Found Footage Friday: DEAN~! 2 Special!!

In honor of DEAN 2~! tonight. Here are some found footage gems from DEAN 2~! stalwarts

Torneo Cibernetico: Felino/Mega/Rambo/Super Mega/Ultimo Vampiro vs. Blue Panther/Bombero Infernal/Dr. Cerebro/Negro Navarro/Scorpio Jr. (Torneo Cibernetico) IWRG 2/15/01

MD: Once this got going it was a lot of fun. You never expect too much out of the battle royale seeding part at the start and there wasn't a lot to see here either, save for everyone piling on Ultimo Vampiro in the corner at the end. The sheer talent in the match was such that once you got into the pairings, there was always someone amazing in the ring. Even though they were eliminated relatively early, Navarro and Cerebro got to stand out during those first few minutes, Navarro with his tricked out holds and understanding of how to project himself as a star and Cerebro by creating a lot of motion, taking a lot of stuff and contorting at least one person in unholy ways. Unfortunately, we only had one brief moment of Panther and Cerebro going at it, with Cerebro sitting up out of a Panther Tapatia.

They teased Mega vs Super Mega which the crowd wanted to see but if it happened, we didn't get to see it. There was a general excitement for rudo vs rudo pairings though. In general, I could have used a little more of both Dandy and Panther, but they both looked good in what they did do. Rambo got to shine with two rapid fire eliminations, first with this great double top arm wrench that someone should really steal and then with a seated campana. He fell almost immediately thereafter to a clever enough Scorpio foul only to get revenge at the end by sneaking one on him from the apron to let Panther win it. So fun stuff all around even if we only got the tiniest appetizer of Cerebro vs Panther.

PAS: This was fun rather then truly exceptional. We have some all timers on both sides, and we get glimpses of what made them great. A taste of Navarro, an appetizer of Cerebro, a sip of Dandy. Panther and Cerebro are the reasons we wrote up this match, and I did dig the little bit we got from them, 24 years later I am expecting more of a dish tonight. I really need to dig into this 01 IWRG Bihari is putting up, because I suspect their are some really hidden bangers (Panther vs. Felino on this show is closer to what we want) This wasn't one of them, but still well worth checking out.  

ER: Rob Bihari uploaded this lost gem not long after we announced the DEAN~! 2 Cibernetico, when I publicly said that we have no actual footage of Dr. Cerebro mixing it up with Blue Panther. The opportunity to prove me wrong led to us finally getting this Cibernetico out there for public consumption. When we found out who CMLL was letting us use for DEAN~! 2 we all immediately salivated at the idea of Cerebro getting minutes with Blue Panther and Virus, two compatriots that Cerebro hardly has any (taped) ring time against. There's an incredibly fun Cerebro/Virus singles from a decade ago (that Matt wrote up when he was just getting into lucha, which is funny to think in retrospect that it's only been a decade since Matt dove into lucha libre) and this Cibernetico that featured both Cerebro and Panther that was not in circulation. Once I publicly proclaimed that we had never seen Cerebro and Panther in the ring together, Rob swooped in minutes later proclaiming that we actually DO have that match in circulation now. Ask and ye shall receive, and we received a real gift. 

The DEAN~! 2 Cibernetico was one of the best Ciberneticos I have seen, and when I watched this match the morning of DEAN~! 2 my mind was in another place. I was somewhere else and watching this in a hotel room and pacing around my room until we left to go see the event space that morning and meet the crew. This match was on, and I was in theory watching it, but I knew I wanted to see it again. In the heat of the insanity that was the DEAN~! 2 live experience, every person backstage was buzzing during and after the Cibernetico. Blue Panther - at 64 - had one of the great performances of his life, young upstart Virus looked as good as ever, and really all 10 guys overdelivered in ways I don't think anyone expected. The DEAN~! 2 Cibernetico was, for me, the best case scenario for a match that looked like dynamite on paper. We got several to book several names that we never dreamed we'd have access to a year ago, and put them in a match with pairings we were dying to see. Then, it actually happened, and I was moved by how hard these men worked at our weird, exciting, outdoor Arizona mall show near a fountain display, lit by the neon signs of Universal Citywalk chain and axe throwing barcades. Nothing is going to compare to my memory of seeing this Cibernetico. Losing my mind with Phil, my good friend Will who I was meeting in person for the first time, wrestlers from DEAN~! and wrestlers who weren't on the show at all, is never going to be beat. Bryan Danielson coming out after your Cibernetico to give one of the greatest promos of his life, somehow convincing hundreds of people in the life affirming power of pro wrestling. 

I stated to at least a dozen people (probably more) over the rest of the night/weekend/next week, that I had watched a newly unearthed early 2000s IWRG Cibernetico and OUR Cibernetico, the one we all got to share, was better. I remember El Dandy suddenly being a top 25 guy on a DVDVR 500 and it made me want to get as much IWRG as possible. Trading for Negro Navarro matches, buying the Dr. Cerebro/El Hijo del Santo mask vs. mask match - and so many other shows - for $5 at Franks and Son Collectibles in some City of Industry warehouse whenever my friends and I would drive down to see wrestling. A 21 year old who now had opinions on Bombero Infernal and Rambo. Had this Cibernetico been available on VHS on any of the trips we made to Franks and Son lucha shows, I obviously would have bought it. Blue Panther, Cerebro, Dandy, Navarro, Felino, all guys I was buying tapes specifically to see. But I had never seen this match until Rob uploaded it, and it had the misfortune of being watched on the same day I witnessed live the most special Cibernetico of my life. 

So the competition was going to be stiff. The mindset was different, my brain was operating on other matters, I am no longer in a hotel room after binging on a breakfast buffet with the DEAN~! crew since we wouldn't be eating again for another 12-16 hours. Now, we're a couple weeks removed from DEAN~! 2, I've finally floated back to earth, I was finally ready, I can finally admit...this is a really great Cibernetico. I still don't think it's better than the one on DEAN~! but I don't think that matters because as with all Ciberneticos, this had things that no other one had. Maybe the only knock against this one is that it never felt like it built to a fever pitch and didn't have as much ongoing story threads, but at the same time it's filled with guys who I could watch wrestle in 2nd gear for hours. That is not to say that anyone dogged it, it just never built to any big bumps and dives, and I think that's incredibly cool in a different way. 

Also, all of these legendary names enter the ring collectively to Survivor's Burning Heart, which feels more like something you'd see at the beginning of a 90s Germany catch tournament show when everyone on that card has to come out and stand in the ring like an idiot. I don't think these Cibernetico teams were chosen based on their allegiances to Communism or Capitalism, but maybe this match is aligned deeper than I realized. 

I think everyone here had some legit moments. My favorites? Cerebro, Panther, Navarro, Bombero Infernal, Rambo. Maybe Rambo. I love Rambo. I love luchadors who move like Rambo. He looks like a poor kid in faded camouflage pajamas, just looking like total shit in there, but then he and Dandy are rolling and he dives into Dandy's leg with a takedown and Dandy is selling for him with that spirited 2001 energy he had and it's everything I want in lucha. Rambo's huracanrana roll up on Navarro is such a great surprise, smoother than even Dr. Cerebro's. Nobody bumps to the floor over the bottom rope like Rambo anymore. The old man luchador style of getting to the floor has been phasing out for a long time, and Rambo's exits are smooth and graceful and faster than you'd expect. "Faster than you'd expect" is one of the joys of older lucha statesmen. He hits two great butt butts into Dandy and the man shouldn't be this damn good with gear that bad. He's 15 years past losing his mask here and he's hitting his double wristlock and butt attacks like a 30 year old. 

The guys I fully expected to be standouts - Cerebro, Navarro, Panther, Dandy - were, and had a half dozen sequences each that any fan of theirs would want to see. Negro Navarro started the whole thing super hot with Super Mega, with the kind of llave and rolling I could watch for an entire match. Navarro had this drop toehold that seemed to work in reverse, body going one way, legs tripping Mega the other way, bending space and time for what could have been a simple single leg trip. Navarro has a snapmare strong enough that it could have been a piece of actual offense, and he kept gravitating to teaming with Panther to target Dandy in cool ways. Cerebro was incredibly vicious, a totally different approach than he's worked the last 15-20 years. He was real aggressive and rudo stiff. In the battle royal he was always running into frame swinging hard horizontal rights. He had great shtick to accompany mat bumps that were harder than everyone else's. His short run against Blue Panther was great fun, with a Cerebro huracanrana roll up and excellent Panther surfboard with awesome power. He also got all his limbs tied up by Bombero, who was holding the ropes so blatantly while laughing like a supervillain that nobody got in his way. Panther's crucifix on Dandy was maybe the most vicious submission of the entire affair, with Panther bending him back forceful, not smoothly, while Dandy screamed and crab walked slowly to a bottom rope.

Watch this Cibernetico. It's great. It's got as many special moments as the best Ciberneticos. They're all unique snowflakes. Can any nation truly stand alone? Maybe we'll answer David Bickler's question on DEAN~! 3. 

Rhyno vs. Low-Ki PWS 6/7/14 - GREAT

PAS: This was kind of a compact TV match, about seven minutes, pretty stiff, just a nice piece of business. Ki hits a couple of nasty kicks on Rhino a guy that square must seem like a perfect heavy bag for him. They each get a kick out of their big move, Ki liquifies his insides with a Warrior's Way for a two, and Ki gets a kick out of the Gore. Match ended with a bit of an awkward roll up, which kind of felt like two guys who couldn't agree on a finish. Give it another big move or two and it would really sing. 

JR: I'll always have a soft spot for Rhyno. I remember being right at the age where I could read magazines when he was coming up in ECW and finding out he had done time and being both mystified and terrified. I remember going to those Hardcore Homecoming shows less than 10 years later, and him working heel, cutting promos about how he was slumming it for a night before going back to TNA, and the guy behind me trying to get a "Bound for Glory" chant going.

What can be said about Low Ki that hasn't already been said? A captivating worker, an inscrutable person. If you hate Low Ki, you are anti-labor.

I had no idea what to make of most of this. I thought it funny that Rhyno is always notable for making his stuff look great while working pretty light, while Low Ki is notable for...the opposite of that. Here, I think they kind of don't know what to do with one another. In someways, it's a match between two guys who are good at working from underneath but primarily want to find ways to control pace, and I don't think either of them really found a way to get in a groove. I thought at the beginning, Rhyno was going to work kind of like a Stan Hansen brawl on the outside with Ki doing a Tommy Rich impression, and then when they didn't do that, I thought Ki would find a way to stick and move around the bigger man, but neither thing happens. Instead, we kind of get a house show match with a finish that feels like more generous on behalf of Rhyno, which I suppose is to be expected.

MD: I loved the look of this one, shot from underneath with those big windows up top. The crowd was more behind Rhino though he tried to turn them. Ki didn't care about them one way or the other. He just did his thing, full steam ahead. Rhino treated him like an absolute equal, like they were the exact same size. There was a small feeling early on that if Rhino just caught him that'd be enough, but it didn't last. He recoiled from Ki's chops. He focused on the back because size alone wouldn't cut it; it would open the door but it wouldn't even contain Ki, let alone defeat him. That led to a fairly long bearhug in a fairly short match but you didn't mind it much. I didn't mind the finish either, where Rhino kicked out of Warrior's Way and Ki kicked out of the Gore before Rhino got rolled up with a lumpy sunset flip as he went for the second one. I would have just liked those kickouts to register a little more emotionally. No one was expecting Ki to kick out but once he did, life just moved on. It's less the shocked face I'm looking for so much as the resolve that one gore simply wasn't enough and he had no choice but to charge back in, even though he was unknowingly charging towards defeat. I never got that feeling and to me that would have put the match just enough over the top.

ER: It looks like I'm the unexpected high voter on this match. It was everything I wanted out of a Ki/Rhino match and more. This was in the back half of a *13 Match Show*, some kind of damned spiritual successor to vintage post-midnight USA Pro shows of a decade prior, and it gets harder to harder to stand out in any way on a show like that. Well these too stood out. Low Ki hit Rhino hard enough multiple times to actually move him. I bet Rhino hasn't felt many chops harder than Ki's, and I know he felt that kick to the thigh later. I have now stood next to Rhino and realize that he is the same height as me, while being probably twice my width. He is a large freezer garage filled with 36 count packs of soft drinks but Low Ki's palm thrusts to the chest looked like something that actually would have tipped that fridge over. 

Rhino is one of out more uniquely shaped men and I love him working a bearhug down to one knee after press slamming Ki onto the buckles. Low Ki has excellent selling and this unmatched ability to recoil on bumps like no other wrestler has (maybe Lio Rush?), selling something huge like a bump to the apron or something less like a headbutt to the stomach or creating activity in a bear hugs. It makes him an ideal opponent for a man of any size, but a big couch of a man like Rhino can make him pinball and rebound in the best ways. And, as Rhino is the size of a couch, Low Ki treats him like me doing Macho Man elbowdrops onto my parent's couch, fucking up that couch with a Warriors Way, just messing up this living room set of a man.

Ki took the Gore so well that it makes the move feel new all over again. It was a great Gore anyway, and would have been great no matter who was taking it. What I loved most about it was how Rhino did not do his typical set up out of the corner but instead used it as a much cooler 180 surprise. He shot past Low Ki with a clothesline and turned on a dime to stop him cold as Ki was rebounding off the ropes. It looked fucking awesome and I don't remember seeing him use it as a momentum stopper. Rhino is always the one supplying the momentum behind it. I wasn't expecting Low Ki to kick out of that surprise Gore and I wasn't expecting Rhino to kick out of the Warriors Way so both popped me good. And I loved the finish, with Ki leaping over a  Gore that Rhino had set up at a charging distance, showing that Rhino should have kept trying to surprise the ninja and not give him any of time to quick react counter. When Low Ki is given actual time to react to an attack, he has too many ways to use that time against his opponent, and Rhino paid for that error. 

Mad Dog Connelly vs. Jordan Blade PPW 9/25/22

PAS: This was Connelly's first dog collar match, and outside of the Demus match I think it is my favorite. These were two staples of the PPW UWFI rules division, and this had the pace of a one round MMA brawl with a chain. All gas, no breaks stuff with both wrestlers trying to decapitate each other with huge chain shots from the break. I loved how nasty all of the wrestling moves felt with the chain in the mix, everything felt like it could go wrong and someone could land temple first on steel. The whole thing felt like a finishing run, sometimes you want to sip, sometimes you want to shoot straight whiskey. 

MD: There's such a Hansen-ian bent to Connelly and especially his chain matches. It's all implicit storytelling, the path of least resistance. They're not building a castle in the sky. They're not loading Chekhov's Gun. They're hitting you with a shotgun blast to the face. There's a cold hard logic to eternal forward motion. The train's coming. Either you can stop it or not.

And at times, Blade could. Connelly went for a choke with it almost from the get go and that put him at a disadvantage that allowed for a German Suplex. Less could be done when he hit the floor and simply pulled. That said, it wasn't until the chain came loose and the ref halted proceedings that he was finally able to start choking Blade with it, striking mercilessly by surprise. That was the opening for the gutwrenches, three in a row, with the chain dangerously dangling between them enhancing the image of each impact.

Blade was skilled, strong, and tenacious though and had an honest shot at it, but wrapping the chain around Connelly's face to further mangle him wasn't the way to go. Thus equipped, loaded, primed, he burst forth, that aforementioned shotgun blast in the form of a headbutt (because I can load Chekhov's Gun in this review, even if he won't). Maybe one last hopeful Blade Rear Naked Choke followed, but it was too little too late, for Connelly was able to roll through and end it with the selfsame sense of brutality that he tried to begin it with. There's no out-hating the Mad Dog in a dog collar match. The chain knows who it serves.

ER: I'm not sure this even goes 5 minutes and it clearly didn't need to go longer than that. I saw this match for the first time in 2024. Phil showed it to me in our motel room the night before the first DEAN~! show. I was sitting up in the bed that we would be sharing - there was some mistake because the in-over-his-head motel manager messed something up with our reservations, giving us a small room with one bed and Tom K the literal largest hotel room I have ever been in - and Phil was seated at the motel desk, laptop on desk. We were both exhausted after a very long travel day. I had a red eye flight and had hung out with friends in Philly all day, so I had not actually slept in over 36 hours. But we were both excited about the show the next day, and Phil asked if I had ever seen Mad Dog vs. Jordan Blade. I had not. 

Now we are in a post-DEAN~! 2 world and I saw more than one person disappointed that Mad Dog vs. Adam Priest "only" went 7 minutes, but I am of the mindset that Mad Dog Collar matches don't need to go that long at all. This is a wild man, unleashed, and most humans aren't going to be able to take a "normal" main event's worth of time enduring a chain beating and chain choking. This match against Blade is a complete match in its 5 minutes. There's no way to stop Mad Dog, only briefly slow him down, and I thought it was great how Blade didn't wrestle a bad match, she just got overwhelmed and couldn't find a way back in. It doesn't diminish her, doesn't mean her strategy was bad, she just got beat by a maniac. She tried to stop the boulder from rolling down the hill but those arms get tired real quick and before long you realize you can't even step aside, that boulder is going straight over the top of you. 

Hard to believe this was Mad Dog's first collar match and he already had full mastery of the chain. I lost my mind when Blade wrapped the chain all around his face and it only made Mad Dog want to use his face as a weapon. It was a good idea but she couldn't have predicted how Mad Dog would have reacted to having a face full of chain. If you've already taken balled up chained up fists to the head and barely weathered those, you just can't prepare for a chain wrapped maniac's face. I love how Mad Dog's violence does not just revolve around the chain. The chain is a weapon he will use but also a tool he will use to facilitate violence, in the same way the Gracie's used their gi to advance to the real violence. He knows how to use the chain to cut angles and change distance, but it is not his only method to bring violence. One of the more violent things in a match made of violence happened on the floor, when Mad Dog just charged into Blade's face with a back elbow. No chain needed, while the threat of the chain loomed always.

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: STUDD~! WANZ~! COCOS~! NOSAWA~! MASADA~! FANTASMAS~!

Big John Studd vs. Otto Wanz CWA 12/20/83

MD: This is a 40 minute John Studd vs. Otto Wanz match from December 1983 found in the massive lot of tapes that @maskedwrestlers was able to rescue from Germany. Go hit him up if you want to see it. Obviously, I jumped at it. I covered a slew of Wanz matches years ago and he has excellent timing, hits hard, and has a singular connection with the crowd. As the 80s roll on, he becomes less and less mobile and while none of those skills fade, the matches do suffer a bit for it. Then there's Studd. In so many ways, he's the most human of the giants, emoting frustration, fear, hatred, resentment. He's a two-hundred pound stalling stooge in a much larger frame. It creates an amazing dissonance he can use to rile an audience, but that dissonance unfortunately carries over to not being particularly dynamic on offense. 

This overachieved and I think it did so because the environment maximized the opportunity for these two to lean into their strengths. This match takes place over nine rounds. There's a minute rest period with music playing in between each. While the narrative can build over rounds, it creates a clear break and bit of respite. Studd has a reputation of sitting in some fairly uninteresting holds and there's very little of that there. There were other advantages as well. Studd's height allows him to strike down and always have an excuse for getting back into the match. They're both massive and everything, from a lock-up to punch to a snap mare to one of them daring to go up to the turnbuckles feels weighty and consequential. The ten count to win added gravitas to every knockdown as well. Maybe most important of all is the fact that Otto is very good at working from underneath in holds, constantly moving his hands, constantly trying to fight his way to a different position. That's more than half the battle against Studd. The crowd was hot the whole way through. There were two camera angles here, spliced together; one picked up the crowd better than the other, but they were buzzing, constantly chanting "Otto, Otto".

If any one of these pieces dropped, it might have been a slog, but none of them did. Let's take it through the text itself. This is going to be a little dry but I want to make the case knowing people may not have forty minutes for this. Right from the get go, after the anthems, Studd was quick to shove Otto, to demand a test of strength. They locked up, shoved off, crashed off the ropes into each other and shook the entire arena. Studd struck downwards with elbows and clubbers. Otto would come back off the ropes with big meaty shots. Studd would attempt a chinlock, a standing one at the end of the second round with him peppering in a knee, and grounded ones in the third, but Otto was quick to get up and the third ended with him jamming Studd's mare and turning it around, to a big pop from the crowd. 

Otto pressed the advantage in the fourth round, dropping Studd with a single leg and then rowing along in time with the crowd's chants with a standing toehold. Otto had a way to make these interesting and entertaining, whether working on top or from the bottom. They had teased slamming each other earlier, but at the end of this round, riding his momentum, Otto finally got Studd up and over as the bell rang. Right after, I'm Still Standing played for the crowd and it felt like a high point in some DreamWorks animated movie. In the fifth, Studd, desperate, was able to get Otto out of the ring and brawled with him there. He caught him on the way back in and layed in some heavy shots. He couldn't hold back Wanz for long though and Otto controlled this middle portion fairly well, even through Studd's attempt to work his arm in the sixth. 

By the seventh round, Studd was at his wit's end. He demanded they announce over the house mic that he had previously said that Otto was going down in the seventh. Otto charged in, they slugged it out, and Otto got the best of him in the corner at hit his signature flip senton. Studd was a bedraggled, sweaty mess by this point. He managed a cheapshot and a corner  beatdown of his own, but Otto powered up and tosses Studd from the ring. There was a clear narrative throughline in all of this, and while it could have potentially been a bit more dramatic, the crowd wanted to see Otto fight back again and again and it led to what happened after the seventh. Instead of staying in his corner, Studd attacked between rounds. This was treated like a horrific offense, with officials and Wanz's second coming in only to get dispatched with ease by Studd to a chorus of boos. Studd beat Wanz around ringside before pulling down the corner pad and opening him up with the metal underneath. Otto was able to fire back at the bell but Studd had the advantage.

Studd pressed that advantage in the ninth, picking Otto up a couple of times with a level of aggression you wouldn't expect out of him at this point of the match, before crashing into the exposed post himself, and finally getting slayed for the ten count (if just barely) by an Otto pile driver. 

Between the round system and Otto's ability to work from underneath, this never slowed down for long. The level of motion may have been more subdued but how hard they hit didn't. Studd taking three or four big steps across the ring to lay a clothesline across Wanz' chest was absolutely impactful. And those times when they really moved, whether it be Studd missing an elbow drop or Wanz coming flying off the top with a big shot, meant all the more for the build. Lots of little bits of build and payoff throughout too, whether it was Otto hitting that slam or changing the trajectory of the match by jamming the mare attempt. They very much knew what they were doing and while I think this could have been even stronger if Studd took slightly more of the middle, that only made his egregious (and dissontant; why does someone so big have to do that!) cheating between the seventh and the eight mean all the more. This was an unquestioned accomplishment. They went forty minutes, never losing the crowd, always hitting hard, utilizing holds at times but not wearing out their welcome and never just sitting there, finishing strong.

ER: I always think of Matt as the Big John Studd Guy because Matt was the guy who really dove into what made Studd different from other big workers, learning his patterns and strengths better than anyone else I know. I think I was close to the trail. I remember talking to Phil about him years ago, tell Phil that Studd wasn't anywhere near as big as he was billed. I thought he had Big Dick Dudley or Col. DeBeers size and build and was a fake big man. A man with military posture like DeBeers or Nick Nolte in Who'll Stop the Rain. Adding size. But I was just being tricked by Studd's sometimes odd style, the smallest working giant we've ever had. Matt recognized it for the oddity it was and cracked the code on what the best assets of Studd were. So Matt covered this match well, as I knew he would. Matt left me the link to this match in the draft of our review and told me to "give myself time." I did, because of course I wanted to watch 40 minutes of a Giant and an Obese Regional Megastar. I love the fat regional babyface. I love Big Daddy. Imagine if Abdullah the Butcher was the big Puerto Rico babyface and Carlos Colon was the island's greatest heel? The feud would be even more blowaway great than their actual feud. 

This is 40 minutes of big man wrestling heaven, where two behemoths worked like rival lumbering mastodons punctuated by polka and electronic instrumental themed rest breaks. It was slow but always intense. Otto Wanz is a real favorite of mine. I love a country who gets behind a big fat guy who looks like a King of Fighters character, and is the kind of fat guy that looks more normal in a double strap singlet than he does in normal clothes. John Studd has some of the great understated gear in wrestling. The long white tights have literally never been pulled off better. The fit impeccable, the build never more impressive. John Studd looked like a tree of a man and Wanz looked like a Bill Plympton drawing. His face has this youthful woundability, and no matter how short or long any Wanz match is, it will be constantly filled with Otto chants. Otto is a master of falling into ropes in dramatic ways, hitting the bottom rope on Studd's short arm western lariats to the fucking face, falling sideways or chest first into them reeling from other strikes. 

This was not a stiff match but had the appearance of a stiff match, an exquisitely worked long match where every single impact had real weight behind it. The longer they worked, the more dramatic it felt. This felt like a true clash of the titans. Studd was not a cheating heel, and often he would call his shot in a more badass way than I've seen from anyone this side of Stan Hansen: multiple times pointing to his very large flexed forearm before swinging it straight at the bridge of Otto's nose. Every time either one of them fell or was knocked down felt like a major deal. The few spills through the ropes to the floor felt like major moments all, none bigger than Studd kicking Otto's ass around ringside while a worried man on the house mic pleads with him to stop and a large old man in a dinner jacket keeps getting dangerously involved. 

The drama and big match feel were so strong here that you wouldn't even need to know anything about Wanz or Studd. You would be easily able to see their appeal even though nobody else works quite like them. I loved the pacing of this, I loved how it felt like it really could have kept going a full hour. I knew Matt had my best interests in mind when leaving a 50 minute link to a Wanz/Studd match, but I never anticipated feeling robbed of a longer match. 

IWRG Retro 3/8/2001

Suicida/Coco Rojo/Coco Blanco vs. Payaso Misterioso/Nosawa/Masada

MD: More IWRG Retro. This is episode 27 which feels like a high number so I probably have to go back and see what I missed. This is the same show with the Santo/Silver King trios main event. This from the undercard definitely worked for me. Nice mix of Nosawa and Masada moving at high speed with Segura, including doing a great job of getting into position for his stuff and then everyone just playing into Los Cocos' act with a bunch of crowd pleasing comedy stuff. Payaso Misterioso had some heft to him so Segura bounced right off of him, but then he'd stumble into a shot from Rojo or Blanco to get knocked out of the ring, that sort of deal. The primera had the beatdown, the segunda the comedy in the comeback, and then they cycled through fairly quickly in the tercera. The finish had Los Cocos get the advantage on the Japanese with quebradoras into submissions, only for a third figure to come in to disrupt things. Probably Minoru Fujita? What we had here was a little clipped but it was 13 minutes of good fun overall.

Enterrador/Bombero Infernal/Black Metal vs. Fantasma/Fantasma Jr/Ultimo Vampiro

MD: Pretty complete trios match here. Fantasma Sr. was just over 50 here if I'm not mistaken. Jr. is his nephew and, alongside, Vampiro, rounded out the tecnico side with flying since Sr. wasn't going to do that.. The rudo side were better than the sum of their parts. Black Metal was tall and Enterrador ("Undertaker") was wide in an Abyss sort of way. Apparently he'd have a mask match with Ultimo Vampiro later that year and from what I saw here, I sort of wonder if that exists. (Edit: It does.). Point being, in the segunda especially, Bombero Infernal was directing traffic as a poor man's Satanico and it all went quite well. Fantasma, Sr. was very giving, allowing for his mask to get pulled in a big way. He was front and center for the comeback, moving out of the way of an Enterrador dropkick. Black Metal used his height to the fullest, first eating a double dropkick from Fantasma, Jr. and Vampiro and then basing for a huge over the top dive. The finish had Enterrador vs Fantasma where Fantasma fooled Bello Greco (who had ref duties here) by tossing his mask to a charging Enterrador to draw the DQ. Totally blatant, no way the ref should have been followed, but wildly charming at the same time.

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