Found Footage Friday: BACKLUND IN KUWAIT~! BUSHWHACKERS~! CONDOR~! ESTRADA~! PSICOSIS~! VOLADOR~! WINNERS~!

AAA TV 5/21/95

MD: A new Roy Lucier drop. I think the top two matches were already out there so we'll dive into the undercard. 

Karloff Lagarde Jr./Mr. Condor/Perro Silva vs. Brilliance/Diamante/Zafiro

MD: I loved the primera beatdown here. The rudos just hopped out as Mr. Condor wrapped a cape around a tecnico's neck even as he was coming in with the valets and the commentators were just casually announcing who would be in the match. Business as usual. Some gnarly stuff on the beatdown with Condor's arching power bombs, a giant lifting face plant, and Perro Silva looking like a beast between the way he threw himself into things and this brutal reverse hotshot where he dropped the back of the neck onto the top rope with a spinebuster like twist instead of the throat. Argh. 

This was going just two falls with a fed up fiery tecnico foul finish so they actually teased a comeback early in the segunda which was pretty spirited, tossing rudos into the crowd and what not, before it got cut off to set up yet another comeback a minute or two later. Sort of a false short segunda (almost makes you wonder if there was a cut, but I don't think there was). Down the stretch Mr. Condor bled all over the place even on the undercard and the tecnicos got a lot of revenge but they lost their cool and the rudos took this one by DQ. Everyone leaned hard into their roles here and the match was fun because of it.

Antifaz del Norte/Panterita del Ring/Volador/Winners vs. Arandu/Jerry Estrada/Misterioso/Psicosis

MD: Some of our Monterrey pals here in the form of Panterita and Arandu (who came out to the Flash Gordon theme by Queen!). Very nice to see them in this mix with some of the AAA mainstays. That's an awesome rudo side right there. And honestly, this was great. The primera was at least somewhat subdued. Misterioso was leaning hard into his gringos loco look and attitude and was dodging Volador. Arandu bumped all over the place. Estrada teased his big bump over the top but didn't give it to people. Psicosis was an absolute jerk paired with Antifaz. I love watching him just exist and antagonize people, even on top of his basing and offense and bumping. He's one of the best bullheaded jerks in wrestling history. Anyway, the tecnicos took it after some exchanges and general chaos with Volador getting a shot in on Misterioso on the outside too.

Things went absolutely nuts in the segunda though. They started destroying both Antifaz and especially his mask. Somehow Estrada got a fork and started to stab away, lick the thing, paint his face with blood, just have a merry time. Then the comeback had all the crazy bumps you might imagine. Psicosis took the corner knee over the top bump as wild as I've ever seen it. Estrada just got yeeted into the third row like a rocket on a reverse whip. I'm not sure I've ever seen that concrete ground look harder and more solid. Finish was the rudos getting back in and getting Antifaz' mask off so thoroughly and clearly in the camera that someone could have picked him out of a police lineup. Just wild stuff in the back half.

Mr. Bob Backlund/Leif Cassidy vs. The Bushwhackers WWF Kuwait Cup 5/11/96 

MD: Recent Richard Land upload. I had thought we'd be getting the Yokozuna tag vs. Backlund, but nope, we've got the Bushwhackers instead. I don't know exactly how much Mr. Bob Backlund heel footage we have but whatever we have, especially after he got shunted down the card, it is 100% not enough. He's as absurd and over the top here as humanly possible and it's wonderful. First off, he comes out to the Rockers theme with Leif and he wants absolutely nothing to do with him. Cassidy tried to bow down to him and go for a handshake and point to the Bushwhackers and everything under the sun and Backlund just shook his head and shouted NOOOO. 

Then, there'd just be random booing no matter what Cassidy and a Bushwhacker was doing in the ring and the camera would cut over and Backlund would be out there on the stage gesticulating to the crowd and going wild and getting huge heat. When he came down he went right after some kid in a Bret shirt and he never really let up. It takes minutes for the match to begin because every time you think it might, he has another fit to huge crowd reaction. When they get going, they do some heel miscommunication spots almost immediately and then have Backlund get shown up by a Bushwhacker, including sneaking out and pointing to his head only to have him right behind and then hiding in the corner just to get bitten on the butt.

They eventually take over on Luke's arm and it's all pretty good with some hope spots and cutoffs until he finally makes the tag and they do one last bit of miscommunication before Butch gets the roll up. Just unbelievably entertaining. Lightning in a bottle. If you could follow one wrestler around to every house show, 96 Backlund feels like a great one to pick. 

ER: When you get access to a 1996 Kuwait show where Bob Backlund is the third oldest (second youngest?) guy in the match, I feel we are then obligated to write about that match. There is so little footage of Mr. Bob Backlund from this era and now we officially have our most substantial look at him. I loved Backlund's look and attitude during 95/96, when he was mostly a house show worker and cantankerous TV presence, but we don't have a lot of footage of him actually wrestling. We have so much footage of his 92/93 babyface return, which I think is mostly awful (unless I find one credible source telling me that it was an elaborate troll and he was fucking up every single non-Doink wrestler's timing intentionally, then I might like it), but not nearly enough of heel Mr. Bob Backlund. Now we have real footage of Backlund charging at a Kuwaiti 11 year old and getting in his face, just because he was wearing a Bret Hart shirt. Backlund singled that kid out and went straight for him (and the kid loved it). 

Throughout my wrestling fandom, not that long ago in the grand scheme, I had no room for bullshit in my wrestling. I wanted action, and I wanted wrestlers to get to the action. I'm not sure when it changed, or what inspired my initial dislike of it. I viewed it as "guys not wanting to work" and maybe it was due to Scott Keith and others demonizing of stall tactic wrestlers like Larry Zbyszko, spurned on by older local indy wrestlers who were taking a Friday night off in the ring. When we did the initial WWF 80s set, I had the Rockers/Rougeaus Full Bullshit match (from France or Italy) ranked very, very low. Not many years after that, the Rougeaus match in Puerto Rico where they take forever to lock up while getting pelted with diapers and other garbage became one of my favorite matches to show friends who were and were not wrestling fans. I don't know when the change happened, when I went from wanting action to embracing bullshit. The change happened quick, I know that, and is surely directly related to indy wrestling styles becoming about All Action, no doubt caused by similar people to me who grew up being told that bullshit and stalling in wrestling was bad. 

Now, most wrestlers are petrified to let anything breathe. Well, either they are petrified or they honestly have no idea what it even means to let a match, or sequence, breathe. They surely never watched wrestlers who knew how to do this, and they surely won't be seeking any who did so. Bullshit became extremely rare (and has only gotten rarer) and now that action is the literal only thing on the menu, I find that I cannot wait to shove my nose in a steaming plate of Bullshit whenever I have the opportunity. And Mr. Bob Backlund was allllll Bullshit. This entire match is 90% bullshit, and I chose to prioritize it over the two awesome lucha matches unearthed above. I don't think anyone takes a bump until well past the 10 minute mark, although Backlund does get knocked off the apron by Cassidy, and he hits the ground running and gets in the faces of more fans. So look, I'm not saying all of this was good. The Bushwhackers are old and they aren't going to bump or throw punches that look good - although Butch Miller throws a fucked up clothesline to Cassidy's neck on his hot tag - and a lot of the bullshit won't seem unique to anyone who had the privilege of seeing guys like Honky Tonk Man work indy shows in the late 90s, but the unique setting and the bizarre pairing and the rarity of Fully Unhinged Mr. Bob Backlund made this well worth your time. Backlund does none of his strength routine, none of his amateur wrestling, and I don't even think he took a bump. Yet he was On during every second he was on screen, a true weirdo being his weirdest self in the weirdest possible live wrestling environment. 

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Found Footage Friday: MICHAELS~! GOLDUST~! CACTUS~! SABU~! REY~! PSICOSIS~! GALLAGHERS~!

Doc Gallagher/Mike Gallagher vs. Scotty Andrews/Donn Lewin 1950s Buffalo

MD: Wrestling Films has posted a lot of things lately but a lot we already had. This one does seem new to us though. It's a relatively rare look at Donn Lewin (Mark's brother, who we have a 1951 match we're very high on) though they do say he was a twelve year vet here. The Gallaghers are, of course, very good at what they do, and what they do is cheat, goozle, and clubber. Stooge too. Andrews and Lewin control early and Mike really scrambles to try to make it to the corner while in a top wristlock and it's fun stuff. They trade off keeping that wristlock on until the Gallagher's start switching off with illegal chokes themselves. Honestly, for an old tag, it all breaks down sort of quickly, building to Doc holding the rope down so that Scotty crashes and burns to the floor. It all came off quite well and the crowd, even in the studio, was hot for it. Lewin had good fire in the ring while this was going on but he wasn't the legal man so him pinning a Gallagher didn't matter. They got Scotty back in there and made short work of him. Very fun sub-ten minute match here.

Cactus Jack/Psicosis/Sabu vs. Rey Misterio Jr./Super Calo/Winners IWAS 10/21/95

MD: This was an Arezzi show with AAA and ECW talent and was a gem. Of course, with the Vault, we just get the primera, but we'll take it. I do wish sometimes they'd go a little further on some of this. Why just give us Goldust/Michaels if they have the whole card (maybe they don't?). Why give us just Gonzales and Hogan interacting after the finish if they have the whole Money Inc. vs. Megamaniacs lumberjack tag (that they must), etc. But we take what we can get, and this is a very cool thing to have.

It's the primera, so you get some posturing, some ambushing, and a couple of exchanges. Psicosis is great here, tossing a chair in at first, mocking Rey with a little dance from the apron, and then taking all of Rey's stuff like an absolute king, including getting pressed head first into the post in an impossible sort of way that he made seem not just possible but feasible. They teased Jack vs. Rey for a moment there but we ended up with Jack vs. Calo instead, still a fun and weird scenario. That was mostly Jack's forearms in the corner but they were great, so I'm not going to complain. Sabu got to take some of Winners stuff and land on him repeatedly. Winners tends to look super charismatic in this era (it's after the point where he lost his mask). It builds to chaos and Rey hitting the tightest 'rana on Psicosis to pick up the fall. Every indication here is that the rest of the match (even if it ended in a no contest) would have been just as fun, plus they probably would have mixed up the pairings a bit. Ah well. We didn't think we'd ever get even this much so we're glad to have it.

ER: I fully second everything Matt said about the unnecessary tease aspect of the WWE Vault. Here's one scorching hot half of one match from a Chicago AAA show. Let me see the Koji Kitao/Masaaki Mochizuki match. Let me see what 2 Cold Scorpio does on a show with cool luchadors. There's a Superstars taping Dark Match Jarrett/Bulldog ladder match released on the same drop as the incredible Michaels/Goldust match we praise below, but from that same Superstars taping there was a Sid/Kama vs. Michaels/Undertaker dark tag and that's the kind of shit that I would also really want to see. If they have one, they have the other, so just put the shows up man. We don't get shows, we get teases of footage that isn't being released. 

That said, we now have extended sequences of Cactus Jack repeatedly elbowing Super Calo in the face like an early version of Necro Butcher in Chikara. It's amazing how much faster Cactus was in '95 compared to '97. That bump card filled up fast and the Jack/Calo pairing would have been so different just a couple years later. This feels like the best year for it to have happened. Cactus elbows him in the face but good, and he also takes two big bumps to the floor for him, including getting clotheslined over the top and later fully catching his missile of a dive. Winners looked so good, a guy who went on to an iconic gimmick but in '95 made a fascinating "what if" among the guys who could have crossed over to the US mainstream, instead of just being thrown out to die on a couple of WWF shows. His plancha soars far off camera and he had such potent tecnico energy any time he got in the ring. Did he really debut the Abismo Negro gimmick at the Royal Rumble? Anyway, Rey/Psicosis was so amazing in '95. I said Cactus lost a lot of speed just two years later but seeing Rey/Psicosis in '95 after watching all of their '97 work and you see so many things that slowed down and got changed. Rey still had his original knees here and was so much faster, while Psicosis had a smoothness that had vanished by summer of '97. "Clunkiness" sounds like I'm insulting his work, but compare some of his bumps here to the same ones two years later, and those later bumps seem like someone doing clunky versions of Psicosis bumps. His ringpost bump is incredible, getting alley-ooped into the ringpost but doing it in a way that looked so alien, just amazing. His fold on Rey's huracanrana bends physics, like he was a human Popple whose head could easily be folded into his own ass. 

 

Ladder Match: Shawn Michaels vs. Goldust WWF 8/24/96

MD: This is not new, per se, but it's an amazing footage upgrade to a match that I've seen at least a few times. It's one of those matches that we give people new to the community on the way in (like Dump vs. Omori or the Savage vs. Garvin cage match). What we had before, however, was a pretty blurry handheld, and this is crisp and beautiful single camera ringside footage. Early on when Goldust brings the ladder towards the ring, you can hear it scraping against the ground perfectly. It's quite the footage upgrade.

And it's a match worth seeing again. When we handed it to people, we'd say it was one of the best ladder matches ever. So much of that is because they delay the use of the ladder. It shows up early as Dustin goes for it and then once in the heat as he puts it over the guardrail and ring to create a hard surface to drop Shawn on, but other than that, it really doesn't come into play until the back half when they start to try to win thing. 

What you get before that is a rough but generally conventional match between Shawn and Dustin where all of Dustin's stuff, which generally looks great to begin with, looks all the better because of Shawn taking it. Just the drop down punch alone maybe never looked better. A bit of extra zing and extra electricity. It means instead of having a match full of contrived spots around the ladder with a lengthy set up and dashing one's suspension of disbelief, they just get to do their thing, and their thing was as good as almost anyone in the world in 96 and we have so little footage of them doing it together.  

The setting is great, an outdoor show at the Canadian National Exhibition Stadium (the site of The Big Event) with a giant Ferris Wheel lit up in the background. The card was stacked with gimmick matches (casket, strap, street fight, etc.) so it's pretty remarkable that they showed the discipline that they did. You get some big bumps (Shawn over the top, a splash off the ladder), but it's all smartly put together. Early on they tease a Curtain Call and then Superkick. Dustin pulls off the turnbuckle pad to do some more damage. Late in the match, Dustin takes a bump off the ladder into it face first but recovers to try to catch Shawn in the Curtain Call while he's climbing. This time when Shawn goes up and over he actually hits the Superkick and is able to win. It just hits a bunch of marks between thought and execution with just enough discipline to hold it all together, to put it above any number of more spectacular ladder matches. Now we get to see it so much more clearly.

ER: This is some incredible footage. I'm not saying this as any kind of brag, but I stopped watching new WWE matches well over three years ago and I haven't looked back. It wasn't a decision I made where I consciously said, "After today, NO MORE!" Because it wasn't a conscious decision, it was the culmination of something that had been building up for several years. There will always be enough people on the roster who I enjoy watching, but what began majorly turning me away was the entire presentation of the product, of the wrestling. I don't think there has ever been a wrestling fed in history who makes their in-ring product look shittier than modern WWE. What an ugly product, directed by people who seemingly hate wrestling, with garish LED lights and quick camera cuts and identical match structures designed to be ROLLING into commercial breaks. Everything is bright as hell, phony as hell, manufactured as hell, and as inauthentic as possible. This match could have feasibly happened in WWE some time in the last 5 years, but you take this exact match and present it the way WWE now presents pro wrestling, and the whole thing would have been half as effective. 

The ring work in this is undeniable. We hardly have any Dustin/Michaels matches (how many of the other Goldust/Michaels World Title house show matches do we even have? Any?) so that makes this extra special. Dustin Rhodes told me that Shawn Michaels is one of his four favorite wrestlers of ALL TIME. One of the four on his Mount Rushmore (with the others being his father, Terry Funk, and Barry Windham). I can't imagine higher praise for a peer, and you can see that respect - mutual respect - in the brilliant and extremely energetic way this match was worked. 

But you can really see that energy because of the way this match was filmed. One camera, at ringside, now in HD detail so crisp that it feels like you're roving ringside while two greats in their prime worked close up magic in an amazing outdoor carnival setting. 20,000 polite but excited Canadians outdoor with a lit up Ferris Wheel in the background like a nighttime Super Nintendo background. The work in the ring was so clear, the camera so embedded into the action, that you feel the very hard bumps both men take and see just how hard they're hitting each other and, eventually, a ladder. The sound is so good that you're put directly in the middle of this carnival. The sound of Dustin's back hitting the ladder is or Michaels hitting a table engulfs you. You run this exact same match today, only with WWE's modern direction and lighting, and it would play as half effectively. 

All of Dustin's strikes - his great worked punches, his great stiff punches, his hard slaps - would be jumped away from, all of Michaels' big bumps - taking an almost Falcon Arrow on a ringside table, springing away from a Dustin uppercut, recoiling off the ropes after being tipped off the ladder more than once - would have been hit with the ugliest fast zooms and held for reactions. Even the small bits of comedy play better from this live ringside angle. I cannot tell you how hard I laughed at the very beginning of the match at the face Michaels makes, when Goldust - jumpsuit hugging those buns tighter than you could ever imagine - approaches him in a flirtatious manner and Michaels uncomfortably looks off to the side, like he doesn't want to make eye contact for fear of being lured in. 

I wish we had a dozen more Michaels/Dustin matches. We have a Raw match and this excellent ladder match, where you can see their off the charts chemistry. 

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Found Footage Friday: REY JR.~! PANTHER~! GILBERT~! FIRE~! INFERNALES~! LA PARKA~!

Eddie Gilbert vs. Huracan Castillo WWC 8/6/94

MD: This was limited by the gimmick, obviously, but you watch it to see the spectacle of it and how Gilbert chose to work it and milk moments. For one, before they got into the ring he took a head into the post and immediately bladed. That way, if nothing else, there would be color. There were flammable pieces of material in fixed intervals just outside the ropes and visually, things were most spectacular when the wind was blowing and the fire seemed to be reaching into the ring. Much of the match was based on Castillo trying to work Gilbert into those ropes and it portrayed that sense you get in exploding cage or barbed wire matches that the heel simply cannot escape. For most of the match, the payoff was Gilbert's hand getting whacked into the fire. Gilbert was able to get a little bit of control and get some revenge, but after Castillo's comeback (off of a Hotshot of all things), Gilbert took some shots to the face into the fire, bumping around and recoiling like crazy for it. The overall effect was diminished by the end since the fire had gone down significantly, but the finish revolved around Gilbert getting some barbed wire and choking Castillo with it, moving things forward to the next match in a very Memphis manner.

PAS: I thought this was awesome, it would have ruled if it was just a bloody Memphis punch out, but add the spectacle of the flames into, what a treat. Tremendous Gilbert performance, his punches looked great, got great early color, and did a wonderful job of making the fire bumps look horrific. Castillo was a fine regional babyface, and got amped up, but this was an Eddie show. I am surprised they used powder as the transition weapon, rather then the Gilbert fireball, but I dug Eddie using the barbed wire to set up the rematch, clever booking, and I need to search out the barbed wire match between these two.

Winners/Rey Mysterio, Jr./La Parka/Octagon vs. Blue Panther/Los Payasos AAA 9/2/95

MD: Maybe the biggest appeal here is just seeing Blue Panther hang out with a bunch of clowns. Really straightforward structure on this one. Exchanges in the primera leading to a tecnico pin, beatdown in the segunda, comeback in the tercera leading to some of the flashier spots, the dives, and the finish. A lot of the details were very good though. I loved the Panther vs Parka exchange in the primera. That felt like a fairly unique match up and they had fun with it on the mat. Coco Azul based really well for Rey too. I was less into what Winners and Amarillo were up to. Payasos and Panther worked well on the beatdown including some nice tandem offense and submissions. The comeback was great as Rey just went through everyone's leg to create chaos for La Parka to dance around. It was exactly what it should have been and the fans loved it. In general, it was a lot of fun to see the other tecnicos keep Parka chants going throughout the match. Rey's backflip dive over the top with a La Parka boost was memorable, but just the way he'd get up on a floating armdrag was endlessly impressive for the time and even now. Finish involved Los Payasos beating down Octagon after a dive and then starting to fight with the crowd, allowing Rey to slip in for a last second countout win. This was pretty much as enjoyable as you'd expect.

Infernales (Satanico/Pirata Morgan/MS-1) vs. Hector Garza/Lizmark/El Dandy CMLL 9/2/95

MD: Fun bit early on here where Satanico and Pirata had Garza held hostage in their corner and Lizmark and Dandy had MS-1 in theirs and it was a bit of a standoff. You're not going to win fighting Los Infernales on their own terms, however, so they eased into the beatdown almost immediately thereafter. No one can direct traffic quite like Santico and lucha beatdowns don't get better than Infernales ones. The comeback moment was just ok, Lizmark coming in to get a shot in, but he was really over with the kids on this night, so it's hard to complain. It was followed by Dandy throwing amazing punches at everyone, including an all time shot to Pirata on the floor. There weren't a lot of exchanges in this one, Satanico putting Garza through the paces to start and then later on a really good Dandy and Morgan one but given who was in there, it all flowed well and did what it was meant to.

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