Found Footage Friday: 1975 CANADA~! SHEIK~! POFFOS~! VON ERICH~! STASIAK~! JAY YORK~! RED LYONS~!

Canadian Big Time Wrestling (Unaired Pilot) 1975

Gene Dubois (Dave McKigney) vs. Waldo Von Erich

MD:  Lord Layton is our commentator because that's what you do with retired Lords apparently. They led off with the national anthem. This is from London, Ontario. I don't know how much Dubois or Waldo Von Erich I've seen (you figure I would have at some point but I don't think I have), but this made me want to see a whole bunch more of both. Waldo had headgear on at first and slugged Dubois (wearing his jacket still) before the bell before taking it off. They really didn't look back from there. Dubois was a shaggy singlet wearing guy and came off like a world's best Brody in a lot of ways. At one point early, after eating a thrashing, he landed on his feet out of a back body drop and started to fire back. They really just threw themselves at each other the whole time, going in and out of the ring. Dubois caught Von Erich a few times, either pulling him out by the legs or landing him stomach first over the ropes on a corner whip. Finish was a let down as Waldo wouldn't let Dubois back in the ring and kept kicking at him again to draw the DQ, but this was a great start for this endeavor and I now need to see how much other footage we have of these two.

ER: I am a man who has watched a lot of wrestling in my life, and I don't think I've ever watched a Waldo von Erich match. That's probably not true, I've forgotten about 75% (more?) of the wrestling I've ever watched, but I figure that if I had seen him, then I would have remembered him as a shit kicking badass because man is this guy a shit kicking badass. Waldo crafted this match around a hypnotic blend of kicks to the ribs and body, and thumbs jabbed into throats. Wrestling needs thumbs jabbed into throats more than ever. That kind of sleight of hand simplicity isn't really a thing anymore and that's a bad thing. I don't know if I can ever respect any wrestler who does a flipping cutter more than a wrestler who does swift attacks to vulnerable body parts. Some 11 year old kid yelled "Go back to Germany!" while von Erich was kicking the shit out of Dubois' ribs and there's no 11 year old in the crowd that would have that kind of reaction to a flipping cutter. I love how Gene DuBois also went by Dave McKigney; two equally, specifically Canadian sounding names but names describing two completely different types of Canadian man. The finish was von Erich kicking Dubois in the ribs from the apron, knocking him to the floor repeatedly, until he gets DQ'd after the fifth or sixth time. How much of Waldo's 1976 All Japan tour do we have? I need to see it all. 

The Patriot vs. "The Alaskan" Jay York

MD: Patriot was from "the heart of America" and someone in the comments suggested it was Michael Farhat but I can't say. York was working singles for some reason and they went a different direction than the first match, keeping it on the mat. Some really good mat wrestling in here though, including York rolling across the Patriot to switch positions into a headlock. Eventually he got fed up and started clubbering and they went right home after that with York hitting a neckbreaker drop off the ropes out of nowhere. So far, I'd pick this show up if I was the network. 

ER: Holy shit Jay York. More people in wrestling and life need to look like Jay York. We've drummed the Jay Yorks out of wrestling and we're so much worse for it. I went to at least a hundred Giants games in the 80s and 90s. Good seats in the Candlestick right field pavilion were $6. Worse seats in the upper deck were $8, because you could smoke up there. Baseball's insane ticket prices drove away the Candlestick upper deck dirtbag in cut offs, no shirt, suntanned the way a guy got when he wore his faded black jeans outside with no shirt often, cig stuck to lip. Jay York looked like one of those dirtbags, only he's 6'5", and he's wrestling really well. 

Because why was Jay York this fucking slick on the mat? Why is this guy working fast Negro Navarro escapes and rolling wrist clutch advances? York escapes an armbar by rolling up Patriot's body into the cleanest damn headlock and he looked like 2x speed Jake the Snake. Jay York reads in no way like a guy who would be this good on the mat. I haven't seen a Jack Brisco match with matwork as well executed and interesting as York's. He throws short headlock punches and neck twisting leveraged snapmares. Every contact he makes looks good, authentic. He throws the best neckbreaker drop I've ever seen for his finish, turning one of wrestling's weakest clotheslines into a finisher clothesline. The key is York's fast drop, hitting the mat in a low quick ark like a reverse bulldog.  Where are men like Jay York now, and why aren't they wrestling? 

Cage Match: The Sheik vs. Tiger Jeet Singh

MD: Layton made sure to let everyone know how rare it was to see a cage match on TV. Singh was, I suppose, at least de facto babyface here mainly because people wanted to see the Sheik lose. Apparently in this one you could ONLY win by going through the door. Going over the top was illegal which is something I can't say I've heard before in an escape rules match like this. A few early shots in to the cage, a lot of scrambling for the door and cutting each other off. Sheik went to an object early as well. They both ended up trading the object back and forth. Lots of what you'd expect here with tossing and grinding against the cage. At one point, Sheik did try to escape over the top but got dragged back. Finish had Singh errantly punch the Sheik through the door and to the floor. I imagine people tuning into this would have gotten their money's worth here at least.  

ER: The best part of this match was one of the cage escape spots where Sheik is holding Singh's whole boot to keep him from getting out, hooking his hand into the top of the boot so he's shoving four fingers in with one hand and firmly gripping Singh's bridge with the other. It was showed close up and the struggle looked so real, which really stood out to me from Sheik's kind of phony old man brawling that I can never fully get into. 

North American Championship: Stan "The Man" Stasiak (c) vs. Ron Doner

MD: Fairly short one here. Stasiak ran into armdrags to start, including an assisted kip up where he got put right back down. He had big meaty shots that he took over with but they had a great bit where he missed the heart punch in the corner and had to sell his hand. He got caught up in the ropes and pummeled too but all it took was him taking over one last time and locking on for the heart punch to win it. Love the heart punch. This was fine for what it was but it wasn't meant to be much.

ER: All of the stuff I wrote about wanting to see wrestlers (and citizens) who look like Jay York up above, all of that could be said romantically about Stan Stasiak. I wish there was anywhere I could go to see a wrestler who looks like and wrestles like Stan Stasiak. Wrestlers should look like him, and have names that sound like his. He is a man who looks like one of the guys drinking beer with your dad after their strip mall office car club meeting. Stasiak has a body like Dennehy, head like Meatloaf, muttonchops of the truck driver who starts a fight with an outsider at a diner. Stasiak's heart punch is the greatest version of one of wrestling's great Lost Finishers. Loved the heart punch miss, putting over how he throws it hard enough to hurt his hand. The last guy I saw use a sincere heart punch was the late Bison Smith, early in his career when he was wrestling as Super Destroyer 2000. You know that wrestler I don't like on Beyond undercards who works a wink heavy heart punch finisher? I don't know if there is one, but, if there is, he sucks.  

World Tag Team Championship: The Poffos (Angelo & Lanny Poffo) w/ Saul Weingeroff (c) vs. "Irish" Mickey Doyle & Billy Red Lyons 

MD: There's a self-published Mickey Doyle biography out there and I'm tempted to get it. He was touted here as the fresh young star of the promotion, though I don't think he was quite as young as they were billing him. It's great to see Angelo and Lanny all the way back in 75. Lanny had to be 19 here tops and he was full of cartwheels and backflips as you'd imagine. He had a singlet over his tights and took the singlet off, which was silly.  

Honestly, this was a bit of a mess. It was almost refreshing to see how much of a mess as it was because you never see old matches that go over the rails quite like this. Lanny bumped and stooged all over the place, just flailing and flapping around. At one point he took a back body drop face first in the oddest way and he hit a pretty odd missile dropkick too. Angelo begged off and got bodyslammed what must have been six times to the point of it being very funny but not making much sense. Doyle's hair started springing every which way like it was Lanny's cartwheels. Lyons looked great ("rolling like a winner" as Layton put it), full of fire and solid looking shots but that was kind of beside the point.  The ultimate finish had Lanny and Doyle crash into each other and Angelo push Lanny on top of him from the outside. That brought Layton out to tell the ref what happened and get things overturned (because of that push!) and when Saul and Angelo complained, Layton said that he wasn't just a commentator but that he represented all of the people in the crowd, which was a unique way of putting it. Anyway, this was entertaining but definitely unmoored. 

ER: How weird is Lanny Poffo? Lanny is one of wrestling's all time weirdest guys and we should probably write more about him at Segunda Caida. What an off putting fucking weirdo. This unaired pilot was great fun, filled with guys tailor made for Michigan/Canadian fans. Then we get to the main event where a bleached blond weirdo who you would avoid in a supermarket sucks in his stomach in a threateningly sexual but gross way and you know exactly why this shit never aired. What a weird guy. I've never seen bleached blonde Lanny and it's horrifying. He looks like gay porn Lurch and cartwheels around, then stands in postures you never see a man stand in. Poffo bumps weirder than the World of Sport roster, falling in a way that seems inspired by nothing. Every bump he takes is weird, every move delivered as if by a ribbon dancer who had only heard about offense described verbally. His greatest weird guy bump is easily his back body drop. The first time you see it, it looks like an accident. By the time he's done three crazier ones, you just realize Lanny Poffo was a teenage genius. His back body drop is taken horizontally, flipping over his opponent like a log rolling off a cliff, not end over end. It's so much harder to get height on your bump that way, and yet here's Poffo taking increasingly higher versions. I need to see more first two years Lanny, but I think we can say that at one point, he might have been a more interesting and unique wrestler than his brother. That's an incredible revelation.

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70s Inoki was Extreme before Extreme was Extreme: RIP Antonio Inoki

Antonio Inoki vs Umanoseke Ueda - Nail Floor Death Match - 2/8/78

MD: The first five or six minutes of this footage was the crew laboriously laying down board covered with nails after board covered with nails around the ring. Ultimately, it served as a deterrent and a tease more than anything else, which worked for the crowd in 1978. It felt like the early stages of an Onita exploding cage match where there's so much effort to avoid the cage at all times, where it's a looming presence hovering over the wrestlers that affects their strategy but that doesn't actually come into play, until it does. Here, it actually doesn't, maybe until Ueda is knocked to the floor post match, but even then he lands on his feet. 

That said, this match contains within it a wonderful example of what made Inoki so special. The first six minutes or so were primarily on the mat. Ueda could go and a lot of the tactics people remember him for were more about standing out and getting over than necessity. In going through 1986 recently, when he faced the UWF guys +after his turn, he could hang with them better than you'd have expected. Here, he traded holds and advantages with Inoki. When it became obvious he wasn't making any inroads though, he took advantage of the looser rules for a gimmick match like this and blatantly went low. Three shots to the groin, a choke, and then the stomps. Here's where the nails came into play, the tease of it as he stomped away trying to press Inoki out of the ring as the fans buzzed and Inoki scrambled on his back on the apron, fighting for what seemed like his literal life. He was never afraid to look vulnerable. He saw the strength in it not necessarily to build sympathy, like Terry Funk in Japan might do, for Antonio Inoki did not need sympathy, but instead to build anticipation in the hearts of the crowd for when he would fire back.

Here it was by dodging Ueda's shots around the ringpost while still on the apron, a fairly unique visual in all the annals of wrestling history. One shot from Ueda, if landed, might knock him off into the nails, but in dodging and weaving, he made Ueda overstretch and he caught the arm, slamming it down over the metal connective tissue of the ring. From there, everything turned. It was an electric moment and Inoki followed up with decisive deliberative tearing apart of Ueda's arm. It was intense, focused, enraged, but so measured. He lifted an arm, paused, allowed the crowd to understand what was happening and then drove it down. He wrenched the arm, pulled it high over his head, paused for the buzz, and then jammed it down over his shoulder. It was an interactive experience, a collaborative ritual of violence and revenge. At no point does it become about Inoki trying to toss Ueda into the nails. Inoki did not need to stoop to such levels when he had complete control and chose the means of his vengeance. In the end, Ueda suffered an even greater affront to his honor than having his body torn apart by the nails. Tiger Jeet Singh, unable to reach the ring due to the nails, threw in the towel to save the arm and the career of his compatriot. Such surrender from two such monsters must have been unthinkable to the crowd and here the drama of the nails became not about laceration of the flesh but instead of the spirit, with Inoki knowing how to milk every moment of the emotion like only a true wrestling mastermind could.

Antonio Inoki vs Tiger Jeet Singh Fence Death Match 2/10/77

MD: This was a title match as well, and had to be worked as one. The gimmick (a steel fence around the ring) came into play after the halfway point, but again, primarily so that Singh could get his long-deserved comeuppance. He deserved it too as he started the match rushing in and nailing Inoki with an object, shocking everyone with a very quick pin before the ref noticed it and restarted the match. After that, Inoki played towards his strength as he recovered and it was generally them trading holds. Singh began with a long top wristlock, using a slam or an unabashed hairpull to maintain control. Inoki met the moment with a short arm scissors. Both ended up on their feet stalking and fighting for positioning until Inoki got the toehold. Here, the VQ gave us a great look of wrenching agony on Singh's face. He's obviously not known for his matwork and I wouldn't say he was Ueda's equal, for instance, but the selling was pretty gripping as he scrambled from underneath. Inoki would press the advantage with a deathlock, again letting everything sink in and building the crowd's anticipation for when he would drop back and put on the pressure. Moreso than a martial artist or a warrior or a carny operator, he was a preacher conducting the hearts of his faithful. 

At one point, Singh tosses him out, prepared to use the fence, but Inoki slides back in. Later on, he can't avoid it though and Singh tosses him in and uses a cord to choke him. Ultimately, Singh knew that he couldn't outwrestle Inoki and his one trick to beat him quickly with the weapon failed, so he went back to that well again. This time Inoki reversed it and posted him, opening him up. From there, it was a matter of time. Each time Singh went for another trick, like moving the corner protection away to uncover the steel, Inoki blocked it and gave him at taste of his own medicine, leaving him a bloody mess ultimately unable to answer the call. Post-match, Inoki wanted more and kept on him. Singh looked tough in that he would keep coming, only to get slammed or dropkicked or simply punched, but it was obvious that this was Inoki's (and therefore the crowd's, if not all of Japan's) supreme victory and Singh's absolute defeat. This wasn't quite as visceral and straightforward as the Ueda match but it had to balance being a title match as well. As such, it still leaned into the spirit of the gimmick match, even if not the reality of it, and went far over the top to prove its point. Inoki absolutely knew what he was doing and he could channel and control a crowd as well as anyone.

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New Footage Friday: PG13! FINLAY! KILLER KARL KOX! DERRICK KING!

Killer Karl Kox Turns Face! AWCW 1973     Pt. 2     Pt. 3     Pt. 4     Pt. 5

MD: We don't do whole TV shows often but this feels worth covering. It's possible this has been out there but quick googling and youtube searches didn't bring it up and it popped up on a TV youtube channel as opposed to a wrestling one, which is always a good sign. This is just a great episode of territories TV, one that felt close to ten years before its time. 73 is not that deep into the decade and things are already defined by the war between Big Bad John's crew and the People's Army.

Lord Layton's perfect as the host, always feigning a struggle with his own moral quandary of journalistic neutrality vs rooting for the good people against the very bad, which just somehow makes the good feel better and the bad worse. The fans are interesting here, never popping at individual lines in the interviews, but waiting until the end. As Karl Kox (who had just turned face) was going on about how he did it for his dead mother who didn't want to see him reviled anymore, I wasn't sure if he really had the fans because of it. In the end though, they were on board. It's such a novel, unique to this area, thing that Big Bad John's biggest gripe was that he had paid $1500 to fly Kox out to be part of his crew and now that money was wasted. That wouldn't have worked almost anywhere else in the world.

This episode had four matches, all of which at least a little competitive. The first (part 2 video) was Bulldog Brower/Abby vs.  Larry O'Dea/Billy White Wolf, with Brower taking a good chunk of the match and the promo after. It left me wanting to see more of him. He had a great presence, a bulky force of gravity in the center of the ring, with big wind-ups to his shots and smart use of his size. It was a weird setting to see Adnan, but he was mainly there to bounce of Brower. Post match promo had Brower enthusiastically talking over John so they couldn't entirely stay focused but it worked for what it was.

Part 3 has the second match, which is Tiger Jeet Singh vs. Kox. The match was short but effective in establishing Kox as a tough and mean looming presence, now a babyface but not one that changed up his style at all. Singh moved and bumped around a bit more than you'd see a decade later, but he was still mostly what you'd expect. The forearm out of nowhere that ended it was great though. Post-match, Kox talked about how the other faces didn't trust him yet, which brought them out. This was the best part of the whole show as King Curtis, untrusting but pragmatic, said that they needed the greatest weapon in all of wrestling, the brainbuster (said like only he could) on their side.

Part 4 introduced Angelo Mosca to the territory, with Layton (who claims to have personally recruited him) playing up his sports and academic credentials like JR might fifteen years later. George Barnes is the sacrificial lamb and he stooges and bumps around well for him, but obviously doesn't have the chance to shine like in the recent Memphis footage we saw. Mosca is fine, but honestly, what's most notable is how out of breath he is in the post-match promo, even noting it and his nervousness, which is a good cover. Definitely not the sort of crazy Mosca promos we'd get in 84.

Then it ends with Waldo von Erich vs. Mario Milano, and if you can get past how deep Waldo still was into the nazi stormtrooper gimmick, even in 73 (it felt more severe than the Barons' goose stepping), this was actually really good. I don't think I've seen a ton of Waldo but he really worked the glove gimmick well, just absolutely unrelenting with a lot of different but all credible bits of offense surrounding it. Milano was fiery in his comebacks and revenge spots, quick to throw out headbutts. Just a good TV main event to put some heat back on the heels after the Kox turn and his win over Tiger.

The fact that we have this whole episode, and with TV Roll information at start makes me wonder just how much is out there. I know there are bits and pieces floating around but I really did enjoy this.

ER: I'll primarily focus on the Kox stuff, but this was a fun episode of TV, presided over by the presumably 7 foot tall Lord Layton, we got to see Abdullah the Butcher without big flapping tiddies but just as stabby as ever, Bulldog Brower even bigger than Abby and with work that looked more than worth seeking out, a fun main event, and a classy 70s TV presentation. But I came here to see the Killer and I loved what we got. His opening promo was open faced and tender, talking about how he recently lost his dear mother, and how his hated ways had turned his family into targets of harassment, and how he wanted to change his ways to honor his mother. I loved his understand of the skepticism, and his reasoning that if he betrayed the fans and his word, he was also betraying his mother, and that couldn't be. It left me not knowing whether he was genuine or not - after all, we've seen old heels go back on their word after much greater promises - so Layton's skepticism is warranted. Kox's match with Tiger Jeet Singh was fascinating to me, as it seems like Kox might be the perfect kind of opponent for Singh. Kox is an expressive seller who can make a claw hold mean something, but I also like Singh digging his nails into Kox's neck and face, loved the way Kox would fight back and struggle up to his feet, and Kox throwing fists is always going to land with me. The finish even feels like a rarity, because how often have you seen a Tiger Jeet Singh match with him actually getting pinned? Kox pins him after a quick, sharpe forearm shot, the kind of shot that looks like it should end a match. Kox throughout this episode looks like Robert Duvall in Killer Elite, a tight mustache with hair that slowly unfurls around the edges, leaving him with fantastic wings that could even bely his plain faced honesty. I loved this whole presentation.

PAS: This really made me wish we had more Australian stuff from this period (do they have a TV archive we can raid?), the idea of these two warring armies full of super charismatic dudes is really appealing. Kox is just incredible in the role of the humbled man trying to atone for his many sins and this really made me want to see him face off with Brower and Abby and everyone. Really felt like a Florida style promotion 10 years before Florida was doing this sort of thing.

TKG: Everything I’ve ever seen from the People’s Army v Big Bad John has been a blast but I’ve only seen “best of never” full shows before. And these full shows are well paced. The whole Kox turns babyface because of his mother’s cancer is amazing. I dug the opening tag a bunch. Bulldog Brower is a guy I associate with dull WWF undercards and I left this thinking that I need to rewatch all of those. All his offense is nasty looking and he’s really fun as immovable object slowly getting knocked down when eating offense. Larry O'day is a guy I will forever remember being killed by the Miracle Violence Connection and it will take something spectacular to make me see him as anything else. The Mosca v Barnes match I thought was really dull but everything else was worth watching and neat watching a whole show format.

Fit Finlay vs. Rico de Cuba CWA 8/7/97

MD: This was a 10+ minute glorified squash where late 90s Finlay (having shrugged off a lot of the chickenshit stooging from his 80s career) just steamrolled some poor, long-haired doofus. He let Rico toss him a couple of times early on and gave him a thing or two as the match went on (especially due to slipping on a banana peel), but this was mostly Fit jamming elbows and forearms into different parts of Rico's skull, turning him inside out with an over-rotated powerbomb, unloading on him utilizing the apron like 00s Finlay, stretching him for fun, and getting so fed up with the guy's last comeback that he ate a red card DQ for half choking him to death in the ropes. More of a novelty for its length than anything else, since you come in expecting the cruelty. It's 2x your 98 WCW Saturday Night Finlay squash and it's good that we get to highlight that sort of thing to the world.

PAS: Rico De Cuba definitely looks like a guy who should have been walking across the beach with Joe Gomez, Jim Powers and the Renegade, and Finlay treats him like that guy. We get all of the classic Finlay brutality, nerve holds which look like he is ripping out chunks of his traps, elbows directly into the trachea, knees across the nose. Cuba gets a couple of comebacks, which didn't look great but Finlay bumped huge for, including flying over the top rope twice. I liked Finlay psychotically trying to rip his head off for the DQ, and this was exactly the kind of thing which made us fall in love with him.

ER: This was so great, this was like if one of those Finlay vs. Johnny Swinger matches from Saturday Night were given 12 minutes instead of 3 minutes. The beating was just as cruel, it just went on 4x as long. Rico de Cuba was given a couple of very short flourishes, and Finlay sold like Cuba was a total superstar in those brief moments. My favorite stretch of the match was when Finlay took two super fast bumps over the top to the floor, working a great Berzerker routine of taking a fast (flipping) bump over the top and landing on his feet, rushing back in and getting tossed just as fast out the other side. Almost all the rest of this is Finlay absolutely mugging Cuba. It is a true greatest hits of every piece of Finlay offense that I love: numbing bodyslams, hard strikes, cruel elbowdrops, snug cravats and chinlocks, precision kneedrops, stomping right on Cuba's chest, and drawing the match ending DQ by tying Cuba's head into the ropes and yanking on his legs. Finlay on WCW Saturday Night is some of the greatest wrestling displays in history, and this is him sharing that formula on some non-Karagias long haired shiny trunks pretty boy 5,000 miles away from Universal Studios.

TKG:  It’s Finlay beating the stew out of some putz. I will always watch that. The early elbows to the nose were so fucking great. And Finlay doing crazy flying out of the ring for de Cuba’s stuff was wild. Man when Finlay puts a guy in a crab that is a fucking deep crab.

Drew Haskins/Derrick King vs. PG-13 SAW ?/?/09

MD: My big takeaway from this is that Haskins with this same gimmick and attitude, would be pretty in demand right now. There's a pre-match promo here establishing the (newly turned?) heel character and how he's on Tiger Beat, etc., just ridiculous over the top snotty heel pretty boy claims. When he actually comes out, a big chunk of the match and commentary is based around the fact he's sans knee pads and wearing dress shoes. Dundee seemed way more into this than Wolfie, both in interacting with Haskins early on (taking the shoe off and tossing it, etc.) and the way he worked the apron during Wolfie's face-in-peril later on. Lots of charisma there still, even in 2009. This hit the marks for a TV tag match but what I'm going to remember the most is the shtick.

PAS: You don't normally see JC Ice outshticked in a match, but Drew Haskins was really on one here. The dress shoes was a great bit of nonsense, and when JC Ice wearing cut off acid washed jeans shorts and a hockey jersey is clowning your clothes you know you have really done something. I think this was hurt a bit by having most of the heat on Wolfie come during the commercial break, as it goes from heel bumbling almost directly into the count out finish, where a midget comes out and hits Wolfie with a broom. I do love watching Derrick King throw jabs, but I imagine there is a better match between these two teams out there.

ER: Hell yes, gimme something like this once a week to watch and write about, just the best kind of Wrestling is America footage you can get. Shown on regional TV, sponsored by a local bail bond company (Grumpy's) that has a crudely drawn rockabilly babe logo, Derrick King wearing hot pink gear, Drew Haskins in ice blue trunks, dress socks and loafers (wrestling in loafers is far more funny than it should be), and PG-13 looking like versions of their heyday selves who have since done time. Haskins takes great pratfalls related to his shoes, including faceplanting after tripping on the low rope getting back into the ring. Derrick King takes two of the highest backdrops, certified Memphis classics. Everyone throws punches at the level you'd want to see, with King's jabs and Wolfie's overhand right standing out especially. We even get an appearance of Half Dollar in the double count out finish, the cohort of King cohort Big Dollar. It's all classic Memphis bullshit, the best junk food.

TKG: The midget was named half dollar!!! I absolutely don’t understand how Drew Haskins didn’t become a bigger deal.

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New Footage Friday: Billy Black, Wahoo, Kobashi, Misawa, The Eagle, Tenryu, Tiger Jeet Singh

Genichiro Tenryu vs. Tiger Jeet Singh AJPW 5/14/82

PAS: This match a fair more pop to it then your normal Jeet Singh affair. I am going to give the credit to Tenryu who keeps this moving, and adds some real pops of drama to Singh's stuff. He jumps him at the bell and tosses the sword aside, and works him over only to get stabbed in the throat. Singh breaks a bottle on the ringpost and stabs Tenryu with it causing our boy to start leaking. It breaks out into mayhem from there, with Casual Friday Ueda hitting Tenryu with a sword and both Singh and Ueda fighting various ringboys and menacing the crowd. Not much wrestling although this had the heat and out of control feel to make it pretty enjoyable. Odd feather in young Tenryu's cap for sure.

ER: This is the best Jeet Singh singles match I've seen, and I like Singh more than most. I like the excitement and weirdness he brings to a professional All Japan setting. He's a fun disturber, and he's a big guy so when he doesn't play by the rules he's tough to rein in. Singh is all twitchy and has maybe one bump in him per match, so it always seems like a big moment when someone fights back and takes him off his feet. From the moment they're both in the ring it's chaos, and the whole thing is paced excellently by Tenryu who bumps all over the ring and floor to put over Singh's attacks. Singh gets his sword yanked away but finds a bottle pretty soon and cuts Tenryu up. Tenryu takes a big tumbling bump off the apron after a shot and comes up nice and bloody, and we get Singh finally leaving his feet after Tenryu hits him with the enziguiri off the ropes. A lot of these 80s Tenryu singles are him selling and building to an opponent bump off the enziguiri, so you kind of have to rate the quality of the chaos and beating leading to that, and then the bump off the enziguiri. If you look at something like Tenryu vs. Kimala, that had a lot of Kimala holding Tenryu by the boob, but built to a fantastic Kimala bump through the ropes to the floor. Singh isn't going to do that. Ueda eventually breaks through the ringboys in his Kim Chee cosplay gear and the whole thing gets thrown out, but damn this is how you work a hot Singh match. Tenryu was fantastic here.

MD:  I'd say this was my revenge on Phil for the hour Survival Tag, suggesting a Tiger Jeet Singh match, but really I wasn't too sure what I thought of it and had put it to Eric first instead. If the network delivered this week, this wouldn't have been here. It didn't, so here we are.

I've seen discussion about Singh as the worst wrestler ever recently and this probably won't convince you otherwise, but it was very effective and very fun. I'm all about anticipation and payoff in my wrestling, and so much of that is the babyface comeback after a ton of heat. As such, this is an abridged version of a bloody Puerto Rico Invader I or Colon match. Tenryu holds the advantage. Singh gets a shot in. Tenryu bleeds. Singh works the wound with whatever he can find and menaces the crowd. Tenryu valiantly and furiously fights back to the crowd's delight. It's pure distilled pro wrestling, powered by blood and selling and the rage of the crowd. While this was the Tenryu show, selling huge, bleeding all over, tapping the rage of the crowd in his comeback, Singh still played his role perfectly, breaking bottles and brandishing them for all to see before diving in to deepen the cut. On this night, at least, there was palpable menace to him, one that was backed up by his actions. While the finish was chaotic in the early 80s AJPW way you'd expect, this is one where the babyface being ultimately triumphant in a pool of his own blood would have taken it over the top. As it is, the build is effective, but we only get a taste of that payoff.

Mitsuharu Misawa/Kentaro Shiga/Satoru Asako/Kenta Kobashi vs. The Eagle/The Lacrosse/The Patriot/Johnny Ace AJPW 1/22/96

PAS: Totally oddball match which goes over an hour and is a survival tag match. It starts as a standard 2x2 tag match, in this case Asako/Shiga vs. Eagle/Lacrosse and when someone is pinned, they are replaced by another member of the team. Eagle (George Hines aka Jackie Fulton) and Lacrosse (Jungle Jim Steele) are a fun roided spot team, kind of a poor man's Steiners and have some fun high impact suplexes and a great big superfly splash by the Eagle. Asako and Shiga are a couple of the duller undercard All Japan guys, although Asako does have a nice top rope rana. The match really is a lot of preface to set up Kobashi/Misawa vs. Patriot/Johnny Ace and when we get down to that, we have a typical big workrate mid-90s All Japan tag. Patriot really has nice looking flying shoulder blocks and he hits them from all over, and the neckbreaker/powerbomb double team they do is really nasty looking. I loved Misawa's fired up entrance into the match where he throws bunches of elbows from different angles, and the finishing stretch was pretty great. Ace pinning Kobashi seems like a big upset, but that top rope cutter really should finish even Kobashi.

MD:  We've been doing this for a while. There are certain things I should know by now. For instance, if I tell Phil about an hour long match I found that sounds weird or out of the ordinary, he's going to want to watch it. This is weird and out of the ordinary. It's actually a lot of fun too.

On paper, despite being the one to point it out, this felt like a hard sell. The American side is no great shakes: Lacrosse is Jim Steele, which is basically enough said there. I've got a soft spot for the Patriot, but not necessarily in an hour long match. By this point, Ace was pretty good at filling space and keeping things tight (because he would get eaten alive by Misawa and Kobashi in a hundred matches otherwise) but that doesn't always make for enjoyable wrestling. Eagle's admittedly generally a lot of fun with a ton of stuff. I was not super familiar with Kentaro (blue tights) or Satoru (light ones with knee pads) but they seemed, coming in, to be lower card guys who'd probably eat falls in the first half.

By the way, that's what this was, a 2 on 2 team battle where eliminated wrestlers were replaced until a final tag would begin with the last four guys. The format really helped this. Nothing breaks up an hour like falls. Every time someone was eliminated, it allowed for a restart and a slightly different dynamic. Lacrosse/Eagle vs Kentaro/Satoru was a big vs little battle with the Japanese just trying to contain their opponents and stay in it. Again, Lacrosse wasn't great by any means. He was clunky, but he did bring power and some presence and an attempt, appreciated even if not successful, at big bombs. Once Kentaro was eliminated, the dynamic completely shifted because you had Kobashi/Satoru vs Eagle/Lacrosse, more of a star/underdog vs monsters format, with the fans instantly hot for Kobashi. This might have actually been my favorite section of the whole thing until the end, as there was just a lot of stuff (including an assisted legdrop and a deadlift powerbomb and some great throws/suplexes by Eagle and Lacrosse absolutely killing Satoru on a botched power bomb) and a lot of heat before they finally eliminated Satoru.

That brought us to Misawa and Kobashi vs the World for around half an hour and suddenly it feels sort of a shame that something this novel was lost for so long. They got Lacrosse out of there pretty quickly and what followed was two tag matches, one of about ten minutes and one of about twenty which did feel part of a larger whole. The first one had more direct heat on Kobashi before he made a hot tag to Misawa. The second one had more of an ebb and flow with the Americans maintaining advantage in the face of larger comebacks and momentum shifts. My favorite part of this was probably Kobashi's hulk up and then Patriot (who again, is a guy that I watched on ESPN as a 10 year old and that I buy having a hulk up in his tank) returning favor with hulked-up headbutts. The finishing stretch had maybe a few too many kickouts (as opposed to break-ups) for a match of this length (though that was to protect Kobashi ultimately) but did feel like escalation and felt like something that people would make sure to watch as part of the broader canon of mid-late 90s AJPW, if that makes sense.

Ultimately, the fans loved the whole thing and as unique house show situations go, this was a winner. As WWE struggles with revamping their house show format, this is the sort of thing that they should steal because it immediately felt different and special and it never really wore out its welcome, despite the length, even if maybe the format limited it from being absolutely great as well. Perfect house show fodder.

Wahoo McDaniel vs. Billy Black ASW 9/3/96

MD: This is apparently Wahoo's retirement match and I've got no reason to believe otherwise. Black is kind of a weird guy for Wahoo to end it all with (I doubt Manny was busy that weekend) but he was more than game to do what he had to. In truth, it was a good little showcase for him. Wahoo held court in the center of ring and Black provided motion, feeding, bumping, stooging, jumping out of the ring to kill time and rile the crowd. Wahoo took some cheapshots in the corner, including a dissonance inducing leg lariat, and bumped himself on an elbow drop, but past that he just acted as a center of gravity and let Black do all the work. It made for something slightly more enjoyable than you'd expect and something that showed proper reverence to Wahoo while still protecting the guy (probably honored to be in that spot) who had to be in the ring the following month.

PAS: Wahoo in his last match isn't going to be doing much more then throw stiff chops, and 96 Billy Black is a great guy to work someone who isn't going to do much more then throw chops. Black bumps all of over the ring for every shot, misses a moonsault and a top rope elbow and makes a pretty immobile Wahoo look fearsome. I am not sure why the match ended with a small package, Wahoo didn't really have the flexibility to pull it off this late in his career, and it feels like a more definitive finish would be fine to send off a legend.

ER: This was on the same show that had that legitimately great Mr. Hughes/Barbarian vs. Steiners match we reviewed a few months ago, a stacked indy card with a big crowd who was going nuts for Wahoo. Billy Black comes out looking like off tour summer BBQ shape Travis Tritt, the referee looks like Alan Belcher's Johnny Cash tattoo, Wahoo looks like the world's toughest egg, and this delivered in the ways I wanted it to. Black was great here, really made me want to see more of him (any Wild Bunch tags worth checking out?), and at a certain point I kind of hope Wahoo would just stand still in the center of the ring to see how cool of a match Black could craft around that. Wahoo does move, a little, but this is all about Black running into chops and rolling through the floor coughing and holding his throat. Black sold a solitary Wahoo downward strike to his forehead as well as Tenryu sold Singh jabbing a bottle into his head (seen up above in this very same review). Black eyerakes Wahoo and hits a big flying leg lariat in the corner, Black dishes a lariat and Wahoo essentially, eventually bumps it by getting off his horse onto a smaller horse, and then onto a smaller horse, and then onto a large dog, before landing on his back. From there we go through an amusing stretch where both guys miss the biggest moves of the match: Black whiffs on a moonsault AND a top rope elbowdrop, Wahoo drives his elbow into the mat on his own missed elbow, and Black takes a small package headfirst into the mat for the abrupt finish. After the match a bunch of the boys come to the ring to celebrate Wahoo and present him with a plaque. RVD is wearing his super short leisure kimono, Adam Bomb is there, someone else is wearing pajama pants, and the promoter shows everyone that he has absolutely zero idea how to do a tomahawk chop. The promoter's chops looked like he was working events staff parking and motioning to a car to turn down the aisle on his right. I love 90s indy wrestling.

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Shinya Hashimoto will Lay his Burdens Down by the Riverside

Shinya Hashimoto/Shiro Koshinaka vs. Tiger Jeet Singh/Kim Duk NJPW 10/17/91 - FUN

PAS: You kind of know what you are getting with a Tiger Jeet Singh match, some crowd brawling, lots of hidden foreign object stuff, no bumps. We did get some fun fired up Hashimoto when he got a hot tag and laced in to both of the heels, I also enjoyed Kim Duk taking an upside down bump in the corner, but this was mostly just the Tigers doing their thing.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE HASHIMOTO

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All Japan Motherload RIP (again): Harley Race/Crusher Blackwell vs Tiger Jeet Singh/One Man Gang

Harley Race/Crusher Blackwell vs Tiger Jeet Singh/One Man Gang

This one's on me. I saw this a few weeks ago and took too much time to post about it. So now the link's down. Maybe it's on that mysterious Meltzer-befuddling Google Drive account of AJPW matches that has been floating around?

Screw it, though. I'm still going to write about it. Almost certainly, it'll pop up again at some point. This was about nine minutes, of which only six or so was in the ring, but it's really great for what it was. Yes, Blackwell is virtually immobile at this point. Yes, Race is probably hurting to some degree. Yes, Tiger Jeet Singh is in the match. It's still tremendous.

Race is someone who is best when he's in a slightly askew situation. That is, I'm not excited to watch him stooge and sell and give a ton of a match as NWA champion. I am excited to watch him try to get something out of Singh while two lumbering behemoths crash into one another in the background. Here, he plays off Singh perfectly, making is garbage into gold. Right from the get go, he's fending off a pre-match ambush with grizzled bravado, standing on the second rope and leaning over, daring Singh closer as the ref tries to hold him back. Later on (after slamming Gang, but we'll get to that), he plays face in peril, actually bring some gravitas to Singh's throat poke BS. When the spike comes into play, he wrestles for the very back row with a broad shot to get it, and a picture perfect suplex that would have ended the match barring interference. They go tumbling out and brawl to close it out in AJPW style. I'm not sure I'd ever want to see the pairing again, but once was exactly what it should have been and it was all Race.

The match, in the ring, started with Blackwell vs Gang, though, and again, it was everything you could have wanted out of two minutes of them clashing. Sizing up. Shoving contests, slam attempts, Gang tarzan-ing his chest, a killer big boot out of nowhere, a clothesline, Blackwell coming back by bullying past a second clothesline, and then the missed shots, an Avalanche, a Splash, a Counter Splash, and Blackwell hitting this amazing falling dropkick thing, which set up the tag and the Race slam.

Sure, this was fairly short and had one of those inconclusive All Japan 80s finishes but it's a blast. Just a real battle of the titans.

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