Found Footage Friday: 1991 WWF TAPING~!

WWF London Ontario 2/16/91

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

Koko B. Ware vs. The Barbarian

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

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

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

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

Ted Dibiase vs. Jimmy Snuka

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

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

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

Gen. Adnan vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan

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

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

Rick Martel vs. Jake Roberts

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

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

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

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

Undertaker vs. Tugboat

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

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

Brooklyn Brawler vs. Virgil

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

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

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

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

Hart Foundation vs. Power & Glory

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

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

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

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

Sgt. Slaughter vs. Ultimate Warrior

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

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

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

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE 305 LIVE

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Found Footage Friday: BABY TAUE~! HARA~! BRET~! VIRGIL~! BABY MONEY INC~! BLONDY~!

Akira Taue vs. Ashura Hara AJPW 10/28/88

MD: This isn't long, but if I'm not mistaken, it might be the earliest Taue singles match on tape. And honestly? It wildly overachieves. I'm used to 89 and even into 90 Taue who is trying to figure out how to be Taue. This is not that guy. This is a big athletic guy trying to figure any of it out. And he's trying to do so against Hara who is stoic and brutal and ready to kill him. Taue hits a Thesz press right at the bell and the crowd ooohs. Great, effective start. The first two minutes of this are pretty sprint light, all building to Hara clocking him with the ring bell on the floor. Throughout this, Taue will throw chops and kicks and there really is the sense that he's learning in the moment, even from a purely kayfabe perspective. He's trying to figure out what angle to throw his strikes from, what technique to use, how to get enough mustard behind the kicks to actually impact Hara, despite his size and presumably strength advantage. It means that every four or five shots from him equals one of Hara's. It means that when he hits the hundred hand sumo slap in the corner and it doesn't register and he escalates to outright smacks across Hara's face, Hara is going to clean his clock with one massive retribution shot of his own. It means when he's able to score four or five kicks, Hara's able to cut him right off with just one off his own off the ropes, even if both of them will keel over after the fact. 

When it comes to the actual execution, Taue bumps big, most especially for the clotheslines at the end, but there is a sense of him telegraphing his stuff (especially the missed stuff) way more than it ought to. We get a great camera shot of Hara managing the same exact thing, a missed clothesline in the corner, with a lot more intensity and grace. I think, and this is just a guess, that Taue didn't know enough to get in his own way yet. He has some single matches with Taue over a year later, right as Taue was on his way out, and in those, he tries to fight from underneath and show fire and I almost see more of that here, naturally, against Hara. Watching the AJPW mainstays this early in their development is so interesting, because you can see all sorts of possibilities and realities that didn't happen. This Taue, one that was more than willing to run into Hara's open hand, and then throw his entire body right back at him, was a different sort of Taue than the one we'd eventually get.

ER: I can't get enough Taue, the man who took over as my favorite pillar sometime post-Misawa death and together we haven't looked back since. I just like how he moves and how he falls and how he sells on his feet. He's a permanently old man and this is the youngest I've seen the old man doing his thing, Akira Taue with the fluffed up city pop hair of All Japan Young Boys. Taue is an athlete who is clumsy in form and clumsy in fall in all of the best ways. He is in his first year - which means he has been thrown to the wolves for over a hundred matches already on the Kings Road schedule - and can barely budge the Hara the Tank. It's one of those fun reaction worthy young boy matches where a brick solid stoic badass in his 40s lets a young boy hit him as hard as he can while he barely budges until he shows him several times how to throw proper kicks to the ribs and butts to the head. Ashura Hara barely reacts to Taue's slaps and yet also feels the need to bash him with a ring bell a couple minutes in. Early! Taue sells slaps really well and Hara knocks him silly really well. He lets Taue kick him in the chest and back if it's hurting him he's wearing it all inside. He catches a kick when he decides to catch a kick - casually, like he was just throwing Taue's leg around with his buddy - and gets to his feet with an uppercut to Taue's left cheekbone. Taue absorbs all of Hara's clotheslines and kicks really well, and Hara literally just clotheslines and kicks him until pinning him. They all looked great and none of them looked clean. 

Fabuloso Blondy/Guerrero Negro vs. Stuka/Apolo Estrada CMLL 1989

MD: Three falls in fifteen minutes or so. Blondy was in his full glory, and Guerrero Negro, sans mask, seemed just happy to be there with him saluting along to the anthem. Tecnicos charged in immediately thereafter. I haven't seen a ton of Apolo Estrada but I like what I have seen. He's very charismatic and over the top in his own particular way. Blondy fouled him to lose the first fall but take over the momentum which is not something you see often actually. They focused in on his stomach and took the segunda after a solid beatdown. In the tercera, Estrada came back after shrugging Blondy into the post on a ram attempt on the floor. Nice pop for it. The fans were into these guys. He got some solid revenge on Blondy's stomach, too, which is again not something you see a lot of focus on. As they cycled through Blondy did a sleeper, which, again isn't usually part of the diction of lucha libra. Finish was fun with Stuka getting Guerrero Negro but Estrada missing a big leap off the top only for Blondy to get overconfident and rolled up. It was a good, over act and here was another look at it, brief, a little slight, but still enjoyable.

Bret Hart/Virgil vs. Ted Dibiase/IRS WWF 8/16/91

MD: This came out of nowhere. They started running this matchup in July, with Duggan sometimes teaming with Virgil. It's still very early in the Dibiase/IRS pairing. We don't have a ton of them with Sherri so it's fun to see it. Super hot crowd and you can hardly blame them as there was always something to look at here. Just having Sherri out there meant that there was a constant reaction to everything that was happening. That meant lots of attempts to interfere which didn't come to anything but drew the eye (and the fancam) to holding her head during a double noggin knocker, to taunting every single person in the arena when Dibiase and IRS finally took over. I almost can't comment on some of Rotunda's holds because the cameraman was more interested in seeing what Sherri was up to. There was a long, long shine here with a couple of false calls on the heels taking over but some very fun stuff, like Bret feigning an eyerake from the outside from IRS (that never happened) which let Virgil unload on Dibiase illegally and this great bit where Virgil did an arm wringer to IRS and then Rotunda's fist right into Dibiase's face. I'm sure I must have seen that spot at least a few times but it felt new to me. The heels had to work three times harder (and dirtier) than the babyfaces to get anything which, I suppose, made the fans care all the more when they finally took over. There was a ton of heat for it at least. Bret ended up taking maybe 80% of this match though Virgil seemed plenty competent when he was in there. Finish was probably what people usually got around this time, with Virgil, almost, almost getting to triumph over Dibiase only to have it stolen out from underneath him (by a loaded purse). Summerslam was just around the corner though.

ER: I have bad taste in wrestling, so this kind of thing is the kind of new match that excites me. I love seeing new WWF pairings from this era, matches that didn't exist in any other form. They ran this tag on a few house shows leading up to Summerslam '91, the peak of Virgil's career and Bret's first singles match title win. Other than these few house show tags, Bret and Virgil rarely associated. Both babyfaces, both careers on the upswing, both in wildly different places one year later. Virgil's World Title Challenge the next year would be by far Bret's shortest match of his first World Title run. This is our lone Bret/Virgil partnership on film and it's a really good tag match, and every person in the match is really great at their role in the match. Bret gets loud crowd sympathy out of getting out of a long chinlock, Dibiase reacts perfectly to a hot tag, IRS works faster and hits heavier than later Money Inc., and the timing of everything is pinpoint. 

But this is a Sensational Sherri. Whatever single Montreal man snuck their camcorder to horsily record Sherri's every single movement at the importance of anything else on the show, was correct to do so. Regardless of the intentions of a lone Quebecois cameraman probably named Edouard, this camera belonged on Sherri. This was one of the hardest working, entertaining, constant motion and broad breathless interaction that few managers in history could replicate. Sherri works an incredible and active manager role with the best looking legs of her life, running around the ring to stop and rub specific fans' faces in it, shouting specific encouragement to IRS or Dibiase in between interacting with fans, physically interact with all four men in the match multiple times ranging from big to small ways, all while adding to the match by getting the crowd more invested in the match by also being more invested in her. She is incredible to watch. It's like she's acting a big scene out for her own biopic; an incredible confident performance that is bigger than any TV performance. You put this performance of hers in any territory and she is a megastar. 

This is a gem of a tag. Every participant did a leaping punch off the middle or top buckle, and any match with jumping or falling punches is going to be a house show gem. But this is a Sensational Sherri match, a match I'm not sure I've seen anyone work better. That it plays like a documentary scene about a Great Manager due to our French New Wave handheld with swirling squeals of in the red crowd noise makes it a wrestling match that should be referenced going forward. 

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Our Greatest Giant Gonzalez Match

Giant Gonzalez vs. Virgil WWF Superstars 4/3

ER: Nobody ever talks about Giant Gonzalez as a great worker, and well, that's because he wasn't. But he also never got the chance to be a good worker. He wasn't getting pro wrestling work because of his in-ring potential, but he also never got the opportunity to actually improve his in-ring work. People wrongly say that Gonzalez/Undertaker is one of the worst matches in WrestleMania history, but who else was pulling good matches out of 1993 Undertaker? What are the good Undertaker singles matches from 91-93? He wasn't having them, because he was a character, not a Great Match Worker. Giant Gonzalez was not brought into WWF to have Great Matches. He was a humongous yeti with the biggest taint anyone had ever seen, whose job was to be a slow lumbering menace to occupy the Undertaker. There were no attempts to make him into anything other than that, and after a half a year of that he was gone. During his WWF stint he worked almost exclusively with Undertaker and Randy Savage, with a few jobber matches and two grail Gonzalez/Adam Bomb vs. Undertaker/Savage house show tags that I want to see really damn bad. Gonzalez wasn't brought in to be a worker, and he was never given the opportunity to work different opponents to see what kind of worker he could be. Imagine what Bret could have done with him! We never got Hart/Gonzalez and I hate that we never got Hart/Gonzalez. 

But he did work a few matches against Virgil at the very beginning of his tenure, and that gave us a glimpse of the kind of worker he might have been with a bit more variety of opponent, against guys who could actually let him show off his legitimate athleticism. Sure, he never actually played in an NBA game, but this man was still an athlete. His TV match with Virgil shows more of his athleticism than he got to show in any other match, and I think this match - all 3 minutes of it - is the best version of Giant Gonzalez. 

Virgil avoids him to start, and flashes a bit of footwork when Gonzalez can't catch him. Gonzalez, hilariously, shows off his own footwork. I still see people talking about how immobile Gonzalez was in the ring, but...he wasn't immobile, at all. They did not want him to be an agile giant, but you can see in this match how quick he could move. He moves faster against Virgil than he ever moved against Undertaker and Savage, and when he finally backs Virgil into a corner, there's an awesome visual where he backs Virgil up the turnbuckles with a knucklelock. Virgil is standing on the top rope leaning all of his weight forward to try to get any leverage on the giant, and you just watch, waiting for Gonzalez to shove him backwards over the ringpost to a certain death. 

They worked this match on three house shows before taping this match, and I wonder if there was ever any variation on that spot, if he DID shove Virgil off. But mainly I just think how in awe I would have been had I seen a furry Sasquatch threatening to throw a man off the top rope. I like the way Virgil falls for Gonzalez, and love the way they move around each other. I don't think Gonzalez's offense ever looked better than in this match. His clubbing arms looked heavy as hell, and he threw a kick to Virgil's ribs that looked just as heavy. I love how he ignored a dropkick and then swatted the next one to the side like Kong swatting a biplane. After he swatted that dropkick away, he leveled Virgil with a clothesline that had honest to god great form. We should have been allowed to see him clotheslining Mr. Perfect or Marty Jannetty or any of the other dozen guys on the roster who knew how to take great clothesline bumps. Gonzalez hits a deadlift chokeslam for the win, and kept his hand wrapped around Virgil's throat for a minute after the win, hunched over him and choking him into unconsciousness. 

This is the only real glimpse of what Gonzalez could have been in WWF. It's not entirely different from the Gonzalez we got, but this is clearly our Greatest Gonzalez. 

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An Exhaustingly Exhaustive Review of WWF Royal Rumble 1/24/93, Pt. 2

Bret Hart vs. Razor Ramon

ER: Another great match. Perhaps too long, but still a great match. The first 75 minutes of the show is one of the best 75 minute stretches of wrestling you'll find in any era of WWF. A couple pieces could have been placed differently, and the crowd gets weirdly restless in the middle (maybe burned out by too many closely strung together nearfalls? I don't know). This starts with a great opening punch exchange, and Razor never got enough credit at the time for his punches. I'm not sure who else could even make the claim to a better whipping right hand in this era, or any era. Razor's punch doesn't allow much wiggle room and requires a lot of moving parts, and I don't know who threw a similar punch better. Also, Razor and Bret are both great stomp punchers. Razor throws those long rights, whips Bret hard into the turnbuckle, and Bret takes just a classic back first bump into them, making it look almost as violent as his classic chest first bump always looks.  

Hart takes over by working over Razor's leg, kicking it out from under him a few times while holding onto his other leg, slamming it into the ringpost, and it's the only part of the match that feels incomplete or misplaced. It never really leads anywhere, Razor doesn't sell the knee, and I don't think you really needed a leg work segment to set up the Sharpshooter finish 12 minutes later. You can just win with the Sharpshooter, you don't need leg work. Now Razor working over Bret's ribs is much more interesting, and it starts with Razor reversing an Irish whip by jamming a kitchen sink knee into things, then whips Hart low into the corner. Bret slides across the mat ribs first and gets wrapped around the ringpost, and the ribs give Razor a cool focal point for the rest of the match. We DO get Bret going hard chest first to the buckles and we realize, yes, the Bret chest first turnbuckle bump IS the definitive violent corner bump. This particular one is one of Bret's best versions, and think of how many matches that covers. I don't know how Bret's arms didn't go completely numb after hitting the buckles. He ran full speed into them like he couldn't see them and had no idea they were there, and then fell backwards, rigid, to the mat. Most match finishes do not look as nasty as Bret running into the buckles. 

We get a lot of Razor working on Bret with his abdominal stretch, stomps, a stiff shoulderblock, and his always nice fallaway slam. Bret's big comeback from all of that is big, with Razor taking a high  backdrop bump to the floor and then Hart nailing a full body tope (with a couple of sneaky mounted punches thrown in after the landing). They work in a lot of momentum shifts down the stretch, which were all handled well but might have benefitted from one or two of them being dropped. Still, it lead to some classics, including proof that Bret might be the only person who can make the jump off the middle buckle into someone's boot actually look damaging and not silly, and the way he crumbles after hitting it is an incredible sell. It also helps that he hits his Hitman elbow off the middle rope so actually has a reason to be leaping off it into a boot in the first place. The match really should have ended with Bret wriggling out of what surely would have been a match finishing Razor's Edge to trap Razor with a backslide. Nothing that came after was necessary, and the finishing itself came off a little clunky (even with Razor grabbing onto the ropes and Earl Hebner's pant leg to desperately stop the Sharpshooter. Pulling a backslide out of the jaws of a Razor's Edge would have kept Razor stronger, and the backslide looked like a finish (most of the crowd bit hard at the late kickout). Still, even with my criticisms this felt like the 2nd best match on a card with four strong matches. 

Lex Luger debuts as Narcissus in an awkward segment where really nothing at all works. They have the trifold mirror set up in the entrance way, but Luger's gear covers up a lot of his body so you can't even see what all the fuss is about. And there IS fuss. Luger poses to an obstructed view while Heenan lavishes such praise over his body that it nearly approaches Power and Glory workout video levels of uncomfortable. My favorite part was when Heenan drooled over Luger's thighs. "Yes! Look at yourself! Enjoy yourself, Narcissus! Look at his thighs!!!"

The Rumble Match

This is a really really good Rumble, with the only flaw being that it is TOO LONG. It has a great first half and almost felt like a love letter to fans of the territories, as it was front-loaded with several different world and regional champs and that early star power felt big. Within the first 10 entrants we had Flair, Backlund, Dibiase, Lawler, Tenryu and Perfect. Flair and Backlund start it off, and neither Monsoon or Heenan talk about what a historic showdown it legitimately was. When you think of early 80s WWF champ, you think Backlund; When you think of early 80s NWA champ, you think Flair. As best I know, this is the only recorded footage of these two facing each other. There was an early 80s "title unification" match at the Omni but I don't think footage of that was ever shown on TV. So you get a fairly decent chunk of a Flair/Backlund match, years later than you would have wanted it, but they work it like an actual match (as opposed to spending the time trying to lift a guy's leg over the ropes). Papa Shango interrupts as the 3rd entrant but gets disposed of immediately, so we get a 4 minute Backlund/Flair match, and that's pretty neat. Now, Backlund was in this Rumble for over an hour, but I thought he looked pretty bad during at least his first half hour, and 1993 Backlund had a ton of weird timing issues. It often felt like Backlund was purposely trying to throw off his opponents' timing during this run, but he doesn't seem the type to do that. 

The two major standouts of this Rumble are Flair and Lawler. They're each in for just 15-20 minutes but their activity and execution and sheer knowledge of how to work a great Rumble is unparalleled. Flair must have had a running bet to see how many eye pokes he could fit in to his run, as he cuts off every single spot with an eye poke and it's incredible. My favorite was right after Max Moon came in and hit a fiery babyface sequence, and Flair tapped him on the shoulder and poked him in the eyes before just walking off. Lawler looked amazing during his whole run, punching everyone in sight and selling even better, getting into battles with guys we never got to see him battle (like Lawler/Backlund, or Lawler/TENRYU! Just the idea of a Lawler/Tenryu singles match makes me angry that they were even in the same ring and it didn't happen). Lawler has an awesome moment with Max Moon, where Max hits his nice corner spinning heel kick on Lawler, goes for it again and eats a huge backdrop bump to the floor. Huge bumps to the floor were one of the great things about this Rumble as I'd say 2/3 of the eliminations were dangerous bumps or bad landings, and that's an insanely high percentage. Also, Lawler has these incredible lowrider car show screen printed tights. Perfect targets Flair and Lawler and anything those three do with and against each other is gold, and if you want to talk about disgusting eliminations then you have to talk about Lawler and Perfect. 

Lawler takes the highest elimination bump of the match, getting launched by Perfect, and then immediately cashes in that receipt. Dibiase and Koko start shoving Perfect over, and Lawler begins yanking him by the head, really making it look like Perfect was desperately trying to hold on to that bottom rope, turning it into a really violent elimination. Referees are trying to pull Lawler away, guys in the ring are shoving Perfect, and Perfect hangs on to the bottom rope as long as humanly possible. It's, ahem, perfect. Knobbs, Skinner, and Samu have really memorable 3 minute runs, and you need a few high end crash and burn guys to make a Rumble good. Knobbs got a huge crowd reaction and had a real fired up run, Skinner came in like a dangerous potato throwing asshole, and Samu came in throwing headbutts. They all took tremendous bumps to elimination, with Samu's maybe the most dangerous. Undertaker had come out midway through (hilariously right as Lawler was headed back through the curtain, and Lawler gives Undertaker a wide berth) and he eliminates Samu by setting him on the top rope and shoving him hard, Samu flipping onto the apron on his head before going to the floor. Berzerker was fun during his 5 minutes, but with a guy who can eat up that much of the ring you hope for more than 5 minutes. I loved how, when Berzerker entered the ring, he went around the ring literally hitting every single person in the match. He didn't focus on anyone (until following Backlund to the floor and hitting him with a chair) but instead just stomped and clubbed his way through everyone. Koko also had a good run, building off 10 year feuds by going after Lawler while gleefully hiking up his gigantic High Energy windbreaker pants. 

The halves of the match are really clearly divided, as the ring needs to be fully cleared so Giant Gonzalez can debut and attack the Undertaker. I liked the Gonzalez debut, even though they never actually learned how to film him. When a guy is *actually* 8 feet tall, you don't need to film him from the floor up. He's the tallest man in pro wrestling history! Show him from far away so you can see how much larger he is than anything else in the arena! When you shoot him ground up it just makes him look like a normal guy, albeit a normal guy wearing a fur and muscle suit.  The problem is, since you had to clear the ring for that angle, and you front loaded the Rumble with most of the best workers, you're left with IRS, Damien DeMento, and Backlund when the smoke clears. It takes quite awhile to build any of that lost momentum back, with even a Natural Disasters Explode moment feeling tepid. Earthquake went right after Typhoon with no explanation, eliminated him, and then it was never mentioned again (Earthquake was gone at the end of the month and worked WAR for the rest of the year). 

Carlos Colon comes out fairly late, but it's really weird because he clearly belonged in the first half of this when it felt like they were legitimately trying to bring in a ton of regional champs. What would Carlos Colon even mean to a 1993 WWF audience? Also, you better believe Monsoon referred to the 45 year old Colon as a youngster after both he and Heenan had spent the entire match using Backlund's age 43 as a negative against him.  I would love a show of hands at the Arco Arena to find out how many in attendance knew anything about Carlos Colon. They had him announced for the Rumble several weeks before the match, but had only showed a picture of him during Mean Gene's Rumble previews, no footage or anything. It would have been far more valuable to see Colon throwing punches and headbutts at Lawler, Tenryu, and Flair; instead we get to see a lot of Colon against Damien DeMento, which is weird! Tatanka was by far the most exciting worker of the 2nd half of this, and his chops in the corner were thrown with more force than any Flair chop. 

Bob Backlund is 28th elimination, going past the hour mark and getting the most mixed reaction of the match. For the first half hour the crowd audibly hated him, but the longer he stayed in the more the crowd seemed to be pulling for him. When he was eliminated I genuinely could not tell if the loud reaction was applause for him making it that far, or relief that Backlund was not going to be in the main event of WrestleMania. The finish run is Macho Man vs. Yokozuna, which was better than I remembered, but the execution of the finish is as bad as I remembered. They work a 5 minute singles match as the final two, and it's good. Savage gets Yokozuna reeling with axe handles, Yokozuna hits a great thrust kick, Savage fights back, and eventually hits the big elbow. And then Savage pins Yokozuna...in the Rumble...and Yoko kicks out, sending Savage over the top to the floor. I kinda get it, I guess? The pinfall attempt just looks stupid and makes Savage look like a total dweeb, but I guess I can buy that the two of them had been one on one so long at the end that Savage went into Singles Match Mode. But that elimination? One man just cannot press a man from his back, over the top rope, and make it look like anything other than a man jumping over the top rope. Savage does as well as possible in that situation, but surely we could have figured out a better way for Yokozuna to eliminate Macho Man. This Rumble is way too long and dips hard for a bit in the middle, but that first half has some of the best work in Royal Rumble Match history and that alone makes this one of the best Rumbles, warts and all. 

This feels like one of the best WWF PPVs and it's weird that it doesn't get discussed as such. I thought every match was a varying degree of great, with the Rumble Match itself being too long and having too much deadweight but still succeeding due to a lot of hard work from the entrants. Lawler, Flair, Perfect, Dibiase, and several guys who were only in for 3 minutes all had great showings, and it had some of the nastiest elimination bumps of any Rumble. The other 4 matches are great in their specific way, and I think it's important that they all accomplished something very different, all felt very different. The opening tag is one of the great WWF tags of the 90s, Michaels/Jannetty had a better match at a house show the day before (and a much better match a few months later on Raw) but still delivered here, the big boys fight was fast paced and fun, and Hart/Razor gave us a Bret singles match that we rarely saw (they had two PPV matches and to my knowledge no other singles matches that made tape). This was a great show. Every single match is recommended. 

Best Matches: 

1. Beverly Brothers vs. Steiners

2. Bret Hart vs. Razor Ramon

3. Big Boss Man vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

4. The Rumble Match

5. Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Jannetty

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1993 WWF Surprises: Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Virgil

Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Virgil WWF Mania 1/23/93

ER: I don't think we've written much about Iron Mike Sharpe on Segunda Caida, but this was an unexpectedly special match. A few loud adults in the Manhattan Center crowd get behind Sharpe and it somehow transitions into a Hometown Hero performance for him, and it's great. The kids in the crowd kept cheering Virgil while their parents - who grew up seeing Sharpe work 15 minute draws with Tony Garea - cheered louder. Adults vs. Kids crowd heat wasn't really a thing in 1993 and the spontaneity is welcome. Sharpe works heel but catches onto and gets into the role of hometown hero, soaking in his reaction and giving them a match with the most Mike Sharpe offense in 3 years. It was a nostalgia reaction when those weren't a common thing, and a pure version of that because it wasn't advertised or intentional nostalgia. Nobody in production knew Sharpe was going to get the first babyface reaction of his northeast run, and there was no attempt to capitalize on it. Although, you could say that just the fact Iron Mike Sharpe was one of the few guys on TV older than Hogan AND kept employed through 1994, that was its own reward. When he was brought back in the early 90s, Sharpe was frequently on TV but never to the level of showing up on Coliseum video or getting a 10 minute Bret Hart match. So, digging up a 1993 Iron Mike Sharpe gem is the best kind of unexpected treat. 

Virgil is no pushover and is still going to get his babyface reaction, and a match where two guys are getting loud cheers and chants turns into a real scrap of a fight. Mike Sharpe isn't a pretty wrestler. He is big and hunched and bumps sideways sometimes and executes familiar offense in weirdly rigid ways. But Sharpe works this match more stiff than any other Mike Sharpe match I've seen (does anyone have a link to his Backlund title challenge?), and Virgil never needs an excuse to add some stiff punches and a rude suplex into a match. Sharpe works his bullshit, his nice headlock punch, basic stuff like bodyslams and shoulderblocks, and then keeps upping things with a great heavy crossbody and these Vader like standing clotheslines to Virgil's head and neck. Virgil fights back and convincingly knocks the bigger man around the ring, and the ragged messy charm is absolutely undeniable. The crowd really begins to react like Sharpe might actually pull off a win, and it's a great moment when Sharpe gets verbal with the them to feed their response. Virgil never worked like a heel in this match, but he did work like a guy who wasn't going to be upstaged, while also giving Sharpe the longest match of his second WWF run. It made for some great nearfalls, with a close kickout after a Virgil clothesline a couple minutes in an early signal that this was something beyond typical. 

Mania was like an early version of Velocity: filled with good matches and unique pairings that only happened on that show. Mania was on episode three here, and had already presented us with two one-off gems in a great Bill Irwin match and a great Iron Mike Sharpe match. Mania is the kind of wrestling that reminds me of tuning in at 12:30 AM in 2003, hoping for a Paul London gem.  

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Borga Wakes Up in the Morning and He Feels, the Pain in His Head

Ludvig Borga vs. Virgil  WWF Superstars 8/28/93 - GREAT

ER: This is Borga's first match against someone who occasionally records wins, and it plays perfectly as a Borga showcase while also giving Virgil a nice little walking tall babyface performance. It's a 3 minute match so it's not a full valiant Tito Santana performance, but he makes a little dent in Borga and the fans are into him. This was a great coming out performance for Borga, his first match against someone the crowd responds to, and he really ups the personality and stiffness. Borga is great at selling contempt for Americans, a raised eyebrow every bit as expressive as The Rock's. Virgil gets a little too hyped up by the crowd's enthusiasm, and decides to shadow box with Borga. Borga is a huge man who boxed professionally, so I got very excited by Virgil's decision to throw hands. And, it's great. Borga has no problem absolutely slugging Virgil several times, the closest he has come by far to giving us Different Fight Halme in WWF. He lands organ punishing body shots in the corner and boxes Virgil's ear, but Virgil is a guy who works stiff and Borga leaves openings for return fire. 

Virgil boxes back and it made me want a 2 Cold Scorpio/Virgil match real bad. Virgil hits hard enough that it looks cool when Borga shoulderblocks him to the mat, like even the larger Borga had to earn it. Virgil lands a clothesline full force to Borga's chest, and throws a couple of sick shots to Borga's throat (Borga sells them like a man who just got punched in the throat), and Virgil's standing dropkick has real impact. Both guys hit smashmouth back elbows and Borga ramps up his impact when moving to finish. I haven't seen his flying lariat look better than it looked here, including his matches against Norton and Vader. This was far more effective than having him murder Ricky Ataki before Summerslam. Virgil was a popular guy who looked tough and credible against Borga, while getting murdered by Borga. This really made Borga look like a killer who could withstand 1993 babyface offense to land his own big shots. They had Jannetty take down Bastion Booger in a few credible ways, really gave a nice lowkey build to what is probably the least important match at Summerslam. But damn if I'm not more excited to see Borga/Jannetty. 

Ludvig Borga vs. PJ Walker WWF Superstars 9/18/93 - VERY GOOD

ER: Total asskicking, great squash, a perfect highlight reel of Borga's best offense, and a great reason why PJ Walker was a full time employee a year later. Walker takes two minutes of hard punishment, and Borga gets to sneer and show off. He starts by lifting Walker into the air with a choke, hits a sick headbutt upon releasing the choke, then starts the body shots. Borga has awesome body shots and here he got to throw off some footwork, give Walker an unexpected left to the body after faking right, then whip him hard into the turnbuckles after softening up his insides. He hits a great vertical suplex after holding Walker up for 10 seconds, then leaps as high as possible on his standing elbowdrop. His elbowdrop is so it it even makes Macho Man exclaim that it's higher than he lands on HIS elbowdrop, and Macho Man was never in the business of praising heels. Walker leans into Borga's big flying clothesline and turns on the landing, making it look like a nice rag doll layout. Borga's specific kind of heel offense is ahead of its time and behind the times, but I don't think it was appreciated enough in 1993. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LUDVIG BORGA

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1992 WWF Boy Scout Troop 3 Fundraiser 1/18/92

Full Show


ER: If you like the sound of a wrestling show where the wrestling is treated with as much value as the day itself, and don't mind 50% of the tape being taken up by non-wrestling, then I invite you to settle on in. This here's a recently unearthed WWF fancam of a show many of us didn't realize even happened, filmed by any old dad as more of a memorable church picnic than as a man filming a pro wrestling show. When my dad got a video camera in 1988 (the kind where the VHS tape slid into the camera itself), he quickly produced half a dozen tapes that were filled entirely with him recording the yard, doing commentary about how the yard looked, filming my toddler sister following a frog, just a grill dad enjoying his new toy while acting out his inner Terence Malick. I still know where tapes of our old Easter egg hunts and 4th of July parties exist at my folks' house, even if they haven't had a VCR to play them on in at least 15 years. This show is the closest to the vibes of those home movies than any wrestling fancam I have ever experienced.

The man who recorded this, is a man recording this event the way my dad recorded every event of our lives over a period of several years. This is not a man recording a pro wrestling show, this is a man recording his niece's wedding, his son's little league game, his daughter's school play; this tape would exist no matter what the event was. If the fundraiser had been a chili cookoff, there would be a tape of Boy Scouts Chili Cookoff and we would likely not be writing about it. But this is a WWF Boy Scouts fundraising show, and this man - I presume - is affiliated somehow with this specific Shelton, CT branch of the Boy Scouts.

Growing up, we used to have a big Harvest Festival every year with all of the 7th Day Adventist churches in our county, held in the gymnasium of a local high school. This wrestling fancam is the exact movie of my dad filming us and several other families and students on a Saturday morning, setting up for the Harvest Festival and decorating a gymnasium. This man is not worried about saving tape space for the matches, he is more concerned with documenting the entire experience, and we're lucky for it.

One of the early joys, is that it's never actually even apparent that any attendees enjoy interacting with our cameraman even in the slightest. Most in attendance don't even act as if they know who he is, let alone act socially familiar with him. But HE feels familiar to these people, and nobody appears to be startled by his presence, so we can assume he's at minimum welcome and/or tolerated. Also, among the 80 or so volunteers in the building, he is the one guy just walking around with a camera and not doing any kind of set up or physical work, so "tolerated" is probably a more believable stance.

Letting yourself get taken in by these home movies, you really appreciate the well oiled machine that is the volunteer staff of Scouts and family of Scouts, as we get to see the ins and outs of what's happening at Shelton High School on a winter Saturday. Our Connecticut Attenborough helps paint the mise en scene by mostly letting the camera do the talking, outside of segment-introducing observations such as "Lots of chairs to be set up" or "Here's another popcorn machine being set up, down at the end of this hall" or "Still setting up these chairs, 600 of them" or "Mopping the floor" or "Taking a break from setting up all these chairs?" or "Gonna sell a lotta merch tonight?" or "Hey how many chairs did you bring in the truck?" The candid interviews aren't particularly insightful, and he is not a very probing interviewer. These interviews do give us some insight into a truck that broke down that was carrying a lot of chairs, and we get some unblemished brief backstage footage that gave us more of a look behind the scenes than any "matches only" fancams have ever bothered with.

Not only do we get to see the catering spread for the wrestlers (literally just a half dozen 6 foot long party subs from Subway), but we get the Bushwhackers signing autographs for all the nerdy adorable Scouts, and what appears to be one specific family meeting the incredibly jacked Chris Walker. One of the Double Trouble members is also there milling about, and we get to see anti-drug PSAs from Virgil and Sgt. Slaughter. It's kind of amazing that this guy was allowed to film Virgil as he took several re-dos on his not great Say No promo. Slaughter cuts his with ease, salutes a local LEO ("from one Sgt. to another"), and then points directly at our camera as we fade into a packed gymnasium. Our ring announcer (who as we saw was there 3 hours early and showed up wearing a great brown leather jacket) is now in a suit looking like the coolest possible Perd Hapley, and announces that due to illness, Bret Hart would not be facing The Mountie tonight. Hart had lost the IC title to Mountie literally the night before, but the crowd is justifiably excited to find out that Roddy Piper would be replacing Hart in that IC title match.

MD: I can't add much more to what Eric's written here about the non-match footage but I will note a few things: First, I was pretty much the target age here. This was January 92. I was 10 years old. I'd watched WWF for less than two years at that point, getting into it late. I'm from the Northeast. I also had some small experiences backstage due to a friend's uncle working for Titan in some capacity. That consisted of meeting Bret backstage after his match with Barbarian in the underdwelling hallways of the Boston Garden, and then, two years later (Survivor Series 93), having a photo shoot opportunity with the Smoking Gunns and getting a free shirt. I can say that the company changed incredibly in those two years when it came to that sort of thing. This is right in the middle.

I was absolutely terrified of meeting the Bushwhackers as a kid, because I didn't want to get licked by them. This was a completely irrational but very, very real fear of mine, especially as I wandered into these backstage scenarios. I wasn't a germaphobe, but I guess I had some texture issues, and the idea of it was literally terrifying to me. They scared me as much as anyone this side of Papa Shango, what with the sardines and the missing teeth. Obviously, they're absolutely great with the kids here, even if they do lick one. Sarge has it down to a science (I caught him at a signing when I was in college and while it was a conveyor belt, he'd still find a way to engage with anyone who engaged with him). You could tell how much value he still had to the company in a show like this. It was also nice to see Sherri interacting with people, though obviously not getting mobbed like Slaughter. What really stands out though, what I will remember forever, is Virgil being completely unable to hit the "Don't do drugs" speech. I always wondered why he never got pushed more; Repo Man helps Dibiase gets the $$$ belt back a little before this and he just tumbles down the card. His liberation from Dibiase was such a huge storyline in 91 and he was legitimately over with the crowd (and he'd become surprisingly engaging destroying jobbers by the end of 92), but seeing this promo attempt makes it all make more sense.


British Bulldog vs. The Barbarian

MD: While we have a thousand Bulldog vs. Warlord matches, this is a more novel pairing. Unfortunately, we don't get much of it.

ER: We get about 90 seconds of this, nothing close to a finish, but mostly a mid match test of strength, a nice Bulldog bump to the floor, and a Barbarian clubbing forearm. But our cameraman shows a strong knack for recording wrestling, knows when to follow the action and knows when to zoom in on holds. That's a good sign. This brief glimpse of a match segues immediately into...


Beverly Brothers vs. The Bushwhackers

ER: In which Luke is biting Blake's rump, and I believe that is the start of the match. The first two minutes of this is so great, the Beverlys bumping all over for shoulderblocks and clotheslines, both taking pratfalls over the top to the floor, all leading to them smoothly transitioning to a classic cut off the ring tag match. The Beverlys look like they're having so much fun, the perfect heel team for a house show like this, the kind of time that makes a gym echo with high pitched little kid anger. Luke is just about the worst person ever at putting over offense, never falling right, barely regarding punches, but it doesn't faze Blake and Beau. Blake is dropping elbows and we get a nice cut off spot where Blake drops a falling lariat on Luke, and when we get to the Butch hot tag we get another run of big flipping Beverly bumps, with Beau bumping to the floor off a battering ram. Blake is making Butch lariats look far more powerful than they should be, and Beau expertly hooks Butch's leg from the floor, really upending him for the finish. Beverlys continue to soak up the hate on their victorious walk to the back, with Blake wiping sweat off himself and flinging at fans.

MD: This was the match that made me realize that I had to absolutely make sure Eric caught this show. If you told 10 year old me how much I'd love a Bushwhackers match like this, I'd tell you that you were crazy. If you'd tell 20 year old me, I'd tell you the same but with worse language. Every single person reading this over the age of 25 was programmed by every sheet-writing print or internet personality to hate matches like this, and it's the craziest thing in the world! Because not only is the match amazingly fun, but there's so much crafty, savvy, old tricks, put into this: the timing at the beginning where the Beverlys try to run in only to be unable to get the advantage, the fact they actually work in the hope spots and cut offs, the Beverlys working the crowd from the apron, and the bumping towards the end. Luke and Butch had this match with the Rougeaus, the Beverlys, the Heavenly Bodies, maybe even Honky and Valentine, spans of six months feuding with these guys around the horn. I'm watching this and I can feel the frustration for these kids that even at the charity show, they can't just put the Bushwhackers over here. Of course the Beverlys were happy. They had the most receptive audience possible, got to go over, and didn't even have to bump for the Road Warriors (or, if they could see their future, the Steiners).


Roddy Piper vs. The Mountie

ER: This was great. Tragically cut short by our fearless editor, so naturally we don't get the finish, but what we do get is great. Piper is such a great house show guy, and this felt like Piper with a decade shaved off his life, working like he was a Portland babyface, just an excellent school gym performance. Piper is super fired up here, and Mountie is game to work some fast exchanges with him. This would have been Mountie's first and only IC title defense after beating Bret on a house show, and it's a cool scrap. They do this great sequence that felt like a WCW Finlay sequence, with Roddy doing quick rope running and making Mountie do two quick leapfrogs, ending with Piper dropping an awesome fistdrop after Mountie drops down. Later, Mountie bails to the floor off an Irish whip, jaws with the fans, and Piper runs around ringside to punch him right in the side of the head. I wish we could have gotten the whole thing, but Mountie's heel control and Piper's crowd control made this great for what we got.

MD: We haven't gotten a ton of new Jacques over the last few years but one thing we did get was his last WWF singles match for a while, against Bret. Between that and this, I'm thinking we probably missed out on a nice long IC title run where he would have been more or less what Honky is remembered to be: a hugely entertaining, vulnerable champion with a big mouth, getting a ton of heat. Piper hits all the marks here perfectly and the fans love to see him, but Jacques is 100% on for every moment, and you buy into the stakes of it (even though it's non-title so there are no stakes) because he obviously cares so much. Even as he tries to express that he doesn't, like when he stalls and beats a ten count at the last, panicked moment. The transition point of the ref grabbing Piper's arm on punches in the corner looked great from the angle we got it, and the ref (Davis? I forget now) kept the heat off of him for the most part by being so frustrated at Jacques taking advantage. We lose the finish, but it seemed to be poetic, with Mountie trying to run one last time only to have Piper come after him. Piper got the cheap pop with the local high school shirt after the match and Jacques stayed completely on, smarmy and disaffected, until he was entirely out of sight.


Ted Dibiase/Repo Man vs. Tito Santana/Virgil

ER: Repo man actually makes some sense as a Million Dollar Man teammate, though I'm not sure it ever crossed my mind until now. We could have gotten a whole Capitalism stable with Repo and Money Inc. that would have been decried by dorks as the Worst Workrate Team Ever. And we get 5 or 6 minutes of a classically structured house show tag match, and even with guys like Repo Man in there it is so obvious how a simple southern tag structure is a much more interesting structure than the modern wrestling tag. It's a simple layout, the pros can easily hit all the beats, and the interesting ones know how to fill in the connecting stretches. Dibiase really takes it out on Virgil, laying into him with a great chop/short forearm combo in the corner that lays him out. The child heavy crowd is way behind Virgil, and Sherri is active the entire time getting into it with fans and cheating for Ted. We get a great build to a Tito hot tag, including Repo Man sneaking over and yanking Tito off the apron just before Virgil could get there. When Tito eventually gets in the building is molten, all three members of the heel squad are bumping for him, and sadly our cameraman misses the end of match Sherri involvement. We get a quick cut and the match is over, Sherri lying on the floor, and you just know Sherri took some too dangerous spill on a fundraiser show that wasn't even going to be a part of listed company history. After the match, we get some footage of Slaughter and Sherri signing autographs and shaking hands, then get a brief interview with Miss Valley, a pretty young blond wearing her pageant sash and acid washed denim romper.

MD: We lose the beginning and end of this, unfortunately, but we can see how it's laid out. I always like wrestlers with unique stances, and Darsow worked as Repo Man with a hulking hunch, even as he's coming to and exiting the ring. Dibiase does everything right here, but he's more going through the motions. We only see a bit of him, but it's obvious Darsow's more engaged. He wanted to go babyface with the character and be beloved by children. He claims to have quit in 93 because they wouldn't let him. This is the crowd for him. The heat's ultimately on Virgil and it seems ok and lets Tito come in later on with some great sweeping dropkicks when the hot tag happens, but the guy filming gets bored of it all midway and focuses on Sherri for a minute. You can't really blame him, both for Sherri's qualities and what was going on, but it's pretty funny, nonetheless. Also funny is that we miss the Sherri involvement at the end, anyway, and just cut to her being disheveled as she walks out with her losing team. A big run of Dibiase/Repo Man would have probably been better than what we ultimately got with Money, Inc.


Berzerker vs. Sgt. Slaughter

ER: I had a hunch this wasn't going to live up to my internal expectations, because how was the only recorded singles match between Berzerker and Slaughter going to do that? There is only one singles match on the books between them, and that was a 1986 AWA show in Oakland (cruelly just an hour away from me, but I was a dumb baby who didn't even know what pro wrestling was). This show is entirely off the books, and this man somehow didn't understand the magnitude of the history he was recording. The cruelty is in what we won't ever know. Did Berzerker take any big bumps? Not on the footage we have, but we have no way of knowing how much of the match we missed. What we did see was Slaughter being enough of a lunatic to take his signature bump, and I just HAVE to assume that if Slaughter is flying stomach first over the top to the floor, then Berzerker had to have at least done so twice. I had no clue Slaughter was doing that bump on 1992 house shows, and considering Berzerker was a guy who didn't let Curt Hennig outbump him, no way in hell was Sgt. Slaughter's bump going to be the only time in the match that a giant man flew to the floor of a gymnasium.

Slaughter's bump was the clear highlight, but I loved Slaughter dropping Berzerker crotch first on the top rope, because as we know Minnesotans are the best in pro wrestling history at selling their butt and balls. So Berzerker gets bounced on the top rope by Slaughter, then rolls to the floor and massages out his sore balls while still Hussing in the faces of children. I love this man. Berzerker also had a fun diving punch to Slaughter's balls, which made a ton of sense as payback for Slaughter's prior ball torture. The finish left a lot to be desired, with Berzerker arguing with the ref and leaving himself open to a schoolboy, but the match was filled with joy. I wish we got a shot of Berzerker signing autographs for Scouts after, just because I needed to see how huge Berzerker was while standing next to some kiddos.

MD: Bit of a reverse structure on this one as Nord stooges early with groin based stuff, working big as always, but maybe showing a bit more ass, to the point that he had to hit a low blow to take over. Sarge's corner bump out of the ring looked great and good on him for breaking it out given the setting. I imagine no one does it now because it defies physics, but it's a great bump and people would be into it. Nord worked the ref and the crowd and his stuff all looked credible, and Sarge is capable at garnering big sympathy so everything worked. I would have just liked to see a little bit more of it due to the clipping. Sarge took the win with a shoolboy out of nowhere, which was kind of a shame as I wanted to see Nord bump all over the ring for his comeback. Not the match I wanted, but perfectly fine as the match we got.


Orient Express vs. The New Foundation

ER: Strong house show tag, the opener of the next day's PPV, but a match that felt like a main event. Kato was really good at riling up the crowd, and the fans were way more into Owen than I realized in 1992. My favorite was a kid screaming for his attention during their entrance, wanting nothing more than to touch Owen's hand. Orient Express were unsurprisingly big bumpers, both whipping over on Owen's armdrags and taking hard ring bumps for Neidhart's shoulderblocks and lariats. Owen was super active, doing a bunch of double dropkicks and crossbodies, really felt like he was zipping around. Neidhart comes off like a real force with an almost Masa Saito presence, but he is also someone who will grab a chinlock out of absolutely nowhere, which is always so odd to see from a babyface. Tanaka was either really gassed and Neidhart was doing him a favor, or Tanaka was great at putting over the damage of a Neidhart chinlock. Still, the crowd was into all of this and again, it felt like a main event on a show with some pretty impressive star power. This was a great crowd, but obviously a crowd with 80% or more children in attendance is going to be a great crowd. Kids are the greatest wrestling fans possible, and a hot crowd made up of tiny excited screaming kids just hits differently, makes you remember the best parts of pro wrestling. 

MD: Cliff notes version of their Royal Rumble 92 match: no Fuji, shorter all around, and weirdly, less Owen working the crowd with clapping or stomping. Some sequences were exactly the same, including Owen's bridge up, springboard backflip, rana bit, and the finish with the dive and rocket launcher. I liked the hot tag here, which wasn't so much a tag as just a frenetic burst of motion as Owen zoomed across the ring until Neidhart was ready for the slingshot. The crowd was into all of it: Owen's flashy moves, Neidhart's size, energy, and charisma, the Express beating down Owen as Neidhart got increasingly frustrated, and the comeback, but it was missing a bit of a spark I was expecting given the setting and the rest of the show.


ER: And with that, we brilliantly close with a fleeting shot of Ted Dibiase, sitting backstage wolfing down a section of those Subway party subs we saw earlier, wearing the brightest purple Zubaz pants and a gym shirt that looked like a girl's blouse from Urban Outfitters. It was arguably the great wrestling fit I have ever seen. What an incredible coda to the most unique wrestling fancam I have ever seen.

 

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New Footage Friday: Survivor Series Showdown 1992

ER: I have a feeling Phil might sit this one out, but these kind of drops are the kind of thing I adore. Obviously there should have been a Berzerker match on here somewhere (seriously why was he booked so strongly but rarely involved in PPVs or PPV build?), but this is an era that will always score major nostalgia points with me.


Big Boss Man vs. Nailz

MD: This was actually pretty good. Bossman had complete presence by this point. It's not hard to make the argument that he has a better WWF portfolio of matches than WWF Dibiase, but you watch this and wonder if he wasn't a better "ring general" too. They'd been working since July and it showed. Very smooth all around. The long goozle in the middle was a bit much but Bossman's comebacks were good and the finish, while cheap, more or less worked. Honestly, Nailz moved around a lot better than I remembered him.

ER: This is exciting because it's the first time we've ever written about Nailz on Segunda Caida. We wrote about him a lot on our proto-SC blog "Nailz in the Coffin" but not on here. This also feels like the best time - maybe the only time - to mention that a kid I went to school with thought Nailz was also Dauber on the TV show Coach. And this match rules because a ton of it is based around punches to the face. Nailz gets written about as a big lug, but he bumped around perfectly for Bossman, threw heavy punches back, and was right where he needed to be for everything. Bossman really came off like a force here, moving so quick, throwing the best right hands to punch Nailz into position (seriously there were at least two moments where he just threw right hands to move Nailz to where he needed him. Bossman takes a nice bump into the ring steps, sets up a fun slam dunk hot shot on Nailz, misses a big splash, gets a nice nearfall off a spinebuster slam, actually press slams Nailz off him on a kickout like Nailz was some cruiser, but you came for those big right hands and you left satisfied.

Jimmy Garvin interview:

MD: This is mildly historic, one of those things that always stood out when looking through the results, an oddball "did you know?" It was brutal. Garvin could work the crowd, but Gene kept wanting him to work the camera. He could get heat, but his means of doing so was taunting Gene's affinity for females. Add in the fact that he kept trying to get the last word in a way that killed the flow of things and that he refused to go into detail on any of his heel-specific predictions and it's no wonder (though likely a shame) that this didn't become an actual gig. The alternate reality where Garvin is an office guy twenty years later instead of Hayes is strange and confounding.

ER: I think Garvin got into the swing of the interview style pretty quickly. Early on he was definitely cutting Gene off in the wrong spots and not hitting his marks, but a couple minutes in he was picking up on camera changes and improvising his amusing support for every heel. I thought it was funny when he tossed out "Now I'm not a guy who respects many people, but..." and then of course talked up all the heels. I thought Garvin was getting smoother the longer he went, and this felt more successful than any of the sleek goofs they throw on TV today. I assume what did him in was throwing in two separate jokes about Gene hooking up with jailbait.

Bret Hart vs. The Mountie

MD: So, last month, we saw that 30 second Ron Garvin match that was absolute perfection. This isn't quite as good, but it's sure close. As I understand it, Rougeau walked out of the company after this match (in part because of it?). If he did, you'd never know it from watching. He was a consummate pro, completely into the moment and working with what they'd given him. Jimmy Hart's out with him and he does a perfect rendition of his chorus. Then, when Bret comes out, he points at him as the match is starting and says "This is going to be your shortest match in the history of the WWF because I'm the Mountie...", tries for a cheapshot a moment later, gets blocked and eats an immediate Bret German with a bridge for the three. After the match he complains about the bell not ringing yet. Perfect farewell. What a pro. This was absolutely nothing but it was probably the most special thing the fans saw that night.

ER: Big fan of every second of this. I'm also curious about the reasons behind Jacques walking out, since he was back the next year anyway with Pierre. How many guys walked out of WWF and then just came back 6 months later with a push? But we get a great Mountie sing-a-long, Rougeau hitting all the notes and really hamming up his greatest of all time theme song, tries to cheapshot Hart and gets immediately caught, eats a perfect German suplex for the pin, all of it so good. Rougeau is a guy I would have loved to see in an extended John Tatum role.

Virgil vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

MD: This was Bam Bam's first match back and he got a nice enough welcome. It was what I was looking forward to the most from the listings, and it came off as a little disappointing accordingly. It wasn't due to Virgil, who was doing next to nothing at this point, one year removed from his big Million Dollar Belt push, and primarily just killing jobbers on Superstars and Challenge. Go back and watch some of those from this era. That meant I wasn't surprised at all when he kept laying shots into Bam Bam during the arm control that was the brunt of the match. Unfortunately, the second Bam Bam took over, there was a weird ref touch and an immediate DQ, because if this thing was an actual match, it could have been pretty good. I did like Bam Bam on the way out complaining that "it was in the heat of the moment" in his over the top Jersey accent.

ER: This really was shaping up to being a cool match before the DQ which nobody could have even seen happen. Most people probably thought it was the quickest count out ever, just a confusing and messy way to end a match. Up and until the sudden and disappointing finish we had the start of something special. Virgil was really relentless and had to of bruised up Bam Bam's shoulder the way he was striking it. Virgil would wrap Bigelow's arm around the ropes, swing hard at it, get pinballed away, and come back gunning for that arm. The shots were tough and both guys were working kind of off rhythm so you saw them swinging at the same time, not really a style in WWF at the time. Virgil took a huge flapjack and Bigelow threw a dropkick right into his gut (intentionally, it wasn't just Bigelow not getting up for it), but that DQ was a bummer.

Razor Ramon vs. Randy Savage

MD: This is probably the best match I've seen between the two and the sort of thing that could have made a WWF 1992 permanent tape back in the day. The brunt of this was Ramon working over the leg, after earning it, with Macho selling huge, even in his comebacks, and Ramon utilizing some great, targeted cutoffs. The finish was novel as Ramon rolls out to avoid the elbow only for Savage, bad leg and all, to leap off the top rope after him on the floor. We miss that due to the stationary nature of the camera, but it made for a believable finish where Ramon could beat the count but Savage couldn't. The post-match assault was maybe unnecessary but they were putting heat on Ramon before Survivor Series.

ER: I really dug this too, and am only annoyed that our camera operator was asleep at the wheel, making us miss Savage's (presumed) axe handle to the floor and their earlier floor brawling. He moved the camera around the catch all of the Bossman/Nailz floor fighting, but was dozing for much of this. This was a really cool version of the "Savage gets no offense until the last move" formula Savage match, as it actually has substance to lead to Savage's one move. That's usually just about my least favorite formula out of the established big star formulas, as Savage would take a 5 minute beating and then basically get a bodyslam and big elbow to win. Here Ramon punches him around the ring and starts working that leg, and let me tell you that Razor had one of the absolute BEST, SMOOTHEST, and downright vicious leg attacks: He hits a drop toehold and all in one motion rolls through it, locks calves with Savage, and snaps it off. I don't know if I've ever seen that sequence pulled off smoother, even by someone like Eddie. Savage really sells that legwork, limping around like a lady with a broken high heel, Razor sweeping his leg in the ring, Savage chasing him on one leg around the ring, all of it great. I wish the camera had panned back a couple of times, but other than that this was house show style gold.

Bret Hart vs. Papa Shango

MD: This was during that first month of Bret's run where they put him over a bunch of guys (Kamala, Virgil, etc.). This was not the Charles Wright you remember. He started the match with a leap over the top rope to the apron and a sneak attack on Hart as he was giving the glasses away and he didn't look back. Yeah, there was the shoulder nerve hold, but he was eating back body drops and the big transition spot was him missing an elbow drop off the top. I don't ever remember seeing him so mobile. Bret came off like a champ (though maybe an IC champ?), constantly fighting back and ultimately taking it clean with a submission. I get why they'd think that someone as outlandish and monstrous as Shango submitting would be a big deal to get Bret over, but it just felt weird and out of place. Unbelievable. He just got his hat back on and did his funny walk to the back afterwards as Bret celebrated.

ER: This was no different than any Bret Hart Coliseum Video matches from this era, which means it was a match that was totally up my alley. I really loved that Kamala match that Matt mentioned, and this one is probably even better. Shango leaps off the apron at Bret to start, boxing his ears while Bret was just trying to give his glasses to a(nother) kid, and I certainly can't recall a Shango match where he leapt off the apron at someone to start a match. And we get a few smart exchanges near the ropes, really well laid out stuff: I loved Hart hitting a big running crossbody for a pin, Shango presses Bret through the ropes to the floor on the kickout, but Hart rolls right back in to hit an atomic drop, giving Shango the perfect amount of time to to a full 360 while selling his balls while Bret is sprinting off the opposite ropes to clothesline Shango to the floor. That's a great sequence and Hart barreling into Shango with that clothesline felt like a huge moment. I dug how they integrated Hart running chest first into the buckles, Hart holding his chest throughout the rest of the match, and Shango doing simple things like throwing stomps right to the chest and dropping elbows. Another layer that made that so smart is it focused Shango's attack on Hart's chest, which lead him to go for the risk of a 2nd rope elbow that he missed, leading to Hart's big comeback. That simple kind of linear chapter 1 to 2 to 3 stuff seems like it should be easy, but it must not be because guys get lost within whatever story they're trying to tell all the time. But here's Hart setting up the chest injury, here's Shango taking the opportunity and focusing wholly on the chest, and here's that chest injury somehow working to Bret's advantage. I dug how they integrated all the turnbuckles into the action, playing to every side of the arena: Bret ran chest first into the upper left, Shango ran him into the lower left, Shango missed his big elbow off the lower right, Bret came off the upper right; it's a cool performance technic and it's a professional thing that Bret doesn't get enough credit for. Bret's attack was nice, and the backdrop was cool in that he just ducked his shoulder right into Shango's waist, sending him more over as a purposeful hockey trip than a showboat high backdrop.

And, I'm glad Matt also noticed the absolutely wonderful post match visual of Papa Shango just...gathering himself. Like a vaudeville team packing up their trunk, we get the gift of seeing Papa Shango collect his garments, in a too real agony of defeat moment. "Big chunky necklace goes on first, gotta put that on before my hat, make sure to grab my voodoo stick, get my strand of skulls..." It's one of the hazards of coming out with seven different accessories and seemingly no ring boy to run all your shit to the back. So here's a vanquished voodoo priest carrying his gimmick away, stopping once to point and shake his fist at Bret, then just walking away. It was a tremendous humanizing look at performers, your favorite guitarist putting his pedals away after the lights have come up.

Nailz vs. Ultimate Warrior

MD: This was disappointing in how short it was. I was expecting something all time bad and we got a blip. Nailz goozled. Warrior spasmed. The transition was a few kicks out of the corner and Warrior hit his clotheslines and the shoulder/splash. You get the feeling that they could have had something memorably terrible and that they couldn't have anything that was at all good, but this wasn't the former; it was only barely the latter. I do foresee a time in a year or two when WWF has exhausted a lot of the Georgia/AWA footage and most of what they have left for Gems are these taping dark matches. It's nice to have one of these now and again but I wouldn't want it every week.

ER: Yeah this was basically the Warrior/HHH Mania match, except there we at least got a press slam spot. This surely gave the fans at the taping something they wanted to see, which was Warrior running out to his music, shaking things, and eventually doing rope running into a couple of moves. I was excited to see what they could do in a 5 minute match - even moreso after seeing what Bossman did with 5 minutes of Nailz not one hour earlier - but this was a quick crowd pleasing Warrior match. Oh well.

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On Brand Segunda Caida: 90s Terry Funk

Branding Iron Match: Terry Funk vs. Virgil NWC 2/11/95

ER: Funk had a really fun formula for these 90s indy matches, and it's a formula that really gives the crowd their money's worth. He really makes sure he does a ton of stuff on all sides of the ring and even into the crowd, really giving so many of the fans an up close shot of a legend acting like a lunatic. Funk comes out with his large open flame branding iron and is literally waving it inches from peoples' faces, jamming it at the ring announcer, chasing ref Jesse Hernandez around ringside with it, almost lighting his own hair on fire rolling into the ring with it, constantly looking like a man going through with a completely terrible idea. And then he stooges around the whole damn building for Virgil. 

The match opens with Funk taking a punch from Virgil and falling off the apron through the timekeeper's table. The match literally starts with a table spot, and we brawl through the crowd from there. Chairs get thrown (and they're those solid as hell hotel conference event chairs), Funk takes spills over the ropes, gets hung up in the ropes, elbows the promoter in the head, literally hits a fan that gets too close (and if it was a plant it was extremely well done as Funk got him and then security from all over the building swarmed in and they never went back to it), throws garbage cans all over the place after emptying them, gets busted open (with the announcer regularly noting that Funk was covered in blood and ketchup and mustard), hits a big piledriver on the floor, staggers straight off the apron, eats two nasty DDTs from Virgil, just total chaos. 

The finish is overdone, but played well by Funk. He gets locked in the million dollar dream and headbutts the ref to get out of it, then wallops Virgil with the branding iron. Promising the loser getting BRANDED is an absolutely ridiculous stipulation, as who is going to actually get branded!? But Funk brands Jesse Hernandez who sells it as well as you can sell getting your flesh pretend burnt. This was not a great Virgil performance (and nowhere near as good as his genuinely great WCW heel run) but obviously Funk was going to show up. We even get a fun JYD appearance at the end (NWC was the home of the very last JYD matches) and he blasts Funk right in the chest with a hard lariat.

Terry Funk vs. Mark Henry WWF Raw 6/1/98

ER: This match is so cool, and one of the first genuinely good matches of Mark Henry's career. Sometime around March '98 things clearly began to click for Henry. His Raw match against Owen was legitimately his best performance to that point in his career, but he was also a standout in his six man tag at Unforgiven, and looked like a monster in a Shotgun squash against Jeff Hardy.  

This is Terry Funk crafting a tight 5 minute match around a still limited opponent, with Henry shining right at the moments he needed to. Lawler was obviously the expert at these matches (there's a reason so many people were sharing his King Kong Bundy matches after Bundy passed) but he's 53 year old Funk taking it to a massive Olympian. There are moments where you can see Funk guiding Henry through things, but they happen early and by the time this match gets going Henry looks like a natural. Funk dishes out chops and a neckbreaker, then more chops and another neckbreaker...except he instead heel kicks Henry in the balls while standing with the neckbreaker. Ridiculous. 

This gets really crazy when they go to the floor, as Funk tries a Vader bomb from the middle rope to the floor (!), but gets caught by Henry and slammed into the ringpost. Very unexpected. Henry takes an awesome bump tumbling into the ring steps head first, and Funk does arguably the craziest thing he did during this WWF run when he hits an Asai moonsault on Henry, crashing with almost ALL of his weight directly into the guardrail. I mean holy shit. His hip and leg just smashed into the railing, and Henry actually sold the impact perfectly, knowing to sell it as a graze and not as a KO. Lawler's, "He's 53! How many 106 year olds do you know?!" response to JR's "middle aged and crazy" quip is genuinely funny, but seriously this spot was pure insanity. Henry had to have zero experience catching a moonsault, so this was the natural result of that, but I also think the spot worked better because Funk crashed and burned so hard.. Truly nuts. Back in the ring we get a hard shoulderblock with both slamming into each other, Funk going flying, but Henry merely staggering. The smack on that collision was LOUD, and I dug Henry's elbowdrop, his legdrop that showed no light and perfect form, and his two standing splashes. It was super impressive seeing how fast Henry could scramble to his feet, serious quickness, and I really loved how these two matched up. At this point Funk wasn't really being put in a position to carry young talent in a match, and it was awesome to see that he could still craft a cool match around a talented but green opponent who had major unique abilities.

 

Terry Funk/Bradshaw vs. Too Much WWF Shotgun 7/14/98

ER: You knew this was going to be a mauling, and it was a fun one. Bradshaw honestly may have been at his best in '98/'99, as his work may have gotten somewhat smarter a few years later, but he lost a lot of that intensity and energy. He was super imposing and moved really quick, so he could have fast exchanges with smaller guys like Scott Taylor, all while it was obvious that the quick exchange was going to end with Taylor getting flattened. This was a lot of Too Much stooging, which, of course that's what it was going to be dummy, and it was great seeing those two stooge while getting occasionally punched. I think the most offense they got was a couple of tandem dropkicks on Bradshaw, and an eyerake to set those up, but there was so much movement that it never felt like an outright squash, even though 95% of this was dominated by Funk & Bradshaw. Brian Christopher takes three big bumps to the floor, Scott gets to throw a couple nice punches at Funk's jaw, Funk locks Taylor in a rolling abdominal stretch that sees Christopher running after them in circles not knowing how to stop it, all great stuff. I really liked Funk hitting a southpaw lariat to send Christopher over the top, and Bradshaw during this era really carried himself like a guy who I desperately would have sought out in All Japan and later NOAH. I like Bobby Duncum Jr., but damn Bradshaw would have been so much cooler in late 90s All Japan than Duncum. The clothesline from hell was a clothesline that should finish a match, and both of these teams ruled.

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23 Things Berzerker Should Never Apologize For

58. Berzerker vs. Mr. Perfect - Superstars 12/14/92

In which Berzerker outbumps the guy whose most widely known skill is "athletic bumping". And this is really good, even with a long Ric Flair interruption in the middle of it. We start out with some classic Berzerker criss-cross rope running, ending when Perfect hits a gorgeous and stiff dropkick that sends Berzerker flying backwards at dangerous speeds over the top to the floor. Berzerker rolls back in and throws some elbows, rope runs some more, and ends up hitting a nice high kick on Perfect. Both guys try and outbump the other, with Perfect missing a fast charge in the corner, Berzerker taking a backdrop to the floor, Perfect getting dropkicked off the apron, all awesome stuff. Flair comes out to distract Perfect for awhile (the Rumble was in just a couple weeks and we were setting up some stuff) but Berzerker and Perfect were really great at continuing to scrap while Perfect also gets separated from Flair by the refs. There's chaos between Flair and Perfect, and Berzerker is flying all around it, working spots into the match while Flair and Perfect are arguing, running into a back elbow during the melee. After Flair is gone Berzerker gets a nice near fall off the world's strongest slam, but then makes the mistake of ducking for a backdrop and getting Perfect Plex'd. After the match, for good measure, Berzerker takes another giant bump to the floor off a Perfect lariat. This whole thing was awesome, and even played in the Flair interruption really nicely.

59. Berzerker vs. Virgil - WWF UK Fan Favorites 12/15/92

Very fun match, and I should reveal that I've also secretly been loving Virgil during this project, seeing a few of his matches while watching shows for their Berzerker matches. I already knew I liked WCW era Vincent/Curly Bill WAY more than anybody else (writing numerous glowing reviews of him and defending him on the internet even!), but for some reason it never crossed my mind that I would also like WWF Virgil more than anybody else...but I think I might. He's looked really good in some of this era stuff...Would a Complete & Accurate Virgil just be WAY too much of a stretch? Is the Berzerker C&A just perfectly on the button nose of our blog, to the point where it's both acknowledged as ludicrous, while also being beloved by our dear readers? But a Virgil C&A would just be "Aren't there some other unwritten parts of the wrestling universe you could be writing about isntead? Who the fuck are you people?" But I kind of want to do it...Thoughts?

Anyway, the match is fun. Both men are treated equal, so they both take it to the other. Virgil hit a stiff clothesline, Berzerker hits a stiff clothesline. Virgil had a clothesline-heavy moveset, which is pretty cool I think. Berzerker takes a big bump to the floor for him, and they also work a super fun sunset flip spot, with Berzerker desperately holding the ropes, and Berzerker breaks out his first ever camel clutch. Virgil had a good showing here, and after awhile Berzerker got sick of that good showing, and went for his sword. Virgil won by DQ. Once the referee saw a man swinging a sword in the ring, he was like FUCK IT. I don't care if no weapon was used, there's a fucking giant man swinging a sword and that has to be illegal as fuck just on principle. Ring the bell. Ring the goddamn bell. The second I see a sword we're done. We're done.

60. Berzerker vs. Bobby Perez - 1/4/93

I had no money riding on Bobby Perez, and for that, my pocketbook thanks me. Bobby clearly did not do the extensive tape room viewing, all of the advanced scouting, that I am doing. But I appreciate Perez's gumption in trying to sneak up on Berzerker while Berzerker was taking off his vest. OH SHIT, IMPORTANT: Berzerker has a giant white fur vest now. I forgot to make note of the vest when he first started wearing it, but I believe I first saw it during that SWS trios match. It's a big, majestic white fur vest. His now-long curls and impressive beard mingle with the wooly vest fabric. And while he is removing this vest, Perez wanted to start the match. And, so, Berzerker wheeled around and pump kicked Perez right in the chest. Those steps Perez took toward Berzerker's back were the last time Perez had the advantage this match. The kick to the chest was one of Berzerker's very best, ever. Perez had no chance. He eats a flying shoulderblock, Berzerker sinks the big kneedrop, big legdrop, wins with the falling slam, pinning Perez by simply kneeling on his chest. Today, Bobby Perez works at his brother-in-law's carpet installation company, probably.

61. Berzerker vs. Bob Backlund - WWF 1/8/93

Thank you, Philadelphian with a camcorder. The idea of lugging my family's circa 1993 camcorder to a pro wrestling show sounds like an awful chore. But somebody did that, and didn't bother to stop taping during an extended bearhug segment. This cameraperson would have been a fool to do so, as bearhug spots are the best. But it's great that this match got taped in the first place. Battery life on camcorders was LOW in 1993, and I'm positive this person brought a camera to tape Flair vs. Hart and Michaels vs. Jannetty. The Flair match is listed as a 27 minute match, and the Michaels match got 13+. But this kind soul used his battery to record a Berzerker match, against an opponent who he never faced on an actual officially recorded show. I would love if someone was taping this match, and then Jannetty/Michaels right after...and then ran out of battery during the Flair/Hart match. For two decades after, tape traders would be shitting all over this person for botching the recording on Flair/Hart - two guys who think their matches against each other are awful but in reality always matched up really well. "So we don't have a Bret/Flair match, but some dude taped 10 minutes of freaking Berzerker humping Bob Backlund??!" It would be mocked on tape lists. And I love it. I love that someone out there thought to experience the utter pain in the ass that was to secretly record a live wrestling match in 1993, and specifically chose this match. Who is this person? Would I know them, if I saw them on the street? Would we understand? Would our eyes meet, and would our hearts tangle with alliteration: Berzerker. Backlund. Big Boots. Bodyslams. Bearhugs. Besties. BAE. What are these feelings? Is this real?

Match itself was wonderful and worked entirely different from other Berzerker matches. It's a great fusion of Berzerker and Backlund. Berzerklund. What a missed tag team opportunity. We start with Berzerker stalking Backlund, and Backlund sweeping at Berzerker's legs with his hand (similar to what I've seen Kerry Von Erich do), and these sweeps allow Berzerker to do a banana peel bump and then his great splits bump. This was a really smart use of the splits bump, as Backlund was directly sweeping that one leg, and coming this early in the match was unique, but was a nice way of showing that Backlund could get to the Berzerker. And here's where the match can potentially lose some people, but I was hooked: we go into a long knucklelock/test of strength spot. It's long, but I thought it was always engaging. I'm always fascinated by Backlund's strength and I weirdly got into the battle. Unexpectedly, Backlund rolls back through it and spins into a wristlock. I love it. Backlund can't go toe to toe with this guy, but he finds his ways. We also get a long, engaging bearhug. I love bearhugs. Many people don't. This match isn't for those people. But this was an awesome bearhug, and Backlund was great at milking the pain. Great faces from Backlund and I loved the moments he would rear back to punch Berzerker, only to have the hold clamped on tighter. Finish was great in that it played into both men, with Berzerker throwing him into the ropes and lifting Backlund into a bearhug, but Backlund shifting his weight and falling onto Berzerker with a makeshift Thesz press for the (quick) pin. A fun, unique match in the Berzerker canon, filmed by a mystery.

COMPLETE & ACCURATE BERZERKER

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