Found Footage Friday: PIPER~! VALENTINE~! SATANICO~! GARZA~! VILLANO~! ARANDU~! VULCANO~!

Roddy Piper vs. Greg Valentine JCP 8/4/83

MD: Elliott has been putting together great primer threads on twitter with match recommendations and came across this while looking for Piper. It's obviously from JCP TV but it wasn't on any of our radars. Just a great piece of business during a chaotic time centered around the US title. Valentine had it. He had damaged Piper's ear. Piper wanted revenge. Fellow heels Slater and Orton wanted it too. The episode was set up with Piper having the match but not expected to make it to the show, so they were going to give it to Slater instead. Piper did show up however and he came in hot.

They covered a lot in ten minutes here. The early stuff was so chippy and uncooperative. Piper wanted revenge but he also wanted the belt. An early sunset flip seemed so uncooperative that it almost turned into a flipping power bomb (and this is a good thing). Piper lit Valentine up with great punches too and a killer posting and the wild abandon kneelift where his limbs went flying as well. He kept going in too hot though and Valentine was able to take advantage. A lot of that was with escalating elbow drops but Valentine had this great gutbuster that hit almost sideways. Valentine could never hold Piper down for long and fired back and opened Valentine up, only to get tossed out of the ring on a fluke. That let Slater rush in and beat on Valentine to draw a DQ Piper didn't want. When Piper tried to fight him off, Orton came out as well. As best as I can tell, this never let to a tag match with the rivals on one side, which seems like a shame. Just great JCP TV.

PAS: This totally ruled, one of the great match ups in wrestling history and such a mitzvah Elliot uncovered another version of it. It is more of a TV match then the arena and Starcade matches we have, so it was trying to do a different thing, but the interactions were first rate, with Pipers handspeed and activity contrasting with the power of Valentine's strikes. It really feels like a boxer vs. a puncher. There is a an incredible section where Valentine bull rushes Piper into the corner and Piper just uses head movement to avoid and parry all of Valentine's shots and fire back. Whenever Valentine landed you could feel Piper's body shudder and react, Valentine was one of the great power punchers in wrestling history, everything he landed felt organ shifting. Finish was a good bit of business, although less satisfying then a clean finish would be. Really wish we had gotten the Parajas Piper and Valentine vs. Orton and Slater match this seemed to be setting up 

ER: This is just the best. You spend 10 minutes of your night watching this and you fully understand why so many people in the south rejected the wrestling product of the north. This is a bell to bell fight and then somehow ends with a different, just as good fight. I've been watching a lot of 1997 Piper and Valentine (although never against each other in 97, sadly) and I love them. It's crazy how good they both were in their mid 40s. But 1997 is not 1983. Nowhere close. It's like how I enjoy watching current Negro Casas and always will, but then you watch any 80s or 90s Negro Casas and go "oh, yeah. Right. He was this." Just because I love old man wrestling an inordinate amount, I don't know if anything else could ever compare to this era of JCP. No shit people watching JCP wouldn't be enthralled by Tony Garea or Swede Hansen or Sal Bellomo. 

It's all hammering Valentine punches or straight rights to the head. I forget how quick he was, how spry. Seeing a Valentine elbowdrop off the middle rope performed with a luchador's speed and grace feels almost anachronistic, my eyes having seen so much more Old Valentine than Young Stud Valentine. How wild is it that Piper's rabbit punches hit just as hard as Valentine's famously heavy fists. Look at that camera shot from the floor when Piper is punching to comeback, Valentine's head mostly obscured by the camera being aimed up at the lights of Carolina Civic Center. It's perfect. Piper's jittery style of selling damage is so electric when he's in with a real fighter like Valentine. They're perfect for each other. The way he stutters and moves his head when he starts fighting back and the way Valentine glances his blows while walking into Piper's fire. Piper's airplane spin was a real impressive surprise, and I love how it quickly turned on him when Valentine held the ropes and forced a momentum shift. Slater and Orton run in and act just as violently as Piper and Valentine and at this point I expect Bugsy McGraw matches to also look super violent. Orton wrecks these men with cowboy boot stomps and Dick Slater is like pissed off Tenryu. It's all so beautiful. 

Arandu/Vulcano vs. Villano III/Panterita del Ring

MD: This was something. We come in with Arandu and Vulcano with the advantage. Vulcano was mostly matched up with Villano and they were working the mask. Just a big beatdown. Villano was able to sidestep and take over but before they could press the advantage, Vulcano lost his head and pulled the loosened mask off to draw the primera DQ. Immediately thereafter, after Villano had put his mask back on, Vulcano charged back in and this time both took it off and ripped it up. Villano rolled to the floor and some kid ran up and immediately put his shirt over Villano's head so that he could be helped to the back. Just a super wholesome moment that you'd think you'd see more in lucha but that I haven't come across much if at all. 

From there, the rudos pressed the numbers game, hanging Panterita up and laying it in until Villano could come in with another mask to break things up and get revenge. Get this, though, he was punching them with the white shirt around his hand! Super iconic moment. Apparently he either fouls or Vulcano feigns a foul as they have Arandu hung up (for revenge!) so the rudos get the segunda. In between falls Villano ups Vulcano up in the stands and things settle back in for a loose and chaotic tercera of them going back and forth until Villano crashes into the ref on purpose and then pretends Vulcano had fouled him. Such beautiful bullshit in this one. The best.

ER: 2/3 of this match is somebody being pinned in the corner or held in the tree of woe while being punched and kicked and yelled at. I'm sure some would read that sentence as a criticism but I'm also sure that none of those people are reading that sentence here. Arandu is a south Texas Mocho Cota, with less shtick but somehow better hair. Vulcano does an incredible thing where he's so focused on keeping V3 in a  modified abdominal stretch that he just ignores Panterita Del Ring's strikes as he's trying to break the hold. Vulcano is laser focused on Villano and Panterita is just going to have to throw better elbows if they are to be acknowledged. 

I was enjoying this and would have honestly enjoyed just a light punching and choking and fake ball shots kind of match...but nobody could have seen one of the greatest REAL moments in pro wrestling history happening. Who could have been prepared? Now I'm sure this has happened before, on camera, and I'm sure the matches that it happened in are all common knowledge, and I'm sure I have written about this kind of thing happening before but my memory is so bad that the only thing I remember about wrestling anymore is that the date 6/3/94 is significant for some reason. Old language. The moment happens when Vulcano rips and tugs Villano's mask off and Villano rolls to the floor covering his face. As he hits the floor, a sweet chubby kid is seen literally giving Villano III the shirt off his back so that he could protect his identity! A reverse Mean Joe Greene! What a sweet boy, who sprang immediately into action the moment he saw a hero unmasked. Villano returning, masked, from the back with the white t-shirt still in hand, wrapping his fist in it and throwing blows? Incredible. No American child would have given their wrestling hero the shirt off their back. The closest anyone in the states came to this was when some 10 year old in Revere handed a frying pan to John Kronus.  

Satanico vs. Hector Garza CMLL 1/6/95

MD: We had 9 minutes of this title match previously. This gives us the entire 20 and you can really get a sense of the narrative at play. One thing that makes Satanico stand out even more is that he could implement narratives that would be more conventional elsewhere, even in places like title matches where you usually get things along different lines. Here, in the primera, he controlled Garza on the mat, Garza was able to get back into it once things got moving, and then Satanico, realizing that, hit a cheapshot and started to lay things in. Garza was able to use his speed to turn it back around, dodge a shot in the corner, and lock in the torture rack. Just a nice and neat story executed well and engaging to the crowd.

The segunda is where things turned a bit. Satanico came out with a handshake attempt but Garza would have none of it, taking him down and starting on the leg. Satanico spent the entirety of the segunda as Honky Tonk Man, basically, already down a fall but playing the vulnerable champion. This lasted a few minutes until Satanico was able to shrug Garza out of the ring by countering a camel clutch. He pressed that advantage with lift up/drop downs until he could put on Satan's knot.

For the tercera, it started as back and forth nearfalls, before Satanico got a mini beatdown in until Garza was able to toss him out and hit a dive. Finish was very clever as Garza locked in a back bridge. Satanico ensured that he himself was pinned, a sacrifice, to also ensure that Garza's arms were trapped down. Just an absolute confident leap of faith in his own ability to ensure mutual destruction knowing that in the event of a draw, he would keep the title. I can't think of almost any other time in wrestling I saw a heel pull off that trick to keep his title. Very clever stuff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ALL TIME MOTY LIST Head to Head 1988: Hansen/Gordy v. Tenryu/Kawada V. Brazos v. Destructores

Los Brazos (Brazo De Oro/Brazo De Plata/El Brazo) vs. Los Destructores (Emilio Charles Jr./Vulcano/Tony Arce) EMLL 1988?

PAS: God bless youtube as this tasty slice of lucha libre violence just shows up one day. I didn't even know Emilio Charles Jr. was in Los Destructores and here he is trying to open up El Brazo's head like a difficult coconut. Destructores lose the first fall by DQ by removing Oro's mask, and as he goes to the back, they take a 3 on 2 advantage on the Brazo's and really beat them badly. Brazo is leaking like Reince Preibus, and they tie Plata in the corner and work his ample belly like a heavy bag. Emilio Charles is so great to watch here, the other Destructores are great, but he is on another level, just an amazing explosive brawler. Loved Porky in this too, he may be one of my favorite high flyers ever, he is such a hippo that to watch him fly around is so incongruous, and he knows how to land everything with such force. My favorite kind of holy grail, a match I had no idea existed, which shows up like a surprise present.

ER: Unseen anything popping up is always exciting, feels like something that can just keep happening forever and ever. And when it's a young mid 20s Porky I will get a little extra exciting. Destructores are all really good and them taking apart Brazos was a treat. Arce was great at crowd riling, and Charles was a vicious beast, those punches to the side of Brazo's dome looked line crossing. But I came for the chubs and I rooted for the chubs. Porky at 25 is pure joy. His leaps from the apron are insane. He gets no kind of running start, just does a huge standing broad jumps and gets frankly absurd distance for a butterball. It's fun seeing younger variations on older, fatter Porky spots, like how he just plops immediately on a sunset flip attempt, and while you're laughing he then breaks out a handspring kip up like the fattest Dynamite Kid and you're in love. His big splash off the top early in the match is an all time big splash, and after 20 years of seeing him hold teammates' hands while climbing to the top it's downright shocking to see him fly 60% of the way across the ring and just crush a man. Great find, god bless unseen lucha.

Hansen/Gordy v. Tenryu/Kawada review

Verdict:

PAS: Loved the trios match, so happy it showed up and it was a great showcase for excellent wrestlers in their prime. I thought it was a slight step below an all time great match though, needed a more intense finish run to really put it over the top. AJ tag is an all time great and is going to need a classic to beat it.

ER: I really liked this, but I don't think this was very close to the AJ tag. I thought portions were kind of aimless, and admittedly the poor VQ made it a little difficult to see any emotion on display. It's admittedly cheap to complain about VQ when we otherwise wouldn't have seen the match, but emotion is pretty paramount in lucha for me. What we got was wonderful, but I don't think there were any points of this match where I had it over the AJ tag.

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MLJ: Misterioso vs Huichol vs Vulcano [Mask vs Hair vs Hair]

1993-10-01 @ Gimnasio Olímpico Juan de la Barrera, Ciudad de México, Distrito Federal
Misterioso vs Vulcano vs Huichol

This is in between the last match I watched and the start of the Misterioso/Volador break up so I figured what the heck? Who doesn't like a hair/mask match? I've got a time crunch upcoming so the plan is to run some Blue Panther lightning matches in between more Volador/Misterioso for the next few weeks. We'll see how that goes.

I don't have a great sense of who Huichol is. I read in an old WON that he'd won a huge number of hair matches in a row at this point. For someone who seemingly had been around forever, there's not a ton online about him, not even on luchawiki. Apparently he became Loco Zandokan II at some point. At this point he had sort of a wild look to him, sort of like Terrible or Charles, Jr. when their hair was long, though lankier. Vulcano was one of Los Destructores.

And this, though clipped, was a lot of fun. It's a triangle apuestas match from this era, so the rules are simple elimination. They start with three luchadores. The first one to get pinned is eliminated, leaving two. Then the second one to get pinned is eliminated as well. The winner is safe. The two losers then wrestle each other and the ultimate loser loses his hair or mask.

Here there were two rudos and a tecnico and though this part of the match was pretty well clipped, it went about as you'd expect. Huichol and Vulcano teamed up and just crushed Misterioso together. There were brief flashes of a comeback, but they were very brief. Mainly, it was a lot of tandem offense and posturing. Some of it was fun, like this assisted clothesline:

but most was business as usual. They took care of him in about three minutes and then celebrated. Maybe it's because they don't run them too much but I love the rudo doublecrossing in cage matches. It was evident here too. Vulcano celebrated on the top rope as the ref was getting Misterioso's body out of the ring. Huichol took advantage of the distraction, fouled him from behind, and scored the quick win, saving his hair from even being on the line. Beautiful Rudo Mentality:

That left Misterioso and Vulcano. Both guys had taken some damage but Misterioso had taken more and he started this portion of the match in trouble. It was pretty strange, to be honest. Volcano was nailing him with sentons after almost every move at first. Then Vulcano pulled off Misterioso's mask, but didn't get DQ'd. Instead Misterioso ran to the back. Vulcano spent this period arguing with the ref and the crowd and was fully distracted, allowing for Misterioso, wearing a new mask, to take over. That led to a bunch of heel ref spots and then inexplicably, with the ref counting a fast count on Vulcano at the end after a huge arcing sunset flip by Misterioso.

The whole thing was fun enough and worth ten minutes or so of your time, clipped or not, but even after looking at a few WONs, I'm not entirely sure what happened there. That's AAA for you, though. I wouldn't mind seeing more Huichol since I didn't get much other than an attitude out of him here (there's not much online though).

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MLJ: Misterioso/Volador 5: Misterioso, Rey Misterio Jr., Volador I b Rocco Valente, Tony Arce, Vulcano

1993-04-30 @ Plaza de Toros Ciudad de México, Ciudad de México, Distrito Federal
Misterioso, Rey Misterio Jr., Volador I b Rocco Valente, Tony Arce, Vulcano

(This is all of TripleMania: Match starts at: 37:45)

So this is Triplemania I, or at least part of it. I've tended to avoid this stuff because it's well-trodden. I'm not saying that people new to lucha immediately gravitate towards it now, but there's certainly a history of that. This was an under card match, third of eight, and I think it was very well received at the time.

I don't have a lot to say about Valente, Arce, and Vulcano right now. They were Los Destructores and as best as I can tell, they were very good at what they did. Amongst other things, they were the rudos that Rey cut through early on in AAA. They're also really hard to tell apart in the ring, this being my first time seeing them. When I watch these matches, I often find things that I want to delve deeper into later. They're one.

So, Rey, Volador, and Misterioso apparently teamed enough to be called La Tercia Del Aire. I'm not sure how many matches they had together but they'd been teaming since September (and feuding with Los Destructores for about that long it seems). Rey was a good addition to their act, since he could take a beating but also be a spark that could help light up a comeback. He was still billed as a "super nino" here.

Pairings here were Volador and Arce, Misterioso and Vulcano, and Rey vs Valente. Of the three, I thought Rey's was probably the weakest, just maybe a step off in some of the execution, without the higher level of difficulty I was expecting. It wasn't bad by any means, but I've seen better from him from around this time. I'm not sure if he was nervous or what. My favorite spot in this initial feeling out/quasi-shine was Volador doing that armwrench/backflip thing that sometimes goes along with a rocker-dropper fake out, but flipping backwards into a headscissors/arm drag combo onto two rudos. I'd never seen that before and it was well done. It's amazing how many spots you see in matches from twenty-plus years ago that you don't see at all now.

Rudos eventually had enough, swarmed, and took over. Rey took some nasty shots here, especially face first into the turnbuckles, just lawn darts, and a pressed-up spike super powerbomb. It didn't last long, however, as the tecnicos came back on the wings of this great run up moonsault press (as in Volador ran up the chest of one rudo and moonsaulted another). With spots like that, you can see why people praised this match so much at the time (the time being the much more spot-starved 1990s). This led to a triple tandem tope and a few tecnico-vs-the-world exchanges and a fun finishing stretch of cutoffs and action until the tecnicos rolled through for the win. Enjoyable match that, once again, seems to highlight the feeling of an era. I need to cehck out more of Los Destructores.

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