andre into the ropes harder than Doc and Gordy did here. The MVC hit Andre with a tandem shoulderblock that would have sent Andre to his sure death if the ropes couldn't be trusted. It's kind of amazing that I can't recall Andre ever breaking a ring rope, because this man has as much unceasing trust in ropes as Big Boss Man. Even during the era where he was having difficulties moving in the ring, he always maintained control over his movement. 

When Doc and Gordy slam into him it looks like Andre gets knocked so hard that the ropes actually save him. It's a great "Andre in the ropes", capped off with the always great moment where he powers to his feet. When I wrote earlier about Andre being so great at using his current physical condition and working it into his matches, I loved how Andre sold the wear and tear after being caught in the ropes, exiting the ring through the middle ropes instead of over the top. It was the only time in the entire match that he didn't go over the top rope when tagging in or out, and I like that he went back to the apron he looked like a defeated giant. The Giants pull out a really fun finish, with Doc taking a big bump to the floor after getting decked by Andre, and Gordy running face first into Baba's big boot in the corner before getting hooked by Baba's flying clothesline, Andre kicking Dr. Death in the ribs as Death is scrambling over the bottom rope for the save. Nothing compares to the specific joys the Andre/Baba team bring me. Each match I watch always just makes me want to watch another. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE THE GIANT

Read more!

New Footage Friday: FLAIR! MURDOCH! DOUGIE! FUJIWARA! TAKADA! BURKE! GORDY! ULTRAMAN

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Nobuhiko Takada vs. Rocky Della Serra/Leo Burke UWF 7/24/84 - GREAT

PAS: This was early UWF, before they were really a shootstyle fed, so this was a standard pro-wrestling tag match. It was mostly hard head Fujiwara, which is far from my favorite Fujiwara, but he does hard head spots really well. Burke especially leaned into stooging big from punching or elbowing Fujiwara in his rock hard dome. Takada continued to underwhelm me, lots of kicks which only semi-hit (although he did waste Burke with a top rope dropkick).Burke was the revelation here, he has a big rep, but not a ton of footage, and he was on one here. Great looking bumps, awesome offense (he hit the best inverted atomic drop I have ever seen) totally looked like a super worker. 

MD: Fun stuff. Della Serra is a guy we've seen pop up in a few places since we started doing this and Burke is obviously one of the greatest journeymen of the 80s. What I liked about them here is that this, in early days UWF, felt almost like a different style battle where they were utilizing the sort of pro wrestling they'd do anywhere else and Fujiwara and Takada were Fujiwara and Takada. That might be a series of overdramatic elbow drops from Della Serra or an inverted atomic drop from Burke or whatever. It obviously meant that they knew how to play into all of Fujiwara's head spots for the best effect. Adding to this you had Takada bringing a little more flash with whips and dropkicks on top of things like the belly to belly right into a submission. It all came together pretty well despite it all.

Ric Flair vs. Dick Murdoch NWA 9/11/86

MD: Maybe not the best week to cover Flair, but what the hell, it's footage, it's new, it's Friday, and it's of historical value since, unless I'm mistaken, we just have a couple of minutes of garbage footage from 78 over two matches of Flair vs Murdoch, so this is a new, iconic pairing. I liked the creativity and the variation here, much of which I'll credit to Murdoch. After the initial matwork (not Flair's best, but it was fine) they made the most of the relatively short fifteen minutes of match time, just throwing out interesting transition after interesting transition to the point where it never felt like a your turn/my turn match but like a real struggle where both guys were trying to outfox the other. My favorites were probably Murdoch catching the knee on an early knee drop attempt and Flair causing Murdoch's elbow drop to the leg to overshoot forcing him to wipe out on it. But Murdoch also got a snap turning backslide counter and Flair jammed him on a fireman's carry attempt by punching him in the face, and so on, combined with what you'd expect like Murdoch answering the chops with punches out of the corner or Flair getting a cheapshot in after begging off towards the ropes. 

The finishing stretch was, of course, BS, but still had enough wrinkles to feel creative. Murdoch hit a running power slam instead of slamming Ric off the top. They had a ref bump, Flair tossing Murdoch over the top, a phantom pin off a punch by Murdoch, before the actual finish of Murdoch inadvertently back body dropping Flair off the top onto Tommy Young and then hitting the brainbuster but getting DQed. If you're going to have a finishing minute like that, at least it was dynamic. You didn't know if Flair would win by cheating after Young went down or if it'd be Flair tossing Murdoch over the top that would cause the finish or if Flair would win after the phantom pinfall, etc. On the other hand, if you're having to stack elements of a Dusty finish one on top of the other on top of the other to keep it fresh, maybe there's something problematic with your booking?

ER: I thought this was excellent, just the panacea I needed after a long work week with some late nights. The chemistry between the two was great and they kept upping the ante in ways I wasn't expecting. This match had a ton of activity to it and they kept pulling off sequences that I hadn't seen done quite this way. That always excites me, when I see a new match with two guys I've seen a ton. I can't really get excited about Flair matches these days. I imagine if an unseen Flair/Steamboat there's a good chance I'd watch it, but probably a better chance that I would just watch a random episode of Sunday Night Heat instead. And yet I loved everything Flair did here and loved even more how Murdoch worked with him. The opening was some light matwork with them moving in the familiar ways, but it really kicks up when Murdoch catches and blocks a Flair kneedrop inches from his nose, drags himself to his feet by Ric's leg, and before long is dropping elbows on Ric's leg. That leads to Dick missing one of them when Flair shifts and then Flair starts working over Murdoch's side from his nasty spill. 

Now, this match had a lot of "stuff". Murdoch and Flair are guys with a lot of stuff, and Flair more than most is a guy who is going to get his stuff in no matter what. But this match managed to have a ton of stuff while feeling like all of the stuff served the match. This didn't feel like Flair giving the fans Flair, it felt like Flair giving the fans a good match with memorable Flair moments. And Murdoch was there with some incredible selling and super impressive body work to make Flair look even better. Murdoch's execution was all time great in this match. His misses landed like a man who didn't expect to miss, his punches looked as punishing and sharp as ever, but his technical ability was amazing. He had a nice tight reversal on a Flair abdominal stretch that he then rolled into a tight cradle, and later he hit one of the most finely executed sunset flips I've ever seen. Murdoch understood the physics of wrestling, and his move execution legitimized his fighting. It wasn't just his offense, but the way he took Flair's offense was a real mastery of physics. Murdoch is able to look heavy while taking offense but you can tell he's getting up for everything with ease. He hangs in the air taking a Flair back suplex, and makes a hiptoss look like Flair really has to muscle him over. Murdoch's selling was excellent throughout, taking a Flair kneelift and holding the left side of his belly like he got stuck, or the painful grimaces when Flair would raise his arm and punch him in his left side. 

The dedication to every small spot made every big spot look fantastic, with the best being Flair going up top and Murdoch running across the ring to plant him with a huge powerslam. And we got an all time great punch out, with Flair dishing a hard knife edge in the corner that sends Murdoch responds instinctively to with a three punch combo, and Flair bumps his way through these fists in great ways, leading to ref Tommy Young stopping Murdoch from hitting his big wind up right, only to have Murdoch throw a just-as-nasty left jab over Young's shoulder. It wouldn't have looked better if it was a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and I'm not sure Bugs could work that punching sequence as expertly as Murdoch or Flair. I loved all of this match, bullshit finishes don't bother me when the journey is this much fun. 

PAS: There is an apocryphal Murdoch vs. Flair match from Mid-South which Joel Watts called the best match he has ever seen, but the tape melted in a hot car. From this relatively abbreviated version you can really tell that they had special chemistry. This was way more reversal heavy then I expect from Flair matches, with lots of cool counter wrestling by both guys. This was counter wrestling which felt organic rather then two guys waiting around to dance into another spot. Murdoch especially found neat ways to pick the leg or sneak in punches. I loved Young catching the haymaker and Murdoch sneaking in a jab, I love when punchers have a bunch of different signature punches and Murdoch unloads the arsenal. 

Doug Gilbert/Keizo Matsuda/Tiger Jeet Singh?/Ultraseven/Takashi Uwano vs. Terry Gordy/Shoichi Ichiyama/YUJI KITO/Yukihide Ueno/Tomohiro Ishii IWA Japan 2/4/01

 
MD: Full disclosure: I'm not super familiar with some of these guys, but I found this overall pretty compelling. The story here was good, with eliminations possible by going over the top too, which meant Gordy was a beast here just due to the size differential. I know he was diminished, but you put him in a tag like this where he could be dangerous in the corner or come in and have some guys run into his stuff or just throw his body around and he could still be incredibly effective. I wouldn't want him working a twenty minute singles match necessarily but he had size and presence and meant something to the crowd: when Ultraseven (who was bigger but could still move pretty well) faced off against him the crowd had a real buzz. Anyway, this was ultimately the Keizo Matsuda show. Mostly thanks to Gordy it became 5 on 2 pretty quickly, with a long beatdown on Matsuda, to the point I thought we'd get ten minutes of Gilbert vs the World, but they were able to get it to 4 on 2 and then Gilbert did his job by double eliminating himself and Gordy. After that, Matsuda had some real hope and momentum and it looked like there might be some heel communication and another elimination but the double teaming works and then works more and then works even more and after a valiant attempt to hang in there, the numbers game ends up as just too much. Matsuda is probably stronger for his showing though.

PAS: This was a couple of months before Gordy's death, a full year after his last listed Cagematch match (Hardy Boys vs. Gordy/Hayes, which is pretty intriguing). I thought he looked great. In some of his 90s work he looked addled, but here he moved well, hit some big hard shots, great clotheslines, nice suplex. I liked how he was a real obstacle for everyone he faced, and I dug Dougie needing to sacrifice himself just to give Matsuda a chance. That was definitely not Tiger Jeet Singh btw, it was some guy in a mask, which is always the trouble with translated match listings. Matsuda was fun as a guy dying on his sword, but be valiant all you want, you are still dead. 

Read more!

New Footage Friday: GORDY! HICKERSON! BLACKWELL! HANSEN! SASUKE! ATLANTIS! AMERICAN DRAGON! METAL MASTER!

Stan Hansen/Terry Gordy vs. Crusher Blackwell/Phil Hickerson AJPW 12/14/88

MD: Bizarrely giving Hansen performance. This is one of the most giving performances I've ever seen out of him, especially against someone who's not paying him. Was Blackwell bringing him in for shots in his Georgia Indy or something? Did he feel like he owed him for some favor done in 1978 Mid-Atlantic (if so you don't really see that bear out in their AWA stuff)? No idea, but this is a Hansen who's getting crushed by mass, beaten around the ring, and legitimately playing face-in-peril in a bear hug. When Hickerson is in there, he fights back a bit more, but then they just tag Blackwell back in. Remember, this is 89 Blackwell. He's huge, has great presence, and can still do an amazing elbow drop (and miss one for a transition too), but this isn't seven years earlier when he was missing top rope splashes and what not. And, of course, Gordy's on the apron playing clapping cheerleader. Eventually, he has enough, intervenes, survives charges into the corner long enough to get a foot up, and it's academic from there. I'm still filing this under "baffling."

PAS: Hansen was always very good at using his size to overwhelm, and it's cool to see him in the ring with two big motherfuckers who gives as good as they get. This was worn tread on the tires Blackwell, but he was still a quarter horse of a dude with great punches and good use of that girth. Hickerson is a mean asskicker in this to, and I love to watch two guys stand in the pocket with Hansen and not get blown out of the building. Gordy is fun in his exchanges as well, although he isn't in the match a ton. Finish was great, I love a Hansen lariat, and this was one of his nastier ones. He hooks it right under Hickerson's jaw and it looks like it's going to pop his head clean off.

ER: At minimum you knew this was going to be great just because how often do you get to see a tag match where Terry Gordy is the smallest man in the match? But how much does it rule that Blackwell and Hickerson took 90% of that match?? Stan Hansen is perhaps the most famous eater of men in pro wrestling history. Hansen can chew someone up more dominantly than anyone, and here he gets completely dominated by Crusher and Hickerson. Sure Hickerson takes some knocks to the head, gets smacked into a ringpost, but it's like Crusher and Hickerson were working the way Hansen and Gordy work every other team. Usually when Hansen takes a shot from someone, he's the one who shakes his head and then angrily walks through it. Blackwell is absolutely impenetrable here, just flattening and outfighting Hansen and Gordy. Blackwell isn't getting the same height on his jumping elbow drops, and he's not doing high dropkicks (or any dropkicks), but he's a tough fat guy with a low center of gravity who punches and headbutts Hansen in the face. 

Blackwell acts like and is treated like the toughest guy in the match, and I love it. His elbow drops look awesome, his missed elbow drops look awesome, his avalanches are delivered with glee, and he's a 5'9 man who convincingly bearhugs Stan Hansen. Two different times in the match he's working over Hansen in the corner, then stops Gordy's interference with one strike! Gordy charges in to save Hansen and Blackwell just turns around and punches him! Later, Gordy charged in and Blackwell just mule kicked Gordy away and ignored Gordy's forearm! Blackwell worked like the total star of the match, which is the most fun way the match could have been worked. Hickerson also appears to be having a blast on his only trip to Japan, a trip where he and Blackwell will be the team in the RWTL who wins no matches. Hickerson seems to really bathe in the new audience, and Blackwell holding Hansen and Gordy in the corner like he was Andre, so that Hickerson can fly across the ring with an avalanche, was a real moment of wrestling bliss. Hansen decides to shut things down the way he does. Hickerson goes back to the well on that avalanche and eats a boot, then the hardest possible Hansen running shoulderblock. Elbow pad adjusted, Hickerson whipped, lariat takes us out. Who could have guessed this would be a 10 minute Blackwell/Hickerson showcase? A great on paper match worked within an unexpected structure is a great treat. 

El Hijo de Anibal/Atlantis/Great Sasuke vs. Java Genjin/Tutankhamen VIII/Macho Pump MPRO 7/24/03

MD: Lost MPRO match that's a good use of fifteen minutes of your time. I haven't seen much Anibal, Jr., but he died of COVID earlier this year. I thought he looked pretty solid here actually, having a decent amount of size, only slight awkwardness because of it, a fearless dive or two, and a nice running elbow. It followed a pretty standard lucha structure despite being one fall. The tecnicos got to shine early, including everyone feeding for Sasuke and Atlantis getting to do some more tricked out one-vs-two spots than I usually remember him doing. When the rudos took over, it was primarily Jabagengi (Being Gran Apache, of all people, working a monkey man Neanderthal gimmick, of all things) directing traffic. It was solid but maybe lasted a little too long without enough motion. They worked for the comeback and went into bigger exchanges. Tutankhamen shined here more than in the rest of the match, including a double jump twisting senton bomb and a no hands dive over the top, but maybe he was a little too into celebrating after the fact. Macho Pump had some personality and got tossed by the head by Atlantis and I have nothing else to say about him. Finish maybe needed a little more zing, but the dives before it had plenty. Basically, the highs were high and lows were few and tolerable. Fun stuff.

PAS: I thought this was neat stuff, MPRO six mans are such a joyful formula style of match. Gran Apache in a monkey suit and Fantastik in King Tut hat do a great job of filling in the KDX rudo base role, and this is some of the better Macho Pump I have seen. They were especially great at basing and bumping for Atlantis, just flying around for all of his offense, I loved the height and distance Macho Pump got on the monkey flip, it was almost Eddieish. All of the dives looked great, we couldn't always see where they landed, but man does Sasuke fly out sight with recklessness and force, it is almost crazier when we don't see his running tope con hilo land. Fantastik hit a crazy flipping springboard senton in the ring, and a wild no hands tope con hilo on a prone Anibal, he was so good every time he showed up in Japan but never went anywhere in Mexico.

ER: 2000s MPRO is a fed ripe for discovery for me, a real blindspot outside of a few matches here and there. Before this, did I know that Gran Apache wore a Giant Gonzalez full body skin and fur suit with a Neanderthal mask? I had no idea, and the crowd had no real idea what to make of him. He has a large novelty club and looks like Bubba the Cave Duck, only with a big dark zipper up his back. He grunts and slaps chest and thighs and constantly tries to get the crowd to react to him, and they politely do, but not enthusiastically. I'm not sure I would have even known it was Apache, even though the slap punches were there and he was a strong base for the tecnicos. I adored Apache's backwards bumps to the floor, perfect backwards tumbles over the bottom rope while landing on his feet, a bump to the floor I don't really see in lucha. There's a classic luchador way of bumping rolling over the bottom rope to the floor, holding the rope and flinging your legs over, but this was like Apache tipping backwards into the water before scuba diving. I loved it. Sasuke had what appeared to be a huge Asai moonsault to the floor (tripod camera missed the landing but it got the loudest reaction of the match so it was surely typical Sasuke danger) and hit his big swan dive right at the finish. Anibal hits a great dive and a nice plancha to the floor, plus takes a wild monkey flip in ring that bounces him upside down off the ropes. But Fantastik really takes the cake, taking multiple high backdrop bumps to the floor (often at the hands of Apache by accident), hits a cool double jump springboard somersault senton, a gorgeous bullet tope, and then hits the dive of the match with a hands free senton to the floor, Super Calo style. I love this format, really need to dive more into mid 2000s MPRO. 

American Dragon vs. Metal Master Paris Japan Expo 7/6/08

PAS: Chad Collyer uploaded this, it was from a show in Paris and has a masked Bryan Danielson against a masked Collyer. What a treat, first section of this match saw Dragon working 80s heel, choking with a rope, doing a Ric Rude hip swivel, taking stooging bumps. He was as good doing John Tatum as he is doing souped up Chris Benoît stuff, as he was doing Ricky Morton shtick in WWE tags, what a talent. I thought all of the early over the top heel stuff really paid off at the end of the match, when they had more of a hot workrate finishing run. By then the crowd was fully behind Metal Master, and chagrined every time Dragon got a bit of an advantage. The execution on the finish had a bunch of cool little flourishes, including Dragon doing a super fast Saint escape of a waistlock into a back elbow. Video gets choppy at the end, but we still get almost the whole match and a great little snapshot at a small part of an all time greats career. 

MD: Absolutely tremendous. When I saw the word "expo," I half wondered what we were going to get. It hearkened back to some of those lucha performances at other "expos" that end up being as streamlined and straightforward as possible, in front of game but unfamiliar crowds. In that regard, this didn't disappoint. This is 2008 Collyer and Danielson, under hoods, wrestling their version of a high-energy 1989 American match. Danielson completely gives himself over to the role, complaining about the crowd not cheering for him at the start, bumping, stooging, feeding, clowning, and stalling throughout, taking over on an unclean break, playing hide the object with a rope from the turnbuckle, and yes, twice doing the Rick Rude hip swivel and probably having the time of his life in the process. Yet, they show that they understand what works and why it works. The crowd completely comes along with Collyer as he fights his way out of a chinlock. Danielson hits an axehandle off the second rope mid-way through to set up a bit transition as he leaps off the top into a Collyer dropkick later. They had to switch cameras towards the end and you got the sense that the person had technical difficulties and had to be selective in what was captured, but you get the broad idea of it. Towards the end, they cycle into Steamboat/Savage pin attempts, and some very believable 1989 power move near falls, before Danielson reverses a flying body press and grabbing the tights for the win. Full commitment, total patience and restraint, great understanding of what works and why. I'm sure they had a blast doing it. It's a great performance from both guys and another feather in Danielson's cap.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Pro Wrestling USA 4/19/85

Larry Sharpe vs. Bobby Duncum

MD: Ok, so the best thing about this match was when Sharpe took a really dumb bump from the corner, just a real tortured thing where there's no way the angle should have worked. He ended up on a table, maybe the timekeeper's maybe not, and the guy swears at Sharpe to get off his table. This is very audible. Then, post match, you can hear, off camera, Sharpe yelling at him "Maybe you can talk to other guys like this but.." Amazing.

The match was disjointed, but fine, I guess? There was supposed to be another Samoan (Samula?) in there maybe? The local radio guy introducing seemed confused. Both of these guys were heels. Duncum was a bit over the hill and past his prime but moved well enough. I did not love his neck jabs. Sharpe had some good flurries and stooged well, but was presented as a poor man's Buddy Rose, which was problematic in its own right. This went home right when it should have with a pretty neat bulldogging elbow drive by Duncum. Sharpe couldn't get out there to yell at the guy quickly enough.

Wild Samoans vs. Tom Zenk/Steve O

MD: This was a completely one-sided match. The crowd wanted to see the Samoans kill Zenk and Steve O and that's what happened. Zenk didn't show a ton but Steve O was a vet by this point and knew what he was there to do. He had a span of a minute or two towards the beginning where he busted his own elbow on a Samoan head, and then tried to slam their heads together, etc. Later on he bumped all over the place including huge on a back body drop. The Samoans really knew how to play the crowd, including a big set up for the Samoan drop. Steve O should have had a job for life, but by design, this wasn't much.

Kendo Nagasaki vs. Jim Duggan

MD: I'm not really sure what to make of this card so far. In a lot of the ones they've posted from this era, every match is competitive. We've seen three squashes so far, basically. Larry Sharpe is the guy who got the most offense in on a losing effort. Duggan's no selling of Nagasaki's stuff was fun, I guess? The whips were weirdly uncooperative. Dusty had been advertised in this spot (not sure where he was, but it wasn't Lenoir, NC with the rest of JCP) and I guess if you're going to sub him out for Duggan, you want to put the babyface over big? Another nothing match.

Baron Von Raschke vs. Jimmy Garvin

MD: We've seen pretty good Baron matches and pretty good Garvin matches in the last month or two and this was neither. The best part was probably Precious' heatseeking. She was so good at riling people and getting pre-match heat just by putting herself in harm's way and daring the babyface to get her. It's a good act but I think it had limited shelf life. What killed this one dead was an extended chinlock/seated chinlock hold by Garvin. A guy like that, with that much heat, can definitely get away with an endless chinlock, but only if both wrestlers are working the thing. Here they weren't, so it didn't work either, especially in front of this crowd of jerks. That they still came back up for the comeback and finish is probably a testament to Garvin/Precious and the claw.

Freebirds vs. High Flyers/Tonga Kid

MD: This was a unique match up, at least. This was a pretty weird Pro Wrestling USA. Instead of JCP, you get the Samoans and the proto-Islanders and Backlund. It makes sense for the Meadowlands, I guess? This was the footage shown in Highlander, by the way, and you get a zooming camera over the top of the action sometimes. More on the overall camera work later.

This was a fun novelty, but I don't think ever really reached any level of greatness. Tonga was legitimately over and his initial exchange with Hayes, with them trading moonwalks, was memorable. Brunzell looked like a world-beater in the shine (thanks mainly to Gordy's basing). Maybe they went heel-in-peril a little bit long, but all the faces had to get a moment and the Freebirds were great stooges.

They had a little heat segment on Brunzell and a longer one on Gagne. The crowd wanted Tonga back in but that didn't 100% translate to getting behind Gagne. I thought camera angle from ringside sort of hurt this. Gagne already wrestles at odd angles, but now we were seeing things from odd angles as well. Usually that doesn't bug me but here it took me out of the match. It was the usual elaborate High Flyers build to a hot tag, but maybe they could have removed a wrinkle, even if Gordy's side slam and especially Budro's bulldog looked great. The crowd came unglued for Tonga but then the ref threw it all out a minute too early and it was a lot less satisfying than if he had just waited for the chairs to come in or if it was worked towards a twenty minute draw since that's exactly as long as it went anyway.

PAS: This had a bunch of fun moments, but never really came together as a great match. I really enjoyed Tonga Kid, he had some flash which as much as I like the High Flyers, they clearly lack.  His pop and lock response to Micheal Hayes's moonwalk was the highlight of the match. I think Gagne is a good wrestler, but he clearly didn't connect to a Jersey crowd which hadn't been following his family for years. I thought the Freebirds were cool, but this wasn't one of their most energetic performances, finish really was terrible, this match was too long to build to a lame cop-out like that.

Kamala vs. Sgt. Slaughter - Ugandan Death Match

MD: I enjoyed this a lot. The lack of rules really benefited Kamala. In a match where he could attack the throat and choke freely and there were no breaks, he legitimately seemed more dangerous and unleashed. I like how much he gave at the get go, really putting over how big a star Sarge was. Like always, when it was time for Sarge to sell and bump, he was great at it. His corner bump out was picture perfect, a thousand times better than Sharpe's in the first match. The hope spots worked with the crowd but were so slight, just a kick or a slam attempt, before he finally punched his way back and actually locked the Cobra Clutch on Kamala. The finish was pretty serious BS especially because it set up a Slaughter vs Billy Robinson match that we never got, though it did at least set up a Boot Camp Cage match that we might get eventually (I think that Meadowlands show has a new Martel vs Bockwinkel match plus Freebirds vs Duggan/Gagne/Hennig, so I hope we do get it). They barely used the actual death match rules. This probably would have been better suited as a Ugandan no holds barred match ending with a countout or some such. Slaughter killing everyone with the stretcher he was supposed to be taken out on was a great visual though.

PAS: It was fun to watch a pair of huge bumping big guys take big in ring bumps. Slaughter had great babyface timing and it was awesome to watch him fire back at Kamala. This was a match that was desperate for blood, a gore soaked Slaughter firing back and Kamala would have been really memorable. I am not sure Kamala's beating was big enough with out it. Man the AWA had terrible finishes though, you can see why the fans eventually soured on them.

Bob Backlund vs. Larry Zbyszko

MD: This is definitely a Matt D match: wrestled title style with compelling matwork and chain wrestling to start, full of emotional selling (from Zbyszko who almost didn't stall enough to create the proper payoffs in the early going, but that was 100% on in every moment of the match), a good heel control segment (including a mini-King of the Mountain where Larry just crushed Backlund's head on the apron with a knee and well-worked, if not at all over, heel headlocks), and some callback spots in the comeback (both a revenge pile driver and face splitter/twister). It could have used some more compelling transitions, a babyface that the fans actually wanted to get behind (though most of the stuff Backlund actually did was spot on), and a finish which wasn't so damn AWA. It never wore out its welcome and it was a good Zbyzsko showcase. You watch this and you wonder, once again, at the idea that Backlund was WWWF champ for so long. Even when he's good, which is often, he comes off as such a goof. I will say this, no other combination in the world could have delivered an atomic drop quite as good as these two.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Flair, Slaughter, Johnny Valentine, OG Kroffat, Roadies, Freebirds

Sgt. Slaughter vs. Ric Flair Pro Wrestling USA 8/16/85

MD: This is a hell of a thing. It's a 30+ minute Slaughter vs Flair match from 85. We had 4-6 minutes of footage before. I don't think this was on anyone's radar as a possibility to be released, but it's a very unique match up. Maybe there's Crockett stuff with them (I started to look through the 82 JCP results but stopped at seeing Flair vs Jerry Blackwell in St. Louis and gave up because I got too frustrated that we don't have that), and there's that one WWF match that made tape, but this ended up feeling really unique. It's not the best match ever but it had a lot to like.

We've all seen hundreds of Flair matches. Narratively, he's such a loose wrestler. He does what he feels is right in the moment and because of who he is and the presence he has, it's almost a feedback loop. What he does in the moment is right because of who he is. He defines what is right and ultimately, so much of it is about the idea of Ric Flair instead of the specific actions of him. I tend to look at wrestling in a very textual way and Flair is a creature of context, of symbolic ideals. You can't break his matches down move for move. Ultimately, he's about no more and no less than constant engagement of the crowd, filling the time in the most compelling way possible, even if it didn't create a greater whole, and for all I'm able to say definitively, I'm not sure I can definitively say that's not the right ideal to shoot for.

Slaughter was larger than life too. As a heel, he was good at grinding down, bumping and stooging. As a face, brawling and selling. You didn't get a lot of the brawling here but the match shined the most when Flair was working over the arm and Sarge was showing the toll. It was probably weakest, past the early headlock spots (the Slaughter armwork that followed was way more compelling), when Sarge was working over the leg. While Flair had a tendency to sell his leg way more than any other body part (and if I had to guess, that's because it's subconsciously what he liked to work over the most or maybe the broadest, most visual thing there was to sell), Slaughter seemed to be struggling with actually putting on the figure four and it made everything a little clunky. The opening feeling out segment was absolutely great, two over the top characters meeting and Slaughter having a lot of fun at Flair's expense. I don't always love Flair playing as vulnerable as he did here for a lot of this, but against an opponent so over the top like Slaughter, it worked. Flair had to use every dirty trick to get an advantage, but once he really dug in with it towards the end, he was vicious and effective and that made Slaughter's comebacks, especially the finish with the out of nowhere with the cobra clutch all the more exciting. The color was saved for the post match with Boris. There were a few creative decisions I didn't entirely agree with, but this was absolutely effective for what it was and it felt like a dredged up dream match, one of those champion vs champion affairs that are never quite as satisfying as they could be but that felt monumental and important.

ER: I think Matt really wrote all that anyone could have wanted on this match, love his thoughts on Flair's match construct, really fascinating analysis and attention to detail, there's not much I'll be able to provide on this match that Matt didn't already. BUT! I liked it. It was one of those big champ vs. champ matches that we all know isn't ending definitively, so you soak up and enjoy it for the charisma of two legends who rarely matched up (including a couple intriguing/unseen Slaughter/Savage vs. Flair/Mountie house show matches I'd love to surface), and dig how great these two look against each other despite seldom crossing paths. I thought they worked the pace really well considering they were going fairly long, and they spaced out a couple of great big bumps to make them feel like an even bigger deal: Slaughter took a big tumbling bump to the floor, and then Flair took two different ones, the second showing him landing on a ton of different objects before hitting the ground; hits the ringside table, falls onto men, hits a chair, thuds to the floor, it's like a great death scene where someone is pulling down curtains and sweeping some China off a table before hitting the floor. My favorite moment was Flair and Slaughter fighting in the corner, Slaughter selling Flair's chops as well as any man, Flair dialing in some of his greatest punches right to the chin, Slaughter recoiling and holding his face, the chops loud enough to literally change the sound pattern of the crowd din that went the whole match. This match was filled with great moments without ever necessarily building to anything extraordinary, and this is okay with me. For a 30+ minute match it certainly didn't feel like it, so it's not something I'm going to nitpick, this felt like it was structured specifically to be enjoyable to this crowd. There's no way someone watching this in the arena wouldn't have been losing their mind. Boris Zhukov runs in and I like the energy of his shots to Slaughter, and then he goes and dumps Slaughter right on his head with a tombstone. Jeeeeez (this set up a really fun singles match between them). So it's a 30+ minute match that ends with a bunch of hunks like Brad Rheingans, interrupting their Chippendale rehearsal to run out in just jeans and boots (seriously, they looked like a male stripper construction worker flash mob), saving their boy. Historically, this is real important, and made for a great Friday afternoon view.

PAS: Every once in a while the network really drops something special. These are two of the biggest stars of the 80s and we never had them matching up before. I didn't love this match, but loved that we got it. This was a Flair match, and while Slaughter delivered some cool stuff, it felt a little like he got shoehorned in a match formula. I really liked Slaughters work with the hammerlock and headlock, and thought it was pretty lame when he started work a figure four. He looked like Disco in that terrible Russo gimmick with print out. I loved Flair's punches to the face and knee drop, and when this turned into a brawl it got special, still I would have rather seen Flair work a Slaughter match then Slaughter working a Flair one.

Road Warriors/Paul Ellering vs. Fabulous Freebirds Pro Wrestling USA 8/16/85

MD: This felt larger than life, another top-of-the-card war. The Roadies were at the height of their power, with every big move shaking the Meadowlands. I'm not sure I've ever actually see them do anything cooler than Animal press slamming Gordy. No one in the crowd even blinked during the attempt. It took too much effort for the Birds to really get over on Ellering. If they combined the attempt at heat with the real thing and didn't give him a pseudo-comeback in the middle, this would have been stronger. The finish was BS but the best sort. Buddy elbowdropping the ref was visually striking. The Birds took the inevitable lost but immediately got their heat back with the huge double back body drop into a powerbomb (in 1985) on Ellering and then the Roadies cleared the ring to end it. New Jersey knew what it liked and it liked the Road Warriors.

PAS: I do love these big main event punch outs. Birds are really great bouncing off the Road Warriors and I loved Gordy as the big dog willing to growl. Ellering is a weird figure in the 80s, as a babyface manager he seemed to exist only to sell so the Roadies didn't have to. The beat down on Ellering was fun and the Warriors hot tag was really explosive, that Animal shoulder block looked like a missile. This kind of made me want to watch some more Warriors matches, sure they aren't going to sell but I appreciate heavyweight wrestling that looks like it hurts.

Kintaro Oki/Michiaki Yoshimura vs. Johnny Valentine/Dan Kroffat JWA 05/29/72

MD: Big thanks to Loss for finding this for us. Valentine is exceptional. He might be the best total package that we have the least amount of footage of. He makes everyone else look shoddy. The way he utilizes leverage and pressure on the simplest holds shows us just how much we take every aspect of pro wrestling for granted and how much more gripping it could be.

This was my first look at the original Kroffat and he reminded me a bit of Wiskowski, both visually and in his ability to marry really sound tag work with dynamic stooging. This was structured with just total control by Valentine/Kroffat for the first fall, long periods of varied grinding holds, quick tags, and drawing a pissed off Yoshimura in. The second fall was lightning quick, just a comeback, a hot tag, headbutts and a finish. Then the last one having a little bit of everything (including Oki pulling off a "Look to the sky/faked you out" spot), before it ended with Valentine pre-creating the Brock vs Orton spot with endless bloody elbowing which either led to a draw or a DQ or who even cares. It was great. I'm pretty sure we should just watch Johnny Valentine matches all the time from now on.

PAS: Johnny Valentine would be my favorite wrestler ever if we had more footage. This wasn't a world class match, but it was another world class performance. Kroffat and Valentine are a fun tag team, Kroffat is a lot more expressive, hitting every move and bump for the last row. Valentine would tag in and start grinding and pounding away. Oki and Yoshimura didn't do a ton to stand out although they were really solid. The finish was awesome though with Valentine pummeling Oki until he started leaking all over the ring, and Oki fired back with great looking gory headbuts. Every Valentine match is a treasure, and this was minor jewel, but a jewel nonetheless.

ER: I obviously agree with the Valentine love here. I love Greg Valentine (not a bold statement), and imagine just how much of a legendary badass Greg had to be just to not be considered a total joke by people who knew Johnny? Greg should be looked at as even more of a total legend just for the giant shoes that he admirably filled. Johnny is so cool and is a rare tough as hell guy who can be beat. He doesn't just gobble up opponents from what we've seen, and his clear toughness always makes it look like his opponent really went through hell to earn a victory. While I don't think the whole of the match made this legendary, the moment he starts raining down on Oki with elbows SHOULD be legendary. That is one of the more unexpected turns into total outright violence that I've ever seen in a match, things going along just fine with headlocks and grounding your opponent until suddenly you are draining your opponent of blood like it was 1850 and Valentine was curing Oki of an infection. Kroffat (or KING KROW as he goes by for some reason) looks like the toughest version of Peter Tork. He was an odd pairing with Valentine, but I liked his sometimes comically expressive bumps and mannerisms. Overall I thought this went too long, felt more like a 50s match than an early 70s match, but I also liked the slow burn due to that insanely rewarding culmination, that moment you really see Oki's head faucet just getting opened up.

Read more!