Found Footage Friday: BABY MISAWA~! ONITA~! SATO~! INOUE~! TENTA~! KABUKI~! JIVE TONES~! CADETES~! MISIONEROS~!

Mitsuharu Misawa/Atsushi Onita vs. Mighty Inoue/Akio Sato AJPW 12/08/82

MD: This is, I think, the earliest Misawa match on record that was identified in a handheld cache from a couple of years back and that's now online due to our new friend in Japan. We have some Goto vs early Kawada matches that we'll hopefully take a look at in the next couple of weeks too. A lot of this was putting Misawa through his paces with the basic spots you'd expect from someone in the system at his age. There was one point where he seemed a little lost on a whip and there were some things he did, like a big backflip off the top that you couldn't quite attach to the wrestler he'd someday be. In general, it was a good showing for his experience level, generally competent. Onita had that electricity that made you think that 82 Randy Savage vs 82 Atushi Onita would be the most interesting match in the world. He drew the eye with everything he did because it stood out so much to everyone around him. And it's not like Sato and Inoue were slouches. These two had as good a finishing combo as you'd see in 82, with Inoue's fireman's carry gutbuster, two flipping sentons, and Sato's wind up hook kick. 

ER: This was mostly simple juniors stuff, a lot of armdrags, some grounded headlocks, and some movements that seem destined only to ruin knees. You see Onita leaping off the top rope to the floor and landing on his feet, just to back off Inoue, and you think about how his knees were pure bone dust less than two years later. Inoue and Sato work over Misawa's knee (Sato had a really nasty grapevine kneedrop that did not prevent Misawa from backflipping off the top rope late in the match) and has a cool backbreaker. Misawa gets to show some spunk with a hard back suplex that gets paid back shortly after. I loved how the match built to a wild Inoue/Onita exchange, with Inoue hitting his high cross block and then FLYINF over the top to the floor after missing the immediate follow up, giving Onita the opening to fly into him with a great tope. The Misawa/Inoue stuff was nice and spirited, with Misawa missing a cool leaping crossbody off the top and getting his insides rearranged with a gutbuster and two fat flipping sentons. Misawa was only 20 years old here, but you could really see how high his floor was just from his young boy work. 

The Jive Tones (Pez Whatley/Tiger Conway Jr.) vs. John Tenta/Great Kabuki AJPW 9/2/89

MD: Jive Tones were generally supporting Abdullah (who was building up to his big, heavily promoted singles match with Baba) on this tour. We get them in some six mans but it's nice to see a straight tag match with them doing their thing. Tenta was winding down on his way to the WWF, having not been utilized all that much in 89. Kabuki, of course, would jump between lower card matches like this and being a second or third guy in Jumbo vs. Tenryu main event trios matches. Maybe that's why it was so enjoyable to see him goof and stooge about with Conway and Whatley here. There was a beautiful exchange where Conway escaped a headlock by dancing this way and that and Kabuki answered by mocking his little dance. The crowd was definitely into the act, popping for each bit of oscillation or jiving that Conway or Whatley pulled out. You never quite got the sense that they were going to win, between the hierarchy of it all and Tenta's sheer size, but they definitely irritated their opponents along the way. That made the post match dancing and strutting around the ring of Tenta and Kabuki all the sweeter after their victory.

ER: Matt really has a strong grasp on the kind of matches that will lure me into writing late on a Friday night. I didn't know the Jive Tones worked an All Japan tour, let alone in a featured tag match, so I was going to be here for this. You see, it's the way Conway shimmies Whatley's white jacket down his arms and shoulders, really taking his time, wiggling his partner free. He will continue wiggling his way through the match, but building to some surprising stiffness and a cool story. I would have enjoyed this if they had kept the early match vibes, like Kabuki barreling out of control doing rope running with Conway, leading to him eating an armdrag and dropkick, or how Tenta swung super low on a clothesline and then caught Whatley's high crossbody, only to go down in a heap from Conway's Thesz press. 

I thought this would settle down pretty quickly into Tenta and Kabuki dominating, and the fun twist in the match comes when Conway gets manhandled into the wrong corner. This is clearly where he was about to take a long beating, and instead, wins a punch out with Kabuki that turns into a nice heat segment on Kabuki, even giving us a Conway butt butt off the ropes. One of Tenta's best traits as a wrestler is how good he is at looking Actually Mad in the ring. He has great body language and is good at selling, but he's so good here at looking genuinely pissed off at Whatley's antics, coming off like someone who was upset that the Jive Tones weren't treating Professional Wrestling with enough Respect. It's so cool seeing such a big dude get knocked around by Conway and Whatley, and my favorite part of the match was this excellent last second pinfall save by Conway, flying into frame with a stage dive that Charles Peterson should have captured in black and white. Kabuki barely gets the win with an inside cradle as Tenta is getting smashed into the ringpost on the floor. Negative points to the cameraman for not giving us more of Tenta and Kabuki's celebratory in-ring strutting. 

Solar/Súper Astro/Ultraman vs. Black Terry/El Signo/Negro Navarro Primer Festival De Lucha Libre Regia 3/21/10

PAS: Always cool to see a new match from Navarro and Terry when they were in their mid 50s and smack in their prime. Terry was the greatest brawler in the world in 2010, but this was more of a Navarro vs. Solar style llave exhibition, which was fun but not revelatory. Everyone kind of hit their beats here, pretty heavily matched up, so we didn't see much of Navarro or Solar doing their things with the other guys in the match. We did get a nice Super Astro tope and some flips from him, and I liked how they teased the traditional Solar vs. Navarro double pin finish, only to switch it up and have Solar win by submission. 

MD: This felt like these guys playing the classics, especially with the initial exchanges, but they're classics for a reason and even though we shouldn't have been surprised by it, because we have Solar vs Navarro even a number of years later, it's absolutely impressive on paper. It was a lot of fun seeing Super Astro use Signo's sheer size as an absolutely literal base to use to bound around the ring. Navarro and Solar had a lot of time and they used it to the fullest with one interesting tricked out hold after the next, holds that almost no one else in the world could make plausible but them. Things opened up a little on the second or third set of exchanges and that let Black Terry unleash some of the shots you'd expect out of him from this time and it gave things some variety, but they snapped back to old form shortly thereafter. Past the action itself, my favorite bit of this was the audio of someone explaining to their kid who each tecnico was based on the color of their gear. It was matter-of-fact and wholesome, spreading the love of these guys across generations.

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New Footage Friday: David Von Erich, Race, Tor Kamata, Jumbo, Wahoo, Billy, Baba

Fritz Von Erich/David Von Erich vs. Harley Race Wrestling at the Chase 8/10/79

MD: This is a match that's been out there, but there's not a lot written about it, and it's nice to see it in context of an entire TV show. In fact, there's so little written about it that it's a bit hard to figure out what's going on. Obviously, this was all about getting David over. He was 21. According to the announcing, he'd already had a big draw with Race. The handicap gauntlet angle to it all seems a little weird because Fritz never makes it in, but that also plays with expectations. If I'm reading things correctly: there's more interest in the match because Fritz is potentially going to face off against Race. Everyone there had to expect Race to beat David so that they'd get to that point. It also allows for things to safely be non-title and protect Race. It makes him look big for taking the challenge and they can rationalize the finish by saying Race was looking past David to Fritz, etc.

The frustration of Race, as we've expressed before, is that everything he does looks so good. Every headbutt, gutwrench (not that he actually gets to hit it here), knee drop, underhanded shot. It all looks good. Race is a guy who consistently beat people with a vertical suplex in a time where that had started to become sort of rare and you believed it because everything looks great. He just gives up so much. Maybe it was his job to give up so much and maybe because his stuff looked so good, he had to hit less of it relatively, but you just want to see him beat the snot out of someone like David and obviously that's not happening. That's not to say David didn't look good and that some of his stuff, like those whole body stretch-overs to turn over Race's headlock into his own weren't really good and fairly unique, but I would have preferred Race take a little more of this, if only because I'm a bad human being at times when it comes to wrestling.

The finish was absolutely amazing. David catching Race off of the diving headbutt with the claw and Race bleeding all over the place. It was iconic. I realize they may have gone to that well again at some point, but it felt like the best thing that happened in wrestling in 1979. I would have 100% dropped money to see David get a title shot against Race. You would have too.

PAS:  I thought this was super impressive Race performance. David was as green as Kermit's dick, he honestly looked like a guy in one of his first couple of matches. Race totally made him look credible in multiple near falls, but also beat him good enough to really engender the crowd sympathy, there were some great looking headbutts and kneedrops. You can see why David was considered such a future star, although it feels very smoke and mirrors. I liked the idea of David insisting to go it alone, although it did rob us of Fritz vs. Race which would have been awesome. That finish was totally iconic, I love the idea of the iron claw as a total kill shot and Race leaking blood made it look like the most dangerous move in the world. What a perfect bit of business, and honestly I am shocked this isn't considered one of the great wrestling angles of the 70s and 80s, really shows how much of wrestling history is framed by availability.


Tor Kamata vs. Tiger Conway Jr. Texas Championship Wrestling 9/10/79

MD: Did you guys know that Tor Kamata was a play on Torquemada? I didn't. I've seen a decent amount of him lately as well due to the 1980 AJPW footage. He's pretty much what you'd expect, a slightly more mobile Abby with slightly less presence, able to whip out those jump kicks and at least an attempt at a dropkick, and to get off his feet on bumps a bit more. The constant bowing went from being irritating to serene as he went over the top with it (and as Conway went full on 70s kung fu in mocking it). Tiger, as we stated before, is a guy that we're lucky to have learned a lot more about through Houston footage. That means we can place a match like this into a more proper context instead of just seeing it as a one-off. He was a great regional star, and in this match he manages to play a ton of different roles: fiery and taking it to Kamata with brawling, working from underneath, comedically mocking him, picking up the pace and flying, working around ringside using whatever he could get his hands on. All that and a great connection to the crowd too. I don't think this was an amazing find relative to some of the other things we watch, but it feels like another piece of that Conway, Jr. puzzle.

PAS: I really enjoyed this, I am sucker for a guy with a good throat chop, and Kamata was a perfectly fine guy for Conway to do his thing around. Conway is a great fired up babyface and gets plenty of chances to fire himself up. I thought the finishes to all of the falls were super cool, the diving top rope tope by Conway to win the first fall, the super unexpected diving top rope throat thrust by Kamata (was not expecting that guy to go to the top) and the tope to the back of the head by Conway, into the crazy over the top bump for the DQ. Conway feels like one of the true great flyers of the 70s and early 80s and has been great every time we have seen him. This isn't a classic like the Valentine match, but it is a bunch of fun.


Giant Baba/Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Billy Robinson/Wahoo McDaniel AJPW 10/17/80

MD: There are some things you learn almost instantly from this match. It's a crime there aren't a slew more Wahoo/Robinson matches out there. Wahoo/Baba is a more compelling pairing than you ever would have imagined: the dueling stylized chops are a thing of vicious beauty. In a match with Billy Robinson in it, it's Wahoo's nasty joint manipulation on Baba's hands that I'll remember six months from now. I've seen dozens of Jumbo/Baba matches by now, but Wahoo and Robinson really got the best out of them, highlighting two different types of intensity, with Baba grinding in and using his size and Jumbo bursting forth at high speed. Like I said before, Robinson and Wahoo worked so well together: the mauling of Baba's hand/arm was great, most especially Wahoo stepping on it so that it was outstretched for Billy to come off the second rope on it with a stomp. This was constant struggle with just enough over-the-top wrestling trappings to make it sizzle. Are any of the singles matches between Wahoo and Baba out there?

PAS:  This was a match that had some really fun parts with never getting out of first gear. Loved Wahoo vs. Baba, it felt a bit "greatest hits" for a matchup I hadn't seen before (cagematch has two singles which we can hope show up at some point), loved the chops to the hand, super nasty and a great way for a chopper to foil another chopper. Robinson always looks so smooth and he also really took chunks out of Baba's arm. I just wished this hummed a little more, it had great moments, but it just kind of finished without a big crescendo.

ER: There's a moment in this where Billy Robinson jumps off the middle rope onto Baba's wrist and Baba's weird long Nosferatu wrist sits there crooked in air and it's an incredible wrestling moment. Nothing else could have happened in this match, and I would have still been completely into it. We did get more of that, so that hypothetical was just a waste of your time, but goddamn that was a great spot. Robinson and Wahoo are a cool tag team who tagged a lot, that I haven't actually watched tag a lot. So seeing them work over Baba's wrist and punch him in his giant ribcage is something I wanted to see on a Friday night. I don't think I've see a Wahoo match where he he goes after a limb as aggressively as he and Billy go after Baba's weird long arm. This felt like more of a chillll house show match than a big classic tag with four huge stars, but every year, older and older I get, the more I really really like chill house show matches. There's a simple satisfaction watching big star minimalism, and it's a great end of work week bleary eyed view. Seeing Robinson snap Baba over with a headscissors just makes my week.

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New Footage Friday: Double Tiger Conways, Mark Lewin, Kawada, Tenryu, DiBiase, Hansen, Jumbo

Tiger Conway Jr./Tiger Conway Sr. vs. Mark Lewin/Gary Hart Houston Wrestling 5/9/79

MD:This looks like it might be the last new match we get out of Houston for a while. You have to love the crowd. There's one wide shot where you can just feel how electric everyone was, even for an attraction match like this. Some of that was a testament to Gary Hart (and how consistently and single-mindedly Hart and Lewin had down their heel game), but so much of it was because of the Tigers.

Lothario was the real "find" of the Houston footage, but Conway, Jr.'s notable as well. He feels very much a local guy, sort of a more mid-card Bill Dundee, who the crowd loves and who delivers match after match. He was an incredible seller and a real fiery comeback. Before all of this Houston footage, he was a guy lost to time and a throw-away mainstream gimmick. This was my first look at Sr., and he was spry and willing but there wasn't a ton to see. They were sure over though and that, along with Jr. doing everything well and Lewin and Hart being sufficiently despicable, made this fun.

PAS: There is something so classically pro wrestling about a youngster bringing in his old retired dad to even the score against an interfering manager. Conway Sr. is great in the Dusty/Bullet Bob role of dancing babyface who can bring it if necessary. Hart doesn't bump but he takes some shots to the face and some demonstrative headbutts. I liked Conway Sr. getting the pin in the first fall, but getting laid out and taken to the back by a throat chop in the second fall. That leaves Jr. to have to take out both heels at once, and he does a great job only to get smashed with a table leg after pinning Hart. I would love to see the blowoff to the Lewin vs. Conway feud, because this was a great taste.

Genichiro Tenryu vs. Ted DiBiase AJPW 3/21/82

MD: We gravitate towards the oddities and the B-sides, the bursts of violence and glowing lights lost in the fog of history. This is none of that. This is a Classic. This, had it not been buried, would be canonical. It would have done well in the 80s AJPW DVDVR ballot. It'd be on some Lynch or Meltzer or McAdam list. It's just a good, high-effort, wrestling match with dueling limbwork and incredibly hard fought transitions. 82 Ted has the best, leanest gutwrench suplex I've ever seen and this crazy tendency to bump out of the ring when he probably shouldn't. Tenryu stays right with him including what is probably the earliest top rope sunset flip in recorded history. It's a draw but there's enough escalation and progression that you don't feel too cheated by it. Really, this was what NWA champion Dibiase probably would have looked like when he was working neutral and it was a pretty good showing for him all around.

PAS: DiBiase is a guy who I like as a brawler, but have never really rated as a technical title match guy. This is really the first time I have seen him perform at the level of an NWA champion in an NWA champion style match (this wasn't for a title, but was very much in that style.) We get some solid matwork early, with Ted working a bunch of different variations of a hammerlock, and Tenryu putting on a tight front face lock. Much of the match is contested on the mat, but we get some big stand up sections including DiBiase taking a big spill to the floor and eating a really nice looking Tenryu tope. Tenryu also unloads with some great looking sumo thrusts which send DiBiase to the floor again. I loved the gutwrench and powerslam by DiBiase, and Tenryu really nails an enzigiri and piledriver. Would have liked a finish, but I get why this went to a draw. I agree with Matt that this would have been highly though of if it was around earlier, and while I prefer stuff with a little more flash, this was a hell of a meat and potatoes bout.

Jumbo Tsuruta/Yoshiaki Yatsu/Masanobu Fuchi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Genichiro Tenryu/Stan Hansen AJPW 11/20/89

PAS: I think the Kawada/Tenryu/Hansen trios team has got to be the most violent trios team in history (although this is zebra stripe Kawada which is significantly less violent then black and yellow Kawada), and the Yatsu/Jumbo/Fuchi trio has to be up there. Yatsu comes into this match wearing a rugby helmet which is usually used to prevent concussions or while recovering from them(I never wore one because I am not a pussy, although now I can't remember any event that happened in my 20s), as one might imagine both Tenryu and Hansen take sadistic pleasure in stomping and elbowing Yatsu right on the side of his head. The presence of that helmet really adds to the violence of their attack. Kawada is the target of the other team, and he takes a pretty good beating including selling an inverted atomic drop like he took a croquet mallet to his nards. Finish felt a bit abrupt, but I am all for the Hansen kill shot lariat. Overall a nifty discovery with six all time greats doing their dance.

MD: This was exactly what one would have expected, a bunch of guys who would continuously bring the unrelenting pressure with ebbs and flows and big shots. I liked how they would work sequences and then grind down to holds before switching partners. I liked how well they contained Hansen early on. Yatsu was a blast to watch as he made sure to sell with every foolish, effective headbutt he threw. I like how when he tried the jumping kick on Tenryu it did absolutely nothing. The Total Elimination spin kick/jumping kick from Kawada/Tenryu, on the other hand, was a thing of beauty. It all escalated into bombs towards the end and that one ever-present kill shot by Hansen. Satisfying as you'd expect.

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