Found Footage Friday: DOUBLE DUSTY~! MURDOCH~! SUPER DRAGON~! taro~! BOSS MAN~! IVAN & SHEIK~!

Dusty Rhodes/Dick Murdoch vs. Iron Sheik/Ivan Koloff GCW 4/3/83

MD: Another recent vault drop. It's a Texas Tornado match and it's a shame we don't have the whole card as it has Buzz vs Masked Superstar, Tito/Blair vs Arn/Borne, Larry vs Tommy, and Flair vs Atlas. BUT we will take what we can get. Heels have Homer O'Dell out with them. Dusty vs Sheik feels like a really unique match up. There's some great pro wrestling bs at the start as the announcer says that Sheik has requested the fans not chant USA USA.

The Outlaws are such a blast in this setting. A lot of it feels like Dusty doing his thing and Murdoch knowing exactly how to riff off of it. They'd throw double elbows or simultaneous punches or pingpong people between them or as part of a comeback. At one point they each took a leg and dropped an elbow (though Dusty didn't go all the way down which was funny). When the heels were able to pry one off and double team, Dusty was great at throwing himself to break up the pin (Sheik did that once or twice too). We don't have a ton of Outlaws footage and to see them conduct a crowd like this and the sheer fluidity in how they worked together is just magic.

This made good use of the rules by stressing that there were none. That meant that Murdoch could toss people over the top. It meant that at one point they grabbed a belt and used it as a weapon, just like that. It meant O'Dell could break up pins. And it especially meant that he could take Dusty out with a cane shot. Apparently he was taken to the back to get bandaged up though we don't see it. That left it two-on-one against Murdoch and he knew exactly what he was doing there too. Biggest pop of the match was him kicking out when both men were pinning him at once. He'd get comebacks but ultimately swept under, setting up the bandaged Dusty coming back and chasing the heels off. Wonderful stuff that set up the following month's bullrope/chain match as they couldn't get away then.

ER: This is from a new Dusty mixtape but it felt like it belonged on the WWE Vault's Dick Murdoch Mixtape that doesn't actually exist. Dusty is getting bandaged up for a long stretch, returning right at the end, which gives us a chance to see how great Murdoch was at working 1 on 2. We all know how great Murdoch was, but handicap matches are tough to work and most people aren't good at them. Murdoch could have been, if it ever made sense to put him in one. This was Texas Tornado rules and I think that format benefitted the pairing. I can't imagine a long Sheik/Ivan control segment would have been worth the hot tag it led to, so seeing the ebbs and flows of Murdoch and Dusty punching the hell out of these two lawless foreigners is the best version of this match. Murdoch knew exactly what to do as Dusty's partner in the TX Outlaws. During the first half there were all these little moments where each man was doing his own thing, and Dick would come in to add a little punctuation to some poetry Dusty had just finished writing. I love all Murdoch punches, but the best was when Dusty was setting up the Flip Flop & Fly without noticing Murdoch moving in, and as Dusty was throwing the payoff punch to Sheik, Murdoch landed one at the same time. Southern Synergy. 

Texas Tornado matches can often have too many instances of bodies getting in the way of other bodies, but Murdoch is a natural at moving through the chaos without slowing down. He was so good at little punctuations, like when Dusty knocked Koloff flat on his back, and as Murdoch casually walks out of the corner to go after Sheik, he stomps Koloff's face as he passes by. The 2 on 1 was really fun and led to Sheik bumping far bigger than I was expecting. The madman from Iran takes two big bumps over the top to the floor, and the guardrail was so close to the ring that his leg gets hung up on it as he's falling! When Sheik and Koloff were pinballing away from Murdoch throwing punch combos from his knees, it's perfect heel feeding and perfect babyface timing.  Murdoch is great at moving between the two as he fights to his feet, never leaving them standing and selling for too long, a man who always knows where he needs to be. 

Dusty makes his triumphant return with a bandage that makes him look like sassy Rambo, and everyone in the Omni loses their minds, except for depressed Omni Superfan Donald Sutherland, who holds the front row hostage every week with his arms folded, a man forever unmoved by the most charismatic wrestlers in history. 

Dusty Rhodes vs. Big Boss Man WWF (Toronto) 10/29/89

MD: There's a moment midmatch where Boss Man has on a hold which one might graciously call an "armbar." Boss Man is making a face that represented the exertion of effort and he was sweating enough that you bought into it. Dusty was making a face that showed the world that the world was painful. I am usually not a stickler for details such as this, but it was not a very good armbar, ok? But it didn't matter. Because Dusty simply turned his hand upwards, flexed his fingers a bit, asked the crowd to come up for him, to help him, to be there for him, to participate, to make noise, to be part of this match and this moment, and they did. 

It was enough. 

Because Dusty was Dusty. Because Boss Man was huge. Because they wanted to be there to see them. Because someone in the back row probably couldn't see the hold all that well but their eyes gravitated to the faces and the faces were larger than life. 

And he asked them. Dusty Rhodes, who himself was larger than life, flexed those fingers. There's some kid in that crowd, someone who had worked a full shift before dragging themselves to the stadium, some old lady who had seen cheered for Billy Watson decades ago.. and Dusty was asking them to come up for them.

And they did. 

And more and more as the match went on, he would reward them. Just as he rewarded them preemptively at the start by stepping on Slick's hand when it was on the apron pre-match. Late in the match he'd reward them by dodging an Avalanche so that Boss Man went careening into Slick. And at the end? As he sent Boss Man reeling, Traylor making up for the dubious hold with brilliant physical charisma as he bounced off the top rope and then the second rope, Dusty would send them over the top by diverting a Slick nightstick shot into Boss Man's head and picking up the win. 

Once upon a time I might have grumbled about this. Plenty of people still will grumble at it. Now? I see how it's so much more impressive to create something out of nothing than far, far less than the something Dusty created here out of far far more. 

ER: A much better match than their SNME match that was taped two days later. That match ended with a weak roll up and had unnecessary arm work instead of dancing, not enough of a big fat guy swaying from punches and elbows. Dusty was on fire here, and Boss Man was great at being a huge young guy setting up every Dusty strike. Boss Man had some material I've never seen, a real guy who keeps giving the more footage you watch. There's a lot of great Boss Man that's just hiding in plain sight, a gifted worker who has aged sneakily well. We've all seen the incredible All Japan 1993 but Traylor is a guy who looks really great through way more years than we talked about at the time. 

There's a fantastic rhythm to this match, like everyone took Dusty's lead and made this into Parappa the Rapper with elbows and a nightstick. When Dusty is dancing in the ring with Boss Man's stolen nightstick, Boss Man is so fed up and humiliated on the floor that he starts banging the apron while hopping down the length of the apron. Five big hopping open handed swats, bopping down the length of the apron, Slick and Boss Man banging out their own Robbert Loggia-Tom Hanks long piano. Boss Man tops himself later when he lands a swinging punch on the floor, punctuated with two lateral hopping apron slap beats before landing the punch on 3. I don't know that I've ever seen so much apron work from Boss Man and it's because NBC didn't want to let him show his rhythm. He rocks and sways for Dusty the effeminate snack charmer, the finish showing off Boss Man's legendary rope work. Dusty elbowing Boss Man into the top rope, into the middle rope, all the way across the ring into Stick's errantly swung nightstick. A flat on his back knock out ending on its biggest beat. 

Super Dragon vs. TARO LXW (New York) 9/27/03 - EPIC

MD: Traveling match as Dragon vs TARO take New York. Apparently TARO had no idea this was taped until it popped up a month ago. Fun (and as you'd expect, brutal) showcase in front of a crowd that probably didn't know what they were getting into. Lots of Dragon basing for TARO. Lots of body contact in general. We have endless reversal sequences now but these two had a way of chaining one attempt to a reversal to the move all while Dragon had TARO up or was catching him in mid air. It creates a different sort of effect where it's less do-si-do somehow, almost as if there's a better application of pro wrestling physics at play. 

Likewise there was a sense of escalation. Armdrags and headcissors to the start, strikes and grinding holds in the middle, a dive to change chapters, and bombs at the end. On the dive, TARO's button gimmick really did feel fifteen years too early. That would have been over huge in 2018. On the bombs, Super Dragon's buckle bomb hits so much better than anyone else's because he almost makes it a sit out with the roll back that follows it. I imagine the people in the crowd couldn't believe some of the kickouts and felt that the lariat that ended it might have been a little anticlimactic. At the same time, one thing I appreciated was the commentary going up for things like a dodged chop or Dragon just chucking him across the ring, even as much as some of the tricked out offense. The lines were less clear back then. If the crowd was at all thrown by the finish, they would soon get it over with the head crunching punctuation Dragon put on things after the match. I'd say that this was what they'd all be talking about in the car on the way home, but the next match was Corporal Robinson vs Necro Butcher so who knows. 

PAS: This as a touring match is pretty fucking crazy. There is something about Taro and Super Dragon doing this to each other in a warehouse in Southern California, as an attempt to start something, or change something, which makes sense. But to just take this on a tour? Do this as the third match on the card? Justin Credible in the back stretching and warming up (to wrestle La Parka, what the fuck was this show? As grody and violent as these guys ever got, nothing in wrestling was ever as sick as what Super Dragon would do to his friend Taro, and this match was loaded with stuff I have only ever seen in this match. A running liger bomb into the corner? A suplex using the horns of Taro's mask? A tapitia flipped into a powerbomb? Fucking hell. Super Dragon did a Psicosis corner bump as hard and fast as it has ever been done, in case you thought this was a one sided mauling. Unbelievable stuff, what a pair of demented psychos. 

ER: This Super Dragon YouTube channel has been such a great personal gift. As Segunda Caida's only ever West Coast representative, we grew up with completely different scenes and regional styles. Indy wrestling was at its most regional in 2001-2004, Bay Area style different from LA style, different from New Jersey style, different from Pittsburgh, different from Georgia, different from Kentuckiana. It was my incomparable favorite time to be a wrestling fan. I saw the West Coast style first hand in the best wrestling years of my life, and I bet Super Dragon was a guy I saw live more than almost anyone. Michael Modest, Donovan Morgan, RevPro/Early PWG guys, Boyce LeGrande, Bryan Danielson somehow, Jardi Frantz, Vinnie Massaro, Larry Blackwell. Those were my guys, who I drove my friends to see in my 1987 Chevy Astro van. 

This channel has given me back so many Super Dragon matches I was at with friends. It's given me back memories of Super Dragon matches I had somehow forgotten, like when I watched myself reacting to Super Dragon/Bobby Quance on the hard cam. I saw Super Dragon live at least a dozen times at the APW Gym, front rows only on three sides of the ring. I saw a Dragon/TARO match a year before this match, and I've seen plenty of tags with Super Dragon/TARO pairings. I love these two. The first RevPro tapes I traded for were shows from July 2000, and their earliest matches are just as good as their latest. TARO is one of those great regional finds from that special era. A flyer with great daring ideas and under a hundred matches; one of several guys who got talked into regularly letting Super Dragon drop them on their heads. He had to have been Dragon's most frequent opponent, and they had years of ideas for each other. 

Super Dragon had a Psicosis/Rey, SUWA/Dragon Kid level base for TARO's imagination, and their matches felt like nothing was off limits and real damage had to be happening. They were strong at placing the biggest spots of their matches, smart about match pacing and still surprising. There are consequences to the matches and the selling is perfect in the same way I think Jersey All Pro selling from the same time was perfect: the realism, stiffness, and the innovative ways to drop guys head first with suplexes was actually happening. They were enduring actual shit kickings. Whatever selling we were seeing, we were seeing a guy actually getting his nose smashed full speed into a turnbuckle, actually thrown unprotected onto his head and neck by the horns. Deranged, TARO, Orion, Nate Webb et al can sell any way they want. They were taking real life damage. Every TARO match is a reason why TARO had less than a hundred matches.  

There's so much to see, so many bumps, so many exchanges that never quite go the way you think they're going to go, so many things you may only see in one of their matches and never in anyone else's matches. This had a sitout buckle bomb that was so precisely and violently executed, a swinging fireman's carry splash mountain. and a suplex so damned it could only come from our early 2000s era of head drop innocence. Just like Jersey All Pro guys from the same era, they knew how to get to big moments in creative ways. TARO hit what had to be one of the earliest topes into a tornado DDT, but it came after Dragon had wrapped himself around the ringpost in that way he does, which was different from Cassandro's way, which was different from Psicosis's way. Setting up a big high spot with a big bump in stead of a big spot causing a big bump. They understand set up and payoff and escalation. There was a moment that felt like something Tully Blanchard would have thought up: Dragon prevents TARO from crotching him on the top buckle by bracing himself, but deservedly Mutumbos TARO and gets his legs swept out from under him into a worse crotching. I don't know if I ever loved wrestling more than when I was 22 years old.   

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SUPER DRAGON

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Found Footage Friday: WAR GAMES~! DUSTIN~! GOLDUST~! CW~! BUNDY~! CORINO~! A BALDWIN BROTHER~! HOGAN~!

Hulk Hogan vs. King Kong Bundy WWF 1/20/86

MD: Lost Minneapolis house show footage from the Vault. We get glimpses of Harts vs Bees and the full Bundy vs Hogan match, including Heenan laying into a very familiar crowd. "You know, you people..." It's about thirty words and it's perfect. Hogan's out with the bandana in his mouth. That's the era we're in.

Interesting structure here as Bundy attacked Hogan first with the bandana and then with the belt with some pretty nasty shots before the bell. Hogan hulked up early, hit the axe bomber, and tossed Bundy out, nailing him with a chair. Bundy came back with an avalanche for the transition. I don't usually think of that of a transition move but it worked here. Then Hogan had to fight from underneath. He hulked up again, did more brawling on the floor (at some point Bundy started bleeding), hit the legdrop and actually pulled him up at two so Heenan could interfere and they could keep the feud going. 

Post match, Heenan held Hogan's leg so Bundy could hit the splashes and Steamboat made the save with the most over the top kung fu poses possible. He took his shoe off as a weapon. Heenan came back with HIS boot off, and Hogan got to make the save on the guy making the save for him before they both posed. We only have so much of the Hogan/Steamboat pairing but it is a lot of fun, especially post-match when Hogan cut a backstage promo about the energy of the universe and the ninja showing him the dark side while Steamboat made funny noises. 

ER: I'm glad they gave us a couple minutes of Hart Foundation/Killer Bees even if the most revelatory thing about it was how fucking cool beard Jim Brunzell looks in HD. Bearded Brunzell looks like a tanned stud who would beat James Brolin's ass and replace him on Hotel without anybody saying shit. He usually looks like an orthodontist. It also offers us some long crowd shots, beautiful crowd shots that offer us people we've never seen, a deep range of winter Minnesotans with great tight fitting 50/50 blend t-shirts no matter the body side, and a pornographic amount of snap front caps. 

The main was real good, a violent brawl in front of an off route arena crowd. One of the best things about any newly released WWE Vault match has been the sound quality. The sound is incredible on those Omni shows, and it makes house shows pop like the hottest 80s territory wrestling. The ways the sound highlights what's happening in the ring adds to every strike and every weapon crash. Bundy fucking murders Hogan with an early match belt shot, stripping it from his waist and swinging it as hard as he could at the back of Hogan's neck. It sounded like a Hogan getting brained with a slapjack. Beyond Bundy hitting a 1999 level weapon shot, he had a lot of really impressive worked offense. It's one thing for Bret to pull his weight and never hurt anyone on his elbowdrop, but Bundy has so much more weight to pull. He protects Hogan on everything - smart time to tighten up your work and secure the biggest monthly paydays of your life - but all of it looks really great. Precise worked kneedrops always amaze me, the distribution of weight that goes into the best of them. Bundy's is so tight that I'd love to see footage of him testing it out on and not breaking eggs. Is Yokozuna's legdrop our Fattest great worked "drop"? 

I was surprised when the legdrop came so early and exclaimed aloud when Hogan pulled him up at 2 and started punching him. But I appreciate that Hogan's two best punches were thrown at Heenan standing on the apron, short targeted staccato rights to Heenan's forehead before Bundy pulled him off and Heenan held Hogan's legs down for the splash. Even with Tito and Steamboat on the card I'm sure nobody else sold two punches better than Heenan sold Hogan's two. 

WAR GAMES! Team JBL (CW Anderson/Elix Skipper/Hernandez/Homicide/Steve Corino) (w/John Bradshaw Layfield) vs. Team Slaughter (Dustin Rhodes/Kirby Mack/Rick Steiner/Scott Steiner/TJ Mack) (w/Sgt. Slaughter) Sadler UWF 9/21/07

MD: Speaking of things we've somehow never covered. The KrisPLettuce Patreon got its hands on all these Sadler UWF shows. Certainly worth a look. This has Slaughter out to Born in the USA which is not something I remember him coming out to often. Hebner does the coin toss and jaws with the fans about Bret. The one liners between Slaughter and JBL are not great. Obviously JBL wins. Someone in the crowd shouts out "the heel always wins" long before the toss. Best not to overthink it. 

This is honestly a pretty good Indie War Games. You start with Dustin and CW Anderson for the five minute period, playing up Dusty and Arn in the classic, obviously. Dustin is in the midst of his Black Reign gimmick at his heaviest but he's going to be in there for 25+ and damn it if he doesn't make a showing of it. People point to this as a disqualifying period and this match certainly seems like a counterargument to that.  They worked a nice little mini-match here with CW feeding for Dustin's strikes (all looked great) and Dustin running into the spinebuster, having to fight his way back. 

Just when he had things under control, it was Corino's time to come in, and they worked a comedy spot or two before taking over. In general, I thought the balance was really good with this one. You had a lot of unique elements, like Hernandez who could just come in and throw people around or Rick Steiner who in his mid-40s could make a believable impact without seeming overly gimmicky (Scott was a bit more so). The Macks were quite adept at getting thrown around. And there was novelty in having Homicide in there teaming with Corino or facing off against Dustin. Skipper was the only guy who felt a little out of place to me. 

It was ultimately pretty chaotic and hard to follow at times, as you'd expect, but that had its own wealth of riches, like looking away from one side of the ring only to see Dustin slamming Corino's head between the rings like a plunger over and over. Finish was silly, with JBL and Slaughter getting involved, even if they did cover it with a simultaneous submission, and it never quite went as bloody as you might have wanted, but overall, it was a pretty well put together War Games with a lot of talent interacting in interesting and unique ways. 

ER: We were all so convinced that we had already covered this match that we had multiple text threads across multiple apps trying to figure out why we hadn't already covered it. I assumed Phil had already covered every single War Games match, but somehow this is THE ONE WAR GAMES that has not been written about by any Segunda Caida member. When Dustin watched our DEAN~! 2 show with us, I wish I had known about this match when the discussion turned to what our favorite War Games matches were. He was obviously proud of his daddy's match concept and was in three straight years of them. I had no clue he was ever in a non-WCW War Games, or that it was one of the three best War Games he'd been involved in. 

Before Slaughter and JBL do the coin toss, some "smart" fan yells out that "the heel always wins the coin toss". Yeah smart guy, you showed 'em all. Nobody wants to see a fucking War Games where the babyfaces have a constant advantage, but there will always be wrestling fans who think they cracked the code about how basic storytelling works. It's like how my dad will turn to my mom and say "Told ya" when a TV/movie character who is clearly the bad guy turns out to be a bad guy. Some people will always seek mysteries to solve while others have long moved past the need to search for mysteries than never pretended to be mysterious. 

I typically hate modern applications of "lore" but I love that this match started with Rhodes and Anderson. It's the best possible throwback to the original classic but also two guys who make logical sense to start a War Games and be in the entire match. I love that heel CW has a manager who needs to be pushed in a wheelchair. This is clearly not a heel manager faking injury that will lead to his chair being tipped over, our heel enforcer just has an actual invalid as a manager and that will sadly never present us with a difficult "wouldn't hit someone with glasses" scenario. Anyway, the whole War Games is shockingly good. I knew the floor would be high just from seeing half of the people involved, but it hit a high note in the first five minutes and I thought maintained that level through all new entries. Some entries were less than others: Rick Steiner accidentally got in the middle of other people's sequences 3x more often than he actively did anything, Kirby Mack looks like the clear worst of the Mack brothers, and Elix Skipper does a couple moves so convoluted that nobody - including Brad Stutts on commentary - could have guessed that it was actual offense he was delivering rather than taking. 

Everyone else though? Everyone else showed up. CW lights Dustin up with elbows during their 5 minutes and goes on to work smart sequences with everyone all match, great at taking TJ's offense, great at stooging when necessary. Dustin works insanely hard all match. I remember watching the Black Reign era and always thinking there were occasional glimpses of Dustin in there but assumed they put him in super short matches because he could no longer go. Nope. Here he is smack dab in the middle of Black Reign and he's breaking out offense I've never otherwise seen from him. He comes off the top rope multiple time, with diving elbow attacks and I can't recall any time past age 25 when Dustin even went to the top rope. TJ Mack is a Hardys trainee but wrestles like a Marufuji acolyte. The thing is he does Marufuji spots with more snap and sounder physics, like the Billy Kidman of Marufujis. He's great at being the guy every heel goes straight after when they enter the match. Homicide murders him with a quick series of strikes and suplexes, Hernandez comes in and press slams him from one ring to the other, he takes a Border Toss from one ring to the other, I'm kind of shocked he wasn't the one to take the Clothesline from Hell. 

There wasn't going to be blood, but the action was strong and the energy level being kept high the whole time elevated things. I expected a lot more lying around time, but these men were here to work. Far exceeded expectations, fits in nicely within the War Games pantheon. I don't think WWE has done one better. 

Goldust vs. Dean (Shark Boy) Baldwin Tribute Championship Wrestling 3/2/13

MD: Somehow this escaped our gaze for years and years, but better late than never. Dean Baldwin is Shark Boy... with a Baldwin brother gimmick, including someone from "hollywood" hyping him up and three valets and a tracksuit. There is a fake Shark Boy as the ref. Dustin is Goldust in between runs. A scene has been set for you.

This was, unsurprisingly, a ton of fun. Match was straightforward. Baldwin would run spots with Goldust, running into a shoulder block or arm drags, then head out to complain and stall and whine. Goldust eventually went out after him. He got over with a banana peel and stayed over with cheapshots even though Dustin did pretty well with his comebacks. He was working this crowd hard, skidding his feet on a backslide or really kicking the leg to get the fans going for a chinlock, just working huge for the back row even though he was also working small from underneath given that Baldwin was tiny compared to him.  

He hit a bunch of his signature stuff on the comeback but it came to the ref losing the mask (beats me who it was) to hit the stunner setting up the final reckoning. Post match they did all the bs you'd want: the shattered dreams, a kid posing with dustin and the ref (re-masked), the valets leaving with Dustin, Baldwin throwing a tantrum, Dustin paying attention to every individual kid in the place. No idea how we'd never seen this one before.

ER: Dean Baldwin looks more like an unsuccessful Jamie Kennedy brother than an unsuccessful Baldwin brother, but he perfectly understands what it's like to be a phony Hollywood douchebag. Coming out to Weezer's "Beverly Hills", a song so bad that it might be the only song that has ever made me spit out my drink the first time I heard it. We got it into our college radio station one Friday afternoon, threw on track one, and I don't think any of us could have possibly expected music this putrid. I sprayed my water out in a fine mist. Had "We Are All on Drugs" been track 1, I may have choked to death. 

This was several months before Goldust was triumphantly brought back to WWE, on his comeback trail to show he was in shape and ready to have TV classics again. In 2013 he was healed up, trimmed up, tapping back into the things that always made him a great babyface. This is pure indy wrestling, a former star on the mend or on the spiral, working in a middle school gym in a small Midwest village that's close enough to major civilization. This is was indy wrestling always was before the 2001 boom, gymnasium shows giving people a chance to see someone that had been on TV for years, filled with kids who likely have no idea who the big TV star even was. Knowledge or no, everyone recognizes Goldust's effective babyface beats, and he works hard to remain underdog and make the smaller Baldwin seem like someone who could control. 

While I would have preferred seeing him work someone with size, like Daniel Baldwin, I thought Dean's punches played as great heel punches (helps when you have a babyface this good at reacting to punches) and Goldust knew how to bump to make him more effective. My favorite Goldust bump was the way he took Baldwin's kitchen sink knee, tumbling painfully and leaning into the bottom rope as he came up holding his stomach. My favorite part was the early match magic show, where Goldust punched and slapped Baldwin around ringside, letting all the kids see up close and personal how good he was smacking this guy around. I can only imagine how much I would have lost my mind if my middle school's gym ever hosted a wrestling show, and Goldust knew exactly how that must have felt. 

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Found Footage Friday: WWF 1998~! AUSTIN~! TOO SEXY~! AGUILA~! FAAROOQ~! CACTUS~! TAFKA GOLDUST~! QUEBECERS~!

WWF House Show Anaheim 3/13/98

Mr. Aguila vs. Brian Christopher

MD: This was the good stuff. I can't imagine anything else on the show is going to reach this level. Christopher was as on as a human being could possibly be. Fascinating reactions to things, fascinating creative choices. He went for a German out of the corner and Aguila landed on his feet. Yet he celebrated like he had just tossed him across the ring. Surely, he would have felt... well, no matter. Then he ate a massive dive and sold his throat for some reason. I enjoyed it. He had some really nice offense too, not just the power bomb down the stretch but a Stroke and this Bulldog which for some reason Aguila decided to sell by compacting himself in a seated spot. Story of his comeuppance was going for the same thing twice and then having it backfire on him in the most spectacular way possible (bulldog #2 let to him crotched in the corner). Really, this was Christopher wound up and given room to run as fast and as far as possible to amazing results.

ER: I love how long they both took coming to the ring. We've never seen Aguila take this long to walk to the ring, and because of that this is the most we have ever heard of Aguila's music. This is the clearest this theme has ever been played. We're learning more about WWF Aguila than ever before, as this is also a clear beautiful look at his gear. This is a GREAT set of gear on Aguila, great use of bright color against white, Lisa Frank color with a clean white canvas. He uses that canvas to paint something beautiful, like the sequence where he knocked Christopher down with a spinning heel kick, hit an effortlessly high floating dropkick to knock him to the floor, then hit an incredible twisting moonsault press to the floor. Cleanest shit ever. 

Christopher was great at setting up his own offense and Aguila's. His set up and execution of the Stroke, rolling Aguila through and firmly planting him, got a stunned reaction and he knew it, soaking in the crowd's hate even more than normal. His messy bulldog (complimentary) nicely set up Aguila shoving him off the next bulldog, balls first into the turnbuckles. The elbowdrop Aguila dropped right on Christopher's face after he dropped to the mat was the best...or was it the best when Christopher hopped to his feet running in place selling that the elbowdrop smashed his nose. How often did we get to see Christopher use two different powerbomb variations in WWF? Funny that I'm seeing it on a house show. Both men covered from the blown spot well, Christopher worked as base for luchadors far better than anyone could have expected. 

Steve Blackman vs. Faarooq

MD: Farooq looked really good here. Just tons of presence. He called everyone ugly on the mic to start, then got Blackman to pose, lured him into the corner and hit a spinning heelbutt I've never seen him do. It was just the way he carried himself. He went for a handshake and Blackman kicked it away but then he got him to run right into the spinebuster slam. Most of his offense was just tossing Blackman out so D-Lo and Henry could beat on him, and Blackman won far, far too soon with a small package out of nowhere, but Farooq looked great in the few minutes we got here, just like the savviest wrestler going. Post-match there was Nation dissension and Rocky ran out and drew chants to try to calm everything down.  

ER: Faarooq looked so damn good here. As someone who's been throwing 1998 WWF on as a break from 1997 WCW, I can attest that this is the best Faarooq looks in the ring in the entire first half of '98. Was he saving it all for the house shows? I'm so confused. He had a really cool Raw match against Shamrock in January '98, so maybe we just weren't getting enough Faarooq against shooters? Honestly, this is one of the greatest NATION performances we have. This is more than just the leader, this is everybody contributing. Faarooq is out here channeling Jungle Jim Kelly with a corner spinkick that he never otherwise used, showing off his peoples' karate to some white karate champ, while his whole team is putting in great work. How about Mark Henry throwing fucking BODY shots full arm into Blackman's stomach? Mark Henry is in baggy light wash jeans and a leather vest and is so wide it's insane. He looks like prom night Shaq. Kama and D-Lo put the boots to Blackman and Kama throws one of the best punches he's ever thrown. Faarooq's singlet doesn't get enough credit for being as elegant as it was. A truly great piece of pro wrestling gear. The simple band diagonally across his torso and the confidence to have so much of the singlet all black. This is confidence. Blackman's inside cradle finish was so slick and so well executed that it played as a finish just as well as Ogawa beating Akiyama, but this was a whole damn Nation show.

Cactus Jack vs. Billy Gunn [Falls Count Anywhere] 

MD: This was great fun. Just constant motion with weapon shots and big bumps all around and stooging from Gunn. Gunn landing on the outstretched chair and taking a goofy flopping bump was one of my favorite Billy Gunn things ever. The transitions were otherwise basically of convenience. Gunn would roll out on the Mandible Claw. He'd roll Cactus back in and Jack would take over in the corner with punches and the running knee, etc. So it wasn't exactly rocket science, but it was still very enjoyable and the sort of thing people weren't going to get on TV. 

ER: Also as part of my 1998 rewatch, I have become a much bigger fan of Billy Gunn than ever before. Did I contribute to the not-long-ago Billy Gunn discourse online? I sure did. I don't know why we didn't give him credit for what he was doing in '98 while it was happening, but damn has his work aged well. This man is a true stooge who is incredible at setting up opponents and taking a lot of damage. All of that is on display here, and all of it plays perfectly off Cactus. Gunn is the best part of the brawl on the floor, the way he hits the ring steps for max volume, the way he flops around on all his bumps and the way he and Cactus get so dirty after a suplex. Why is the floor of the Arrowhead Pond so damn filthy!? Was this a cowboy bar on days the Ducks weren't playing and they needed to fill the arena with sawdust? Gunn and Cactus get so covered in dust that they look like they're on a crew who hauls asbestos out of office buildings. 

Gunn is the perfect foil for all of Cactus's offense, from the violent to the absurd. He leans into Jack's best punches and holds firm to take a running knee in the corner. He gets tossed through a table in the corner and later takes a hard whip into the table he broke. But he is at his best getting over through absurdity, and that is on full display when he gets his balls salad tonged by Cactus and the crowd loses their damn minds for it. Gunn lays Cactus out with a chair and lays the chair over his face, setting up a fistdrop off the middle buckle - he even kisses his fist, which is some expert fistdrop knowledge from a guy who I've never see do a fistdrop before - that is of course reversed when Cactus raises the chair to meet Billy. Gunn's running in place face flop to sell the absurdity was divine. His two big pieces of offense looked great, snapping off a piledriver with real torque and sticking the not-yet-named Fameasser when Cactus ducks his head. For the finish, I loved Billy's kickout attempt after taking the double arm DDT on a chair. No life in the legs, no chance of kickout, but a visual attempt to roll his shoulder up at 3 that didn't take away from any of the violent and/or silly damage he took. 

Mark Mero vs. Chainz

MD: No idea how they thought this was going to work. The only babyface out there was Sable (and someone was whistling for her the whole match). Mero's entrance was over with all the lights and Sable was very over in general, getting her own chant as the match started. Mero played to the crowd, especially when it came to her. Chainz was just there, a de facto babyface who didn't get a shine (he tossed Mero out right at the start). Mero's shots and knees and what not looked good, but no one wanted to see Chainz work up from a chinlock (even being choked by wrist tape). He had a brief comeback but missed a Bombs Away kneedrop and ate the TKO. Probably good to see the state of the Mero/Sable act in a setting like this but this was doomed from the start.

ER: Chainz was definitely the babyface here, he was just the least defined character of the DOA. Part of this was because he didn't have a nazi twin, part of it was having a Z in his name like he was a member of the Burger King Kids Club. But he was a babyface at this point of 1998, even if that was mostly because DOA were in a regular feud with the Nation and WWF crowds were definitely going to be in the corner of DOA for reasons beyond face/heel alignment. Would a heel have the kind of shiny, lustrous hair that Chainz had? 

I thought the match worked really well with Chainz as babyface, throwing strong punches that Mero took like a great overpowered heel. I was also surprised at how fast Mero bumped to the floor when Chainz threw him through the ropes. Both men bump real well for the other. Mero goes down hard for a shoulderblock and clothesline, Chainz takes a shockingly cool bump when Mero snaps his neck over the ropes. He took it the exact same way Jimmy Hart took his apron bumps, and bumping was an underrated part of Chainz' game. Yes, I realize while typing that that every part of Chainz' game was underrated, because there isn't a person reading this who can clearly picture their favorite WWF Chainz moments. What did Chainz use as a finisher? I can't ever recall him winning a match during this run. But in the couple months around WrestleMania this year, he seemed like a guy who was trying for the last time to be noticed. We're not counting that weird stretch in TNA where he was losing 10 pounds a week until he was all teeth and jawbone and his hair started suffering from vitamin deficiency, I mean that he was trying to stand out to someone in WWF who might notice. 

Go watch how much Chainz puts himself out there in the DOA vs. DX vs. Boricuas chain match angle from Raw 4/13/98 (I fully understand if you do not do this) and it was clear he was trying to be noticed by someone. Was it me? Was it me, Chainz, noticing you 25 years after the fact? I love what you did against Marc Mero, Chainz. I loved your missed kneedrop off the middle buckle, and loved you leaning in to take Mero's kneelift to the side of the head rather than to your breadbasket. Nobody else took Mero's kneelift this way, only you Chainz. And it looked really good! I am a noticer, always noticing things. Your effort was true. 

Steve Austin vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley 

MD: I haven't actually written out the word "Helmsley" in a very long time. It still has a red underline under it. I'm not going back to check. Let me dump in some of the personal stuff here actually. I didn't watch a hell of a lot of wrestling from ~93-98. I remember seeing Hogan turn on scramblevision. Mania XIV was in Boston (I lived in a suburb) so with the public workout and everything, people were buzzing about it at High School and that's when I more or less got back into it, right around here.

That said, I don't go back to 98 WWF much. If we had more house shows, maybe it'd be different. What I have seen tends to be C-Shows. So I haven't seen these guys from this particular year in a long time. And it's fascinating just to see Austin move. I'm more used to the Austin of a couple of years earlier or a couple of years later, but here he was a superstar just ready to get the belt and carry the company. He conducted the crowd and fed off of them. It was a house show. The act hadn't quite calcified yet. So he was a little looser but it didn't feel pandering in any way. 

What I'll say about Hunter here is that he was very giving. His character didn't earn a single thing. He got everything through cheating or Chyna or chance. I imagine it wouldn't have carried through quite as well if TV cameras were on but he let himself be genuinely vulnerable in a way that, after a certain point, he never did genuinely again. And he came off as a better, more effective heel because of it. 

Early on they did a couple of hammerlock bits which were very good. Great back elbow and fun punch out of them. That's probably what I will remember out of this as much as anything else. Austin had to fight his way back from some legwork, but he did. The finish was wonky, overthought. Even vulnerable Hunter is still Hunter. It did six or seven things (too complicated a set up for the comeback with a double down that wasn't really needed, shrugging of the stunner the first time, a ref bump, Chyna, etc.) when one or two would have hit so much better. Still, the good in here was quite good.

ER: Man, I loved this. I loved this. I thought it was great. Austin was flat out incredible and constant motion towards something More, while HHH turned in what might be his best performance of the year. I have seen enough Austin/HHH matches and don't think they always work well as opponents, primarily because of HHH, but this was tremendous and a perfect use of time. If you dare, go ahead and check out their brutally long match a few weeks later from Mayhem in Manchester, and you can see a HHH with no idea how to treat a match against Austin. Here? Like night and day, roles defined perfectly and not a single wasted movement by either. HHH was not attempting to work cool heel, he was just feeding and setting things up for Austin to knock down, which he did spectacularly. The work over Austin's perpetually injured knee/s was interesting, and the ways Austin moved around that knee work was amazing. It's crazy how active Austin was in this era. 

For a guy who would eventually be surrounded by go go go wrestlers, it's wild how much he went went went without making his actual work feel empty and forgotten. It's funny whenever I see Austin talked about as a guy who "didn't do much" in the ring. Maybe that's referring to his "small moveset" (silly) but I watch the guy and see someone who is constantly doing something. Austin is a very active wrestler and this 12 minute and change format is perfect for him to craft this active, cool story. I loved every beat of this. When Hunter was getting his ass kicked, he was actually getting his ass kicked. This was not a self-service stooge performance from Hunter, he wasn't yet at the time where he was "showing people he could work down" he was just the heel taking a beating. Early, Austin rocks him so good with a back elbow to break a hammerlock that I had to rewind it a few times, both to see the elbow and to see the actual anger in Hunter's face. That's how a heel should look when a tough babyface elbows him in his big nose. And, while it didn't smash Hunter's nose, Austin's falling elbow is one of the greatest pieces of offense in wrestling history. What an incredible magic trick. This wife beating beer drinking Texas rattlesnake also figured out how to work an incredibly dangerous elbow, pointed directly at someone's throat and never showing a sliver of light, in a way that looks like he's collapsing a man's trachea. The trust he built with that elbow is incredible, and earned. 

When things settle down into Hunter working the knee, I loved the way Austin would stay in the match while selling, never settling into a long Hunter control sequence (because Austin rightly understood that Hunter has next to no ideas how to control things for that long), which fits perfectly into Austin's style. He is a fighter, a man who wants to constantly advance and who will keep after you after losing a limb, and that's how he sells the leg. There is an incredible spot, my personal favorite moment on this show, where Austin misses a clothesline and falls forward into the ropes, recovering in time for Hunter to kick him straight in the knee. The way Austin missed this clothesline pays such perfect attention to detail, every frame looking like a man who threw to connect, falling into the ropes because your missed momentum carried you there. His fall into the ropes looked like a man who hadn't considered he would ever miss that clothesline. Only the top 0.1% of wrestlers can miss offense with that kind of conviction. 

Chyna's involvement was the perfect amount as well, as her presence was always acknowledged while her threats were mostly implied. When she finally elbow smashes Austin from the floor it played as one of the best moments of an already excellent match. When she finally gets in the ring for the finish, the crowd was rabid for any kind of involvement from her. The way they played Chyna's first year in the company was an incredible use of restraint, totally unimaginable today. Austin's greatest feat in this match is actually making Hunter's goof ass Flair/Race cosplay bumps mean something other than "now is the time Hunter can show that he has watched several Flair/Race matches". His rolling upside down bump in the corner is almost always shoehorned into a match, but here felt like the best possible use and execution, adding an off the rails feel to Austin's comeback fire. 

I honestly don't think I could name 10 better matches in 1998 WWF. If these house shows keep coming, maybe eventually we'll be able to name 20 better. 

Godwinns vs. DoA [Country Whipping]

MD: Three minutes. The fans didn't really care at all until a couple of hard Godwinn shots in the ring towards the end. I was off thinking why they didn't get a couple more hillbillies (Moondog Splat was still active in 97?) and have them as part of the whole gang wars thing. And then I blinked and there was a slop drop and the thing was over. On some level this was kind of Death Valley Days coded. Just guys whipping the hell out of each other for three minutes and going home. If Phil, Matt and Eric booked this though, it'd have way more emotional resonance. 

ER: This was only two minutes long and a mostly useless two minutes, all likely for a very good reason. When you have Nazi Bikers taking on Confederacy Nostalgists it is only a matter of time before they come to some real Can't We All Just Get Along conclusions. Why are we lightly whipping each other for two minutes? We all collectively, the four of us, hate blacks, so why are we fighting each other? Henry and Skull have a moment of understanding that they're wasting their own energy fighting those with the same goals, so they agree to a lazily set up Slop Drop and clear the ring so a full crew of tough black dudes can do something more productive. 

Rock vs. Ken Shamrock

MD: Sort of a tale of two matches here. Shamrock looked great early, charging right in and having a lot of dynamic offense. Rocky fed and fed and fed and he did a great job with it. Some distraction from the outside let Rocky take over and it was a little off to me, a little rough around the edges. He didn't register some of Shamrock's stuff in the hope spots. That sort of thing. They did another ref bump here, but it was a nice one with a ducked clothesline. Then the rest of the Nation got involved and everything fell apart. It looked like Rocky was going to sneak away with a win after a D-Lo chairshot but another ref ran out and the Nation swarmed in. DQ win for Shamrock with the fans getting at least one big moment as he hit the Belly to Belly on Henry after a heated face off. 

Headbangers vs. Quebecers

MD: I had high hopes for this one, and it seemed like they'd be personified in Jacques' look. It was pretty amazing. Quebecers had the blue gear here, but Jacques had his hair pulled back tight, which made him looking like the hairline was really receding, with an almost fluffy ponytail, and a baldspot in the middle. Amazing stuff.

There was nothing wrong with this match really, but I wanted more elaboration in the early stooging. Pierre bumped all over the place, but I needed a bit more pluck and comeuppance from Jacques. It's a house show. Do all the bits. They did barely any of the bits. There'd be more bits on a 1989 Rougeaus TV squash. So I was a little disappointed there. I did like the finish where one Headbanger leapfrogged over the other to avoid a whip into one another, only to run right into Quebecers clotheslines. That set up the Quebecers going for their finisher, it getting broken up and the Headbangers hitting theirs. I needed this to have 600% more bullshit and I'm not sure why it didn't.

Undertaker vs. TAFKA Goldust

MD: There were elements to the initial Goldust character which pushed things in clever, if not entirely subtle ways. I don't think much of that was in this incarnation. It was all trying too hard and so little of it landed. Dustin wasn't at his physical best here but he still bumped all over the place for Taker and had his usual timing. Another distraction transition, this time with Taker choking Luna. I liked the comeback though as Taker hit a flurry of punches to the gut like he was playing Punch Out! Then the lights went off and the place went more nuts for Kane than they did for any of the matches. You wonder about the mic-ing with the cameras as they are for most of this, but when the place explodes for something like that it really does make you feel like they've just been quiet for most of the wrestling. I kind of liked Taker's punch exchange on Kane too. Weirdly, the ref didn't call for the DQ even though it would have made total sense (it wasn't a ball control thing either; Kane was getting shots in). But they wanted to send the fans home happy with a "clean" win after the Tombstone I guess and they couldn't do yet another ref bump. 

I'm going to chalk this off as a dubiously agented show. There were good things, but past the Christopher match, which they still might have gotten pre-show, just at half the length, and the Cactus Jack match which they wouldn't be getting anywhere else save maybe PPV (at least until the Hardcore division started up), I don't think it was all that much of a stronger experience than you would have gotten from a Raw of this era, and as a house show, it really should have been.

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Found Footage Friday: 1991 WWF TAPING~!

WWF London Ontario 2/16/91

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

Koko B. Ware vs. The Barbarian

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

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

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

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

Ted Dibiase vs. Jimmy Snuka

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

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

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

Gen. Adnan vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan

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

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

Rick Martel vs. Jake Roberts

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

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

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

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

Undertaker vs. Tugboat

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

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

Brooklyn Brawler vs. Virgil

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

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

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

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

Hart Foundation vs. Power & Glory

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

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

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

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

Sgt. Slaughter vs. Ultimate Warrior

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

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

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

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE 305 LIVE

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Found Footage Friday: HOGAN~! JYD~! ORNDORFF~! ADONIS~! BABY TAKA~! TERRY BOY~! SASUKE~! DELFIN~!

Hulk Hogan/Junkyard Dog vs. Paul Orndorff/Adrian Adonis WWF 8/27/86

MD: Very interesting match from the very first Challenge taping (including Lord Al doing the ring announcing). Both Hulk and Orndorff came out to Real American, though they had very different people to come out with. Hart, Heenan, and Orton were with Orndorff and Adonis though Heenan really was subdued for most of this. 

I saw some people saying it was sloppy, but to me, it was wild and out of control. There were bodies going everywhere at the start and if people seemed out of position at times, that just added to the feel and it certainly kept the crowd going. This didn't feel rote or rehearsed. It felt like it was all over the place because people kept coming at Hogan and JYD from every direction and they just threw fists and anything that moved. I'm not sure you'd want that every night for every match but here it clearly worked. 

Adonis bumped all over the place, including into the corner multiple times in interesting ways. Orndorff stooged like a maniac. After one punch he wobbled around the ring for long enough for Hogan and JYD to switch so he could finally eat a shot and fall down. They ended up working over JYD after some chaos with everyone getting involved again (with Hogan being choked with a cord on the outside so he couldn't stop it).

They had a nice bit where Adonis held down JYD so Orndorff could leap off the top on him, a sort of nothing axe handle type move. Later on Adonis help cut JYD off and got a shot in but didn't hold him down so when Orndorff went for it he met an outstretched fist. That set up Hogan getting back in, Hart getting involved, and the leg falling nonetheless. Chaotic and enjoyable. I'm glad this one showed up. 

ER: I'll trust Matt that people were saying this was sloppy, but I wouldn't trust anyone saying that because this felt much more like an out of control fight, with Orndorff and Adonis cutting off JYD and Hogan getting absurdly loud reactions the whole match, especially when he wasn't in the ring. The Hartford Civic was packed and loud, because these people had sat through three Challenge tapings and were finally getting a real match with a megastar. I'm sure the Moondogs/British Bulldogs tag had something memorable, but this tag was on another level. Great Hogan performance throughout, and a reminder that my favorite kind of Hogan match is when you can tell he's having fun, and it would be impossible to not have fun with this crowd behind you. 

Orndorff and Adonis were real assholes. Bobby Heenan was at ringside as a red herring, seemingly out there to do nothing but make people think he would be getting involved in the match when actually it would be Jimmy Hart doing that. I don't remember Heenan getting involved in any way, but as Orndorff attacked with the kind of elbowdrops and fistdrops that made me say "THAT'S a wrestler" aloud. Adonis bumped all over, to no surprise, but this was all about Hogan and his massive reactions. He started the match punching everyone around the ring and ringside, but this match gave us a great look at an underrated Hogan: Apron Hogan. When I say it looked like Hogan was having fun, watch him on the apron as JYD is being cut off. He is fueling this large crowd, building the anticipation, playing into distraction spots, before giving them all release when Dog makes the tag. Hogan relishing the hot tag on the apron before slamming the door shut gave me a huge smile, a jacked goofball giving everyone in attendance exactly what they wanted to see. Great tag. 

Super Delfin/Terry Boy vs. Great Sasuke/Taka Michinoku Oriental Pro 1/20/93

MD: This was very early into Teioh and Taka's career and it's definitely an interesting look at their early development. They were matched up for a couple of exchanges before switching dance partners with a few minutes left in the match. I'd say Terry Boy was further along maybe, though some of that might have been that he was framed as the aggressor and had the gimmick to fall back on. Their first exchange was primarily young lion matwork, but it got more interesting from there. I do think Teioh was more explosive and just struck at things a little harder, with Taka a bit more reactive. The punches were over and the spinning toe hold was definitely over (even if Sasuke hit a springboard dropkick to break it up).

Delfin and Sasuke worked well together, very quick matwork exchanges which had a lot of headsprings and kip ups but that still felt competitive. There were a couple of teased dives until they switched partners, at which point Sasuke hit a couple of moonsaults and Delfin crunched Taka with a plancha. Sasuke flew into no man's land on the outside at Terry Boy to set up the finish. Really, them working with Taka and Teioh was mostly a chance for them to hit stuff more cleanly and sharply than against one another, but it was effective nonetheless. Just a fun, well-balanced tag all around even if it was clear that Taka especially was working it all out.

ER: Oh my god if someone can get me an Oriental Pro logo shirt, with that gorilla wearing a singlet, I will pay them real American dollars. Please. It's incredible to me how formed these guys were in this incubatory period. One year later they'd be creating tape trader gold, but they were all already so far along. The flow got better, exchanges got tightened up, but everything was there in earlier forms. I came away so impressed by Terry. He's surely the most underrated of this Mpro group, and that might be because his highs are less consistent than the others. I think, at his best, he might rank as the actual best of the group, but I also think that Taka, Togo, Kaz Hayashi, maybe even others had highs they hit more consistently, but on any night Terry could look like the best of them. Early in his career he was much more blatantly lifting from every great Mid-South worker. He's doing Junkyard Dog headbutts in a way that shows he studied every frame of JYD's delivery (since we just watched and wrote about a JYD tag before this, it was incredibly easy to see how accurate his was) and all the Funk aping, but it was his gorgeous Dibiase fistdrop that made me react out loud, the same way you'd react to taking the first bite of a really great meal. If it's possible to learn to throw a fistdrop so perfect so early in one's career, then it's an indictment against every wrestler today than none have. My reaction to his piledriver was similar. 

Everything was much more clean than I expected. I mean, Sasuke's occasional clumsiness is baked into the overall charm of Sasuke, as he may stumble but he will always see something through, but the overall tightness impressed me. They didn't all have the same speed or snap as they would, but their mastery of the basics stood out and elevated the craziest spots. Look at how perfect Delfin/Terry's vertical suplex/crossbody combo was. No two Armstrongs ever hit one finer. This match was incubatory for what was to come, but you really could see everything that was coming.  

Yoshihiko Abe vs. Katsumi Hirano Oriental Pro 1/20/93

MD: They say styles make fights, and Katsumi Hirano's style was to get kicked in the face. That sums this up pretty well. It went two rounds before Hirano's corner literally threw in the towel and it was a minor miracle that he survived the second round. His great hope here was to catch Abe's kicks and take him down and do something, but every time he tried either the bell rang to end the round or Abe ended up in the ropes or it just didn't work and Hirano ate more strikes. Really a mauling with Abe coming in at every exchange guns firing and Hirano having no answer. Abe wore a gi and he lost it between the second and third rounds. That was a prelude to him just pressing Hirano in the corner with strike after strike until his corner gave up. Post-match was almost more interesting than the match itself as everything got chippy with the seconds and Abe but even that petered out pretty quickly. 

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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: SAVAGE~! LAWLER~! MABEL~! PCO~! TAKER~! MANKIND~! JARRETT~! RAZOR~!

Jerry Lawler vs. Randy Savage Memphis 3/23/85 (Jonesboro)

MD: I'm not going to wax poetic on the WWE Vault finding this. You know. We live in amazing times.

The match itself was very interesting. Savage had turned a couple of times during his primary Memphis run and he was a familiar face and he was over. He had Newman with him. He was clearly the heel. The fans were still split. So they did everything they could to present Lawler as worth cheering and Savage as worth booing. To start, they had Lawler break clean at every point and get the best of Savage on rope running exchanges. 

After Lawler got a knee up in the corner, and raised his hands to show he meant for it to be a legal attack, Savage went out, got on the mic. Then Lawler did the same complaining about Tux, then Tux got to talk, and Savage again, and they went around with it, really laying out the case that you should cheer Lawler and boo Savage, even if it didn't look like that at face value. And then, when they got back into the ring, Lawler nailed Savage on the break, but by now, it was fully established how much he deserved it and how Lawler had tried to play nice first. On the next break, Lawler stepped on Newman's hand on the apron instead. The fans want to see the babyface hit hard and clown the heel and they built to it coming off as a pure babyface move and nothing petty or spiteful. 

Then of course, they inverted it by having Savage freak out about Newman getting stomped, run around with a chair, and get a cheapshot in on the next break. Unlike Lawler, though, Savage celebrated as if he'd accomplished something monumental. Suddenly, the crowd wasn't split anymore. They were booing Savage. Pretty masterful stuff. 

Because they had to tear things down and then build it all back up, Savage didn't really take over until around twenty minutes in and he did with a clever bit of misdirection with Tux and his cane. From there, things were pretty wild with Lawler coming back a couple of times and the fight spilling out to the audience. Incredibly crowd pleasing stuff with rapid fire slamming of heads into turnbuckles and grounded punches. Lawler turned Tux interference back on Savage one last time and hit the fist drop for a definitive win. Post match, he ALMOST got his hands on Tux but had to fight off three other heels instead (and he did to the crowd's delight). Really brilliant stuff overall in how they ensured that the crowd was exactly where they wanted them.

ER: To think there was a time in my fandom that I would have been bored by something like this. Savage, avoiding contact to rile up the half of the crowd who hates him while simultaneously appealing to the half who adores him, an incredible cross section of fans that not only allows this match its beautiful slow burn, but encourages it. This was 20 minutes of slow burn and shifting allegiances with men actually pleading their case on the house mic far more than hitting each other. They get so much mileage out of Savage just going out to the floor and getting upset, with little bits of in-ring character like Lawler popping his head up and down for four straight dropdowns while Savage sprinted back and forth over him. 

All the bullshit started breaking down when Savage finally started hitting Lawler and Lawler caught a Savage kick, hopping him out to the center of the ring, holding Savage's leg high up on his chest and drawing it out before finally tipping and fistdropping him in one move. Savage then catches Lawler's leg the same exact way and goes  through the same routine, only this ends with a Lawler enziguiri (a great one!). The misdirection around Tux Newman getting his cane to Savage and everything that happened after that was the kind of fire you want to see from a Lawler/Savage match. The way Savage punched Lawler all around ringside was filmed so perfectly it's as if they purposely took the brawl in front of the cameras, without actually doing that. It was just Savage giving everyone some close up magic and popping Lawler in the forehead around each side of the ring, these individual reared back shots every 10 feet, then hitting a big axe handle to the floor, then another. It's an honest to god miracle that he didn't blow out his knee until his mid-40s because he was just jumping onto concrete on every show for 15 years with or without cameras present. 

Savage is battering Lawler, and it all turns into one of the great turnbuckle smashing comebacks. Savage is bashing Lawler's head into the buckles, and they start coming a little slower with a little more resistance. The sixth time Savage is actively working to get Lawler's face to the buckle, and by the seventh Lawler has fully blocked it, and the crowd is here for it. When the strap comes down, Lawler's back is to the camera so we get to see Savage react to it, and Savage's eyes are the perfect eyes to be reacting to the strap coming down. We get them in shocking HD and it plays like such a famous clip that you'd think we'd have been seeing it in highlight videos for 40 years. Lawler's fistdrop off the middle buckle is as good as you can actually do a fistdrop...but his earlier missed fistdrop into the mat and subsequent sell might have been even better. Just another classic match we didn't realize existed until the last week. 

WWF House Show Footage

Mabel vs. Pierre MSG 11/26/94

MD: Really enjoyed this one. Pierre looked as good as anyone in the company at this point. He flew all over the place for Mabel early, timing all of his stooging perfectly and just bumping big given his size. One bit of punishment after the next. The transition was great. Mabel tried to suplex him back into the ring (and this didn't seem like a huge effort considering what he'd already done to him) and Pierre dropped straight down to the floor from the apron, causing Mabel to get hotshotted onto the top rope.

Then all of Pierre's offense was equally good, maybe too good, because the crowd was starting to go for him despite him working them a bit. Thankfully, they still went for Mabel on the comeback (reversing things on the floor to post Pierre) and Mabel hit two or three big things on the way out. Just a strong, larger than life undercard house show match.

ER: I love Mabel, ADORE Mabel, I will always back the big man...but HERE is a damn Quebecer Pierre performances if ever there was. It's no secret PCO is insane - it's been his main brand for a decade now - but I don't remember him going this hard in New Generation Raw matches, let alone on house shows. This was a man working UP to MSG, taking bumps that put 1-2-3 Kid to shame and hitting offense like a truck. I loved the layout of this, where it looked like the whole thing was going to be Pierre getting tossed repeatedly. He gets thrown so violently to the floor on the first lock up that there is no way he was able to work like this night in and night out....a thing one could have said before we found out how much he loves falling from great heights. Mabel suplexes him like it's nothing, throws him into the air with a high back body drop, really slamming him at will. 

Pierre turns the tide by stopping a suplex into the ring by throwing his body weight back and stunning Mabel on the top rope as he drops to the floor yet again. Then we get this great mix of Pierre trying to tame this sea beast by jumping all over Mabel's back, and taking big bumps as he's swatted away. He takes a back drop to the floor and responds by running up the nearest turnbuckle and hitting a real heat seeking missile of a dropkick. It always feels unsustainable, only a matter of time before Mabel would catch him again, and when he does it's just as great as before. Pierre takes an even higher backdrop than before, kicks out of the spinning heel kick but gets crushed by an avalanche, than takes his well earned time wobbling to the center of the ring and back, turning around to get flattened by a Mabel crossbody. 

Undertaker vs. Mankind Meadowlands 7/5/96

MD: I haven't seen any of the Taker vs. Mankind  stuff in a while and I wasn't quite prepared for where they were at this point in the feud. I don't remember Taker's shots ever looking quite this good for one thing. I don't know if that was Mankind leaning into them or Taker just laying them in because he was used to working him. 

This kept moving quite steadily, with Taker controlling for the first half but never in a straight line. Mankind would take over for a few shots and get cut off. He'd lose focus and start chasing Bearer. He'd go for a chair only for Taker to get it instead. He'd knock him over the rail only for him to come flying back with a clothesline. 

When he did really start to lean on Taker, he couldn't put him away. Taker punched out of the Mandible Claw in a great bit. He'd kick out of everything else and eventually Mankind lost focus again and started to hit himself and slam his head against the turnbuckle. Even then, even as he shot a choke up to stop the second Claw, Taker had to really fight for the comeback and it ended up as a pretty complete experience for everyone watching. A good entry into their series. 

ER: I shouldn't be surprised by Foley going this hard on a house show, but seeing it in HD it's shocking how much damage he took in front of a bunch of New Jersey sickos who knew how much of a sicko he was. If you ever look at Foley's schedule over '95-'98 and see a house show match like this, you'll wonder how his body didn't give out the first few months of his WWF schedule. When Foley started in WWF he was still making trips back and forth to Japan, going back and forth to take sick beatings on opposite sides of the globe. I guess his body was just conditioned to it by that point but I was still surprised how hard Taker was laying it in and how bad Foley's bumps got. It's obvious Taker is hitting him hard from the bell, clubbing him hard on the back of the neck and throwing tighter strikes than I associate with 1996 Undertaker. 

But then the chairshots start, which are much harder than 1996 WWF chair shots, and it all peaks with Foley taking his backwards bump off the apron to the guardrail...but this lunatic lands back-of-head first into the thickest bottom rail of the guardrail, and the leap back was FAR. The leap backward being so far is probably what led to his body not flying into the railing itself, but flying backward just to whip the most tender part of your head into the thickest steel...that's a guy who should be working 180 matches a year right there. That bump would concuss and give brain damage to most men, but it doesn't even slow Foley down. He still takes more crazy bumps on the floor, including a great one over the railing, off a chair and onto the concrete, which seemed to signal to the Meadowlands crowd that he really was doing this for them, as the chants for Foley started to have a One Of Us feel to them the more damage he took. Awesome fight. Foley really did himself a minor disservice by focusing on his goofy "having fun with Owen" house show matches in his first book, because I had no idea there were hard performances like this out there. I, of course, should have known. 

Jeff Jarrett vs. Razor Ramon Montreal 10/21/94

MD: Most of the Hall I've seen lately has either been 90-91 Puerto Rico or 88 NJPW so it's weird to see him as Razor. This went a few directions I wasn't quite expecting and I think, as much as anything else, it was them trying things. They had wrestled a few times earlier in the year but this was fairly early in their 'marriage' that would last a while.

It's funny because I buy it out of 2025 Jarrett, but I'm not sure I was feeling the strut here. Much more gripping and organic was the way that he paintbrushed Ramon's head after taking him down a few times. All of that paid off so well with him running right into Ramon's open handed slam and bumping huge. Beautiful stooging and feeding. He'd subsequently get knocked out, come back strong, and run right into the fall away slam and Ramon paintbrushing him a bit in return.

Once he took over, he controlled primarily through some nice cutoffs (an enziguiri, dropkicks, corner whips, a nice punch, etc). They really did a great job of building the hope spots, getting bigger and more elaborate each time until Ramon finally punched his way through it all only to get redirected over the top. Ramon controlled out there but Jarrett reversed a whip for a cheap (but effective count out). 

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