Found Footage Friday: QUEBECERS EXPLODE~! CESARO~! GUNTHER~! LOS COWBOYS IN GUATEMALA~!

Los Cowboys (El Texano/Silver King) vs. Astro de Oro/Skeletor Guatemala 9/15/91

MD: There's a certain genre of match that I find fascinating. There's no good name for it but it's best described by the rudos/heels being visibly, noticeably concerned about the amount of heat they might get in front of a specific crowd and adapting their wrestling accordingly. I don't know what preceded this but there was nothing to make Texano and Silver King come off as particularly rudo in the early going here. They came out, they were nice to fans, they posed well with the belts and the anthems. They wrestled clean early. Texano worked really hard to get a handshake. And the trash was still coming and they seemed kind of alarmed and put off by it. For the anthem, there were a ton of kids singing which was always a good sign. Skeletor came out with a robe with Guatemala on the back. Astro de Oro was obviously beloved. 

So there wasn't any mask ripping here. Their win in the segunda was real quick. While they controlled in the tercera there was never really that sense of danger for the tecnicos. You always got the sense that even amidst the double teams Skeletor could PROBABLY make the tag if he really really wanted to. It was, shall we say, a ginger rudo performance. 

Instead, they flew all over the place. They missed leaps off the top rope and dives. There was plenty of heel miscommunication. Silver King was happy to fly out of the ring on a kick out. Skeletor was charismatic and hammed it up a bit with Texano. Silver King and Astro de Oro were really moving at times and mostly everything looked very good. There was a point in the tercera where Texano and Silver King did Tiger Feints instead of diving and one guy right in the center of the crowd shot let out a popper/firework thinking the dive was coming and that's a little bit of really interesting cultural information. It made me sad for him that they didn't get dives because his timing was perfect. Anyway, of course the locals won and everyone survived to see tomorrow. 

Jacques Rougeau vs. Pierre Carl Ouellet WWF 10/21/94

MD: This is about 80% of a perfect match to me. 75%, 75%. I was thinking structurally, but the thing needed blood too. It has parallels to MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana in some ways. And before you balk at that, think of the setting. This is Jacques in Montreal, in what was supposed to be a celebratory swansong. He's up against Pierre. He's got Raymond in his corner. Polo's out there with PCO.  

And Pierre cheapshots him before he can get his robe off. Raymond tries to break it up but the ref pulls him off which just lets Pierre stomp away. Jacques tries to fire back, but Pierre's younger, stronger, bigger. He lays in a beating, a nasty, brutal thing. Every time it seems like Jacques has an answer, he cuts him off. Jacques is able to outsmart him and back body drop him over the top. He lands on his feet. Jacques gets a flurry and he catches him in midair and puts him in the tree of woe. When the ref tries to stop things, Polo comes over to choke him. Pure heat. There's one moment where Pierre is whipping Jacques off the ropes and Jacques makes a sort of out of control bobbling motion, almost seizing, with his head as he's getting whipped and it's some of the best selling I've ever seen.

The thing is, Pierre can't put him away. So he starts to go with more and more high risk moves. He hits a flip dive. He goes off the turnbuckles, once, twice, and then Jacques catches him, crotching him on top. It's not quite the punch heard round the world but it's pretty damn satisfying, especially to this crowd. 

And it opens the floodgates for the ritual beating. And what a beating it is. When Jacques tosses him into the stairs on the outside, it's about as loud as I've heard stairs. After beating him around the ring, Jacques goes for a mounted punch (no puns). Pierre tosses him off and we get this great ref bump. Polo comes in to attack. Raymond hits him with a superkick.

And that's when they should have taken this thing home. Have it seem like Pierre was going to get the advantage, have Jacques mount one last comeback, go to the finish. They don't though. They just sort of meander with some nearfalls and momentum shifts and they don't lose the crowd, but once you see Polo back on his feet rooting for Pierre, you realize that the match went just a little long in the tooth. The finish is amazing, Pierre going for a tombstone and Jacques turning it around for this gnarly sitout variation and then slowly, fatefully draping a hand over for three. There's just no reason why that couldn't have happened almost immediately after Polo got taken out. And blood. Blood would have been good. Still, 75% perfect is pretty damn good.

Cesaro vs. Gunther WWE 11/8/21

MD: This is a house show match between Cesaro and Gunther. In Leeds. It is definitely. That's nothing to scoff at. It's just not transcendent like Cena vs Reigns or even the parts of Jacques vs Pierre that were transcendent. 

It had room to breathe. It managed the crowd well (and a crowd like that needed managing). It didn't get ahead of its sails. It didn't go off any rails. It was measured and focused and did what it had to. Instead of having the crowd go for dueling chants or ironically entertaining themselves (or shouting 2! a lot or whatever), it got them to clap up three times, early on in a test of strength, then during a surfboard (the one with the head in; Cesaro got out of it with some headbutts of his own after he turned it) and finally once in the heat as he was building to the comeback. 

It got them to chant for the swing right before Cesaro got it down the stretch. They hit hard, both early on and right before the finish. And yes, they built to that swing and they paid it off. They worked things fairly even up front. Gunther would go for cheapshots and deviate from the wrestling first but Cesaro generally had an answer. I liked the big comeback spot as Cesaro was able to catch Gunther in midair and turn him, strength outdoing strength, and the finish was good, with a near-miss with the ref before a cheapshot and a thudding top rope splash. This hit marks, and that's admirable. A good match. A good house show match. And good for the crowd for letting it guide them.

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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: LOW KI~! PCO~! DR. DEATH~! 2 COLD~! MEAN STREET POSSE~! LONDON~! KENDRICK~! FBI~!

WWE Vault Dark Matches

Pierre Carl Ouellet vs. El Tornado(?) 7/7/03

MD: Pretty insane performance by PCO here. Not surprising but he went so far over the top that he did three things in one match probably not otherwise seen in a WWE ring in 2003: a sit out chokeslam, sit out pumphandle slam, top rope exploder. That was on top of both a flip dive to the floor and the flipping cannonball senton he won it with. He also took a gnarly face first corner bump that was not at all warranted by the guy half his size whipping him across the ring. He balanced it with a lot of energy and charisma and a connection with the crowd but it almost all felt like a rib somehow. His opponent was game and along for the ride and got pretty good heat at times but not necessarily through much that he was doing. Just having the offense against PCO here was going to be enough and he didn't capitalize on it by leaning into it in any way. I don't think I'd hire PCO off of this but I sure as hell would give him a 2003 ROH run.

ER: It's crazy how PCO ran the ropes better than every person on the current WWE roster. Not sure who El Tornado(?) is but the man had a fine backdrop and a real nice slingshot senton. It's awesome to see PCO taking bumps off the edges of aprons 20+ years ago, not so different than the Shawn Michaels casket match bump that turned him into one of the worst big match workers of the 2000s. We all know PCO now for his inhuman bumps, but I didn't remember him being so good at bumping into the buckles. Every time he went into the buckles - back first, chest first - it looked so hard. There are some spots in this that they absolutely would not have allowed a regular heavyweight to be doing. The top rope exploder was incredible, both men standing on the top with seemingly no balance issues, PCO getting legs behind it like he was just standing on the mat. Insane. The cannonball hit perfectly, but really everything he did hit perfectly. The man could have been great doing just "basic" clotheslines and slams, but instead he was out here killing himself and a game opponent whom none of us know. 

Mean Street Posse (Rodney/Pete Gas) vs. Low Ki/Vincent Goodnight 8/7/00

MD: We come in on a crazy Low Ki dive (set up well by Goodnight teasing one drawing the MSP in another direction, a set up not used nearly enough now honestly) followed by a great transition where Ki, going for another dive off the apron is knocked off by Rodney knocking Goodnight into him, landing right in Gas' clutches for a world's strongest slam. Gas looked pretty good here, honestly. Most of the rest of the match was a FIP on Ki and Rodney looked ok, but Gas was in the right place and doing the right thing with the right energy. They did a phantom tag (with a clap) as Goodnight had the ref, solid stuff, well taught. The comeback had Goodnight punching one MSP in the corner while Ki kicked the other and they weren't entirely in sync (Ki would have just kicked him all day) before they just crashed into each other and I saw the Gas Mask for the first time in years (I remembered it being more of a full reverse full nelson for some reason when here it was more of a just a lift up). There was probably a really good Ki vs Gas singles match in here somewhere.

ER: I am a big fan of the actual wrestling abilities of the Mean Street Posse, so was excited to see this turn up. Low Ki vs. Pete Gas is one of those oddball EWR pairings that surely never happened in the real world, and yet here's Gas and Rodney hanging in to catch Low Ki's Phoenix splash to the floor, Ki kicking Gas across his very large face, and Gas slamming Ki hard on the floor. Who taught Rodney how to throw his actually good worked punches? Who taught Gas to throw such aggressive low cut missed clotheslines? How many pairs of normal jeans could have been made out of Rodney's double wide legged jeans? How did Gas have such nice form on his vertical suplex? I love Gas choking out Low Ki and breaking before 5, repeatedly telling the referee he could count. What's incredible about Pete Gas and the way he says "I can count!" is that he knows exactly how to say it the way a guy who didn't actually know how to count would defensively and angrily say it. I loved Rodney's sell of Low Ki's short superkick, bumping fast after leaning in chin first. Vincent Goodnight was the only part of this match that didn't work. The guy looked like a worse version of Lenny Lane. Hundreds of guys would have made a better Low Ki partner, but what should stand out the most is how legitimately good the Mean Street Posse looked.  

Paul London/Brian Kendrick vs. FBI (Little Guido/Tony Mamaluke) 8/1/06

MD: This was a hot mess, but still pretty fun. The problem was that the crowd was totally behind the FBI, which Guido (ribs taped even) was able to play into and Spanky, maybe, just a little bit as well, but that no one else could adapt to and the match structure didn't adapt to. London and Kendrick might get a pop for a big move or double team or dive but then the crowd would turn right back on them again. Guido worked really well with both guys. At one point they did a cazadora before Kendrick looped around into a roll up but during it, Guido smacked him right in the back which is a great bit. Mamaluke looked real rough around the edges but when he actually landed, that added more than substracted. There was one missed clothesline where a foot got up somehow that looked nasty, right before London absolutely wiped out on a dive. If they had adapted and really leaned hard into Kendrick/London heeling I think this would have been over huge and could have been honestly great but they stayed the course and ran off the road.

ER: Kendrick's and London's shorts are hands down the worst gear in wrestling history. I fucking hated these enormous culottes in 2006 and they look even worse now. They look like 9 year olds wearing their father's board shorts. I don't think this match was too negatively affected by the teams sticking to their plan and mostly ignoring the fans. Sure, it probably would have been amazing if London and Kendrick came in and chose to be overt heels, but this felt like a crowd worth ignoring, one that wouldn't play along regardless of how you played to them. They were going to react to all the big spots no matter what but they also wanted to get themselves over. I don't think it was a bad crowd, but it wasn't a crowd to cater to. 

As is, I thought this was among the best Guido looked during his long WWE run. This guy was working with something to prove. He looked great against both champs but especially against Kendrick. He and Kendrick worked a lot together but this felt like they were pushing each other hard. Guido blocking Kendrick's majistral, punching him in the back during a cazadora, dropping a knee on his face, both men pushing pace. Everyone else in the match outclassed Tony Mamaluke, who was shockingly behind what I remembered him as. This man couldn't keep up with what anyone else was doing and then he somehow managed to kick Kendrick in the face on a missed clothesline. I skipped back several times and still don't know what he was doing or why he did what he did. It's like he threw he leg up as if Kendrick was supposed to roll over a knee lift with a cradle...but he was also throwing a missed clothesline so what was that leg even doing there? Guido holds Kendrick right after so Mamaluke can hit a cool standing cannonball into him, then everyone lets London splat on the floor on a dive. Nobody came close to catching that man. London's shooting star press vaulting off Kendrick's back looked incredible. 

Justin Credible vs. Kid Kash 9/18/01

 

MD: The crowd did not want to go along for this journey. Kash did small things fine, I'm talking firing back after a big spot or working out of a chinlock. He did some very impressive big things, a run up flip dive to the floor, a pretty complex leaping rana off the top. Credible was... you know, credible, not just sitting arond on the chinlock, working him in the corner, hitting his pull out powerbomb. The fans just weren't buying what they were selling though. In some ways, I think this was a pretty well put together tryout sort of match, but it just didn't click. They even had one unique spot I liked a lot where Credible kicked Kash off of him, pressing him right into the corner hard, only for Kash to fall forward with a headbutt to the crotch. That got a little bit of an "ohhh" but they were right back on their feet a moment later and couldn't really capitalize on it. Or anything else, I guess. At least Kash had the XWF to fall back on.

ER: This is the kind of content the Vault Fans are clamoring for. Justin Credible is one of those wrestlers that is impossible to have a hot take about. There have been a lot of wrestlers who we have worked to change the narrative on, but what if Justin Credible became one of those "actually you know who was really great?" wrestlers. How useless would that be? Maybe it's true. I remember him being an above average bumper and I'm sure there are some other skills he doesn't get credit for. He doesn't get credit for them, because he is someone that nobody wants to talk about. I love talking about guys like that, so let's see if I can further ruin my life by becoming a Justin Credible Truther. His weird minimal contact DDT looks really great when Kid Kash is flying fast onto his face. I also like the way he leaned out of almost all of Kid Kash's punches. One thing you want to do in someone's tryout match is lean out of all their strikes.  He was decent at catching both of Kash's swinging huracanranas and not great at catching his dive, but his scoop powerbomb out of the corner looked good and his superkick was better than I remembered. This was the first Justin Credible match we at Segunda Caida have written about in literally 18 years. Can't wait to revisit his work in my early 60s. 

 

Dr. Death Steve Williams vs. Scorpio 4/28/98

 

MD: I don't know. When this dropped, I saw a bit of "I don't see how this guy could have main evented against Austin" and maybe that would have been an issue. Asking him to do a twenty minute walk and brawl while the stooges were guest timekeepers or whateve rmight have been a problem. This, where Scorpio could create a lot of the motion and Doc could catch him midair off a slingshot with a straight punch or catch a dive and drop him into a tombstone, or just run him over worked pretty well. When he had to bump, he used his whole body, going feet overhead in a slow timbering motion that worked. Credible strikes. A long press slam that got over with the crowd, enough mannerisms to remind him he was alive at all points, a few too many swears that made it all seem just a bit more labored than it had to. I'd watch another twenty matches with this Doc in this environment up against end-run Vader or rookie Edge or Val or Faarooq or whatever.

ER: I have been so excited for this one since it got uploaded, and, yeah, it didn't fully work. I don't think it was either man's fault, but I don't know what the actual problems were. I am not someone who buys into the whole "Doc wouldn't have been able to work WWF style" because that narrative is almost always based on the fallacy that "all Doc does is dangerous suplexes". Dr. Death Williams (as Howard Finkel calls him) is not a one dimensional wrestler, and in 1997 I thought he was one of the greatest wrestlers in the world. Watch his few early '97 ECW matches and tell me his (great) match against Raven couldn't have worked with the majority of the 1998 WWF roster. His 1997 All Japan work is excellent. Watch Misawa's first Triple Crown defense after winning it back from Kobashi. Yes, Misawa takes several suplexes onto his head - it was his fetish after all - but Doc is so much more than suplexes in that match. His energy and look would have absolutely played in WWF a year later. What's so confusing, is that a lot of that energy was completely absent in this match. Maybe that last full year in AJPW really did break him down, but I'm still not so sure. Before this match, the man had just spent the previous month working long Champions Carnival matches, so it's possible his body was worn out from that. I don't know. He did look a step slower here, in a way that I never saw him look in '97, so who's to say when that started. 

It's also easy to forget (unless you go back and watch the footage) that Scorpio was not at his best in early 1998 WWF. The man's timing in singles matches was so far out of whack. I don't know why, but watch late '97/early '98 WWF Scorpio and the man was a constant timing problem. He didn't start looking like himself again until he started teaming with Terry Funk, magically regaining his old form overnight. This match was during the Funk team run, but his singles match timing still wasn't there. I don't think either man did anything specifically bad here, sometimes things just don't work. I still don't agree with the narrative that Doc wouldn't have been able to adapt to The Style. "His big suplexes wouldn't have played in WWF, they needed punch kick guys in their main events" and well the best parts of this match were every single time Doc turned it into a punch exchange. Punching Scorpio out of the air on a slingshot was easily the best spot of the match, but he had several different punches that all looked tremendous, including a staggering right while both were selling on their feet, and a series of jabs that backed Scorpio into the corner and looked like something out of Valentine/Garvin. The crowd doesn't get into any of it, until a Scorpio back suplex makes it sound like they are getting actually fired up for Scorp's comeback. But then he starts his comeback and it dies instantly down to silence. Oh well. 

Maybe this would have seemed like a good match if the crowd had reacted to any of it. It looked like a match that deserved some reaction. The press slam spot looked great, the punches all looked good, Doc catching Scorpio's moonsault press was a cool spot that wasn't being done in 1998, but even then it looked like the crowd wanted something bigger than just a front slam out of it. The reactions were not there and that killed the match good. But both men also seemed off in ways that I don't think reflect their actual abilities. Anyway, I wish I had a Dr. Death match against every member of the 1998 WWF roster for further research but yeah yeah this didn't work like it should have. 

 

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Found Footage Friday: VALENTINE~! GARVIN~! CENA~! JOE~! BOTSWANA~! DOUG~!

Greg Valentine vs. Ronnie Garvin WWF 1/14/89

MD: Another new Richard Land find (go seek him out on twitter if you want to see this). Apparently this show did exist but with terrible VQ to the point where it hasn't been looked at. From entrances to leaving this goes ~15 and it's probably even better than you'd expect coming in, which is saying a lot. They're able to balance the best strike exchanges in the history of the company with just enough variety, stooging, stalling, and other little tricks to tie it all together.

The exchanges are amazing, but varied as well. Valentine might go high and low with punches or throw chops. Garvin will fire back out of the corner, in the center, will pick him up to knock him down again. And they do such a great job not just registering each blow by throwing their head back (whether in the corner or not) or Valentine spacing out, but by setting up the anticipation of it all with Valentine dancing back or stalling in the ropes or both of them throwing hands. It's the ultimate combination of anticipation, execution, and reaction that makes this amazing, strike exchange after strike exchange, with Garvin throwing in enough other things (a jackknife pin, slamming Valentine's head into the corner) and Valentine doing his big stooging sells to make it more than just a slugfest but a complete living, breathing tapestry of violence.

ER: We all keep writing in various ways "Greg Valentine's case as an All Time Great only rises with every new match we find" because it just keeps happening. Since we started Found Footage Fridays 5-15 years ago Valentine has been one of our frequent topics, appearing in the feature 10+ times, and each one of those times only raised his stock as a worker. He's incredible. 15 years ago, I had no idea what a huge Greg Valentine fan I would become. It really started with the DVDVR 80s WWF Project, the first set in the project that would make for the best years of my wrestling fandom. Valentine/Garvin was the kind of WWF match I had never seen before and didn't realize was ever happening there. Years later Valentine would be the reason I'd start my favorite wrestling project ever - Complete Berzerker - after seeing his brilliant match against Berzerker. Every piece of footage I've seen since - new, old, seen, unseen - just confirmed how great Valentine was. 

Now here's another new piece of the Valentine lore and it takes me back to 2006 (that can't be right) and the first time I saw the Valentine/Garvin '89 MSG match. It finished very high on my DVDVR 80s ballot, and I got to talk to Valentine at a convention about their matches. He said that nobody liked working Garvin because he worked stiff, and so they paired Valentine with him a lot because Valentine didn't mind working stiff with Garvin. That's the simplest explanation, those were Valentine's words, and then I proceeded to talk to him about BattlArts without ever buying an 8x10. I didn't know the rules, sorry. 

Now we get another take on them beating the hell out of each other and crowds slowly catching on to just how hard these men are hitting each other. Dick Graham catches on pretty quick just how hard the men are hitting each other. My favorite realization from Graham is when Valentine kicked Garvin in the face like Tenryu right in front of the ringside camera, and Graham just shouted out "SHOOT!" You have no idea, Dick. You watch this, and realize this whole thing cannot happen with Valentine. I love Garvin, but Valentine could have worked this match with anybody. Valentine is the one falling all over the place for him and leaning in to his toughest shots. Valentine is the one permitting every piece of nasty action to proceed. When Garvin starts teeing off on Hammer in the ropes, throwing hard overhand chops, mixing up punches to the forehead and body, finishing him with a shot to the forehead in the corner that sent Valentine skidding down each turnbuckle to the mat, I can see why not many others were willing to work Garvin. But Valentine makes it all into more than just stiff shots. Valentine showcases the willingness to throw hands and the over-willingness to stooge (the man must have timberrrrrrr fell to the mat a dozen times for payoff blows), but most importantly Valentine knew how to put over every single thing Garvin did. 

My favorite part of the match might have been Garvin's crucifix pin, because I don't know if I've ever seen a more ligament stretching crucifix. Garvin tied up Hammer's arms and slowly started pulling him back, and if you'd never seen a crucifix pin before you'd think Hammer was getting his arms slowly broken behind him. Valentine made his taking the move look more like a shoot pin than I'd ever seen, like his necktie was caught in a shredder and the more time he spent struggling the closer he was brought to his death. This match could have been All Hands and still been one of the best WWF matches of the decade, but Valentine knew how to take things higher. 

Doug Gilbert vs. Botswana Beast (Kimala II) Barbed Wire MECW 1999

MD: This was supposed to be One Man Gang vs. Doug and you can't just make a substitution late on a match like this and just expect it to work, but they made a pretty good effort overall. Gilbert went into the wire real early which was sort of the only logical way to do this (he took it right to Beast but couldn't actually whip him) unless you were going to take out a knee and keep it on the mat or something. So there wasn't exactly build and payoff. Instead, they actually went to the floor which I'm not sure I've ever actually seen in a barbed wire match. More than that, you had to rationalize Beast even being able to get out under the bottom rope without killing himself. That did allow Gilbert to get some reasonable offense with the chair and then, back in the ring toss Beast in at least once. He came back and had a fun marathon whipping of Gilbert into the wire again and again before dropping the splash. When he went for a second one PG-13 came out to break things up and smash Beast with the hubcap. Reno Riggins hilariously made the save with a chair, which he immediately put down before hitting anyone with it, thus allowing for himself to get swept under so Beast could make the save. Doug Gilbert's Bobcat Goldthwait faces made this work despite the substitution.

ER: Ever since I was the high voter on the Botswana Beast vs. Terry Gordy match from the World Class set, I feel a strong connection to Beast that might not actually be present in his ring work. I've always been fascinated by Beast/Kimala II/Uganda in a similar but different way than I'm fascinated by Gallagher II. Kimala II might have been the worst All Japan worker of the 90s, yet there he was wrestling 800 matches in the greatest workrate fed of the decade, dressed up as the shorter, fatter version of a guy whom everyone in attendance knew. I love that Kimala II existed, I sincerely love that Gordy match, and if he's the worst All Japan worker of the 90s then I love that he got to exist there during that whole magic era. This was from '99, when he was working ECW shows in the states between All Japan tours and is a fun spectacle without being much of a match. My favorite bits were all centered on Beast's low center of gravity, showing how impossible it would be for Doug to shove him into the ropes against his will. I loved that Irish whip spot where Doug pulled with all his might only for Beast's feet to slide a bit forward on the mat, before Beast whipped Doug into the barbed wire with the strength of Andre. 

John Cena vs. Samoa Joe WWE 8/26/17

MD: This was absolutely delightful. It checks so many boxes just from the start. A match we never thought we'd get. Unproduced house show footage, clear as day, from 2010s WWE. A hot crowd. Two larger than life wrestlers who knew exactly what they were doing working a house show style. It feels like a million years ago and I'd say it overdelivered my expectations. You listen to the crowd build and build and build as they take them up and down (but each high getting a little bit higher) and that's just what I want out of pro wrestling more often than not. 

I can't even tell you the last time I saw a Cena match. It was probably for FFF. We watched one in 2022. That was probably it. I think that was a house show too. I can't get over how simplistic, minimalist, straightforward this was. Joe won an early exchange and celebrated, the shine was basically just a build to Cena winning a shoulderblock and it feeling like a huge deal. Joe took over with one (and only one) punch in the corner. Cena went down like a ton of bricks.

He never really looked back. Cena would get hope spots because he was Cena and basically anything he did was a hope spot. He'd dash into the ring before Joe expected. He'd block a punch. He'd heft him up into a fireman's carry out of nowhere, but Joe dropped him each time. The fans got louder each time though. Until it was just Cena standing up in the corner that did it. Amazing stuff. Joe ran right through him then, but then, when it was repeated, Cena moved and that's when he got in his signature comeback stuff. Talk about rewarding the crowd for caring. They went into a ref bump and a phantom win before the actual one, adding in a bit of doubt to the proceedings. I'm not entirely sure that was necessary given the match they were wrestling, but it was no real harm overall. Just an amazing reminder how special these guys are.

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Found Footage Friday: TAJIRI~! HHH~! BABA~! EIGEN~! FURNAS~! MVC~! SPIVEY~!

Dr. Death Steve Williams/Terry Gordy vs. Dan Spivey/Doug Furnas AJPW 10/19/90

MD: I like Kroffat as much as the next guy, move even, but Spivey being in there instead increased the hoss level considerably. This was heated from the start too. Doc had it out for Furnas for some reason. He gave him the middle finger before the match. Furnas returned the favor by swinging a kick at him as he was squaring up with Spivey. Doc wiped his sweat in Furnas' direction. Furnas gave him the finger. Doc told him to kiss his butt. You get the idea. It's a good way to start a match. 

It doesn't let up from there. Furnas uses the three point stance to knock Gordy down, but Doc's able to grind Furnas down well enough that he makes sure to rush over and smack Spivey around a bit too, before mouthing off and maybe even spitting at him drawing Spivey in and it's just an absolutely chaotic feel early on.

What follows is about five minutes of the best wrestling you'll ever see. Doc catching Furnas in mid air and bringing him to the top rope, the two of them trading slaps and Furnas leaping over him to hit a belly to belly. Doc and Spivey smacking each other all the way out of the ring. Spivey hitting a bossman slam on Doc and boos ringing through the air as Gordy breaks it up. The place absolutely exploding as Furnas press slams Gordy only to eat a lariat. It's a hell of a five minutes before everything settles down to holds.

They take it down before building it back up and the overall effect is a hell of a thing. Gordy and especially Doc get a ton of heat. Furnas is able to clap up Spivey. There are a bunch of great nearfalls down the stretch before an extremely definitive ending but one that took that bit of extra effort. These are the sort of lost matches we hope to find.

ER: I love All Gaijin matches in All Japan because it's interesting to see how they can organically draw heat and interest without any kind of Nativism at play. No side is necessarily more loved or hated, only more established. Dr. Death understands that and leans into the MVC's established rep and for seemingly no reason goes hard on Doug Furnas. I have zero reason to believe there is any kind of animosity between Dr. Death and Doug Furnas, but everyone in this match made me believe there was. Doug Furnas was fairly established at this point. Not at the level of beating teams like Doc and Gordy, but already a two time All Asia tag champ who had beaten big teams. Doc quickly turns him into an underdog babyface which leads to a more spirited wild eyed performance from Spivey and some incredible payoff when Furnas finally starts throwing them around. 

Everyone was so good in this match that I fully bought into Doc and Gordy as two guys who actually hated Furnas (they didn't), Furnas as a guy out of his depth (he wasn't) and Spivey as a guy fearlessly telling MVC to back the fuck off and stop taking liberties with Furnas (they weren't, but at times it didn't seem like Spivey realized that). Doc was doing some performative middle fingers and phony baloney heat drawing across the ring while Furnas looked like a guy making the universal face of "Hey man I didn't do anything to you do you have the right guy?" You could tell Doc had the right guy when he sat Furnas on the top rope and slapped Furnas so hard to break. Furnas looked like Allen Covert and sold the slap by making the face that Allen Covert makes when his girlfriend leaves him in one of the few Sandler movies where that happens. Doc is great at bullying Furnas to rile up Spivey, and Spivey is that great combination of large and reckless and Just Getting Real Good so that he always gets too amped up on his first punch of an exchange and throws some potatoes before dialing back a little. He always looks ready to pop off, and it's a killer distraction from Furnas finally popping off. 

Doug Furnas gorilla press slamming Terry freaking Gordy - and the scared face Gordy makes while being held up high in that press - is an incredible spot. It would have been an amazing press slam anyway, but once Furnas added a pump it became an all timer. The crowd lost their minds at that press slam and that hyped Doug up so much he did a backflip and then ran as fast as he could into Gordy's biggest clothesline of the match. Doug finally suplexing Death was so cool. I love the way Doc bumps when he's reeling, just as I love when he decides one turnbuckle isn't enough for a stampede. MVC made damn certain that they were the bad guys here and were so convincing that the fans bought them as bullies against two of the toughest dudes. Terry Gordy out here getting booed over and over for breaking up pins and picking on Mega Athlete Doug Furnas.   

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura/Akira Taue vs. Harkua Eigen/Motoshi Okuma/Masa Fuchi AJPW 10/27/90

MD: This is a recent Classics drop and a Baba 30th Anniversary match. Jumbo gives him a plaque before the match and everything. This gets a ton of time, 20+ it feels like and it's just packed full of character and comedy. It's hard to do justice to it all or even half of it but I'll point out a few things.

First, Eigen, amazing as always, really shines at the start. He faces off against young Taue to start but then darts to the corner and slaps Baba before running out. They reset, he does the same thing but this time teases Baba and slaps Rusher. Then when facing off against Rusher, he ducks and slaps him twice before leading him to the corner for a long heat segment. They kick away at him forever before we ultimately get some goofy stuff with Okuma and headbutts. There are a ton of headbutts in this match and while Rusher gets some in, a lot of them are eaten by Taue.

Taue's a lot of fun here. I've seen every bit of 1990 footage we have of him and he wasn't there yet, but here he's got this sense of wild abandon, limbs flying and flopping about, that would soon be gone from him. He looks like he's going to become an entirely different wrestler here between his selling of the headbutts and a sort of physical recklessness.

This refuses to end, a lot of the normal things you think might end it getting broken up. They run some of the best Eigen spit spot stuff ever, as both Taue and Baba get to do it, with Baba getting it on his hand and everyone almost cracking up (and Kobashi cracking up decades later on commentary). Then Rusher goes for it, but he's blocked, and Baba comes in from the other side with a chop and it's pretty hilarious let me tell you. The finish is a fun combo of Taue hitting an atomic drop sending Okuma into Baba's foot and then right back into Taue's belly to back. My only regret is that they didn't repeat the atomic drop/boot sequence a couple of times first. Great fun that no dirtsheet would have appreciated at the time but that we can absolutely appreciate now.

ER: This is one of those Wrestling Heaven situations for me. I love my King's Road, and I love my boys. Give me 20 minutes of VILLAIN SHOKAI up to their old bullshit and the nuanced twists that come with every new 20 minutes. It's crazy how many ways they found to do their same bullshit slightly different over the years. You recognize the behaviors but there are always things they do different, things I've never seen, or realistically perhaps things I've seen a million times but don't care because they all work so well together that I don't ever get tired of them. All of these old men matches (Masa Fuchi was 36 lol) were written off unfairly by morose tape traders, so now everything in them is ripe for discovery. Nobody was talking about how great Haruka Eigen was when I got into trading, none of these guys were getting any kind of acclaim. We're long past that now.

Now, before this even starts, you just know Eigen is going to get up to shenanigans before Villain Shokai starts bringing headbutts and hamstring kicks. Eigen starting the match with a slap and run routine on Baba and Rusher is so classic, celebrating in the aisles with young boys you barely recognize, knowing he was going to get paid back down the stretch. A lot of these start with long heat on Kimura, eating boots and headbutts and selling the headbutts so believably (that happens here), but that's not where the match stays. I thought they did a great job integrating everybody and keeping Baba's involvement short and exciting. Villain Shokai made quick tags and this settled into me being excited watching an Akira Taue who didn't wrestle a single thing like my favorite wrestler Akira Taue. 1990 Taue is so cool as can see hints of the Taue that would be there just a couple years later but you'd only notice them if you were familiar with them. For the most part, he's a totally different guy with totally different offense and movement. 

His most important characteristic that he apparently always had, was his realistic approach to bumping. Watch how he sells an Okuma headbutt to the mouth, watch the way he falls with limbs flopping around and not in a controlled wrestling school back bump. The realistic bumps and selling were the things that instantly drew me to Taue at the end of the 90s, and with all the '90 Taue we have as evidence we can see that it's just who he is, a thing that would be near impossible to teach someone. He also has completely different offense and I love "elbowdrop Taue who doesn't use his giant feet in any way" but maybe I only love it because I know we're not far away from "big feet to face and the best chokeslams ever" Taue. 

You get so much tough guy sneaky prankster Eigen that you forget they had already started honing the Spit Spot this early. It's still early, as the front row all knows what's happening when it's happening, but nobody is holding up newspapers. People are fleeing, which only draws attention to one woman who is not moving at all while every other woman around her scurries to safety. Baba getting involved in Eigen's Spit is a thing that does not happen in most of these, and his involvement here brings two incredible moments: Baba clutching Eigen under the chin and clubbing his chest, only for Eigen to spit all over Baba's hand, leading to Baba wiping off his hand all over Eigen's head; then when Rusher is winding up to club Eigen, Fuchi intercepts his arm. While the two are locked in struggle, Baba creeps in from the other side and just knife edges Eigen. Taue's back suplex drops like a damn anchor. These 20 minutes always feel like 5 to me, something I never say about Modern Epic Wrestling. 

HHH vs. Tajiri WWE 1/25/03

MD: This is the sort of Vault drop that we're looking for, Hunter reign of terror match or no. Previously we only had a few minutes of this. With the introductions and post-match this is 30+ minutes. The biggest takeaway, past maybe how good Tajiri is here and how it's a shame we don't have a bunch of other 20+ minute matches with him from this era, is that Hunter consciously worked it differently than almost any other match of the period. Maybe even almost any other match of his career.

There's the whole bit about Hogan doing two extra bits of chain wrestling in his Japanese appearances (when it's more the reckless energy and Axe Bomber people should be looking at). To me, this was more about Hunter getting to work the sort of classic NWA Title match style that he didn't think the current WWE audience would appreciate. The problem was that he just didn't have the reps with it (which isn't really his fault). It meant he did the sort of stuff you'd expect him to be good at (feeding into headlocks and other holds) well, but when he tried some fancier escapes, it didn't quite click. The headstand escape to the headscissors was cute and all but people haven't clipped him basically comedically putting himself back into the hold to set up the positioning for it.

What did work were the transitions, the hope spots, the cutoffs. Hunter took over by clipping Tajiri with a clothesline on the handspring and that looked great. They worked a lot of hope spots given the time the match had to breathe and it meant when Tajiri did comeback, it felt momentous. Lots of moving parts and hoohah on the finishing stretch but the fans certainly got their money out of all of it. I loved hearing Earl talking up close too. That's something you'd rarely get in the heavily produced WWE, even in the early 00s. This just felt very different and refreshing in a sea of 2002-2003 Hunter matches I have memories of but really don't want to revisit.  

ER: I remember being 21 and reading about this match in the Observer and DVDVR but now I'm twice as old as I was then and my wants and priorities have changed. How far away, the post college years where my friends and I split an Observer subscription for several years and my friend Jason would use his work photocopier to copy even double issues for all of us. If this match had been taped, I would have traded for a tape to see this match. The 2025 version of doing that is me making 30 minutes of time to watch a HHH match. I'm glad I did. It closed a loop and lived up to its release. I love that it's shot handheld, I love the format, and I loved the story.  I always love the story of a guy who isn't World Title level getting a lengthy main event title match. If it exists, I'd be equally excited to see Brooklyn Brawler getting a long Shawn Michaels title match on a house show after winning a battle royal. 

HHH works this much more like a heel Bret Hart match and shows that he's better at that than when he's working his touring champion Flair match. Thank god this isn't his touring Flair match only in Japan. He's more execution focused than when he's in his Flair Entertainer mode and while I don't think he's anywhere near Bret as an execution guy there were several moments that I thought he looked a lot tighter than expected. He's better at bump as Bret than he is bumping as Flair and it made the match come off harder hitting than theatrical. Tajiri's kicks were great ways for him to storm back into the match and I liked how he would use them as unpredictable combos thrown at different body targets. HHH is bad at standing still making an "I'm waiting to be hit face" but much better at taking strikes that are less expected. We didn't have to see him hold his head a certain way as he waits to hair whip react to a punch, instead we just got Tajiri throwing kicks up and down his body. 

HHH as a guy working over shoulder back breakers is one of the coolest versions of HHH. Do more of that. Less Irish whips and more backbreakers! When Tajiri finally slips out the back of one of the backbreakers it's this great spot that looks like it's going to fall apart entirely and end in an awkward tangle but it somehow bumbles expertly into a clean sunset flip pin away from ropes. I thought for sure both men were falling and going to wind up in an ugly heap of blown spot but instead it made it all look like HHH was struggling to stop Tajiri's momentum. Tajiri using the Tarantula while the referee was out seemed like the one time where it would have been acceptable to let HHH Act. Just let him scream and NXT sell for a full minute while completely stuck, no ref to save him. I was disappointed that Tajiri maintained the 5 second rule. We didn't get enough of Tajiri maniacally refusing to break Tarantula. 

Tajiri kicking out of the Pedigree was something we all read about in 2003, but it plays far crazier than it reads. This is a detail I remember reading about. It was shocking to hear that Tajiri had kicked out of a Pedigree, but the details at the time actually downplayed what really happened. When it was reported, the reporting made it sound like the Pedigree was hit and Hebner - blinded by mist - took an eternity to make the count. That makes sense and it still sounded surprising that Tajiri kicked out. In actuality, the whole thing happened in under 10 seconds. Tajiri kicked out of the Pedigree less than 10 seconds after it was hit, which nobody else was doing in 2003. 

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Found Footage Friday: PUNK~! RED~! NUNZIO~! JUVI~! MARTINEZ~! HERMANN~!

Luis Martinez vs. Hans Hermann NWA Chicago 1960

MD: Another one that Charles posted a while ago that we're just getting to now. This one went through Lee first as the length would have probably had me deprioritize it. It's only five minutes but it's five very fun minutes with a few comedy spots that I've never seen before. Hermann had a foot on Martinez and was an evil German with a chin to match. He ground Martinez down early with nerve ("muscle") holds and the sort.

When Martinez took over, he never really looked back. He went for a waistlock and Hermann crashed his fists down to break it, but Martinez was gone and he punched himself. Legitimately funny spot. There were a few more like that, like Martinez darting out of the way as Hermann tried to club him in the ropes. That set up Hermann tied up in said ropes and the charging headbutts to the gut. The physics of Hermann going over for Martinez on things like a flying headlock takeover felt weighty to say the least (and Martinez accentuated it with a loud "Arriba!"). He put him down in short order after this flurry with a Thesz press.

Post match, there was a special spotlight segment with John Paul Henning (sic). This is third hand, as in I found it on the internet, but apparently Henning had to stop wrestling because during a riot, he slammed the door and locked it, leaving Sonny Myers out with the rioting crowd to get stabbed. 

Nunzio vs. Juventud Guerrera WWE 11/15/05

MD: The vault released this one fairly quietly a few weeks ago and we're just getting to it now. It was in Rome. Nunzio was wildly over. Juvi was more than happy to get heat in front of a crowd like that. This ended up being incredibly minimalist, way more than I would have expected, but they were eating up everything that happened so it worked.

Juvi was doing a thing where he'd go for a pin at almost every opportunity and it meant that every kickout got a pop and felt almost like a hope spot. He'd cut Nunzio off with kicks to the guts, nothing fancy, but they could do no wrong (and in my mind, they did no wrong). Eventually, Nunzio got the slice rocker dropper off the top and it felt like a finish but Juvi got a foot on the rope, which, in itself, felt like a signal to the crowd that Nunzio wasn't winning in the old WWE style. The Juvi driver that followed would have really signified that but Juvi picked him up at one and demanded another. That allowed Nunzio to slip up and over, get a backslide and listen as the place became unglued. Fun stuff with just an amazing crowd and two guys willing to just bask in the glory of it all.

ER: I'm not sure when it started, but at some point I started writing "Juvi" as "Juvy" and now there's no turning back. I think Matt's right on this one. He also goes Eddy to my Eddie so it's clear my Mexican nickname spelling is nowhere near as good as my taste in wrestling. But one thing I know is that people with real taste in wrestling think Juventud Guerrera is one of the greats. Now, 1997 Juvy is different than 2001 Juvy is different than 2005 Juvy and beyond, but they are all phases of Juventud and that attitude and insanity is lurking inside every iteration. In 1997 he was one of the most insanely athletic ring guys in history, an improviser with nutty ideas and offense that nobody else was thinking about, a guy outshining Rey Misterio on the weekend shows with a degree of danger. 

This was Juvy in 2005, in Rome, against an Italian man who reveals after the match that he can barely pretend to speak Italian phonetically. "Italia Numero Uno" is the kind of thing someone guessing at Italian would say, but for this match Nunzio is a regional hero fighting for a championship in front of 10,000 Italians. Except in no part of this match does Nunzio come off like the star, only the de facto star, because this is expert heel Juventud working a match in Italy in 2005 like he's heel Terry Taylor. Juvy is great at working as heel Terry Taylor. Don't go into this waiting for the springboard improv of 1997, this is Juvy being a smug prick and drawing real damn heat. There is absolutely no highflying in this (well, aside from Juvy taking a mighty high backdrop during Nunzio's fiery comeback) because Juventud is Terry Taylor. Nunzio is the only one who goes up top, and it leads to the greatest part of the match: while up top, Juvy sweeps his leg and Nunzio flies off the top onto his tailbone (a bump I don't really remember him taking) and then Juvy does the fucking funniest little strut that ends with a slow motion shoulder shimmy. Juvy's strut is everything and all I need to tell me how damn good this match is. Juvy could have worked all of this without a highspot - he does the Juvy Driver and picks it up at 1 - because he really didn't need them. He takes the Sicilian Slice perfectly and gets his foot on the bottom rope with expert timing and nonchalance, and you could hear the crowd realizing they wouldn't be seeing this ox-eyed prick defeated. Until he is, by his own smugness, and the roar is deafening. Juvy fully understood what could be accomplished within a stripped down "safe" WWE style, a totally different kind of star than he was a decade prior. 

CM Punk vs. Amazing Red WWE 5/14/05 

MD: Not a ton to say here. I didn't think they were totally on the same page during the comeback and down the stretch and that felt a little more on Red, but he worked well from underneath before that and got to show off a bit in general. Punk stood out though, adapting to what he thought they were looking for like he always did in these situations. Just canny stuff. Lots of being vocal, wrestling for the last row, trying to get the crowd engaged. Yes, he had a couple of flashy things like the curb stomp and his grapevined DDT finisher, but in general, he was working this like it was fifteen years earlier as a way to show his mettle and that he wasn't some spot-laden indy guy. A worker working.

ER: I feel for Amazing Red here. I had no idea he ever even got a WWE tryout, let alone after he had already been done with his first several year run in TNA. It was clearly a case of them making him work a restrained version of whatever his match would have been in 2005. By the early 2000s they weren't really letting tryout dark match guys go out there specifically to Wow the audience, they wanted them to work a basic face/heel match with Young Boy restrictions. Hey Amazing Red, go out there and show every one your armdrags and dropkicks and your inside cradle. Maaaaybe a sunset flip. Red is a guy capable of Amazing things timed very nicely, and he was basically not allowed to be Amazing or use his timing. 

But - and I can't say "lucky for Red" as this tryout clearly went nowhere for him - CM Punk went out there and had a superstar performance that made this crowd fully get behind a generic Young Boy. Punk kept the crowd engaged the entire time and worked like an asshole from the second he appeared through the entrance. It's a super vocal performance that made me want to go back and rewatch all of that 2004-05 Punk that I haven't watched since 2004-05, just to see how much of this kind of heel wrestling he carried over from the indies. He sold loudly but not theatrically, yelling not to be funny but in a way that stood out as unique. Not like "Barry Darsow Unique", not hammy noise, but noise like nobody else was making on 2005 WWE cards. Seeing how vocal Punk was made me wonder if everyone else on the roster is given directives to be as quiet as possible. Rob Conway, Sylvan Grenier, the Bashams, I don't remember any of these guys making noise in a 2005 WWE ring. Punk kept people invested with great selling - vocals being a big part of it - and small movements. He came off like an asshole but kept them there with details, like that punch to the jaw after a rope break or the way he absentmindedly shook out his arm long enough after Red had driven his knee into it that it would have been understandable if he never referenced it again. 

Red wasn't allowed to be Amazing, and it didn't matter because people wanted him to shut CM Punk up. This crowd bit so hard on Red's swinging DDT, 100% convinced that Punk was going down, and I think it was all because he made himself out to be a guy who people wanted to see get beaten. 

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Found Footage Friday: KNOBBS~! SAGS~! DREW~! TAYLOR~! YAHAMA~! CHOSHU~! KIDO~!

Chief Yaqui vs. Karl Kowalski 1/30/50

MD: This is worth watching, but I suggest doing it on mute. It's a fake audience track with sound effects and Bill Stern being particularly irritating and racist. A joke a minute and none of them good (well the one about how the white man wouldn't have made it further west than Hoboken if their opposition all fought like Yaqui was pretty good). The action itself, while clipped, was pretty good! Yaqui had a thousand little tricks when it came to getting presumably crowd pleasing little shots in with both his hands and his feet. Kowalski was bald and had a greased head gimmick, maybe.

When they took it to the mat, it was pretty gnarly, actually, not that you'd tell from the commentary. They got tied up pretty bad once or twice with some fairly unique leglocks and counters. At one point, Kowalksi had him upside down after jamming a rolling leglock type move and was peppering shots into the side. The finish was Yaqui locking in a sort of deathlock and rolling with it to turn it into a bridging pin. I'd like to see either of them in literally any other setting than this, but we're beggars and not choosers when it comes to footage from 1950.

Yamaha Brothers (Kantaro Hoshino/Kotesu Yamamoto) vs. Riki Choshu/Osamu Kido NJPW 1/24/79 

MD: This has been hidden for a couple of years but it was definitely new to me. This card had Jose Estrada vs. Fujiwara and I want to see Super Medico vs. Fujiwara, but we won't dwell on that. Let's just be glad for what we have. This is about fifteen minutes, JIP, and while maybe a little formless and back and forth, the wrestling is good. Choshu and Hoshino trade armholds early, but it gets kind of wild when Yamamoto comes in and just slaps the life out of Choshu repeatedly. You sort of wish this was the Choshu of a few years later to fire back. In general, Yamamoto looks great here.

There's a moment later on where Choshu comes in hot and hits a couple of double arm suplexes in a row and looks great, but some of his other fiery stuff doesn't hit like you'd expect from him. Hoshino's a little tank, like you'd expect, high impact charges into the corner, some nice teamwork with Yamamoto, and he matches up well with Kido, as he would for years to come. At one point Kido comes in with a bunch of bodyslams and it's funny because you're expecting takedowns and what not. There were some fun moments with clear momentum shifts and parallels. Yamamoto misses a giant turn around flying body press as Hoshino fails to hold on to his opponent and gets wiped out by his own partner. The finish is a similar set up with Choshu and Kido crashing into each other off the ropes. There wasn't a bad exchange in this one, but I'm not sure it all came together to form a coherent whole.

ER: I don't believe I have seen any 70s Yamaha Brothers so I had no idea what the hierarchical dynamics would be when I started this, but I was only excited to see a match with four extremely short legged men. You couldn't find shorter legs in 1979, this was the match for that. I'm so used to Kantaro Hoshino as a junior that I forget he was more beefed up in his 30s, but even then he and Yamamoto are still clearly smaller than Choshu and Kido...so color me surprised at how much of this was dominated by the Yamaha Brothers. The idea of Hoshino dominating Choshu or even Kido just a few years later is preposterous, but this gem takes us to the point in time where the Yamahas easily and efficiently cut Choshu off from Kido for the first half, peaking with Yamamoto just rocking Choshu with punches like he was Kurisu (Kurisu wrestled Hector Guerrero on this card by the way and holy god does 1979 Hector Guerrero vs. Kurisu sound incredible). Yamamoto really comes off like a supreme badass every time he's in the ring. At one point he gets swarmed by Kido and Choshu and in mere seconds he winds up holding both of them by the jaw in headlocks, standing on the bottom buckle, threatening to remove their mandibles from their heads until Hoshino comes in and punches Choshu to the floor. The hierarchy was so damn different in 1979, which is why something like this showing up is such a treat.   

Drew McIntyre/Dave Taylor vs. Nasty Boys WWE 11/20/07

MD: Look, if you're reading this, you're reading it to see what Eric has to say. I'm reading it for what Eric has to say. I included it to see what Eric has to say, and I'm sure that'll be here soon if it's not already. Let me say just a few things. My understanding is that the Nasties lied about the shape they were in and were there to show off in front of a bunch of their buddies in the front row. Knobbs comes out and hugs a bunch of people and Sags has a long talk with one kid. They're super over. They come out to a version of their song I'm not familiar with (I know the "We're the Boys; we're the boys... the Nasty Boys" one). This had a Janet Jackson rip off to start and sampled lines from Gorilla and the Brain. Big Nasty Boys chant to start too. 

And you know what, I kind of dug the first half. They had a ton of heft behind everything they did. Drew was demonstrative and working big. He called out Sags which... I don't get why but it was kind of funny. I could have absolutely seen them have a 2 year run as sort of ambassadors and doing high school things like the Bushwhackers; they were about the same age as the Sheepherders when they signed in the late 80s and they obviously knew how to work a crowd and come off as stars. It felt almost like watching the Freebirds in 92. The back few minutes were pretty rough though. After Sags hit the craziest pumphandle slam I've ever seen (I was kind of glad to see it since I always wondered what would happen if someone took a slightly higher angle on the drop, like a powerbomb, and now I know!) he sort of just stood around for Drew to kick him for a brief, very brief, bit of heat leading to miscommunication and then casually walked over to make a hot tag. Brutal stuff. And of course the finish didn't work at all. So not a lot of gas in the tank but that's not to say there wasn't any at all. 

ER: So this dropped just a few days before we wrote about it, and I didn't watch it until last night, but all I saw written about it was how the Nasty Boys were unprofessional sacks of shit who went out there completely out of shape and took advantage of poor young greenhorn Drew McIntyre, and how Dave Taylor (in his second to last match in WWE) looked outraged on the apron and broke character to tell off the Nasty Boys. They showed up looking like complete shit to pop their weird Tampa friends and children of those friends, fucked up a young innocent boy with no Arab strap and embarrassed the business in the process. The Nasty Boys have brought shame to professional wrestling. For three days now I've been picturing how the fucked up, fat, somehow same age as me now, unprofessional Nasty Boys were going to mess this kid up like a PG version of Ian Rotten vs. Peter B. Beautiful and when I finally watch it...

It's a totally professional kind of impressive match that's far better and more interesting than at least 75% of the dark tryout matches we've ever seen. Dark tryout matches have a ceiling of quality. They are 3-6 minutes. Sometimes you reach nirvana and get Vic Grimes vs. Erin O'Grady. I saw a 2003 Psychosis tryout match against Jamie Noble and it was fine. My friends and I weren't expecting to start our night with a Psychosis match and we were all excited at the surprise and it was fine. He did the rope flip bump on the back of his head, and I still remember it 20 years later so that means It Worked. That's the ceiling for a dark trout match tryout, and this Nasty Boys tag was a good one.  

It was also a totally normal match and not a single thing looked out of sorts or unprofessional to my eyes, and honestly I came away thinking the Nasty Boys would have been worth a shot as a team working house show undercards in 2007. This was a roster that had Jim Duggan and had just had Tatanka and Road Warrior Animal. I really liked each one of those runs and thought nostalgia Legends Contracts acts would be far more interesting if used in an All Japan Old Man style division instead of [camera pans to Faarooq saying Damn]. A Legends Division (which shouldn't be titled and should just exist as a thing but they wouldn't be able to resist calling it a Legends Division) that would allow one of them to occasionally break out of the old man trios matches into a short feud with a younger wrestler would be a thing that would make me watch WWE television again. 

The Nasty Boys hadn't appeared on any kind of wrestling television in over 10 years before this match and came out with a theme song I have never heard anywhere else before that sounded like a cut up Steinski break of their original theme, and the fans in Tampa reacted. That's important. It's good to have acts on your show that get reactions, who then work for the next 5 minutes to sustain those reactions. I was made to believe that the Nasty Boys were goof off/jerk offs and instead they just got a crowd invested in a match the way Brett and Brian Major or John Morrison or The Miz 100% did not do 20 minutes later. I said I saw no moments of unprofessionalism or even sloppiness, and I mean that. Knobbs looked as fat as I've ever seen him and was wearing a XXXL Nasty Boys blouse but had several moments where I thought he was going to punish Drew and instead just worked like a good heavyweight. There was one moment where Drew was selling a shoulderblock too long and was sitting up instead of lying down for the elbowdrop Knobbs was waiting to hit, and when Knobbs shoved him back to the mat I thought for sure McIntyre was toast. Knobbs hit a big heavy elbowdrop, but it was not an unprofessional amount of weight. Have any of you actually watched the 1991-1993 Superstars and Wrestling Challenge matches? They fucked job guys up every single week. Everybody did. Toughen up, boyo. 

The toughest thing about this match was Sags lighting Drew up with chops that should have been enough to get Sags signed and put into a Mad Max team with Road Warrior Animal, because tell me a 2007 Animal/Sags team doesn't actually sound cool. Jerome Saganowich would have looked and worked so much better in a revamped Road Warriors team than Droz or Heidenreich ever did. Nasty Warriors. God that would have been great. Based on his chops and his pump handle slam I see no real differences between 2007 Jerry Sags and 1993 Kensuke Sasaki. 

Dave Taylor is the person who didn't do enough in this match. I liked the way the Nastys kept him out of the match down the stretch with punches and elbows to knock him off the apron, otherwise he just peaced out of strike exchanges that could have actually taken this match to Dark Tryout Match Nirvana. Brian Knobbs threw three unanswered punches to the side of Taylor's head and it was the perfect opportunity to show Knobbs what the locker room thought of him with a pair of uppercuts, but Taylor just took a hiptoss and stood on the apron the rest of the time. Drew showed good timing in feeding for a returning nostalgia act in what was actually the longest stretch of time he was in the ring in any of his WWF matches to that point. Drew was trusted to stay in the ring for an extra minute or two with two guys making a 10 year return, and he did great. His visual reaction to a hot tag is one of the little things he did that you could tell he was going to keep getting better. 

The finish was botched but was a split second from being a direct hit Beverly Brothers Wrestling Challenge intro exclamation point. Drew would have suffered a head injury and been given a role as the slow third member of The Highlanders. The Nasty Boys should have been signed. In 2007 would you have rather seen the Nasty Boys every few weeks, or Deuce & Domino? You know the answer. Have Cherry manage the obese Nasty Boys and give her a Lisa Langois Class of 1984 punk look instead. This was better than both Morishima dark matches and it wasn't close. 

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