Found Footage Friday: Hanover 86 Part 2

Hanover '86

9/8/86

Klaus Kauroff vs. John Quinn

MD: Time to hit the second half of the 4 hour 9/86 Germany tape with Bull Power (Vader) all over it. Anyway, this was down our alley, real 305 live stuff, a clash of the titans. So much of this were just the two of them crashing into one another or throwing meaty shots, testing one another, pressing advantages when they could. It was two out of three falls, which we don't usually see for a singles match but it meant that when one did get the best of the other with a rare shoulder tackle that worked or a body slam, it warranted a successful pin and worked within the match.The format gave it room to breathe and make those key moments mean so much even though in theory they were so simple and straightforward. 

Otto Wanz vs. Bull Power

MD: Speaking of titans clashing. It's interesting that these two matches were on the same card. It makes Kauroff vs Quinn sort of a like-minded undercard attraction, though this was going to have more fireworks. Overall, I don't think this was as strong or seasoned as Kauroff vs Quinn but it didn't disappoint either. Wanz knew exactly what he had in Leon even if Leon didn't quite know everything he was yet. Pre-match, Power did his usual attack while still in the trucker hat and windbreaker, wielding the flag. Unlike others, Wanz recovered quickly and took the flag to cross check him repeatedly to the fans' delight. Lots of delight in this one.

Wanz would get the better of him with skill and a bit of slickness, moving out of the way at a key moment, and meeting him head on. Power would take three charges (the last being a football three-point stance set up) to stagger Otto but he would stagger him, and he could always credibly take over with a few shots, especially as he pressed him into the corner. They'd keep going in circles with this, Power taking back over and Otto fighting from underneath. He never seemed in too much danger but Power could likewise take right back over whenever he had even the smallest opening. I'd call this more inconclusive and unsatisfying than anything else (even if not disappointing), as they left more for the future. Otto eventually hefted Power over the top and they brawled on the floor until things were thrown out.

Axel Dieter vs. Klaus Wallas

MD: Clipped as this is, it becomes a real simple exercise in Wallas being as big a jerk as humanly possible and Dieter eventually coming back and giving him what he deserves. Primal, straightforward, effective stuff. Wallas looked as good as I've seen him in this footage. He'd take Dieter to the ropes and punch him in the face. When Dieter charged in, he'd force a break in the corner and then punch him in the face again. Later on, he'd drape his knee right over Dieter's throat, that sort of thing. Then when it came time, Dieter hefted him over the top rope and caught him with a flurry of shots on his way in. Eventually, once he took enough, Wallas started to fight back and they went to the floor where things devolved into chaos. It's obvious by now but Dieter really knew what he was doing in there.

Steve Wright/Steve Casey vs. Col. Brody/Dave Morgan

MD: We only get part of this as it skips to the finish out of nowhere, but what we get really is great fun. There are moments of the heels working together or bullying the faces but most of this is Wright and Casey clowning them to high effect. It could be as simple as Casey smacking someone in the face out of nowhere or as complex as one heel being trapped in the ropes and the other being used as a battering ram and then, after the ref complains, summarily dropped to elated laughter from the crowd. You'd also get some fun wrestling like Wright and Morgan doing these fast headscissors reversals back and forth over and over again, or Wright doing all of his headstand and kip up tricks with Brody. But mostly it was stuff like Brody going for a dropdown and Wright dropping down beside him and saying "boo." But it really was great fun. Brody and Morgan were good sports but also engaged. When they shrugged off a double headlock charge, Brody pointed to the prone babyfaces in a sort of "Ha Ha. We finally got you!" sort of way. Of course, immediately thereafter things were turned around and the battering ram took place. We lose the big comeback and only get a glimpse of the finish but the individual bits were great.

9/10/86

Kid Burgess vs. Rasputin 2

MD: Fans really liked to get on Rasputin's case and he sold it well. Burgess had some fun counters early. Rasputin would get over on him twice and then he'd spin out and nail him with a headbutt. Or he'd escape from a full nelson and then just lay prone on the mat until Rasputin leaned in and got kicked. Rasputin finally got incensed and took over by cheating but Burgess dumped him over the top to get into it. Fun comeback with a lot of signature combos and dropkicks but he finally missed one and Rasputin slammed him for the win. Not sure if this was the first match on this card but the fans were definitely up for it.

Steve Wright vs. John Quinn

MD: If you have access to Richard Land's drive, this is worth a watch. A lot of these are, of course, but this gets time, has familiarity and animosity while still being light and fun, and both of these guys are tremendously talented. It's a long draw and while clipped we get more than the gist of it. Wright starts by doing a cartwheel and asking for a handshake and you can tell immediately Morgan has had more than enough of him in his life. Early on, he tosses Wright out in a big way (tapping his head after) and Wright comes back in and gets a sunset flip. You can't keep Wright down. He has all of his signature counters, the bounding and twisting and flipping, the kip up into a dropkick after getting knocked down, clever escapes from full nelsons and other holds. He also does something I've never seen before where, in a front facelock, he goes down to one knee than the other a few times before coming up and flipping Quinn's arm out of it.

There's a round where he controls the arm (including a very smooth short arm scissors) and a round where Morgan batters him around the ring getting revenge. And then Wright gets revenge for the revenge. There are a couple of very believable near-falls for the style down the stretch and the fans are chanting Stevie most of the way. Masters doing masterful things. That's what this one is.

Otto Wanz/Axel Dieter vs. Bull Power/Klaus Wallas

MD: This whole show has a sort of yellowish overtone to it, almost like AI, but AI could never replicate Otto Wanz crashing into Bull Power in the corner like this. They really built to that moment, with Dieter starting and holding his own against Power until he got hit by a Vader Attack in the ropes. Then Wallas worked him over so when Otto came in (and the crowd was overjoyed to see him get in) he was up against Wallas. Otto tagged out to Dieter before Power came in so it wasn't until Dieter could escape once again that they ended up facing off. It was worth the wait. Wallas had some great jerk expressions here, one of which was zoomed in, and Dieter knew EXACTLY what to do in his role, but this maybe didn't have enough Otto and Vader for me, all things considered, especially because the tape cuts off into some sort of wild scene we can barely make out (with a pinball table lit up in the corner) before the tape ends. This had to be a great show to attend live however. That much we can tell.

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Found Footage Friday: HANOVER 86~!

Hanover 

9/86

Franz Schuhmann vs. Steve Wright

MD: Four shows. Mainly the layperson appeal is Bull Power against all of these guys but it's nice to see some shows not even on wrestlingdata with guys we've been watching in 80/81 and some others. They fit 4 hours onto this tape and we'll see how many shows we make it through this week. We have dates for the subsequent shows but not this one but it's probably the first few days of September 1986.  Everything is clipped but you tend to get the flow and a lot of fun spots. 

For instance, you get a lot of Wright really stymieing Schuhmann here with his meticulous precision, Even when Franz has a good counter, like looping one leg over the other to turn Wright over, Wright just moves into a cartwheel to get out of it. There's some fun bits where they hang onto holds through escape attempts (there Wright lets Franz hang on even as he does a scooping hip takeover for instance). Some fun pin exchanges too where they both end up laying there. If this boiled over we don't see it but as things progress to rope running, we've seen Wright win enough times that even without the actual finish, we can imagine it.

ER: It's too bad this is so heavily clipped. Weight looks extremely spirited all match and I love when he tries out tricks. The clips mean we miss on some of Wright's move application, and I like seeing how he gets into and out of things. He works his way into several inventive and firm submissions on Schuhmann, but we never get to see how Schuhmann gets out of most of them, nor how Wright maneuvers through them. We get to see a lot of Wright getting into things, and that in itself is great. He is a clever Dean Malenko, a Dean Malenko with follow through and natural progression through holds. I don't have any experience with 80s Franz Schuhmann. I've seen plenty of mid 90s Schuhmann but no mid 80s. This match doesn't offer much insight, it's clipped into a Wright highlight reel, but I loved the way Wright maneuvered him through sequences. A series of rolling Malenko nearfalls actually felt like something, and ended with both men lying flat on top of each other, a rest neutral position that hasn't been seen in pro wrestling in 40 years.  

Tony St. Clair vs. John Quinn

MD: Quinn had superior size but got plenty of heat by going with inside shots or hair pulls to keep St. Clair on his back leg as well as just bullying him around. Nice Tony chant here. He always had a connection with these German crowds (as early as 86 we can see now). Tony would finally get one over on Quinn and use a  headcissors and they'd do the Gotch Lift style spot but out of the headscissors which you never ever see and is really the damndest thing. We get this a number of times but the clipping means it's never QUITE as clear as I'd like. They take it out of the ring and then back in from the apron, working in and out of it. A very cool spot (and way to spend a few minutes). Quinn bullies St. Clair some more, tossing him out, but St. Clair comes back with a number of nearfalls en route to the time limit draw.

ER: Quinn kicked ass here. There are very few men today who look like John Quinn and none of them are trying to become wrestlers. I like Quinn, a worker I don't think I'd seen before Matt and I started writing about Germany, but this is the coolest I've seen him. He's a monster, a sadist. I don't remember him being so sadistic in the '81 footage we've written about. This was mostly Quinn beating St. Clair's ass, as viciously and as stiff as I've seen him beat someone. He's a hard hitting bully, hitting St. Clair hard enough that St. Clair gets loud reactions any time he's in control (which isn't much, that we saw). Everything Quinn does looks mean. Kicking Tony in the back with a scoff, hammering him several times with punches to the stomach that St. Clair sold as if he didn't think he was actually getting punched in the stomach, headlock punches so good that you realize it's been ages since you've anyone do a headlock punch even thought they're literally always good. Holding a headlock away from a referee, unleashing your inner Nolan Ryan just once, elevating yourself as a wrestler to all who see? Easiest shortcut to looking like a great wrestler, right there for the taking. Headlock punches, gone. Why don't you see brown cars anymore? 

Eddy Steinblock vs. Bull Power

MD: This isn't 89 Vader here. He's only been wrestling for about a year and he's been a babyface for a lot of that, even if he had another tour of Germany before this. He's out with the flag and a trucker hat and windbreaker type jacket and American flag, shoving fans away before the bell. Also attacking Steinblock with the flag before the bell, which gets the exact right reaction from the get go. 

He's raw but there's a lot to like. You don't want to look away a bit due to the rawness, not just in spite of it. He has brutal looking blows from every angle, plus the Vader Attack (with a big pose) and usage of the ropes or just wrenching his back over the corner turnbuckle. He'll just throw in a knee on Steinblock or lean on him with one. Some of it got a little repetitive since he only had so much stuff (the back elbow and Vader Attack hit multiple times) but it was all doing damage so you hardly cared. Steinblock came back with dropkicks and big sweeping blows (to huge crowd reaction since they cared about Vader already) but he missed a splash onto the leg and Vader never really looked back, crushing him with an Avalanche and a Splash for the win. Definitely a way to establish him for later, bigger matches.

ER: Not much Vader earlier than this. This is Vader at his most long haul trucker, with the perfect wrestling body and his sweet round face. He shifts side to side with soft polite eyes during the long in ring introduction ceremony with everyone from the tour, but when he's out for his match he's taunting everyone with an American Flag. An odd sized American flag, Vader's belly sticking out under his short, zipped, normal man's windbreaker jacket. Pointing to the flag, doing ethnic heel "How about that, huh? How about that right there!" Cheap heat diner brawler Vader, Bull Power, works the best Eddy Steinblock match I've ever seen, because he just beasts Steinblock's ass and makes him sell and bump. If it's not the best Steinblock match, it's the most compelling. I haven'y seen any 80s Steinblock, but I've seen plenty of 90s Steinblock where he's booking himself on top forever. It's wild to see him get punched around and beaten up bad by Vader. Bull Power doesn't have all of Vader's presence and size confidence, but he knows he can hit hard and throw his weight around. This man looked tough and out of place, a different cool version of a favorite.  

Axel Dieter/Steve Casey vs. Le Grand Vladimir/Rasputin II

MD: A feel good tag. We've seen a bunch of these now but the clipping made it seem even more so since you never really saw the heels on top. Maybe they never were even over two falls. This had heel miscommunication, Vlad walking into a bunch of spots (the best was when he armdragged nothing and was made to look the fool), Dieter playing the hits and Rasputin bringing size and energy in his bumping and Casey relative youth. You got some fun moments in here but it was harder than the other matches to get a real sense of things past Vlad's annoyance with Rasputin.

ER: We only have four minutes of this, but we see a lot in four minutes. Matt and I are the only two people in the world who talk about Le Grand Vladimir and this is the first I'm seeing him five years older, and he's somehow even better. This German style that nobody cares about that acts as a fountain of youth to older tall brutes. Vladimir works as stooging brute great at getting caught off guard by Steve Casey, a chance to nuanced bad partner bullshit with Rasputin, five years older but taking faster bumps to the floor than in 1981. I was blown away by how strong Casey's fundamentals were, admittedly more so when I thought it was Texas Steve Casey. No, British Steve Casey has the fundamentals and worked real strong as a babyface with heavyweight moving dropkicks and snug headlocks. Dieter is eternally loudly over, a god. Steve Casey looked like he belonged with Dieter in every big babyface moment, a natural fit. 

9/5/86

Franz Schuhmann vs. Hansi Rooks

MD: Rooks is kind of like if you merged Vader with Harley Race, in look at least. He's a real jerk. Schuhmann had a connection with the audience which reminds me of UFO and especially Sal to a degree and it made sense he'd be a top guy there for years after this. He went sailing out at Rooks' hands right towards the camera to start and then pulled back in. Then Rooks had the audacity to go for a handshake and kick him. When Rooks was beating on him on the outside and got a yellow card, he merrily waved to the crowd on the way back in. You have to like his style at least. Franz had some fiery comebacks including dropkicks that knocked Rooks out of the ring or that pinballed him, but Rooks eventually won it with a nice tilt a whirl slam.

ER: You're telling me that there was a big fat guy with Harley Race hair out there named Hansi Rooks?! Fans wanted to see Otto Wanz's body with the familiar blond curls of Harley, with a name honoring Razzle Dingley. I've never heard of this guy and neither have you. He's the perfect kind of brute for our German tent shows, a big heel who knows how to kick and punch and is a real bully. That's what they wanted to see and that's the 80s German heel style I've grown accustomed to. Rooks is not as good as Quinn or Vladimir or Wiskoski or Vader and he leans out of strikes but he is one of them and this was a fun, clipped look. His clubbing to Schuhmann's chest looked heavy and his finishing slam was cool, but this was just a glimpse. 

Otto Wanz vs. Col. Brodey

MD: I'll be honest that part of the appeal of the 80-81 shows is that there's just a bit less of the familiarity we've already had with later 80s German footage. Guys like Brodey and Guajardo. They're fine and generally functional but I've liked getting to know Morowski better for instance. 

So this felt familiar, almost stereotypical. It was, of course, a nightmare of a time for Brodey. Wherever he tried to go, whatever he tried to do, Wanz was there. He'd go for a full nelson and Wanz would butt butt him. He got whipped into the corner and belly attacked. Wanz would throw these brutal looking hamhocks or take him down with a swank tricked out armbar takeover. Once or twice Brodey would pry off a leg and have some hope but Wanz would just kick him across the ring or propel him that way out of a pin. When he hit the flip senton and the splash it was a mercy, even if Brodey's ineffectual kicking might have said otherwise. Obviously, the crowd loved it all of course.

Bull Power vs. Axel Dieter

MD: We're lucky to have this footage. It's very good, even if Leon was just figuring it out still. Dieter was not and he knew exactly what to do, charging in right at the start and doing some damage. The ref wasn't going to let him go wild so early though and Vader used that distraction to snatch Axel's throat. He'd do these lifting hanging tree chokes, put him down and just clobber him. It looked great. He had plenty of Vader attacks and back elbows and a tendency to move Axel around by his throat. Dieter would come back when he could, either throwing desperate shots, or after Vader missed a corner charge or he could duck a back elbow. The place went nuts as he just laid into him with uppercuts and punches. All it took was one shot from Vader to turn things right back around though. Both men went over the top once or twice (with Axel able to use Vader's weight against him) and things devolved on the floor. This was raw but well worth watching.

Klaus Wallas vs. Eddy Steinblock

MD: Wallas was a judoka in the 1976 Olympics which more or less made his pro career and got him runs in New Japan. He picked up a thing or two there like the enziguiri he used at the end of one round. he was 43 and at the tail end of his career but he had presence and confidence as he moved around. My favorite thing he did was this little duck around to whack Steinblock in the back to cut him off. The first time we see him do it, he does it in the lower back with an outright slap and it looks nasty. Steinblock would come back which would mean mostly whips into the corner and mares for Wallas. I get the sense he wasn't taking too many big bumps anymore, but the fans ate it up anyway. I liked the finish which had Wallas whipped, do a little do-si-do where he hooked the arm to whip Steinblock back the other way, where he caught him in that European arm drag slam that ended so many matches.

Steve Wright/Klaus Kauroff vs. Rambo/John Quinn

MD: This got time and actually had a decent amount of heat. It's one of Rambo's first tours of Germany, if not the first. Apparently he had come in through working for Delaporte in France. Of course, the heat wouldn't start until Wright clowned these guys, absolute menace that he was. Fun bit with Quinn where Wright would cartwheel off of whips and Quinn would just walk off of them, refusing to run. Wright also did the multiple kip ups deal with Rambo, and then a great chinlock bit where he worked up to a fireman's carry, got cut off by Quinn, did it again, and then when Quinn came in whacked him with Rambo's feet on an airplane spin. Big pop for that. Heels controlled with a lot of illegal cutoffs and even when Wright came back after ducking a second double clothesline, Rambo kept breaking up pins until he got red carded. You need to do a finish like that now and again to get over the rules, really.

 

9/7/86

Bull Power vs. Steve Wright

MD: This feels like a real find honestly. We're just looking at 86 Bull Power here, but you watch him against a guy like Wright who was such a master of his craft and Vader comes off like a huge monster, a huge star. He nails Wright before the match with the American flag and the image of it made me wish he had worked the whole match with his hat. Ah well. Wright dodges a Vader corner charge at the bell, and follows up, knocking Vader all the way out of the ring. Vader comes back and press slams him over the top rope. They really don't look back from there.

There are cool bits in here where Wright, who is usually a menace to everyone, just can't get out of a wristlock and he keeps monkey flipping Vader who just hangs on. You get all the stuff you'd expect, Vader Attacks, and corner charges, and just the meatiest shots from Vader. Wright comes back by throwing his entire body at him and choking the life out of him desperately, no funny tricks here. Vader's able to shut him down with one shot though. Ten shots from Wright equal one from Vader. They go quite a while and we get a sense of it even with the clipping, before Vader KOs him with one, slams him, and hits the big splash for the win. It's a very good match where Wright took but only at a high cost and when it made the most sense. Mostly it was giving. They were still building to the Otto match here.

Axel Dieter vs. Le Grand Vladimir

MD: It might just be a selection of the footage we have but these two feel like lifelong opponents. I just went over to wrestling data on a whim, after having that thought, to see how many times they faced. I clicked on Dieter's opponents and there, at the very top of the list by a wide wide margin was Vladimir. I wouldn't have necessarily guessed that but I'm not at all surprised by it. So it's not the selection of matches we have. It's simply truth.

There's such familiarity and contempt in this match. They spend the first round trading mares and chinlocks and fighting out of them and cutting each other off, but as it gets going, Vlad comes in with his overhand hammers and his casual knee strikes and his stomps, and Dieter comes back by ducking a shot and catapulting him into the ropes so he lands on the knees, and ultimate finishes him off with mean whips into the corner and body slams. These two know each other, every cell, and it's almost like watching a married couple bicker on some level, the way it's obvious they're under each other's skin. It's a very lived in match, if that makes any sense, and it's fun to visit, especially knowing we get to go home and they're stuck with one another.

Kid Burgess/Steve Casey vs. Hansi Rooks/Klaus Wallas

MD: Burgess is George Burgess, also Jamaica George and "Coolcat Jackson" which is an amazing name. He passed away a couple of years ago. He was able to clown the heels by escaping things and especially (of course) with a preternaturally hard head. They were able to get their heat on Casey instead and leaned on him hard. After winning the first fall, the camera cuts to the crowd where some security guards have to force a guy back into his seat and I got the feeling people were getting upset. That's probably why Casey came back (as Rooks was trying to work over his ears) and won the second fall with a quick jumping back elbow that seemed to surprise Wallas on the apron in that he didn't move to interfere until it was too late. They did a lot of brawling outside of the ring in the third fall, probably to try to channel the energy elsewhere, so that when they worked over Burgess and Wallas won with a suplex, there wasn't a riot or anything. 

 

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Found Footage Friday: 1989 NJPW~!

2/8/89

George Takano vs. Hiro Saito

MD: Pretty solid match. Takano was being pushed more at the start of 89 (with his team with Super Strong Machine) than at any point since he dropped the Cobra gimmick. He looked good here in a singles against a very game opponent. He did take most of the match. Saito would try to get him in a hold and he had an interesting technical escape to everything (be it stepping through to set up a takedown or a headstand to get out of a headscissors). Saito had a nice escape or two of his own. Things really picked up down the stretch as they absolutely paintbrushed each other for thirty seconds. That led to a nearfall off of Saito's senton and Takano catching him out of nowhere with the spin wheel kick and then finishing him off with a suplex and top rope splash. You'll be glad to know they shook hands post-match.  

ER: This was good. Tight grappling, real force applied during submissions and lock ups and knuckle locks, real physics used in takedowns and near misses. Takano had some great stuff to steal, including a cool low kip up out of an armbar (going straight into leaning his weight down into Saito's legs to maneuver out) and a cool pendulum swing spinebuster takedown, shifting Saito's weight back and forth before slamming him. Saito's figure 4 headscissors is impossibly snug, and all of Takano's eventual escape looked well earned. Once he escapes he locks Saito into a disgusting leg-grapevined camel clutch that would have played as the finish. You know maybe someone shouldn't steal any of this Takano stuff as I don't know who would be able to apply it as well as he does. They work these holds until the 10 minute announcement and then get right up and go into the finishing stretch. I was getting used to these snug holds and suddenly we're getting suplexes, Takano going up for a high backdrop, Saito hitting his senton famously full weight. I think Takano is much more interesting working holds than he is doing actual running offense. All of his holds looked like he was stretching Saito, but his top rope splash finish looked like he was trying to avoid full contact at all costs. 

Bello Greco/Sergio El Hermoso vs. Hirokazu Hata/Naoki Sano

MD: When Hata and Sano came back from Mexico, they brought their sparring partners with them. There's a Fujiwara match with them that people should seek out. As best as I can tell, Greco was the real base and worker and Sergio was the flash and lead for the comedy. He kissed the announcer before the match and blew one to the ref, causing all sorts of havoc. Hata and Sano had some big climb up armdrags on Greco. And the kiss spot where Sano went flying the first time but Hata blocked it to tweak the nose/lips the second worked about as well as it could. Sano had a bit more style to what he was doing maybe, whereas Hata just played into what he was given more, but both looked good. Finish had Hata hit a dive to the floor off the top and Sano hit a German (but not able to hold the bridge) for the win. In context, a lot of these spots were repeated from the TV matches they were having, but they were all crowd-pleasers for the house show crowd.

ER: The exoticos' music is incredible. It's like someone doing a muted trumpet sound with their mouth doing a sexy Peter Gunn theme. They have a great act. You can tell it's a great act, because they got constant laughs for the full 14 minute runtime, while tons of wrestlers on this card couldn't buy a reaction. Matt Borne and Italian Stallion can't buy a single sound from the people of Sapporo, but they love every single thing Greco and Sergio do, with good cause. The fans love the silly rope running, they love the butt stuff (I wonder if Rick Rude ever saw Bello Greco and lifted an entire career of selling atomic drops), they love the accidents and the misdirection, just involved in every single movement both do. Their timing is great throughout, the absolute best bit being Greco running down the length of the apron to just miss Hata, running his own face into the turnbuckle. Sano looked like a guy clearly in the middle of his breakout year whenever he was in (his stepover armdrag early in the match was so fast and clean) and Hata looked like a guy who was not that, and I loved how they worked with the exotico tandem. They weren't guys being worked around, they were integrating nicely. I would have loved to see Greco and Sergio stick around longer than these few weeks of '89 and work with more opponents, see what the act could do in singles, but all the footage we have is so good in the way that I'm happy it never burnt out. 

Seiji Sakaguchi/Kengo Kimura vs. Matt Borne/Italian Stallion 

ER: This doesn't add up to anything big but has plenty of fun working parts. I have not seen much of Italian Stallion's 1989 New Japan run, and it's crazy how much time he spent there that year and only that year. Sakaguchi makes chopped liver out of him, swallowing him up whole and chaining judo throws while never letting go of his arm, which he caught when Stallion tried to throw one punch. One punch that doesn't land and Sakaguchi treats him like he's Seiji Sakaguchi fighting The Italian Stallion. Stallion isn't bad at all, but he is much better when he wrestles like a poor man's Matt Borne rather than his usual rich man's Joey Maggs. His dropkick hits like a truck and he throws Kimura with a cool belly to belly, but needs a better clothesline. 

I love how Matt Borne moves. He's just as unpredictable as Buzz Sawyer but keeps things more compact. He's a bulldog, goes hard after Sakaguchi and gets hit hard by the large man. I loved a double leg trip Kimura and Sakaguchi pulled on him, like they were actually trying to pull him apart like a wishbone. Borne really smothers Kimura whenever he's in with him, riding him on the mat and not letting him land anything until the finish. He even pulls some bullshit when the ref misses Sakaguchi's tag and Borne goes back to picking on Kimura, shutting down a hot tag. Crowd doesn't react in any way to his bombs away which is just cold. He eventually takes the pin when Kimura gets a piledriver, and I like how he sells the piledriver with confusion instead of neck pain. 

MD: Little bit of a weird one to me. Stallion (and Borne to a lesser degree) gave a bit to Kimura but mostly ate him up on the mat. Stallion would just roll around on top of him. As you can imagine, they'd give more for Sakaguchi though. Kimura did get the win with the leg lariat/pile driver combo so maybe he felt giving but it did seem like Stallion was going to assert himself as much as possible when given the chance (just not with one of the bosses). Maybe that's why he stayed around so much in 89? 

Super Strong Machine vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 

ER: This doesn't rise to levels of Fujiwara singles match greatness, but it is a Fujiwara singles match against one of my favorite New Japan 80s natives so it's obviously a great 12 minutes. Fujiwara is in house show antagonist mode and just trolls Strong Machine with annoying stuff all match. He breaks every lock up with a slap, in a way that's not meant to hurt but meant to rile up Machine into making mistakes. It's all mischievousness where he retains plausible deniability over being a troll but it's all there. Look at Machine finally make his first inroads and throw Fujiwara to the floor, only to see the insanely aggravating way Fujiwara casually walks back around the ring after hitting the floor. Fujiwara gets his head bounced off the turnbuckle bolt and just strolls away adjusting his trunks. I don't think there was a wink thrown to the crowd, but it was implied. Just a cool fucking guy catching eyes with a girl in a car while crossing the street. 

Things open up when Machine starts going after Fujiwara's taped up knee with an ankle lock, and you can tell it's getting to Fujiwara because he starts throwing backfists from his back into Machine's neck. Machine wisely maneuvers things into a single leg crab, much harder to throw backfists from that position. Fujiwara breaks free from it by fishhooking Strong Machine's mask with one hand and throwing punches with the other, gripping a handful of the bottom edge of his mask with his left while punching him straight in the jaw with his right. When he gets to his feet he throws half a dozen headbutts, still holding Machine by the mask, hopping on his bad knee while throwing them. There's a great moment where Machine fires up after Fujiwara kneels on his face, and demands Fujiwara punch him some more, like a man. Fujiwara happily obliges and buckles Strong Machine's legs. 

The finish sequence is hot as hell. Fujiwara catches a clothesline and puts his weight behind an armbar in one motion, but Machine rolls through, so Fujiwara tries to take him down again with a Fujiwara but Machine blocks it, so Fujiwara pulls an inside cradle. Fujiwara's greatest successes come from never wanting to finish a match a specific way, always willing to pivot to whatever might be available. 

MD:  Not top tier-Fujiwara, sure, but it was definitely chippy and snippy. They leaned on each other. Battering in the corner, etc. I'd say SSM had the advantage until he tried slamming Fujiwara's head into the post. Then he tried to stop the headbutts that would come (self aware in a very good way) but couldn't. He did pull Fujiwara out and post his leg and Fujiwara had to fight from underneath for a bit. Fujiwara came back with huge headbutts though and ultimately after two arm bar attempts (first rolled through) locked in a small package. Nice little self-aware bits in this, the sort of thing you'd be more likely to get from Super Strong Machine than a lot of his contemporaries.

Hiroshi Hase vs. Shiro Koshinaka

MD: This was really good. Super high on it. There's a rule for 1987-1989 NJPW Juniors matches: The best ones start with an immediate ambush/advantage, and Koshinaka got that, nailing Hase in the ropes on the first exchange and going after his taped knee. Lots of nasty little shots and bigger submissions. At one point he went for a suplex, and Hase's leg went out and his head just crushed into the mat. Koshinaka hit the butt butt, the top rope knee drop and even the power bomb. Then he shoved Hase out. The ref got in his face and that let Hase pull Shiro out to take over. 

I wouldn't have minded if Hase sold just a little more but I was generally ok with it. Most of his offense wasn't hefting Koshinaka up but slamming his head into the exposed post instead (the best kind of offense). Koshinaka bled. Hase stayed on the wound. The ref tried to stop him at one point and Hase pointed out that Shiro had been unsportsmanlike in going after his leg and this was warranted. 

Eventually he did hit the Northern Lights but couldn't keep the bridge given his leg. He ended up choking Koshinaka for the DQ, which is way better than it sounds on paper, trust me. Post match Hiro Saito came in and they beat on Koshinaka and anyone that tried to stop them. Honestly, as a finish, it's not something we saw much during this era in New Japan and it was grisly and effective for me. Really good match.  

ER: This was really good. There was a different Koshinaka/Hase match on the New Japan DVDVR 80s set that happened the next month, from 3/16/89. I was higher on that match than the consensus (I had it 25 spots higher than the final results) and I think this is the better match. Koshinaka goes after Hase's leg like a heel and works the first third of this match as Junior Heavyweight Tenryu. Hase's comeback goes on so much longer and is equally violent, so much so that it turns Koshinaka into a bigger babyface by virtue of Hase being such an asshole. Hase pays merely lip service to Koshinaka's knee work - had the knee come back in any meaningful way, instead of Hase occasionally shaking it out while otherwise not acknowledging - it would have been one of the best New Japan juniors matches of the late decade. Koshinaka throws sharp kicks at Hase's knee that do not look pulled, so much so that it seems absurd when Hase goes on offense for 10 straight minutes with no sign of slowing down. 

Until Hase just flipped the switch, his knee selling was great. There was this almost third wall breaking spot where Koshinaka went for a snap suplex and Hase couldn't make it over on his bad leg, so instead whips nose first into the mat in one of the more disgusting DDT bumps I've ever seen. It's such a fucked up looking bump that it looked like a blown spot or miscommunication. It hits this meta level of "Hase's leg is so bad that he can't take moves the way you all expect guys to take moves" and it was something that could have made this match legendary. But Hase messes that up to and actually treats the spot like a fuck up, not acknowledging the bump he took at all and kind of quickly getting to his feet. 

But he went so hard on Koshinaka that I think he overcame the lack of selling. I've never thought of Hase as a kicker, but he unleashes some hellish kicks on Koshinaka. At one point, Koshinaka on his knees, Hase is just kicking him right across the bridge of the nose and Koshinaka hangs in for more, so Hase kicks him in the back of the head. He's really merciless, and Koshinaka turns into this fired up screaming babyface while taking everything Hase brought. Hase's torso and legs wound up smeared with Koshinaka's blood and he looked like a deranged animal biting at Koshinaka's head. The DQ finish looked great as there really was nothing the referee could do to separate Hase's mouth from Koshinaka's head. That man looked like he was pulling with all his might to pull him off and it was not happening. I'm curious what the consensus would have been on this match. Enough DVDVR voters would have hated Hase's selling, but I think more would have loved the violence. 

Antonio Inoki/Riki Choshu/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Big Van Vader/Bam Bam Bigelow/Rip Morgan 

ER: A great house show main event that never quite settles into a structure but has the two biggest gaijin taking tons of big bumps for the freaking powerhouse native team. That's a star studded lineup and Vader/Bigelow treat them as size/power equals for long stretches. Bigelow takes a full flip for Riki's second lariat one minute in. Just a full backflip like he's Jeff Hardy. Fujinami isn't taking a flipping bump for Vader's clothesline, he's blocking it and getting a sick backslide instead. This is Riki's lariat though, so even Vader is taking a big leaping bump for it late in the match. Vader and Bigelow get rocked by suplexes and clotheslines all match, from all of them. Choshu even suplexes Vader in from the apron! Everybody was taking suplexes man.  

There isn't even really any hierarchy in this match, it's kind of strange. Going into it Rip Morgan feels like the most obvious Guy Taking Pin in Main possible but he's in there working big exchanges with Inoki and Choshu. He hits a kitchen sink knee to Choshu that Riki takes so well that it made my stomach hurt. Riki leans into his Scorpion Deathlock like he's applying it to Morgan as a shoot submission. Nobody felt like a bigger start than anyone else, it was just six stars working a main event that nobody outside of this sports center will ever see.

Bigelow was the one who worked this with joy. Everybody works with energy but Bam Bam was having fun. He's not a monster, he's the guy working with some color, a little whimsy. He shakes his fist out after punching Riki, bodyslams Inoki with force, breaks up a pin with a falling headbutt to Inoki's face. He's doing light axe handles off the top and throwing headbutts, but also looks like he's giving Vader ideas on how to wreak havoc. Vader had this amazing press slam hoist of Choshu, super impressive, made him look weightless. Bam Bam gets in the ring and directs Vader to throw Riki onto his knee in a gutbuster. It rules.  There's an awesome 1-2 where Bigelow breaks Inoki's octopus hold on Morgan by leveling him with a clothesline, and right when he hits it he gets wasted by a Riki lariat, great bookend to him getting flipped by one early. There are some little clips in this so we don't get a full feel for the finish, but this is six guys I loved watching run around each other. 

MD: 1989 starts with the Power Elite of Inoki/Choshu/Fujinami coming together against Vader and Bigelow. They do a bunch of these matches in January and the start of February, so it's a little overdone by this point, but the plus side is that they've been practicing and honing the match. That meant some spots like the Inoki kicking off out of the over the shoulder double team worked quite well. 

I really enjoyed the start of this one, with the heels ambushing and then Choshu ducking a Bigelow clothesline, hitting a lariat that just staggered him and then hitting the real one that Bigelow took a flip bump for (very rare for 89 in general and especially a guy Bigelow's size). In order to keep things fresh and prep for the Russians coming in, they had Rheingans join Vader/Bigelow as their American player/coach and he was at the margins of this one. 

This was fairly back and forth. You feel bad for Fujinami here. He's fine but he doesn't come off as the ace/champ when teaming with two of the most charismatic wrestlers ever. Vader was there to basically get control again. It boiled over (with a clip, and during that clip Inoki may have actually won it) to either the DQ or the post-match where heels controlled in the corner wouldn't stop double teaming and charging in. 

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Tony Halme's All Alone, Feeling the Tears Falling Down from His Eyes

 

Different Style Fight: Tony Halme vs. Vader NJPW 10/13/91 - EPIC

ER: What a gift. With this week's discovery of Vader joyfully practicing moonsaults on his trampoline, it felt right to celebrate this different style gift. Tony Halme's Different Style Fights with Hashimoto and Aoyagi are what made me dive deeper down this Borga rabbit hole of mine and come out the other side a changed man. Now we have 7 of his 9 total Different Style Fights (I'm not holding my breath for his fight against Larry the Villain, whoever the hell that is) and finally have his first against Vader. We had his second and third matches with Vader (the second match was also a Different Style Fight, the third and final bout merely a "regular" match) and I say with no hyperbole that this one is the Certified Classic of the three. Their 10/18/91 Fight is nowhere near as good as this match, and after finally seeing their first encounter I fully understand why that match didn't live up to its on-paper potential. 

This one was their first fight, and THIS was their war. THIS was their fight. THIS was the match where they left everything in the ring. It would have been impossible to recapture aura and spectacle like this just a few days later. How could they? This is also, by far, the longest Different Style Fight Halme ever had (a couple of them went into the 4th round, this one goes all the way to the 6th) and the longest match of his lengthy New Japan run. It's incredible. The way they hit each other makes it look like they won't make it out of the 3rd, and the way Halme's stomach is heaving makes it look like they won't make it out of the 2nd. 

Of note: Chris Benoit in Halme's corner, which is pretty fascinating. By all accounts Tony Halme was a sweet young man with no questionable belief systems until some time in mid 1991, so now that we finally have video of this encounter we can pinpoint the exact moment Halme was mentored into being a real piece of shit. 

R1: A bit of a feeling out, each getting a knockdown in the corner but neither with any clue how quaint those knockdowns would seem 15 minutes later. Halme landed several uppercuts into Vader's left side, high up, and it built to both thudding each other with multiple shots to the stomach. Halme started throwing straight rights over Vader's left eye that Vader has to stop with a Fujiwara takedown, riding out the round holding him down. 

R2: Vader threw punches just as hard as Halme, except Vader was wearing the gloves he always wore and Halme was wearing larger boxing gloves. Needless to say, that means Vader was hitting harder. He upended Halme with a clothesline and locked in a grounded crossface chickenwing, which looked even more nasty because Halme just isn't that flexible. When he let go of it Vader punched the face down Halme in the back of the head. It looked so petty that right after Vader seemed to allow Halme to give him some receipts, sticking his head out with no defense so Halme could take some swings, a level of trust and insanity that only adds to Vader's legend. Vader isn't completely generous though, as after allowing the receipts he headbutts Halme hard between his nose and eyeball, so...

R3: Third round started with Halme bullying Vader into the corner but being staggered back out of it by punches. Halme is great at being staggered. His best selling of the match was any time Vader hit him into a forced backward retreat. Halme looks more blown up with every bump. Every time he takes a back bump it looks like he won't be able to stand back up, and that's before Vader lifts him up for a back suplex. I don't know how much help Halme was giving him on that one, but he seemed more scared about potentially tipping back onto his head, which made the entire lift look dangerous. Stomach heaving, Halme eventually gets up throwing arms, buying himself some time by dropping Vader to a knee, then goes for broke. He catches Vader with a full arm swinging right-left that sends Vader rolling out to the floor, and when Vader gets back into the ring he's sporting a big cut over his right eye. Suddenly Vader looks to be breathing just as hard as Halme... 

R4: Vader's cut is spraying blood down his chest and arm, way more than I expected. Vader is bleeding fast and Halme's punches aren't even aimed at the cut. It's like Halme is knocking the blood out of the other side of his head. When Vader emerges from the corner, he lands a shot I thought would put Halme down but Halme weathers it and starts throwing some focused left body/right head combos that eventually crumble Vader into a bent knee 180. The right side of Vader's face is fully masked in crimson while the left side doesn't have a single drop of blood on it. The visual is incredible. Somebody needs to capture this Vader on canvas. Vader refuses to let the ref check his cut, both men look gassed, and Vader manages to trap Halme in the corner to bounce some shots off the top of his head. Halme can't damage Vader when he's tied up in the corner, can't extend his long arms, and when a roundhouse right drops Halme to his seat, he is literally saved by the bell. Several seconds after the round ends Halme is still frozen on one knee, holding the top rope, unable to stand or pull himself to his feet without great difficulty. He needs the aide of a child murderer just to get to his feet. The shell of a man who turned the famously kind Finn evil has to  slap Halme on the ass and assist him back to his corner.

R5: Round 5 is Vader desecrating the largest human corpse. A 10-7 round, nothing but survival for Halme, but at what cost. He can barely move his arms and Vader has a second wind. The bell rings and a second later Halme's bell gets rung when Vader splats him with an avalanche. Halme was not expecting Vader to make it across the ring so quickly. It's a sign of what's to come, as Halme isn't on his feet for more than a second at a time the entire round. Vader hits a front slam and Halme hits the mat and rolls over so slowly, in a way that looks like he just got jumped out of a gang and they finally stopped putting the boots to him. I figured a disgusting - truly disgusting - Vader lariat would be the end of things, but Vader now looks like a guy who does not want this to end. He fires up the crowd and hits a running standing splash that lands full weight on Halme's ribs and I don't know how Halme ever got back up. Vader is now filled with energy and the crowd keeps egging him on, so he plays out the rest of the round holding Halme in a dragon sleeper and the fans love it.

R6: An absolutely shocking turn of events. I and everyone in Chiba knew that this round would be the end...we just didn't think it would be the end of Vader. Halme can't move from his corner so Vader starts the match the same way he started the 5th, with another avalanche. It feels like the perfect strategy against a man who can't defend himself, but when Vader does it again...Halme manages to move, and while stepping aside he throws a right hand into Vader's stomach like Vader was Arn attempting an axe handle. Halme has one chance, and that's to start swinging for his life, and when Vader sees him swinging for broke he starts swinging for broke. Vader keeps getting knocked down and Halme looks like he'll fall over any second, leaning on the ropes every chance he gets, mouth wide open, hanging himself by the armpits over the top rope so deep that 2 Cold Scorpio has to run over to shove the Finn's mouthguard back in. Vader foolishly keeps standing back up and keeps thinking he can weather Halme's big arm swings, and he keeps thinking this, and keeps getting dropped, and keeps taking longer to get back up...until he can't. I did not see this Halme win coming, the crowd didn't see this Halme win coming, and Vader was incredible at being someone who also did not see it coming.  

We now have all three Halme/Vader matches. One of them is a good idea, one of them is a great match, but this one is an outright classic. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE TONY HALME

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Found Footage Friday: WCW in Manchester 1993~!

ER: We get a full 1993 WCW house show from a week long UK tour that had great sounding matches and really big crowds every night. This one is from Manchester and looks great. If there's a new Vader/Cactus match we get to talk about, it really wouldn't matter what the rest of the card looked like, but this is great. Aside from Vader/Cactus, we get something even more valuable, in a different way. We get fully into the handheld spirit of Dad Recording Events With a Camcorder by starting with some incredible man on the street interviews asking Impossibly British people about their favorite wrestlers. This is a professionally shot and assembled show and these interviews are supposedly professional, but it's crazy that they sold 8,000 tickets to a show and seemingly couldn't find more than a couple fans who had ever heard of WCW. This is essential. 

By the third interview they are talking to a shabby bearded man in a stocking cap who looks like Badly Drawn Boy if he had a bad childhood with a really strict loveless father. The man says his favorite wrestlers are Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo, because he saw them live a coupla times and saw them on TV. Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo have not wrestled in over 10 and 20 years, respectively. The man started acting like he was being asked too probing a question about his taste in wrestling. One Brilliant older lady says she loves Marcus Alexander Bagwell and then politely seemed embarrassed to say that she doesn't like Dustin Rhodes! She calls Barry Windham "Big Barry" and asks if he's married, then yells to her friend Barbara. She shows mild disgust at the mention of Big Van Vader. There are numerous kids with Arn Anderson signs. The most British kid in the fucking world wearing a bowtie and talking about how much he loves Sting. 

Johnny B Badd vs. Scotty Flamingo

MD: Good opener. It was obvious almost immediately that Scotty knew exactly what he had with this crowd. I'm not going back to looking at gates around this time but he was probably not in front of a crowd like this often. They were going to react to everything he did, every forced break in the corner, every complaint about a hairpull that didn't happen, ever stop in the action to interact with them, and he milked it to the fullest. Badd was used to these openers by now and stooged Scotty around for a bit before getting dragged down for most of the match. Scotty's stuff was varied and credible and they worked a few believable hope spots in before going to an energetic stretch of Badd coming back with a few inversions, be it Scotty reversing him off of multiple whips into the corner or just ducking the KO Punch. It wasn't until Johnny snuck in a late match headscissors takeover that he got Scotty off balance to hit it. This was exactly what it ought to have been and the crowd responded accordingly. 

ER: Sorry, Scotty Flamingo fucks. When the cameras cut to him in his fringe and his bulge, he looked like a sex god bringing color to a washed out colorless world. He looks like a Happy Mondays concert. Johnny B. Badd's sequined Naval blue and gold jacket, Captain's hat, and lampshade knee fringe is hotter and far gayer than any gear Cassandro ever wore to the ring and I am frankly stunned at how much bedazzled sex they brought to this town. Flamingo knew exactly what kind of heel to be, trying to sneak things in behind the ref's back, bumping comically when needed, while leaving the biggest bumps for babyface Badd. Johnny took a huge bump over the top to the floor and later a fast one through the ropes, and Scotty had this fun way of playing an innocent little guy. Flamingo used the Curt Hennig corner bump effectively, and the way he went down for Badd finally landing the left hand looked good. This crowd was clearly into all of this and I love a crowd who shows up ready to see some wrestling. 

Maxx Payne vs. Michael Hayes

MD: This peaked in the second minute. Not to say anything else they did was wrong, even if Hayes was 34 going on 60 in how he moved, but I liked the shtick the best. Probably not a surprise. It was good shtick too. Hayes came out decked to the nines and knew the crowd was going to be up for it all. Weird, you couldn't really hear the impacts in the ring (even of the nice punches that needed a louder stomp to go with them I guess?) but you could heard the crowd stomping and cavorting. Even just Payne pointing to each side of the ring to boos and Hayes doing it to cheers felt refreshing. Payne leaned on him like you'd expect and it was fine. Hayes came back and it was fine if a half step slow. And then the finish was nice as Payne shrugged off the DDT and dropped him right down with the... what was it? The Paynekiller? I need to look this up. Yep, the Payne Killer Fujiwara Arm Bar. Perfectly ok house show match but I wish they had done even more goofy stuff at the beginning. The crowd was eager to eat it up and Hayes could make it work.

ER: I liked this quite a bit, but mainly because it was worked around a lot of nice punches that hit and missed. Both guys have nice punches and the ways they would weave the misses in with the hits always felt different, like they kept telling the same punch story and ending it in different ways. I like "old man" Michael Hayes (as Matt said, somehow 34 years old here) and I like that nobody in England had ever seen a man move this way before. That moonwalk is something that would have made him a major star had British wrestling not collapsed already. Maxx Payne is a guy who lands with real heft. A super dense guy who isn't fat enough to be a big fat guy and clearly isn't a body guy, but is big and dense enough that the fat guy spots - like falling on Hayes after Hayes can't handle the lift - work well. I loved how he blocked Hayes' DDT attempt but just anchoring his feet to the mat and shoving off. 

Dustin Rhodes/Van Hammer vs. Barry Windham/Rick Rude

MD: This was a blatant lie as Barry took out Dustin with a chair right after he got to ringside (after a brief scuffle) and it turned into just Rude vs Hammer.

Van Hammer vs. Rick Rude

MD: In general, obviously it's a disappointment that we don't get Barry and Dustin in this tag but it did really let us see Rick Rude at the height of his power working a fairly complete match against Hammer. The early parts where he let Hammer show him up again and again with strength bits and comeuppance and bluster that made him look like a fool was all done extremely well, really getting the crowd moving in exactly the right ways at exactly the right times.

When things settled down, it was all a little weird. A lot of these wrestlers aged better than you'd think because the sheets were valuing so much of the wrong things back then but Hammer is an exception. Rude had to call the match against a broomstick; that's the impression I got at least, because he had him do heel spots and have them go wrong on him only for Rude to do the same spots and have Hammer overcome. For instance, the seated chinlock, which Rude liked to do and then miss on a jump onto the back. Hammer did it first and then when Rude tried to repeat, Hammer was able to lift him up. Likewise the leap onto an outstretched foot. Hammer did it first and you don't often see a babyface wipe out like that. Despite all that, it worked, because Rude made it work and the crowd wanted it to work and Hammer... I mean, he did what he did by this point, a few years into his WCW run. Rude hit almost a snap, swinging sort of Rude Awakening which I'm not sure I ever saw him do. So this had value, but not nearly the sort of value the tag would have had.

ER: Yeah that tag match we didn't get sure looked worlds better than a 15+ minute Van Hammer singles match, but you can't deny how over Hammer was. Before the show when Cappetta was running down the card, Hammer got louder cheers than anyone but Davey Boy, which is incredible. And Rick Rude is probably the best person on the roster at getting a good match out of Van Hammer. Rude knows how to sell effectively for guys like Van Hammer and he knows how to keep crowds interested to make up for the babyface skills Hammer lacks. Rude sells his back better than most wrestlers and takes higher backdrops than anyone, gets ragdolled incredibly on a bearhug, limbs swinging and flopping everywhere like he was giving something to the real Bez-heads in the crowd, blows snot rockets on a downed Hammer, and swings his head around so sweat flies off in waves when Hammer stands up out of a camel clutch. The finishing stretch of this is really good. Rude ducking and moving to avoid Hammer punches until Hammer fakes him out and catches him with one. Rude gives the crowd exactly what they want with his duck walk atomic drop sells and getting run over with clotheslines. I imagine the swinging Rude Awakening was to deal with Van Hammer's height, but it looked good for it. 

Davey Boy Smith vs. Vinnie Vegas

MD: What Worked:

- Vinnie Vegas' cutoffs, including a big boot that went over Davey's head and a great slam back into the corner.
- Vegas' lightning bolt tights that feel like they should have been worn by Sasaki.

What Didn't Work:

- Nash having no idea exactly how much to give at any one point (he gets it sometime in the next year; maybe he was just put off by the size of the crowd?)
- Nash's mannerisms in general. None of it seemed organic.It was all cartoony and over the top in a way where if he dialed it back fifteen percent the crowd would have eaten it up more.
- The crowd doing the same Bulldog chant for ten minutes straight. I shut my eyes and can still hear it.

ER: I got too excited for Matt talking about Vinnie Vegas's cutoffs before watching this and now I'm disappointed. I wanted to see leg. That said, I thought Vegas was a good Bulldog opponent here and I thought this all kinda rocked. Nash might have been more Skywalker Nitro here than what he would be in a couple years, but I thought they were great opponents and both looked good. All the early shoulderblocks and Vegas no sells were great. Bulldog threw a perfect dropkick to a large man and he ran very hard in to Vegas with shoulderblocks. They worked through some compelling slow exchanges that the crowd stayed incessantly attached to with a repeated Airhorn Bulldog chant. All the small stuff built to big Bulldog moments: The long test of strength blow job spot, the heavy sleeper that ended with Bulldog powering to his feet to run Vegas multiple times into the buckles, a sleeper that builds to Bulldog throwing clotheslines and slams. I thought it was all great. 

I thought Vegas looked great. He had a lot of good ideas and a good mix of offense. His two big boots had a nice visual look and were well timed, he threw Bulldog far with his bodyslam, and jumped into a good hard connection landing on his elbowdrop. Vegas did something that I loved as much as anything I've seen in a Kevin Nash match - and I'm a guy who loves a lot of Kevin Nash matches - when Vegas blocked a vertical suplex with a quick punch to Bulldog's kidney. It was so badass, caught perfectly on film. His running missed elbow into the turnbuckles to set up the running powerslam was a full speed miss meant to hit. I thought it was a performance that has aged really well. This felt more like a match he put together for Bulldog than a match Bulldog worked him through. 

Big Van Vader vs. Cactus Jack

MD: Race certainly earned his pay on this night between moving the guardrail out of the way when Cactus was having a superhuman run on the outside to being there for a lot of pivotal moments of Vader taking back over by eating Cactus' stuff while he recovered, including on the finish. The middle felt a little flat to me with Cactus kicking out of the two Vader Bombs a little too early in the sequence maybe, even though there was going to be an escalation to Vader coming off the turnbuckles with a splash. Maybe I just don't remember exactly where Vader's offense was here in 93.

On the other hand, watching Cactus taking Vader's punches is a pretty magic, horrific experience. Just gnarly shot after gnarly shot. Cactus' comebacks were all really good too, be it just getting his foot up at the exact right time or throwing a few DDTs or slamming him out on the floor. Vader was so big that Cactus could believably get a sleeper on him by jumping on his back. And when he took out Race once, he had a great heads up standing tall look to him, a hero you could get behind. So this was good overall, if maybe a bit too reliant on Race and a bit off in the middle. We're better off for having it certainly, if only to see those punches land one more time.

ER: I thought this was pretty fantastic; the match that obviously leapt off the page when the show dropped. A new match added to the legendary feud and it has moments just as violent as the best matches they had. The punches were there but sadly obscured; instead we got Vader taking a diving bump off the ring staging across and over a guardrail. It's one of the bigger Vader bumps in their feud and it's crazy to see on this show. It looked no different than a dangerous Cactus bump, but this match was about Vader and Harley Race being the ones taking bumps on concrete and ring edges, not Cactus. Vader was taking big DDT bumps with slick vertical pause, missed a big splash off the middle buckle. Honestly Cactus got out of this one easy. Jack was the one announced to the crowd multiple times as one of the main attractions but the reactions were not there. Nobody was talking about him in the pre-show interviews, nobody seemed to know how to react to him as a man. 

Vader knows how to get reaction and works impressively overtime. This is a match that raises Vader's stock. He was an incredibly hard working mammoth man. He worked 125 matches in 1993 and he's out there playing up to the large crowd, falling hard, swinging harder. In between his big bumps are the big hits. Beyond our obscured sequence of definitely shoot punches, there were straight kicks to the ribs and headbutts; a little kid smile before jumping ass to chest with a bombs away. I thought the Race involvement was hilarious and unnecessary but love that Race is a psycho taking suplexes at 50 and looking 65. Vader is good at being specially vicious taking over after his interference. He mule kicks Cactus so hard in the balls that it felt like a finish. But Vader is an artist. A fan's wrestler. While Jack is selling his balls Vader delivers his biggest hardest swing of the match into the side of his head. 

Cactus/Vader was an excellent feud to get another match from. They always had new ideas, and this one had a structure I hadn't seen from them. 

Sting vs. Paul Orndorff

MD: The good in this was really good. Orndorff looked amazing to start. There's an early sequence where he begins with an awesome grinding headlock and moves into faster rope running than you'd think into almost a snap press slam by Sting and the recoiling that followed and it was all great. I wish we had a little more stooging before he took over, but his offense for the transition was all credible, jabs and a perfectly timed knee cutoff.

The problem was that there was both a lack of motion and a lack of heeling once he did
take over. He mostly ground Sting down as they built to a few hope spots and I get why he might contain him and Sting sold well, but it maybe wasn't the match I would have wanted as a main event. I half get the impression that since the fans were just chanting for Sting over and over, Orndorff felt like he didn't need to do a whole lot to get more heat. They did have a good finish though with Orndorff taking a front bump into the corner and Sting splashing him to the back and then rolling up. I'm not sure I'd seen that in too many Sting matches. So good overall but maybe not rising to the moment.

ER: I thought Orndorff looked incredible here. Sting was a great babyface, I loved all his flying and his comeback punches might have been the best on the show. But I couldn't stop watching Orndorff and his weird arm but mostly his incredible skillset. He was fast, dynamic, bumped everything like he meant it and It mattered. He knew how to use that little arm to throw short sharp elbows to the jaw and pointed elbowdrops straight down to the throat that were exquisitely worked. He took a damn vertical suplex on the floor; his back suplex landed Sting firmly on his shoulders in a way that looked distinctly All Japan. I thought about Paul Orndorff in 90s All Japan as the crispest possible Johnny Ace and thinking about how differently things could have been. Sting/Orndorff is a match I don't think I've ever seen. I don't think of them as guys who feuded. This felt like a NEW new match to me, and they probably could have done more and built to something bigger than the Vader/Cactus match that preceded them. But for guys I don't think about as wrestling each other, Orndorff felt like one of the best to take Sting's offense. This man knew how to draw money wrestling wild eyed babyfaces like he was born to do it. 

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Loosely Formed Thoughts on WWF Over the Edge 5/31/98

The Propaganda-style intro to this PPV is fucking insane. It's all World War II footage of tanks and soldiers and fucking Stalin and Mussolini and actual Nazi footage and it's all interspersed with They Live CONFORM and OBEY block fonts but also video of Stone Cold doing shit like turkey tapping Vince from several angles. Best possible start. 

 

1. LOD 2000 vs. DOA

It actually feels impossible that LOD 2000 didn't become the biggest tag team of the rest of the decade with Sunny as their manager. I don't think I'm being overly horny here either. I don't think the fact that Sunny looked like this while I was 17 years old matters here, as I don't think this is a matter of bias. I think I'm being a very reasonable and appropriate level of horny in a way that the eyes of history agree with. 

This is Hawk and Animal vs. 8-Ball and Skull but Droz and Chainz are there. Up above I only wrote "LOD 2000 vs. DOA" and I didn't want anyone to get confused about what members of each group of friends was actively involved here. 

Skull throws a nice ugly big man swinging neck beaker and an actual good legdrop. It does not bring me great joy that 8-Ball and Skull's work from '98 is probably better than we assessed at the time. 

Animal is in strong style mode and does a dragon screw and I don't think I've seen that from him before or since. How much of his BattlArts work is available? 

8-Ball vs. Hawk is better than Skull vs. Animal. They did more punching and elbowdrops and an ugly piledriver that Hawk gets to ignore completely because that is Hawk's spot. 

Hawk has a way of looking off balance while also having this incredible balance and sturdiness on all of his clotheslines. He looks wobbly, but takes this incredible bump all the way across the ring off a missed top rope shoulderblock, flying out of the ring into an almost Halloween style sliding bump to the floor. Hard. I liked Drunk Hawk when I was a teenager but I don't think it was because I thought he was GOOD good. Accidentally, time has only proven me right. Further proof of how good he still was on fumes in '98: the 1-2 punch of his  neckbreaker -> fistdrop combo. 

The 8-Ball/Hawk punch exchange is good and should have gone three times as long. It's worth it for Chainz punching Hawk in the balls from the floor in a way that didn't even seem planned. Cameras weren't focused on it. You can see Chainz pop him in the nuts from the floor and Hawk reacts like a guy who just realized he got tapped hard enough in the balls to react. 

Nobody quite knew how to get to the finish, but Animal clotheslining his way through a hot tag and hitting a great powerslam for the finish plays well with any lead up. 

There is a Faarooq! Faarooq! Faarooq is on Fire!! sign and folks, that's a good one. 

2. Jeff Jarrett vs. Steve Blackman

Fuck I hope Steve Blackman tries a piledriver here but I have a parlay on Jarrett doing one. You see, in between matches backstage, Faarooq hit The Rock with the Piledriver To Beat tonight. We're 20 minutes into this show and we've had two piledrivers and we still have over 2.5 hours to go.  

Blackman is really fun to watch during this stretch. We don't get Reformed Musclehead Karate Guys Working Every Pro Wrestling Spot He's Ever Seen anymore. Blackman doing a baseball slide dropkick to start but then press slamming Jarrett back into the ring but also doing Ricky Steamboat double chops but also looking lost and kind of dangerous is just lightning in a bottle. I think he would get a lot less interesting the more he learned, but this is still in that magic window. 

Blackman hits a thrust kick on the floor that looks like the the most violent version of Chuck Norris kicking Jarrett down the aisle. 

Jarrett does a really good job icing this down the right amount while there's an Al Snow angle taking several minutes too long at ringside. Jarrett works Barry Darsow chatter like "He ain't going nowhere now!" and "Ring the bell he's done!" and is able to do essentially nothing for a few minutes, really well. 

They do a preposterously slow 9 count after Jarrett hits a back suplex. Jarrett had been working over Blackman in a chinlock for a minute so I have no idea why Jarrett was as knocked out as Blackman. I thought they would explode a bit more after the Al Snow angle, you know, to get everyone back involved in things, but they kind of do the opposite for no reason. They've turned the entire rest of the match into "every move keeps both of us down for too long" and it sucks.  

Steve Blackman is at his absolute beautiful best when he is doing moves with full commitment without looking as if he's ever even practiced doing the move before. It's only a detriment if a couple of miscues happen back to back, but has a remarkably high ceiling as a style. His elbowdrop is not thrown like any other wrestler has thrown an elbowdrop. It's like he was born with the knowledge but without memory of where the knowledge came from. He knows it's right, but it's informed by something beyond him. He is not inspired by anyone else who came before. 

Steve Blackman is Backyarder Doug Furnas and we didn't know what we had. We didn't know, and he didn't know how to continue giving that to us. 

3. Loser Leaves WWF: Sable vs. Marc Mero

I'll say it again: Mero and Sable were really great during the first half of '98. Neither ever did it better. Maybe when we get into Jacqueline Era Marc I'll determine that it has aged even better than his Sable Forced Separation arc but I'm not expecting it to be. Honestly Sable and Mero are fucking GREAT together. They really seem like they dislike each other, like their marriage was really already over instead of merely being on the start of a 5 year slide towards being over.  

Marc Mero is so good during this entire segment. "Sable what happened to us? This business ruins relationships... It ruined ours."  

Marc Mero pulling a small package after doing the honorable thing and lying down for Sable, then jumping around the ring in celebration is one of those things my sister will bring up unprovoked 25 years later. 

4. Bradshaw/Taka Michinoku vs. Kai En Tai

Bradshaw press slams Taka into everyone within the first 30 seconds. He's so massive, they look like Lilliputians wearing Miller's Outpost jean shorts. 

I remember this being a lot better, with a lot more heat. Crowd really isn't as into it as I remember. I'm not into it as much as I remember. The Kai En Tai stuff doesn't read as fluid or unique today. There are a lot more seams with 2024 eyes. Bradshaw is not actually reckless at all. Did we all have false implanted rose colored memories of Bradshaw recklessly fucking up everyone in the match or was that just me? This Wisconsin crowd doesn't understand a single fucking part of it. Arms are crossed in Milwaukee, politely not understanding any of Dick Togo's excellent senton variations. 

Jim Ross makes an extended Gulliver's Travels reference and then explains it and I feel like a stupid asshole who's only read three books in my life out here making the same similes as Jim Ross. JR and I each watched the Ted Danson Gulliver's Travels Two Night Television Event in 1996 and now we use it to describe pro wrestling when big man fights small men.   

Okay it gets good when Bradshaw finally tags in and that's when he starts throwing them around. It's still never unprofessional in the ways I remember it being. In fact, Bradshaw was actually a good sport believably taking Kai En Tai's offense, leaning into dropkicks and struggling really well while the Lilliputians tethered his legs with rope. He does polish Funaki with a clothesline and choose Teioh as his Only True Victim by throwing him - really throwing him - with a tiger suplex, but you could watch this match and have no actual idea that Bradshaw is a miserable prick.  

5. Faarooq vs. The Rock

I think Faarooq looked like a real badass (before the match started). This match was the best his Faarooq gear ever looked on him. Fuck how cool would Jacqueline have looked in Faarooq's exact gear? Faarooq looks like a lean cut Masa Saito, or the most bulked up Bernie Casey. He looks perfect, in other words. He looks like a guy really giving a beating to a guy he dislikes. A beating he's been waiting to hand out. His sparsely African-patterned gear looked great with the straps up, and even better when he takes the straps down. Someone who's good with computers, put Jacqueline in Faarooq's gear. 

I hate how guys like MJF or Austin Theory or Ricky Starks move like 1998 The Rock. It sucks. They all flop the same and walk around with their butts out the same and it's all theater kids goofing around doing People's Elbows. The Butt Out Walk must be the first thing they teach at Brahma School. 

I don't know why the crowd isn't more excited for Faarooq dishing out a beating. The Rock wore a big neck brace after Faarooq piledrove him earlier and takes a fun beating, and that combination of things deserved a reaction. His elbows on the apron looked good, Rock is acting like a real punk doofus, yet nobody cares. 

Real flat finish. This feud never had a chance. There was a weird 3 count that got a silent reaction and the camera shot it in a way where you couldn't see Rock's foot on the rope. This whole thing was only 5 minutes and felt really incomplete. Blackman/Jarrett got twice as much time without even being based around an actual feud, so this whole thing was just set up to fail.  

When DX runs in after the match to ambush The Nation they look like the 4 Horsemen of Rape.

6. Vader vs. Kane

Vader was getting real reactions in 1998. There was a powerful machine working against 1998 Vader. He does the Vader flex, he flashes the V's, a ton of fans have Vader signs. The People believed in Vader in 98 and the people in charge didn't want them to. Vader was done wrong. We all know it. The man was 43 years old, which is not an old age at all. I know this because it is my age and how could I possibly be old? I understand why they instinctively didn't want to get behind a 43 year old Vader, but you see things a couple decades removed from the original context and you realize just how mammoth a star Vader would have been in WWF had they just treated him the same way they treat Nakamura at the same age. 

Kane's punches were better in 1998 - better, not good - but his straight rights are not good. There is a reason he never threw them for most of the rest of his career. They have no weight behind them. His uppercuts don't look good either. He threw a bigger variety of punches then, not just uppercuts, and their form is good but the weight is absent. Kane's strikes look shittier the longer the match goes. He would go on to phase all of these punches out other than the uppercut.  

Vader's offense looks good against a big guy like Kane. His bear attack runs him over, but he smartly did one bear attack that stunned Kane, then a second bigger one that flattened him. Nobody was flattening Kane in 1998. Vader knew we build to that. "Vader using his mass now" fuck yeah he is JR. 

This match should be getting a bigger reaction. Vader is making this look like a big fight. He's swinging arms into all sides of Kane's head, even throwing them to the back of his head. Kane is in retreat! Vader sent Kane into retreat which is a thing that has never happened and nobody is reacting to it. Nobody is reacting to these beefy arms and it doesn't make sense. Nobody thinks it's cool that Kane scoop slammed Vader? Vader is a really big guy to take a scoop slam! He lands completely differently than you've seen because you just don't see 400 pound men getting slammed. 

This has not been a night of good matches, which often hurts a crowd, but I don't know why this crowd was not reacting to this match as if it was not Good or Big. It was both, but the crowd reacting so indifferently and Kane just not being that good limited how good it could get. 

I don't know why I haven't mentioned how ridiculous the mask stipulation is but it really didn't need to happen. It didn't make anyone care more about the match than they would have. Vader getting real red-faced revenge would have been cooler. A match built around "first to grab and use the large comical wrench" would have been cooler, probably.  

Kane's top rope clothesline is the softest contact Signature Clothesline of the modern era. It's a terrible clothesline and it never got better. It was only ever good if used in No Mercy. His running clothesline, which he stopped using, looked like a clothesline that would run Vader over and is the loudest contact of the match. 

Vader bumps to get Kane over but they react more to Vader on the attack than Vader bumping around. If Kane had the energy of Bradshaw it could have been a real fight, but Vader has to create his own energy off Kane's Lesser Jason Voorhees body acting. Vader knows how to build a reaction when going for the Vader Bomb, and he knows how to peak it by pausing briefly on the middle buckle before deciding to climb to the top, Milwaukee swelling as he leaves his feet and deflating when he crash lands. The Vader moonsault is a flat out insane and incredible spot for a man his age and size to be using. Vader understood PPV and They resented him for it. This man got up for a goddamn Tombstone and yep, it looks cool as hell when a guy the size of Vader is Tombstoned. 

I don't actually know how I feel about Vader calling himself a fat piece of shit. I think it's a raw promo, and his delivery is note perfect. I guess the problem is that I don't think they ever did anything other than kind of reflect on how sad it was that Vader called himself a fat piece of shit. I don't know if we needed to see vulnerable, sensitive Vader but I do think it was so memorable because of how real it was delivered. We've all been down on ourselves in our lives. A lot sometimes, for any little thing. Vader felt real, and maybe we didn't need Real Vader. Maybe, if it led to something of substance, a renewed energy and fight, it would have allowed people to reflect on themselves when they get too down on themselves. I don't think WWF was or is capable of writing that kind of character. Whatever. It felt like actual, real frustration, the kind we all go through. We don't get that kind of insight into athletes. They're insulated. Taught what not to say to the media. Me, personally? I do not think Vader is a fat piece of shit, but I believed in that moment that he did, and that's affecting. 

I forgot this was the PPV they did that weird Lawler/Crusher/Mad Dog Vachon angle. The Crusher, in his early 70s, kept looking cooler the more undressed he got during his segment with Lawler and Mad Dog Vachon. He looked cool the entire time and got a great big reaction from Milwaukee. He looked like such a badass grandpa in his brown Wrangler Wranchers throwing his bolo punches. This was such a weird thing for WWF to do. They had already used Mad Dog's wooden leg in a match and the idea of WWF honoring a local hero who had nothing to do with them is such a non-Vince move. 

7. HHH/New Age Outlaws vs. D-Lo Brown/Owen Hart/The Godfather 

If your friend had never watched WWF programming before, you could convince them pretty easily that Owen Hart was working some kind of hacker gimmick in his caution tape singlet and, well, hacker sunglasses. 

Owen tags in and runs straight into a Billy Gunn clothesline, Gunn punches and press slams him, Gunn goes up for a backdrop for him, really two of the only guys trying to make this work.

Helmsley's running jumping knee and his tilt a whirl backbreaker (!?) looked good. He always really looked like he enjoyed working Owen. 

Why was the Billy Gunn/Godfather pairing so good in this? They worked kind of fast against each other, and Godfather looked like he was throwing his kicks and missed clotheslines with different pep.

New Age Outlaws working over D-Lo is really good too, though not as good whenever HHH tags in. It's wild how much HHH really kills all the pacing and vibe of this match any time he's involved.

More Owen Sucks chants than I remember but his perfect piledriver to Road Dogg brings no reaction at all. Philistines. 

This match is going a lot longer than anyone could have reasonably expected. The fans get real restless whenever anyone considers doing any kind of hold. This thing is dying the longer they go, nobody is doing anything to bring it back to life even if a lot of the work looks good. It's crazy how bad HHH makes the DX act in-ring. He is actively hurting their vibe and wrestling image. 

8. Steve Austin vs. Dude Love 

Pat Patterson is so fucking funny introducing Gerald Brisco as the guest timekeeper. He has his readers on and a stack of at least a dozen 3x5 cards. He actually said that Gerald Brisco's heart "beats like the tom tom drum on the reservation, like the Heartbeat of America." I mean whoever wrote that line was onto something next level. "Some call him the reincarnation of Jim Thorpe. We call him...A Friend." This is incredible. I did not appreciate how amazing his intro was when I watched this as a teen. All my friends and I just wanted to see Austin beat everyone's ass. 

Vince looks like an impossibly hulked up Robert Carradine. A real geek, and a real freak in his flap pocket black chinos and sleeveless ref shirt. Incredible posture, but a freakish build sculpted onto that wealthy flawed Connecticut skeleton and Kennedy hair. He has a million facial reactions and it's incredible how good literally every one of them are. It's a real Gotta Hand it To. 

Foley sells a back elbow like Austin really spiked him in the nose, running himself into the ground like Terry Funk but more real. The longer the match goes, the more I know that each man was really taking these shots. I just didn't realize they were roughing each other up from go. 

Foley takes such a great bump on a clothesline to the floor. Austin really timed it well and collided with him well, but Foley went over so fast, in that way that Foley sometimes does where you don't know how controlled it actually is. Man would just throw his body to the floor with more speed than he used for anything else. Shouldn't really be a shock anymore that Foley took some crazy bumps, but his heavy lower half really whips him over the ropes. Nobody else has really been able to duplicate that. 

Austin throws Foley onto Brisco and then stomps on them both and punches Foley in the back of the head too many times before clotheslining him ass over elbow onto concrete over the guardrail. I probably haven't watched this match since the early 2000s (I bought the Over the Edge VHS from a video store in Healdsburg that was going out of business) and remember it being built around tons of bumps onto concrete, and that is exactly what it is, and they keep escalating. 

Austin taking a backdrop onto the hood of a fucked up old style Honda Civic, boot going through the windshield 20 years before Zona 23. Is Zona 23:16 anything? Austin gets thrown onto and over a tilted old Mercury and Foley sunset flips him off that Mercury's hood, it's awesome. Foley's body makes a wet splat as his weird torso and wide butt land perfectly flat. It's a sound you never hear and Foley has made it like three times in this match alone. 

Austin is bleeding and is always an incredible looking bleeder. The blood doesn't keep up but the initial color is strong. When he bleeds he always gets the best deep red color on his tanned bald head. For a match built around big bumps on concrete I forgot how many hard back bumps Austin takes onto concrete in this match. My man is out here taking backdrops and suplexes in parts of the entrance that at least 7,000 people can't even see. It's insane. This man broke his damn neck 10 months ago and he's bumping on concrete for himself. 

Also, Steve Austin is great because he manages to bounce a chair off the ropes and into his own face and makes it look like a complete accident. It's a spot that a lot of men have tried and few have made work well. I think there needs to be a level of alcoholism involved to make it work. Sandman was good at it too. 

Pat Patterson throws such a punch into Mike Chioda's lower orbital bone. There's no way any of these Patterson/Briscoe matches from 1999 are any good but damn they should have been using Patterson in more physical roles this whole time. He takes one of the best chokeslams of the year through a damn table. This is a man pushing 60 who retired four presidents ago and hasn't done physical stuff on screen since the mid 80s. How did he even prepare to take this? How did Vince psych himself up to get brained with a pre-Chris Nowinski research chairshot? No idea. 

I don't know how well this holds up as an All Time Great Brawl, but it's differently great for its big stunt show feel and old man bullshit that was at the center of a fight. It was messier than I remembered and was more about getting to specific areas and moments, but this is still a standout 1998 WWF match and surely the best WWF match of the year to this point.   

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE 305 LIVE

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Dirtbag Era Barry Windham Concludes; Dirtbag Era Vader Commencing?

Barry Windham vs. Vader WWF Raw 5/11/98

ER: You wanna talk dirtbags, kid, then you're going to want to talk about this match. Barry Windham and Vader were each ensconced in their own individual dirtbag eras, riding out contracts neither seemingly wanted to be underneath any longer. Windham doesn't so much look like a dirtbag as he looks like a man who is permanently sleeping one off, forced to come into work on his day off after a night spent as a man who didn't have to work the next day. Vader still has that unmistakeable Vader charisma - you watch him burst out on that entrance stage and throw in an unnecessary-but-Absolutely Necessary twirl as he's hyping up fans in several sections of the arena with V hands and tell me this man isn't the greatest big man ever - but he is also wearing Vader gear that is tantamount to those old Halloween costumes that had a picture of the character you were supposed to be on the pajama shirt that came with the plastic mask. Obviously I am C-3P0, you can tell by my shirt that has C3P0 on it and also says "C3P0". Vader is not so much in dirtbag mode as he is in Pajama Jams Vader mode, wearing the sleeveless t-shirt version of his own Vader Time singlet. Vader is a man wearing his own character's pajamas. Barry Windham was just woken up from a 7 hour nap minutes before this match. Vader has just finished brushing his teeth before bedtime, and for two guys visibly mailing it in they sure do have a cool match. 

Vader and Windham had several years of overlap in WCW and WWF, more than enough time to give us a Vader/Windham singles match, but somehow this match is it. The only one! We got several instances of them teaming in 1993 WCW, but can you imagine a 10 minutes singles match between them in 1993? My god. This 2 minute singles match in 1998 is not that 10 minute match in 1993 that I made up and got upset about, but I like this era of clock punching big men in their own Spirit Store costumes. Windham looks like a man who wouldn't be able to keep food down but moves as fast as his 1988 self. He weathers Vader's attacks and ducks fast under a super low Vader clothesline swing, throws his diving lariat with real impact and I love that despite a physique that looks like he hasn't lifted a weight since Clinton's re-election, Windham actually holds Vader up and drops him with a back suplex. Windham also absorbs a ton of Vader's weight in really painful ways, pulling Vader butt first onto his chest with a misguided sunset flip and apparently not learning his lesson in any way and trying it again later, this one Full Ass and punctuated with a Vader eye roll. Vader is either tired of This Shit, or recognizes how foolish Barry was to try that exact same thing a second time. Vader flattens him with a standing splash and drags him over for the Vader Bomb, which Windham sells perfectly. Barry rolls to his side clutching his guts as Vader lands, the way a man would reel when a 400 pound man just laid out from 5 feet up, like the world's heaviest mattress just got thrown onto him from the window of a three story walk up. 

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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.  

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