Found Footage Friday: OMNI 83~! ZBYSZKO~! ORNDORFF~! ARN~! BORNE~! WILDFIRE~! ROOP~! GARVIN~!

GCW Omni 5/15/83

MD: Unfortunately, we're missing the six man which had Hansen and Murdoch teaming, plus a random Killer Brooks vs. Brian Blair match apparently, a testament to how the territory was a bit down and some guys were doing double duty, but we're going to be thankful we got this at all. 

Brett Wayne vs. Joe Lightfoot 

MD: It feels a little much that Lightfoot is a "Chief" too. Not everyone can be a chief. This started as a babyface match and the first thing we hear at the bell is someone shout from the crowd "Now don't you do any bodily harm to one another." which is some beautiful Georgia wrestling right there. And this was a pretty solid babyface exhibition for the first five minutes, headlocks into headscissors, that sort of thing. There was one nice moment where Lightfoot jammed a monkey flip in a way you don't usually see and there was a sense of struggle. That struggle boiled over and Lightfoot got more and more chippy, sneaking in a punch, hitting a chop, and then finally hitting a cheapshot from out of the corner. The fans did not like that. Wayne did not like that. They skidded into roll up exchanges before things could get too heated though and Wayne snuck one out with a jackknife. They more or less made up post match. If this had one or two more minutes for Lightfoot to lean harder heel and be in control, it would have been more memorable but it was a good opener. 

ER: Boy this really did end right when it was picking up steam. Brett Wayne has been one of my favorite "discoveries" of the Omni shows, and his talents admittedly shine brighter when he's in against a guy he won't be/shouldn't be beating. Underdog babyface fire and ability to take heavy thudding beatings are two things that won't be necessary in a face vs. face match with Joe Lightfoot. While I appreciated their work in the opening minutes, some snug headscissors and - importantly - always honest work, it got a lot better when Lightfoot started getting really bothered by someone in the crowd. I don't know exactly who it was but someone was getting under Lightfoot's skin - multiple times including post-match he flapped his hand at someone, telling them to Keep Yapping - and that little shove into being a heel made this temporarily catch fire. The honesty of the exchanges and the firmness of the contact suddenly meant a lot more. I like how they handled a blocked O'Connor roll, Lightfoot holding the ropes and Wayne not rolling back but splatting to his back, legs in the air for a kip up that never came. Lightfoot, picking up on Wayne's landing, pulls an inside cradle that looked like it could have won. The energy and weight for the actual finish was excellent, with Wayne kicking out of a sunset flip and pouncing into a jackknife pin. You watch enough Guerrero/Malenko roll ups sequences - and brother, that is a thing seared into my brain folds - and get used to the visual of the last 20+ years of Divas level copycat versions, and suddenly Brett Wayne shows what the sequence can look like when someone actually wants to win a match. 

Brian Blair vs. Chick Donovan 

MD: Blair came off as straightlaced and sound, a bit of a competent babyface bully on the mat. Chick preened and stalled to start. When they finally locked up, he tried to screw around with Blair. Blair showed him why that wasn't a good idea, clearly out wrestling him. He worked a hammerlock for a while and you got the sense he could do whatever he wanted with him. Eventually Chick got a few cheapshots in and took over. Blair was maybe a little less interesting working from underneath but his comeback was good with a leapfront, a huge forearm that knocked Chick into the ropes, and then catching him with a sleeper on the way back. Not only did he whack him to wake him up, but he did it with a second rope kneedrop to the back of his head as Chick was seated but unconscious, which was a great bit.

ER: Chick Donovan must have been poured into that coat OR bought it when he was less shredded because he is forced to enlist the referee just to help him out of it. Even with an extra man, it is still a full production. I've never seen a man take so long to get out of a jacket. Love the pack of women in the crowd screaming for Chick. Dude looks great, like the middle step of Jeff Jarrett evolving into Flair, and he wrestles like the best possible Jarrett. Chick was great bumping around for Blair and the bumping was made even better because Chick had no problem hitting a stiff back elbow or other stiff cheap shot, gain nothing from it, and then go back to bumping. I thought Joe Lightfoot had a nice kneedrop in the opener, but Blair had a gorgeous kneedrop that looked Harley Race level. I was still thinking about it when Blair smothered Chick with a sleeper to win, and was not expecting Blair to hit an even cooler kneedrop after the match. Matt's right, it's a great bit to put someone to sleep and then hit a move to wake them up, and I cannot say I have ever seen someone hit a kneedrop off the middle turnbuckle to a seated opponent. Blair's kneedrop has to be precise for the bit, but also seems insanely dangerous to even attempt. Blair leaps several feet away to perfectly place a pointed knee to Chick's cerebellum, snapping Donovan awake. 

Ron Garvin vs. Bob Roop 

MD: First time I caught this it was on a bus home from DC and I fell asleep a bunch. I don't think that's fair to the match but it's also not too surprising as a lot of this was Roop armwork and some of it was more compelling than others. Him actually chipping away at the arm was compelling because of how Garvin fought back. He was always threatening to throw a right hand and there were some bits, like Garvin having his foot caught and jumping over multiple trip attempts that I loved.

All of the hope spots were so good too. Garvin was fighting with one arm. Sometimes it meant he just got one punch and that was enough. Sometimes it meant he got Roop on the apron and could clubber until Roop draped his other arm over the top. Sometimes it meant a flurry of right handed punches followed up by a huge headbutt. The comeback was a headbutt to the groin and man did he ever thrash Roop after that, including the Garvin stomp. Fans were very much into all of it and it led to a fun finishing stretch where he tossed Roop off the top and when Roop tried it to him, he rolled him up. Maybe this got a little long in the tooth at times, but maybe they needed that for the comeback to work as well as it did? I don't fault the match for me being tired on a Thursday afternoon. 

ER: This was a slow burn that went up in hot flames the moment they wanted it to. For the first 12-13 minutes, Roop methodically worked over Garvin's arm in the kind of way that would potentially put you asleep after a long day at work, but was rewarding to someone watching with a fresh cup of coffee. Roop is Shooter Ned Beatty and all his arm work was honest and tough, jamming his shoulder into hard surfaces and not letting it go, working like Regal without the flash. Garvin endured and sold expertly throughout the long control, and the sudden payoff was incredible. Was the payoff even better because of the slow burn? I thought so, and loved how suddenly and explosively it came, with a Garvin headbutt that sends Roop backpedaling all the way to the other side of the ring, where Garvin stalks to meet him with a kick right to the face. Garvin's high kick is such a cool piece of offense that no other brawler used. When you had a great punching babyface - or any brawler outside of Takayama - they were never working kicks into their punching attacks. 

But if you want to talk about great punching wrestlers, we must discuss ALL of Roop's punches. How about his overhand right to back Garvin up, fanning out his hand after because he knew how fucking good it looked? His head movement to miss Garvin's response. His falling hammer fist into Garvin's throat, the punches in mount while holding onto the back of Garvin's head, every straight right to the head directly at the hard cam, busting Garvin open and leading to an even bigger comeback. Nobody talks about Roop as a great puncher but it's all here. He sets up the biggest comeback possible, the Garvin Stomp and big followup elbowdrop getting a big reaction, but nowhere near as big as Garvin biting Roop on the face after. Garvin is back raking and striking Roop all over the ring and we should all love how much Bob Roop absolutely refuses to fix his singlet after the left strap first falls, then is pulled down by Garvin. Roop works the rest of the match with his singlet falling off and I can't see that kind of stooging happening today. 

Tommy Rich/Ray Candy vs. Arn Anderson/Matt Borne (w/ Precious Paul Ellering)

MD: This was the one match on the card we had clipped already, but we did only have a few minutes of it and as best as I can tell this is our first full Anderson/Borne arena match.  Bleached Blonde Borne is a weird look for a guy who had so many looks. I really did love this though. It's a wonderful match. Rich's shine where he's ducking things and throwing fists and Arn and Borne are flying all over the place for him while the fans go nuts and "ooh!" for every punch is perfect pro wrestling.

It's amazing how good Arn was already, the way he moved his hands or looked at what was going on. He just got it so naturally. Such rich and vivid reactions to everything. None of it felt fabricated or overwrought. He had grown up a wrestling fan and I think he understood so intimately what connected with him and how not to play at a wrestler but to inhabit the character of one completely.

This had double heat on Candy where they were able to manage through quick switches and either riding him or clubbering away, tagging whenever he started to comeback. It was very effective because of the dissonance. You wouldn't think they'd be able to keep him down but they did it through hook or crook. Then there was a heat on Rich to finish it, with hope spots and all, before he got a roll up out of nowhere with Arn already celebrating on the apron since he thought they were doing great. Really good stuff all around and I like how unconventional the structure was overall. 

ER: Great stuff, great look at Destruction Inc, which happened when Borne was a better version of Arn than Arn. Young old man Arn and Borne working fully in sync, going after Candy and cutting him off, Wildfire raging on the apron for the hot tag, it's the perfect use of everyone. The Tommy stuff was a great way to start, Borne and Arn feeding perfectly for his wild fire, the way Arn and Borne moved into and fell away from Rich was electric. It's been said that wrestlers today are far better athletes but I don't understand that at all. The movement seen from ab-less 1983 wrestlers was such a better use of motion than anything in modern wrestling. Every strike led to a big recoil, selling happening constantly, everyone great at occupying themselves while feeding. 

When it's time for Destruction Inc to cut off Candy, Borne and Arn work the mat with him like they're specifically trying to gas Candy out, making him work through scrambles and pushing him to a pace he would never be able to handle. It's great psychology and a great way to use Candy, forcing him to be a tired monster swinging at two men who don't look like they'd be so fast. Paul is cheating from the floor, and I love how Candy falls when Paul grabs his leg from the floor, a real crashing wave that looked like a man actually thrown off balance by an unexpected full leg grab. Destruction are so good at keeping the ring cut off and the heat strong. Several moments stood out, but I loved one of Candy's big attempts to fight his way to Rich. Candy was punching at Borne while back elbowing Arn on the apron to escape their corner, and as Borne goes down from a punch he scissors Candy's leg as he's falling. When Rich finally tagged in it was a great as expected...but I did not expect them to then work a heat segment cutting off Rich! Great little twist, could have watched another 10 minutes of it. 

Paul Orndorff vs. Larry Zbyszko

MD: Larry's so great here. People complain about the stalling. People are, of course, fools. He doesn't do a lot of it here, but he does complain and grumble and get frustrated by everything. In college, my roommate, who did not like wrestling in the least, had to put up with us watching Nitro, and at one point Larry, on commentary, said "It hurts to live." and he loved that turn of phrase. Well, Larry sells life. He sells absolutely everything. And he's so damn active about it. If he takes a bump, he then flails his legs and slaps his arm against the mat and walks it off like he has ants in his pants. Early on he stumbles into so many different stooging scenarios. My favorite is him dropping down on his stomach, then on his back, which you never see, and then hitting a clunky front dropkick (Erik Watts level) as Orndorff catches himself on the rope, making Larry eat the bump. It's beautiful stuff.  

The transition has Larry sidestepping and Orndorff careening out. We don't see the bump into the guardrail but we hear it and it sounds nasty. Larry plays king of the mountain, of sorts, after that, heading out to the apron to lay shots in until Orndorff pulls the leg out. Larry gets up first and catches him on the way back in. He cuts him off one or two times like that but Orndorff is persistent and Larry is playing vulnerable. Orndorff has very stilted, staccato style attacks. Big sweeping stuff that doesn't really feel chained together. Drumbeat attacks so the last row can see (and hear). 

Larry, of course takes a beating. In the ring, out, onto the announce table, until he can shove Orndorff into the ref from the outside and then pin him with his foot stuck in the ropes.  That's a fake finish though as Tommy Rich comes out to tell the ref and they restart the match. Orndorff sells the leg from having had it caught in the ropes and Larry targets it, Orndorff fighting back on one leg really well. Larry keeps wanting the figure four but he wants it too badly and gets rolled up for his trouble. Fun match. Fascinating to watch both of these guys do their thing.

ER: I love these looks at Zbyszko, who looks and works almost like a normal size Buddy Rose in these environments. I love the way Larry moves, love how he feeds, love how he throws kicks and punches with similar to so many French Catch workers but perfectly distilled into a southern setting. Anytime the mics pick up Orndorff yelling about Zbyszko he sounds like Boomhauer because he hasn't yet had his New York Training. Zbyszko is so good at selling befuddlement while working out of holds. When he tries to push off and Orndorff holds onto a headlock, our Ordinary People couple in their same front row center seats actually have a rare small exchange, Jane Fonda pointing something out about the exchange while Donald Sutherland stares forward, emotionless. They are Georgia's two biggest wrestling fans and their demeanor never rises above that of a pair ordered to be there as part of some creative court mandated punishment. 

It's not always productive to view wrestling this way, but sometimes I watch a guy and think, "why doesn't anyone do this now?" I never actually know what those things might be, what things will get my attention. I don't always have a set criteria for Preferred Execution. It can be something simple or something complicated that someone makes look simple. Often it is concerning a common sequence done in a way that is so far removed from modern interpretations that it feels almost completely foreign. Here, it was the way Larry handled a dropdown/dropkick exchange, specifically the way he moved and got into position. He did two dropdowns then missed a dropkick, but it was this incredibly fast, incredibly tight work of clownery, and again I must compare Larry Zbyszko of all people to French Catch workers who he has surely never heard of in his life. His first dropdown was stomach down, but he took a back bump into his second one, and when he sprang up for the (missed) dropkick he did a flat back bump dropkick that made the whole sequence felt like it was evolving organically to the payoff of the specific way he fell.  

I loved the way he fought underneath, like trying to break a cravat with a hair pull that got him punished much worse, Orndorff dropping the hole and elbowing him in the nose before snapmaring him into a fistdrop. When it was Larry's time for control, he threw these great kicks while holding the ropes and keeping Orndorff in ring ropes purgatory, almost whipping his leg into Orndorff's body. Zbyszko does offense with his entire body, and that's the kind of thing I watch and think "athleticism". Using your whole body in the service of making all your actions more impactful. When I watch modern wrestling I predominately see athleticism used so frequently in the service of just getting into position for offense that all feels like wasted energy. No energy in this match felt wasted, even Larry reeling on his feet like a goofball for Orndorff's fire. 

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Found Footage Friday: OMNI 2/5/84~!

GCW Omni 2/5/84

Jesse Barr vs. Johnny Rich 

MD: Usually these shows have one long match early, either a draw in the first or second match. This went long with the first two and it was done purposefully. The second match went to a draw, but the crowd was primed by the first ending in a pinfall when it felt like they were working towards a draw (at least that's what it felt like to me). We can't know for certain what a 1984 crowd thought, but given it was booked this way, the idea was almost certainly to introduce the idea that a match can end at any point to keep the interest strong for a second match worked long in Thornton vs Armstrong. As much as the crowd liked Rich, and they really liked Rich on this night, Armstrong was the one going for Thornton's Jr. Heavyweight title, and because they wanted to keep Brad strong, that's the one that had to go to a draw. Did it work? I think, as best as we can tell from crowd noise, it did.

The matches were fairly similar. Long holds worked in and out of. Barr vs Rich had more shtick and I probably liked it more accordingly. They did a great bit early on where Rich worked out of a headlock, Barr did a dropdown, and Sawyer elbow dropped him, only to invert the sequence a minute later but have Barr miss the elbow drop. They did another bit where Barr tried to press Rich's hands down in a double knucklelock so he could step on them only for Rich to move his hands and punch him. Or they'd escalate to rope running and Rich would get one on Barr and then when Barr tried it a few minutes later, Rich would drop to his knees and punch him instead. Then a couple of minutes later, they'd have Barr stop short and try a falling punch only for Sawyer to move. Crowd-pleasing stuff. Barr finally had enough and roughed Rich up a bit, but Brett came back big and Barr stooged all over the place for him. Finish had Barr try to toss Rich off the top but get rolled up. 

ER: When I fired up a new Omni show I was not especially seeking out a Young Boys style opener where Jesse Barr works side headlocks while Rich gets kickier the longer he's in them, building to shoulderblocks and knucklelocks. New Japan Young Boys have much better timing on rope running spots but Rich and Barr's timing gets better the longer they do the shtick and it starts to get actively good by the time they're pushing to the finishing stretch. Our Donald Sutherland coffee drinking swinger who is fast becoming the Straw Hat Guy of the Omni is not impressed, chewing his gum the whole time, but it gets good when Barr works the knucklelock into a hand stomp, but Rich is a beat ahead of him and punches him from his knees. Rich has a lot of good working punching from his knees, and things get even better when they work a great fistdrop sequence into it, where Rich lands a nice one after stopping short, and when Barr tries the same thing he punches mat. Barr draws real heat when the 10 minute mark is announced, with only 5 minutes remaining, and he starts picking Rich up at 2 counts, smiling to the crowd like he doesn't give a damn if they go to a draw. A heel not actually interested in winning is hilarious and the crowd rejects his indifference. I love the trick of announcing the 5 minutes remaining, announcing each remaining minute, setting things up for a clear time limit draw, before the babyface escapes with a quick roll through win. I started this too dog tired to turn it off, and wound up completely into what they were doing. 

Les Thornton vs. Brad Armstrong

Thornton vs. Armstrong had much more of Thornton leaning on Brad, especially with a headscissors. Brad would find his way out with headstands and all sorts of other techniques but Thornton would get him right back into it. Eventually, after beating on Brad in the corner a bit with European Uppercuts, Thornton ended up into a hammerlock and they switched to having Brad control that way for the next part of the match. Thornton got him out and started playing king of the mountain, and following up with a headlock as Brad got back in. Brad was able to turn it around and get him out, getting some revenge on the floor. Then as the time was ticking down they wrestled fairly even, both going for opportunities where they could get it and fighting towards the draw. Thornton vs. Brad was harder hitting with meaner holds and maybe tighter work, and still had the crowd going, but I had more fun with the shtick in Rich vs. Barr.

ER: I'm so tired of Good Hand Brad. It's 15+ years of documentation of a guy who refused to take anything to the next level. Act like it means something to you. It has to mean more than how well you can execute a hammerlock, right Brad? Does it ever interest you to take a ring posting in a cool, memorable way, instead of "the right way"? I was born into pro wrestling. My daddy is a legend, my brothers all wrestle. I want to be a better version of Tony Garea. That's my pro wrestling dream. Les Thornton throws a ringpost bump into the aftereffect of an atomic drop, so even among great physique guys who couldn't break out of the undercard, Brad wasn't front of the line. Thornton's butterfly and back suplexes looked like they were trying to actually get the match to a finish as time expired - nice aggression after taking nothing but scenic routes - and I wish they had committed to getting Thornton that inside cradle win at 19:30. 

Ron Garvin vs. King Kong Bundy

MD: Not a ton to say here. We come in JIP. and maybe lose the first ten minutes or so of it actually. We come in with Bundy leaning on Garvin but they build towards these great, great Garvin flurries, first in the center of the ring and then in the corner. Bundy's able to push Garvin away but he keeps coming at him. Just as Bundy really has him in the corner, Ellering comes out and Bundy chases him to the back so Garvin wins it. I assume this was mid-turn for Bundy and Garvin was just sort of there as a babyface to fight along the way. The good stuff here was good but we didn't get quite enough of it.

ER: I was hoping for a big slug out as the only remaining footage, but we get instead a fun build to Garvin throwing punches, working his way closer to Krang with eye pokes and foot stomps and frustrated the largest man in town, before triumphantly teeing off on him. Bundy takes punches like he's being swarmed with bees, and what's even better is he gets his hands on Garvin instantly and beats the shit out of him. Paul Ellering is contractually obligated to appear in 75% of the matches so Bundy just chases him off after beating Garvin's ass. We deserve to see this as a real match. 

Jake Roberts vs. Jerry Brisco

MD: As always, 83-84 Jake is the Jake we were promised: a slinking, long-limbed psychological master. This doesn't go nearly long enough. Brisco outwrestles Jake early causing Jake to slither around the ring trying to escape. Jake uses his reach advantage to cut him off and control. Brisco starts outwrestling him again on the comeback. Jake takes a great corner bump as he runs in and gets tripped. As he's going for the figure-four, Ellering gets on the apron. Jake then gets the ref between them so he can hit a cheapshot and hit the DDT. It was stylistically different than the rest of the card but I would have liked a bit more. What we did get here was very good.

ER: I don't even need to write much about it, I just love the way Jake Roberts moves. This 1984 Omni has given us the slinkiest dirtbag Jake Roberts. He looks and moves like a giant spider version of my cool Little League coach Tom Menghini, who coached us to a title in 1991, smoked, and often wore no shirt. This is six minutes of Jake movement from what might have been his best year of moving. Jake moves so compellingly that Gerald Brisco may as well have been Les Thornton or Brad Armstrong. He could have drawn believable stories with near upsets with any of those men. His powers were larger than life. His is one of our great necessary wrestler looks, a nightmare drunk fan sitting in the cheap upper deck Candlestick seats. His sprawling upside down out of nowhere corner bump isn't enough to rouse a single emotion from our emotional black hole Ordinary People Omni front row regulars, but the cheap seats thunder. I love how Jake sells his annoyance at Brisco's tenaciousness with his entire body. Jake could have been John Tatum if he didn't look so dangerous and so cool. The dismissive way he shoves the ref into Brisco, kicking Brisco in the balls as he does it, is done with the precision of a prison hitman. We've seen a career of Jake giving long limbed perfect DDTs, and we may have just found the purest one. This is how it looks, how it moves. 

Mr. R (Tommy Rich) vs. the Spoiler

MD: Chaos from the get go. More often than not, when we get a new Spoiler match, it doesn't disappoint. He was well into his 40s here but he still moved incredibly well for his size. Very fluid and active. They brawled to start including, Spoiler tossing in the little wooden ring steps and then Rich threatening him while he was on the top. Spoiler was incessant, using the claw, pulling at the mask, teeter tottering Rich in the ropes. When Rich would come back, Spoiler would go high and come down upon him, including just casually walking up the ropes in the middle of the ring to hammer down. He took a huge bump in the corner as Rich got out of the way allowing Rich to come back and work the mask himself. That would happen a few times honestly. Spoiler must have taken three bumps in the corner. This had a crazy feel as they fought around ringside, with Spoiler going for the bell only for the ref to stop him. Towards the end Ellering ran in and Rich was about to tear him apart until Spoiler nailed him with a chair. Babyfaces made the save. Just a great high energy brawl with perfect chemistry. 

ER: We are so over the moon for The Spoiler. Where were we, as a blog, before we wrote about Spoiler matches? He's such an Our Guy kind of guy, a real weirdo, who wrestled as a man inspired by nobody. Tommy Rich is also Our Guy but this isn't a Mr. R match, this is a Spoiler match. Every second of this is a Spoiler match. Even when he's doing something you've seen before, he's doing it in a way that is truly his own. Jardine's rope work is an incredible trick. Nobody else was walking on the ropes like that. Why is such a large man climbing and walking around on the ropes like that, and how does he make it look so easy. He'll use the ropes like he's cornered in a cage, and exploiting a loophole by climbing the cage and still attacking from the top of the cage, as if he's thinking of the ring as a bowl shape and the top rope around the ring as the top of the bowl. But while his rope walking is a cool trick - leading Tommy around by the head as he takes way bigger strides than you'd think possible - I love it even more when he is standing still up there. There's a moment where he knocks Rich to the floor and quickly scales the turnbuckles, then just stands there on the top, lording over Rich on the floor, looking like he was primed to plancha to his death, but just keeps standing. The visual is so odd, he's facing away from the ring but leaning his weight back towards it, defying physics with no respect before leaping off with an elbow. 

He cheats in fun ways that must have been a joy to see live. I loved him throwing the wooden ring steps into the ring before the match even starts, felt like something Terry Funk would do on a northeast indy show in the 90s, just to get the crowd buzzing while he stalks the ringside. My favorite bit was also before the bell, when he pretended to adjust a weapon in his tights just to piss off one small corner of the arena, a small magic trick only meant to be seen by some. His bumping was so dangerous for an old man (one year younger than I am). The way he got hung up by the knee missing a corner charge was something that Chris Hamrick stole and used with a much smaller frame, but I gotta know...is Don Jardine our first flying ringpost bumper? The Great Ringpost Bump has been a thing for ages with several ways to do it, but is Jardine the first guy to fly through the turnbuckles and nail the ringpost? I've seen him do it earlier than here, but it wouldn't surprise me if Spoiler was the one to invent the Cassandro/Super Dragon wrap around ringpost bump. The man had a gift for taking something you thought you'd seen and presenting it in a whole new light. This is a 1984 Omni show so naturally Paul Ellering was required for the finish, but that doesn't take away from this gem of a performance. 

Road Warriors vs. Sweet Brown Sugar/Pez Whatley

MD: Fun first few minutes here as the Roadies stooged and bumped all over the place in a way that would have seemed ridiculous two years later. I enjoy seeing them early on because they feel so different but this was obviously the genesis of what would make them into what they were. Once the extended heat started, the match sort of slowed to a crawl. We've seen this crowd go up huge for Pez but it wasn't happening on this night and they weren't really going up for Young either. It wasn't the most compelling heat in the history of the world but usually that didn't matter so much. Not sure what was going on. Maybe they were just ready to get on to the next program. Sugar and Pez had gotten close with a double headbutt but Hawk broke up the pin and the ref had to toss the match out as it devolved into chaos. But the crowd got to go home happy as Sawyer and Bundy came in to clear house post-match. 

ER: This was worked completely differently than I was expecting and was so much fun in the way it defied expectations, until it just became very boring and lost all energy. This did not go the way you expected it to go on paper, in three different ways: You wouldn't expect Pez and Sugar to control for as long as they did, you wouldn't expect the Road Warriors to be so boring when they went in control, and you wouldn't expect Pez or Sugar to be so boring working from underneath. What an odd match. It's weird (but very fun!) when Pez is in control and Hawk is bumping around for him, and then it's as if everyone forgets how to work a crowd. Suddenly there is no underneath fire from Pez or Sugar, and there is no energy from Hawk or Animal. Some of the loud reactions for Pez in this Omni footage have been revelatory, but here it's like everyone forgot who he was. However, for several minutes, we got to see Pez Whatley smothering Hawk and not let him get any offense in, and that's hilarious. Hawk looks as intimidating as ever, and he just can't get anything going against Pistol Pez...until he does, and opts to do nothing. Such is life. This is the ONE match on this card where Don't Look Now Donald Sutherland fan in. a sad Ordinary People marriage had the correct, bored reaction. 

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Found Footage Friday: AJPW CLASSICS~! ABBY~! WAJIMA~! MAGEE~! TAKAGI~! IDOL~! RICH~! KABUKI~! TIGER MASK~!

Abdullah the Butcher vs. Hiroshi Wajima AJPW 1/2/88

MD: Abby had bigger fish to fry. His eyes were on Jumbo and Baba. Wajima was just a guy he had to babysit here. I'm not going back to see if this did ratings or not but I bet it did even as Wajima was less of a TV draw than he'd been the year before. I'll be honest. I started my AJPW chronological watch with 89 in part to avoid the guy. I kind of regret that now though not necessarily because of anything he did here. More because I would have liked to track every Tenryu match after his turn. But I'd say in small doses, i.e. this match, Wajima was pretty interesting to watch.

Here we got to see him through the lens of an Abdullah the Butcher that wanted the country of Japan to remember that he was a singular and formidable monster. 

Wajima would try a bunch of things. Abby would no sell them in the most bored and stoic way possible, hilarious to both me (despite myself) and the crowd at the time, and cut him off with the throat shot. The fans would chant Butcher over and over again. Then Abby would do some stylized karate shots and pose. It was something. To Abby's credit, it built to Wajima finally got him over and even though the first time that happened, Abby looked more bemused and surprised than anything else, it did sort of matter because of the mountain Wajima climbed. It would have just mattered more if it was, let's say, Isao Takagi (since he'll come up later) or Shunji Takano doing it and not someone who had been around main events for a while. Abby quickly had enough of that, hit a shoulder block and started laying in the elbow drops. Wajima kept putting his feet on the ropes and Abby got incensed and started going after anyone that moved with Baba making the save. Definitely a match that one experiences, this one.

ER: Another lifetime ago, I was the sole person on the Pro Wrestling Only All Japan 80s Nominating Committee to want this match as one of the 150 matches on the final set. I understand the need to keep someone like me in check on a group project like the 80s sets. We were cultivating something important and historical for a large group of people to see and experience. Setting new talking points and updating tastes and standards. All 150 slots were important. I sincerely wanted this Abby/Wajima match on the Final 150. I love it. It deserved to be on. The main argument against it was that some thought it was the clear 150th place finisher, which might be true. Some would rank it low because it's only 6.5 minutes bell to bell. It isn't a title change, it doesn't build to a hot finish, and obviously not enough voters went to the wall for Abdullah the Butcher matches, because he had no matches on the set. Hiroshi Wajima had three. So maybe we put this match on the set as the fourth Wajima match and the only Abby match, and it finishes last? Is that bad? 

The two last place matches, #149 and #150, wound up being two different Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Bruiser Brody matches. Their 1983 match was #149, their 1988 match was #150. That 1988 match was #150 on my own personal ballot, in full unanimous agreement with the mass voting bloc in finding Jumbo/Brody '88 to be the very worst match of the 150 best All Japan matches of the 80s. Did we need to have two different Jumbo/Brody matches on there if they were considered the two worst of the set? Every territory we did was going to have a match that finished dead last. There has to be a Worst Scorsese Movie. I always wanted to put a colorful match on the set as the one we thought would finish last. For the WWF set I wanted the best of the Bobby Heenan/Ultimate Warrior weasel suit matches (which didn't make the set). For the Memphis set Phil and I were the ones pushing for the Nightmare Freddy matches that finished dead last. 

Something has to finish last. Abdullah the Butcher should have been #150. Or #147. Time has proven me correct on this match. I love this match. It has incredible aura, incredible atmosphere, feels filled with danger and tension and unpredictability for its entire short runtime, and devolves into genuine spectacle in Korakuen. This match has intrigue. Abby had returned to Japan a few weeks earlier after a three year absence. He had primarily been a New Japan guy in the first half of the decade and now he was a New All Japan Guy. Abby looked like as big a superstar in 1988 as he had a decade earlier. I don't think we put enough respect on his 87-95 run. Watch this match and witness the power of his charisma. Add Wajima to the mix, who is one of my favorite kinds of wrestlers: Disgraced Former Sumo. He was a big name and had the greatest robe in wrestling. People respected him. 

Abdullah the Butcher clearly was not one of them. This whole match feels uncooperative and Abdullah lis a guy who just keeps fearlessly making an all time great sumo look like a chump. There is no fork stabbing. There is no blood. But there is a lot of Abdullah the Butcher no selling Wajima's strikes and looking at him with unblinking, unimpressed eyes. His head is the perfect shape and his expressions are incredible. He walks through or ignores every Wajima strike while throwing screaming taped finger thrusts into his throat, and after every one of those thrusts he does karate poses, a new one every strike. He steps repeatedly to a champion sumo and makes more poses and faces than you've ever seen him do. Wajima finally takes the hint and does a couple shoot throws, grabbing Abby by his sizable pants. Abby had finally been Gotten in a match where he disrespected Wajima over and over and over, and once he gets thrown he decides NOPE we're not doing that and runs into a legendary sumo with a full contact shoulderblock. He drops three running elbows onto Wajima's neck and chest. They're all rough.  

Abby is so disrespectful to Wajima - AND THEN SHOVES JOE HIGUCHI! HARD! - that it draws out Jumbo and Baba and every green-tracksuited undercarder. Abby spends 10 constantly enjoyable minutes avoiding physical interaction with Baba and Jumbo while throwing fingers at the throat of every tracksuit he sees. Jumbo is screaming at him while being held back. Baba takes his track jacket off and is walking around in track pants and no shirt, and I don't think I've ever seen him look more badass. Abby walks the rows of Korakuen flanked by TNT and Black Assassin, who isn't a guy anyone knows. It's the best. It's always intriguing, always entertaining. 

Here's the match that unanimously finished #150, which is extra appropriate because it was the main event of this very show, 3/27/88. We cover the Tom Magee and Tommy Rich/Austin Idol matches below. Watch this match, this 150th place finisher, and tell me it's better than the pure spectacle of Abby/Wajima. 

#150: 

Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Bruiser Brody AJPW 3/27/88

Also, I was the extreme high vote for one of the Wajima matches that made the final set. I had Wajima/Ishikawa vs. Tenryu/Hara 6/8/87 as my #4 match. #4! It finished #141. #141! I ranked a match #4 that finished in the bottom 6%! You can't get much farther apart than 4 and 141. I haven't watched that match since doing the set, 13 years ago. I'm going to watch it later. I'm justified 15 years later in my love for Abby/Wajima, let's see what shit I was working through in 2012 to be the extreme high Wajima voter: 

Hiroshi Wajima/Takashi Ishikawa vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Ashura Hara AJPW 6/8/87

[Watched it again, turns out I was completely right once again. This match rocks. It's four sumos all angry for different reasons, Tenryu and Wajima cannot stand each other, everyone takes unprofessional shots. Wajima sells Tenryu's enziguiris better than anyone, Hara clotheslines Wajima in the side of the face and Wajima pays him back with one that knocks Hara onto his head. Every second of it has aura and/or sumos hitting each other hard. Undeniable top All Japan match of the 80s.]

Tommy Rich/Austin Idol vs. Tiger Mask II/Great Kabuki AJPW 3/27/88

MD: You'll want to stick around for the post match where Idol gathers a crowd around him and starts to pose like crazy. That's the most interesting thing in this one but it's also legitimately interesting. The second most interesting thing is the chinlock he puts on Kabuki where he works it so hard that every vein in his neck looked like it'd pop. The sheets said that Idol and Rich didn't get over because the Japanese didn't know what to make of guys who mostly punched and I find that kind of absurd and dismissive. The third is that Rich/Idol come out to Roll with the Changes by REO Speedwagon. 

I didn't love the feeling out stuff here or the finishing stretch to be honest, but I did think the control on Kabuki where they went after his neck/throat with a bunch of headlock punches/throat shots and a great Rich neckbreaker, plus the aforementioned chinlock was all very good. Tiger Mask probably just wasn't the right guy to match up against these two?

ER: Rich and Idol come out to "Roll with the Changes" and I love it. Tommy Rich was still using REO Speedwagon in Japan when he worked WAR in 1993, when the song was 15 years old. The match rules because it's Idol and Rich working a Memphis tag with Kabuki going along with it, Idol and Rich cutting off the ring and throwing punches from real and comedic angles, Idol connecting with Japanese fans as an honest to god cult celebrity. Jerry Lawler got such an ice cold reaction in his limited Japanese work, but Idol grabs the attention of the All Japan crowd and them makes aloof faces like he doesn't understand why.  At one point Idol tags in and throws Great Pro Wrestling Punches while dropping to a knee, throws a snapmare that is actually a man flipping another man to his seat by the head, and then throws punches to a seated Kabuki and chokes him on the mat before running him face first into Tommy Rich's knee. It is everything I love about wrestling distilled into 15 seconds. When he throws headlock punches to Kabuki, Kabuki drops forward to his knees like his nose is broken. Tommy Rich hits a fistdrop off the middle buckle. Idol hooks his hands under Kabuki's chin and flexes his arms as he pulls his neck back over his knee, hair looking like a swag version of the Mark Davis cut, and all is right. Austin Idol had a connection with the Japanese crowds and even in loss, that cult status looms over the victorious Tiger Mask. Idol flexes his biceps in the crowd and the reaction makes it clear that the people want More. 

Tom Magee vs. Isao Takagi AJPW 3/27/88

MD:  Some of these have been out there more or less for a few years but we never covered them (it's hard to keep up with Classics) so they're really new enough. And this was quite the thing right here. Magee came out to Danger Zone like he was Masa Fuchi or something, stood on the top turnbuckle, dropped his cape, posed, and did a shooting star press into the ring right into a tumble. Hell of a thing. 

And you know, parts of this were competent. Sure he landed on Takagi with his first leapfrog and there was just a weirdness to some of what he did. He'd do a headscissors at an angle I've never quite seen it and grabbed the ropes not for heat so much as so he didn't fall over, while in a grounded headscissors. His strikes were stylized to say the least. He put his foot on Takagi's leg while holding an armbar, not to drive him down but to set up a drop toehold and I don't quite get that. Lots of little things like that, but the armdrags looked ok and he was spirited in his legdrops and kneedrops and hiptosses and what not. 

But really this was about the spin wheel kicks. His was basically a beesting, the chop of the spinwheelkick, where he got the edge of his foot into the midsection of Takagi. Takagi when he later reversed a whip and hit a charge and just careened at Magee, went foot first right into his face as he arced. And yes, right after that, Magee opened up in a big way, blood coming down his face. The match was over by that point though as he did a somersault to "dodge a charging Takagi", put in quotes for a reason and then did a belly to back position backbreaker which I've never seen before for a submission. Hell of an entrance though. 

ER: I don't really think Tom Magee is that much different than many guys who are pushed as a Fast Rising Star on the modern indy (or national television!) scene. He had great athleticism and actually had more offense than I realized, and he isn't as terrible as advertised when it comes to fitting that offense into an actual match. He feels like someone who could have been molded with more time, but wasn't given more time. That's nothing new. I liked some things he did, like his weird drop toehold, but the main thing he had going against him was the same thing he had going for him: He moved like an alien in the ring. If not like an alien, he moved like someone who had been given the implanted knowledge of pro wrestling, without actually having seen pro wrestling. There was no sense he had any understanding what pro wrestling was. 

Many of the things he does look "fine" but he does them as someone who doesn't know what he is doing, and the crowds can feel it. He is doing a kneedrop, he is doing a legdrop, he is doing a weird drop toehold, but he is doing them in a way that doesn't feel like pro wrestling, instead a memorized series of steps. Tom Magee memorized the sounds of the alphabet phonetically but cannot actually read or understand letters, and it is off-putting to the people there live, who love wrestling. If you gave an alien a recipe to make a pumpkin pie, but they had never tasted a pie or seen what a pie looked like, you would almost surely get some sort of creation that had similarities to pie while being grotesque in a way that aesthetically offended you. It's why Magee didn't seem to realize he was even bleeding from the nose and mouth after being hit by a spinning heel kick. He does not understand these humans, the ways they leak.

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Found Footage Friday: OMNI 83~!

GCW Omni 8/28/83

ER: I'm so glad they included the opening promo package for this show, it's so good. Tommy Rich called Bill Irwin "Jack" (the greatest promo guys in history knew to call their opponents Jack), Mad Dog Sawyer has the greatest pro wrestling body imaginable, and the Brisco Brothers cut an honest to god excellent promo on the Roadies. Gerry is a bit rigid but he keeps calling their match a Texas Tarnado Match and talks about how they wrestle tarnadoes in the Great State of Oklahoma every day, but Jack is the real killer. I am not a big Jack Brisco guy. He is one of the All Time Greats whose work doesn't really thrill me. But he sounds so damn cool in this promo. He is calm, and delivers it with a smirk like he really doesn't give a good goddamn about the Road Warriors. There is no fear at all. He even makes fun of their big arms, and asks what they're going to do with those big arms when the Briscoes bend them behind their backs and they start gasping for breath, and then Gerry starts doing this incredible tongue out gagging. These Oklahoma men in their tan suits just out here mocking the fucking Road Warriors. Incredible. That sold me on their match so hard, I can't wait. 

Mr. Wrestling (Jesse Barr) vs. Joe Lightfoot

MD: Good mat-based opener to get over the idea that the fake Mr. Wrestling is capable enough. Lightfoot is basically the definition of a good undercard hand. I may or may not have mentioned it last time, but he was useful in Portland as a guy to build up Jay Youngblood coming in by giving the heels someone to beat first. They worked in and out of holds with some solid rope running. Barr did one of my favorite bits of mat wrestling where he has a toehold on and has to rotate around while keeping the toes in order to avoid his opponent from grasping his head. It's the slickest thing imaginable. Great finish here as he jammed a second headscissors takeover by turning it into a hotshot on the second rope, setting Lightfoot up for the running knee and then a back bridging pin for good measure.

ER: I dug this a lot. Barr does a lot of little things that I really like. I liked how he lay in wait to break Lightfoot's full nelson, holding his hands behind his head over Lightfoot's, motionless, before striking down in one quick motion. His drop toehold to set up his Indian deathlock was so tight. His fistdrop? A great, workmanlike Dibiase style fistdrop. He fell into the ropes selling for Lightfoot's comeback in a way that made it feel like he could accidentally slip through them. The finish is great, with Lightfoot going for a flying headscissors and Barr falling back with a hotshot that drops Lightfoot on the top rope to the middle. He sets up his Mr. Wrestling kneelift like an asshole, calling for it in the corner like an actually cool version of Edge. But the real asshole move was his jackknife neck bridge pin. I would have wanted to murder the guy if I were one of the front row men with their arms crossed. 

Brett Sawyer vs. Bob Roop

MD: This is an aside but I listened to an episode of Roop's podcast (#12 about his first tour of Japan) the other day and it was quite good. I'd suggest it. The more we see of Wayne, the better he comes off. Amazing connection with the crowd. Great seller. Throws everything into both his bumping and his shots, especially his comeback shots. Roop did a great job throwing himself into things too, especially his knee strikes. He used one to knock Wayne out of the ring early and Wayne came back a bloody mess. Blood on the second match on the card is a choice but it worked out here. Some great moments of comeback and cutoff, including a picture perfect posting reversal by Roop. Except for that wasn't a cutoff at all. As Roop tried to get back into the ring, a staggered Wayne managed to roll him up making it for two great, novel finishes in a row. Very good stuff for what it was.

ER: I really love Brett Sawyer now. I used to have not much of an opinion on him. All of these 1983 Omni shows have been so much fun, and everyone on them has had their stock raised by the new footage. Brett Wayne might just be the guy who has been raised the most, for me. Now, a lot of other guys had such high ceilings that they had less room to move up, but that doesn't matter. The Other Sawyer is great. This match was awesome. Bob Roop is one of the toughest men in wrestling history and looks like Ned Beatty. Sawyer looks like the ugly bassist in an 80s hair metal band, but he's just such a fucking great babyface. He has skills completely different from his brother. He was Mad Dog's younger brother, but by a lot less time than you'd think. They were a year apart but Brett Wayne was in permanent Kid Brother mode. Brett Wayne Sawyer was a GREAT Kid Brother wrestler. 

The Omni crowd sat with their arms crossed during a good opener, but Brett Wayne is the one who gets the old ladies waving their arms and pumping their fists for his comeback. This whole match is built around a big posting, where Roop runs Brett down the apron. Sawyer is great at dramatic falls, and I love how he absorbs the posting, how he falls off the apron, the time he took to get back in the ring. Sawyer is a great bleeder too, and as Roop hits a snaring clothesline you can see he has good color from the posting. Sawyer's selling is so good as he's fighting back, and it all builds to this incredible moment that mirrors his earlier posting. Sawyer now has Roop on the apron, now it's his turn for revenge, the fans all want it, the old ladies are screaming for Brett...and instead it turns out to be an incredibly done reversal. Sawyer runs Roop down the length of the apron and at the last second Roop smashes Sawyer's face into the turnbuckle, a shot maybe ever tougher than his posting earlier. I thought that would have played as a great, if demoralizing, finish, buy my boy Brett surprises me again when he gets a tight roll up immediately after, as Roop is getting back in the ring. I bit at all the exact things they wanted that Omni crowd to bite at, their storytelling and Sawyer's babyface fire hooking me just as it hooked ATL over 40 years ago.

Paul Ellering vs. Bruno Sammartino Jr.

MD: Seeing David with the Bruno Jr. name really hammers home how doomed the guy was. He was stocky and there's a world where he could have had a totally different name and been in Florida or Memphis teaming with Jim Neidhart and they could have been a hugely successful heel team, I think.  What we had instead was Ellering really guiding him through one. Paul would eat the mat and end up in cross toeholds again and again, then complain to the ref when he got out. He finally took over working the eyes and he had a great way of selling his fists after the punch or continuing to sell the leg that had him coming off like a vulnerable manager instead of a former muscleman wrestler. The fans were behind David when he came back. Weird spot down the stretch as he got pressed off the top (like Flair or someone would) by Ellering, but he came back again after that and hit a suplex and a belabored press slam before Ellering took a powder for the count out. Pretty transparent overall but still better than you'd expect and a testament to Ellering.

ER: That David Sammartino has BS all over his boots, poor kid really stepped in it. As Matt said, what chance did this kid have? He had his dad's build and none of his timing or charisma. There was a moment where he swept Ellering's legs late in the match and Ellering was just lying on his back, directing Sammartino to start punching him, and it took him forever to pull the trigger on them. Ellering did what he could, but you but my boy Brett Wayne in the same match and he'd have Ellering scrambling and begging off all around the ring. I did like Sammartino standing on Ellering's neck while holding his legs in a deathlock, but much of this was Ellering just making do. When Paul finally took over with a punch to a grounded Sammartino, shaking out his fist, I said aloud "finally" at my desk at work. Ellering had several nice punches and was good at working to get heat, since Sammartino was incapable of connecting with these people. Sammartino's big press slam was a good thing to end on. It looked good and I like how he really threw Ellering, but Ellering was great at deciding to take the count out loss, almost swinging at a cop on his way out. 

Texas Tornado Match: Road Warriors vs. Brisco Brothers

MD: This was already out there so I'll just hit it quickly. Gerry saying "Texas Tarnado" never gets old. What was most striking here was how this was so unproduced and raw. There weren't the sort of momentum shifts that you'd expect. It had all four men in the ring at the same time but very often one Brisco was in charge of a Roadie and a Roadie was in charge of the other Brisco. There were a few moments of double teaming if they got a Brisco out and a few moments of clear comeback, but in general, it was just barely controlled chaos. That's extremely refreshing even if it meant any possible narrative had to be entirely implicit. The finish was fun too since it had the Briscos resorting to using chairs (within the rules) and making it so the Road Warriors were too wary to come back into the ring. They got swung at every time they tried and that forced them to get counted out. It's a match that simply couldn't exist today.

ER: I thought this was mostly pretty bad. The Briscoes wrestled nothing like they said they would wrestle and the Tarnado stipulation played to nobody's strengths. Much of the fighting looked soft and slowed down. Many of the strikes looked so bad I had to check that I hadn't actually been watching the other matches in 1.5x speed and then got brought back to real life. Nope, it was just them moving slowly and throwing bad strikes. Animals kept doing this little hopping stomps, everyone moved like they didn't want to accidentally bump into anyone else, Gerry did a run of four push off double boots out of the corner and not only did it look like the Roadies didn't want to run into them, but Gerry threw them like he didn't want them to make contact. Jack did a couple things I liked, getting out of a bearhug with a big telegraphed eye poke, and I liked the visual of both Briscoes kicking their own Road Warrior in the knee around the ring at the same time, but then that chairs finish quickly brought this back to bad. The wrestling grapplers who were going to immobilize the muscle bound freaks on the mat, instead resorting to getting weapons (the Road Warriors did not do a single untoward action toward them!) and throwing the worst chair shots you've ever seen. Gerry's were especially terrible. The second match on this card had blood, motherfucker, throw a glancing blow off one of their heads or something, anything. No good. 

Mr. Wrestling II vs. Larry Zbyszko

MD: Totally down my alley. Mr. Wrestling II was an absolute folk hero here and Zbyszko was just the perfect heel. II started by dropping the belt between them like a line in the sand. Then, of course, Larry stalled. Until II gave chase and finally caught him as he thought he was free and clear to slide into the ring. A massive beating ensued until Larry stalled more into the corner. Then as he finally let the ref allow II to get close, he hit a kick, pulled the turnbuckle back and smashed II's head into it. That allowed him to control for a while, including a very interesting chinlock where he put it over by leaning to the side. Such a little thing but it was visually effective. II made it up and Larry went for the exposed corner again but II turned it around on him, leading to another beating and the eventual finish, which had Larry hold the rope on a roll up after he couldn't get a pile driver to work. Post-match II hit a kneelift and Larry tossed the belt straight up in one of the best visuals I've seen in a very long time. This was exactly what it should have been.

ER: Now we're talking, now we're back to the good stuff. The Omni Zbyszko has been so good, and this continues that trend. But this is also a tremendous Wrestling II performance, just fire the whole way through. The crowd starts swelling when Larry begins removing the turnbuckle pad, knowing what's coming, and once he smashes II into the buckle the real great shit begins. I love how these two fall for each other. Look how II smashes into that buckle and falls slowly down the ropes to the mat, and look how explosively Larry falls when the tables get turned. The second time Larry got smashed into the exposed buckle he sold it so well that I was sure he broke his nose, lying there on the mat covering his face, I fully expected a bloody nose and mouth when the hands came away. Wresting II was pushing 50 and his work was excellent. He beat Zbyszko's ass around the ring (paying him back for those great punches Larry threw right across his jaw) and scraped his boot all over Larry's face. Zbyszko took at least three back body drops from the guy, fast ones. Wrestling II has the best kneelift in wrestling: short, quick, sharp, damaging. I loved him dropping standing into Zbyszko's head and neck, doing a quick fist shake out to straight his arm after one to the dome. Zbyszko's finish was real scummy, great hold of the ropes after a cool piledriver reversal from II, and the post match fire was excellent. Wrestling II nailing him with another all time great kneelift causing Larry to toss the belt up into the air as he bumped. 

Tommy Rich vs. Bill Irwin (Loser Receives Lashes)

MD: When this show came out, I think people undersold just how great this one-two punch was, as one match led into the next and heated it up to a massive degree. Pez had the crowd anyway and the Kabuki/Hart act was super over; plus you had Ole to cheerlead, but it was all incredibly cleverly done. 

Rich and Irwin really did have great chemistry. There was a way that the two were visually balanced, something about how they both moved, emoting for the back row, big arm movements, a sort of lankiness where the sum of the two was more than the individual parts. And they had a certain explosiveness to how they hit the ropes, and whipped each other. They'd bring it up and down here, going right back to that explosiveness. Tommy got color early, because of course he did. He'd have a great hope spot where he reversed a smash in the corner and fired away for a bit until he got cutoff back in the corner again. The finish had him hitting the damndest small package out of nowhere, with the legs hooked just right. The fans went nuts and then doubly so as he handcuffed Irwin in the corner and started whipping. They had to deliver on the gimmick at least a little so he got a few shots in before Hart and Kabuki ran down to break it up. Then they got some shots in on a prone Rich before the place really exploded as Pez and Ole charged in to stop it. 

ER: Yeah this is another reason why we're here, this is what we want. Two wild men, Wildfire and Just Wild, one of the best bleeders of all time against a guy who will throw a couple dozen pump kicks into a bleeding man's face. Everyone in Georgia was so complementary to each other's style, everyone synced up so well, everyone was great at feeding for everyone else. This footage really is magic. Even before the blood, I could have watched a match built around these two hitting the ropes and Irwin doing drop downs. Irwin stayed on Rich and Rich was great at getting kicked around. It's a simple formula that they kept going to most of the match and I never tired of it, because Rich kept finding great ways to put over the kicks to his bleeding head. My favorite moment was Irwin busting Rich open because before you see that Rich is busted open, you see Irwin looking at his fist after punching Rich, and then shake his fist off. He clearly does not shake his fist because of the impact of his punch, he is shaking it to get the blood off. It's so good. The small package finish works really well, love how Rich grapevined those legs and how Irwin was wiggling to kick out. All of the pins in this were great, now that I think about it. Irwin had a great one where he posted up on Rich's laid out arm, body weight on one arm and his arm pressed down onto Rich's flattened arm, and I have no idea how Rich kicked out. Irwin missed a charge into the buckles really violently, perfect way to set up Rich cuffing him around the ropes. There were only a few whippings before Hart and Kabuki got in there to break it up but they all looked nastier than I expected, Rich really airing out that whip. 

Pez Whatley vs. Great Kabuki

MD: That led right into the Pez vs. Kabuki match, with the crowd on edge from the start. Pez dismantled Kabuki from the get go with each shot drawing that Ooooof noise that is so welcome in these early 80s matches. He got too close to the ropes as he was goozling Kabuki though and Hart got him in the eye. Hart was entertaining throughout since he was constantly trying to evade Ole. They brought it up and down with nerveholds but the fans got up for Pez's comebacks each and every time. Then they built to bigger spots with Kabuki coming off the top until Pez caught him and tossed him off. Finish had Hart grab the leg on a suplex attempt from the outside in but Pez actually kick out (the babyface never kicks out that scenario) and then Ole trip Kabuki off the ropes so Pez could hit the jumping headbutt for the win. Place went nuts, Ole celebrated with Pez. Post-match they had Kabuki ALMOST go after Hart until he got him under control; just beautiful pro wrestling all around.

ER: How good are these OOOF shots!? They added to every match they gave the OOFs and in such an ahead of its time wrestling crowd way. What's the fan crossover of fans who were doing the Omni OOFs and Knife Edge WOOs? Every shot in this match and the other Good Ones had it's own punctuation and since everyone in the territory was capable of throwing a great punch the matches feel like constant exclamation points. That's another reason the Road Warriors/Briscoes match was so bad, it was just a sloppy tornado with punches and soft kicks and a weird legdrop and nobody could find the rhythm. Nobody was timing their strikes for impact they were just in each other's way. No OOFs. 

If Brett Sawyer is a guy I didn't have an opinion on before the Omni stuff started showing up a few years ago, then Kabuki is a guy I didn't have an opinion on before the DVDVR Texas and All Japan 80s sets. The Chris Adams series was the peak but Kabuki revealed himself to have a real consistent TV match quality and a style I really like. Maybe our greatest Mysterious Asian Striker gimmick worker. He felt violent like Abby but with no weapons, just the savate kicks and throat thrusts and aura. Pez Whatley has been a real treat on these Omni shows too - they're a gift that has raised many boats - and his big headbutts and the way people were living with his selling were so good. The way Kabuki bumped for Whatley's first headbutt, flying back into a leaping bump for the first time all match......then the way Gary Hart bumps for Whatley's headbutt!!Hart takes it on the apron and leaps up high enough that I gasped, thinking he was crashing off the apron to the floor, but instead he gets tangled in the ropes in seven different ways before getting to the apron. It's the best Tangled in the Ropes bumping ever done among heel managers with the latest name Hart. Kabuki leapt high in the air to absorb Whatley's flying headbutt and it was the right amount of cartoon impact the crowd needed for one gigantic OOF. 

Dick Slater vs. Buzz Sawyer

MD:  The first thirty seconds of this went exactly how I was expecting. The two meet up on the floor and you get every impression that this was going to be a wild draw. But then it went in a completely different direction and stands as an incredibly complete match, just a real heated, grudge-filled but grounded main event (with some big high points) and it's almost surprising there wasn't a title match involved given how they worked it.

Slater controlled the arm early. They'd go out of it and right back into it. Sawyer would pull the hair or get a cheapshot in but they'd run two or three bits and then Slater would drag him back down. Varied stuff, hammerlock and wristlock variations, with the best of it being Slater throwing in a bunch of headbutts while he had the arm. The transition here had Ellering get involved, whacking Slater as his head was between the ropes and Buzz had the ref distraction.

First heat was chinlock heavy but they worked it well and the fans went up for every hope spot with the cutoffs being sufficiently weighty, including the last one where Sawyer tossed Slater to the floor. He started to hulk up out there and came back with big punches. This could have well built to a finish but instead the ref went down, Ellering handed Buzz some knucks, and they went around for a second bit of heat, Slater now bleeding. He survived the power slam, though, started firing back again, beating Slater around ringside. When things got desperate and Buzz went back to the knucks, Slater got them and KOed him right in front of the ref for the DQ. 

Just super complete. That's the best word for it. This is one of those matches that closed every parenthesis and was full of compelling stuff in the middle. Second time I went through this (even not remembering the details), I could feel every banana peel slip or cut off by Buzz coming but it all felt just right, perfectly placed, perfectly timed. You could program a match like this but of course it's Buzz and Slater's mannerisms and wild abandon that turned it from theory to gripping practice.

ER: 20 minutes of new Buzz Sawyer means 20 more minutes cementing him as one of my favorites. Can you imagine seeing a guy looking like and shaped like Buzz Sawyer walking into an Olive Garden in a mint green polo? A guy with that hairline who is jacked in that specific way looks like Instant Trouble. I don't know that there are five looks in wrestling history that I love more than Buzz Sawyer's. The fact he's not just a Perfect Look but he knows how to use it is lighting in a bottle. The way he uses his look, the way he bends his back taking payoff punches, the way he false starts and stomps before locking up, the way he walks around in a circle before bringing it back around to taking a shot. He's the beefiest Chris Candido possible and Dick Slater is like a strong silent Roddy Piper. People respond to both. 

They can work slow and they can work big and they have no problem filling 20. They could have filled 30. There were three different points where it felt like they were peaking things to the finish and they all worked, and the small stuff in between was no less interesting. The highest peak - and what certainly felt like the push to the finish - was Slater finally zombie staggering furiously after Ellering at ringside, throwing chairs and kicking tables in a rage while Ellering runs away in his silk robe like Don Knotts. Mad Dog grabs Dick from the ring and gets his lights punched out. You'll see two different great powerslams, Slater throwing a series of 8 consecutive headbutts short arm headbutts after also being the one to hit a charging JYD headbutt earlier, two hidden weapon punches that look like the finish, a great ref performance from Nick Patrick - a guy who needs to get more praise for everything he does - and a post match sour grapes stuff piledriver that could have started a riot. Pro wrestling. 

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Found Footage Friday: OMNI 8/14/83~! PIPER~! BUZZ~! ZBYSZKO~! GARVIN~! SHEIK~! TOMMY~! IRWIN~! ROAD WARRIORS~!

GCW Omni 8/14/83

Arn Anderson vs. Joe Lightfoot

MD: Interesting to place this one. This was Arn's second to last match in the territory. Borne had flaked out before this leaving Arn on his own and aimless. He drifted over to the babyface side and was mainly used for putting over the Road Warriors in various ways before heading to Alabama as Super Olympia. So this was more or less a babyface match. Arn was the aggressor maybe and ate a whole bunch of chops leading up to the finish but this was really just on the mat for the most part. Anyway, Lightfoot was a solid hand, a guy I know mostly for being Youngblood's little buddy to set up a program in Portland. This was five minutes in and out, and certainly didn't wear out its welcome before the double pin finish and Arn getting his shoulder up. Post match he shook Lightfoot's hand and past one Tony Zane match a couple of weeks later, that was it for Arn in Georgia.

ER: This got really entertaining when they transitioned out of the ground work and Arn was staggering into Lightfoot's chops, and that was the last 10 seconds of the match. Arn was 23!!

Fake Mr. Wrestling I (Jesse Barr) vs. Rick Rood

MD: Yes, this was Barr. I'm not sure if he was trying to work like Woods or not. I do know that he'd feud with Mr. Wrestling II after this and Wrestling II would take his mask in October. This went ten minutes as a draw which may have been surprising but Wrestling was supposed to be a bit of a fraud and he got his heat back after the match by attacking Rood. He had pretty solid armwork throughout with some big comebacks and revenge armwork by Rood. Rood had good fire and it was funny to see him do things like a headstand to get out of a headscissors which was very not Rood. Ten minute draws are far more palatable than 20 minute ones and this made me wonder what a babyface Rood might have looked like later in the decade.

ER: This was among the earliest Rick Rude matches I've seen, and it's very early. This is like 30 matches into a 1,500 match career early. It's impressive how far along he was this early while also wrestling like a completely different guy. This early on he still had elements of who he would be a thousand matches from now, in how he moved and how he sold while feeding. He already had an honest use of physics in his basics like dropdowns and shoulderblocks. He was already delivering his offense in a way where you could tell he knew what the goal of his match was. He also of course did a few funny things I have never associated with Rude, like a headstand escape out of Mr. Wrestling's great headscissors. I didn't actually know it was Jesse Barr until after I watched this. I was real confused when he beat Rude's ass after the loss after working an entire 10 minute draw without ever trying to beat Rude's ass. The crowd was really pissed off and I thought there was this great 50 year old Tim Woods heel run. 

Brett Sawyer vs. The Iron Sheik

MD: Brett was really good. Obviously there was a ceiling to him as a drawing card (Flair match from Portland and teaming with his brother vs. the Road Warriors aside) but he was just a great mid-card presence, very down home and folksy in a way that would never make it to TV today, not without being more stylized like a Mark Briscoe. But he just came off as a guy down the street with a lot of fire in his heart. 

The first third of this (after getting under Sheik's skin with the patriotic chants) was all headlocks and rope running and Sheik really was pretty lithe stooging his way into these and keeping up off the ropes. Brett eventually got caught and then Sheik jammed his face into his boot (with his boot on the top rope, which was a nice bit that he may not have been flexible enough to pull off in later years). That started the blood and with it came the woundwork and it was pretty glorious. A bloody Brett would wave his fists and try to power up and fight from underneath and the crowd ate it up. Sheik cut him off and did more damage right until the banana peel finish where Brett fell on Sheik on a suplex attempt and the place became unglued. Post match Ellering and Sheik pounded on Brett until Rich and Buzz (certainly not aligned) ran out for the save. Pretty electric stuff. This was third match on the card and it inspired so much emotion. Beautiful pro wrestling.

ER: There were at least five other matches on this show I was more excited to see. I don't know if I even registered this match when my eyes skipped past the bottom of the card to where the Valentine, Tommy Rich, Buzz Sawyer, and Road Warriors matches. I'm so glad I didn't just skip to those other matches as this match is a condensed gem. The fans really like Sawyer, hate the Sheik, and you get to see a vicious quick Sheik that would be a completely different wrestler in less than two years. Sheik is one of our great weird body wrestlers, and it's not a coincidence that so many of our great weird body guys were high level amateur wrestlers. Gary Albright's small arms and hunched shoulders and powerful belly, Tamon Honda's full long upper torso with his short sturdy legs glued to the canvas, and Iron Sheik's shredded distended belly with small arms and close shoulders, all weird amateur grappler bodies and all great. Sheik moved so weird and here he moves really well...while still moving the weird way Sheik moves. He has the same stiff old man posture as he did when he was ruining indy cards in the late 90s, but he has this cool unexpected quickness. When Sheik did a hindu squat splits dropdown into a leapfrog to set up a fast Sawyer sunset flip, I yelled aloud. 

Putting your boot up on the top turnbuckle and slamming someone's face into your boot is a real Lost Great Spot. Think of the last time you saw it. I saw Barry Horowitz do it 20 years ago and maybe it was something FTR pulled when they were The Revival. Tag partners should also yell at their partner on the apron to give them a boot more often. The boot eyelet raking made a comeback at some point, somebody needs to bring back the boot smash. Sawyer gets busted open from biting and Sheik pushes it well past biting when he throws a gorgeous belly to belly that started with him picking up a bearhug. His missed cannonball that gave Sawyer some fight was so unexpected. It's so weird watching Iron Sheik do a huge front flip. I love how it didn't lead to Sawyer's actual comeback, it just gave him a little time to fight to his knees and get the crowd believing. The finish coming right after as its own surprise was a great way to triple that reaction just as it was dimming. 

The post match was great with Buzz Sawyer and Tommy Rich coming out to save Buzz's bro from one of seven or eight Paul Ellering fueled beatings. Tommy looked so loyal, standing over Sawyer wanting to fight anyone who got near, but Buzz had this unreal aura. It's so unmistakably bad ass, a guy you don't want to cross who keeps this dangerous cool composure. "I know people don't like me but I'm not a total asshole" big brother energy. The way he carries himself with his hands in his sweatpants pockets, that torso in a tight 50/50 blend blue t-shirt, the fucking bandana essential to the look, sending calm threats to Ellering as he walked up to him. An unemployed adult older brother who stays at home all day coming out to the front yard to tell his teen brother's bully how he's going to cut him. 

Larry Zbyszko vs. Ron Garvin

MD: The TV title was on the line for the first ten minutes here. I'll be honest that there are single matches i want more or less out of the Omni footage, but if we're talking a run, then I want as much as Larry's run as possible. We have bits and pieces but it's right down my alley on paper. I think it ages better than a lot of heel Dibiase footage for instance.  

Anyway, this was the panacea to Larry's usual tactics as he only had ten minutes to try to take Garvin's title. Yes, he got punched out of the ring early, but he couldn't linger. He had to be more aggressive than usual. Tons of great punches in this one, especially in the corners. There was one comeback by Garvin where he knocked Larry down and then held on to the arm after he fell and the crowd realized it, realized that he was going to pull Larry back up to hit him again, and were elated about it. Larry was able to fire back out of the corner using the ref as a distraction and took about half the match pretty soundly. He had an advantage at the end as Garvin missed a knee drop and it seemed like he might have a chance of taking the title with a pile driver but Garvin turned it into a pin and got the win. This was a nice subversion of the Rood match which did go to a ten minute draw. It seemed like it would here too or that Garvin was going to lose and then he snuck out the win at the last moment. 

ER: I love this era of Zbyszko. Yeah Garvin looks like a jacked up super tough brat pack era Judd Nelson and hits with his trademark up close short range power, but Zbyszko man. Zbyszko sells the impact of Garvin's strikes better than maybe anyone. I love the tough guy sturdy gravity Valentine sells them with but Zbyszko is so moveable, a wiggly guy who bounces off ropes and uses body movement the same way Tully did, recoiling fast but being punched and physically reacting to those punches exactly the way 9,000 people wanted to see. He knows exactly how I want to see Larry Zbyszko reacting to being hit. He also punches exactly how I want to see a man punch. All the punches were great for the whole match, but Zbyszko's tight, straight reared back rights looked perfect. The finish of this was incredibly done and I didn't see it coming. We had our 10 minute draw already and every single piece of wrestling language made this look like a frustrated Zbyszko unable to win within 10 minutes. I actually but when Larry pulled off a sweet and smooth inside cradle to block a bodyslam in its infancy, but the actual finish was a great surprise. Zbyszko looking like he was going to cave in Garvin's teen idol 'do, with all the execution of Zbyszko lifting up the way you do just before you sit down, Garvin shifting his weight at the peak of lift off to tip the weight. Great finish, great match. 

Road Warriors vs. Mr. Wrestling/Mr. Wrestling II

MD: I really enjoy 83 Roadies. They were raw but they hadn't quite settled into what they'd become a year or two later. They wrestled much more vulnerably, more stooging, more backpedaling, while still being monsters both aesthetically and when they were doing damage. We've been hearing it for the last few matches but it's so great to have the crowd make that primal guttural noise whenever a babyface threw a shot. It was chaos to begin and chaos to end with Mr Wrestling having to fight from underneath in the middle. Wrestling II came in hot and it was rousing stuff but Zbyszko nailed him from the apron out of nowhere after a couple of kneelifts. All of this felt larger than life especially to this crowd.

ER: Man I LOVE the way the Road Warriors sell for two 50 year old man throwing big arm swinging punches. The Road Warriors sell so well for the Wrestlings that I want to see 1983 Roadies against 1989 Baba/Rusher. I couldn't get enough for Wrestling's big swinging punches that are thrown like nobody else threw punches and the way Hawk perfectly knew to throw his head back for them, just enough. We know the Road Warriors were not yet the monsters they would become just a year or so later, but it's still wild seeing Hawk taking multiple back body drops. This had another spectacular finish, with action so good I had to keep rewinding to watch what each individual was doing. Wrestling II was fending off Animal in the top corner, Hawk was roughing up Wrestling in the foreground. Wrestling gets thrown over the top down onto a table and almost into a front row before charging back into the ring by stepping up onto that table and getting back into the fight. Animal keeps charging into Wrestling II in the corner and keeps catching knees, until he charges in and catches two boots shoved squarely into his chest and gets bumped back hard. Zbyszko sneaks in and bashes II in the back of the head and staggers him into the greatest This is the End powerslam from Animal. This was not the structure I expected going in but now I want more Hawk and Animal selling for great old man strikes.  

Greg Valentine vs. Pez Whatley

MD: Pretty remarkable Pez performance here. He came in hot, even while Greg still had the title in hand and had Valentine rocking and falling over the place with headbutts early. Greg took over with a nasty kneeling piledriver and started on the arm. Pez came back with one arm with some great silly in his hope spots, using the head when he could, really solid stuff. They dropped the arm selling for the most part as it went on but you almost didn't mind because Pez was so good at working from underneath on a chinlock, just constant motion fighting up and engaging the crowd. Transition was another pile driver attempt which was a little like the Garvin/Zbyszko match but they had Valentine go into the corner again. Things got out of hand and it ended up as a DQ with him using the belt repeatedly, but Pez drove him off so the crowd got at least some satisfaction out of it. Very good match overall though, even if the arm selling went nowhere. 

ER: Every heel in this territory knew exactly how to sell the strikes of every top babyface and it's all so beautiful. Valentine makes Pez Whatley a god and Pez wiggles his way up to it, and once again, this rules. Valentine is on the Found Footage Friday Mt. Rushmore as we've now been uncovering unseen classics of his for nearly a decade, every one of them broadening his case as one of our greatest workers. Here's another for the pile. I'm so used to seeing Valentine take strikes from fellow tough guys and hitting them back. I've seen that Valentine more than I've seen the Valentine who sells for smaller ethnic babyface, and this one is great. With Valentine's selling, his head whips and stunned cobweb shaking, Whatley's headbutts looked peerless, the culmination of decades of black wrestler headbutts. His perseverance and big time style and charisma through his comebacks were getting reactions louder than any part of the Dog Collar main event, and it was such infectious babyface energy that played incredibly off the tough guy champ. Whatley's reversal out of the piledriver was such a cool spot, upending Valentine into and off the turnbuckles. It's one of those spots where, no matter how much wrestling I've watched, there's always something like that waiting to show me something new. 

Bullwhip on a Pole: Tommy Rich vs. Bill Irwin

MD: I've always been pretty high on Irwin. Great body language. Big lanky guy who was willing to throw himself into everything he did, and there was so much to throw himself into here. Every time either guy went for the pole, the other was on top of him instantly. Really gripping stuff. People don't understand today just how compelling these pole matches could be when the wrestlers put forth so much care towards whatever was on top of the pole. 

Here they had to really incapacitate the other. Irwin kept escalating things, hitting a gut wrench suplex, tossing Rich out of the ring, knocking the head against the post. Rich on the other hand got out of the way for Irwin's corner charge and he bumped huge over the top knee first, etc. Just more and more until finally Irwin started working the leg, a necessity since Rich wouldn't stay down. Even that didn't quite do it but it allowed for a hotshot and Irwin to finally get up the pole. One thing I wish we had were more pole matches from the 70s when there probably WASN'T an inversion of the finish. By the 80s, whoever first got the weapon tended not to be the one who got to use it and to see that once could be satisfying but to see it in every pole match gets a little frustrating. Sometimes you just want that nice clean feeling of something happening how it's supposed to. Still, Rich grabbing it mid swing and firing off on Irwin was a greater level of enjoyment for the crowd and this was really good stuff overall.

Dog Collar Match: Roddy Piper vs Buzz Sawyer 

MD: Pull this back up. Just watch a minute of it, any minute. Watch Roddy. Watch him move. Nothing specific that he does, though if you catch a bump or some selling or a punch, that's all the better. But just the in-between. Did you see it? Go look out a window or down the street. Find a neighbor, a spouse. Hell, look in the mirror. Watch yourself move. Whatever you see, it's not as alive and vibrant and vivid as this forty year old footage of Roddy Piper.

The anticipation early here, both of them six feet apart, the chain between them, a rabid game of chess to decide which would rush first to strike. At the start it was Buzz but when it was Piper's time, he became a man possessed, cutting the distance with wide eyes and a wild snarl. Buzz scored first blood but Piper's comebacks on the floor were things of myth and legend.

Matches like these, from this era, often end shortly after that first huge comeback, after the turn of the tide, after revenge is grasped. This one, however, went around one more time, as Buzz was able to sneak in a low blow. Things spilled back out to the floor but Piper fired back once more, moving the guardrail and basically punching Buzz back into the ring. Gripping, satisfying, refreshing stuff. In some ways a prototype for what would come later in both of their careers and something that almost impossibly lived up to the picture we had in our heads.

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FOUND FOOTAGE FRIDAY: OMNI 2/26/84

 

Jesse Barr vs. Pez Whatley

ER: A match made completely worthwhile by the finish. Up until the finishing stretch I was prepared to write "Yep this sure is some undercard wrestling. Well Barr did work his chin lock fairly effectively and I appreciate that" and be done with it. But then we go on an excellent one minute run to finish on a perfect high note: Barr throws Whatley through the ropes to the floor, fast, and the cameras pan to Whatley and what appears to be a ringside security guard facing away from the ring while eating popcorn and literally reading a fucking magazine. When Whatley tries to get back in the ring he's greeted by Barr's legitimately great kneelift - the best piece of offense all match - and I love how Whatley's reaction is to get obliterated by the kneelift and desperately try to roll back to the floor before being dragged back in. All of that is made worth it by Barr taking one of the greatest banana peel bumps I've seen when Whatley sweeps his leg. Barr made it look like he had no idea the football was being pulled. 

MD: Nice way to get acclimated to 1984 here. The ref, especially does a great job in both checking Barr before the match (showing Barr that if he doesn't agree, then he'll declare Pez the winner) and then catching the hairpull on the top wristlock cutoffs the second or third time Barr does it. Barr was maybe 25 here and you had to wonder what his ceiling might have been at this point. He looked good, high energy especially on a kneelift catching Pez on the way in and then bumping big for Pez's finishing stuff, and Pez, of course, knew exactly what he was doing and played to the crowd well between it. Ok opening match but I'm glad they didn't decide it needed to be a time limit draw. 

TKG: Fuck all that, this ruled and was ridiculously hot for an opener. Pez Whatley backdrop driver may be the most impressive suplex on a show with great throws. Just holds Barr up in impressive lift before perfectly dropping him. Whatley just looks like a hoss throughout this dominating on mat. Why wasn’t Whatley in the Varsity Club? Why didn’t he get a Triple Crown title challenge. You watch that suplex and shocking that it wasn’t finisher. Barr actually hits a desperation knee to get straight back on offense. And really the high knee lift is Barr’s only move. Was Barr doing a loaded knee pad gimmick? Barr refuses to let ref Scrappy McGowan check his kneepads before the match until Scrappy threatens him with DQ, all of his offense and comebacks and signature bump built around knee lift. Hits a knee lift for control and then slaps on a chinlock. Whatley wins with this high neck yolk move (instead of a bulldog from behind he yolks opponent down from the front), Whatley goes for it several times and never quite gets it till the win. First time, I thought it was a crossbody that he got too much height with, second time I thought it was a Mil style in ring tope and when he finally hits it clean, clear that is what he was going for and match is over. The moves based match structure had a real first round of a early 2000’s Super Eight feel to it, and you could totally see Ketner booking a Billy Fives, Scoot Andrews, Barr, Pez 4 way dance for the next month.

The Spoiler vs. Johnny Rich

ER: Spoiler standing on the top rope looks like a magic trick. It looks like an illusion. He's standing so still, like he's not even standing on anything at all. Don Jardine is a man the same age as me and twice my size, yet he stands effortlessly on the ropes with the grace of El Hijo del Santo. Watch him. Watch his entire body. At one point he appears to be only standing on one leg, right leg on one set of ropes, left leg on another, until one of the legs lifts...and the rest of his body doesn't move. His entire body is still, no part of him looks like he is countering weight to maintain balance. He looks like he is standing on solid ground. He looks incredible. You've never seen anyone walk the ropes like Spoiler. Fenix, Komander, Elix Skipper, any name, none are comparable to what Spoiler does. 

I could go on and on about the unreality of his rope work - if this wasn't a full card and only this match, I would write several paragraphs on him standing on the ropes - but maybe the greatest thing about it is how he uses his rope work for heel heat. I don't think there has ever been a heel who has used "look how well I balance on the top rope" as the basis for his heel heat, but there is Spoiler on the top rope, striking and holding a pose like a large buccaneer, showing off his balance to a bunch of husbands and wives out on a Sunday. The Spoiler draws heat from standing still on a very high point, and the crowd starts coming alive for Rich's comeback because of it. Johnny Rich does this thing where his punches keep looking better the deeper into the match we go, and it makes the crowd louder and more responsive. And then my man hits the blade for Spoiler's claw, and we get this incredible, violent, wrenched in claw that Spoiler made look like he was breaking Rich's entire upper torso. The shot of Rich, still standing, body being contorted while held in the claw, blood covering his face quick, made me go from "Man Spoiler matches always deliver" to "oh wow they did something special in just 6 minutes". 

MD: Great look at the Spoiler and I'm glad people will see him that are unaware. Hot start to this as he clubbers right away in the corner only for Rich to fire back. But then the size advantage takes over as he just hefts him up and then tosses him into the corner. The rope walk elbow drop is just super striking because he does it with ease and without hesitation and he followed it up by draping Rich in the ropes and kicking the ropes and they made it look great and painful. Someone needs to steal that. 

Rich eventually rolls in (and to the other side of the ring so he can recover) and fires back with jabs, but pressing Spoiler into the corner is no good. He'll just grab your head and use it to steady himself as he walks the ropes. From there, he started utilizing the claw, getting Rich out of the ring with it and then immediately catching him on the way back in, leaving him a bloody mess. I'm happy people will get introduced to Spoiler this way (And Rich was perfectly fine in his role with fiery but futile comebacks).

TKG: The Spoiler putting Rich in a cat’s cradle is the greatest yo-yo trick ever done with a wrestling ring..

Ted Dibiase vs. Mr. R

ER: This was not designed to be a great match, but instead was worked like the first six minutes of a bigger match, all basic Mr. R side headlocks floated over into Dibiase pin attempts and then back again. I had never seen any of the Mr. R angle and my favorite part of this was Rich avoiding Jesse Barr and Spoiler's attacks as he rolled out of the ring and jumped the rail. The fans were into this and all they did was headlock shoulderblock stuff, showed how over the full angle was. 

MD: We had maybe 25 seconds of this previously. I imagine those might have been the 25 seconds we needed but we have so little actual Mr. R footage, this is still interesting. They worked the first five minutes of a very conventional match with the usual chain wrestling. Dibiase was very into it and this was fine, but it's interesting just how normal and conventional it was. After about five minutes, Dibiase calls his cronies in and the heels all try to get Mr. R's mask, but he darts out of the ring like a trickster and hops the rail and wins by DQ. The energy at the end with the angle bit was very good but this was really all just a tease.

TKG: There was some cool fighting for top wristlock stuff here but this reminded me of a lot of the Mid South Dibiase technical fussbudgeting with no direction killing time before the loaded glove finish. I kind of need to feel like you are stealing a win for me to get mad at a DQ.

Les Thornton vs. Tommy Rogers

ER: My God Les Thornton is a little tank. Tommy Rogers had a real credible side headlock and he really cranked it in a few times, especially on one spot where Thornton tried to push off, but just when I thought I knew what snug was, Thornton made me say "whoa" aloud (in the bathroom at work where I was watching this) at how violent his reversal to headscissors was. Thornton pulled off the headscissor with such speed and force, in a way I haven't seen. Rogers couldn't have stopped this if he wanted to. Made me want to see a Thornton/Finlay match. Every headscissor looked great and Rogers sold his frustration in them so well. His hair pulls are done with such a quick snap that it made me smile when Rogers finally broke a headscissors with a knee straight to the head. Rogers has a clean sunset flip that looks like an actual pin, and Thornton really thunderclaps his ears with his legs to break. Love the bounce Rogers got on Thornton's butterfly suplex and how both men made every headlock exchange look like actual struggle and applied pressure. The finish had a couple things that didn't quite work. Thornton has a way of taking Rogers dropkicks that makes Tommy look like a chump, and Rogers tried a back suplex that saw him dropping Thornton's full weight onto himself. Thornton's pin reversal win looked like it didn't even have half the leverage of any of the headlock/headscissor exchanges. Basically I loved the first 13 a lot more than the last 2.   

MD: I thought this was going to be wrestled straight but as it went on Thorton leaned heel. There was a lot of ref interaction early. I liked him the first match but he got a little too involved here turning holds over, kicking the arms off when they were holding the ropes, etc. They did some really neat things with headscissors right after pins including a transition into a takeover from Rogers i'm not sure I'd ever seen.

The match opens up midway as Thorton starts to introduce heel tactics. It leads to a really big extended comeback by Rogers where Thorton keeps trying to cut him off but can't. That played more to Rogers' strengths so it was better than if this was just wrestled clean. The fans were pretty into it by the end and when Thornton holds onto the tights to win, they are very much not happy with him.

TKG: Meltzer wrote about Malenko v Benoit from Road Wild that it would be a great match with a different audience and I was like “fuck that, they would have worked it differently for different crowd”,,,the best part of that match is how hostile the work was making the crowd. I was joking with Phil the other day about a Les Thorton v Scott Mcghee match which the WWF had booked to kill heat and send crowd to concessions. I assume Vince Sr was getting percentage of concessions and built into his card formula were these log technical draws that were intended to get a hostile crowd response and send people to concession stands and my memory of Thorton v Mcghee was that crowd started “boring” chants from moment they came to ring but actually never left their seats for concessions, transfixed; just couldn’t take eyes of one guy has a headlock which other guy counters with a leg scissors and just got more and more hostile about the idea that it was holding their attention. Match had a bunch of same elements while that one was built around egging on hostility while this is built around the pops for the face and encouraging the cheers. We don’t build matches to kill crowds anymore and kind of miss it as an art….but this was really cool too

Wahoo McDaniel vs. Nikolai Volkoff

MD: Basically a slugfest. Volkoff had big over the top punches. Wahoo had straight shots and chops. Volkoff did do this one shot to the face that I thought was amazing and Wahoo, as he was firing back, did a chop where he just ran through Volkoff in a way that I hadn't seen him do too many times before. Volkoff did get one bearhug in there but it was functional and led to a wild clap escape by Wahoo. He hit both of his backbreaker variations (including the press slam one). Things got wild on the floor with Wahoo dodging a chairshot. This was one of those matches where it was just interesting to see how they made the noise for their strikes. Not stomps so much as recoil jumps, things like that. Eventually the ref, who had been all over the show as noted, tried to get in the way of a Wahoo choke and both guys ultimately tossed him for the no contest. Wahoo tried a bunch of elbowdrops to crush Volkoff but he kept on rolling to safety.

TKG: Crap, was Nikolai Volkoff always this bad? It is Wahoo, you can hit him. He won’t cry. Volkoff’s lift before backbreaker is always impressive but c’mon. Wahoo keeps on leaning into strikes and Volkoff pulls them even more. Aways a joy to see Wahoo tee off on someone but Volkoff is a shitty guy for him to be stuck against.

ER: Damn, was Nikolai Volkoff always this good? Do I like Nikolai Volkoff now? Wahoo is Wahoo and the chops (more than one to the face!) are great and his comeback had the heaviest shots of the match, but has Volkoff been good this whole time and I just haven't sought out any of it? Is the Don Muraco Eastern Championship Wrestling Title match good? Is the '94 WWF run good? Volkoff was a big weird guy here and I loved the way he kept awkwardly kicking at Wahoo's forehead like he was Bad Taue. Imagine how great Volkoff could have been had he just been Bad Taue? He throws his kicks up with the same awkwardness of Taue, but with normal body proportions so his legs aren't as long. He does two great backbreakers to Wahoo. Well, one good back backbreaker and one incredible backbreaker. Volkoff is one of our few wrestlers to make gear a part of his backbreaker. It must be so humiliating to not only have your back broken, but to have your singlet or trunks stretched and wedged and rearranged during the lift. Volkoff kept lifting higher and Wahoo's singlet kept stretching further, an insult I think worse than mussing someone's hair. He bumped bigger than I expected when Wahoo started firing back, getting upended by a running chop and pinballing all the way across the ring for Wahoo's excellent shoulder shrug to the jaw. 

Jake Roberts vs. Ron Garvin

MD: Just an exceptional match. With these GCW Omnis, we see the Jake Roberts that we were always promised, the master of psychology, of bringing the crowds up and down and using every dirty trick. He was good later on but was too much a babyface and without the room to breathe like he had here. His ribs were taped coming in so we had his reach and leverage and dirty tricks and Ellering at ringside against the promise that at some point in the match, Garvin would get free and use the hands of stone to punch those ribs. 

They built it and built it and built it, Roberts leaning hard on the ref disallowing punches and utilizing every hairpull, tights pull, piece of rope to choke, distraction from Ellering, everything he can manage. At one point he goads Garvin into the corner (with Garvin having the advantage) only for Ellering to pull the leg out. So much of the match is just a seated armbar, but they work it so well, with hope spots like Garvin pulling Roberts' shirt up to expose the taped ribs, just that. It's so good. He gets him once but Roberts' escapes, and then when he finally gets him and ties him up in the ropes, laying in shot after shot, the place comes unglued. The ref takes a great bump and while Garvin's able to stop Ellering from using the chair, Jake blindsides him and DDTs him on the chair. When the ref comes too he hits a couple of insult to injury elbow drops for the pin, keeping the program going and getting huge heat. Just a brilliant match, maybe even a perfect one for what they were trying to accomplish.

TKG: I think of Garvin as a guy who is relentless on offense, and less of as a guy who is really great at selling but he is…he isn’t bumping for strikes but somehow by standing tall and selling the toughness of not going down, he makes the strikes look far more legit. Also I am so used to TOUGH manager Paul Ellering, that exasperated throwing hands in the air freaking out Ellering was super fun.

ER: 1984 t-shirt Jake is such an amazing era of Jake Roberts. He never looked more like the most dangerous Molly Hatchet roadie. The load out guy who everyone fears but everyone knows is the guy who can get you crank...and beyond. He did not look like a wrestler or move like a wrestler and it's what made him one of the most compelling wrestlers. He did not throw his uppercut like a wrestler. When he throws five downward punches at Garvin's face when Garvin has him by the leg, he punches like a carny. When the throws cross chops at Garvin's throat they're...maybe the best non-punch strike you've seen. Jake is wearing a t-shirt to cover up his taped ribs, and this might be the only Garvin match I've seen based around him throwing body shots. Once he starts teeing off on Jake's ribs, even tying him up in the ropes like Andre, the crows loses their mind. The whole thing is incredible. Roberts stifles Garvin for so long and escapes at the right moments, and it all burns down as Roberts is finally getting his ribs battered while he sells it like he's doing kabuki, bent at the waist on tip toes. The finish is dynamite, with Garvin being spiked right on Ellering's chair with a DDT. You can't fake the way Garvin takes this DDT, that's a man going vertebrae first onto that chair. The best past is Jake doesn't pin him after that. He rouses the ref by shoving him the way a big brother would shove his little brother after calling him numb nuts, then when the ref is watching he falls onto Garvin with an elbowdrop. He grabs at his ribs on impact, totally worth it. Had this been on one of the DVDVR 80s sets, we would have called it one of the greatest Jake matches. Now we can. 

The Road Warriors vs. Stan Hansen/King Kong Bundy

PAS: In my mind this is an insane Kaiju battle, a tag version of Andre vs. Hansen. It wasn't that, much more of a traditional tag match, but it was delightful. I am going to leave Eric and Matt to rhapsodize about the initial lock up, but man was that beautiful stuff. We don't have a ton of Road Warriors stooging and bumping, and they do a great job of that early, I can't remember seeing Stan Hansen working face in peril, and we get a nice spoonful at once, I have definitely not seen hot tag Bundy, and hot tag Bundy was incredible. I wanted a bit more of an explosion at the end, it felt like this was a match setting up a huge gimmick blowoff, which never happened, but man what a treat.

MD: Finish or no finish, the fans got their money's worth on this one. It was, in some ways, very weird in the entire history of wrestling. GCW Roadies were still raw, were very willing to stooge and show ass in a way that they really wouldn't later. Bundy was a big towering babyface, and Hansen played face-in-peril. We don't have a ton of performances like this out of him. 

When they did finally take over on him, it was by focusing on the arm, the old Hansen standard, but his hope spots were great and rousing, just big booming attempts to fire back, with the fans getting behind him, before he'd get cut off. There were only so many teams in the world that could believably keep him down like this but the Road Warriors in 84 were on that list and they really made it work. Bundy coming in at the end was like a wrecking ball and yes, this broke down with Ellering grabbing Bundy's leg and all four guys firing off until the ref called it. It's great that the Road Warriors became what they did, but I do wonder what I would have looked like if they stayed on this road instead. Just a tremendous Hansen performance overall and a new piece of a puzzle that was already feeling complete. 

TKG: This was way more a standard tag than I was picturing but a pretty great standard tag. I assume most of this will be covered by everyone else but I really loved all the Hansen face in peril trying to make sure that he still was getting blood flow to his fingers while the Road Warriors working over his arm.

Ric Flair vs. Brad Armstrong

MD: This went how you'd expect it to go except for that maybe it stayed clean (though with Flair still strutting when he did well) for quite a while. I loved Brad's energy on his hope spots/comebacks. The bit where he climbs the bottom rope to start firing back on Flair was great and I want to see Daniel Garcia implement that as part of his act ASAP. Just super, balanced pro wrestling with a little something for everyone who might be watching in 1984. More of this please, and soon.

ER: I want to know more about the Donald Sutherland/Kurt Vonnegut led couple who left at the same time with the cool younger leather jacket couple. Leather jacket guy had his hand on his girl's inner thigh and they had just found out this Brad Armstrong headlock had hit the 10 minute mark. They made a look before both getting up at the exact same time and I didn't see a single solitary second the rest of the show where it looked like they even know they were there. A bunch of kids take their place and the 13 year old on the end is wearing a sleeveless Union Jack and has his arms crossed the entire time. He's the fucking coolest 13 year old I have ever seen at a wrestling show. 

TKG: The weird thing about the “traditional long slow build Flair main event” is how fucking fast paced it is. Like this is the fastest paced match on show. In theory Flair is trying to slow it down but it never slows and just builds. I also really like the way it feels like 2/3 falls match where it has parts, an initial technical fall section, a brawling section and a quick running exchange section that feel like they build off each other. At one point Flair does his first set of chops during the technical section to regain control and those are completely different than the type of chops he does during the actual brawling section.

TKG: Referee Scrappy McGowan worked this entire show solo and it is a real impressive performance. HE is neither a tough ref who is completely in control nor a ref in over his head struggling to assert himself but instead just a perfect medium. Guy who gets manipulated by heels but also stops heels from cheating. Of the Georgia refs, he isn’t one that I think of as getting talked up but he was really great throughout this show.

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