Found Footage Friday: LOS BRAZOS~! LAWLER~! REDD DOGG~! EDDY~! REY~! JBL~! hhh~!

Humberto Garza Jr/Principe Franky/Tigre Universitario vs. Los Brazos Monterrey 4/24/94

MD: Tecnico vs tecnico encounter with the Brazos vs locals. Pretty much as fun as it sounds. First two falls were a blast. Franky matched up with Brazo, Tigre with Oro, and Garza with Porky. Then they switched it around in the segunda. Primera had a couple of exchanges each with matwork/chain wrestling leading into rope running in the second. It all hit for me. Then Porky accidentally splashed his brothers and celebrated and they argued and hugged and you've seen it dozens of times and it always works. In the segunda, there was a bit more animosity due to a Brazos kick and this time around a stumbling but spectacular Porky splashed all three off the top to even the falls up.

Tercera had them trade holds (but not really break them up, which was interesting). There was a nice Porky/Franky exchange in there where Porky hit a couple of big power moves before stretching him a bit. He could have been an absolute killer in another world. Then they cycled into the tandem spots, like La Estrella with the associated 'rana, and back and forth leglocks where everyone got involved. After simultaneous pins. things got pretty exciting between Oro and Garza (I think, look, it's far away and blurry) before they pinned one another. There was a great nearfall where the Brazo got a killer grounded punch countering a pin attempt. But the fans, who were chanting for their locals the whole way through, got to see then go to a draw with the larger than life stars at least. Any new Brazos is immediately worth watching. 

ER: I don't know if there's anything that makes me happier than the words New Super Porky Handheld. Handhelds are my favorite kind of wrestling, the difference between a great soundboard recording or a great recording from the pit, and they can each reveal such different things about a match. It turns a match into a completely different experience, putting you inside a crowd to see what they're seeing. Super Porky is one of our greatest handheld wrestlers ever; he's a man whose case as a mega star legend grows more and more with every new Los Brazos handheld over a 15 year stretch. Early 90s house show Porky was a force of nature, the ultimate babyface who felt like a genuine cultural phenomenon. It's fitting that Principe Franky comes out to Selena's "Amor Prohibido". I don't think I've ever considered comparing Brazo de Plata to Selena, but whenever I see Super Porky working to god level reactions in some LA high school gym, it feels like the same kind of cultural secret. One broke mainstream for the saddest reason, one became the weirdest and completely botched WWE signing ever.     

Porky is a master entertainer, a legend who works every reaction from a packed Monterrey arena that on tape looks stacked with German Expressionist angles. Porky works just another match where every single movement gets a great reaction. It's like when Elvis is cracking jokes during the late night set at the International and he's actually funny and deserves laughs, in front of a crowd who would also love him if his jokes were bad. Porky has that charisma and as much variety in strong material. 

All three Brazos looked strong, all match. Brazo de Oro is a high end great matwork guy who hasn't survived as a referenced name when discussing great mat workers. This is a long match and his gas tank through long match filling-while-engaging fast matwork was a highlight. Brazo is a consistent treat in the handhelds, for the brother who became the least worker by the 2000s he's a great fusion of Oro with a meaner streak. But everyone is there on their Sunday afternoon to go nuts for every riff Porky takes off with. When he splashes his brothers to end the first fall, you can tell the buzz in the crowd is caused by them all being familiar with the branching ways the aftermath could go. Los Brazos are so good at playing off learned material, expanding on regular spots and adding punchlines. As his brothers approached him, I was so giddy waiting for Brazo to smack Porky, and for Porky to shed wounded tears to squealing admirers, that I actually squealed when Oro pecked his brother was a soft kiss. Prime Brazos didn't ever miss. 

Have we all seen Super Porky actually getting STUCK under the bottom rope as a routine? My memory is terrible so forgive me if I've come to this conclusion on several Porky matches before but I'd like to think my declining brain would retain the image of Porky's big round butt hung up on the bottom rope like a crawling toddler held in place by his diaper. The referee ran over to him, freeing him so lovingly. He reworks the spot after the confusing and disappointing finish, where everyone is waiting for him to get back in the ring and he gets stuck trying to roll in. Nobody leaves the arena when the match is over, 1/4 of this link is just a packed arena celebrating Super Porky, lingering, drawing out poses so they can listen to the entirety of "Amor Prohibido", then only one month old. Undeniable.   

Jerry Lawler vs. Redd Dogg WWE 10/22/02 - GREAT

MD: Richard Land posts Raw and Smackdown feeds every month and usually that gives us a dark match with Steve Bradley or Scott Vick or someone, which is fine but not usually worth covering. This was in Memphis holding court against Jerry Lawler vs the future Rodney Mack. That's worth covering, even if it only went around five minutes.

Maybe I'm biased but this was very good. Dogg slammed Lawler to start and Lawler shot him a look and the Jerry chants started. Dogg did it again and howled. Then he hit a back body drop and was really feeling it, right until he went for another and the punches started. Lawler finished it with his own body slam and dropkick which Dogg sold by rolling to the outside and having a fit and the crowd went up big for all of this of course. 

They followed with rope running and Lawler caught himself on the criss-cross and strutted, and I wonder how many indie matches he did that in over that three month period. He dodged a corner charge and hit a nice bulldog and pointed to Dogg who sold it as the fans chanted again. Mack probably deserved to get a spot out of this one as he was playing into everything very well. He took over with a nice punch in the corner (selling his hand) but Lawler got his knees up on a splash and then dropped the strap in the most self-aware, funny way possible. This was a ritual celebration and at this point turned into a ritual slaughter Punches, mare, second rope fistdrop and Lawler could go back to greeting everyone at ringside as if they were old friends and kissing babies (well, maybe let's not).

ER: For as much time as he actually spent in WWF, there is so little Lawler match footage that I get excited anytime something like this turns up. Lawler is an excellent short match worker and every four minute Lawler match provides insight into who he was as a worker. This is a cool situation to see him work. He was far from a WWE regular in 2002 - his year saw him work three TV matches, two dark matches, and two house show tags - and here he gets to work as hometown legend vs. a larger, almost complete unknown who had been working house shows and dark matches. It's a great spot for Redd Dogg to be in, too, as he gets an opponent to sink his teeth into, someone who the crowd really wants to see succeed for them. To this point he'd only been in dark matches teaming opposite Charlie Haas, or working Batista on house shows. Against Lawler, in Memphis? Suddenly he has an actual canvas. 

I really loved the surprised reaction Lawler got, people excitedly rising to their feet when they realized Lawler would be wrestling, not doing commentary. Actually, it is really odd seeing him wrestling in a Smackdown ring. Have I seen Lawler wrestling on Smackdown? What is this Velocity? That never happened. I'm sure I saw some nothing Lawler match on Smackdown, but Lawler coming out to the Velocity color scheme is new, and gives this match some unidentified energy. 

This is only a few minutes, but few are better than Lawler at setting up a short story with payoffs. Was Bobby Eaton still employed by the company? Anyway, Lawler takes early match bodyslams that lead to his own later match bodyslams, he takes a dark match back body drop - I thought Redd Dogg set it up way too close to the ropes when he shot him in, but Lawler found a way to take a great one anyway - and the next time Dogg dropped his head for one Lawler dropped to a knee to punch him. The more Lawler makes his way into the match, the more the crowd reacts with glee, perhaps none more than when Lawler holds the ropes on a criss cross and floats into a Fargo strut like he was Fred Astaire. I knew I'd be rewinding any fistdrops that would be occurring, but I didn't expect to watch Lawler maneuver his way into a Fargo strut a half dozen times. I watched it frame by frame, watching his feet, watching how he hit the ropes and spun those feet lithely into place, strut locked into a groove. I'm happy we got a classic Lawler ugly dropkick, lest I feel the need to use the word "lithe" again. 

Redd Dogg's two big pieces of offense were two excellent right hands in the corner. I don't remember Rodney Mack having such great shutdown right hands, the kind of punch you only have to throw once or twice, like Chuck Palumbo's. Lawler's selling of the two punches, especially the second one that drops him to a knee and sends a hand to his jaw, feeling for any breaks. Loved how Redd Dogg shook out his fist after the second one, perhaps in reaction to Lawler's selling, perhaps because he knew what a great looking punch it was. As the rules state, anyone who shakes their fist out after a decent punch is automatically a very good wrestler. I've yet to find anyone who shakes their fist out while still looking like a bad wrestler, but I am excited for whomever eventually forces me to break that rule. 

It's WWF, so it was no guarantee that Lawler made a comeback in his hometown, but when he does we get yet another variety of strap drop: The crowd all knew the strap was about to be dropped, Lawler knew they knew and held up a finger waiting for their patience (the same way he held up a finger while in a side headlock, before backdropping Andy Kaufman), because he wanted to make sure Redd Dogg was looking right at him when the strap came down. Lawler waited to meet Redd Dogg's eyes, the way Stone Cold would get down into someone's face and blast the double middles straight into their eyes. Lawler finishes him with a bolo punch fistdrop from the middle buckle that lands so beautifully I watched it a half dozen times, just like the Fargo strut. Lawler shook out that arm the whole flight and if you didn't know what a Lawler fistdrop was you'd swear he just sent a fist into Redd Dogg's forehead as hard as he could. 

Undertaker/Batista/Rey Mysterio vs. Triple H/Eddy Guerrero/JBL WWF 7/19/05

MD: The biggest appeal of these dark matches is always to see wrestlers interact. I immediately want to see what JBL and Eddy teaming in 05 looks like, right? After their feud the year before. Our first image instead, however, is Triple H standing across from Rey and Batista flexing and Undertaker doing the throat cut, Rey in the middle, telling him he better damn well get out there and be David to a dubious Goliath. Apparently there was never a Rey vs Trips singles match. Seems like a huge oversight on his part as Rey would have made him look as good as anyone, right? This would have been the first time they ever faced off. 

So what happens? Triple H gets down on his hands and knees, begs off as a joke, punches the air like he was facing Little Beaver, and then Rey dropkicks him. Triple H sells it huge, sprawls out all over the place...

... and the fans start chanting Eddie Sucks. The Career of Triple H in a nutshell. 

Then the match goes from ridiculous to sublime as Eddy makes faces and tags in, the fans go nuts, and he immediately tags out to a scar-ridden JBL. JBL gets a shit eating grin, happy to be facing off against Rey, and then just as he gets in, Rey tags off to the Undertaker. JBL turns right back around, tags Eddy, and then he and Triple H take a powder, leaving Eddy in there with Taker.

The thing is, Triple H has to go along with it. He can't push against the heat here. He can undercut a babyface or someone with a political power disparity but he can't undercut Eddy. So after things cycle around to Eddy and Rey, and Eddy begs off and hugs Trips, all he can do is act like second banana to Shawn again and take the groan shot from Eddie's head as Rey runs over and slams it. Triple H is a survivor. 

For some reason, the crowd sweetening seems to go wild after that (even though it's a dark match) but they run a spot where Rey pulls down Triple H's pants and he runs around the ring, dragging Rey on the mat behind him, so obviously he knew what he was up against here. Then, during the ensuing Triple H/Batista "pec-off", JBL comes in posing like Road Warrior Animal and they all give him "too much, cut it out" expressions while he walks out of the ring with a kicked puppy face. Half the effort for at least an equal result.

(And yes, when Trips and Batista finally have an exchange and Batista clotheslines him over the top, the Eddie Sucks chants start anew).

Both Batista and Taker let themselves slip under a bit and then came back only for Rey to get caught in the fallaway slam by JBL. They worked him over on the outside, including a moment of JBL leaping over the rail as Taker got close. The crowd sweetening started up again, a wave of someone hitting the button every few seconds and it was pretty maddening. And so confusing. This is a dark match from 20 years ago! What the heck.

After some pretty solid cutoffs... look, when this dropped, I joked to Eric we'd get to see Triple H landing on a boot after a flying nothing and then staring at the lights for a minute before flopping. I was kidding. I shouldn't have been. That's what sets up the last burst against Eddy and the hot tag. Thankfully, it's not quite a minute, and it was made better by JBL trying to talk to Triple H through it, but, that's it for me. I'm out. Maybe Eric will mention Triple H taking everyone's finish or taking one last scare bump for Taker. Maybe he'll mention the drama of Taker milking a handshake to Batista and a fist bump to Rey. Me? I'm moving on to the next match.

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: 1991 WWF TAPING~!

WWF London Ontario 2/16/91

MD: This is all new save for the Crush vs. Butch match, and therefore, we'll cover the rest.

Koko B. Ware vs. The Barbarian

MD: Early on, Lord Alfred talks about seeing a young, young Barbarian in Puerto Rico when he was wrestling there with Monsoon and I wish we had 70s Lord Alfred in Puerto Rico. Ah well.

This was very good, especially the early feeling out process. They framed each and every exchange well, Barbarian's early strength (holding him up in a one-handed choke, which you never seen), and then Koko chipping away at him with dropkicks, until he went sailing over the top and menaced the camera man. Back in the ring, Koko was able to fire back with shots to the face, but Barbarian hefted him over the top and then crushed him against the post on the outside and that was that. 

Pretty good face-in-peril with some nice hope spots (including a sunset flip in). The nerve hold could have been a little more active, maybe, but the crowd came up for Koko getting the elbows in on his comeback. That got cutoff but then Barbarian missed an elbow drop and Koko was back in it. They actually had me on a couple of the nearfalls even though intellectually, I knew there was no way Koko won this one. Barbarian won it with a hotshot out of nowhere, which really did feel like the ultimate match-ender for this time period. A guy ends up with his throat draped over the top and it's over.

ER: I was impressed with how well Koko overcame the size difference here. 1991 is some Peak Gas WWF (see how fucking jacked Bushwhacker Butch is in the match after this) and Barbarian looks immovable. Well, Koko moved him real well and threw babyface punches so good that they believably kept moving him. I love Koko, a great sympathetic babyface seller who knew how to take bumps that garner even more sympathy. His low fast backdrop to the floor made the bump look more tough and his selling once he was on the floor built it more. Barbarian will slam your spine into the ringpost but a great salesman like Koko will make it look truly backbreaking. Koko has two strong nearfalls: an inside cradle that was pulled off quick, and his missile dropkick which was done well enough that I bit on it as a finish. He took Barbarian's hotshot finish so exuberantly that the top rope practically touched the bottom. Frankie wasn't there to see the loss. 

Ted Dibiase vs. Jimmy Snuka

MD: Pretty interesting point in time and space here as Snuka actually got on the mic and brought out Virgil to Dibiase's horror. Virgil was super over as you can imagine. Once this got going, it didn't wear out its welcome. Dibiase got sneak attacked by Snuka while distracted and then everything he tried for the next couple of minutes backfired on him. Honestly, this is as good as I can remember seeing Snuka look in this run and so much of it is due to the set up. Dibiase did take over by getting a gutshot up to counter a double axe-handle, and they built to Dibiase trying to suplex him in and Virgil grabbing the leg to set up the upset. Dibiase got rocked by him post match. Very effective, crowd-pleasing stuff to help get over what they were doing with Virgil.

ER: Agree that this feels like the best 1991 Snuka, but a lot of that felt like the best 1991 Dibiase. This was a basic 1991 Offense WWF match that Dibiase was working like an All Japan match. He took extra, probably unnecessary, snap off every surface Snuka bounced him off. Dibiase made every connection an impact, dedicated to making every slam into a turnbuckle look brain scrambling. He could have gotten away with going lighter on the 2nd night of a week straight of house shows. Snuka had timing and Weird Buff Old Guy energy, using simple offense like clubbing hands, and "grabbing Dibiase to shove him into a thing". I can't recall when I've been so impressed by someone getting their head bounced off the ring apron. Jimmy Snuka was in his late 40s and moved older than that, but Dibiase made him feel like a fighter. 

The camera doesn't film his fistdrops from the best angle but he does three of them and we keep seeing each one from a slightly different too close angle, and by the third it felt like a cool look at the up close magic form of his fistdrop. He was a guy whose Ace Worker status dipped after we watched the Mid South footage, a guy who plays incredibly in the greatest matches of all time but doesn't hold up in the weekly TV. But I'm quite high on 90s Dibiase. He started working more like Arn Anderson and I thought he was great. I love '93 Dibiase. He stands out in unique ways from the other strong WWF heel workers from that year (Doink, Michaels, Headshrinkers, Yokozuna) and takes his impact bumping to All Japan and locks it in until his injury. Ted Dibiase is destined to become one of our wrestlers whose discourse constantly waffles between overrated and underrated until we die, but I think any unearthed 90s footage has only added to his case as a great worker. 

Gen. Adnan vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan

MD: I don't remember seeing a singles match between these two make tape during this run but I could be wrong. It's one of those things you'd see in house show results and wonder how they did it. Now we know. A lot of "Back to Iraq" chants by Duggan. Adnan snuck up on him with the turban, choked him, got slammed, and ate the three-point stance clothesline. Another crowd-pleaser but now we know what it'd look like at least.

ER: To think, looking like a reasonable facsimile to Saddam Hussein would get you a certain death gimmick as a decoy in one part of the world, while in another part it could net you a plum late career WWF gig. I have a ton of respect for Adnan Al-Kaissie's 90s WWF run. You're in your early 50s, haven't worked WWF since your 30s, and you happen to look like a dictator from the country you're from and don't have to get in actual shape for the gig. You get to have one minute matches on house shows where fans watch Saddam Hussein get no offense in on America (OR Canada!!) before quickly losing. It all ends with a main event PPV gig opposite Hulk Hogan. Also you get to wear incredible boots. It's one of wrestling's greatest gigs ever and should be celebrated as such. How many wrestlers get the chance to work in front of 20,000 people in a main event, ever, in their careers, let alone in their 50s? I wonder what his Summerslam paycheck looked like compared to Virgil's. 

Rick Martel vs. Jake Roberts

MD: Martel on the mic with just a few words about how everyone was jealous to ensure he wouldn't get any Canadian cheers. Jake had the blue and gold cobra crotch tights. Important everyone knows that. 

Very fun early. Martel ambushed but crashed into the post on a shoulder block attempt. Jake started on the arm, including lifting him up and holding him there for a second, and punches. Best part was when he faked high, causing Martel to duck, and then kneeled down to punch the model in the face. Big sell of the nose. Big pop. Jake really bathed in the DDT chants too, milking them.

Martel's control, after using the ref as a stalking horse, wasn't as interesting, but he had some good cut offs at least. Jake ended up trapped in the ropes as Martel went for Arrogance, but he got out while the ref was fighting with him and hit the DDT. He took forever, absolutely forever, to creep over and pin him. 

ER: It was truly stunning to watch how long Jake took to pin Martel after the DDT. They were both down so long that the ref started counting both down. I have no idea why Jake was down so long. He set up the DDT with a long stretch of being stuck in the ropes just like Andre, doing great physical work of stretching out his body as he tried to pull both arms out of the ropes. His physical work was so good, his selling for Martel so emotive, and his post DDT crawl was the slowest thing you have ever seen. 

Undertaker vs. Tugboat

MD: I don't have a lot to say about this but it's a great example of how the initial heel run Undertaker had total commitment to his character. He moved like a lurching zombie, ever creeping forward. It was a great act and has been rarely emulated. You could push him back but he'd keep coming in a way that was sort of unnerving. When they shoot to the audience for Superstars/Challenge matches and show scared kids, they were scared for a reason. And then, when least expected, like in the finish here, he'd do something extra quick or agile and it'd go from creeping doom to jump scare. Here it was vaulting over the top rope so he could climb up, take a few steps and hit an elbow drop to beat Tugboat. 

ER: Marvel at the front row of Very Canadian Men who all seemed amused/confused by the Undertaker. None of them understood what it was they were supposed to be seeing and silently stared accordingly. Imagine if zombie heel Undertaker actually worked like a heavyweight and hit like he was a big man. He could have been one of the scariest heels of all time. By the time he learned how to strike 15 years later he was incapable of ever being a heel. He had a kick to the ribs that was so light he may have confused people into thinking he was portraying a ghost who is incapable of making physical contact with our realm. His backward leap into the ringpost is a cool bump in theory but he doesn't know how to give it weight or impact. Tugboat is the one of the two who felt like a guy with potential. His powerslam has rotation that makes it feel big but a controlled landing that safely drops a 300 pound zombie. When Tugboat hit and then missed his leaping avalanche I was thinking how much more agile he was than Taker, but just then Taker leapt over the top rope to the apron and got to the top rope so fast that it was like I was watching a wrestler I'd never seen before. Taker's rope walk elbowdrop finisher was a cool piece of his arsenal that felt like a dead man falling off a roof. 

Brooklyn Brawler vs. Virgil

MD: One thing I appreciate about the Brawler's act is that they let him come out with Yankees gear. My guess is that if he came around today, he'd have Brawler written on his shirt instead. 

He did a good job of showing fear of Virgil early, which only helped him be over with the crowd. They had a nice bit of rope running with multiple leapfrogs too. In general, this went longer than it should have. Virgil took some big bumps including one through the ropes to the floor, but I do think this was set up to give him some ring time selling. The match was sacrificed to prep him for future matches which makes total sense. He won it with a power slam which is not a move you usually associate with him. 

ER: This era of Virgil's work was so weird. This match was smack dab between his babyface turn on Dibiase at the Rumble, and their big WrestleMania match next month. It is the only match Virgil worked in February. No matter your thoughts on Virgil's in ring, it is undeniable how well his babyface turn got over. Listen to the response he gets from the people of Ontario! This is a man they are rooting for! He hasn't wrestled as much as you might think for being on WWF TV for so many years, but he wrestles like a guy who is barely trained while also wrestling like a trained wrestler who is wrestling as an untrained wrestler. You see glimpses of a man who can't run the ropes, who throws clotheslines like he's only seen them portrayed in children's drawings, but also see a man who throws himself into big babyface bumps and knows how to use them to draw sympathy. His bump flying through the ropes with nothing slowing him down, back bump past the mats and onto the London Gardens floorboards, was the best bump on the show and kept his reaction peak. But he also took a "hard way" bump back into the ring that I thought was among the best of its kind. His powerslam looked terrible. 

Brawler is a worker I like more whenever I rewatch him. Any era. Virgil gets a great reaction for a bizarrely scarce post-turn match, but Brawler is great at keeping them interested in Virgil all match. What's the best Lombardi match? Is there a consensus? I think Tom once sold me on an Abe Knuckleball Schwartz/123 Kid match.  I don't think this one would be in the discussion for Best Lombardi match but it's a great showing and a professional handling of the green veteran Virgil. 

Hart Foundation vs. Power & Glory

MD: These two teams were very well matched. Bret started with Roma, lots of rope running ending with him catching him on a leapfrog and then hitting the inverted atomic drop/clothesline combo. Herc outpowered him but didn't outpower Anvil. He did catch Bret off the ropes and took over accordingly. They worked over Bret's back including some nice Roma backbreakers. We rarely get close up footage without commentary like this and you could hear how vocal Herc and Roma were in rooting for one another. To set up the hot tag, Bret climbed across the mat on his back using the ropes. Great stuff. Finish had Roma cut off the Hart Attack and Neidhart cut off the Powerplex and then everything spill out to the floor for a double countout. Post-match Harts ran P&G off but it mostly set up a second encounter. 

ER: This should have been better but there was a really great Bret/Roma match in the middle of a good enough tag match with a bad finish. I don't know if I've watched the Bret/Roma singles matches but now I'm going to, but if there are Hercules/Anvil matches I can probably skip them. This was two FTR teams that are better than FTR working a so so FTR match. I wonder what Bret's thoughts were about he and Anvil working over Herc's shoulder only for it to build to a Hercules gorilla press slam? That's the kind of backwards set up that Bret never wants to take part in, while feeling like a sequence Bret was mapping out. Bret matches don't build to the heel press slamming the babyface after getting his shoulder pummeled. 

Is P&G the best era of Paul Roma? Has to be. It's crazy they kept trying to make him a babyface. He looks so untrustworthy. He'd assault your girlfriend at a party while you were in the bathroom. Power & Glory Roma was fully in his element. The Bret/Roma stuff works so well because he's essentially working a heel Bret style, if Bret were a greasy forcible sexual assaulter. The snap was the same, the heel bumping was the yin to Bret's baby bumping yang. He's a great punch taker, a truly hateable piece of scum like Tully Blanchard who moves similar to Tully as well. I loved the work from everyone when Roma ad Hercules were tying Bret up in a bearhug; Bret's selling was compelling, Roma's bearhug was even better than Hercules', and Roma worked a false tag far better than you'd ever think from someone who teamed with Jim Powers. I don't remember the last time I saw a team work a modern false tag spot without also doing it with a I'm A Heel wink. Roma wasn't out for glory, he had business to take care of. 

The finish stunk, but there was a tremendous reveal while setting up the late match Hart Attack: The way it was filmed, you couldn't see where Roma was. He got knocked off the apron into the guardrail but his location couldn't be seen. As Bret started his run into the opposite ropes, he was expertly kept off camera to preserve the mystery behind whether Bret would hit it or whether Roma would make it back in time to grab his ankle. It was the latter, but until Bret went down it looked like he was gearing up to take Hercules' head off. 

Sgt. Slaughter vs. Ultimate Warrior

MD: I know we already had one or two of these Sarge w/Sherri matches but I haven't seen them for a bit so I couldn't tell you how similar this was. All I generally remember is Sarge bumping all over the place and Sherri dying at the end. This starts with her doing a saluting ceremony with Sarge on the floor after Warrior runs in, including putting the title up to her waist to taunt him, and it's good stuff. Warrior gets Sarge's helmet and goes nuts with it which is also good stuff. 

Warrior chases Sherri around including the usual 1991 high culture bits of them coming out from under the ring with him having undressed her. That lets Sarge take over though and there's a pretty long heat which is well done. Sherri works her ass off helping and cheering on Sarge, especially in a never-ending Camel Clutch. That's going to end with him shrugging Sarge off of course. What's surprising is that the cut off has Sarge getting his knees up. They really make Warrior work for the comeback, which makes it all the more frustrating when he shoves the ref for basically no reason once he does come back. Post-match, he continues to cause havoc including the press slam on Sherri. It's impressive how much they got out of this honestly. 

ER: Sherri was looking THIS hot on Canadian house shows!? That's the major takeaway from this match, which was such a "should have been better" match that I feel I was too quick to give Hart Foundation/Power & Glory that title. Sarge looked more washed than I remember - great bumps still, including his classic over the ringpost that I love so much - with sludgy offense where he looked afraid to fall over too fast. His stomps and some of his other offense looked like he was working a kid with progeria, not as gassed up freak sporting his dumbest haircut in a lifetime of dumb haircuts. Warrior comes as close as humanly possible to hitting a 50 yard head of steam Pounce on a ringside cameraman who sprinted out in front of him like a wild rabbit. Warrior was only going to do so much to avoid him and this guy came about 3 inches from being driven brutally into the guardrail. It would have been the highlight of this event. The Canadian crowd clearly had no idea how they were expected to react to Warrior assaulting Sherri both physically and sexually, but they rightly sat in uncomfortable silence while he hit his hardest offense of the match on her, dropping her from his gorilla press with a real flop, then actually stepping on her as he exited the ring. I wonder how many in attendance had actually seen a woman this hot before. A satin pink teddy with black thigh highs? Girl, Detroit is thataway. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE 305 LIVE

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: ABBY~! KIMALA II~! RUSHER~! INOUE~! ORTON~! TAKER~! OMNI~!

Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala II vs. Rusher Kimura/Mighty Inoue AJPW 12/1/90

MD: Big IWE stars vs. monsters energy here, even if Rusher and Inoue were up in the years. This overachieved from my expectations, which were set in part for seeing Abby in so many short, abruptly ending tags from this era and from seeing Rusher in so many comedy matches. I love those matches by the way, but that wasn't going to work here.

What we got instead was pretty gruesome actually. Rusher bled early and they worked over the wound with headbutts, chops, and Abby just sticking his finger in the wound awesome. When Inoue got in, he turned the tables, sitting up on Abby's shoulders and poking him repeatedly with the fork until he dropped back. Then he kept it going with a bunch of awesome headlock punches until Kimala broke it up. The kept things rolling with a couple of chairshots from the outside in. Pretty valiant stuff.

Even the finish had one or two more rotations than I was expecting as Abby hit his cool Angle Slam type suplex but Inoue survived it only to get crushed with the throat shot/elbow drop combo. Post-match, Abby and Kimala bowed to all four sides. Not a lost classic but I'd say still well worth your time.

ER: This was disgusting, extremely violent, not far off from Great. Matt said gruesome and that's a good word for it. This wasn't a Fork Stabbing Abby match, this was built around punching and bleeding and digging into cuts. The match is helped by the HD of these new episodes of AJ Classics, as the second Abby is stabbing his fingers into Rusher's head I knew they weren't going to hold back. Abdullah's stiff fingered thrusts and jabs looked so painful, and it is 50-50 whether or not he had some kind of blade in his finger tape, because Rusher's head bled quick and Abby's fingertips were soon soaked red. Kimura's blood ran in rivulets down his chest and Abby dug his fingers into Rusher's cuts and the rest of his face. It was disgusting and the cameras zoomed in close on it to show the savagery. 

But these IWE guys are tough, so when Rusher finally tags in Might Inoue, Inoue shoot punches Abby in the head a couple dozen times and it's incredible. Inoue enters the ring climbing onto Abby's shoulders and just punches and stabs away at his head. Did we know Inoue was hiding a sharp object that he was going to use to scrape and stab at Abby's head while throwing shoot hammerfists? Abdullah the Butcher doesn't stab a single soul in this match with a fork, but Mighty Inoue introduces a weapon with no warning? Maybe this match is actually greater than great. When they both go down, Inoue grabs him in a headlock and throws sick blood wet splat punches repeatedly as the camera is again right on top of these slasher movie visuals. Every time Inoue ran and flew at Abby with a headbutt, you could hear his head actually smacking into Butcher's chin! He hits one in the ropes to knock Abby to the floor, and more in the ring. Great spot. Inoue's flipping senton is always so cool. It hits with impact but has the flourish and showmanship of French Catch. Abby rolling just out of the way of a senton and leading to him massacring Inoue's throat was a great late match sudden turn. Abby's Angle Slam is a really great spot and I love when he breaks it out. Using his bulk to perform weight physics is an Abby we don't get to see as often as Stabbing Abby. 

Kimala II was the odd man out in this, and he usually is, which is why I always look forward to Kimala II matches. He is the weirdest All Japan regular during their extended run of high expectancy ring work. He is clumsy, he doesn't work anywhere near as stiff as the style demands, he falls weird on offense, and despite being in his mid 20s he moves about as well as Abdullah the Butcher. But he torpedoes into the action at fun times, including a big bump thrown through the ropes to the floor. He's probably the thing holding this match from being legitimately great, but you can't deny the crowd excitement when he started slapping his belly. 

Dustin Rhodes/Ricky Steamboat/Shane Douglas vs. Steve Austin/Brian Pillman/Barry Windham WCW 2/7/93

MD: We get the last eight minutes of this and then a big post-match brawl. On the one hand, it's a shame we lose out on the elimination match because it sounds amazing on paper, but we're better off for what we do get here than nothing at all. Part of that is because Steamboat looks like the best babyface in the world here. Some of it is the way this is shot with no commentary. It just feels closer up, right in the midst of the action, and Steamboat working from underneath here is just transcendent. The way he moves his body, expanding and contracting, hanging on to the ropes, finding strength within, expressing pain and writhing emotion, is just over the top great. 

And Austin, in his own way, is almost as good. He's put upon, frustrated, aggravated that Steamboat refuses to quite, that he paints himself as so sympathetic a figure, that he dares to appeal to his humanity. At one point, Steamboat ... it's not begging off, I wouldn't say he's begging off, but he does seem to call for some level of mercy, maybe just to get things back on a more even playing field, but Austin, framing it perfectly, timing it as dramatically as possible, cinematically in a way that would only work in footage like this, that would be overwrought or overproduced on TV, literally spits on the effort. That makes it all the more poignant when Steamboat, in the midst of his big comeback, blows a mist of spit himself later on. Just really primal stuff.

That stays through into the chaotic post-match, bodies flying and violence ebbing and flowing and ebbing again. Weirdly enough, Shane Douglas might have stood out the most here, as he came off as a real powerhouse. Still, this post match, as good as it was and with a real sense of consequence for matches to come, comes off a little like a consolation prize for the elimination match we didn't get. Still, what a look at Steamboat and Austin.

Kurt Angle vs. Undertaker vs. Randy Orton vs. Mark Henry WWE 3/3/06

MD: House show match from the vault from Australia. I was expecting to see Henry assert himself. That was the draw, but really this was all about Randy Orton, especially but not only him reacting to Undertaker. It's a bit clipped and we come in after entrances with him preening in the corner only to turn around and find Taker there, going for a handshake before he gets rocked with punches. It's easy to joke about the Kyle Fletcher parallels but he was around 26 here and they're clearer here than at almost any other point of his career as best as I can remember.

This is not a version of Orton I remember well, but he was pretty effective even if I did see the strings at times. Plus it was a house show so they really played into it. There was a bit where he teased getting knocked into the crowd three or four times before finally landing on a fan's lap and thanking her after the fact. It was all pretty funny stuff. Plus he was flying around as a menace throughout, including dashing from one opportunistic pin to the next.

Angle was a bit of a non-factor overall, in part due to his current persona, I think, but just because Undertaker and Orton were taking up so much air. And then Henry just seemed there to cut people off at times. He did it effectively but his role could have been much more interesting. Still, this was fun for what it was, but it would have probably worked just as well as two singles matches. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: EDDIE~! JANNETTY~! COLT~! GANG~! REY~! GERMANY~!

MD: Going to finish out last month's Richard Land Germany knowing we've got some 81 footage to go through too (Rudge vs. Bret Hart for one).

9/6/80

Axel Dieter vs. Kim Duk

MD: Just a clip. We come in JIP. We get no finish. It's almost entirely Duk chopping Dieter with karate strikes. Overhand shots. I've seen a lot of Duk between Germany and Puerto Rico and that one cool Korea match that came up last year. And he can be very good. He really can. And we get flashes of that here right at the end when he's scrapping with Dieter who's firing back. The chops are quicker. They hit harder. He's actually trying to cut a resurgent warrior off instead of just marking time. Usually though, I find him lacking and I did in the first bit here. He's relatively big and has a great look and a clear personality and he just does the bare minimum to limited effect a lot of the times. But when it is time to go, he goes hard. Not much here.

Sal Bellomo/Achim Chall vs. Jim Harris/Tom Shaft

MD: Something of a slight tag but another look at Shaft and another chance to see Pre-Kamala Harris. There was some tomfoolery early where neither Harris nor Shaft wanted to be in there (past one shaky bit at the start, Harris fed pretty well for early shine), but as you can imagine, Harris was able to take over fairly quickly. It was interesting to see him do the handshake with one hand behind is back on his knees deal, which led to the transition. He had a misunderstanding with the ref. Due to the nature of the rules, you have to connect a pin to your last move in some way shape or form. His big splash defied that and he had to make sure to get in an extra bodyslam and quick pin to win the fall. Shaft did not impress. He could grind someone down but whenever he tried to do anything more (like a butt butt where he barely got off the ground) it just lacked oomph and energy. 

Not much to say about the faces. Bellomo took massive back body drops here and Chall came in hot on the hot tag. Good strikes. Bellomo won the second fall with a body block but everything got thrown out, with the heels getting DQed for illegal double teaming early into the final fall. More educational than entertaining overall.

9/13/80

Chris Colt vs. Louis Lawrence

MD: I knew how great Chris Colt was. I've seen him in a bunch of different territories, right? But watching him in these German matches is a whole different beast. He's itchy. That's the word. He wrestles like he's seeing colors wherever he looks and it's wild. Everything he does is worth watching, whether it's strutting around the ring as he's being announced or pointing at the ref, paranoid, between rounds. At the end of one round he was trying to get out of a headlock with roll ups and lifts where he got taken over, and he just decided to lay there in the middle of the ring once the bell rang. Lawrence had to come over and pour water on him and then he freaked out. Constant motion, constant manic energy, just fascinating to watch.

Lawrence, unfortunately, was not fascinating to watch, but I guess he provided a sane baseline for everything going on around him. There was one point where he just put him in a cross toehold for a few minutes and Colt WAS entertaining in it but they could have been doing a hundred more entertaining things. Finish was pretty hilarious as Colt guided the ref to the ropes to look out so he could climb them to do an elbow drop off the top. But the ref only looked for a second. It clearly didn't work. Just a "Look over there" that was futile, but the ref let him get away with it anyway. Maybe it was legal there and he thought it wasn't? Who knows? Anyway every match we get with him here is well worth watching.

Eddie Guerrero vs. Marty Jannetty ECW Enter Sandman 5/13/95

ER: We only had this (already short) match in very clipped form, and now we have all six minutes. Eddie had wrestled a 30 minute draw earlier in the night against Malenko and who could say what could ever have happened in that one. Maybe someday we'll get to see any of the Malenko/Guerrero matches but for now I'll watch this unclipped match for the first time and...see why ECW originally clipped it so much. This isn't that great! That's unexpected! This is one of those times where I was really hoping for a hot go go go short match, two guys who can work some speed and never otherwise wrestled, and instead it's kind of slow and sleepy and structurally confused. Eddie seemed tired and Marty worked down to his sleepy foe. Eddie and Dean had jerked each other off for a half hour earlier but Joey Styles wasn't pushing Eddie being tired from an earlier match whatsoever on commentary, so I guess this was just a couple quick guys working at 75%. Eddie pokes Marty in the eyes and scrapes his boot across his face but otherwise does nothing else heelish. Heatless backslides, ramp up that doesn't ramp, never reaches drama. Eddie's snapped off huracanrana finish looked good. Great leg hooking. 

One Man Gang vs. Flash Flanagan WWF 2/3/98

MD: Gang dark match. He had dropped some weight from his peak and was up against Flash Flanagan. My big takeaway is that he had a lot to add to the company if they were to bring him in but that this match didn't necessarily serve him. He worked the crowd well. His clubbers looked great. He had pretty decent presence. He shouted out "Shut your hole" which popped everyone. He gave Flash a ton though, and while it was generally earned, it was probably too much and serving too many masters. I think the fans saw the two of them too differently and it didn't do Flash any favors. If he had to work from underneath even more and had to really scrape for every inch he got it would have done him better and I think it would have served the match (and Gang) too. Kind of weird what might have been here. You could see him all over the card, the lost member of DOA, an Oddity, or the third man in a Bossman/Shamrock Corporation trio?

ER: I love getting a look at these dark/tryout matches because some of them are good, some of them aren't, and some of them are weird. This one was kind of weird, as it was laid out almost like a double showcase. I"m not certain it did a good job of showcasing Gang, but it played like a Flash Flanagan babyface showcase while also playing as a "here are all of my various skills" showcase for Gang. By that, I mean it felt like Gang was showing every thing that he could possibly do, without necessarily putting that into a coherent match. Think of it like someone auditioning for SNL by doing a bunch of impressions rather than doing a tight set utilizing those impressions. This was slower than it should have been, because it felt like Gang showing his entire skillset, in order. You can see how he works a crowd or gets verbal with a ref, you see what offense he can do, then you see how good he is at taking and selling offense. Some of Gang's offense looked great: he drops a pair of sick elbowdrops that are, quite frankly, perfect, he gets his boot up in the corner right to Flanagan's chin and gets an audible OOF from the crowd, and his follow up clothesline following through to his knees looked great.  

But I don't think I expected, going into this, how much more valuable Gang would be at putting over a fired up babyface. He was fantastic at taking and selling Flash's offense. Part of it was that Flash Flanagan had great offense. His missile dropkick is strong (Gang hangs in the whole way and takes it to the chest), and he has a cool springboard dropkick that starts in the ring and gets aimed at Gang in the corner. He has several kinds of nice punches and is great at "punching up" to the much larger Gang. He even has a couple big back elbows that looked like they would indeed move a guy Gang's size. But I don't think Flash's offense works as well without a guy selling it as well as Gang. This wasn't just about bumping, it's about being a humongous man believably getting knocked around by a smaller heavyweight, and Gang was so good at getting punched around into place. But he topped it all with a ridiculous spot where he gets hung up across the corner ropes like Shawn Michaels and splashed repeatedly by Flash until falling to the mat. I loved it, never seen anything like it before. A man the size of One Man Gang using the rope corners like a hammock alone looked absurd, but every time Flash hit him his large body would get rearranged into a different hilarious position. Body sagging, legs propped up like legs that size never are, finally falling gracelessly to the mat. Ridiculous. 

I would have loved One Man Gang in 1998 WWF, even if he was just a guy working Sunday Night Heat. Reuniting the slimmed down Twin Towers would have been booking directly to me, and with Gang recently on the payroll it would have made them more likely to bring the Towers back as a triumphant patriotic babyface team at the end of 2001. 

 

Eddie Guerrero/Kurt Angle/Edge vs. Undertaker/Kane/Rey Mysterio WWE 7/2/05

MD: Enough of a lost Japan house show match to write about certainly. We miss a huge amount of it but we get the beginning and the end and there's plenty to see. For one thing, this might have been the best use of Kane ever. He was tagged in early when Guerrero and Angle were basically trying to throw Edge under the bus. They had dodged Rey and Edge thought he was going in to face him only to get Kane. Lots of goofing around and it's all entertaining as the characters crash up against each other. Best part might have been Eddie trying for a sneak attack only to run when Kane turned his head. When Eddy finally gets in there, the crowd tries to encourage him which is all very funny. 

For what actual action we see, we get a good Eddie and Rey exchange where Eddie bases all over the place for him and then Edge feeding and feeding for Undertaker and that's pretty much what he's best at so it all works for me. It's much preferable to things being the other way around. Then we come back for the finish where Eddie got to goof against all the babyfaces and the ref with a chair. House shows are the best sort of wrestling? Sure seems it.

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: SAVAGE~! LAWLER~! MABEL~! PCO~! TAKER~! MANKIND~! JARRETT~! RAZOR~!

Jerry Lawler vs. Randy Savage Memphis 3/23/85 (Jonesboro)

MD: I'm not going to wax poetic on the WWE Vault finding this. You know. We live in amazing times.

The match itself was very interesting. Savage had turned a couple of times during his primary Memphis run and he was a familiar face and he was over. He had Newman with him. He was clearly the heel. The fans were still split. So they did everything they could to present Lawler as worth cheering and Savage as worth booing. To start, they had Lawler break clean at every point and get the best of Savage on rope running exchanges. 

After Lawler got a knee up in the corner, and raised his hands to show he meant for it to be a legal attack, Savage went out, got on the mic. Then Lawler did the same complaining about Tux, then Tux got to talk, and Savage again, and they went around with it, really laying out the case that you should cheer Lawler and boo Savage, even if it didn't look like that at face value. And then, when they got back into the ring, Lawler nailed Savage on the break, but by now, it was fully established how much he deserved it and how Lawler had tried to play nice first. On the next break, Lawler stepped on Newman's hand on the apron instead. The fans want to see the babyface hit hard and clown the heel and they built to it coming off as a pure babyface move and nothing petty or spiteful. 

Then of course, they inverted it by having Savage freak out about Newman getting stomped, run around with a chair, and get a cheapshot in on the next break. Unlike Lawler, though, Savage celebrated as if he'd accomplished something monumental. Suddenly, the crowd wasn't split anymore. They were booing Savage. Pretty masterful stuff. 

Because they had to tear things down and then build it all back up, Savage didn't really take over until around twenty minutes in and he did with a clever bit of misdirection with Tux and his cane. From there, things were pretty wild with Lawler coming back a couple of times and the fight spilling out to the audience. Incredibly crowd pleasing stuff with rapid fire slamming of heads into turnbuckles and grounded punches. Lawler turned Tux interference back on Savage one last time and hit the fist drop for a definitive win. Post match, he ALMOST got his hands on Tux but had to fight off three other heels instead (and he did to the crowd's delight). Really brilliant stuff overall in how they ensured that the crowd was exactly where they wanted them.

ER: To think there was a time in my fandom that I would have been bored by something like this. Savage, avoiding contact to rile up the half of the crowd who hates him while simultaneously appealing to the half who adores him, an incredible cross section of fans that not only allows this match its beautiful slow burn, but encourages it. This was 20 minutes of slow burn and shifting allegiances with men actually pleading their case on the house mic far more than hitting each other. They get so much mileage out of Savage just going out to the floor and getting upset, with little bits of in-ring character like Lawler popping his head up and down for four straight dropdowns while Savage sprinted back and forth over him. 

All the bullshit started breaking down when Savage finally started hitting Lawler and Lawler caught a Savage kick, hopping him out to the center of the ring, holding Savage's leg high up on his chest and drawing it out before finally tipping and fistdropping him in one move. Savage then catches Lawler's leg the same exact way and goes  through the same routine, only this ends with a Lawler enziguiri (a great one!). The misdirection around Tux Newman getting his cane to Savage and everything that happened after that was the kind of fire you want to see from a Lawler/Savage match. The way Savage punched Lawler all around ringside was filmed so perfectly it's as if they purposely took the brawl in front of the cameras, without actually doing that. It was just Savage giving everyone some close up magic and popping Lawler in the forehead around each side of the ring, these individual reared back shots every 10 feet, then hitting a big axe handle to the floor, then another. It's an honest to god miracle that he didn't blow out his knee until his mid-40s because he was just jumping onto concrete on every show for 15 years with or without cameras present. 

Savage is battering Lawler, and it all turns into one of the great turnbuckle smashing comebacks. Savage is bashing Lawler's head into the buckles, and they start coming a little slower with a little more resistance. The sixth time Savage is actively working to get Lawler's face to the buckle, and by the seventh Lawler has fully blocked it, and the crowd is here for it. When the strap comes down, Lawler's back is to the camera so we get to see Savage react to it, and Savage's eyes are the perfect eyes to be reacting to the strap coming down. We get them in shocking HD and it plays like such a famous clip that you'd think we'd have been seeing it in highlight videos for 40 years. Lawler's fistdrop off the middle buckle is as good as you can actually do a fistdrop...but his earlier missed fistdrop into the mat and subsequent sell might have been even better. Just another classic match we didn't realize existed until the last week. 

WWF House Show Footage

Mabel vs. Pierre MSG 11/26/94

MD: Really enjoyed this one. Pierre looked as good as anyone in the company at this point. He flew all over the place for Mabel early, timing all of his stooging perfectly and just bumping big given his size. One bit of punishment after the next. The transition was great. Mabel tried to suplex him back into the ring (and this didn't seem like a huge effort considering what he'd already done to him) and Pierre dropped straight down to the floor from the apron, causing Mabel to get hotshotted onto the top rope.

Then all of Pierre's offense was equally good, maybe too good, because the crowd was starting to go for him despite him working them a bit. Thankfully, they still went for Mabel on the comeback (reversing things on the floor to post Pierre) and Mabel hit two or three big things on the way out. Just a strong, larger than life undercard house show match.

ER: I love Mabel, ADORE Mabel, I will always back the big man...but HERE is a damn Quebecer Pierre performances if ever there was. It's no secret PCO is insane - it's been his main brand for a decade now - but I don't remember him going this hard in New Generation Raw matches, let alone on house shows. This was a man working UP to MSG, taking bumps that put 1-2-3 Kid to shame and hitting offense like a truck. I loved the layout of this, where it looked like the whole thing was going to be Pierre getting tossed repeatedly. He gets thrown so violently to the floor on the first lock up that there is no way he was able to work like this night in and night out....a thing one could have said before we found out how much he loves falling from great heights. Mabel suplexes him like it's nothing, throws him into the air with a high back body drop, really slamming him at will. 

Pierre turns the tide by stopping a suplex into the ring by throwing his body weight back and stunning Mabel on the top rope as he drops to the floor yet again. Then we get this great mix of Pierre trying to tame this sea beast by jumping all over Mabel's back, and taking big bumps as he's swatted away. He takes a back drop to the floor and responds by running up the nearest turnbuckle and hitting a real heat seeking missile of a dropkick. It always feels unsustainable, only a matter of time before Mabel would catch him again, and when he does it's just as great as before. Pierre takes an even higher backdrop than before, kicks out of the spinning heel kick but gets crushed by an avalanche, than takes his well earned time wobbling to the center of the ring and back, turning around to get flattened by a Mabel crossbody. 

Undertaker vs. Mankind Meadowlands 7/5/96

MD: I haven't seen any of the Taker vs. Mankind  stuff in a while and I wasn't quite prepared for where they were at this point in the feud. I don't remember Taker's shots ever looking quite this good for one thing. I don't know if that was Mankind leaning into them or Taker just laying them in because he was used to working him. 

This kept moving quite steadily, with Taker controlling for the first half but never in a straight line. Mankind would take over for a few shots and get cut off. He'd lose focus and start chasing Bearer. He'd go for a chair only for Taker to get it instead. He'd knock him over the rail only for him to come flying back with a clothesline. 

When he did really start to lean on Taker, he couldn't put him away. Taker punched out of the Mandible Claw in a great bit. He'd kick out of everything else and eventually Mankind lost focus again and started to hit himself and slam his head against the turnbuckle. Even then, even as he shot a choke up to stop the second Claw, Taker had to really fight for the comeback and it ended up as a pretty complete experience for everyone watching. A good entry into their series. 

ER: I shouldn't be surprised by Foley going this hard on a house show, but seeing it in HD it's shocking how much damage he took in front of a bunch of New Jersey sickos who knew how much of a sicko he was. If you ever look at Foley's schedule over '95-'98 and see a house show match like this, you'll wonder how his body didn't give out the first few months of his WWF schedule. When Foley started in WWF he was still making trips back and forth to Japan, going back and forth to take sick beatings on opposite sides of the globe. I guess his body was just conditioned to it by that point but I was still surprised how hard Taker was laying it in and how bad Foley's bumps got. It's obvious Taker is hitting him hard from the bell, clubbing him hard on the back of the neck and throwing tighter strikes than I associate with 1996 Undertaker. 

But then the chairshots start, which are much harder than 1996 WWF chair shots, and it all peaks with Foley taking his backwards bump off the apron to the guardrail...but this lunatic lands back-of-head first into the thickest bottom rail of the guardrail, and the leap back was FAR. The leap backward being so far is probably what led to his body not flying into the railing itself, but flying backward just to whip the most tender part of your head into the thickest steel...that's a guy who should be working 180 matches a year right there. That bump would concuss and give brain damage to most men, but it doesn't even slow Foley down. He still takes more crazy bumps on the floor, including a great one over the railing, off a chair and onto the concrete, which seemed to signal to the Meadowlands crowd that he really was doing this for them, as the chants for Foley started to have a One Of Us feel to them the more damage he took. Awesome fight. Foley really did himself a minor disservice by focusing on his goofy "having fun with Owen" house show matches in his first book, because I had no idea there were hard performances like this out there. I, of course, should have known. 

Jeff Jarrett vs. Razor Ramon Montreal 10/21/94

MD: Most of the Hall I've seen lately has either been 90-91 Puerto Rico or 88 NJPW so it's weird to see him as Razor. This went a few directions I wasn't quite expecting and I think, as much as anything else, it was them trying things. They had wrestled a few times earlier in the year but this was fairly early in their 'marriage' that would last a while.

It's funny because I buy it out of 2025 Jarrett, but I'm not sure I was feeling the strut here. Much more gripping and organic was the way that he paintbrushed Ramon's head after taking him down a few times. All of that paid off so well with him running right into Ramon's open handed slam and bumping huge. Beautiful stooging and feeding. He'd subsequently get knocked out, come back strong, and run right into the fall away slam and Ramon paintbrushing him a bit in return.

Once he took over, he controlled primarily through some nice cutoffs (an enziguiri, dropkicks, corner whips, a nice punch, etc). They really did a great job of building the hope spots, getting bigger and more elaborate each time until Ramon finally punched his way through it all only to get redirected over the top. Ramon controlled out there but Jarrett reversed a whip for a cheap (but effective count out). 

Read more!

Loosely Formed Thoughts on WWF Unforgiven 4/26/98

 

1. The Rock/D-Lo Brown/Mark Henry vs. Faarooq/Ken Shamrock/Steve Blackman

The Nation team is billed at 950 lb, meaning they could have gotten this to 1,000 if they subbed in Kama for D-Lo, meaning they fucked up.  

Blackman and D-Lo have very little chemistry but D-Lo's snap suplex looks excellent and Blackman throws the fastest spinning chop I've seen. 

Blackman is too hesitant this entire match and leads to awkward timing whenever he's in. He even tags back into the match when Shamrock was clearly setting Faarooq for the tag and Shamrock forces him to go back to the apron. Holy moly. Blackman has really bad timing with everyone, like he totally forgot how to bump for anything. It's really odd. Fans are noticing it and it's a bizarre choice to have him work the bulk of the match as FIP. 

Everybody is taking everybody else's offense slightly wrong, it's not just Blackman. He's merely the worst offender. 

The Rock's punch when he tags in to a dazed Faarooq is the best part of the match up to this point, and his clothesline is hard. I love all three of Mark Henry's quick elbowdrops when he tags in. Faarooq is a much cooler face in peril that Blackman but they cannot wait to get Blackman back into this match. I don't know why Steve Blackman is in this match so much. 

Blackman wailing on D-Lo with chops is a Better Blackman, and his punch exchange with The Rock felt like it should have looked a lot worse, but the Blackman FIP stuff doesn't work. People really dislike the Rock still, but they feel nothing for Blackman. He is just not a guy who should be selling in long matches like this. Use him like fucking Ernest Miller, let him fly into the ring in the last third throwing improvised kicks, don't have one of the worst physical actors on the roster go in there and sell for the bulk of your opener. 

The Faarooq hot tag could have been fire but it was way too rushed. I loved how he threw his body into the back of Mark Henry's knees and Henry took a great bump for the double leg spinebuster. Henry took another cool fall on a big Blackman kick. Shit, earlier he set up a nice powerslam on Blackman by throwing him into the Rock's knee and I didn't even mention it. Another strong Henry performance, really exposing all of us for not being fully into this guy the moment he re-debuted after his ankle injury. 

Boy this match did not work at all and on paper it really looked like it should have. This was a complete and total failure from the babyface side. Everyone in the Nation looked great, all standout performances. Faarooq's side all wrestled like they had just met each other backstage before their entrance, and none of them looked good during their brief windows to shine. Shamrock barely got involved, Blackman was taken way out of his comfort zone for far too long, hardly any focus was placed on Faarooq getting revenge on the Nation, just a full three person bag fumble. The crowd was quiet most of the match and it was due entirely to the uninspiring babyface squad. 

2. Owen Hart vs. HHH

Chyna in a tiny cage suspended near the ring feels like one of the last times Cornette convinced Vince to do a silly territory gimmick that WWF had never done at any other time. For all the things about territory work that HHH clearly never understood but constantly pretended he was an expert student, he at minimum does understand that he needs to kick the tires on the cage and rigorously test its sturdiness. 

This starts off a lot better than the opener but the crowd is still quiet. HHH bumps around ringside and Owen throws a nice headbutt that he doesn't use enough. Owen runs hard into HHH's jumping knee and it's among the best that spot has looked - equal credit to both - and Owen gets dropped kind of disgustingly chin first on the top buckle when HHH takes the legs out of his 10 count punches. 

Owen takes a lot of hard bumps in this, a great string of them. He makes all of HHH's knee offense look good, bouncing less on impact and making them look more painful. He hits the buckles really hard, and takes a couple more chin first bumps into them. This was the most spirited Owen performance since the rest of his family left for WCW 5 months prior. 

Neither of them can make HHH's Dragon Sleeper I Guess look interesting but at least HHH tries it out three different times, just in case the first two disinterested crowd reactions were a fluke. I don't think I have seen him attempt this submission before or since, but he's also done plenty of things that looked worse, so...

Chyna dangling from the cage is a really great, tremendously performed stunt spot. I forgot sometimes just how much my friends and I were excited for Chyna's further involvement in matches, dying for her to start doing more than hit Owen Hart in the balls. I forget sometimes how much of a Chyna Fan I was at 17. This was one of her greatest physical performances and a spot that looked actually dangerous the entire time it was happening. When she broke free of the little shark cage she was suspended from, and attempted to climb down it? That woman was at least 12 feet in the air, possibly higher, and did a full "hanging by one arm" stunt. Chyna was old John Cliffhanger up there, working with no safety net, with the very real possibility of her falling hard onto concrete or the entrance ramp. She was great at milking the danger, kicking her legs, making the cage sway, making it look like a struggle, making it completely impossible to focus on anything but her. What could have even been happening in the ring, HHH trying out another submission he saw a Japanese guy do better? 

Much better than their WrestleMania match, elevated by a big bumping Owen performance and Chyna's legitimately cool stunt. 

3. New Midnight Express vs. Rock n Roll Express 

I actually think it's pretty cool that they put the Rock n Rolls on a 21,000 house Greensboro show, but every criticism at the time of this match being put out there to fail, is sadly accurate. 

Bob Holly takes an awesome backwards cannonball bump to the floor from a Gibson shoulderblock, and Cornette still draws Greensboro heat by hugging him. Bart Gunn takes a nice bump off the apron too, after Ricky dodges a punch from Holly, and then they work another spot where the Midnights bump each other off the apron. The crowd should be responding much better to these bumps. 

What does not help is when Bart Gunn goes to an abdominal stretch like 2 minutes into this thing, the first heat they got on Ricky. The man tagged in and went straight to the stretch. 

Cornette plays this whole thing way too desperately, which is probably much more entertaining to the people backstage who wanted this idea to fail. I've seen Cornette start dozens of fights with referees and this is one of his worst, a fight with Tim White using the worst exaggerated "Let's Fight" mannerisms he's ever used. 

Ricky gets to take his own cool bump through the ropes to the floor and Cornette does wind up throwing the best worked punch of the match.  

I liked Robert's hot tag, leaping in quick on an advancing Bart, throwing fast punches, working 10 count punches with Ricky, sizing up the double dropkick. All of it looked good, none of it got much reaction, which is a drag. 

This was exclusively talked about at the time as something intentionally set up to look sad instead of cool, and that self-serving missions was mostly accomplished. Rock n Rolls were set up to fail in their WWF run, and that sucks because they were still a better tag team than basically any 1998 WWF tag team other than the New Age Outlaws. Robert especially was going hard every chance he got, they just couldn't have ever worked hard enough to succeed. It wasn't allowed. 

4. Evening Gown Match: Sable vs. Luna

I wonder how long it took the 40-something adult man in the front row to make his Sable Free Tongue Bath sign. This man had to go buy a poster board and at least two markers and had to have the commitment to thinking it was a great idea every step of the way. 

This is the first real misstep of their use of Sable. The WrestleMania match was excellent, and the pull apart brawl at Mayhem in Manchester was so authentic and natural that it seriously ranks as one of the best wrestling pull apart of the year. But every part of this suuuuuucks. 

The fans are undeniably into it, and that means something, but they are nowhere near as into it as they were the WM tag or the Manchester brawl. 

Also, why was Sable out there in such a dowdy gown? Talk about terrible lines and no sense of style. I know the dress wasn't staying on for long, but let's get your star in something that actually fits so she looks good in clothes before she is out of clothes. 

This whole thing is only two minutes long, and the only good part was when Sable booted Luna in the neck and then flung herself onto her and punched her several times in that same part of the neck. 

Also, it's wild how Luna often comes off as less trained than Sable. She looks lost in a two minute match where they only goal is to tear fabric, and the more of this I revisit the more I remember how Luna got 100% of the credit for anything that worked in this feud but it is very clear that Sable is responsible for all of it. Nobody was giving Sable credit in 1998 for any of this. 

It's two minutes long, Sable gets her Mama's Family funeral dress ripped off, and the whole payoff is Sable's 1990s Elizabeth Berkley long butt. The fans love to see those long flat white butts. Butts just used to be different and we can't ever put that genie back in the bottle. In 1998 America still liked 'em long and low. 

5. New Age Outlaws vs. LOD 2000

JR is still talking about the Outlaws shaving off Hawk's bi hawk like half a year ago. This entire feud is based around Hawk getting a 3/8" strip of hair shaved off part of his head two seasons ago. 

You knew the damn fix was in man, because directly after a segment where Lawler and Greensboro wolf whistled and unrolled their tongues at Sable's Classic Kelly McGillis Ass, Sunny is out here in her far and away hottest era. Her LOD 2000 gear made her look like the most incredible lead Fred Olen Ray could have found for Deathstalker III & IV. Babes don't come this hot in the apocalypse, but JR is busy talking about Hawk's mohawk. There should have been a social uprising whenever Sunny appeared in her LOD 2000 gear. 

The New Age Outlaws have aged really well as a tag act, especially during this early part of their run. They felt like a real natural team from go despite each completely languishing separately for well over a year before they teamed. Huge portions of their act would have killed in Memphis, and they threw in a lot of nuance that I didn't give them credit for at the time. I loved Road Dogg adjusting Billy's trunks for him, getting them just right while Billy was waiting to lock up. 

I also actually like this old out of shape Road Warriors era, because Hawk is still a really good puncher. So you get him pulling his tights up over his belly like a 60 year old luchador. He has no power whatsoever, but he also still hits a great fistdrop and is a great puncher. I would have watched another several years of Hawk as a punch guy. It's weird seeing a 40 year old Road Warrior work matches like 70 year old Jimmy Valiant but also I sincerely love Hawk as Jimmy Valiant. He fires off punches as well as anyone on the roster. I also remember liking 2006 Wrestling in Jeans Animal so it's possible I either have total dogshit taste or more likely really refined taste. 

Every match on this card feels like it's being worked the exact opposite from how it should be worked. Animal tags in and holds Billy in a cravat and I have no idea why we're building up to Billy's comeback but the crowd doesn't know either and they are silent. 

There's a cool and dangerous spot where Billy Gunn chops blocks Animal during the first Doomsday attempt and Animal crumples while Road Dogg just drops down onto him. That could have gone badly but instead just looked cool. The Outlaws try to get heat by working over Animal's knee, and Animal does a really great job selling the knee damage. All of the work looks good, it's just not getting any kind of response and it's always eerie when a crowd with this many people are this quiet. 

But the finish was incredibly insulting, and that's not going to help the crowd noise. Hawk pinned Road Dogg with a German suplex, they won the belts, but of course Hawk's shoulders were counted down. Why the ref was only looking at Hawk's shoulders, I don't know, you'll have to ask the Gods of the Bad Finish, but it's one of those wrestling finishes that can get no other reaction from the crowd than an annoyed "Oh seriously? Fuck off." It's a finish designed to get no heat, just insult everyone who saw it. Throw a flat as hell German suplex, ref gets down to count right next to Road Dogg's shoulders, but looks right past them to Hawk's shoulders. Nonsense. Well, have fun feuding with DOA for the rest of the year.  

6. Inferno Match: Undertaker vs. Kane

I don't know what any of us were expecting from this match. They kept details intentionally vague and I guess we were all supposed to believe that we would witness a man being burned alive, and that we were supposed to be intrigued by the idea of a man being burned alive? This PPV was primarily sold on one of these men being burned to death, and also on the possibility of you seeing Sable's tits. The Austin/Dude Love title match basically got added as the main event the week of the show. This was a PPV built on Fake Tits and Fire Death. 

Now, it's been long enough that my internal timeline has blurred and I don't actually remember if I saw this match first or if I had already traded for a 6 hour Sabu comp tape in 8th Gen quality and saw Sabu and Sheik and Onita and Tarzan Goto almost die in an outdoor wrestling fire. I had no idea who Atsushi Onita or Tarzan Goto or The Sheik were when I got that tape but I knew that it looked like several people almost died from Fire. Which match was my first Fire Match experience? That memory is lost to time. But damn this must have looked so fucking cool from the upper deck of Greensboro. The Colosseum darkened, the literal danger of INDOOR FIRE. Can you imagine being inside a building with open, flaring flames? Not me, not since the Great White incident. Fuck no. I'm not going to be one of those bodies trampled in a doorway. 

Hey, is this match actually really fucking great? This is fucking fire and it's also 300 lb. men fighting near fire! Normal Kane/Undertaker spots look better with fire! The flames shooting up the ropes when Undertaker does Old School is the best that a jumping punch to the arm is going to look. Undertaker's flipping clothesline now becomes a riveting miss because it sends him tumbling to the edge of the ring next to The Fire! And yes, they probably should have saved all of the fire flare-ups for big shit like chokeslams and Undertaker's superplex instead of doing them for every bump or impact, but it is also Very Funny seeing flames shoot up 6 feet in the air after Undertaker does a side Russian legsweep. 

A note about Kane: you know how Kane threw great worked uppercuts but couldn't throw any other kind of punch that looked good? Here he threw great overhand rights but didn't use any uppercuts at all. What is considered the Best Kane Era? 

Kane takes the biggest over the top rope bump to the floor of his life when Undertaker has to throw him far enough to clear The Fire. And how about the fucking VADER chant when Vader In Sweatpants runs down to ringside and starts punching and headbutting Kane in the face!! I get Undertaker needing someone like Vader out there to provide more landing coverage for his tope suicida over the fire. Great spot. Undertaker does a suicide dive over Fire and the crowd is left chanting for Vader. That's huge. That means something. Fans either still believed in the big man in 1998, or those Vader/Flair matches left a long lasting impression on the people of North Carolina.  

Paul Bearer hits a big bladejob after Undertaker hits him square over the head with Star Search band Sawyer Brown's kick drum. A big sweaty fat guy hitting a huge blade job is one of the great disgusting visuals unique to wrestling. You couldn't just fire up the internet in 1998 and see a fat guy bleed in a suit after a kick drum was slammed over his head. It was only a pro wrestling visual then. A fat sweaty guy dressed for the finest Sunday Service potluck gets his head busted open by the same kick drum that was used earlier in the night to perform Sawyer Brown's smash hit #1 single (from 1992) Some Girls Do.   

So it turns out the Inferno Match is really good. Let's turn this one into the new King of the Road Match. This one is due some revisionist history I think. I had openly wondered what the best Undertaker/Kane singles match was, and this has to be one of the absolute top contenders. Great spectacle.  

6. Steve Austin vs. Dude Love 

The wrestling sections in this were so much fun, and I love how it evolved from a classic wrestling match into sick bumps and bullshit. Dude Love running the ropes all fast and sloppy and Austin rolling in with a perfect dropdown, catching Dude on the run with a Thesz press. That falling elbow Austin does is one of my favorite moves in wrestling. I'm a person who hates having my neck touched, hates shirts that are too tight and rub against my neck, hated playing night game baseball in high school because it meant turtlenecks under my uniform. So I can't really picture the kind of trust I would need to have to be okay with Steve Austin sending the point of his elbow down towards my Adam's apple only to stop a couple centimeters short. It's one of our purest pieces of worked pro wrestling offense. 

All of Austin's classic pro wrestling exchanges look great, but when he throws Dude off the stage we all know a guy splatting onto concrete so early in the match meant that there was a chance Foley might do something even more painful. 

Nobody had lower crotches on his tights than Foley. Dude's tights fit like old long johns.

Austin is a guy who knew how to capitalize on Foley as an opponent. I guess a lot of guys did that - he took some terrible beatings - but you can tell Austin is really sinking things in. He back elbows his way out of a body vice (a Dude Love body vice!) and runs clotheslines at him as hard as he can. 

This is the first time (of what would be many times) that they milked the Montreal Screwjob as a Vince Tactic. I don't know if anybody I knew in 97/98 actually knew what actually happened in Montreal at this point in our lives and probably just assumed that Vince stopping matches was just going to be a finish we'd get every few months. We had a party to watch Wrestling With Shadows when it aired on A&E, but that was several months after this match. I don't remember how effective this angle was to me and my friends as teenagers, how much we bought into the worked shoot that we wouldn't have known was a work or a shoot. 

Foley does save some really great bumps for the finishing stretch, bouncing off concrete, getting tossed over the guardrail and back, and getting suplex off several corners of the ring steps. I'm not sure you could have suplexed a man into a more painful part of the ring steps. All edges. 

Vince McMahon takes a chairshot right off the side of his fucking head, a completely insane thing for a man with real money to be willing to do. Vince was willing to take a harder chairshot than Foley took (*in this match) and Austin was a man being paid to hit a sociopath in the side of the head with a chair. No wonder we all loved the Austin/Vince stuff so much. 

Well, this was an overall underwhelming PPV, and it all started so promising with a direly serious Undertaker/Kane video package that's nothing but grim allusions to an afterlife spent in hell, broken up bouncily with a "1-800-COLLECT PRESENTS...." It's tough to top that. 

Best Matches:

1. Steve Austin vs. Dude Love

2. Undertaker vs. Kane

3. Owen Hart vs. HHH

Worst Matches: 

1. Sable vs. Luna

2. The Nation vs. Faarooq/Ken Shamrock/Steve Blackman

Read more!

WWF In Your House: Final Four 2/16/97

Shamefully, I've never seen the Final Four main event. It's a big 90s WWF blindspot for me and there's no reason for it, other than I don't love 1997 WWF. The highs are high, but the arenas are cold, the undercards are stale, the house style leaned towards dull, and I don't think the shows are filmed well. But other than that, I can't complain. A fact that can double as a reason, is that I've been watching - daily - a lot of 1997 WCW lately for my wildly entertaining and cumbersome book, and watching something like this does make for a nice comparison point. Plus, In Your House events were still under 2 hours at this point. They're basically a Coliseum Video with worse editing.  

Anyway let's correct the mistake of me never seeing a universally praised match with 3 of my favorites, and also double down and replace that corrected mistake with a bigger mistake: reviewing the entire show. 

1. Marc Mero vs. Leif Cassidy

ER: Marc Mero gets a ring full of sparklers, and Cassidy is already waiting inside that ring of sparklers. How often did they already have somebody waiting in the ring to start a PPV? I really like how the French announce team talks about Chattanooga, but the crowd is cold for this one. A Wildman shouldn't start off a match working a kneeling wristlock, so the cold is earned. Cassidy at least throws in bumps and acts like a dickhead. When Cassidy is kicking at Mero's leg, I buy his look of disgust. Cassidy throwing legsweeps and heel hooks is more interesting than what Mero was doing with the match. Okay we are going into the heel hooks and the elbowdrops to the inner knee a lot more than I was expecting. Interesting to me doesn't mean "interesting to the live crowd", but to the crowd and wrestler's credit they did all come together to root Mero through the legwork. 

It just hit me that the whole thing is laid out like a Tony Garea/Johnny Rodz match, and how a lot of 1997 WWF undercard matches felt like they were doing tributes to bad 1982 WWF undercard style. Not only is that a terrible style to be doing in 1997 - especially compared to what WCW was doing - but this was in Chattanooga and people in Tennessee were getting Lawler/Dundee in 1982, so Salvatore Bellomo vs. Baron Mikel Scicluna wasn't going to cut it. Mero has a cool short runway tope to break up Cassidy threatening Sable, and the shooting star press looks like even more of a crazy 1997 finisher today, but WCW opened their February PPV with Syxx/Dean Malenko like one week after this. People saw the difference. 

2. The Nation of Domination (Crush/Savio Vega/Faarooq) vs. Goldust/Flash Funk/Bart Gunn

ER: What even is this babyface (?) team? What do those three men have in common? Are they all recent TV victims of the Nation? I didn't watch any of the TV surrounding this match, but that's a tenuous reason to have three men teaming up on PPV. One of the clips they showed was Goldust getting jumped on a house show. Was WWF setting up PPV six mans on house shows in 1997?! Also I know I'm a big hypocrite because if I saw this match was on a WAR card I would lose my shit, and I would be right to do so. And this match - what we get of it - might be worth losing your shit over? It's filled with Flash Funk in his Labelle boots, hitting huge planchas (including one he gets Irish whipped into), and a nice run of the Nation cutting the ring off on Funk. Flash has a great sequence to build to his hot tag, back flipping over a Vega/Crush double clothesline and leaping through them with one of his own. 

The hot tag goes to Bart Gunn and it's kind of incredible to have one of wrestling's best babyface hot tag guys on the apron but choose not use Goldust as the babyface hot tag in a match where Goldust was the one shown getting attacked at a house show and makes the most sense as the babyface hot tag. But hey I guess liked the simple usage of Gunn. He comes in, throws left hands, hits a couple clotheslines, and gets a nice visual pin on Faarooq with the bulldog. This is a very fun six minutes, but ends way too early and feels way too incomplete to fully recommend. There was hardly any Goldust, Crush, or Vega. I don't know if you can have a good a trios match while barely utilizing half of the participants. It's useful as a match you can point to when talking about strong Flash Funk performances - maybe the least recommendable era of Scorpio's career - as it has some of his best flying and great selling. That means something. 

3. Rocky Maivia vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley

ER: I didn't actually check the full card for Final Four before I fired up this review, and I gotta say I'm not jazzed about watching a HHH/Rock title match. That said, this was really good. It has a great opening. They do a really cool section around dueling drop toe holds, a bit of a scramble, a loud slap delivered by HHH and returned by Rocky and it snaps the crowd awake. Helmsley hits kind of hard and Rocky bumps bigger and a bit more recklessly than he would a year later. I wish we got a bit more Rocky bumping, as the HHH control after the hot opening was solid, workmanlike, but doesn't give Maivia a ton to play against. Rocky isn't great at emotive selling in 1997. He only knows one move and it's "heave on the mat". He just lies there and heaves, which is the worst way to make a grounded side headlock interesting. But the more he moves, the more the crowd swells, and he's very good at taking offense. He is much more watchable when he runs into Hunter's running knee (which Hunter brings up to face level) and misses a high dropkick than he is is hitting a running crossbody. 

Rocky's big punch comeback has some fire but was missing something, much better taking at a hot shot off the top turnbuckle. Yep, Rock's offense sucked in 1997, but HHH tucked his head painfully on that stupid "hop around you" DDT. This had a really good opening and a second act that felt like it was building to a hot third, and I don't think we got there. Of the Islanders given a surprise title win in 1997, it's clear that Prince Iaukea was so much further along than The Rock. We'll see how this continues to develop, but as of February 1997 it's clear that Iaukea is more advanced as a wrestler and in line for a more successful career. Not one single person could have predicted what Rock would become by June 1998 if they had only seen him in February 1997. Impossible leap. If Byron Saxton had become an all time short term draw a within a year. 

4. Owen Hart/British Bulldog vs. Doug Furnas/Phillip LaFon

ER: This is one of those on paper matches that feels like it should be great, but this was not great. That's partly due to a lot of this being angle instead of match, but also due to the angle itself not being any good. I don't think the Owen/Bulldog team was ever as good as it should have been, and even working normally I don't think they were ever as complementary as they should have been. That means in this match they are a team of non-complementary guys who are now intentionally not communicating as part of an angle. It's awful. And let's just get it out of the way now: British Bulldog looked like shit. He didn't look like shit physically; he actually looked healthy. "Healthy" isn't a word typically used to describe The British Bulldog, but this era is the healthiest he looked. He's noticeably smaller and has none of the inflated muscle he had through most of his career. Every person in this match is basically the same size, even though I don't think of any person in this match being the same size as any other person in this match. Bulldog and Owen are essentially the same exact guy here. So physically, he looks great. 

He just wrestles like shit. His strikes are shockingly bad, just putrid strikes with no kind of weight behind them. His clotheslines look so pulled that you'd think his body was incapable of taking any kind of resistance. Bulldog was much smaller and not wrestling like a heavyweight...sorta. Other than holding LaFon up in a vertical suplex, he does no power spots, instead doing sliding dropdowns and sunset flips. The powerslam is still his finisher, but it's more like Charlie Haas doing a powerslam. British Bulldog is like if Doc Dean had worse stomps. 

 

Owen and LaFon feel like they would be a much better team with better chemistry. I liked the twists they did on their own Malenko/Guerrero roll-ups. I'm pretty burnt out on 2 count kickout reversals but theirs looked fresh, and it helped that they weren't doing these reversals in a bunch of their matches. Owen and LaFon feel like two sides of the same coin and even their movement is similar. None of the Owen/Bulldog offense looked good and they really did feel like a time who never teamed before, more than a team having disagreements. When Bulldog holds up LaFon in a vertical suplex, Owen goes to crossbody LaFon to the mat and instead mostly lands on Bulldog's face. But I did like Owen's spinning heel kick into him when LaFon ducked out of the way. Their best interaction against each other was strong, when Owen actually slapped him and Bulldog responded with his best clothesline of the match.

Furnas and LaFon wrestled like a fucking team. These dudes wrestled like every single tag team on TV today wished they wrestled like. It's crazy you don't hear Furnas/Kroffat every mentioned by modern wrestlers as influences, because there are dozens of guys on current wrestling TV who seem to be wrestling like worse versions of Furnas/Kroffat. They were doing this high speed move chaining so much better than all of the teams who have turned that into the prevailing Big Match tag team style. When Furnas made his hot tag it made the match actually hum for the first time, with nothing but cool shit getting chained. But then it ends with Owen barely hitting LaFon with his Slammy award. Major boner not just giving Furnas/LaFon the titles here. 

5. Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin vs. Vader vs. Undertaker

ER: I'm not sure why I haven't watched this before now. I really didn't know anything about the match other than it still gets consistently praised and that Vader got busted open. I remember seeing the Raw Magazine with Vader's bloody masked face on it in the supermarket, at a time where I hadn't been exposed to that much bloody wrestling. I had bought an old copy of the War Games Bash '87 clamshell VHS at a Healdsburg video store and that had really opened up my wrestling world. That who tape was bloody and had at least two dozen instances of somebody getting their face painfully raked across chain link. I don't think I had seen bloody wrestling before that tape, and I don't think I had seen blood in a WWF match before seeing Vader bloodied up on that magazine. 

And Vader bleeding is really the thing that makes this match great. It's really chaotic, more chaotic than any main event WWF had done, because most of the match is two separate singles matches happening in the direct way of each other, without ever really getting in the way of each other. Impressive feat. It rules that Vader gets busted open like 2 minutes in, running full face into a chair and then taking a big bump into the ring steps, quickly apparent that the cut over his eye is disgusting. It's great that the match became all about Vader's disgusting eye and didn't focus on a goof like Undertaker, a man who is doing his silly rope walk in a match where you can lose by being thrown over the top. Just out here making everyone look like fools. It's only when Vader is swinging wildly at him with a chair - and then getting that chair mashed into his face by Taker's boot - that the match really starts to feel like a match. Well, I guess it felt like something great was going to happen before the match when Vader and Austin were flipping each other off. But Vader is a force and the crowd is hyped and loud. People love seeing Vader get chokeslammed, people love Vader kicking Bret in the balls and beating him with a chair, the people loved Vader and Austin hitting each other with the ring bell and fighting on top of some balding guy who Vader fell on top of. 

Vader gets kicked in the balls by Bret Hart in one of the most teed up kicks to the balls to ever appear in a main event. When Vader is eliminated, he is uppercut in the balls by Undertaker. People get choked with production cables and kicked in the balls in this match, and every time they show Vader's cut it looks worse. His missed moonsault is incredible. It defies physics. That moment where his hand is no longer in contact with the top rope and his body is leaning back before starting his rotation, it looks like you're about to witness the most dangerous accident. But then he gets superplexed by Bret and you begin to wonder which bump is worse for a man the size of Vader to be taking, and how fucking stupid it was that WWF had a 400 pound mastodon who could bleed out of his eye for 20 minutes and still go up for a moonsault and a superplex and then take a bump over the top to the floor, but still not see a role for him as a star.

I liked everybody in this match. Bret was as great as Bret always is in main events, Austin was lean and incredibly fast, Undertaker somehow fit excellently into the chaos, and I guess that's the key to why this worked so well: it was constantly chaotic with very little downtime, without any pairing ever overshadowing the other pairing, no matter who was fighting or where they were fighting. But this was Vader's show, a legendary big man performance that probably would have come off great even without one of the more grisly cuts in modern WWF history.  

Read more!