Found Footage Friday: Universal Pro Wrestling 1992~!

Bulldog KT (Gedo)/Pat Tanaka/Villano IV vs. Coolie SZ (Jado)/Lightning Kid/Jerry Lynn Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: It's important you know that Lynn and co. come out to Don't Cry by Asia. Also that Pat Tanaka is a huge jerk in this match and I'm all for it. They did a lot in 20+ minutes over three falls. It was fun to see Villano work with Lynn (bounding fast exchanges) and Kid (hitting him really, really hard and then taking all of Waltman's karate bs). The heels worked together well, lots of setting a babyface up for a double team or single shot. There were some nice pushes by Tanaka, on a suplex to give it extra oomph and then to set up the finish by basically shoving a victory rolling Lynn and Villano out of the ring. Gedo and Jado generally worked together but their stuff looked practiced, solid, and usually pretty mean. After coming back from a relatively long, cycled beatdown, Lynn broke up a hold on Kid and they hit a tandem missile dropkick/Northern Lights. Second fall had some funnier stuff from Lynn as he tossed Tanaka into the corner and Tanaka twisted twice on the way and then got down on his hands and knees and dog barked Gedo out of the ring. But it came back together for the fireworks down the stretch. 

ER: I was pretty blown away by this, a frenetically based long three falls match where every guy is working fast and hitting harder. Everyone had standout moments, with Jerry Lynn being the guy who blew me away the most. Lynn looked ready to work any promotion in the world, breezing into Japan and working smoking hot dodging and tumbling sequences with Villano IV, throwing perfect snug execution on everything he attempted. His offense makes extravagant bumps look necessary. When he hits a dropkick to Villano IV, it makes sense that it sends him flying out of the ring; when he blasts Pat Tanaka with a clothesline, he swings it so hard that it makes Tanaka's inside out flip bump seem like the natural way to get eaten by that clothesline. Everything Lynn did was crisp, established the pacing of the match, and followed through to logical match building conclusions. When I say I was blown away, I mean it. Jerry Lynn is a guy who I view as a known quantity. We've all seen many JL matches, we all know he's talented, the industry respects him, he's worked everywhere, etc. But seeing Lynn here is like seeing him for the first time, seeing things he was capable of that never defined his style. Lynn really could do it all...but I don't know how often I've seen him doing It better than he does here. 

The thing is, everyone kind of comes off that way. Jado and Gedo as beefed up Mr. Perfect Singlet Boys is the most interesting version of them in the 90s. I love the wave of T&C Surf Designs inspired Japanese indy wrestlers of the late 80s/early 90s, from the surf punks surrounding the ring in the most violent late 80s FMW Different Style bouts, to these two beefy Malibu boys in their mullets and surf suits. It's unfathomable to me that 1992 Jado and Gedo had great clotheslines, but video doesn't lie. Jado throws a top rope clothesline as hard as Ikeda ever threw, and that's arguably the toughest clothesline to throw well. Gedo blows up Jado with a clothesline that would get Tenryu's attention, and it's a wildly more interesting version of themselves than all their bad juniors wrestling the rest of the decade. 

If Pat Tanaka was a real jerk - he was! - then Villano IV might have been an outright sadist. This man was in his late 20s and a physical danger. If I praised Lynn's execution, then V4 deserves the same praise. Everything he does has such force behind it. He has these cool kneedrops, where he starts from a kneeling position and drives a knee into his opponent's temple, and I'm not sure I've ever seen legdrops thrown with more force. I didn't think you could get such impact from a standing legdrop, but Villano made them look like real finishers. 

But the thing that really stood out in a match filled with standouts, was Villano IV and Lightning Kid starting off the third fall with a literal shoot fight on the floor. I couldn't tell why it escalated, but they clearly start throwing increasingly harder and harder shots during a routine sequence. I don't know the exact moment it turned unprofessional, but Villano knocked Kid to the floor and Kid came up throwing elbows meant to crack jaws, and Villano recognized the intent behind those elbows immediately and landed five straight punches to Kid's face and head. This all happened within 15 seconds, where a hard Villano club to the back turned into a Kid shoot elbow, and suddenly Kid was fleeing while wisely shielding his face as Villano finds every uncovered part and lands every punch he throws. No idea what happened, but there's no mistaking those punches for worked, and whatever might have happened didn't affect Kid's big comeback in the tercera, which played as great retribution. Villano IV stood in for spin kicks and cooperated to make it look like a strong comeback, taking all of his kicks and making the decision to not punch him directly in the face, again. 

Gran Hamada/Panterita del Ring vs. Shu el Guerrero/Scorpio Jr. Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: Shu and Scorpio come out to Simply Irresistible. Good for them. Anyway, I struggle a little with matches like this. There's just not a ton to say. There were 12+ minutes of bits/spots to start, and they were good! A lot of them were really good. But do I just list them? There wasn't a lot of rhyme or reason to them. There was a little bit of progression with early matwork, but after that, it was off into bit-land. Yes, Shu based well. Yes, Scorpio had some moments of stooging, including a great one where Pandrita was able to roll through on something, drive him out, and force him to walk down the ramp hands up in retreat so there was no dive. There was a great bit where Shu swiped away a Panterita dropkick and slapped his chest repeatedly only to end up in the corner for a knee driving headscissors takeover. Hamada in general looked like a million bucks. Then they had a few minutes of beatdown which was, again good (really liked a catapult where Shu choked Hamada down onto Scorpio's knees), and a comeback with a strike exchange and some big dives, before Shu scored a clutch powerbomb and a pretty swank tied up pin. Definitely good action. A lot of character and personality. Super entertaining. I'm sure DEAN would have been able to write the hell out of this. But all I can do is bear witness.

Kendo/Great Sasuke vs. Rocky Santana/Super Delfin Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: This was the main event, 2/3 falls. By the way, the first match on the show, that we don't have, is Black Magic vs Rey Bucanero. Though it's 92 Bucanero so he was like 12. Ah well. Kendo comes out with a soccer type shirt with himself on it. The fans are immediately behind him.

The initial Kendo vs. Santana and Sasuke vs. Delfin exchanges (two times) are a lot of fun. Nice tricked out back and forth with Kendo and Santana where they both hit the mat hard and Sasuke being insanely flexible against Delfin. Some nice comedic bits in there as well, like Santana getting skidded out and Kendo sliding out to invite him back in and Santana faceplanting a few times. It's mostly friendly though Delfin takes (and misses) a swipe at one point. The fall ends with the pairings getting switched up and Sasuke flying off the top on both Santana and Delfin leading to a funny bit where they toss Kendo off and Sasuke tosses him back on until he finally sits on all of them for the pin.

Second fall switches the pairings for real, with Delfin falling for all of Kendo's tricks and Santana feeding for Sasuke. The rudos take over though and run a beatdown on one than the other than the first again. They tease a comeback but Delfin gets a tornado DDT and locks up Kendo for the pin. After that, Kendo gets rolled out of the ring hurt, and I thought this was going to turn into a different sort of match. It lets the de facto rudos control for a bit but Kendo just comes back in pissed a few minutes later and he gets into the most ridiculous kneeling strike exchange with Santana that I've ever seen. They whack each other, then fall over backwards then get counted and pop back up and do it some more. It goes on for quite a while and it is a crowd pleaser. After that, they pop right into dives with Sasuke knocking everyone out with the Space Flying Tiger Drop to get the countout win. Definitely fun. Might have been interesting to see it take a more grisly turn but that's not what they were doing here. 

ER: I love these proto-MPro matches where you can see the style almost fully gestated, the lightheartedness with the stiffness, the innovative movement with the strong lucha inspiration. I love Rocky Santana within this world. He understood the kind of regional lucha comedy that would crossover well to Japanese Indies, while also working stiff enough to capture the attention of the rest of the crowd. They laughed when Santana charged into the ring and tripped on the bottom rope, face planting into the ring and crying to the ref for support. When he did the exact same thing in the second fall, they ate it up, fully understanding his vibe. He bases as well as Hamada and moves the same, but he'll also break down and start punching people. The whole match building to a long stretch where Kendo and Santana kneel in front of each other and do several minutes of stiff punches, comedy punches, and exhausted punches, is brilliant. We've all seen enough "two men throwing strikes with no defense" at this point, but it's crazy how many innovative versions of that exist on small lucha shows and Japanese Indies. This exchange starts normal...until the strikes start becoming unexpected, sometimes silly, sometimes mean, thrown in a totally unpredictable rhythm. It looked like Kendo and Santana were playing some kind of memory game that nobody else knew the rules to, and this memory game involved being punched in the jaw, ear, and neck. I've never seen an exchange like it, one that had multiple goals and just kept going until everyone in the building was on board. That's wrestling, baby. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: VILLANOS~! UNIVERSO~! PIRATA~! PANTHER~! ESPECTRO~! MANDO~! MARKUS~!

Villano IV/Villano IV/Milo Caballero vs. Universo 2000/Hijo del Gladiador/Babe Face Monterrey 1991

MD: The sort of lucha trios that hits just right for the most part. Villano IV was paired with Babe Face who was happy to stooge all over the place, feigning getting hit by low blows and making faces. Villano V was matched with Universo who was heatseeing (punching the post and getting DDT'd for instance). Both pairings were heated and seemed to have issues. Gladiador and Milo were more or less along for the ride.

Lots of feeding (more than basing) in the primera with an exciting escalation. When the rudos took over there was a nice bit of Villano V grabbing fans' hands on the outside after he took a beating. The comeback moment was just Milo recovering and attacking from behind but the Villanos more than made up for that. V got some great punches in on the floor on Universo while IV doled out justice on Babe Face. They rushed to pinfalls in the tercera but then had the Villanos make an illegal switch despite the fact they were the tecnicos here. The rudos complained but it was too little too late. Fun stuff but it almost would have been served better as a straight tag.

Pirata Morgan/Mascara Sagrada/Kato Kung Lee II vs. Indomito/Blue Panther/Espectro, Jr. Monterrey end 91/early 92

MD: The big appeal to this one was that the rudos had recently turned on Morgan and now he was with the tecnicos. It was straightforward overall with more exchanges than heat even with Morgan's turn but it was all pretty masterful so you don't mind. Primera pairings were Panther/KKL, Indomito/Morgan, Espectro/Sagrada. Lots of Panther matwork. He worked a short arm scissors/gotch lift sequence with you don't see every day in Lucha. At the start ot the second round of exchanges (rope running) he knocked KKL out of the ring immediately before eating an arm drag on his way back in and that was funny for the matter-of-factness of it. Equally funny was watching Morgan work staright tecnico including some flashy things like a Mule Kick out of nowhere. Espectro  and Sagrada didn't go as long but the had the most tricked out stuff overall.

Rudos took the primera with a beautiful Panther northern lights out of nowhere. That led into a fairly simple beatdown, simple because it didn't last long. The second they cycled to Morgan, he started firing back and tecnicos won quickly. Likewise, the third fall was quick, full of crowd pleasing tandem stuff (including an estrella with KKL using a victory roll into the center instead of a 'rana. So fun stuff but I wanted to see Morgan really go on the offense and that wasn't what this one was about.

Mando Guerrero/Centurion Negro/Monarca vs. Corsario Negro/Gran Markus Jr./Azteca de Oro Monterey 1991?

MD: This, on the other hand, was all heat. The issue was between Centurion Negro and Corsario Negro (the latter of which had no mask anymore). Corsario dodged him well enough during the primera (which was full of posturing), even if it meant that his team was at a bit of a disadvantage. In the segunda, they went all in on Centurion's mask, tearing it apart. The commentators were trying to get any glimpse they could, noting definitively that he did not have a mustache. The comeback in the tercera was because they were focusing too much on the mask allowing Mando and Monarca to come in and even the odds.

At that point, Centurion laid a pretty colossal beating on Corsario. The refs wanted to just award it to the tecnicos but they didn't want to stop. Nothing wildly over the top, just stomps and stomps and more stomps but they were pretty brutal ones. Eventually that let the other rudos come in and even the odds and they fairly quickly got a banana peel win. Post-match they had to do everything they could to keep Centurion and Corsario away from each other. If this led to an apuestas match, I would have bought a ticket for it. I think we might have five or six minutes of a JIP match actually. I should look at that.

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: SERDAN~! AQUILES~! VERNE~! MCCLARITY~! VILLANOS~! TEXANO~! SIGNO~! NAVARRO~!

Michel Serdan vs Aquiles Brazil 9/13/87

MD: We've covered two other matches from Brazil and they've both been tremendous. This was no different. If someone is just sitting on a bunch of Michel Serdan matches, please come forward with them. We'll watch them all. This was billed as his retirement match, one last fight in a cage against Aquiles to prove the better man once and for all. Aquiles cut a fun quick promo before the match saying he wanted Serdan to be calm because he was scared to face him. Serdan had a more celebratory one where he got to thank the fans. This was escape rules with rounds of all things. The cage was flush to the ring, so much so that there were no turnbuckle pads.

That came into play immediately as Serdan ran Aquiles right into the corner a couple of times to open him up. He was already bleeding when he ran him into the cage. He had wild sweeping strikes meant for the last row. I wouldn't call them conventional or even tight but they were very effective and dramatic, like he was riding the music of the roaring crowd. The round breaks served as potential transitions, but even more so were attempts out of the cage. That's when Aquiles got to first take over on Serdan, who had beaten him enough that he was satisfied and went to leave but was immediately pulled down. He quickly got color too though not quite as much as Aquiles (though he had the bald head to help it go a little further). From there they went back and forth, utilizing either escape attempts or round breaks as a way to fire back at one another, just repeatedly slamming fists into heads from every angle.

What a finish too. Aquiles managed to knock Serdan away and started to climb and you wondered, just for a moment, if he might get away. Serdan was there though, grabbing at his feet and it wasn't hard to see the rest of this playing out with Aquiles thrust back into the ring and Serdan rising victorious. However, the entire heel locker room rushed forth and pulled Aquiles over the top. The celebration that followed was one of the most jubilant ever in the history of heel triumphs. Though he was completely undeserving, Aquiles rushed back and forth, surrounded by the heels, arms in the air, as Serdan recovered, dejected, in the ring. I have no idea how they avoided a riot here; it was well-warranted. There's very little quite as beautiful in all of pro wrestling as a heel drawing heat with such exuberance and verve. I'm sure he got his comeuppance at some point but this is a world we only get a glimpse into so who knows what it was or when. I would have paid to see it though, that's for sure. 

Verne Gagne vs Roy McClairity NWA Chicago 8/6/54

MD: We had the first fall of this previously, but not the whole thing. It's a long 2/3 falls match, with a substantial first fall. Verne is Verne, dynamic, explosive, made for TV, carrying within him this bounding energy. You can see it in the way he moves. There was a promise of action in his matches, though, of course, it's the 50s, so that action never crosses a threshold from sublime to absurd in a way that more "action-driven" wrestlers from Race to Rocco to Angle to their modern counterparts can't claim.

A lot of the match was centered around McClaritiy trying to find an answer to the challenge of Verne, working hard to ground him and keep him in long holds, most especially a fairly complex grapevined leg stretcher. It meant that when Verne got an upper hand once again, he was more aggressive and frustrated than usual, looping in some chippy extracurricular bits of damage; for instance, in a toehold, he might slam the knee into the mat in a way that he might not have otherwise. It turned the crowd against him a little, or at least turned them more towards McClairity.

They were working the holds so hard and with so much spirit that without Verne's baldspot, it'd be hard to tell the two of them apart at times. The finish of each fall came down to battle over sleeper type moves, first Verne's straight on sleeper and then McClairity's cobra clutch. In the third fall, with neither able to get it on, McClarity went to the well with a side headlock one too often and Verne hit a 1954 belly to back suplex out of it (one that everyone seemed surprised by) to score the win. Between the underlying story of McClarity trying to contain Verne and Verne getting frustrated by it and just how hard they were working each hold, this felt a lot shorter than it was and remained enjoyable the whole way through.

Kato Kung Lee/Texano/Villanos IV y V vs Indomito/Signo/Tigre Blanco/Negro Navarro CMLL 1991

MD: Look, I love that we have all of these Monterrey matches. I've found something worth watching in 90% of them and some of them are legitimately great. We've got to see regionally pushed talents like Panterita and Arandu and more from the greats like Casas. But man, it can be so frustrating in the way lucha can so often be to see great builds to an apuestas match and then not even know if the thing ever happened, let alone having footage of it. The build to Indomito vs Texano was really good and this was another piece of that vexing puzzle.

They paired up for the primera, with Signo vs Villano (I think V; telling apart Villanos is my personal lucha weakness) really standing out as being smooth. Just a lot of fun talent here so it was nice to see them have their exchanges. The tecnicos took it and kept control into the segunda, though Indomito was dodging Texano for the most part, as well he should. Kato Kung Lee got to take advantage of sheer numbers involved in an atomicos match and did his usual shtick, just with more people to higher effect. Immediately thereafter the rudos had enough and swarmed. At times it was hard for Indomito to take center stage just because Navarro and Signo were there but once they got going, he honed in well enough on Texano and bloodied him. The comeback in the tercera was heated and focused on Texano rushing the ringing and getting his revenge. He hit a pile driver on the outside and back in the ring which was jarring especially because they weren't sold like death. Things built to a final exchange where Texano came in too hot and Indomito was able to get his feet up on the ropes for a cheap pin. Again, just a nice balance of blood and revenge and comeuppance denied. All building to a match that's not listed on luchawiki at least. Ah well. Lucha is a challenging mistress.

Read more!

2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Villano IV vs. Pentagon Jr. MASK MATCH!

1. Villano IV vs. Pentagon Jr. AAA TripleMania XXX 10/15

ER: There's nothing else in wrestling like a big lucha show with a mask match main event. AAA has run some major mask matches over the last several years. I really loved LA Park vs. La Parka, and the Psycho Clown/Dr. Wagner match from a few years ago turned Psycho into maybe the biggest star in Mexico, while also revealing Dr. Wagner Jr. to be the most handsome man in Mexico. CMLL ran my favorite modern mask match, Villano V vs. Blue Panther, the perfect combination of two legends defending two of the most legendary masks in Mexico, fighting to keep two of the most legendary identities in lucha history. Villano IV had an awesome 2022, a 57 year old man who worked the entire year as if he knew this was his final year, and this match was the culmination of that. AAA running a year long Ruleta de la Muerte tournament all around Mexico was an awesome idea, leading to big matches at all of the Triplemanias. Villano IV had big matches against LA Park, Psycho Clown, and this final against Pentagon Jr. 

Pentagon is a guy who became a big star when all of the taped Lucha Underground matches started airing in 2015, an immediate standout on a show that blew everyone away with their first season. No wrestling show over the past 15 years has felt more fresh than that debut LU season, and Pentagon was a major part of that. Once the messiness of the LU contracts was sorted out, he and Fenix were the guys who really capitalized on their LU presence, and began showing up on indy cards all over the country. As his star grew, Pentagon quickly became a guy who stopped growing as a wrestler, because it's a whole helluva lot easier to get by on catchphrases and the Cero Miedo gesture. When huge crowds cheer for you just as loudly when you do your catchphrase as they do when you fall head first through a table, the choice is insanely easy. Pentagon quickly became a guy I went from loving, to one that I rarely go out of my way to watch, but there was no way I was missing him in a mask match main event against one of my favorite luchadors.

Any time a Villano has been in a mask match this decade - and it's actually shocking how many big Villano mask matches we've gotten in the past decade - my brain always compares it to Panther/V5. That's really become the benchmark mask match for me, maybe the benchmark lucha match, maybe the benchmark match period. I love it. Villano IV and V are such in-ring clones of each other (they are no longer visual clones, as V looks like a B-movie mafia villain or a Bam Margera uncle now) that I always wondered what Villano IV would have done if he had his own mask match against Panther. And now that he's 57 and has wrestled for 42 of those years - 75% of his life! - we're finally getting all of the big Villano IV mask matches. This started with Pentagon flying into a backdrop on the entrance ramp and ended with both men dripping blood while their ripped masks barely covered their faces. This was a fight, with none of that old man lucha grace. Pentagon is in awesome shape right now, lean and mean and excited to punch and be punched by an old man in the throat. Villano really puts the boots to the young punk (late 30s is young in lucha years), with some sick trash can shots and a bunch of punctuated left and right hooks. Villano takes time to savor the punches, even holding Pentagon up by the mask to punch him. When Pentagon tries to powerbomb him, Villano just punches him in the neck. 

Pentagon threw himself into a lot of bumps, and when he started throwing his body into Villano he went big. Villano threw such disrespectful punches to start this thing that you knew the old man was gonna get those paid back. Pentagon wiped out IV and V with a tope con giro, and I loved how we got a ton of Villano family reactions as Pentagon laid in a beating on the floor. Pentagon threw Villano across the floor like Pedro Martinez throwing Don Zimmer, a real fight on the floor. Wrestling has a lot of strike exchanges  that I hate now, but I loved these exchanges. The timing was off just enough and they really connected on these shots. These weren't mirror exchanges, this was Pentagon hitting a superkick under Villano's chin and Villano responding with the hardest chop he can throw, with all of it devolving into punches. Pentagon threw some really damaging looking leg kicks, like he was really trying to tire Villano out. When he threw a leg kick to set up a punch that set up a superkick, he executed it all so well that it looked like the best version of Pentagon. 

The big push to the finish has big stuff, like guys going through tables and a 57 year old man getting his guts stomped out by an all time great double stomp. But they balanced the big stuff with missed submission swerve finishes, and great timing on all of the nearfalls. I loved how loud the crowd got when Villano locked in the octopus hold, and the octopus hold cradle felt like the most dangerous finisher in the moment. I always get choked up when they show people crying in the crowd during unmaskings, a moment that hits me harder than any kind of sad fan playoff loss crowd shot. The Villano legacy really felt honored, even though moments before this little old bald man was getting his arm broken three different times. The post-match emotion was as good as the match itself. The emotions felt real, the hand shakes to every member of the family and all of the crew felt sincere, the ride around on shoulders felt earned and lovingly received. Villano said he would be retiring soon, and that he wanted Pentagon to be his last match. I cannot wait for that match. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: IWRG RETRO~! CEREBRO~! COCOS~! VILLANOS~! CANEK~! SCORPIO~! OFICIALES~!

IWRG Retro 9/8/22

MD: IWRG is posting old stuff. Some of it is new. Some of it is rare. We are very happy about this development.

Fantasy/Zonic vs. Rey Cuervo/Caballero Azteca 4/11/99

MD: This is the "rare" one as opposed to the "new" ones, as it was apparently on tape lists. It's a pretty fun way to spend eight minutes. About half of that is Cuervo and Azteca beating down the tecnicos and it's solid comfort food. The comeback comes on a miscommunication dropkick and goes pretty quickly into a finishing stretch of sorts as this is just one fall. Most of the heat ends up on a rudo ref who misses a tag early and misses Fantasy's shoulder being up late. It's all light stuff with a real opening match feel, but colorful, with the biggest issue being that we lose out on the native audio to the new commentary, which is a problem throughout the show but less of an issue with the matches with more substance to them.

Dr. Cerebro/Paramedico/Cirujano vs. Los Cocos 12/23/01

MD: We've got Rojo, Blanco, and Verde for those keeping score, and they come out with "Super Capo" as their valet, which feels like a big deal. Rudos ambush early and make quick work out of the clowns to end the primera. Cerebro is great here directing traffic and flipping off the rope to crush someone or kick them in the face. He bites Rojo's hand after the submission for the heck of it. In the segunda, he goes from hanging out in the corner and watching the violence to hitting a spring up turning headbutt foul to a hung up Rojo. Apparently that impressed the production team so much that they decided to show it in slow motion instead of the moment of comeback. Both Blanco and Verde looked good here, with the best spot maybe Verde on the apron ready to jump and Cerebro diving at him only for his legs to pop up so Cerebro ends up sliding across the apron and off screen errantly. Tercera had some comedy miscommunication, submissions that were broken up one after the other and a pretty nice tope suicida train, with Paramedico all but sailing into the crowd. That cleared the ring for Rojo vs Cerebro and a pretty definitive and crowd-pleasing stunner finish on Cerebro. Big takeaway here was how good he looked overall.

Canek/Villano III/Villano IV vs. Scorpio/Guardia/Vigilante 8/22/96

MD: I don't think I've seen much Scorpio, Sr. before but he looked like an old, decrepit rudo with spaghetti like hair that was made to be taken by Canek in an apuestas match.  This was super libre and all about the numbers game, with as much mask pulling as I can remember seeing in one match. The rudos attacked the Villanos before Canek could come out to even the odds but the tecnicos fired back after a couple of minutes of beatdown to take the primera. There was already a lot of mask pulling here, all around, with Guardia and Vigilante spending a good chunk of the match just trying to keep their masks on. Between falls, Scorpio successfully got Canek's mask and that led to a 3 on 2 advantage as he had to run to the back. The beatdowns were solid here and utilized the super libre rules. Scorpio stood out and kept things interesting, in the primera by choking Canek with his own cape and in the segunda, by forcing Villano III into the corner, seated, groin first, and just jamming his feet into his back. Eventually, Canek rushed to the rescue with a new mask, but super libre or no, the refs seemed to call it after too many rudo fouls to try to stem the turned tide. I have to assume that this led to a bunch of mask challenges that went nowhere. Some satisfying lucha for lucha's sake in this initial drop.

Read more!

2022 Ongoing MOTY List: LA Park vs. Villano IV

4. LA Park vs. Villano IV AAA TripleMania XXX 4/30

ER: I've been buried up to my elbows watching and reviewing every single 1997 WCW match this past year for a book that is far and away the biggest project of my life. WCW had a big roster and a ton of TV time to fill, and I can probably count on one hand the other wrestlers in 1997 WCW I've loved more than Park and Villano IV. Looking at both men's matches and standout performances from that year, and there are only a handful of guys on that roster I could argue had comparable or better years in-ring. That was somehow 25 years ago. Now Park is 56, Villano is 57, and while neither are spry or anywhere near as graceful as their past WCW selves, they are still captivating in entirely different ways. I thought both men had some of the best offense in WCW. Villano had strong armdrags that could shift direction and impossibly smooth headscissors and hurricanranas. La Parka did more dives than anyone there and took bigger bumps than any luchador who wasn't Super Calo. The smoothness is gone, but the rough edges are what makes this match what it is. 

I think a lot of the actual, traditional "wrestling" in this match looked bad. Sometimes really bad. The moments where they're slowly walking past each other, the barely attempted missed clotheslines, inside cradles as slow as a 70 year old Mil Mascaras inside cradle. This was not a match made by move execution, it was a match made by dirty punches and headbutts and blood. Villano's headbutts and his punches to Park's face and body looked far more painful than his chair shots, and that was before the man bit into Park's head and sprayed blood mist into the night sky. Am I stupid for being shocked by something like that? We went through Covid! Now two old men who shouldn't need the money are spraying blood in a Monterey baseball stadium and I guess that's what makes all of this so great. I loved how Villano was saved from Park's chops and used that chance to punch Park in the face, and how it built to him trying it again and punching the ref even harder. Park is such a great comeback wrestler, you could feel the buzz as Park started firing back, then getting louder as Park traveled back to 1998 to bring back some chair shots from a time where we could pretend we didn't know better. 

The floor and crowd brawling was great. A girl gets kicked right in the face when Villano gets clotheslined into the crowd. She takes it completely in stride and only looks more hot and powerful for it, just getting up and moving over a bit as Park drips blood all over the front row while throwing headbutts two feet away, swinging a chair as hard as he can at the side of V4's face. Park hits a powerslam through some propped up flooring, and as his mask hangs off his face you can see that LA Park is the bloodiest, most violent Alfred Molina you've ever seen. I mentioned Park being the biggest bumper in WCW, well the old man can still take some doozies. He still takes the hardest landing banana peel bumps, here getting his leg knocked out from under him by a Villano chair shot; when he goes to the top rope he gets knocked off in real nasty fashion, dropping fast to his crotch and falling off onto the top rope. He takes several different DDT bumps and he always looks like he's bouncing off the back of his head, body landing just as hard after. The king takes big falls, but he's still dangerous on the ground, so maybe it was inevitable that they'd drag themselves into malicious low blows and a kneeling punch-out that was one of the best uses of that spot, Park's heavier blows landing more and more until he was able to just shove Villano over. I love the way big stage old man fights always seem to get to a point where both men are dragging each other over the finish line, collapsing into match's end in exhaustion. The consequences always seem bigger in this kind of spectacle. Two stars commanding a 13,000+ crowd, age showing while also being defied.

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

QEPD Super Porky

Brazo de Plata/Brazo de Oro/El Brazo vs. Solomon Grundy/Chavo Guerrero/Popitekus CMLL 4/8/90

ER: It doesn't get more portly than this in lucha, and this match was filled with a ton of belly busting. The big draw here is Porky/Grundy and it delivers in every way you'd want it to. In a match with no dives we still wind up with a ton of big boy gold. Outside of a few nice armdrags we don't really get any Popitekus (but with his gorgeous hair he looks like the fattest possible Ramone), but we get a lot of Porky picking on Grundy, building to a huge sumo war between them to end the tercera. Grundy dwarfs Porky but Porky throws harder fists, throws an uppercut into Grundy's neckbeard, and then bumps him to the floor with a belly bump. There are a LOT of belly bumps in this match, and they're all great. 

I love Grundy's slow bumps to the floor, feels and looks like a glacier falling into the Antarctic. He falls to the floor, Porky hits a lariat off the apron (felt like it was supposed to be a plancha but Grundy moved), and then Porky splatted him with his running belly bounce. Later Grundy takes the absolute slowest Harley Race bump, and I love it. The match is filled with entertaining misdirection, a lot of Porky accidentally hitting splashes and avalanches on his bros and then blaming them for it. Porky even shoves Grundy backwards onto his brothers! There are some classic moments, like Porky being knocked from the apron onto Oro's shoulders, who dumps him butt first onto a front row fan! I also loved the big build to Grundy hitting an avalanche on all three Brazos, with Porky doing a hilarious bump where he runs most of the way across the ring before just taking a normal back bump. The final sumo showdown between Porky and Grundy was fantastic, with Brazo shoving a ref in between them to get Los Brazos DQd, the ref getting a full stretcher job post-match to sell the Porky/Grundy loose meat sandwich. This match might have the most belly bumps I have ever seen, so of course it comes with the highest possible recommendation. 

MD: Great build here as they really milked a potential Porky vs Grundy encounter all the way to the tecera, with a couple of false starts along the way. The first was best as they teased it only to have the other Brazos rush in, kicking off the transitional beatdown. It wasn't just all Porky either as Grundy showed some decent physical charisma in his bumping and in building the anticipation. And of course, yes, he'd eat Porky's clothesline to knock him out, catch Porky's clothesline off the apron and get crushed against the barricade for good measure. The funniest bit of this one was when Porky ended up in some guy's lap in the first row. That shows protecting people with control of your body right there. This ended with one of the most satisfying bits of ref flattening you'll encounter. It was hardly definitive but I doubt anyone cared about that given the effort they made to stretcher him out.

JR: I don’t know if this is a personal failing or an issue with the narrative overall but I feel like far fewer words have been written about rudo Brazo de Plata, so I’m glad we can touch on it here. I think it’s instructive for how gifted a performer Porky truly was. He has great timing and great cut offs and when he does his normal spots minus the flourishes that made them so well loved otherwise, they stand out as tremendously impactful. He is a performer that can use his body in so many ways, or rather, can use his body in one way but change enough about it to make it feel so different. As he rushes forward, with good but rarely seen punches and headbutts and body checks, Super Porky feels inevitable.

Of course, as the match goes on, specifically in the third fall, we get to see the rudo comedy that one would expect from Porky, where he is essentially the incompetent henchman deployed by his slightly more competent brothers. Nothing here is exclamatory per say, or groundbreaking, but at the same time there is value in being able to play the hits and do so without any major faults. This match is fine, more of a Brazos exhibition than anything to talk about on behalf of their opponents, but at the same time it is nice to see Porky show off different shades and viewpoints rather than the standard fare we talk about most often.

Brazo De Plata/Negro Casas/TAKA Michinoku vs. El Hijo Del Gladiador/Gran Markus Jr./Satanico CMLL 5/30/97

MD: Fun trios. This was sort of a sweet spot where Porky was still imposing, to the point where he was, of course, funny, but could make someone like Hijo de Gladiador beg off when he was taking liberties. Within a decade, that would be over and he'd be there just for laughs. Great laughs, certainly, but here he could serve more roles within a match. He could also make like Shawn Michaels posing in the ropes while his partners were in the ring, so it was a balance. And when it was time for him to come in, the fans buzzed in a way that they didn't for Casas or Satanico, for instance. The end of the primera was fun stuff with Casas hitting one big DDT only to get jammed on the second, setting up Porky to come in and accidentally knock him onto Markus only to teeter him back to a sitting and pinning position and then squashing Hijo de Gladiador on a sunset flip attempt. They got the pin while shaking hands like gentlemen. Not much else to say here except for that TAKA (more Taka here than TAKA) was paired well with Satanico both in the primera and in the closing exchange. Satanico was pretty giving against him and looked as great as always; his big interaction with Porky was slapping him in the corner only to get crushed by a series of headbutts out of it as the crowd popped big. The final tecnico comeback was picture perfect Porky use too, as Hijo del Gladiador was trapped behind him in the corner so every time he got whacked by Satanico and Markus he was crushing HdG. Not only does that never get old, but here it was effective and pro wrestling believable in switching the momentum for that final time.

ER: Wow. I actually had no idea a match existed that had Satanico tearing it up on the mat against Taka Michinoku (I trust we do NOT have their singles match a couple weeks after this?), and it's only one of several very fun things happening here. Porky is really treated as the biggest name in the match, and he worked the match as someone who relished the role. This was always building to a big Porky/Markus chubby boys showdown, but all the pairings here worked really well. Gladiador and Casas gave us some quick exchanges before Satanico and Taka came in and outquicked them, and I loved all the rudos scrambling away from Porky whenever he came in. Gladiador hit a questionable strike on Casas and Porky runs in and just plasters him into the corner. We get a lot of classic Porky comedy mixed in with actual strong ringwork, so we get him bumping his butt into Gladiador's face when getting punched in the corner, but we also get an amazing sequence where Satanico starts punching and slapping Porky over and over in the corner. and I'm expecting Porky to start his crying routine. Instead, he had enough and charges out of the corner with a half dozen wicked headbutts that backs Satanico all the way across the ring. Porky hits a big dive into Markus (Markus had landed two very stiff punches earlier during Irish whip exchanges and I couldn't wait for Porky to flatten him) and Taka finishes things with his nice missile dropkick to Satanico's chest, then plants Satanico with the Michinoku Driver. Loved the vibe throughout this whole match, great mix of classic lucha and comedy and stiff strikes. 

JR: I must confess that I haven’t watched a ton of this 90s lucha since the pandemic, and returning to it here is like putting on an old pair of comfortable shoes. Seeing prime Casas and Satanico and remembering the things they did every night was so gratifying. It made me love wrestling for a moment.

But Porky! A revelation every time. People talk about Tajiri being a silent film star with his body language, but I see Porky do sequences here, with a stylized hip attack and a rope running sequence and I can’t help but think of Charlie Chaplin films, in which he is toeing the line between genius and accident. Porky does that here; getting kicked in the gut, but the momentum causes his ass to hit someone in the face, or flattening his own partner so hard that he bounces back up into a cover of his own.

Really, this is sort of the platonic use of porky in a match like this. Casas does the heavy lifting and holds everything together long enough for Taka to shine and change the pace and for Porky to have a few huge moments, including a tremendous plancha. This isn’t what I’d call an all time Porky match or anything, but I think it’s the blueprint of one.

Brazo De Plata/Brazo De Oro/Brazo Cibernetico vs. Villano 3/4/5 Acapulco 11/20/04

PAS: I think I have probably called 15 different lucha cage matches "the only good lucha cage match", but I am doing it again. Here is the only good lucha cage match and it is great one. You can put together any combination of wrestling's Hatfields and McCoys and they are going to try to murder each other, and this was an awesome combo. Nothing funny about Porky here, he was looking to put Villanos in the ground, and there was some big chop and punch exchanges and a fair amount of spilt blood. I liked the finish with V5 and Oro left in the cage only for V3 to break a bottle through the cage on Oro's head so his brother could escape. I am not sure how we didn't review this match when it arrived on the internet, but it is another chapter in this endless family feud. 

MD: Nothing is bad in a bubble. Lucha cage matches tend to be bad because they're a bunch of singles guys stuck together, a few of them maybe with programs or build, but with the primary goal of escaping in the midst of the chaos so that they're not one of the last two in there. Team vs team cage matches probably work better because there's much more hesitation for wrestlers to just scramble out at the first opportunity; to be doing so would be to leave their partners in danger. More so, there's generally a more visceral feud as was the case here. Finally, you have to factor in how hard it is for Porky to get up and out of the cage by this point, so they really had to do some damage to the Villanos to allow for that. Put that all together and you had a recipe for a good lucha cage match. 

I loved how this was filmed. You weren't going to see all the action but then that was impossible given the sight constraints and the size of some of the wrestlers and how thoroughly they were intent on beating and bloodying one another. Instead, it almost felt like you were on one of those rail rides at an amusement park, except for instead of the figurative horrors of It's a Small World, you were able to look left or right and see the real horror of a bloody Porky getting battered in the corner or Platino scrapping hard in a fist fight. It was less on the big memorable spots and more on the steady violence then, at least until the ring started to clear a bit. Thankfully, it all led to the most memorable moment of all, when Villano III smashed a beer bottle into the cage as Oro was trying to climb out, shattering it against the cage and sending glass right into Oro's face. Brilliant, unsafe spot, that was only lessened a little by the fact the Brazos weren't immediately on top of him to get vengeance.

Read more!

WCW Bash at the Beach 7/13/97

I can't believe they had under 8,000 fans in attendance for this show. I thought the build was great and the lineup on-paper is really strong. This really feels like the kind of show that should have drawn 20,000+, but a hot smaller crowd could be a great thing. 

1. Wrath/Mortis vs. Glacier/Ernest Miller (9:47)

If you found out that WCW was going to essentially have a karate division, with nothing but arcade fighting game characters, this is the best possible version of the kind of matches that attempted to fuse fighting games and pro wrestling. These guys all had varying levels of training and in ring backgrounds, but I don't think you could have laid out a better match for this specific combination of wrestlers, and it resulted in an insanely fun PPV opener. It's 10 glorious minutes of shockingly good spin kicks and crazy double teams, like a cartoon version of a Low Ki/Red match several years before that was a match. I'm not sure Ernest Miller or Glacier ever fit so naturally into a match again, Wrath and Mortis doing a great job of being in all the right places to take some complicated kick landings. This was much more snug than other Glacier/Miller matches, everybody really tightened up their punches and so many of the kicks looked genuinely explosive. The US was still in a big martial arts craze in 1997, and this match fit so well into that, and the crowd reactions showed that. There were some crazy spots here, all using some impressive timing. Mortis and Wrath hit their great powerbomb neckbreaker, Wrath hits a big cannonball of the apron, Miller is trying springboard attacks, and Glacier looks like he gets a concussion on the floor when Wrath hold a chair for Mortis to superkick directly into Glacier's ear. His left ear eats chair, right ear gets smashed into the ringpost. There is a little slow down before the finishing stretch, but when Miller tags in and is hitting spin kicks and James Vandenburg gets superkicked off the apron you won't care. The finish is the best possible Memphis Mortal Kombat, when Vandenburg wraps a chain around Mortis's boot for a loaded karate kick win. Pure brilliance, one of my favorite PPV openers of the 90s. 

2. Ultimo Dragon vs. Chris Jericho (12:55)

This was a pretty good embodiment of a lot of the 1997 WCW juniors matches. There's a lot of great spots that get big reactions, a couple of ambitious spots that look blown, they lose the page a bit and try to make up for it with big bumps, and it works! The best stuff makes up for the worst stuff, they mostly keep a good pace, and throw in some genuinely memorable spots. A lot of it is fairly typical 90s juniors wrestling: some engaging but meaningless matwork, a mirrored move, some cool backdrop reversals (Dragon landing on his feet, Jericho cartwheeling through), a stand off, we all loved it in 1997. It was the reason we traded for WAR tapes before all collectively realizing that the lumpy old sumo main events were the reason to be trading for WAR tapes. The best stuff here is very good, with a couple of very nice Jericho moonsaults and fun Dragon kick combos, a big double powerbomb from Jericho, great Asai moonsault to the floor, and some fun reversals. They get off the page a little bit when both men fall on a top rope spot, Dragon basically leaping to the floor while Jericho leapt back into the ring, and Jericho feels like he's trying to make up for that spot by taking a couple of really big bumps to the floor. It doesn't ever quite seem like it's anything other than a nicely laid out collection of spots, but the effort being put in elevates things. 

3. Steiner Brothers vs. Great Muta/Masahiro Chono (10:37)

This was filled with a lot of miscommunication, but still came off great to the crowd thanks to some huge Steiners throws and a fantastic stooging heel performance from Chono. He yelled at the crowd the entire time he was on the apron, and continues riling them up any time he was in control. He easily crossed any language barrier just by having no problem throwing the sole of his boot into heads with his great yakuza kicks, while also rubbing the crowd’s nose in it before inevitably getting smashed by the Steiners. The match is pretty formless, but the nWo Japan control is very fun and it’s cool seeing them dominating the Steiners and not being eaten alive like has happened. Scott looked absolutely massive here, which only makes it cooler when he is throwing Muta across the ring with his hip switch belly to belly or nailing the Frankensteiner. Muta hits his own big top rope Frankensteiner and Rick hits dangerous overhead belly to bellys on both. Chono also took some big backdrops from Rick, just a great house show main event heel performance. The match was a mess, but a cool mess, with big charisma and big highspots. The finish is dangerous and made everyone in the building get to their feet, with Muta taking an electric chair DDT. It looked as safe as possible, meaning it looked like a man taking a vertical dive off another man's shoulders. Those kind of things made it feel like a bigger, better match than it was. 

4. La Parka/Villano IV/Psychosis vs. Juventud Guerrera/Hector Garza/Lizmark Jr. (10:08)

This was the same kind of fireworks that made the opener so much fun, although the Daytona crowd didn't react as loudly to this as they did to that. It wasn't for lack of effort, and all kept working so hard to impress for 10 minutes that eventually the crowd finally had to respect it. It started a little slow with some nice Psychosis/Lizmark maestro match up, and the crowd reacted kind of confused to it. Even Tenay had to explain to Schiavone and Heenan that it was common for lucha matches to start with matwork. From there they build to some huge flying spots that come mostly at the end of the match, and they build to those big spots with hard bumps and stiff strikes. I don't think the crowd was looking for the luchadors to beat the hell out of each other, it's as if it isn't even happening right in front of them. Villano IV especially just comes in murdering everyone with chops and punches and lariats. La Parka does the same (he hit an amazing clothesline on Juvy in the corner, running down the length of the apron to land it), and Psychosis throws maybe the two hardest lariats in the match. 

La Parka is an excellent base for Juvy's headscissors, even catching a nice one through the ropes to the floor, and Psychosis took hiss missed corner bump on the back of his head. The crowd didn't react to any of Psychosis's bumps, even though he was killing himself. Seeing that, you really got the sense of how well Juvy and La Parka understood the timing of spots and how to hit them for the maximum crowd reaction. But the crowd got more involved after a series of misdirections, every member of the match missing consecutive top rope splashes, and it's like it suddenly woke everyone up and reminded them that bodies were crashing for their amusement. The dive train was tremendous, all started by Lizmark flattening V4 with a plancha. Psychosis got backdropped by Garza into a tope con giro, Garza acted as a tabletop for Juvy to get *incredible* height and distance on Air Juvy, just soaring beyond the ropes, building to the big Garza tornillo. A match that deserved to win the crowd over, and eventually did. Very memorable PPV lucha trios, one of the best. 

5. Chris Benoit vs. Kevin Sullivan (13:10)

A tremendous swan song performance for Kevin Sullivan, a real fight feel for its duration with some great use of non-participants and a ton of violence. The violence never dips and it's a painful pace to keep up, things beginning with a punch exchange that makes it clear Sullivan will be throwing fat fists square at Benoit's face. Benoit keeps everything entirely professional the full match, always working snug but clearly working elbow strikes and kicks. Sullivan, however, has no interest in worked shots and beats Benoit up the way someone fighting for their career would. Every punch is thrown to hurt, every kick to the stomach looks upsetting, he stomps Benoit in the balls, double stomps him in the stomach, throws him through a display of surfboards and even throws Jacqueline at him. Sullivan was an expert at taking advantage of Jacqueline and Jimmy Hart's interference, and both of them are great additions to the match. 

Jacqueline is relentless when things spill to the floor, getting flung aside by both Sullivan and Benoit but always screaming back into action. Benoit lifts her up for an atomic drop and instead launches her at Sullivan; Sullivan shoves her at Benoit while immediately following up with a fist to Benoit's eye. Jimmy Hart climbs a lifeguard's chair only to ride it into some fake palm trees after Benoit shoves it over, and the fight continues. Sullivan hangs Benoit in the tree of woe and delivers three hard running knees, and they cool things down a bit with a long crippler crossface. I really liked the long application, Benoit locking his hands right underneath Sullivan's nose, and Sullivan getting a long hard fought rope break and a nice reaction from the crowd after fighting to his feet. The ending pays off the weeks of Sullivan shoving Jacqueline around as she brains him with a wooden chair and leaves Benoit to fling himself straight down with a headbutt off the top. Great fight, worked with the importance of the stipulation in mind, stands out as a stiff brawl in a promotion full of them. 

6. Steve McMichael vs. Jeff Jarrett (6:56)

Very entertaining US Title match, with a crowd loudly against Jarrett. Jarrett knew exactly how to get heat from this crowd, and knows how to rub it in every time he's in control against Mongo. I love how Jarrett bumps and gets upended by McMichael's offense and has to keep spilling to the floor, yelling at fans, then pointing smugly to his head at those same fans whenever he would lure Mongo into a trap. Mongo looks good on offense, hitting a big powerslam and heavy knee lift, but was even more effective bumping for Jarrett. McMichael misses an awesome kneedrop into the corner, patella straight to the top buckle, and Jarrett immediately begins mocking him as he goes after the knee. The crowd hates it when Jarrett goes into a three point stance and takes out Mongo's knee, and just when it seems that Debra is about to step in and save her husband, she instead gives the Halliburton to Jarrett! The finish looks great, with McMichael blocking the first briefcase shot with his forearm and grabbing at it in pain, opening himself up to take the briefcase to the head. The crowd seemed genuinely surprised by Debra turning on her husband, and the announce team all seemed just as shocked. Everyone played their role really well and it lead to a great 10 minute segment. 

7. Randy Savage/Scott Hall vs. DDP/Curt Hennig (9:35)

This show has been really great at keeping every match within a perfect time window, giving everyone long enough to work an interesting and memorable match while not risking them losing the audience. It keeps the audience up the entire time, and this match had a good TV build. A lot of time was spent on who DDP's mystery partner would be, with Hennig and Raven being the ones not so subtly hinted at. In fact, it was hinted at so strongly that it felt more likely it would be neither of those two, so I was actually surprised when Curt Hennig came out as the partner. But even then the announcers had the appropriate reaction when they said "Oh so it IS Curt Hennig!" The match itself doesn't actually build much, as it turns out to be more angle than match, but the rare match ups elevated things and got us nicely to the angle. Hennig and Hall were a strong AWA tag team a decade prior and only fought on house shows and one PPV tag in the WWF.  And, outside of a few possible Royal Rumble interactions, Hennig and Savage is a first time match. So those are fun pairings, and to add to that DDP always works well with Savage so the floor on this one is high. This was an inspired stretch for Savage, always loved the energy between he and DDP. Hennig and Hall square off and it feels new, even though it's not, ahem, perfect. It all builds to DDP skinning the cat which causes Hennig to get slowed by a low bridge, but then he attacks DDP and leaves him prone to the Outsider's Edge/Elbow. I think Hennig made more sense as a heel during his comeback, so I liked the turn and thought it came off unexpected. 

8. Roddy Piper vs. Ric Flair (13:26)

I loved this match. Piper vs. Flair hadn't faced off against each other since 1992, and most of their early 90s WWF feud was house show only. Their interactions in the 1992 Rumble were arguably the best part of one of the most legendary Rumbles, and this match immediately brought back the energy of those Rumble interactions. Whenever I think of the 92 Rumble I think of Piper going after Flair every chance he got, running in and flinging himself onto Flair, and that's exactly how the first several minutes of this match go.  Piper's strikes all look classic, throwing hard overhand right chops, mixing up punch combos, big knife edge chops, Flair off balance the whole time and only making his way into the match by landing a chop block after Piper briefly gets tied up with the ref. Both men are good at both sides of the match, Piper looking like a crazed lunatic going after Flair, but also doing an impressive job selling the damage Flair was doing to his knee. 

Flair stooged and bumped and flopped for Piper's strike barrage, then looked near sadistic every time he would kick or stomp at Piper's knee or ring one up below the belt. Flair takes a couple bumps to the floor and Piper not only kept up the brawl energy at ringside, but he managed to limp around on his worked over leg the entire time. We get a couple of dramatic figure 4 moments, and a great twist when Piper has to deal with Benoit and Mongo. It's a bunch of chaos all at once, with ref Randy Anderson suddenly very easily distractible while people are crashing behind his back, but the payoff is worth it. Piper suckers Benoit into hitting a flying headbutt on Flair, but Mongo absolutely spikes Piper with a tombstone. There's a lot of great Flair/Piper drama as Flair crawls to cover Piper after Mongo's tombstone, and it really felt like it could have been the finish. Flair takes just enough time getting to the pin that it feels like there's a chance of Piper kicking out, and when it does it gets a huge reaction from the crowd. These two knew how to build to convincing pinfalls, with Piper also getting a reaction from a swinging neckbreaker that looked good enough to be the finish. But everyone wanted to see Piper drag Flair to the mat with the sleeper, and it was great seeing Flair's arm drop. This would have easily played as a strong main event a decade prior, and it was great to see both really go at it. 

9. Lex Luger/The Giant vs. Hulk Hogan/Dennis Rodman (22:30)

Buffer really adds to the big main event feel for this one, although he gives the nWo a way cooler intro than our two babyface heroes, saying that Rodman is a bad boy because he's good enough to be as bad as he wants to be. This tale of the tape feels very opinionated, but it does get the crowd buzzing. The match itself is long, but expertly laid out like a Memphis arena main event. It's classic Memphis, with a charismatic heel teaming with an athletic superstar and a charismatic face teaming with a green Giant. Sometimes the athlete is a babyface and sometimes the giant is a monster heel but the Memphis feel is strong. Hogan adds to that vibe by working as total chickenshit heel, and while the match had a purposely slow build, they knew exactly what they were doing as the crowd built along with it. They hide weaknesses and bullshit around strengths, with the Giant not tagging in until over 11 minutes into the match and Rodman being celebrated for every single wrestling move he managed to pull off. Hardly anything happens for the first several minutes and the crowd is along exactly where they need to be the whole time. Hogan takes forever to lock up with Luger, it builds nicely to Rodman entering the match, and the match works as a real impressive way to frame Rodman's first pro wrestling match. 

Rodman has a high floor as a wrestler. His size is impressive, and it makes his slow hesitant movements come off like a dangerous giant, not a tentative celebrity newcomer. Macho Man is the nWo's second, and he and Hogan are perfect cheeseballs who celebrate Rodman's every move as a feat of wonder. He locks up and armdrags Luger, and Macho and Hogan come screaming into the ring like Rodman had just grabbed a rebound to seal a playoff win. A Rodman leapfrog exchange leads to a reaction typically reserved for gold medal sprinters breaking the tape, and it's all great. The fans cannot stand Rodman and hate the idea of giving him credit, so we begin to get loud Rodman Sucks chants, and Rodman knows exactly how to soak it up. But they also can't help getting excited when he got more and more involved, and by the time he was hammering a trio of very nasty looking back elbows into Luger in the corner, he no longer felt like merely a celebrity attraction. They built well to everything the crowd wanted to see, and they especially reacted big whenever Rodman took damage. Rodman's size made his bumping more impressive, the crowd loved seeing him knock Luger down with shoulderblocks and also leap into a huge Giant bearhug. Giant is still real raw here, does a lot of Giant Gonzalez wide eyes swinging arms selling and comes off clumsy and unsure, but Hogan and Rodman are both good at working around him. It's all basic southern house show, but those connect with crowds and these reactions kept getting bigger. 

Not only did we get a steady stream of wadded up garbage thrown at the nWo, but the big spots all felt big. Rodman and Hogan did a double hip toss on Giant that felt shook the building, and the fans reacted like they had just been through an aftershock. Rodman violently manhandles ref Randy Anderson and headbutts him in the back of the head, and it leads to a chaotic finish that works for the match. Sting (a man who is clearly not Sting and instead a 7 footer who steps over the top rope entering and exiting the ring) hits the Giant with a baseball bat but WCW still gets to triumph amid the confusion, with Luger torture racking Hogan, Rodman, and Savage one after the other. It's a strong main event to one of WCW's best PPVs, a match that felt like a main event and properly navigated the egos of two top wrestling stars, one star rookie, and a major mainstream celebrity. It's not necessarily an easy match to book, but they made it look simple. 

Read more!

New Footage Friday: KIDO! IVAN GOMES! VILLANOS! LOS DESTRUCTORES! DEVILS REJECTS! NWA ELITE

 Ivan Gomes vs. Osamu Kido NJPW 8/14/76

PAS: Gomes is a legendary Vale Tudo fighter who both fought and trained with Carlson Gracie. Very little footage of him exists and this is a Different Style Fight with Kido. This was a worked shoot, and more of an interesting bit of historic footage then a great match, with Kido eating a lot of head kicks and eventually getting choked out with a guillotine. I would love to see Gomes in some actual Vale Tudo fights and I have to keep an eye on this youtube page.

MD: I don't have much to say about the specifics of the match. It's more that it exists at all, and of course, the general sense that if something like this does exist in the 70s, what else happened that we haven't seen along these lines and that might exist on tape? It's a whole style of wrestling that we barely have any of until years later. Some of the shots that do land were pretty great, at least. Hopefully we get more along these lines.

Villanos (III/IV/V) vs. Los Destructores (Tony Arce/Vulcano/Rocco Valente) AAA 3/5/95

PAS: These are a pair of great lucha rudo trios and on paper you would expect a brawl, but this was a title match and was worked mostly scientifically. We get some cool matwork exchanges and rope running in the first couple of falls, Villanos are super skilled and it is fun to watch Los Destructores try to match them hold for hold. At the end of the segunda Villano IV hits this fast northern lights suplex and damages his neck. The third fall has the Destructores working him over angering his brothers and heating up the third fall. It never really breaks down into a total brawl, and I really hate the double pin ending in lucha, however this was a cool chance to see great luchadores do something a bit unexpected.

MD: Just about everything you could want out of a trios titles match. Just understand that it's a title match and it's worked like a title match. Therefore, it's not even close to everything you'd want from a Villanos vs Destructores match. The primera was technical and sound, very smooth, with that sort of escalation from pairing to pairing you like to see. Everyone got time. While nothing was breathtaking, everything worked. It ended cleverly with the bottom dropping out and Villanos pinballing into one another, allowing for a triple team. For such a logical sort of spot, it felt pretty fresh to me. The segunda kept that escalation going and was full of motion, with things never wearing out their welcome. It ended with the Villanos working like a well-oiled machine only for disaster to strike as Villano IV crushed his own head on a Northern Lights suplex, which is again, not a specific spot that I can think of seeing too many times, but carried the narrative for most of the rest of the match. He fought on but had to start the tercera and just got crushed by the Destructores, a great selling job as the fans more and more desperately wanted him to get out of the ring. Eventually it happened and they rolled into a big comeback until he was recovered enough (though still sluggish and selling) to move into a lot of finishing stretch near-falls, a few dives, and a final pairing with a really good visual on a double pin (which feels like a consolation prize, but what are you going to do?). It was a title match so it never became an over the top brawl (though the Villanos were pretty heated in their final comeback, for good reason), but it was loose enough that the Destructores really got to rudo it up in the back half. Otherwise, like I said, it was pretty much everything you could want from a title match that played it mostly straight, clever in multiple places and overall well-executed.

Devil's Rejects (Iceberg/Shaun Tempers/Azrael/Tank) vs. NWA Elite (Kory Chavis/Jeff Lewis/Phil Shatter/Abomination) NWA Anarchy 6/23/07

PAS: I wrote a long review of this match in my book Way of the Blade (buy it now on Amazon),  and have recorded an upcoming podcast on this match for my Way of the Blade podcast with both of the evil stewards of these teams Rev. Dan Wilson and Jeff G. Bailey. So I have said my piece. It was super hard to track down, and Rev. Dan has placed it on Youtube for all to see. NWA Anarchy is a real footage blind spot, it is clear that there are plenty of classics to be excavated. This is a heel versus heel War Games, with two psychos leading their respective crew of lunatics into battle, it has blood, huge uncalled for bumps by enormous men, a showdown between two untrained monsters, Phil Shatter looking like prime Scott Steiner and much more. It is a goddamn delight and everyone should watch it, buy my book to read me praise it more, and keep your ears peeled for the podcast. 

MD: This is one I've heard about and read about but never actually had the chance to see. It's just a perfectly balanced War Games, the mix of story and moments and spots and blood and violence and spectacle. More than anything, it creates a sense of mood, which is what you want from every match you see, but something you absolutely need in a match beyond. Multiple times in this thing, you get a sense of inevitability or dread or awe. Case in point, the first five minutes with Chavis holding an advantage over Tempers. It's unquestionable, but you know it's fleeting, on borrowed time. Likewise, later on when Lewis is kept out of the ring for long seconds; when he flies in around the barbed wire off the top of the cage, it's a great moment since it's full of daring and surprise, but you can feel the encroaching futility because the numbers game was about to be restored. The match succeeds at so many things: Tank's return, an absolute Shatter showcase, Abomination destroying everyone in the center of the ring, the escalation of weapons (fork, weapon of destruction, sword of screams) and blood, and of course, Wilson and Bailey getting involved, which is visceral and satisfying (the whole world seem to shift on that missed dropkick), but also doesn't distract from the wrestlers when it came to the finish, which is honestly some of the most restraint ever shown in a match like this.

Read more!

New Footage Friday:VILLANOS! ULTIMO! AMERICAN DRAGON! YANO!

Villano IV/V/Sanguinario vs. Ultimo Dragon/Pantera/Tineblas Jr.  AAA 9/8/96

MD: Nice trios match that got some time. Pantera was the standout from the tecnico side, with a long, very good, opening exchange with Villano IV (I think it was IV; for someone who writes on this site, I'm terrible at telling Villanos apart). I was very much ready to joke that there was no point in having Tinieblas, Jr. there if you weren't going to have Alushe but Sanguinario worked well with him, and not just in the stalling and being cowed by his superior size. Dragon, despite getting the focus moment at the end of the match, after the dives, and comporting himself well there with a few slick spots, was barely in the match otherwise. He got a nice pop whenever he showed up and got to show off with the corner handstand. I liked the moment of comeback, most especially Pantera charging the rudo corner after hitting a lucky move so that they couldn't immediately cut him off, but the beatdown needed a little more viciousness, maybe. Good stuff all around though.

American Dragon/Metal Master vs. Liverpool Lads 3/08

MD: More lost 80s heel Brian Danielson, this time with Collyer getting in on the act. I'm pretty certain that having a bunch of British kids chanting "cheat" at him for working southern tag antics was Danielson living a pro wrestling dream. There's one moment where he hits a roundhouse kick in the corner and immediately remembers he should be doing more conventional stomps instead. Lots of commitment to the act with some fun heel miscommunication spots. They have some nice cutoffs towards the end but instead of building to a hot tag, they go the fed-up-partner route instead, which is almost never as satisfying. Still, everyone played their role well and this reinforced what we saw of Danielson's range last time. No Rick Rude hip swivels but he did taunt the crowd with a USA chant at least.

PAS: Fun to watch Collyer and Danielson work like the Rock and Roll RPMs. They are full foils in this match, but very fun foils. I am mark for the spot where one guy gets whipped into the turnbuckle, and is saved by his partner, only to have the heel try the same thing and get clowned. Brookside is a guy with a lot of skill, Danielson thinks his best match ever was against him, but this is more of pop the crowd kind of match, and it fulfilled its purpose. 

Keita Yano vs. Taro Yamada Wallabee 6/24/12

MD: Nice (and relatively surprising) accomplishment here as they fill a lot of time, in a dojo type setting, with a fairly measured sense of escalation. My complaint about Yano's comedy 'rope-running' isn't that it exists but that it's not funnier. If they were going to break in that direction anyway, they should have made that break worthwhile by having big comedic payoffs. As it was, it felt more like lip service towards the idea of it but they weren't imaginative enough there or they thought it might have devalued the rest of the work/atmosphere, maybe. If you're going to break suspension of disbelief in the first place, make it worth it! Anyway, the rest of the match was full of imagination and struggle, with them tying one another up and stretching the hell out of each other in a very tit-for-tat manner. There were times where you got the sense that Yano especially was just twisting limbs this way or that to see what would stick but whenever it seems like it might work, you tended to believe it would.

SR: Damn great match, I imagine if Yano had never stunk up BattlARTS and instead was only known for doing weird technical matches while wearing his joker makeup and clown singlet in a tiny gym we’d all be Yano superfans. Taro Yamada is the last guy in Japan still holding up the T2P style matwork and one of the most underrated grapplers on the independent scene. This was 25 minutes of matwork that was like a great IWRG style title match. It was a mix of Yamadas llave holds with Yano going along and some cool RINGs-like leglock work thrown in, with both guys doing a great job escaping and transitioning between holds. Whole match felt fresh and competitive and never was like a derivative or weird LARP, these guys were trying to pop each others shoulders and/or ankles the whole time. There were one or two geeky moments where Yano did some “rope running” although it was more like a comedy spot with Yano hooting like an owl, and both these moments lead to cool spots, one where Yamada actually trips Keita with a drop down and another where Yano tricks Yamada into his special hold. There wasn’t some kind of story if you are into that but there were a few great nearfalls and I deeply respect these two for just grappling it out for 25 minutes without slowing down, and never throwing a strike or even a body slam, it was all submissions and funky cradle pins (especially loved Yamadas weird Delfin Clutch variation), just really tightly worked stuff that wouldn’t look out of place in a WoS or lucha title match. I did love Yanos dickish knee slide across Yamadas face and the moment where Yano had enough of the llave holds and challenged Yamada to an amateur match was really cool. Finish was great as well. Best Yano match I’ve seen by far and actively a great match, which is a major shocker. Yamada played a huge part too but I’ll be damned if Yano wasn’t feeling it that night. Apparently there have been a few matches between these two and I look forward to checking them all out but as it stands this is the best I’ve seen from Yano by a mile.

PAS: I am a real Yano skeptic, but it is hard not to enjoy this. You rarely see two guys just hit the mat like this, and this was a weird mix of shoot mat work and llave  Both guys found really interesting ways to twist and turn body parts, and with no ropes to break, they had to find a way out of all of the holds. I also thought the rope running was stupid, but it was my only complaint in a 20 minute plus Yano match. I loved the partier stuff near the end, I love when wrestlers challenge their opponent to amateur restarts, and both guys to interesting attack and defenses from that position. Feels like I need to dig a bit more into no ropes clown makeup Yano

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Santo! Rey Jr.! Villiano 4! Scorpio Jr.! Shamu!

WWA 9/2/91

Rey Mysterio Jr. /??? vs Shamu/Peligro Mortal 

MD: This had a nice bit of pomp to start as Rey Sr gives his nephew (though not billed that way) the Rey Jr mantle. The rudos here worked ok as bases. Everything was fine, but unsurprisingly, Rey's the guy you can't take your eyes off of. Not everything was smooth but even the things that weren't smooth still worked. He might have to bounce twice on the ropes before launching himself off, but there's still such agility and talent to the fact he even could get that second bounce that it somehow added to it instead of taking away from it. Somehow that seemed as impressive as the things he hit clearly, cleanly, and brilliantly.

PAS: This was a mini's match, and it is crazy how much more agile and wild Rey was then other mini's. The rudos were nice bases for all of Rey's spots, I think the thing that stood out the most wasn't the spots themselves but how much more height and speed Rey would get on typical spots. A springboard headscissors isn't that rare, but Rey just floats in the air like a flying squirrel before he hit anything. 

ER: I gotta write about a new Shamu match, I love that guy. He's the Tijuana undercarder my friends and I always got most excited for any time we did a wrestling road trip down south (except for my friend Jason who pretended he liked Xstasis). He was the best base on a lot of the shows we saw and when your gimmick is also that you're a fat guy whale then of course I will love you. This was probably the earliest Shamu I've seen and he takes the same great fast bumps to the floor and can catch ranas and armdrags better than anyone in the match. Peligro Mortal isn't bad himself, and Rey is spectacular. I don't think you would have predicted he would take over the world and become one of the biggest stars of all time, but he is the guy in the opening match that people talk about after the show. He really soars on his springboard offense, and at one point Shamu bumps him into the ropes to create space and Rey flies back into the ropes  like Shamu was an explosion. 

Los Mercenarios vs Rey Misterio/Kiss/Halcon 78 

 

MD: Pretty fun midcard trios match here. Mercenarios were Bill Anderson, a young Louie Spicolli, and some guy under a mask, who was pretty definitely not Tim Patterson, who had the gimmick off and on in the years prior. Anderson and Spiecolli worked well together (though I kind of wish Anderson worked up to his size a little more), but it was the masked guy who really stood out. He was a crazy bump machine and pinballed all over the ring and the floor for all of the tecnicos. He made Kiss, who I'm not particularly familiar with, look like a million bucks in their exchange. This was all-around enjoyable with sufficient chaos in the tercera that the handheld cam had no idea what to focus on.

Villano IV vs Scorpio Jr. 

MD: This was a solid title match. Scorpio was maybe half a step behind in the opening matwork but that was the only thing he felt behind on. When the pace picked up, his quick dropkicks were great. When he was in control, he had presence. His submissions in the tercera were all good. Villano was more or less flawless throughout. Even though the crowd was definitely behind him, I could have used a slightly better transition in the segunda. He just sort of fell out of an abdominal stretch (that Scorpio was cheating on) and then took over. The crowd deserved something better there. They got a pretty good tercera though with a lot of drama.

PAS: I thought this was pretty great. We don't have many (if any) long Villano IV singles matches and this was a treat. I thought the early matwork was really cool, including a long section working in and out of a calf stretch. I actually liked the second fall fine, with Villano IV hitting this really nasty short knee drop, and Scorpio doing sort of a Oklahoma stampede with a spinebuster. Final fall had a heavy V4 tope and a great looking reversal of superplex where Scorpio looked like he was going to get sheer dropped on the top of his head, before he reversed it into a pin. V4 clearly was holding a belt of some kind, and I want to see all of those defenses. 

Hijo del Santo/Hijo de Solitario vs Kahoz/Fishman

MD: Unfortunately, we only get the first two falls before the tape cuts off. Not a ton to say with just that. Solitario held up his end so what we got were good. I always look for a Fishman performance that'll make him stand out to me and I rarely get it but I thought he asserted himself well here. He's never comes off as particular quick or agile but there was a real heft and weight to all of his offense here as he leaned on the tecnicos. That I appreciated at least.

[The video got taken down very quickly due to WWE complaints about Rey footage. We will find some way to get the footage uploaded. As you can see, it got pulled before either Phil or Eric could watch any of it.]

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Brazos 25th Anniversary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXMKL-Iy2Yk&feature=youtu.be

Escorpion Dorado Jr./Corazon De Dragon vs. Super Halcon Jr./Bestial

MD: It's been a while since I've seen undercard lucha, especially undercard indy lucha from 2001. Not a ton to say here. One-fall opening match. They didn't do anything big and most of what registered was carried by Bestial and Halcon's rudo antics. The crowd was into it, but more into booing them than cheering the tecnicos. Some things looked good. Some things looked sluggish. The only build to the finish was Halcon launching a cheapshot after a handshake and as a match, it probably could have used a bit more of a beatdown after that.


Super Nono/Super Kepler vs. Enrique Vertiz/El Cazador

MD: Ñoño had a big kid gimmick. He was definitely young but maybe not as young as luchawiki would have us believe (though hey, maybe). I thought he had the act down pretty well and the kids were into it to the point where they were chanting for him and not against the rudos. Cazador was a bit more into the match than Vertiz who was mostly bemused by everything (completely no-selling an outside-the-ring wedgie for instance). Kepler did not look smooth including some of the weirder stilted armdrags you'll see. If you had gotten the rudos from the first match and let them work with Ñoño, you might have had something here.


Pirata Morgan Jr. vs. Dash

MD: This was the first of a bunch of Luchas 2000 vs XLAW matches. Anyway, the first two minutes were pretty good. Morgan hit a Dropkick followed by a tope right to start and then had a string of fairly nice looking offense (press up facebuster, somersault senton, etc.). It got rougher after that. Dash looked like he was wrestling underwater and just seemed to lack the strength to get Morgan up at times (which could have been on Morgan too, I guess, though he showed plenty of effort elsewhere, like his flip bump on a clothesline). They were definitely not on the same page with some of the spots and holds. The run-in at the end was at least high energy.


Brazo De Platino/Super Brazo vs. El Pietir/Dolar

MD: Pretty satisfying mauling at times. Brazos were full on rudo but beloved, to the point that when they try to take a powder up the stairs, the fans inspire them to come back. Some perfectly fine 405 Live stuff combined with handshake goofing. Platino's clap slaps/punches were fun but would probably get old quick. Dolar had a presence and really ran into the corner on one whip late in the match. Perfectly acceptable fat indy guy. Platino and Super Brazo could do this stuff in their sleep but it's still a good, charismatic act.

MD: There was a bit with Gringo Loco and some young luchador where they did a lot in a short period of time and Gringo got clowned which was effective but not really much to write about. It felt like if they'd done a big indy show in 1998 Calgary and gave Teddy Hart a showcase or something.


El Brazo Jr./Brazo De Oro Jr./Brazo De Plata Jr. vs. Crazy Boy/Mike Segura/Genesis

MD: Totally different vibe to the show once we hit this point. The entrances are more elaborate. There's more of a buzz. The Brazos are out with football gear and ski masks to start, with weapons to bear. The XLaw guys cut a promo and then the violence begins. Amusingly, they cut away from a lawn dart iconoclasm onto a chair in the middle of the ring to focus on some floor brawling. That set the tone pretty well. They kept things moving here with a lot of creative weapon usage that didn't have overly elaborate set ups (except for the chair assisted moonsault in the dive train but that you can forgive, and the final table spot but at least that had a soundtrack). As with a lot of this show so far, especially with the XLAW vs Luchas 2000 stuff, the rudo/tecnico dynamic was a bit off. The crowd was behind the Brazos but the XLAW guys got the big comeback/momentum shift off the Brazos going to the well once too often with a whip into a chair in the corner. The crowd got behind them during the mauling that followed though. Like with any of this stuff, the craziest bump isn't always the most spectacular looking one. Crazy Boy took a clothesline over the top and hit a chair on the apron on the way out which just felt nuts. The one-on-one exchanges towards the end maybe went on a little too long and broke the tone of what had come before but there was nothing innately wrong with them. The wrestling was all good. It just felt out of place. By that point the genie had been long out of the bottle and they couldn't just go back to order after all the chaos; maybe if they had fall breaks, I guess. It was all very 2001 post-ECW Emulation with unprotected chair shots and violence on women so inconsequential that the camera didn't even follow it and some worked shoot stuff post-match (I guess?), but that can be good for you in small doses now and again.

PAS: This was fun without actually being particularly good. They wandered around and smashed each other with things, and sometimes the finish ended up being worth the set up, and sometimes it wasn't. The stuff that resembled traditional lucha brawling was the best, I really liked the bleeding and the dive train, and the ECW prop stuff didn't work as well. Segura is the biggest pro on the XLAW team, and his lucha stuff looked the best, Jr. Brazo's were fun, although it probably made sense for their careers to ditch the Jr. gimmicks and go with what they did.

Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Plata/Brazo De Platino vs. Villano III/IV/V

PAS: I love the idea of Hatfield vs. McCoys wrestling family feuds, Armstrongs vs. Fullers is really the only other one I can really remember which spanned generations like the Villanos and the Brazos. Imagine my glee when my boy Rob lets me know about a previously unseen Villanos vs. Brazos match. This is exactly what you want, expect and love about a match between these two families. Lots of blood pooling in forehead scars, great looking wild brawling, a couple of Super Porky miscommunication spots and all six guys looking like the dazed survivors of a tour bus crash. Porky is just iconic, I loved how he worked in the splash-his-partners comedy spots into non-comedic violent spots in a brawl, and the highlights of the match where him just standing and trading hard shots with Villano 3. A worthy addition to this iconic rivalry.

MD: This was shaping up to be a great, hate-filled, bloody brawl, and certainly there's a big history of those between these families but I'm not sure that was the right move to follow the last match, especially after the ceremony. I think this would have worked better if they started with more shtick and then built to the violence. There was plenty of room to transition that way. That's the problem with watching these things in context sometimes. That said, it was a really good brawl until the finish when La Dinastia Alvarado came in to battle in full force. Porky's physical timing was amazing as always. At the end of the first fall, he was masterful at trying to portray an attempt at stopping himself from jumping off the second rope after the Villanos switched up who he was going to land on. Too often guys in that situation would just jump. I was really into where it was heading with Villano III directing traffic but then everyone rushed the ring and that was that.

Read more!

New Footage Friday: Dick Murdoch! New Kobashi/Kikuchi vs. Can-Ams! Infernales vs. Villanos in TJ!

Dick Murdoch vs. Johnny Rodz WWF Kuwait 1984

PAS: Murdoch is on one in this match. Three stooges selling, phantom air punching, multiple shoving matches with the ring announcers, just the full Murdoch. Rodz was a fun foil in this match, but my goodness what a Murdoch show. It was clear that he was going to take everything to 11 in front of a crowd who may not be familiar with wrestling, so he was especially off his rocker here. There may be five minutes of shtick before the first lock up, some all-time atomic drop sells, everything you would want from a showman in front of a small crowd of Emir’s in a carpeted soccer stadium.

MD: We had a few Kuwait matches to take a look at. After a scan of a few matches (including a pretty fun Adonis/Murdoch/Smirnoff vs. Morales/Johnson/Gama Singh cage match and a 25 minute tag with a fake Masked Superstar, Don Muraco and DeCarlo/Bellomo!) this was the way to go. Two immediate thoughts. First, one of my favorite matches of all time is Funk vs. Martel from Puerto Rico from 1986. In it, Funk wages an indirect war with the entire country of Puerto Rico. This kind of feels like that, with Murdoch spending more time arguing with the crowd and menacing the PA announcer than fighting Rodz. Second, you know how even in the most serious matches, Murdoch ends up stooging in the third act. Like in the amazing Karl Kox match? Here, you don't get anything but the stooging. It's the purest distillation of comedy house show Murdoch and it's a thing of beauty. The way he shooting gallery walks across the ring after getting hit by Rodz is amazing. His reactions to the PA guy calling out every bad thing he does? Brilliant. His stagger shadowpunch selling? He wasn't wrestling for the empty back rows; he was wrestling for someone on Mars. The crowd was a constant buzz. Rodz did his part, but you get the sense he was just happy to be there. This is in no way good but it is in every way great. Dick Murdoch, walking contradiction.

ER: You see some on paper potential for a Murdoch being Murdoch match, and then something so bizarre comes along and ends up out-Murdoching any kind of Murdoch you were hoping to see Murdoch. First, let me say that I really loved Johnny Rodz here. It's tough being the straight man forced to play things normal and not look like a nerd while your opponent is duck walking around the ring and starting fights with timekeepers. Rodz bumps really big for Murdoch to keep him looking like a threat while Murdoch is hilariously stooging to fill in the gaps. There's no chance anyone in the crowd knew who Murdoch was, but because of the work of both men they all got to see Murdoch as a very believable threat and total buffoon. I loved Rodz' big bump off Murdoch's 2nd strike of the match, staggering fast 3/4 of the way across the ring and spilling hard into the ropes, and later Rodz does an awesome twist on Flair's corner bump, flipping over the top and landing hard on his butt on the apron. Murdoch is a great striker, but Rodz had a big variety of shots that made him look super credible. I especially liked him hitting a leaping punch to Murdoch's beer belly, then tags him in the chin when the gut punch causes him to buckle. Obviously Murdoch is a master. He was his own one man Ministry of Silly Walks here, doing this absurd straight leg/straight arm waddle while being punched, and clearly peaking with his atomic drop sell. Murdoch sells an atomic drop like someone who is dangerously close to shitting their pants, knees buckles, on his tip toes, asshole clenched, rubbing out his tailbone, while also moving his hips as if he was working out a major wedgie without using his hands. He punches the air and flops face first with his butt in the air, he punches the air and gets kicked over onto his butt, and every second of it is great. These two men reached people who - honestly - they couldn't have actually known how to reach. They just did what they knew how to do in the most exaggerated way possible, bringing the gift of stooging to Kuwait.

Tsuyoshi Kikuchi/Kenta Kobashi vs. Doug Furnas/Dan Kroffat AJPW 10/7/92

MD: There are a lot of batches of these handhelds. For instance, there's a batch of AJPW dates that we've barely looked at because they were followed so quickly by first Fujiwara vs Fuchi and then by the new NJPW set. This was part of yet another group where we knew these aired on TV but generally JIP or clipped and sometimes just as part of a digest of finishes. As best as I can tell (and I double checked it with Ditch, so we'll call it the best I could tell), only four minutes of this actually aired on TV.

That means that we have for you a never-before-seen-in-the-wild Kobashi/Kikuchi vs Can-Ams match, another iteration of one of the best tags of the 90s.

This is a good and interesting, but lesser version of the match-up. For one thing, the crowd, while definitely abuzz, isn't quite as electric. Also, there isn't quite the same commitment to a singular theme that makes the May match such a great Southern Tag.

This had another six months of history behind it and definitely some of the same elements. I love how Kroffat and Furnas can draw heat in this setting. Every time they cheat or even take a shortcut, the crowd boos. Some of that is Kikuchi's charisma or how beloved Kobashi was, but I think a lot of it is respect and admiration for Furnas and Kroffat. They really lean into it. There are two moments in the match where Furnas comes in behind an opponent who is fighting back against Kroffat and grabs him for a belly to back; the fact they repeat the spot later on adds more than it subtracts because it doubles down on the theme and it gets a reaction each time. I do think overall, there are a number of individual reactions instead of the sort of building one you get in the May match. Ultimately, they instead build to some pretty cool spots and a moonsault that the world for how hard Kobashi had to work for it. Ultimately this was good stuff that couldn't live up to what they'd already laid down months before.

PAS: I thought this was tremendous, their May match is of course an all time classic, and it is so neat that this big run of HH’s had given us two other versions of that match up. Kikuchi is of course a legendary face in peril, and he takes the expected level of beating here. Kroffat was especially nasty throwing knuckle punches like he was trying to open up his eyebrow, Furnas also bends him in two with a variation of a torture rack, which really looked like a guy being tortured. Lots of cool cut offs in this, Kikuchi flies into Furnas when he was about to leap into a rana, Kikuchi grabs Kobashi so he won’t get double team, only to pay the price when Kroffat lariats him off the apron. Video blips out a couple of times so we miss a shot or two, but we are still totally blessed to be able to check this out, and all four guys are at their prime.

Satanico/Rey Bucanero/Ultimo Guerrero vs. Villano IV/Villano V/Atlantis Tijuana 2001

ER: This was from a real hot time in TJ, tons of big talent was coming through fresh off the demise of WCW, and more talent was coming in from CMLL than any time since. This was also around the time me and some friends made some trips down there to finally check out Auditorio Municipal de Tijuana. I got to see some cool things there, and now Roy Lucier is posting a ton of handhelds that not many others have ever seen. This is a great house show style match with some great bits, spirited performances from everyone, and a nice build to a big dive finish. Satanico was an absolute machine in his early 50s, punching everyone in sight, working as ringleader of his Infernales goons, and throwing in a genuinely hilarious spot where Atlantis gets him to flinch and take two fast back bumps in anticipation of getting hit. All of the comedy worked, and there was a really good Bugs Bunny Duck Season/Rabbit Season joke where guys kept turning over sunset flips to favor their side, so the tecnicos flipped it on them and made Infernales flip their own man over, a really fun take on an old spot. Later I laughed when Atlantis started chasing UG around the ring and UG was running full speed but also Atlantis threw out practically a dozen tilt a whirl backbreakers (I know he's slower now, but I have no clue how he has any knees left at all) and worked with big energy; both Villanos looked good, and one in particular (I'm not going to bother to guess which one, as there's no way I'm reading a roman numeral IV or V on a handheld that I'm watching on my phone) has this awesome sequence where he hits a pop up rana, armdrag, and sticks the exclamation point with a cool cutter. All of Infernales alley oop avalanches got real good height, and I laughed at Bucanero/Guerrero locking on their overly complicated rolling leg bars and armbars, because everytime they would roll through Satanico would stroll over and just grab a free limb and start yanking. This was also during the period where Bucanero was maybe the biggest bumper in wrestling, and here he slides to the floor to challenge a Villano to slugfest, then brings it to the apron and takes his big vaulting bump over the turnbuckles to the floor. This all comes to a head with both Villanos hitting stereo dives, capping off the kind of fun and charismatic 15 minute match that anyone would love to have seen live.

MD: This was a blast. The New Infernales were one of the best acts in the world at the turn of the century. Satanico is probably the best guy in history at directing rudo violence. Atlantis was at the height of his power here and the Villanos were Villanos, nothing more said. The initial beatdown was fluid and solid, with everything the Infernales did smooth and practiced. They made each bit of complex tandem offense look natural, like it's obviously what would happen if these three goons teamed up. Even when something didn't quite work perfectly, it still felt like it fit into the match. I really liked the corner alley-oop. I've seen a million GdI matches and they very rarely use it. It made for a great transition. The back half of the match was mostly them feeding comedy spots for the tecnicos. You can hardly imagine Ultimo Guerrero running from Atlantis like that even a year or two later. His knee-bump over the top was at hyperspeed and Bucanero did this twisting trip flip bump over the other turnbuckle which I don't remember seeing him do too often (probably for good reason). I liked the extra (post-)post-dive wrinkle to the finish as I thought it'd end in the ring between Atlantis and Satanico. Just crowd pleasing lucha with some of the best acts in the world at the time.

PAS: This was a very CMLL trios for 2000 Tijuana. Pretty trippy to see these guys work in a different environment. Infernales were just such a smooth lucha machine, the first fall is rudo dominated and dominated in a pretty perfect fashion. Bucanero and UG's shtick eventually began to tire me in 2000, but I can really appreciate it looking back 20 years later. It was fun to see the Villanos who are such master rudos themselves work as technicos against another rudo force. Atlantis is great in this too, he was so fast and agile back then, and having watched him for so long, I was really getting a lot of joy anticipating where he was about to go. Beautiful bumps to the floor from Gdl, in a way that felt totally safe but looked totally dangerous which is really the best way to do it. Great stuff, had a grin on my face the entire time.

Read more!