Found Footage Friday: BIG BUBBA~! ARNOLD~! HAMILTON~! MIGRAS~! FALCON~! HALCON 78~! TAKANO~!

Larry "The Missouri Mauler" Hamilton vs. Don Arnold Hollywood Wrestling 8/31/53

MD: This was 2/3 falls and went over 30. The first fall was clean and mostly hold based. Arnold would put on a hold (armlock, toehold, headscissors), and then after a great deal of struggle, Hamilton would get a counter (hammerlock, bodyscissors) and control with that for a while. Within five or six minutes, they were looking fairly haggard, just for how hard they were working the holds. Arnold was clearly the aggressor here, but Hamilton took it with his great "rodeo" headlock takeover, which has a big windup, enough to be a viable finisher. Second fall had the cracks start to show. Early on Arnold turned a legsplitter into a standing anklelock and the commentary called it a "Hackenschmidt". When he won the fall with an abdominal stretch, called as such, which he got on cleverly by ducking another windup for the headlock takeover, commentary called it a Billy Varga special. As the match went on the fans started to boo Hamilton as he kept going to the ropes to escape. It was subtle. He also grabbed the hair for a smaller headlock takeover and went for a toehold after a rope break too soon. It wasn't much but it was enough to turn the crowd. That meant when Arnold put on a long and fast airplane spin to pick up the win, everyone was pretty happy with the result. A lot to like here in between the formula of the first fall and how hard the holds were worked, the callback counter that won Arnold the second fall, and the subtle but definite heeling from Hamilton as things went on. 

Migra I/Migra II vs. Falcon/Halcon 78 WWA 9/19/87

MD: Los Angeles WWA with two teams that basically look alike. Cheat sheet is that Falcon has some extra flourishes on the sides of his mask. And Migra I is the more massive Migra. The commentators work with the ring announcer and spend the first three minutes of this trying to figure it out while the Migras just hug one another repeatedly to get heat. We only have the first two falls of this (best as I can tell) but they're fun.

Primera was full of fun stuff. Halcon clowned Migra I on the mat. Migra II kept going to the eyes and hanging on to Falcon's mask to keep a headlock on until he got shrugged to the floor and ended up punching the post. They had a pretty elaborate finishing sequence where Halcon and Falcon had to figure out how to avoid getting tossed into one another so they could get distance and lure the Migra's into a trap. Crowd-pleasing stuff. 

Segunda had Migras take over just by separating their opponents and leaning hard on Falcon. This ended up mostly mask ripping and wound work, but we like mask ripping and wound work. It seemed like they were going to end a caida once Halcon finally got past the ref to get in and they took him out too, including with a nice stump puller, but things kept going. At one point, Falcon, bloodied and sprawled on the ground was offered a drink by a kid through the guardrail so that's always nice. Eventually the ref just called it and the tape cuts after twenty minutes with the last fall still to go. Good for what we had though. 

Shunji Takano vs. Big Bubba AJPW 3/27/88

MD: Maybe the most fun four and a half minutes you'll have today. This was a Classics drop we're just catching up on. Takano, by 88, had a lot going for him. Size and fire. He'd grow into it even more in 89 before his career started to take weird turns. Looking at him here and he looked like the future of the company though. Also, oddly enough, Bubba looked like the future of the company too. He looked like a guy who could have toured as much as Doc and Gordy and fit right in. Yeah, he was a different size and shape, but he had such presence and could move. He looked like a million bucks here.

He pressed in right from the start with punches to the face and this great axe handle. Takano turned it around and dropkicked him out. He sold it with huge frustration, going after the guardrail, only to come back in and dominate. Lots of great power offense here, his spinebuster slam, back body drop, clothesline, and more great strikes, a headbutt and this beautiful sweeping chop. Then he got out the belt and started choking Takano with it, jarring, effective stuff. He climbed up to the top with it but that just let Takano come back tossing him off in a big moment. Takano followed up with a body press off the turnbuckles but Bubba turned it around for the Bubba Slam. It felt like a really refreshing WCW Syndicated TV match in a way AJPW very rarely does. Ah, what could have been.

ER: Shunji Nakano is a kind of under-discussed guy. Maybe people just hated Super Ninja, I don't know. His look was Larger Japanese Mike Awesome and he could really take a hit and throw a suplex. This is 4 minutes of Big Bubba dishing out hit after hit after hit and Takano had one suplex that might have been the biggest suplex bump Bubba had taken to that point in his career. Bubba is barely 100 matches into his career, in his 2nd match ever in Japan, a couple months away from WWF, just a baby. Boss Man was my favorite wrestler as a kid because he was shaped exactly like my dad. That same exact belly, dress shirt pulled tight, hugging his stomach because of the tuck. Never fat enough where they had to get larger pants and tuck their stomachs into their pants - that's what we call Ronnie P. Gossett fat - but incredible belly hang over the waistband of their slacks. Some of us have Bald Dads, some of us have Tall Dads, I was lucky enough to have a Fat Dad. 

How quickly did Bubba get this good? When was he Actually Good? He's a marvel here. Find me a single misstep, all match. It's the perfect 4 minutes of material. Every detail, every hit, every miss. Complete package. 15 year pros don't have a fast swing and miss clothesline as good as Bubba's. The speed he takes a dropkick bump over the top to the floor, and the anger he shows after (scaring a few ringside fans) is done with a veteran's confidence. He double axe handles Takano in the back of the head; the man hits a sidewalk slam with one suspender down like the world's largest Jeff Leonard. He tosses Takano so high with a back body drop, and the visual looks nuts because you never see guys Takano's height taking back body drops. Bubba throws his full weight into his falling clothesline, like a big fat guy STO. His enziguiri slashes across the face. The casual removal of his belt before choking Takano to his knees, climbing to the top rope for choking leverage, was like something you'd see a hitman do in an 80s Hong Kong action movie. 

And, while I'm not sure it needs to be said, I will say that the Bubba Slam clears the Black Hole Slam every day of the week. This isn't swing dancing. This stomach goes over the belt. 

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Found Footage Friday: CENA~! REIGNS~! TAMBA~! TINIEBLAS~! MAGNUM HALL~! MALUMBA~!

Tinieblas Sr. vs. Tamba [Mask vs Hair] WWA 9/19/87

MD: LA was a dead territory. Obviously WWF had success there in the 80s, but in the midst of that, these Olympic Auditorium shows were happening and they're very much a missing piece of wrestling history. There's a lot of talk about what was happening in the 90s, but these were just there underneath the surface the whole time. And while I wish we could hear the crowd a little bit better, you can't deny the trash being thrown in at the end here, and this was overall a wild scene.

Tamba is a pudgy babyfaced guy with no shirt and no mask and he was putting his hair up against Tinieblas' hallowed mask. The commentary indicates that maybe he was being nudged into this by his partner, Super Halcon, and there was a build here where they had gotten some cheating tag wins apparently. There was also an indication that the promoter too had been goaded in and that other promoters wouldn't have put up Tinieblas' mask like this. 

Halcon hangs out on the apron at the start of the match. Tinieblas nails him and Tamba gets Tinieblas from behind and we're off to the races. Tamba's stuff is, shall we say, rough around the edges. He had size and he had size and he had size and that was pretty much what he had. His forearms did not look great, but you sort of bought them given that size and Tinieblas made sure to spin and backpedal on each one on the floor. He used a chair as well. Back in the ring he hit maybe the worst top rope splash I've ever seen, just sort of falling down on Tinieblas' legs but that scored in the primera. The segunda had a couple of Tinieblas comebacks where he beat Tamba around the ring, but that size kept coming into play. Here though he missed a second rope splash after laboriously getting up the ropes, and that allowed Tinieblas to slap on La de a Caballo.

The tercera, then, was all over the place. The video cuts in and out a bit but by the end of it, Tinieblas had hit Tamba with a chair and opened him up (though maybe not a gusher). Tamba manages to come back with not just one low blow, but two, and he pulls at the mask and goozles Tinieblas. When the ref tries to get involved, Tamba tosses him off repeatedly, until he climbs on both Tamba and Tinieblas in the ropes and Tinieblas hefts both Tamba and the ref over. That allows Halcon to come in and interfere and Tamba to steal a three fall. The trash came flying, and they were very, very quick to get on the house mic (lowered from the ceiling) and let everyone know that they were reviewing the tape because of the fouls. I thought they were going to maybe restart the match, but no, they just gave it to Tinieblas and probably avoided a riot in the process, and we were left with the image of Tamba and his giant with a wound right in the middle, getting sheered with expert speed. It was more of an experience than a match but you really get a sense of the time and place.

ER: Oh, Tamba, where have you been all my life? Tamba, with his post-peak fat guy body and jack o lantern smile, 38 but moving like a 55 year old luchador, every fall the fall of a formerly great and still unique wrestler. He has among the worst fat guy splashes you've seen, falling in a controlled way on Tinieblas with no jump at all, like Cathy flopping onto her bed after a long Monday at the office. He wins the primera with a top rope splash that was an insult to the name. He landed somewhere near Tinieblas's legs with the form of a man who fell into a swimming pool while trying to fish something out. He looks like he's never climbed the ropes before and yet he's got this unique aura the entire time. He has great heavyweight punches, heavy blows that came from the side, thrown to the face, head, and chest. His punches are great enough that I know 1982 Tamba was an incredible menace. You can see him as a Super Porky who immediately fell off once the athleticism aged out to size. He got great fat guy color and did a tremendous job of almost starting a riot by taking one of the legendary lucha masks in a 100:1 upset. I don't think the lacking or loose execution held this back because the aura was there. It still felt like a big match even if the outcome was so unlikely and the opponent so washed. Underdogs got nothing to lose and it felt like there was more raw emotion in Tamba's toothless face than I expected. This felt like the right match for the occasion and felt like a look inside a scene. 

Scott Hall vs. Atkie Malumba [Cage] WWC 8/4/90 

MD: One great thing about having covered 1990 Puerto Rico so thoroughly is that we can fit this right in. This was after Hall's face turn and after the Aniversario match and they were using gimmicks to keep the feud going. You can see from the finish here that they left more meat on the bone. To me, this was right around the point where everything clicked for Hall. He could have had a serious babyface run in the back half of 1990 somewhere, but I guess he was in Germany as a heel (I saw some of that recently, a Tony St. Clair/Owen Hart handicap match).

This was from an episode a couple of years later so Profe kept joking how there was resemblance to Razor Ramon. I thought it was laid out well though. They went back and forth early, Hall's punches vs Malumba's heft, but it opened up when Malumba was able to toss Hall into the cage a couple of times. From there he leaned on him with a couple of hope spots when he tried to escape the cage through the door and Hall stopped him. There was a long nervehold (maybe too long) but it let Hall power up, the fans behind him, and start firing back. Hall finally got to toss Malumba into the cage (they had protected that), and there was a good nearfall for a cage when he dropkicked Malumba and Malumba almost went out the door from it, a finish we'd seen all too often but that I haven't seen teased like that much. Hall finally got the slam (also protected) to a big pop. He sold it well too stumbling backwards after the fact. And the finish had him go up and over but Malumba make it through the door a second before he landed. Maybe they could have shrunk that nerve hold just a little but overall this was a good piece of business and gave them room to go back for one more. 

ER: I've written a lot about Scott Hall, but almost exclusively 1992-1997 Scott Hall, which is when he became a really great worker. I've written a lot about Kimala II as well. He's probably the worst wrestler who Matt and I frequently write about, and I love him. I love both guys, but it never crossed my mind that they had ever wrestled each other. In another country. I didn't even know Scott Hall worked Puerto Rico or how big the cultural impact of Magnum PI on 1990 Puerto Rico was. I've never seen a Razor Ramon vs. Kamala match but now we have a version of that from an alternate dimension where Scott Hall wrestled like green Lex Luger and worked Gallagher Too in Puerto Rico. 

Scott Hall is an okay Lex Luger, and it's fun to see him sell like 96/97 Lex and use the same kind of punch comebacks. It's weird seeing Hall throwing lesser versions of his punch, before he perfected it, but I like how he sells for Kimala. Kimala's strikes never look great but they look correct for a Kimala. I love his shape and his big smooth back makes me think of him as a Punch-Out!! character. More wrestlers should remind me of a different ethnicity King Hippo. Kimala was a completely different opponent than we ever got to see Hall work, and it's good fun seeing Hall selling his back on lifts and throwing heavyweight dropkicks because he's a hunky babyface and not a greasy foreigner. Kimala's splashes always look good and I think he was able to have a 20 year career because he was a fat guy who worked without kneepads who stayed healthy. His deadweight landings look like they would never hold up over a decade long All Japan run, but these two were just built different. 

John Cena vs. Roman Reigns WWE 12/26/17 

MD: I'm not touching the Cena retirement tour but in watching this, I was stricken by how great a Cena retirement match this would have been, albeit 8 years too early. I don't remember the first thing about 2017 WWE. If I looked things up, I could probably piece it all together. Reigns was the Intercontinental champ apparently. This was at MSG, the big holiday show that kids get tickets for over XMas.

And I really liked it. It was Ace vs. Ace and felt like a passing of the guard moment. It has the room to stretch and breathe that you'd want in a house show. Cena leaned into it right in the beginning, going for a long lock up that let the fans chant at him (Let's Go Cena/Cena Sucks). He pushed Reigns into the corner for a clean break and basked in it. There was such a sense of mastery here, of really knowing the value of a moment.  Reigns came back and controlled on a test of strength and then won on a shoulder block.

The match opened up when Cena went for a punch exchange, a traditional strength for him and Reigns clocked him. From there, it became about Reigns having a soft, punch-based advantage on these exchanges, and both men trying to unlock their moves. Instead of hitting things three times, they made getting through each part of the sequence an effort that needed to be built to. The crowd then went nuts when Cena finally hit his dropping belly to back or the five knuckle shuffle or Reigns finally got the Superman punch. There was one finisher kick out. Cena got the AA first and Reigns kicked out. Just that one and Cena wouldn't get it again, though he would cannily come close, hitting the mat as Reigns beat him again on a punch exchange only to lure him in on the pin and roll into a fireman's carry. This time Reigns escaped and hit the spear for the three, though. Just a very clever, very self-aware, very trusting match. Very little excess and because of that, what did happen mattered all the more and felt iconic. 

ER: 2017 was not my favorite John Cena year. It felt fully post-peak Cena at the time and scanning his television and PPV year now doesn't make me want to rewatch any of it. My favorite Cena match of the year had been a TV match against Jason Jordan, which feels like such a 2017 thing to say while also not sounding like it ever happened. I think I'd believe anything you told me about 2017 because none of it feels real, the timeline fake. It feels forever ago, not 8 years ago. Eight years ago, Jason Jordan was a Rising Star that I liked and wrote about, and Roman Reigns was a guy I thought might have been the best wrestler in the world. I went out of my way to watch and write about as many Roman Reigns/Braun Strowman TV, PPV, and house show matches existed - and there were a lot - and loved them all. In 2026, the idea of watching one Roman Reigns vs. Braun Strowman match would never cross my mind, and if suggested to me it would make me wrinkle up my nose in decline. 2017 feels like an implanted memory I only learn about from my own supposed writings and observations that I find in various notebooks that the RPG slowly reveals to me. 2017 was when you could go to a house show and see Enzo Amore vs. Kalisto but nobody saw it because it wasn't real. 

Roman Reigns was one of the best in the world in 2017 and was the best wrestler in WWE, and now they are a promotion I do not watch in part because I got tired of the new main event talk and walk style popularized by Roman Reigns. Eight years doesn't feel long, but it was a long time ago. This style isn't the main style in the fed that these two were the aces for, so this match - a great version of that style - feels like something much further back in time. It also greatly benefits from its handheld feel, shot on pro cam in the middle of the real crowd noise, like a concert recording from the taper's pit, but a taper who had a four man team and had been traveling to shows for several years. On TV everything is mic'd different, but in the middle of MSG you got to hear how much people hated Cena and wanted to cheer Roman...which made it so much better that we got to hear Cena winning them over the entire match. By the end of this, Roman's offense is being met with silence, like they didn't want to see Cena lose, and every time Cena made a comeback the crowd got louder with their support. 

Cena had one of his typical sloppy execution matches and some stuff looked hokier when played to the back rows of MSG. That big long lean over the apron while waiting for Roman's dropkick, the way his punches look so much worse than Roman's (until they start getting better when MSG is moved to cheer for him!?) are things that Cena is able to overcome stylistically, because the sloppy execution is baked into his style, and because the most important thing is his timing. Knowing when to bump, knowing when to take a beat, knowing which punch to get knocked down by. His timing was on the top of his game this whole match and it's knowing and perfecting that rhythm that had the entire building on his side within 15 minutes. 

It doesn't not matter in the grand scheme of things that his punches look loopy and cartoon-y, because he is so much better at taking Roman's punches and knowing how to bump and sell for each individual punch. I loved an early spot where he missed a turnbuckle charge and turned around into a nice Roman uppercut that sent Cena pirouetting into the mat, and there was this ongoing story where the punch exchanges never felt like they ended where Cena/Roman planned on ending them, but they ended where the punch quality and crowd reaction dictated they would end. This never felt like a match that they laid out and then worked exactly how they laid it out, it felt like something worked with room to grow into whatever the crowd wanted it to be. When Cena's tornado DDT maybe 7 minutes in got a big nearfall reaction, it's like that moment gave people a reason to believe in Cena, thus ROOT for Cena, and the dynamic change was huge. That's when this became something that felt a bit bigger and different than your usual send 'em home happy house show main. 

This was technically for the Intercontinental Title, but that seems laughably quaint. IF someone cared about that title before the match started, the title became an unimportant part of the match midway, if not sooner. This never felt like an IC Title match and by the end it only felt like a main event epic, a crowd worked to perfection, and moments timed for maximum impact. Neither man was able to hit their spots clean. Within a couple years, the WWE main event style was just finisher kickout spam, and this match got by with only one big surprise kickout (Roman kickout out of the AA, and to a lesser extent Cena kicking out of the Superman punch) because they wisely kept being unable to hit their various finishes. Finisher kickout is a lazy kind of surprise, but crafting a big main event build around stopped attempts and alternate means of attaining victory before looping back to one big finisher changed everything. Neither could put the other away because neither could connect with the big one. 

The reaction for Cena ducking a Superman punch, sloppily drop toe holding Roman into the STFU, was huge, a crowd chanting CENA SUCKS minutes before suddenly fighting with him, so much so that the pop when Roman lands his first Superman punch actually sounded more like shock than excitement. It got so Roman's offense was being met with silence. He wasn't being booed, but suddenly people were icing him out like they didn't want to actually see Cena lose. When Cena actually hits the AA (or moments where the 5 knuckle is stopped and then hit again later as more of a sudden surprise) the camera can no longer handle the decibels of the crowd and starts to distort. The finish was fantastic, with Cena leaping off the middle buckle for a legdrop but being hit with a sitout powerbomb for a good nearfall, leaping into a great punch exchange. This was the best punch exchange of the match, the one that felt like a gift to the crowd rather than one planned to go a specific length. It was a Boo/Yay exchange with people now booing Roman and cheering every punch a staggering Cena would throw, like they were the ones actually willing the men on instead of having a lengthy punch exchange foisted upon them. Cena deftly went down like a shot for Roman's best punch of the match, and it felt like it wasn't where Cena was "supposed" to go down, it just felt like he went down for the punch that felt (and looked) right. When Cena rolled through the pin and fought to deadlift Roman to his feet, clean and jerking him to his shoulders, it looked like the most triumphant Cena win and that's what everyone wanted to see. It was also the perfect way to set up Roman's win, Cena burning through all his reserves just to give everyone a look at Vintage Cena, doing it for the fans and forgetting he was in there with the new ace. 

I don't think the match happens like this if it was on TV or PPV, and I don't think it feels this good without the camera capturing the real crowd sound. This was a match that became more powerful because of its status as a house show main event (a house show in their main venue, but a house show nonetheless) and they seem to have completely forgotten that aspect of the show. Picturing this match done with their classically bad scripted commentary and all of the zoomed in reaction shaky cam and ugly LED displays just makes me nauseous. This was the right match for the right time presented in the best way. 

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Found Footage Friday: WWE IN AUSTRALIA~! BABE FACE~! FANTASMA~! SUPER ASTRO~! SCORPIO~! SATANICO~! EMILIO~!

Super Astro/Fantasma vs. Babe Face/Scorpio WWA Olympic Auditorium 09/12/87

MD: This has been sitting in plain sight for a few years but was thankfully was brought to light by the Wrestling Playlists newsletter recently. It hits so many of the marks you'd want with four very talented wrestlers doing their thing in a slightly alien place for slightly alien promotion. Super Astro is this tightly contained ball of energy, a little shorter than his peers, a little stockier than you'd expect, but it's almost like there's a wick counting down on him and he's always ready to explode. It gives his roles and vaults and stylized tricks an extra bit of oomph. They're things that would be impressive regardless but with him it's all somehow supercharged, and Scorpio, bald and wide and spry took it all so well. He shoved Fantasma before the bell and Fantasma bounced back off the ropes and shoved him back, causing him to bump huge. That's just the sort of guy Scorpio was.

I wouldn't say this had a rudo ref so much as the rudo was holding the tecnicos to far higher standards. That meant they withheld tags in a way that you don't usually see in lucha (though the out of the ring rule was definitely in play) and it allowed the rudos to stay in charge in the primera. That built the pressure for the comeback, even through the end of the fall and a nice double takover onto Fantasma and subsequent submission. You can tell the pressure was up beacuse there was an upset Granny at ringside. 

It was interesting because they used the ref taking back/not allowing tags to build heat but the moment of comeback was wholly within the ring on a bit of rudo miscommunication. From there things went even with it looking like the tecnicos might get swept under again only to outquick and outslick the rudos, all building to Astro knocking Scorpio out and landing on him with a senton through the ropes to the floor. Brutal stuff and Scorpio either bladed or got bust open. Either way, he was a bloody mess. That was the equalizer as simultaneously Fantasma was doing a ridiculous submission in Tombstone position on Babe Face (who I have less to say about here but he was perfectly fine in his role).

The tercera was full of the sort of great exchanges you'd expect until Scorpio was able to go behind on Fantasma off the ropes, using his momentum to push him through the ropes and right into a waiting chairshot from Babe Face. From there it was an academic 2-on-1 with them picking up Astro repeatedly after having him beat. That sort of hubris didn't lead to comeuppance though as they finished him off after one of Babe Face's great off-center running sentons and a nasty legdrop from Scorpio. I'm sure this led to some phenomenal return match we don't have, but at least we have this.

ER: You show up for a match like this to see what Super Astro might do, but then you leave getting to see  stocky rudo toughness from Babe Face and Scorpio. Super Astro is must watch in any setting. You're always going to get something worth writing about. Imagine seeing this stocky little guy in LA doing a slingshot senton to the floor in 1987. It's great. But this is a match that makes you want to watch more Babe Face and Scorpio. Scorpio Sr.! I have not seen much Scorpio Sr. He is as ugly as his son in a completely different way, more hideous monster way. He also looks like the perfect wrestler. Wide, round, ugly, bald, cocky. He's got a fat buff guy or buff fat guy body squeezed into a red King Kong Bundy double strap that you wish could be pulled off as well in modern wrestling but everyone is shaped wrong. Babe Face, it turns out, also has a perfect pro wrestling physique. He is stocky and muscular and compact and powerful. He's Bill Dundee with 20 pounds of thick bulk. He is one of three of the smallest most powerful men, wrestling inside of the largest ring in wrestling history. You fill not believe how long it takes Super Astro to run ropes in this ring. It's incredible. 

We all love Super Astro and we love the way he is in a competition with himself to take higher back body drops. But this hits peaks whenever Babe Face or Scorpio are throwing punches and chops and headbutts. Babe Face headbutts Super Astro in the eye socket to force a tag out and I thought we were going to get a bloody mask hole Super Astro match. He is stocky rudo cocktease, pouncing Astro to the floor to interrupt a dive, cameras catching a great close up of Scorpio's mug before he overhand chops Astro out of his boots. Things build throughout to big Babe Face/Fantasma showdowns, until Babe Face fucking BRAINS Fantasma with an open folding chair to the top of the head while Fantasma was draped over the ropes. The announcers say something about Intrepidos Punks, so either they're describing these two stocky men of differing beauty, or they're advertising the late 80s movie of the same name and either way makes this great. Los Intrepidos Punks lay a fucking beating on Astro while Fantasma's corpse is under the ropes, slapping him back and forth, Babe Face hitting full weight sentons, kneeling on his chest and groin while Scorpio holds a legdrop like the most smug sideburn asshole.  

I liked Fantasma's aggressively pistoning 69 bearhug. 

Emilio Charles vs. Satanico [hair vs hair] CMLL 3/20/98? 

MD: Pretty unique hair match here though one that hits a lot of the right notes despite that and despite some goofiness. As best as I can tell, this is rudo vs. rudo though Charles is the clear crowd favorite. Satanico gets an early ambush and starts dismantling Charles like only he can. No one is better in the history of wrestling at orchestrating violence, including his own. The bump Charles takes into the third row, head over heels, is excellent. Charles starts to mount some comebacks (including one really nice Fujiwara armbar reversal out of a grounded abdominal stretch that's lucha loose but symbolically perfect) but the ref (who apparently he hit the week before?) seems to get in his way each time and Satanico finally gets the caida on a backslide with a fast count.

That causes Charles to start complaining to the commission. Rey Mendoza is out there and says that Charles has a stipulation in his contract that he can call for a change in ref so Babe Richard comes out to take over. Meanwhile, Charles is unloading on Satanico, including tossing him into the crowd. Satanico is able to sneak in a foul though and locks in the Satan's Knot. That seems like the end and the end to Charles' hair, but he gets lost in the moment and refuses to let go and the ref awards the caida to Charles. So it's a bit of an odd dynamic with the ref switch and Satanico basically winning the second fall only to have it overturned. It all gets paid off in the tercera with Charles getting a foul in of his own and everything building to another Satan's Knot only for Charles to fight his way out of it and lock in this great Gory Special (where he has to slowly bring his hands together) before dropping down with it into a pin. I wouldn't call this the most primal match or the quickest path between two points but these guys were so good and they made this work so well for what it was.

ER: The ugliest default babyface fighting dirty through getting punched in the forehead and thrown into the third row by the devil. Satan himself throwing short punches aimed to open up an ugly man's forehead and biting him. I love situations where Charles became the tecnico. He is good at working through tecnico stages of a three fall match, peaking the reactions in the tercera and getting bigger reactions with consecutive quebradoras while the crowd loudly hates Satanico for breaking holds with biting at men's thighs. The devil fights dirty when the devil's beautiful head of hair is at stake. Satanico is a great rudo because he also wrestlers through submissions like the tecnico, pulling each limb with celebratory swipes like he's an Olympic runner raising both arms through the finish line. It makes Charles' win, through a biased ref and the persistent devil himself, even more of an ugly man tecnico triumph. I thought the execution on Charles' tercera-winning Gory Special was so good for this specific match. A fought for Gary, Charles' hands clasped, drawing out the inescapable backslide. 

It didn't get as violent as I expected it would, for a match I knew nothing about. When you start with Satanico biting and punching at a cut you expect escalation and that violent escalation never comes. We also don't get the actual haircutting. Satanico knew that he looked like a totally different badass when he had his head shaved and I wanted to see what that looked like at 50.  

Batista/Chris Jericho/Chris Benoit vs. Triple H/Ric Flair/Edge WWE 4/8/05

MD: New Richard Land Handheld from Australia right after Wrestlemania 21. Some of those names should worry you for a 50 minute clip, maybe, but this is house show bullshit and that's the best bullshit there is. Plus it's about ten minutes of entrances and pre-match talking and ten minutes of them breaking down the ring. I thought I was going to be taking one for the team here but I had fun with this. The pre-match yapping was ridiculous with Triple H going on about how terrible Australia was and how in America they had an army that could kick their asses, the Salvation Army. Basically the most definitional Triple H stuff imaginable. Batista's retort was short and sweet (he had just won the title), and the crowd was hot for all of this really.

All of the early exchanges were fun. Benoit and Edge started. Benoit chopped Edge out of the corner. Edge went for a tag. Both Triple H and Flair dropped down to avoid it. Jericho came in and Batista and Benoit cheerlead the crowd in a Y2J chant. Flair came in, had a chop off with Jericho so the fans could chant woo and then walked into the babyface corner to eat a bunch of punches and take the first flop (of many) of the night. Jericho grabbed a sign and paraded around with it. Batista came in. Flair eyepoked him and chopped him. Batista no sold it. Flair begged off. Batista waggled his finger. Flair took his second back body drop. Triple H came in. The crowd went up for the idea of them going at it. Flair wooed at Batista from the corner repeatedly. Batista posed and the crowd went nuts. Triple H won on a shoulder block exchange and posed. They milked a test of strength for a while before doing it. Triple H kicked Batista, drove him down. Batista fought back up and clotheslined Triple H over the top and the crowd loved every second of all of this. Truly entertaining house show BS, what much, much more of wrestling should be and what a lot of the times it isn't in a world where these barely exist anymore.

Again, this had a ton of time and they worked double heat on it. Jericho was drawn into the heel corner and when he came back and made a hot tag, Benoit came in hot for a bit only to miss the diving headbutt. Eventually, Triple H had Benoit down in the corner but got distracted by Batista and leaped right into a foot, wherein he spent an entire minute (not a second less) standing there looking at the lights dazed before flopping. Only on a house show. I'm actually not sure that spot hit as well as it could have but points for committing to the bit certainly. That let Batista make it in finally, let everything break down, and let Edge eat the power bomb (thumbs down beforehand) to end the match. I don't know if I would have seen this same match around the loop but to see it one time was honestly a lot of fun. Just a totally different world that barely exists anymore. And we're talking 2005, not 1985 here.

ER: We've been doing - and Matt's been running entirely - Found Footage Friday for over a decade now. It's probably the most valuable thing we've done because it preserves at least 1-3 different takes on footage that none of us as fans had ever seen before. In many cases, we've written about matches that can get newly added into a Greatest Matches discussion, 40 years later. New narratives, new looks, new opportunities to have views changed. It's an incredible resource, constantly growing. This week alone we have a new apuestas match, new Babe Face...and now a new 30 minute match with SC stalwarts like HHH and Edge and Chris Benoit. 

People love our HHH writing, and this is the match for those people. This is an essential HHH match for HHH fans, because not only did all 30 minutes feel completely laid out by HHH, but all six men wrestle like HHH from different eras of his career. This is a match agented, produced, and then wrestled by six HHHs. Jericho wrestles like Terra Ryzing, Batista wrestles like HHH did when he came back gassed up after the quad tear, Benoit sells like HHH in a way that you know it won't lead anywhere, Flair is slowed down so he wrestles like HHH during that long era of bloated HHH aping Flair spots, Edge wrestles like the worst version of 1998 bad Opponents' Momentum offense HHH, and HHH wrestles like some unholy house show HHH amalgam that includes a long comedy spot that he doesn't know how to make resonate but he 100% would have gotten anyone else fired over.

This was a HHH match in every way, and it was good. There is so much wrestling I've never watched and so much wrestling I never will watch but I love Matt, and Matt got me to watch a 30 minute HHH/HHH/HHH vs. HHH/HHH/HHH in Australia, because HHH - with his meaty nose and heavy brow beadying his eyes - is like Bruno at MSG to Australians.  

Seeing Flair work the brunt of a long house show match was surprisingly fun. HHH could never connect his in-ring comedy to a crowd like this, and we get a literal example of that during what should have been the crowd noise peak. Flair's punches looked fantastic throughout, and even though he enters the match in control he's soon taking a back body drop and it leads to a fantastic Flair spot, where he rolls up in the babyface corner, eats a headbutt from Benoit and a punch from Batista, hops around like he's getting back into the fight, then flops. Flair takes another back body drop when Batista tags in, classically begging off before poking him in the eyes, but none of his chops have any affect and he's soon flopping and back dropping and leaving down the aisle. It's the kind of ass showing that HHH admires about Flair, but could never bring himself to actually look weak enough for the extended periods that make the stooging work, meaning it always came off like Stooging While Still in Control and never worked. After Benoit gets his hand smashed with a chair (nasty business smashing it against a ringpost) and gets cut off, the long heat segment builds to Benoit's hot tag, but the entire tag is iced out by HHH doing a full minute of Working On Material that sounds great on paper but gets no reaction live. 

HHH leaps off the middle buckle into Benoit's up-stretched boot and stands there on his feet, selling and swaying, for exactly one minute. You can picture Larry Sweeney doing this spot and burning the house down, knowing the exact moment to grind an entire match to a halt for one self-aggrandizing spot, and how much HHH would fucking BURY anyone else who did that spot, regardless of how well it got over. To see HHH pull out a 2006 Chikara spot on a house show and get no reaction for it is the wrestling equivalent to a gay bashing Republican getting caught in a rest stop bathroom, all secret unfulfilled urges and embarrassing missteps. It's as clear as day that HHH would brand anyone else who tried this much of a comedy overreach a mark who isn't serious about the business that he's devoted his life to. Six different HHHs in one match, and the real HHH is the one desperate to show his chops as a comedy worker that didn't understand punchlines

Great match. The kind of match you can put on after a Gene Snitsky/Shelton Benjamin title match.

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Found Footage Friday: SANTO~! DANDY~! MONSTERS~! OF~! THE~! MAT~! '87~!

El Hijo del Santo vs. El Dandy Monterrey 6/14/98

MD: The biased ref: the rock that sunk a thousand lucha indy matches. But, at the end of the day, it's a tool, just like anything else, and whenever you give a tool to two absolute masters, two of the all time greats, they can use it to make magic. That was much the case here, as (Cuato?) Guerrero, that self same ref that I've encountered in countless old Monterrey matches in the last year, was completely on Dandy's side. Throughout the first two falls, every time Santo would start to come back, he'd been there to slow him down. In and of itself, that might have been frustrating and dumped all the heat on Guerrero. Instead, Dandy made use of the situation each and every time to slip one foul or another in, infuriating the crowd as he was taking advantage in the dirtiest, cheapest way possible. Therefore, it served it's best possible purpose, to build and build and build the heat until Santo was able to finally come back and get bloody, brutal, satisfying vengeance.

Dandy had started the beatdown in the primera by choking Santo with a shirt, and after the first foul cutoff, locked in La Casita for the pin. During the segunda, he started opening Santo up, especially after the next ref interference and foul, and made like an absolute vampire with his gnawing and tearing. When Santo finally did come back, he was constant motion, keeping well out of the reach of the referee as he darted across the ring to kick Dandy in the skull, including hitting the gnarliest diving tope in the center of the ring en route to a Caballo where he was pulling Dandy's head back by the hair in grisly fashion. The tercera started with him trying to split Dandy's head completely open in a row of chairs and never really let down. The commentators noted that there was strong rudo energy within Santo here, and maybe he went overboard, letting Dandy fire back in the crowd. They went into a more conventional tercera finishing sequence from there with big dramatic pin attempts as they continued to bleed all over the place. 

Just when it looked like Santo was about to lock in the Caballo once again, Bestia Salvaje stormed the ring and everything broke down. You knew that Santo was about to win, however, and even before that, they had gone through all the proper stages of the ritual: the beatdown, the hope spots, the cutoffs, the comeback, and then the back and forth bloody battle. This was a match that came out of nowhere, that we never thought we might have, one that defied and overcame the inherent failings of the local trappings to turn a convention that usually feels like bullshit into something absolutely serene. Two masters at work, painting a vivid landscape in blood and retribution. 

PAS: Incredible discovery, Dandy stops off in Monterey for a month in between jobbing to Chris Jericho in less then a minute on Nitro and beating Lash LaRoux on WCW Pro, to carve up El Hijo Del Santo and bleed buckets all over the ring. Intense, fevered brawl with rows of chairs being tossed willy nilly and Santo responding to the heel ref by just getting more and more vicious, tearing at Dandy's skull, smashing his head into wooden chairs and ripping at his hair. These guys had a legendary hair match a year earlier, and while this doesn't have the epic scope of the match, they make up for it with nastiness and grime. Finish was a bit deflating, but that is really the only thing that keeps it from legendary status. 

JR: El Dandy is such a wonderful heel. He feels like a fictional character almost, as though he has been written to be perfectly slimy. He is such an obvious scumbag, so violent and so cruel. Yet he still functions with these flourishes and affectations while on offense, spinning on his strikes and preening between stomps. He’s like a mafia hitman who uses big words he learns from a word a day calendar in between his routine of torture and murder.

Santo is perfect here, perhaps the most patient wrestler of all time. There are so many places in this match where his spots would make sense and would get the crowd to react, but he holds them until the very last possible moment. He makes people wait. He builds anticipation better than any wrestler except for maybe Hogan. Truthfully, this performance is almost Hogan-esque, is it not? He sells wonderfully. He works with the referee in a way that would feel almost heelish if he did not have such a beautiful connection with the crowd. He hits his dive late and Colliseo erupts.

This isn’t the best Santo match. It’s not the best footage we have of Dandy as a heel. But if you wanted to show someone the essence of why both are so effective, you could do worse than using this as a guidepost.

 

 

Monsters of the Mat WWA 6/15/87

MD: Sometimes we don't have a choice. The footage decides itself. This was a Luce production at the Kats Bar in Chicago and is very much what it sounds like. It began with an arm wrestling match between the Sinister Minster of Fear and Calypso Joe (who wrestled sometimes as Bobo Brazil, Jr.). It ended after a bit too long (The announcer even said "something will have to happen soon" or something along those lines) with seconds crashing into each other and the proceedings after a missed punch, leading to Calypso winning by DQ, more or less setting the tone for the night.

Moose Cholak vs. Shotgun Willie

MD: (Yukon) Cholak was somewhere around 57 here, billed at 450 pounds. He felt like both a star (of sorts) and a regular at the bar in this setting. Willie had the Minister with him and had that DDP/Jimmy "Jam" Garvin look a few years early. He was a few inches away from solid TV job work. You found yourself looking forward to every time Cholak would whack Willie. Willie would do these big sweeping shots and then Cholak would just shove a satisfying fist in his face, ram his face into the corner or hit him with his belly. Then Willie would escape, stall, work the crowd, and try again from a different angle only for the process to repeat. Willie played hide the object (a chain maybe), but it really didn't do him too much good as Moose manhandled him again and again. Likewise with the Minister grabbing Moose's legs from the outside. He'd just shrug off the damage, muss his hair a bit, and pummel Willie. On some level it was probably repetitive, but everyone seemed to enjoy it well enough. Willie dodged the splash and things sort of devolved into a finish I didn't entirely understand but at the very least Moose had a moral victory and the Minster and Willie ended up scrambling.

Golden Lion & Polynesian Wildman vs. Beach Boy & Calypso Jim

MD: Golden Lion worked as Dick the Bruiser, Jr. That's all I've got on any of these guys. This was 2 out of 3 falls and had to do a lot of heavy lifting on the card. Sinister Minster was out with the heels (Lion/Wildman). I have conflicted thoughts about this. The leaned into traditional roles. The simple fact of the matter is that tag wrestling, so long as the formula (we'll say the southern tag formula) is stuck to, simply works. It's not rocket science. Shine/heat/comeback. Hope spots, cutoffs. The 2/3 structure allows for wrestlers' to either play that into the ebb and flow for falls and comebacks, or to have multiple face-in-perils and hot tags. That's basically what they did here, and it worked.

It's alarming how well it worked. These guys may not have ever been stars, but they were at least competent. The heels fed well for both faces. Jim had charisma. Beach Boy worked hard and had a lot of energy. The transitions were basic but effective. When the heels were in control they had swagger and kept things moving. Lion would strut to set up a Beach Boy hope spot and then cut him right off and set up some cheating. He hopped on the mic between falls to get heat. They built to big hot tags and big payoffs.

So why is this alarming? Because these guys (these guys!) could have this match and front of this crowd, could take up so much time and bring people up and down so well, and I'm not sure how many people watching wrestling would value what they did here or how many people wrestling could actually pull it off. These guys could do this in a random Chicago bar in 1987 with maybe a quarter of the athleticism. It shouldn't have felt so refreshing to me in 2024.

Igor Zatkoff vs. Dick the Bruiser

MD: Zatkoff was maybe Psycho Sam Cody and I've got a lot of time for him as a fake Russian. He looked like an oversized Rasputin with the beard and the shaky hands. He was there to fly around for Bruiser and he did, going feet over head for punches. They did some pretty solid test of strength stuff to start, working out of that position so Bruiser could toss Zatkoff about. Igor took over for a bit in the middle, mainly working Bruiser over in the corner but the comeback was more or less matter-of-fact. Minister managed all the heels in the night but this is the first time where it really felt like he got his comeuppance as things led to a big double noggin knocker; pretty smart way to build the card and put Bruiser over in the end and send the fans home happy.

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Found Footage Friday: KOX~! SHEREEF~! WRESTLING LA RAMS~! MAEDA~! YATSU~! LUCHA ROBOCOP~?!

Killer Karl Kox/El Shereef vs. Don Chuy /Joe Carollo WWA 2/2/67 

MD: The family of Killer Karl Kox shared this and I think it's the earliest Kox footage we have on tape. Chuy and Carollo were LA Rams (offensive tackle, I think) and they did this during their off season. They even had runs in Japan (teaming with Kox) if I'm not mistaken. Shereef brought bigger bumps and Kox brought ones that went over with a bit more effort and grounded things. Things got a little disjointed towards the end of the first fall as Kox jumped in once to break up a pin but was supposed to get shaken off the second time and the ref didn't quite stop the pin. Things reset and the football players hit their big charges and back body drop charges.

Second fall stared with some crowd pleasing grinding headlocks, lots of big selling and arm waving, that sort of thing. The heels took over though but the Rams fought out of the corner and hit a series of double charges until the ref threw it out. The third fall was quick, just three minutes and it ended with Kox planting Carollo with the brainbuster. I knew he did it in the 70s but's crazy that he was doing this as early as 66! It was treated like absolute death Carollo was out for the rest of the match. They did a fourth fall due to the thrown out second and they made short work of Chuy, two on one, and he fell to the brainbuster too. Great look at mid-30s Kox and maybe historical for the Rams on top of that.

PAS: So cool that this showed up, Kox has maybe 10 matches in full that are out there, but looks incredible in all of them. I also just love this kind of match with local heroes, bumping around willing heels. I dug how so much of the Rams offense was tackles and blocks, and all of the crowd pleasing payoffs, like Kox jumping off the top with stomp to break a Chuy headlock, and then when he tries it again Carollo shakes the ropes to spill him off. This must have been building to a big rematch of some sort, because Kox really dominates the end of the match, spiking both Rams with his brainbuster for clean pins in both falls. Would definitely make the fans buy a ticket to next month to see their heroes try to solve the problem of the Killer. 

Akira Maeda vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu NJPW 1/6/84

MD: Maeda and Yatsu were more or less finding themselves here. This would have really been something three and a half years later. As it was, though, they had all of the prerequisite skills. Both could take it to the mat. Both weren't afraid to strike. Both had a suplex or two. They also had plenty of animosity for one another based on the fact that they were on opposing stables and in plenty of tags and trios against one another. This had been out there but only in the form of a tiny, unwatchable, real player sized file. This is much more watchable. They'd go at it from the bell to the post-match after a double count out and it wasn't in the least bit refined, but it was chippy and active, including some armwork by Maeda and a nice seated octopus by Yatsu. Once they started throwing suplexes, Maeda somehow managed to drop Yatsu exactly on his head but Yatsu was unfazed and stumbled up to hit a belly to belly of his own. It was pretty grisly stuff. Overall this was rough around the edges but full of fire, so they definitely had that bit down. 

ER: I thought this was incredibly cool, a very grown up version of a match I wouldn't have expected from either at this point. This felt like a couple older pros, especially Yatsu, who moved spry and almost like a cruiserweight but obviously not. Both looked lithe and had incredible ring confidence. It was some great halfway point between Choshu/Fujinami and Young Lions. Maeda was about to go on a pair of month long WWF excursions, but Yatsu feels like the perfect 1984 WWF Japanese wrestler. Yatsu works this like  shootstyle Mr. Fuji, with some fast unstoppable throws, takeovers and strong-cradled pins, but with a throat thrust and elbowdrop assortment that would play well in Buffalo working Terry Daniels. Akira Maeda got to work a couple months of WWF as Akira Maeda. If I was given the information that a) Akira Maeda worked a couple WWF tours in 1984, and b) worked a tour somewhere early in his career as Kwick-Kick Lee, I would bet so much money on there being a New Haven card with a Kwick-Kick Lee vs. Rene Goulet time limit draw. Yatsu's quick, strong style would have fit well in 1984 WWF, even if it would have just inevitably lead to a tag team with Tiger Chung Lee. 

The submission work and movement within holds was really captivating. You could see the legitimacy in how they worked to prevent the unpreventable or grapple like real heavyweights. Maeda almost scorpions Yatsu with an overhead belly to belly - it's not as bad as it initially looks, with Yatsu taking a lot of it on his forearms and not his neck - and plays it as a successfully blocked takedown, scrambling straight up to his feet and Maeda's waist to pivot into his own belly to belly. It reads as a real way an Olympic level freestyle wrestler would sell the same. They're so good at grappling that they manage one of the great abdominal stretch spots, some beautiful work of real cool fighting over who could secure an abdominal stretch, sending both tumbling hard through the ropes. The way I wrote about it makes it sound like an inevitable end to that spot, but they way they did it didn't feel like it was going that way. It was this shoot authenticity they worked their pro wrestling with, an abdominal stretch do-si-do leading to the stiffest strikes of the match being thrown on the floor to double count out. They could have worked this exact same match just two years later, nothing changed about the wrestling, but now perceived as bigger and bigger stars. They got big reactions for what they didm, and the crowd reacted to this like a fight between two names. But nowhere near the names they'd become, but the wrestling was real. 

Principe Franky/ROBOCOP vs. Ministro de la Muerte I/Ministro de la Muerte II CMLL 1992

MD: This is blurry but kind of novel because I'm not sure how much Robocop footage we actually have. Franky had been Polimero Espacial but lost his mask quite recently in a tag with Latin Lover against Sangre Chicana and El Sanguinario, also in Monterrey. From what we see, he looks solid. There's a fun moment late in the match where his partner teases a dive and we just see him come flipping from off the side of the screen as a blur instead. Robocop is, as promised, Robocop, with a plush looking but intricate costume, visor and all. It's a much more elaborate costume than the other match we've covered years ago. He moved surprisingly well in there, able to do a couple of tricked out armdrags and to finally win it (after teasing that dive) with the diving back headbutt off the ropes. He actually had some presence too. When he came in to break up a submission, there was a little extra swagger in how he moved. Los Ministros are pretty generic rudos but played their part well in this sub-ten minute match. That meant basing for a guy dressed like Robocop and throwing fouls when Robocop was duly distracting the ref. This was undercard stuff and didn't go long but it was fun while it lasted, for the novelty of Robocop as much as anything else.

ER: I can't pretend to know any of these guys and I can't pretend I knew there was a lucha Robocop but I assumed that was likely. I was impressed at how good the Robocop suit looked. I'm not sure what I was specifically expecting from lucha Robocop but this was a quality looking suit. Intricate, as Matt called it, but allowing for smooth movement. No way a 1992 Monterrey luchador working a Robocop gimmick should have a Robocop suit this good. In our grainy tracky footage he looked like La Parka, or a Storm Trooper. He moved smoothly for being the largest guy in the match (maybe some of that was suit weight and mask height) and had an armdrag reversal on the back end of a backdrop that surprised me, and his topes en reversa landed firmly. Ministros were my kind of rudos, guys who would each take a backdrop and are good at catching dives and taking complicated armdrags, working over Franky's knee in a way appropriate in a short lucha match. Franky's dive looked crazy, visible only in the background, Robocop in the foreground, Franky already upside down when he enters the frame. Cameras catch the wreckage on the floor and Robocop wins right after. Opener undercard lucha remains winning.  

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Two Rare Pairings from WWA 1/10/92

I had no idea this show even existed, and it has two nearly exclusive pairings that are right up my alley! Murdoch isn't a guy I believe I've ever seen in a singles match against Kamala, and I know I've never seen a Lawler/Backlund match. Now, I suppose it's possible that I didn't know about these two specific matches because they are terrible, and there's good reason I haven't seen them spoken about. I'll know in about an hour! Also, I think it's amusing that while I'm excited for these two pairings, it's probably the least exciting pairing of these four guys. Lawler vs. Kamala is a proven banger, Murdoch vs. Lawler is a dream match that I don't think ever happened, Backlund vs. Kamala sounds insanely fun (picture Backlund lifting Kamala!), and Backlund vs. Murdoch could just be them making silly faces at each other and doing silly walks and it would be legendary. So we are left with arguably the least intriguing use of these men, but I am still into what we've been given.

Dick Murdoch vs. Kamala

ER: This was what I wanted to see from these two. Kamala throwing chops to the head, Murdoch punching Kamala in the face, Kamala locking on axillary nerve holds while Murdoch stomps on his bare feet to escape, all of it the best. Murdoch grabs Kamala by the beard and punches him in the nose, Kamala hits his mule kick in the ropes, Kamala jumps around great whenever Murdoch stomps those feet...and possibly the best part of this is that whomever is playing Kim Chee is at most 5 feet tall and at least 270 lb. This is the shortest roundest Kim Chee I have ever seen. If the match had taken place around 2008 I would have assumed this was Taz. Kamala chops ref Scott Dickinson, Murdoch adds a punch when Dickinson wanders back, and these two legends just punch and chop away. 10 year old me would have been in awe sitting in this crowd watching these two.


Jerry Lawler vs. Bob Backlund

ER: I already know this rules, because Lawler comes out in periwinkle tights with a magenta top singlet (matching socks and wrist tape too, my god), a combination I have never seen the King sport, another in a long line of gorgeously garish gear that Lawler sported in '88-'92. Those were the years Lawler discovered pastels, neon, and dayglo, and it ruled. Backlund appears to give a motivational talk to a 6 year old on the way to the ring, like actually kneeling in front of the kid and talking in serious but fatherly tones, tapping him on the chest approvingly. Then Lawler makes fun of him for it. This is already a classic. This file length is 40 minutes, and they squaring up at around 9, so I assume this is going long. But I love Lawler matches where he really takes his time, and the feeling out process here is great. They do some go behinds, couple body slams, Lawler goes for a couple single legs and just eats a bunch of mat, it's the best. Lawler missing those single legs was some of the funniest shtick I've seen, Backlund easily dodging out of the way while Lawler comically piles up on his face, like Wile E. Coyote winding up in a heap after coming up with an armful of Roadrunner's dust cloud. Our first strike comes six minutes in, Lawler pops him in the corner and Backlund levels him with an elbow, Lawler flying 5 feet and sprawling.

So Lawler finally grabs onto Backlund's arm, and we go into a long arm section. And Lawler and Backlund are two guys who are great at milking very simple arm work for nearly 14 minutes. Does 14 minutes of working an arm sound boring? Probably. It doesn't sound like something that would excite me either, if I read about it. But these two are such masters of micro reactions that I was not bored for a second. Lawler simply grabs the arm and wrenches it in the crook of his arm, Backlund always threatening to power out, Lawler punching him in the face when he gets close to doing so, it's great long play stuff. Backlund starts slapping at his dead arm and hand, the one Lawler is working over, wiggling his fingers to try and get circulation going. The visual of Backlund, arm tied up, using his free arm to slap his other hand, as if his entire arm was dead asleep, was such a fun thought and something that played great. I don't recall ever seeing someone do that before. And the longer armlock went, the more I wanted the tables turned, to see how Lawler would respond to having his arm yanked around. And brother, I got my wish. Lawler is such a great backpeddler, such a fun bumper, someone who will let all sides of a gymnasium see him react a different way. The ways he tries to scramble and get out of Backlund's grasp are classic, his near tantrums when he gets a foot close to the ropes only for Backlund to grab onto his other arm and drag him away from the ropes. I dig that old Backlund arm work, the kind where he fully extends his legs into his opponent, sitting there as if he just completed a leg press, and I love the visual of guys standing up out of that leg press arm bar. Lawler, unsurprisingly, has shtick that he can work around that. I love Lawler standing out of the armbar, arm extended, Backlund's feet pressing into him so that he can't straighten, reaching the ropes unseen by the ref, before getting leg pressed back to the mat.

We get a few close escapes, one almost leading to a Lawler piledriver, but Backlund backdrops him and hits a fantastic piledriver of his own. I've said before that while Lawler's piledriver is the best, he is actually even better at taking and selling piledrivers of others. He is a man who knows the piledriver frontwards and backwards, someone who understands everything about the move. His piledriver bumps are the best, always looking like he takes it right on his hairline and always looks like his head might snap off as he whips forward onto his stomach. When Lawler finally does go back on offense, he unleashes all the punches you want to see: his jab, his big haymaker, his standing fistdrop, his headlock punch, his fistdrop off the middle buckle (flying well past the halfway mark of a very large ring), all of the great Lawler punches on display. And if there's a flaw to the match, it's the sudden finish. For a match to go slow burn for 21 of its 23 minutes - and to work an engaging slow burn, the kind that felt like they were really squaring up for an epic - the finish they went with was more of an "oh, it's over?" reaction than a big earned babyface comeback. Basically, Lawler started punching the hell out of Backlund, hit that middle buckle fistdrop, picked him up after a pin attempt...and then Backlund ran him into the ropes and pinned him with an O'Connor roll and that was that. The O'Connor roll was nothing short of textbook, but it didn't really feel like it belonged as the finish to the match they had established. Overall though, I loved it. I have seen a huge quantity of Lawler matches, and this one was a unique standout, worked in a way that is very different than much of his output. It felt much more like a Backlund match, but with the expert flash of Lawler. A super satisfying combo.

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MLJ: Hechicero Spotlight 1: Rey Hechiero vs Valiente [WWA Middleweight Title]

2008-01-27 @ Gimnasio Nuevo León
Rey Hechiero vs Valiente [WWA Middleweight Title]





I could have gone on into Cavernario's 2014, but that's been pretty well covered elsewhere, including here on Segunda Caida. That's not to say I won't do it for my own sake at some point but I wanted to move on now. Hechicero was a pretty logical choice. Obviously he's been active for a lot longer, even if it's mainly been on the fringes, but there's not a ton online and available, so it'll work out pretty well as a broad overview looking in on his career at various points.

This is from way back in early 2008. I've got no real idea how old Hechicero was here, which I suppose is part of the appeal of masked wrestlers. Wikipedia has his debut in 2001, but that doesn't mean a ton. This is at the Gimnasio Nuevo León, which is an indoor arena in Monterrey seems to be mainly for basketball and indoor soccer. From what I can tell, a lot of the other matches I've seen from Monterrey have been at Arena Coliseo there. This was for the local version of the WWA Middleweight Title which Charles Lucero has, currently at the time of writing, held for almost 2000 days. He defended it at least once or twice in 2014 but it's not super active, best I can tell. Hechicero had won it the month before and he'd hold on to it until April. From all indication, it was his first title.

This is about a year off of that Valiente/Virus lightning match which is sort of the seminal Valiente match in my mind. I say this having not seen nearly everything or having a clear picture of the guy's career, but that's the match I always think about when I think about valiente. He's one wrestler that I think I buck against the conventional wisdom on, especially that of the time. For instance, he ranked pretty highly, on both the 2008 and 2009 WKO top 100s. I know that's not the best indication but it's AN indication, after all. At least one group of fans in the know rating him highly in this period. Hell, they still rated him #22 in the world last year. I sort of get why. He's a stocky little guy who can manage incredible physical feats, the sort that almost defy logic. He has a sense of balance that is really almost unmatched from what I've seen and makes things that should be nigh impossible look easy. I find him a better gymnast than wrestler a lot of the times. He fits into trios matches very well, getting in, hitting his stuff, cycling on to the next pairing but I've never liked him much in the singles matches I've seen where he's called upon more to supply more of the connective tissue and to give things meaning.

Frankly, I haven't seen enough Hechicero to comment one way or another if he was a finished product by early 2008 (which is one reason I'm going through these matches), but my gut feeling would be no. He did have a lot of the crowd and you get the sense that he was sort of a local hero, despite being a rudo. The structure here was a relatively short primera with matwork, a segunda that was almost immediately over, and then a tercera where they went all out, very much the modern title match. Of it, I liked the tercera well enough, though I maybe wanted another couple of minutes and a few more near falls. The whole match was somewhat underwhelming.

The primera was mostly feeling out and matwork, some of it complex, but all of it a little disjointed with too much laying around. There wasn't a huge sense of struggle or competitiveness I was looking for. Valiente picked up the fall by softening Hechicero up with an interesting but clumsy arm-hold and finishing him with an immediate leglock. The segunda was Valiente showing off a bit before Hechicero countered with a lifting cutter and immediate submission. Hopefully he still does that cutter because it was very effective as a sudden transition move.

The tercera was a lot of what you'd expect, but in a good way. Hechicero ate an armdrag to the outside followed by a tope. Valiente locked on a nasty Cavernaria and once he let go of it, took a nice Hamrick bump to the outside. Hechicero followed that up with a tope con hilo and some good dominant offense. He then tried an ill-conceived spinning slingshot splash back in which led to Valiente getting his knees up; Hechicero used that as part of his escape bump which was clever. Valiente hit another dive (a double jump moonsault) and by the time they made it back into the ring, selling the weight of the match, it did feel a little bit earned. Their chop exchange was good and measured though I found Valiente's attempts to get the crowd into it while selling a little forced. It ended with Valiente hesitating too much and missing a moonsault which allowed Hechiero to hit Valiente's own endlessly goofy finisher on him and lock in an arm-trapped triangle choke for the win. It was a good finish but I could have used one more time around before they went to it (including maybe a tease of Valiente hitting the move or something to set up the actual finish).

I had to scour the recesses of dailymotion for this match and while I didn't outright love it, I am glad that I was able to get so relatively early a look at Hechicero (to what we have available) in a title match. For people into his work now it's worth watching, I think, even though I do get the sense that he's improved on his craft considerably in the years between.

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MLJ: Hijo del Santo vs Blue Panther 12: El Hijo del Santo y Damian 666 vs Blue Panther y Super Parka

2003-5-18 - El Hijo del Santo y Damian 666 vs Blue Panther y Super Parka - WWA

Look, I expect to get a bad match when I'm doing other parts of my stuff: going through 2006 or the Casas vs Rush series or what not. It happens. It's okay. I move on to the next one. I try to learn something from it. Part of the point of doing something like Santo vs Panther is that I'm not supposed to get bad matches, and while some things, like the Mil match, weren't great, at least they were full of some great moments and exchanges, and they still give me something to learn.

This was the shits. Let's run through some things. This was from WWA. I have no idea what that meant in 2003. Wikipedia said that it didn't even resume operations until 2004. It was from a TV show, of which the very best part were the replays. Super Parka is the original Volador; his son is Volador, Jr.; his nephew is La Parka. He's got a La Parka suit with a Superman S in the middle and he came out in a kilt. He can't dance nearly as well as his nephew. We know who Damian is but he was vaguely shaped like late-ECW Mikey Whipwreck in this match and he sort of moved like old Pierroth. The ref was as rudo as can be while also being Jurassic. He looked like some old local uncle or something, but he's probably someone I'm supposed to know and this statement is showing intense ignorance. If so, feel free to lambaste me. This was to set up a Super Parka vs Santo apuestas match, I think, in as there is a Parka vs Santo match from around this time.

I'm not even sure where to begin here. The structure was almost non-existent. The tecnicos weren't tecnico enough. The rudos ate too much rudo-style offense. The work was sluggish and sloppy and downright embarrassing at times. The heat came from all the wrong places. For instance, Santo's mask got ripped off. Totally off, and bitten, and chewed on, and pulled, and it was such an affront because it was Santo's mask, but there was nothing behind it. It was all too haphazard and not built to in the least. It was paced all wrong and gone to too quickly and done without reverence. It felt like seeing someone tear apart some deep undercard luchador's mask. It installed the wrong kind of heat, at least in me, and the rudo ref just allowing it, like it was nothing, and then doing the usual rudo ref tricks to delay the comeback? All the wrong sort of heat. There were a couple of brief weapon cameos. There were some pointless allowed fouls (heel ref again). There was a bullshit non finish.

Generally only two things worked. The first was Blue Panther being a dick and taunting the crowd with Santo chants at a few points in the match. Super dick Blue Panther is hugely underrated. The second was the way they tied Santo's mask to the ropes at the end, which lead to them double teaming Damian until Halloween came in to break things up and presumably cause the DQ or the match to be thrown out or whatever. Even that only half worked because it made no sense. The idea that the mask being tied up prevents a wrestler from leaving the corner is sort of a good one, right? He'd lose his honor and his identity if he just took the mask off to get free, but Santo wasn't even trying to untie the damn thing even if his hands were free. Ultimately, it doesn't make sense. There was also a decent comeback spot where Santo moved out of the way of a charging Panther, having been held by Super Parka. Panther ended up leaping into Parka's arms like he was going to monkey flip him and Santo dropkicked him over the top from that position. It was a good idea but about three seconds too slow to be really effective.

I want to wash my hands on this but I think I need to mention a few particularly bad moments. Past a couple of Panther topes (including a late one to clear the ring for the finish which wasn't actually used that way), the big high spot was at the end of the segunda, where Panther had laboriously positioned Damian on the top rope so that he could propel a charging Parka up to the top after him. It didn't quite work. Panther did follow it up with a nice leglock though. What else? Well Damian had this tendency to always want to be in the ring, so it meant a lot of sort of uncomfortable early double teaming where Santo and Damian were beating up their opponents together. After the first caida, I actually thought that maybe, somehow, Parka and Panther were tecnicos. it was a short fall but a weird one. There was a Damian sunset flip on Parka attempt where Santo was supposed to come in for a faceplant on Parka, but it took too long to set up so Parka had to dance for far, far too long while stuck about to get pulled down. Just brutal stuff. It looked good in the well-produced replay though.

This was just a mess. I expected way more from guys this talented. Let's move on.

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MLJ: Hijo del Santo Vs Blue Panther 1: Negro Casas, Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera vs El Hijo del Santo, Yoshihiro Asai, Gran Hamada

WWA, 1990
Negro Casas, Blue Panther, Fuerza Guerrera vs El Hijo del Santo, Yoshihiro Asai, Gran Hamada

I think there's a slight danger in me just watching random matches without purpose or point. Lucha's a giant ocean of decades and what seems like a near infinite number of matches. I've been trying to jump off from one point to the next. It means maybe I watch ten Marco Corleone matches, but if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have necessarily ended up where I did in 2006 enjoying the stuff I'm enjoying now. I'm also trying to build to more classic feuds and matches as I go, so that I develop some sort of context and theoretical underpinning.

I do want to watch more Hijo del Santo but I wanted to find some sort of structure in my watching. What I came up with, sort of on the fly, was to find the matches online where he was pitted against another person I want to see more of, Blue Panther. For now Santo One-Shots has become Hijo del Santo vs Blue Panther. This means three or four singles matches and a bunch of tags and trios over a span of fifteen years or so. I've been warned that they don't actually face off too many times in the tags I have in front of me, but they're both so good and they're in there with such good partners for the most part, that I think I'll be perfectly okay with that.

Case in point is the first match here. It's true: there really wasn't much Panther vs Santo interaction. That's okay when the others guys in the match were Fuerza, Casas, Hamada and a young Asai. There were some great exchanges and sequences in this match and even though the key match up didn't take place at any length, everyone else paired off, sometimes multiple times, and it was all great, compelling action.

That said, it wasn't the most satisfying match I've seen in this project, even if the work itself was all very crisp and sharp and high-end. The big problem is that the tecnicos took so much of the match. There wasn't any sort of prolonged heat segment and past a blip where the rudos snatched a fall in the segunda, it was all quite one-sided and a little "samey." It especially stood out since Asai was staged almost perfectly in his role in the match to have been the victim of a few satisfying minutes of rudo dominance to build to a comeback.

Here, my lack of context hurts. One thing I've noticed from watching so many matches from 2006 on an almost weekly basis is that they did change things up from show to show. You'd get a differently structured match each week. Things would be balanced. There's a lot about this match I just don't know. It's from WWA, which was a promotion I haven't seen much of. It's from 1990, which was a year (and even a decade) I've seen little of. It's in a geographic setting I'm not as used to. They presented trophies to the tecnicos at the end.

So basically, I'm not sure if they worked this was worked a bit more like a title match or if it was part of a tournament with these two teams working a number of matches against different opponents or if they had just worked a match the week before with a long beatdown on Asai, or even if there was another match on the same show with that sort of structure. Maybe the purpose of the match WAS to get over the tecnicos strong for some future encounter with other opponents or because they had just debuted or maybe the rudos were on the way out. Maybe it was just meant to be a celebratory match to end a big show, etc. I just don't know, so therefore, it becomes a bit harder to hold it against the match. I say this because I know these guys know what they're doing. For instance, I've seen Hamada paired with Sayama in the Asai role and in that match, Sayama took a lot of offense the way that I kind of wanted Asai to here.

Now, then, all that said, there was a lot to love here. Past Panther vs Santo (ironically enough), everyone got paired with everyone else. I love the rudo side as they all brought something slightly different to the table, but all of them served exceptionally well as bases for the tecnico offense. Panther really got to shine on the mat in the opening segment with Asai, who held his own as they played up his agility as a way to counter Panther's skill. Fuerza had the most personality though he never went too deep into shtick at the expense of the competitive mood they managed to create. He's someone I badly want to see more of. Casas fell somewhere in the middle and was also the most frenetic of the bunch. He also had a pretty awesome punch exchange with Hamada.

This was a showcase for the tecnicos, in that the rudos mainly got to show off by eating their offense and stooging well. Santo looked great, hitting all sorts of elaborate stuff in his exchanges, especially with Casas. The end of both the primera and tercera were pretty with Santo hitting big spots while action went on around him. I wish we had multiple camera angles and replays. Hamada was gutsy. My favorite spot of the match with him was when he fought off all three rudos in the primera, which culminated with him kicking Fuerza in the butt so that he would dropkick Panther through the ropes by accident. Asai served his purpose, showed a lot of promise and felt like he belonged in the ring with them, though again, I don't think they used him well enough as a foil. There were little moments like when Fuerza goes for a handshake and then a hug and he's left bewildered in the face of the mindgames.

It was just too much in the way of tecnico control. In the primera, that felt intentional, like a shine, with the tecnicos getting the best of the exchanges due to their skill and agility. As the match went on though, it became an issue. The rudos momentarily caught them to end the segunda, yes, but they went right to a reset after the fall ended. Then there was a moment late in the match where Hamada had an armbar on and the rudos all sort of looked at each other and decided they had enough and that they were going to rush him, but after a moment of swarming advantage it went back to another reset and they started on towards the finish. A little bit of heat would have gone a long way. Good action, fun start to Santo vs Panther, but not ultimately what I'd consider a great match.

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