Andre the Giant Enforces Carpool Rules

Andre the Giant vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan WWF 5/21/88 - GREAT

ER: Heel Andre is one of the most perfect Jim Duggan opponents we ever got. Nobody is better prepared for Duggan's strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies. He is impossible to gobble up so there's no danger of Duggan lazily walking through the hits. Duggan wasn't really doing that in '88 anyway, but he certainly wasn't going to do that against Andre. Andre forced Duggan's selling to be at its best, and he paid off Duggan's selling with some incredible work of his own. All of Andre's work here is incredible. He puts on such a show. There is something so damn funny about the largest man in the country steadfastly, calmly refusing to wrestle if the referee doesn't remove Duggan's 2x4 from the ring. Andre acting as a lawyer is some of his best work. He's not losing his temper, he's just acting like a kid who is perfectly fine waiting at the dinner table if he can wait out his parents making him eating his vegetables. Andre is resigning himself to sitting at that table until bedtime if it means he doesn't have to eat them. He hears the threats and does not care. He has drawn the line and made up his mind and everyone in the Spectrum hates him for it.

Andre holding out his hands, palms down, to quiet down some of the threats is so fucking funny. I had to keep skipping back to watch him do it. Look at his face man, look at his face, turning over his right shoulder when one of his young twin sons verbally crosses a line during carpool. Andre's son just said the S-word and Andre is trying to get control of the situation. "Hey, Jace? We don't say that okay? Hey...we don't say that." Andre is riling up the Spectrum, a man who has just paused the movie for the 4th time so he can use the bathroom again. Nobody else has even gone once! 

Dick Graham, as really only Dick Graham can do, starts imagining what he thinks a typical Andre the Giant breakfast might consist of, but he's clearly speaking of some mythical Andre who has a specifically Philadelphian palate. "Imagine what this Giant might eat for breakfast. Couple pounds of bacon, couple dozen eggs, scrapple, pancakes, cinnamon milk..." I have never heard of cinnamon milk as a Philadelphia thing. I always assumed cinnamon milk was what homeless people made at the Starbucks straw and lid station without having to buy anything. No doubt it was also a treat Dick Graham's mother made him in the 30s and Dick assumed a French countryside giant also grew up drinking it. Dick Graham presumably thinks broccoli rabe is Andre's favorite side and that his mother made milk pie for dessert. 

My Scrapple Breakfast with Andre. 

The match is great. Andre beats the damn bricks off Duggan. His closing speed when he "starts" the match is the most imposing and unavoidable attack. He closes distance so fast and goes from not being next to Duggan to choking the life out of him in short seconds. He comes off like a lumbering ogre but that distance disappears quick man. But how about the way Andre responds to punches? How Andre sells punches? The way Andre takes a big right hand, wipes at his nose with the back of his hand multiple times to check for what has to be blood, taking another punch, finally throwing judo chops because he is tired of taking punches to the nose. Andre going to his bearhug sure shuts people in the Spectrum the fuck up. House shows are great places to work bearhugs, especially ones this good. Duggan is so good fighting through his various stages of pain and grief while in a Giant's grasp. His only chance is to go for nose. 

Andre shoves Duggan off and starts holding his nose and yelling at him through the pain. When Duggan fights back he starts targeting Andre's End of Level blinking red nose and the way Andre unsteadily staggers in response is wrestling. Andre keeps taking three point stance charges - FIVE of them! - and is walking uneasily while using the ropes for guidance, a giant walking on mousetraps out of the corner, the ropes acting as his guide and support. Duggan finally bumps Andre him by kicking the ogre's support ropes to send him flying, a tortoise flipped to his back. It's everything I want.

The only thing I did not want was The 2x4 Finish (pronounced "TUBA-four" by Dick Graham). This is one of the weaker Andre finishes of the 80s, sadly. Andre swinging a board into Duggan's back looked nowhere near as dangerous as any of the times Andre swung his arm at him. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE THE GIANT

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Found Footage Friday: KONG~! MEIKO~! CACTUS~! ATLANTIS~! MASAKRE~! DANDY~! JT SMITH~!

Cactus Jack vs. JT Smith TWA 8/20/91

MD: Guessing on this date from the finish. It's surreal to see Foley go from Manchester vs Vader back to this (just a couple of years earlier). He did stuff on top of stuff to keep it entertaining, smacking a chair into his head (two chairs; the first wooden which he sold more), going on the mic for a big rant (after which he ran right into Smith's offense), the Cactus clothesline over the top, a flip bump in the corner, so on and so forth.

His shots in the corner all looked great and he was there for every little thing Smith did. Smith was in the right place at the right time hitting the right stuff for a lot of this, keeping the crowd engaged as a babyface, but it was hard not to be overshadowed by Cactus. I'd call this more entertaining than coherent or great, but you still didn't want to look away which was the hallmark of early 90s Foley. Great finish too as Foley got his throat caught in the ropes leading to a count out, a very clever way to get Cactus Jack out of a tournament if need be.

ER: A cool match, and I love the timing of this coming just a week after we covered a new Cactus/Vader match. That was 1993, this is 1991, and Cactus seems like such a different wrestler in this one. Just two years later he was slower, beefier, and his execution on almost everything was completely different. Here he threw punches with his arm and threw them more overhand, completely different arm slot than he would use for most of his career. His punches looked great here. Every time he hit JT Smith it looked like a real shot. JT Smith was in there to take shots, and the crowd responded to it. They really got behind him, even though every single time we got a glimpse of the crowd there didn't seem to be a single person in attendance who looked like him. How about that. 

JT Smith isn't really a guy with offense, so of course you were going to have Cactus make up for that. That's when you get him wandering around the building hitting himself with chairs, cutting a promo mid-match, keeping people riled and wary against him and hot behind JT. He knew JT was going to bump big for him - JT Smith got thrown, hit, or clotheslined to the floor three times in under a minute and every fall he took to the floor looked great - and he is Cactus Jack so of course he's going to take some bumps. That said, I don't know if I've seen Cactus take that Ray Stevens bump in the corner before. It's not the Shawn Michaels roll up bump, it's the Stevens bump that John Nord and Mike Modest took neck/shoulder first into the buckles. Nord and Modest took it more horizontally and landed flat, but Cactus takes it messier and ends with an uglier bump down into the mat. 

There were two really great moments, as judged by some guy sitting near the cameraman who exclaimed "Oh SHIT!" two different times: The first was when a charging Cactus clothesline knocked Smith sideways on landed him on his stomach; the second was when Cactus got himself hanged in the ropes very near to where he was sitting. His verbal exclamations were absolutely correct both times. 

Atlantis/Rayo de Jalisco Jr/El Dandy vs. Pierroth Jr/Masakre/MS-1 CMLL 9/92

MD: Really a blast in the about ten minutes we get here. The primera and segunda function almost as a fully formed sprint and then we get at least part of the finish of the tercera. Atlantis looks like a huge star here. He bounds into the ring and gets ambushed starting the rudo control. Masakre is a menace here, sneaking in and punching anyone he can at any point, even when they're in holds.

Atlantis comes back basically on his own, including eating a punch and kipping up immediately to fire back. While this is happening Rayo is fondly holding the hand of a prone Dandy. Atlantis just outslicks all three rudos until his partners can come back (and when they do, it's with a huge Dandy punch and Rayo doing his shtick; it all felt balanced here). For the tercera we come in on them switching matches around which is a little weird, but the tecnicos pretty quickly overcome. I would have liked to see how we got to the mask switching but overall what we did get here was great.

Aja Kong vs. Meiko Satomura GAEA 6/14/03

MD: We're going to try to tackle some of these GAEA uploads that people think are rare/new as we've done a bad job at that. I have no idea about the context here, but I do know that Aja Kong might be the most immediately watchable wrestler ever. You can drop into almost any of her matches from almost any period and while the match might be enhanced by content, you're going to be able to figure out exactly what's going on. 

I call it the "Problem of Aja" which has to be overcome by any opponent she faces. She's too big, too strong, too fierce, too much, and even against someone like Satomura, you see it right from the get go where Aja just stuffs her and starts to pull her apart, wrenching her arms in all sorts of ways they don't belong. With a little bit of distance Satomura can get a quick shot in, but by giving Aja a little bit of distance, she'll get run over in turn. She can smash her head with the metal bucket (or throw it at her) but Aja will just take it and headbutt her back, or even worse: she'll get the bucket and smash Satomura and then drop her head first on it. 

The great equalizer here was Satomura's death valley drivers. Any move that took so much effort could justifiably have such an effect, and they were enough to turn the tide and even to almost put Aja away, but almost isn't enough and while she was able to duck the uraken a few times and get ten strikes in for every one Aja hit, all it took was one landing to end this.

ER: I thought this was incredible. This wasn't out there before? This is new? We're just seeing this match, that feels like one of the classic matches of a classic feud? That can't be. If this match happened on this week's Dynamite it would be a 5.5 star match that people actually remember two months later. Aja Kong is an unstoppable danger that must be endured, and I've never responded to a woman wrestler the way I respond to Aja. The same way I can show any of my non-wrestling bubble friends any Stan Hansen match from any era and they recognize on sight that this man is beating the shit out of everyone and moving and falling and reacting in ways they have never seen yet instantly understand, Aja Kong has that exact same level of accessibility. If this is your first Aja Kong/Meiko match, you will understand everything. The fight Aja forces Meiko into bringing, Aja's unbeatable and at times literally unmovable condescending honesty, and Meiko's urge and determination. Aja feels like someone who cannot be moved and it requires Meiko to do it for real, and when Aja takes something for real she's finally a monster wounded. 

The GAEA girls at ringside keep taking this to higher levels, their volume and cries and anger growing over a brisk 12 minutes, and the crowd actually sounds upset when Aja kicks out of Meiko's final surge of fire. The anguish of her girls at ringside was felt as much or more than the emotion all over Meiko's face.  Every hit in this match is honest as can be. The death valley drivers compress Kong, the slaps seem like they should all swell Meiko's jaw and wreck her hearing. Kong gives this woman a brainbuster on a metal bucket and it's not as violent as a half dozen of Kong's strikes. The emotion is huge for a "short" match, and Kong pulling a fucking small package - and a small package so well executed that it would have brought a tear to Bret Hart's eye - is one of the greatest bullshit asshole heel spots I've ever seen. Can you picture Stan Hansen needle dicking his way into pulling a small package on Misawa? Riots. I've never seen something so brazen. She eventually buckles Meiko's entire body with a uraken but I wanted to see the looks on everyone's faces and the boos from every mouth had Aja Kong won with that perfect small package. 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Barkley!

57. 1979.09.2X1 - Jackie Sato vs. Winnie Barkley (After 9/21, possibly October)

K: This is similar to the Jackie vs. Vicki Williams match we covered last we so it makes sense to more of a direct comparison. I don't like how these Japan vs. American matches are laid out, the evil foreigner is way too dominant and the constant cheating is overkill.

I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent here. People often associate this kind of match with Dump Matsumoto but there's actually a substantial business. Dump's matches (especially the famous ones) don't have this kind of flat constant cheating where the heel is just doing essentially the same thing over and over again. Rather, there's an ebb and flow to it where she'll do some cheating, then roll it back a bit, before coming up with some new devilry, and you never know what she's going to do next or how deep into her bag of tricks she's gonna go this time. It's why her matches sometimes have an element of horror in them.

But back to the match I'm actually reviewing. This does feel like a slightly improved version of what we saw last week in that firstly, Jackie does get a bit of shine at the start. I'm not saying there's some absolute rule that that needs to happen, but I think in this kind of match it really worked and neither of her opponents have ferocious enough heel offense to take over right from the start and have it feel meaningful. The dodgy referee  business starts early but is a little more restrained in that he breaks up a hold that he claims is a choke, and there's a little plausible deniability there that he's just strictly enforcing the rules before it becomes blatantly obvious that he's just crooked against Jackie.

But after hinting a more efficient direction at the start this settles into the pattern of the referee slow/fast counting and the Americans on the outside constantly interfering under his nose so Jackie can never get any momentum going (she does hit a beautiful proto-slingblade in one of her brief hope spots though). It just feels a lot more right when Jackie gets to go on offense, she's meant to be the heroic Ace around here, plus she's just such a physical specimen.

But then in the last few minutes this match turns into something different entirely when AJW referee Jimmy Kayama runs into to confront the American ref and his crooked ways but the ref attacks him. The crowd are so furious at the ref they start throwing things at him and it really feels like things are getting out of hand when suddenly a random fan actually runs into the ring to  remonstrate with him, and all the wrestlers on the outside have to jump into the ring to get rid of him. Jimmy Kayama is in there again fighting, throws the crooked ref out of the ring just in time to fairly count a Jackie cover to give her the win. Well. That would have been an awesome final 90 seconds of a great match if I hadn't been mostly bored for 10 minutes beforehand.

**

MD: Yeah, this was more of the same from the last match but Williams had looked way smoother than Barkley. She was, of course, Winona Littleheart, just out of gimmick.That’s almost a shame because I’d be curious what the gimmick would have looked like in this setting. As it was, we were looking at choking, eye rakes, draping the face over the ropes, etc. Jackie emoted well in agony. The heel US ref made sure that she didn’t get any comebacks but honestly, there weren’t even enough hope spots in here. The US team (the Moolah Army) interfered when they did. The commentators told us some useful things, like that the winner of the tournament would get $30,000 (I think dollars at least), and that Winnie liked disco dancing. At least things did come to a head in a crazy angle at the end as referee Kunimatsu Matsunaga had enough and got involved, getting into a big brawl with the US ref and finally just making the count himself. It was a wild scene for such a pedestrian angle and probably made this work overall as long as they just don’t go right back to it later. You could watch the last two minutes of this and get the full effect save for some of Jackie’s great selling.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 3/24 - 3/30

AEW Dynamite 3/26/25

Kyle Fletcher vs Brody King

MD: Kyle Fletcher is the most interesting wrestler in AEW. I'm not 100% sure they know what they have in him. He's the honestly surprising frontrunner of what I'm more or less calling the New Heel Movement (Neo-Heelism? Probably I stick with New Heel Movement). Yes, he looks like a star now, in his own way. But it's not his looks but how he carries himself. So long as he's kept away from some of the worst perpetrators of action for the sake of action on the babyface side, he expands and takes up the air in every match that he wrestles in the most selfless, entertaining, productive way. 

He's a counterbalance to three decades of cool heels who refused to take anything seriously and show real vulnerability and at least a decade and a half of selfish spottiness that has honestly plagued pro wrestling, pushing fans away from caring about outcomes and characters and towards rewarding sensationalism and celebrating the means, not the ends. And he's not alone. You see it up and down the card, from people like MxM, Blake Christian, Red Velvet, and Lee Johnson on ROH, all the way to guys like Ricochet and Okada at the top of the card (and of course there's MJF when he's at his most MJF-ish). 

But none of them are managing it quite like Fletcher. You actually expect it more on ROH with looser time cues and more creative freedom and less need to clutch onto every ratings decimal. But there he is, taking his time, basking in every moment, leaning hard into every opportunity to push things over the top and get under the skin of the fans. And they respond in turn, chanting against him, chanting for the babyface, chanting anything at all except for "This is Awesome" or "Fight Forever." In this case, they were going after Callis too and I wonder how much of that was the fan in the first row dressed just like him, but it's still all way more of a positive scenario than having fans blandly celebrate the match simply existing as a spectacle instead of being engaged in its outcome. 

And he keeps adding to the act (which is much more of an overall philosophy and mindset than a series of spots/bits). Here, he had the pullaway pants at the start. He ambushed King and then took the time to really show off the new gear to the crowd, smiling, posing, all but preening, even as King crept up behind him. It was honestly beautiful stuff and he leaned into it 30% harder and 30% longer than anyone else on the roster would have and that investment paid off huge in reaction and how memorable it all was. 

It's incredibly hard for a heel to balance the sort of corpsing, stooging, sprawling bumping and selling that Fletcher did here while still maintaining credibility, but he managed it. Some of that is simply putting him over enough (as they did here), but so much of it comes down to the heel figuring out how to be vicious and making the most of his time on top in a match. Fletcher, in the midst of cracking the code, seems to realizes that it doesn't just mean hitting great looking dynamic offense, but making sure to engage with the crowd, with the ref, with the opponent, with the world while doing it, and then letting it sink in and resonate after the fact. Basically, everything he's been doing while taking offense applies just as much when he's on top. That could be as simple as living and breathing and being the Protostar while stepping on Brody's face. It's showing that he cares about what he's doing instead of just rushing to hit the next spot and spoonfeeding the fans action on top of action. It sounds so simple but it's become increasingly rare and it doesn't just make him stand out, but it makes both the moments and the overall effect of his matches mean all the more. 

It also means that when he does something truly impressive, like hefting up Brody for his tombstone, the fans are even more frustrated, for they have to give it to him, and he's given them nothing to latch on to before that. It means that instead of supporting him or thinking the match is simply great, they end up resenting him all the more, and that he gets real, honest, meaningful heat that maybe, just maybe can drive the sorts of business metrics that had seem dead and dusted, the notion that you want to see a heel get his comeuppance at the hands of a babyface. And of course, just when they had the fans begrudgingly handing it to Fletcher and resenting him all the more for it, Mark Davis came out to take things over the top and push everything the other way, distracting Brody so that Fletcher could steal the win. That he did it with the corner brainbuster, yet another impressive move on a massive opponent, just increased the dissonance and writhing, churning feeling in the stomach of the fans.

Fletcher's become a heel that poisons everything he touches in the very best of ways, something that frankly, we haven't seen on top in a US company in ages. He's gold, and in some ways, he's going to be bulletproof as long he can continue to lead with bluster and live in the moment, as long as he doesn't lose his nerve and get pressured to speed things up and rush to the next thing like so many of his peers. But he still needs to be protected and valued. Everyone around him, from the wrestlers he faces, to the commentators, and all the way to the top of the company should be shown to care as much as he does, in both his successes and his failures. If that can happen, way I see it, the sky's the limit.

ROH TV 3/27/25

Athena/Diamante vs Jordan Blu/Mazzerati

MD: I honestly love matches like this. Yes, it was a squash. Blu/Mazzeratti got almost no offense in. But if you watch five hundred matches in one year, you're probably not going to see another match that tries to tell this specific story. The last time I can remember something quite like this was back during the Mercedes Martinez vs Serena Deeb feud where they were trying to one-up each other. This wasn't quite that but it was a similar idea, with Diamante trying to show her value to Athena. I'm not entirely sure what's going on with the story overall (for one thing, it's going to clash with the main roster story, almost like Lawler doing one thing in Memphis and another on WWF TV). Diamante doesn't quite seem minion material, but she also seems like she might go with the flow if she sees a success bully successfully bullying, so who knows. 

The match itself was a lot of fun though, because Diamante kept looking over for approval and to see what Athena had to think about things, and Athena would react accordingly. My big regret here (and it's a shame because I can't see them doing this again) is that I wish they had an Athena cam set up. I'm not sure what the rationale for it would have been, kayfabe-wise, but I'm sure they could have thought of something. And she could have been a corner insert for the entire match as we just saw her reacting to all of Diamante's stuff. Otherwise, this was fun because it was so different and told so unique a story. I love the idea of a tag match where the focus is equally on the person on the apron as it is the person in the ring. It just expands and stretches the limits of the form. It's one of those things you can really get away with on ROH that you can't quite get away with as easily on Dynamite or Collision.

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Found Footage Friday: WCW in Manchester 1993~!

ER: We get a full 1993 WCW house show from a week long UK tour that had great sounding matches and really big crowds every night. This one is from Manchester and looks great. If there's a new Vader/Cactus match we get to talk about, it really wouldn't matter what the rest of the card looked like, but this is great. Aside from Vader/Cactus, we get something even more valuable, in a different way. We get fully into the handheld spirit of Dad Recording Events With a Camcorder by starting with some incredible man on the street interviews asking Impossibly British people about their favorite wrestlers. This is a professionally shot and assembled show and these interviews are supposedly professional, but it's crazy that they sold 8,000 tickets to a show and seemingly couldn't find more than a couple fans who had ever heard of WCW. This is essential. 

By the third interview they are talking to a shabby bearded man in a stocking cap who looks like Badly Drawn Boy if he had a bad childhood with a really strict loveless father. The man says his favorite wrestlers are Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo, because he saw them live a coupla times and saw them on TV. Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo have not wrestled in over 10 and 20 years, respectively. The man started acting like he was being asked too probing a question about his taste in wrestling. One Brilliant older lady says she loves Marcus Alexander Bagwell and then politely seemed embarrassed to say that she doesn't like Dustin Rhodes! She calls Barry Windham "Big Barry" and asks if he's married, then yells to her friend Barbara. She shows mild disgust at the mention of Big Van Vader. There are numerous kids with Arn Anderson signs. The most British kid in the fucking world wearing a bowtie and talking about how much he loves Sting. 

Johnny B Badd vs. Scotty Flamingo

MD: Good opener. It was obvious almost immediately that Scotty knew exactly what he had with this crowd. I'm not going back to looking at gates around this time but he was probably not in front of a crowd like this often. They were going to react to everything he did, every forced break in the corner, every complaint about a hairpull that didn't happen, ever stop in the action to interact with them, and he milked it to the fullest. Badd was used to these openers by now and stooged Scotty around for a bit before getting dragged down for most of the match. Scotty's stuff was varied and credible and they worked a few believable hope spots in before going to an energetic stretch of Badd coming back with a few inversions, be it Scotty reversing him off of multiple whips into the corner or just ducking the KO Punch. It wasn't until Johnny snuck in a late match headscissors takeover that he got Scotty off balance to hit it. This was exactly what it ought to have been and the crowd responded accordingly. 

ER: Sorry, Scotty Flamingo fucks. When the cameras cut to him in his fringe and his bulge, he looked like a sex god bringing color to a washed out colorless world. He looks like a Happy Mondays concert. Johnny B. Badd's sequined Naval blue and gold jacket, Captain's hat, and lampshade knee fringe is hotter and far gayer than any gear Cassandro ever wore to the ring and I am frankly stunned at how much bedazzled sex they brought to this town. Flamingo knew exactly what kind of heel to be, trying to sneak things in behind the ref's back, bumping comically when needed, while leaving the biggest bumps for babyface Badd. Johnny took a huge bump over the top to the floor and later a fast one through the ropes, and Scotty had this fun way of playing an innocent little guy. Flamingo used the Curt Hennig corner bump effectively, and the way he went down for Badd finally landing the left hand looked good. This crowd was clearly into all of this and I love a crowd who shows up ready to see some wrestling. 

Maxx Payne vs. Michael Hayes

MD: This peaked in the second minute. Not to say anything else they did was wrong, even if Hayes was 34 going on 60 in how he moved, but I liked the shtick the best. Probably not a surprise. It was good shtick too. Hayes came out decked to the nines and knew the crowd was going to be up for it all. Weird, you couldn't really hear the impacts in the ring (even of the nice punches that needed a louder stomp to go with them I guess?) but you could heard the crowd stomping and cavorting. Even just Payne pointing to each side of the ring to boos and Hayes doing it to cheers felt refreshing. Payne leaned on him like you'd expect and it was fine. Hayes came back and it was fine if a half step slow. And then the finish was nice as Payne shrugged off the DDT and dropped him right down with the... what was it? The Paynekiller? I need to look this up. Yep, the Payne Killer Fujiwara Arm Bar. Perfectly ok house show match but I wish they had done even more goofy stuff at the beginning. The crowd was eager to eat it up and Hayes could make it work.

ER: I liked this quite a bit, but mainly because it was worked around a lot of nice punches that hit and missed. Both guys have nice punches and the ways they would weave the misses in with the hits always felt different, like they kept telling the same punch story and ending it in different ways. I like "old man" Michael Hayes (as Matt said, somehow 34 years old here) and I like that nobody in England had ever seen a man move this way before. That moonwalk is something that would have made him a major star had British wrestling not collapsed already. Maxx Payne is a guy who lands with real heft. A super dense guy who isn't fat enough to be a big fat guy and clearly isn't a body guy, but is big and dense enough that the fat guy spots - like falling on Hayes after Hayes can't handle the lift - work well. I loved how he blocked Hayes' DDT attempt but just anchoring his feet to the mat and shoving off. 

Dustin Rhodes/Van Hammer vs. Barry Windham/Rick Rude

MD: This was a blatant lie as Barry took out Dustin with a chair right after he got to ringside (after a brief scuffle) and it turned into just Rude vs Hammer.

Van Hammer vs. Rick Rude

MD: In general, obviously it's a disappointment that we don't get Barry and Dustin in this tag but it did really let us see Rick Rude at the height of his power working a fairly complete match against Hammer. The early parts where he let Hammer show him up again and again with strength bits and comeuppance and bluster that made him look like a fool was all done extremely well, really getting the crowd moving in exactly the right ways at exactly the right times.

When things settled down, it was all a little weird. A lot of these wrestlers aged better than you'd think because the sheets were valuing so much of the wrong things back then but Hammer is an exception. Rude had to call the match against a broomstick; that's the impression I got at least, because he had him do heel spots and have them go wrong on him only for Rude to do the same spots and have Hammer overcome. For instance, the seated chinlock, which Rude liked to do and then miss on a jump onto the back. Hammer did it first and then when Rude tried to repeat, Hammer was able to lift him up. Likewise the leap onto an outstretched foot. Hammer did it first and you don't often see a babyface wipe out like that. Despite all that, it worked, because Rude made it work and the crowd wanted it to work and Hammer... I mean, he did what he did by this point, a few years into his WCW run. Rude hit almost a snap, swinging sort of Rude Awakening which I'm not sure I ever saw him do. So this had value, but not nearly the sort of value the tag would have had.

ER: Yeah that tag match we didn't get sure looked worlds better than a 15+ minute Van Hammer singles match, but you can't deny how over Hammer was. Before the show when Cappetta was running down the card, Hammer got louder cheers than anyone but Davey Boy, which is incredible. And Rick Rude is probably the best person on the roster at getting a good match out of Van Hammer. Rude knows how to sell effectively for guys like Van Hammer and he knows how to keep crowds interested to make up for the babyface skills Hammer lacks. Rude sells his back better than most wrestlers and takes higher backdrops than anyone, gets ragdolled incredibly on a bearhug, limbs swinging and flopping everywhere like he was giving something to the real Bez-heads in the crowd, blows snot rockets on a downed Hammer, and swings his head around so sweat flies off in waves when Hammer stands up out of a camel clutch. The finishing stretch of this is really good. Rude ducking and moving to avoid Hammer punches until Hammer fakes him out and catches him with one. Rude gives the crowd exactly what they want with his duck walk atomic drop sells and getting run over with clotheslines. I imagine the swinging Rude Awakening was to deal with Van Hammer's height, but it looked good for it. 

Davey Boy Smith vs. Vinnie Vegas

MD: What Worked:

- Vinnie Vegas' cutoffs, including a big boot that went over Davey's head and a great slam back into the corner.
- Vegas' lightning bolt tights that feel like they should have been worn by Sasaki.

What Didn't Work:

- Nash having no idea exactly how much to give at any one point (he gets it sometime in the next year; maybe he was just put off by the size of the crowd?)
- Nash's mannerisms in general. None of it seemed organic.It was all cartoony and over the top in a way where if he dialed it back fifteen percent the crowd would have eaten it up more.
- The crowd doing the same Bulldog chant for ten minutes straight. I shut my eyes and can still hear it.

ER: I got too excited for Matt talking about Vinnie Vegas's cutoffs before watching this and now I'm disappointed. I wanted to see leg. That said, I thought Vegas was a good Bulldog opponent here and I thought this all kinda rocked. Nash might have been more Skywalker Nitro here than what he would be in a couple years, but I thought they were great opponents and both looked good. All the early shoulderblocks and Vegas no sells were great. Bulldog threw a perfect dropkick to a large man and he ran very hard in to Vegas with shoulderblocks. They worked through some compelling slow exchanges that the crowd stayed incessantly attached to with a repeated Airhorn Bulldog chant. All the small stuff built to big Bulldog moments: The long test of strength blow job spot, the heavy sleeper that ended with Bulldog powering to his feet to run Vegas multiple times into the buckles, a sleeper that builds to Bulldog throwing clotheslines and slams. I thought it was all great. 

I thought Vegas looked great. He had a lot of good ideas and a good mix of offense. His two big boots had a nice visual look and were well timed, he threw Bulldog far with his bodyslam, and jumped into a good hard connection landing on his elbowdrop. Vegas did something that I loved as much as anything I've seen in a Kevin Nash match - and I'm a guy who loves a lot of Kevin Nash matches - when Vegas blocked a vertical suplex with a quick punch to Bulldog's kidney. It was so badass, caught perfectly on film. His running missed elbow into the turnbuckles to set up the running powerslam was a full speed miss meant to hit. I thought it was a performance that has aged really well. This felt more like a match he put together for Bulldog than a match Bulldog worked him through. 

Big Van Vader vs. Cactus Jack

MD: Race certainly earned his pay on this night between moving the guardrail out of the way when Cactus was having a superhuman run on the outside to being there for a lot of pivotal moments of Vader taking back over by eating Cactus' stuff while he recovered, including on the finish. The middle felt a little flat to me with Cactus kicking out of the two Vader Bombs a little too early in the sequence maybe, even though there was going to be an escalation to Vader coming off the turnbuckles with a splash. Maybe I just don't remember exactly where Vader's offense was here in 93.

On the other hand, watching Cactus taking Vader's punches is a pretty magic, horrific experience. Just gnarly shot after gnarly shot. Cactus' comebacks were all really good too, be it just getting his foot up at the exact right time or throwing a few DDTs or slamming him out on the floor. Vader was so big that Cactus could believably get a sleeper on him by jumping on his back. And when he took out Race once, he had a great heads up standing tall look to him, a hero you could get behind. So this was good overall, if maybe a bit too reliant on Race and a bit off in the middle. We're better off for having it certainly, if only to see those punches land one more time.

ER: I thought this was pretty fantastic; the match that obviously leapt off the page when the show dropped. A new match added to the legendary feud and it has moments just as violent as the best matches they had. The punches were there but sadly obscured; instead we got Vader taking a diving bump off the ring staging across and over a guardrail. It's one of the bigger Vader bumps in their feud and it's crazy to see on this show. It looked no different than a dangerous Cactus bump, but this match was about Vader and Harley Race being the ones taking bumps on concrete and ring edges, not Cactus. Vader was taking big DDT bumps with slick vertical pause, missed a big splash off the middle buckle. Honestly Cactus got out of this one easy. Jack was the one announced to the crowd multiple times as one of the main attractions but the reactions were not there. Nobody was talking about him in the pre-show interviews, nobody seemed to know how to react to him as a man. 

Vader knows how to get reaction and works impressively overtime. This is a match that raises Vader's stock. He was an incredibly hard working mammoth man. He worked 125 matches in 1993 and he's out there playing up to the large crowd, falling hard, swinging harder. In between his big bumps are the big hits. Beyond our obscured sequence of definitely shoot punches, there were straight kicks to the ribs and headbutts; a little kid smile before jumping ass to chest with a bombs away. I thought the Race involvement was hilarious and unnecessary but love that Race is a psycho taking suplexes at 50 and looking 65. Vader is good at being specially vicious taking over after his interference. He mule kicks Cactus so hard in the balls that it felt like a finish. But Vader is an artist. A fan's wrestler. While Jack is selling his balls Vader delivers his biggest hardest swing of the match into the side of his head. 

Cactus/Vader was an excellent feud to get another match from. They always had new ideas, and this one had a structure I hadn't seen from them. 

Sting vs. Paul Orndorff

MD: The good in this was really good. Orndorff looked amazing to start. There's an early sequence where he begins with an awesome grinding headlock and moves into faster rope running than you'd think into almost a snap press slam by Sting and the recoiling that followed and it was all great. I wish we had a little more stooging before he took over, but his offense for the transition was all credible, jabs and a perfectly timed knee cutoff.

The problem was that there was both a lack of motion and a lack of heeling once he did
take over. He mostly ground Sting down as they built to a few hope spots and I get why he might contain him and Sting sold well, but it maybe wasn't the match I would have wanted as a main event. I half get the impression that since the fans were just chanting for Sting over and over, Orndorff felt like he didn't need to do a whole lot to get more heat. They did have a good finish though with Orndorff taking a front bump into the corner and Sting splashing him to the back and then rolling up. I'm not sure I'd seen that in too many Sting matches. So good overall but maybe not rising to the moment.

ER: I thought Orndorff looked incredible here. Sting was a great babyface, I loved all his flying and his comeback punches might have been the best on the show. But I couldn't stop watching Orndorff and his weird arm but mostly his incredible skillset. He was fast, dynamic, bumped everything like he meant it and It mattered. He knew how to use that little arm to throw short sharp elbows to the jaw and pointed elbowdrops straight down to the throat that were exquisitely worked. He took a damn vertical suplex on the floor; his back suplex landed Sting firmly on his shoulders in a way that looked distinctly All Japan. I thought about Paul Orndorff in 90s All Japan as the crispest possible Johnny Ace and thinking about how differently things could have been. Sting/Orndorff is a match I don't think I've ever seen. I don't think of them as guys who feuded. This felt like a NEW new match to me, and they probably could have done more and built to something bigger than the Vader/Cactus match that preceded them. But for guys I don't think about as wrestling each other, Orndorff felt like one of the best to take Sting's offense. This man knew how to draw money wrestling wild eyed babyfaces like he was born to do it. 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Jackie! Williams!

56. 1979.09.21 - 03 Jackie Sato vs. Vicki Williams

K: I’ll be a bit theoretical like this. For a match to work, it almost always has to have some structure going on in order for it to have any value. This distinguishes it from an angle, which can just be one thing happening because that’s its only purpose. This feels more like an angle than a match because it’s really just one thing happening. Vicki Williams jumps Jackie at the start and chokes her and gets helped out with blatant interference from the other Americans on the outside and the biased American referee just lets it all go. Jackie doesn’t put up any real fight against it, it’s hardly a spirited performance from her. So I’m only a few minutes into it and I’m already thinking “ok you’ve made your point, the Americans are cheating and their referee is crooked” and just want this to wrap up quickly.

Unfortunately they didn’t. This just goes on very monotonously until Jackie finally gets tired of the crooked ref constantly slow counting her and attacks him to get DQed. There was no need for this match to go any more than 5 minutes.

*1/2

MD: As a one time thought experiment this was pretty interesting. Jackie had to face not just Vicki, not just all of the American contingent on the outside, but also a biased referee who would let Williams put her in illegal holds, would break Jackie’s mostly legal holds, and would count far faster for Williams than Jackie. It’s something we’ve seen a hundred times but here it was fresh and new and shocking to the announcers and the crowd.

And that was probably a good thing as there wasn’t a whole lot else interesting with the match. Williams used a bunch of chokes. She had one nice drop into a body scissors. Jackie had some really good comebacks especially after the image of her getting choke in the ropes in front of the whole American team and they had a clear way for Williams to get back on top as Jackie was arguing with the heel ref, but it never really added up to much overall. That was especially true with the non finish. Instead of the ref getting some meaningful comeuppance, Jackie tossed him after a slow count and he DQed her. I assume this will be a story moving forward with the American vs Japanese tournament and therefore it made sense to introduce and not pay it off, but we’ll see.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 3/17 - 3/23

ROH 3/20/25

Satnam Singh vs Sid Ellington

MD: Satnam's come a long way in as I don't think he could have fit his part quite right in a squash like this even a year ago, even when he was having the Danielson match. Ellington was about as game as could be, quite Darby-ish in his willingness to take months off of his life in order to help put Satnam over here. 

There was nothing particularly complex about this. Ellington rushed Satnam instead of accepting the handshake. Satnam brushed him off. Ellington rushed again and ducked a mammoth clothesline and got a shot in. Satnam brushed him off. Ellington tried again and basically got stomped into the mat. Now he was caught and, in a company that was once known for its biels, he ate probably the most spectacular one we've seen. Satnam chopped him a few times in the corner, played to the crowd fairly effectively about doing another, and then chucked him to the other side of the ring with another biel. Ellington managed one last gasp, by leaping onto Satnam's back. Satnam yanked him around into a press slam right into the turnbuckle which was one of the nastiest things I've ever seen, then ended him with a chokeslam. 

Straightforward enough, but it was the inbetween stuff that impressed me. Well, I was impressed by the biels and the press slam into the post too. I am a human being after all and Satnam is one in a billion. But those inbetween bits, brushing off the shot, taking his time walking from moment to moment and letting both the anticipation and the aftermath of everything he did set in, interacting with the crowd, just seeming alive in there as if he was a living breathing entity reacting to what was going on around him instead of going from spot to spot to spot. That matters and it's not easy and, when married to how big and how unique he is and how well he can move for his size, it definitely makes one feel like there's something there. 

The problem is that we're in 2025 and it's a weekly episodic televised business. We've been thirty years since a giant could be a real attraction. Vince, Sr. can't just send Andre around from territory to territory and then bring him back to MSG once a month. This is a company with Hobbs crashing through people, with Toa slapping the mat, with Wardlow out of action (one way or the other). It's a company with Ospreay and Omega, two guys who could be protected attractions in their own right (in entirely different ways), on top. It's a company where Mistico flies in for post-show six-mans and with Hologram back from injury, where a guy like Bill seems to have a ceiling as a heater.

If you see Satnam every week, he's no longer as special. You can build him to be beat, to be overcome, but you can only do that once or twice before he loses his luster. He'll always be a giant. He'll always be a threat. But he'll only be unstoppable until he's not. And by making him less special, unlike other wrestlers who can more easily take losses, you make everything less special, because he is so obviously special.

I'm not sure what the answer is for Bill or Toa or Wardlow. For Hobbs, it's push him as hard as you can push him. That much I've figured out. For Satnam, I almost hate to say it, but the answer is probably keeping him on ROH. He's a special attraction for the live crowd. The only people that get to see something so thoroughly amazing are the ones who pay a ticket and get there early or stick around; or that pay that extra fee for Honor Club. Just let him mow through people, do impressive things to young talent willing to enhance him. 

And then, when you're sure, when you're absolutely sure, when you have that guy who needs that rub, when you get that one basket to put all your eggs in, push him forward to TV and build him up and then have him be the wall for your new hero to climb. You only get to do it once though. Until then, let him amaze the people who really care week in and week out. I'm one of them, and I was sure as hell amazed by the attraction I saw here. 

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Found Footage Friday: RIP NISHIMURA~! NAGATA~! GENTARO~! NAKANISHI~! CHONO~! TENZAN~!

Hiroyoshi Tenzan/Masahiro Chono vs. Manabu Nakanishi/Osamu Nishimura NJPW 06/05/02

MD: This is an hour draw where we never had the full version until recently. They structure the time extremely well all things considered, with a few major story beats to loop together the characters, the work, and the big moments. The first ten minutes were primarily Nakanashi paired with Tenzan and Nishimura paired with Chono, worked fairly even. They had time to breathe though and that meant a bit more struggle and effort to lock in or escape from every hold. Nakanishi and Tenzan brought little sprinkles of bombast and over the top theatrics and Chono and Nishimura were grounded and focused.

From there, they spent around ten minutes working on Tenzan, leading to a big entry Chono and a little less than twenty minutes working on Nishimura, including some big bits of hope including a superplex/toss off the rope combo. Nishimura was credible enough to stay in it and keep the crowd invested, so they were up and ready when Nakanishi came in like a truck, using feats of (as the commentary put it) "superhuman" strength to fight both off, including lifting both over his head at once. When he went for a German, however, his leg went out, setting up the back two-fifths of the match. 

It had seemed like maybe they were going into the finish, but instead Nishimura had to step forth and he did so iconically, taking his boots off and becoming an absolute wrestling machine, switching from one opponent to the other and keeping his head more than above water. Just when it seemed like he was getting swept under, there was Nakanishi, bandaged up for an extended comeback and finishing stretch. The match had one last wrinkle though, one thing to put it over the top and force the champion on their back foot in a very visual way. Nakanishi shot a knee into Tenzan and he bled big. That gave the last ten minutes a bloody, desperate overtone as they rushed on towards the draw. This warranted the time it got, with all of the comebacks and momentum shifts feeling suitably huge and the iconic moments even huger.

PAS:  Very cool match that I don't think I had ever watched before. Nishimura has always been one of my guys, but I was lower on Nakanish, Tenzan and 2000s Chono, and I imagine the length kept me from watching it in 2002, and it has never been something I have considered revisiting. Nishimura's passing and the new footage of it all, led me to advocate for this, and I am glad I did. 

Just a couple of all-time moments in this match. I loved the idea of Nakanishi on this Incredible hulk run of power spots and the injury being non-contact. If it was a real injury, tremendous improv, if it was part of the match, hell of an idea. Nishimura pulling off his boots is an iconic leading man moment from one of wrestling's great character actors, and instantly became one of my favorite strap drop momentum changes ever.. I did kind of wish that, that moment and the big Nakanish return from the back, led more quickly into the finish, I liked the finish run and the Tenzan blood, but there was some dead time in between the Nakanishi return and the big ending, which felt like it could have been trimmed, still hell of piece of business and a tribute to the greatness of Nishimura.

Osamu Nishimura vs Yugi Nagata - European Rounds NJPW 06/02/05

MD: Ah, a handheld of two guys in black trunks wrestling. That's what you want out of NJPW. This on the fabled Italy tour and was really European rounds. They went five to a draw. I liked it quite a bit actually. Balanced, good work, good anticipation, good story. The first round was mostly even, just feeling out but I liked how they made every touch seem like it could lead to something. Nagata took over with a kick in the ropes (unclean break) and he got carded for it but that was a small price to pay to break the stalemate (or the slight Nishimura advantage) and take over. 

He kept control through a roundbreak but one too many kicks led to his doom as Nishimura caught it for a dragon screw. Likewise, he kept control through a ropebreak (charging forth with a leaping kick to ensure he'd keep it right at the start of the round), and pressed the advantage with a figure-four. He couldn't get the win though and they leaned into the last round with some big bombs as they worked towards they draw. This worked for me as something different and they leaned into the gimmick well with Nagata holding his own. They could have gone back to Japan and done these matches for years and told interesting stories with them. We'd probably be in a better pro wrestling world if they did. 

Osamu Nishimura vs. GENTARO VKF 11/16/15

MD: Pretty enjoyable 20+ minutes here as they just went hard with one another. For the first half of the match GENTARO would try to press an advantage (anything from a vein-popping headlock to slamming Nishimura's head into the turnbuckles to a headscissors to a bow and arrow) and Nishimura had not just an answer for each but suitable punishment in return, most especially a nasty European Uppercuts. 

Midway through, things spilled outside, and Nishimura absolutely cracked GENTARO's knee with a shin breaker on a chair and started dismantling the leg. Sometimes you're watching a match and something takes a turn and even after watching for years and years you still get that feeling in your stomach of "how is this guy ever going to come back from that?" The answer was that Nishimura missed a knee drop off the top and GENTARO was able to slam his knee into the post with a shinbreaker of his own.

From there they were both on one leg and fought hobbled against one another, including a few figure-four attempts by GENTARO, one of which he was finally able to lock on outside the ring, staying in it for almost the entire twenty count. All of this was very good, with lots of struggle to try to prevent the hold and plenty of consequence for being in it. Finish came out of nowhere as GENTARO got it on again only for Nishimura to turn it and almost immediately get the submission. On the one hand, it made sense given the damage to the knee and how hard they were fighting over the hold. On the other, I'm not sure I've ever seen a submission on a turned Figure-Four before.

ER: This was so great. It's Nishimura at his best. He's the same age as I am right now and he looks 60, but moves like a tough 30 year old. He's a rare breed, a Masa Fuchi type who looks like a polite salaryman in his own Japanese Nobody. He has such a dedication to making every step of a match look earned, an honesty that is something became really important to me. He hits guys in slightly different ways and makes simple transitions look like rewarding events. There's so much satisfaction in watching a pro work slowly but effectively through a figure 4 or Indian deathlock. The camera work in VKF is really great and amplifies Nishimura's style. 

The ringside camera films inside the ring like they're aiming to show that there are no tricks or illusions in Nishimura's work. It's an honest camera for an honest style. But that close-up realism pays off when the match escalates to hard strikes and real impact. Nishimura had an incredible uppercut sandwich when he went full weight into GENTARO'S neck and jaw, then went low with one into his thigh, then went back to the neck and jaw just as hard as the first. He drove some of the hardest full body downward strike elbows into GENTARO'S quad, escalated things further with a knee breaker on a chair, attacked it in ways I wasn't expecting. When he hits a big kneedrop from the middle rope across the leg, it's the same movement that leads to a miss and transition back to GENTARO later. There's that honesty. I like when GENTARO realized he was losing this fight but looking for ways out, suddenly getting really serious about a Count Out win still being on the table while the ref calmly insisted that Nishimura was clearly on the apron. There are no bad Nishimura finishes, they always feel like one man won with a submission that was well earned, and I love the way Nishimura specifically showed his work while earning those wins. A true craftsman. 

2015 MOTY MASTER LIST

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Nancy! Victoria! Kumano! Ikeshita!

55. 1979.09.21 - 02 Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita vs. Nancy Kumi & Victoria Fujimi (WWWA Tag Team Titles) (2/3 Falls)

K: The introductions are pretty reserved considering what happens the moment the bell rings: Mami Kumano apron neck-swings both her opponents within the first minute while Yumi Ikeshita keeps the other at bay. From here Black Pair really dominate too things, probably a bit too much really, at times it’s hard to really root for Golden Pair when they’re taking such a prolonged beatdown without any significant attempt at a comeback, so it feels a bit of a fluke when they get one comeback together after Victoria hits a very high angle sunset flip that put Yumi almost vertical. The tides switch in a matter of seconds and Black Pair just take slam after slam plus a big splash off the top from Nancy and that’s enough to put them away for the 1st fall.

Usually when Black Pair drop a fall, the result is they up the brutality in the 2nd to turn things into their style of match. That isn’t really what happens here. Ikeshita does hit them with a bucket at the start, but by their standards that’s pretty mild weapon use. The rest of the fall is in the ring and Black Pair stay in control with just moves and they win the fall with a hurricanrana off the top into a pin. The 3rd fall follows a similar pattern. This time Black Pair bring in The Towel, but it backfires pretty quickly and it ends up being used on them more than the other way round. But they still turn things around pretty quickly by basically just outfighting Golden Pair and put them away with an even more spectacular looking sequence of offense.

This was mostly entertaining but I can’t help but feel like this match was incredibly one-sided. It’s not just that Black Pair dominated all 3 falls, but they did it mostly without needing to resort to weapons to interference so Golden Pair came out of it just looking out of their league.

**3/4

MD: It’s an exciting day for AJW as Jackie’s new song was about to be released (“A Pocket Full of Tears?”) but the video skips just as we’re about to hear more about it and I guess we have a Dark Pair vs Golden Pair match in front of us instead. It’s important you know that Kumano’s cool one-sleeve jacket is gone and she’s got a robe and a headband now instead. Ikeshita’s got sort of a black vest over a white collared shirt for her ring gear. We don’t care what the Golden Pair have (Ok, fine. Fujimi has her gi like usual. She’s the only one that wears one). As best as I can tell from the commentary, if the Golden Pair don’t win this one, they’re going to disband.

It didn’t start well for them as Kumano was dangling both with her choke off the apron within the first minute. They’d get one bit of hope in the first fall, and would actually tag quite frequently, but the fall almost completely belonged to the Black Pair right up until the end. Just the usual headbutts and violent shots. On the comeback, Fujimi hit her butt butt repeatedly and Kumi had her lifting drops from a northern lights position and finally a full suplex over to take things. They weren’t winning on points but they took the fall.

The Black Pair came back with the bucket at the start of the second fall. Ikeshita was hitting her tight scoop powerslams that were almost like gutwrenches. Fujimi’s attempt to save Kumi off the top failed as she crashed into her. Then she got tossed outside and the American contingent dragged her down. Meanwhile, Ikeshita hit a jumping ‘rana off the top, truly a thing of beauty, and that was that. Kumi started the third fall off scrappy, but ended up outside with the Americans again. Meanwhile, Ikeshita somehow got a Mickey Mouse towel and tried using it as a weapon as things escalated into a finishing stretch. The Golden Pair did okay for a while but Ikeshita pretty quickly caught them and started with these cool stalling fallaway slams. They then isolated Fujimi in the corner, did a lifting dangling choke on her, and set her up for a Kumano seated senton and torture rack. It was another solid Black Pair match but didn’t quite rise to either the chaos or the drama of some of their previous ones, despite the big stakes.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 3/10 - 3/16

ROH 3/13/25

Gates of Agony (Toa Liona/Bishop Kaun)/Top Flight (Dante/Darius Martin) vs Frat House (Preston Vance/Cole Karter)/Premier Athletes (Ariya Daivari/Tony Nese)

MD: Different matches have different purposes. Different wrestlers in different matches have different goals. Greatness comes in a lot of forms and not all of them are well captured by star ratings. While I don't have a taping schedule in front of me, this was filmed in Oakland with a Collision and I'm almost certain it came on post-show as part of an ROH taping that ended with a Mistico trios. ROH is very much wrestling for wrestling's sake, a way to fill out cards, give people work and reps (develop talent), to create a well of extra content in a post-Elevation/Dark/Rampage world, to build up a product which may be more lucrative/marketable at some point. I think it brings TK some joy, both because of his affection for the brand and because it lets him put together matches without any external constraints (commercials, demos, network notes, etc.). For me, it harkens back to being a kid in the 90s and watching Power Hour or Worldwide or Prime Time (or later on Velocity/Heat/Jakked). The big story beats weren't going to happen there, but you'd get to just watch an hour of wrestling and enjoy it just for what it was. I think there's a disconnect with people who didn't grow up with that maybe.

Anyway, for the crowd that hangs around, it gives them an added bonus, just fun wrestling, to a degree 'house show wrestling' during a time where there are very few house shows. That's absolutely what this was, and if you look at the broad history of pro wrestling, this has its place and its value and it's honestly a really worthy entry along those lines. I am so glad a match like this is still allowed to exist in 2025, a match anchored by incredibly giving, unlikable heels, 100% willing to do their job as opposed to trying to make it about themselves, and two very diverse, very talented babyface teams, with one absolute shining star at the heart of it all in Toa Liona. 

Let's talk structure quickly so you know how they put this together, and then I'll double back to that thought. Match started with chaos as Gates came down and Toa beelined to Cole Karter (with Kaun going after Vance). Daivari pulled Dante's hair to drag him to the corner and we got a mini FIP early. Eventually, Dante made it to the corner (Karter the weak link) and they ran a sequence where everyone slingshotted in on him one after the other, with Toa being the last, after really milking it; after he did it (to big reaction), he had the biggest smile on his face; more on that later too. With some chicanery, the heels were able to isolate Darius on the floor (including some cheapshots from the associated managers and hangers oners, Sterling and Jameson, ultimately broken up by Toa rushing around ringside with a chair to a big pop). From there, we entered into a second FIP on Darius, during which the fans chanted that they wanted Toa and Dante, reading the room, hyped that idea from the apron (which, given that his brother was getting beat on was pretty selfless in serving the match when you think about it). Darius finally came back for the hot tag and everything went into a wild finishing stretch.

I don't usually do this, but I think everyone should go check out the climax of that wildness and the finish itself. I clipped it because people needed to see it and I'd like everyone (and I mean everyone, even if you've seen it before, even if you helped conceive it) to go and take a look and then come back so we can close this out. Sound on is better, but even sound off will give you the idea. Just do it.

https://x.com/MattD_SC/status/1901244037081788581

This misses Kaun (a surprisingly natural babyface) shutting down everyone and hitting a poetry in motion leap and maybe another dive or two from the assembled mass of talent, but it gives you what I need you to see. First we have Toa using Dante as a weapon twice, both to kick at an opponent and then by press slamming him into everyone; great emotive reactions by Dante here. If the two weren't so ingrained in their obvious partnerships, I could see real money in a big/little tag team between the two of them. Obviously the crowd loved that.

But then Toa just... dropped the chain, broke through the limiters, and for about a minute looked like the biggest attraction imaginable, slapping the ground, charging up, looking for prey, and absolutely bursting through everyone in sight on the floor, all leading to him hesitating only slightly as Sterling got in the way before plowing right through him and send him careening into Nese (great work all around by everyone). The crowd went wild, even here for an (on paper) disposable post-show ROH match with absolutely no stakes. And yes, it was a good crowd, absolutely, but there was magic in what they did. And it was magic that all came to fruition as Toa rolled back into the ring and slammed the mat again, his gaze set on the last man standing in Preston Vance. 

As Toa was slapping the mat, as the post-Collision fans were going nuts for him hyping them up, there was the biggest smile on his face. Toa portrays a wild man, a bestial presence, a throwback to decades past, a killing machine, but my god, that smile. This was a guy absolutely living in the moment, basking in the crowd's excitement and adulation, realizing the sheer joy that he, through his presence and physicality brought into the world for at least those in attendance and living his very best life. You can't fabricate that smile. You can't bottle it and sell it. It was an honestly beautiful thing during a time where we need as many honestly beautiful things that we can get. And of course, that made it all the better when he had his leg grabbed from the outside and Vance (who has a history of robbing people of joy) cut him down with a very credible clothesline before the Gates fired back and won the thing. 

Sometimes wrestling is just special and it doesn't always have to be two guys leaping off the top of the cage or wrestlers bleeding buckets. Sometimes it can just be one wrestler using everything at his disposal without hesitation or abandon, just embracing all of the complicated absurdities and simple blissful truths of pro wrestling and everyone around him being selfless and giving and professional in enabling that moment. That's what they had here. The crowd in Oakland was lucky to see it. We were lucky to see it on ROH TV last week. And hopefully, now all of you reading this that went back and clicked on that link feel like you're lucky to have seen it too. I know I feel that way.

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Found Footage Friday: NJPW 85~! DANCING ANDRE~! CAPTAIN REDNECK~! INOKI~! BACKLUND~! SHARPE~! ADONIS~! HIRO~!

NJPW 5/18/85

Masked Superstar vs. Kim Su Hong (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbKieuAaBEQ)

MD: Kim is a South Korean wrestler who shows up on these NJPW cards now and again. I can't say that he stands out much. I love Eadie, love him, one of my favorites, but in New Japan he is so often a gatekeeper, just an incredibly credible wall for people to push off against. He takes 90% of this. Still some neat small things like losing Kim early and then claiming he was oiled up. That sort of being alive within the match. All of his stuff looks mean and credible with both a killer neckbreaker and then a twisting drop down into a front facelock. He also whacks him with something outside of the ring to big effect. Kim does come back late and his stuff is middling, some good, some bad. Superstar drops down on him and nails him with a clothesline to end it.

ER: We don't have Hashimoto/Sano, or the Canek/Enrique Vera tag, but we have Masked Superstar throwing Finlay level clubs to Su Hong's chest and killer knees to the side of the head. I liked how Superstar held the ropes to block a single leg and just went right back to clubbing. Superstar kind of jams Su Hong up on his small pieces of offense, running too hard into dropkicks that really shouldn't have moved him but looked worse with how he treated them. His clothesline looked like a match finishing clothesline and there's a good chance I won't watch a Kim Su Hong match the rest of my life. 

Super Strong Machine vs. Tony St. Clair (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pADWavSmgM)

MD: Just a credible back and forth match. I wouldn't say any of the transitions were particularly interesting but everything looked good. SSM is a tank and St. Clair can hold his own. They traded advantages and holds. Machine had a nice leaping headbutt off the ropes and a killer clothesline. St. Clair turned a headlock into a backbreaker (by slipping out, not a Robinson backbreaker). Good finishing stretch where St. Clair got a nearfall on a sunset flip in but Machine was able to get a German for the win. Wakamatsu got involved pre-match even though Machine wanted nothing to do with him and then tried to attack SSM post match only to get thrashed for his trouble. Added a little spice to what would have otherwise been a meaty but straightforward midcard match.

ER: This crowd is so fired up for Super Strong Machine. He was getting clapping Misawa-type chants during his entrance. I wasn't expecting Tony St. Clair to look larger than Strong Machine. My mental pictures don't always give me accurate reads but both are 15-20 pounds in the opposite direction I picture them. Made it look good when Tony started hitting Machine. SSM can work real tough and St. Clair looked like he was moving him good with his back elbow and uppercut, sharp front chancery. His dropkick pushes up under the chin and he makes a whip into the buckles look like it made all his limbs go briefly numb. I like the way these two hit each other. St. Clair is great at leaning into lariats while selling how much he doesn't like taking them. Strong Machine has one of my favorite German suplexes. Both of them work exactly how Bret Hart would have worked New Japan in 1994. 

Kengo Kimura/Seiji Sakaguchi vs. Adrian Adonis/Dick Murdoch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bqyZdnuwVU)

MD: Honestly, this is yet another all time Murdoch performance, and on a house show too. Granted, the stuff I loved here was stuff Meltzer wouldn't have liked anyway but what are you going to do about it. For instance, there's a moment in the middle where Sakaguchi's on a rampage. He takes out Adonis and then goes to the apron to get Murdoch and Murdoch moves to the other side of the post and the crowd cracks up. It's great. But it's such a tiny little wrestling thing. His reactions are great throughout. The way he takes the Inazuma leg lariat by covering his face like he'd just lost his nose is amazing. Dick Murdoch. Captain Redneck, or as they call him in NJPW, the Super Rodeo Machine.

This had a great heat on Kimura where he kept almost coming back and Murdoch and Adonis would just make a quick tag. Eventually, instead of going for a hold, he threw a dropkick instead and made it to Sakaguchi. They did another bit of heat on Kimura and then a big hot comeback. Everything ended up thrown out. Post match they had both a great bit with a chair and being afraid of it and an even better one of double elbowing the ref. Great stuff.

ER: Great Dick Murdoch handheld matches are the best, because not only do you get to see Dick Murdoch being the greatest pro wrestler, but it makes me think of DEAN. To take us back at least 15 years, the moment I always remember from Segunda Caida Radio - something I am not sure exists online anymore, but was loved by all the real SC Heads - was DEAN making fun of Meltzer for thinking Dick Murdoch was a guy who only worked for the cameras. By then we had a lot of handheld footage and had all seen Murdoch wrestling exactly the same as in all of his great matches. DEAN had seen Murdoch live. We were all talking about how great Dick Murdoch was, but DEAN was the one who saw him live and knew how good he was off camera. I always think about DEAN doing a bit as Murdoch, where he's dogging it in Korakuen and does a Don Knotts reaction when he sees a Japanese guy in the crowd with a huge 1985 camcorder.  

This is the only match on this show that doesn't have a listed cagematch runtime, and I didn't realize it would be the longest match of the show. And in that time, Dick Murdoch kept putting on a performance that grew in elegance the longer they went, arguably peaking two minutes after the count out when he got cheers for beating up the referee and then running shenanigans around a chair swinging Kengo Kimura. The match goes long enough that we get several momentum shifts and each one peaks the action and story and Murdoch grows with the story. I think my favorite part was when he had been worked over for awhile and got to tag out, and he stayed in the ring shaking out and rubbing his arm after tagging in Adonis, not participating in but watching Adonis lay a beating on Kimura. The cattle branding looked like a wild rapids ride, his punches matched the energy at all times, and he sold Kimura's like they were the stiffest punches of the match. The fans treated him after the match like a charming folk hero. 

The Cobra (c) vs. Hiro Saito (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIud5l0HlGc)

 

MD: I am not at all a Cobra guy. I think some of his Rocco matches are really bad, for instance, as he tried to fill a post-Tiger Mask gap and ended up with the worst of two worlds. A lack of substance and not even all that much style. Action for the sake of action and the action tends to frankly just be okay. This was great though, and so much of that was on the contrast. Saito is the prototypical cruiserweight bully and he gave everything weight and heft as the two of them threw everything they had at each other.

 

That meant that when Cobra was going to do an unnecessary backflip charging at Saito in the corner, Saito would come back and take his head off with a lariat. Or if he'd get pushed off after a kick and do another backflip within the ring, Saito would dropkick him out and crush him with a dive. They worked it like a title match starting with holds and going back to them, building to big spots and exchanges, with meaningful momentum shifts usually based around a big reversal/mistake/missed move. As time went on they traded some really great pile drivers and the dives you'd expect. Saito got a German mid match but couldn't put away with it and down the stretch Cobra finally escalated to a Tiger Suplex for a win. Very good lost Jr. Heavyweight Title match.

ER: We don't really talk much about how cool Hiro Saito is, and for how long he was cool. He's cool in all the eras. He was cool when I started getting New Japan tapes in 2000, and he was a bleach blond black beard surf punk with a tight bod, punk groupies and surf licks. Cobra feels like a throwback in 1985 by comparison, and it's punk scum vs. Mil Mascaras. Cobra's Mil hits hard, and Saito keeps spiking Mil with martinetes. The crowd was real into Saito's grounded piledriver when Cobra tried standing out of a headscissors, and they kept coming alive when they see how tough and well worked. I knew it was really good when Cobra's cravat into a stump puller and how Saito slowly powers out of it by eventually digging into Cobra's mask and hitting a GREAT fistdrop. Direct, hard. His piledriver after is perfect. Two kids in the crowd invent TomK's famous Dueling Chant 15 years before he did while Saito takes a crazy bump getting dropkicked to the floor. Cobra's kip up to dropkick is as beautiful as anything by our most graceful lucha legends. Saito hits a massive tope that is what you want a tope to be. I was going to write about how Cobra's flying offense isn't as good as his matwork and hitting but then he hits a piledriver so good that I felt I shouldn't harp on his lesser offense. Hiro Saito is so good. He's such a hard bumper, and strong, and fast. His forceful kickout just after 3 is the exact right energy. 

Andre the Giant vs. King Kong Bundy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kntbQ5SjUs)

 

MD: I wasn't going to cover this one since it was already out there, but it's pretty remarkable. My gut says that this was during the period where Andre was really breaking down, before his surgery and the switch to the singlet, but also before he really figured out how to work his late era style. So he was left in there against Bundy not entirely sure what he could or couldn't do. And what he ended up doing was being as entertaining as humanly possible. Yes, they did the bit where Bundy walks up the ropes to try to escape a hold and gets dropped, but Andre's mannerisms and little dance moves in this one are all over the place. Little shuffle steps. Hand motions. Weird faces. Outright dancing. He doesn't do the Fargo Strut but basically everything else you can imagine. And the fans do respond to it. I mean, who knows. Maybe he was just ribbing, maybe he was drunk, but I've only ever seen him do one or two of these little crazy finger motions or screw around like this, not build a whole match around it.

ER: I think every single Andre match I write about has me talking about some little thing I've never seen Andre do before, and I always mean it. But this Andre is an entirely new Andre. This is a house show taped by some saint, and without it I'm not sure we ever get to see Andre as a dancing babyface. It's incredible. I've seen Andre do something that could be considered sassy before but never a full match of him working as Dusty Rhodes. It's incredible. It doesn't start right away, but when it starts it does not stop. It feels like it's going to be your standard great Andre performance, smothering the humongous Bundy, muscling him into corners, hooking him in heavy sleepers, and I was excited about how he was going to sell for Bundy's comebacks. But when things take a turn, they really take a turn. I certainly was not expecting Bundy to walk up the ropes like Bret when Andre had a sleeper locked on, a real Dig Up mentality, and when Andre just drops the big man flat the crowd erupts. 

That's when Quirky Andre comes out. He makes the cuckoo sign, twirling his finger around his ear, and then does a kind of soft shoe routine, a little tap dance with a hard final step, like he's letting everyone in on his bit. If he'd had a cane and top hat it only would have made more sense. He keeps it up. While holding Bundy in another standing choke, he floats some butterfly steps, skipping in place in a movement that I have not once seen Andre do. He becomes Dusty Rhodes, flip flopping and flying. Bundy himself seems confused, he doesn't seem to understand the timing of the dancing and the strikes, leaning out of Andre's first punch after a perfect dance, so Andre has to catch him even harder with a backhand. This is truly an Andre I've never seen. Bundy takes a huge bump over the top to the floor and eventually just leaves, but not before more Andre dancing. How does history's greatest wrestler keep raising his stock? You think you've seen everything the biggest spectacle in wrestling history has done, but he keeps bringing out new tricks. This is no different than if a dancing babyface Stan Hansen match had just been discovered. It's bizarre, it's great, it's nothing you've seen. It's Andre.   

Bob Backlund/Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Antonio Inoki/Tatsumi Fujinami (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsW8GclZnt4)

 

MD: Honestly, I was here for Backlund vs Inoki and we really don't get that. What we do get is very good though. A lot of it is Sharpe being as vocal as humanly possible in a ring but entertaining and credible. Most of the rest, though, is Fujinami vs Backland and of course they match up so well. They matched up well years earlier and they match up even better now that Fujinami is a credible heavyweight. Right place, right time, smooth, slick, imapctful. And yes, they do a great short arm scissors sequence leading to the Gotch lift, just like you'd want. I just wanted a little bit more Inoki in here though. 

ER: I went into this wanting the most Popeye noises ever heard in one wrestling match. This was our chance. I wanted to hear Backlund and Iron Mike Oh-Whoa-Whoa-Whoaing all over the ring in the only time these two ever tagged. But we didn't get that. Backlund ceded the constant vocals to Sharpe and Sharpe ran with them. Backlund was shockingly silent. 1985 Backlund is interesting. It's his first year at sea after his long reign on top. I wonder what drove him to wrestle that year, seeing how much he pulled back for several years after. He surely could have been working regular Japan schedules had he wanted to, so he clearly just didn't want to. He only worked this one short New Japan tour and now we have another small piece of it. Sharpe vs. Inoki is an amusing footnote. You look at this tag and you've never seen a more obvious Taking the Fall guy than Iron Mike. Backlund's matwork with Fujinami was something I could have seen a lot more of. The crowd was so into Backlund's slow powerful reversals, but most of this tag felt like it was just about to kick into gear and never really did.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE THE GIANT

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Martin!

54. 1979.09.21 - 01 Judy Martin vs. Tomi Aoyama

K: I didn’t think much of this one. There was a lot of interference from the Americans patrolling the ringside area; my main thought about it was how much it seemed to disrupt the flow of the match and every time Tomi got back in the ring it felt like a reset. I’m not sure what the difference is because Black Pair of course do interference in their matches but it usually works a lot better than this, like it’s just part of the greater package whereas here it’s more of an irritating intrusion.

When Judy and Tomi are just in the ring the work is fine but nothing really of interest. Judy dominates the vast majority of the match, which I don’t think is ideal, and Tomi just gets one big comeback with her top rope boomerang and a giant swing into the big splash and that’s the end of that.

*1/4

MD: Judy Martin is a favorite and it was great to see her here so maybe I’m biased towards this one. She’s sort of the best possible manifestation of Moolah-ism, that style known for hair throws and clubbering and slams, just an excellent base to give structure and form to all the fireworks around her. I was wondering how fully formed she’d be here (maye three years in they said, and age 20), but nope. She drives Tomi right into the corner with nasty shots to start. This is Judy Martin, fully formed already basically.

This was the first match of the long awaited Japan vs US series and it functioned almost like a lumberjack match with both teams on the outside. Martin would control and toss Tomi to the floor where she’d get beaten on for a bit before her team broke things up and she fought her way back in. Just solid, well-formed stuff overall. Great finishing bit where she Tomi hit her comebacker body press off the ropes (very nice camera angle on it) but just for a 1. It served as the last transition though as she mowed through Martin and flung her about in a fantastic screaming giant swing for the win.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 3/3 - 3/9

AEW Revolution 3/9/25

Toni Storm vs. Mariah May

MD: We live in an age of lore, where the immediate gratification of social media crashes up against corporate created media full of first episode twists, end-of-movie stingers foreshadowing sequels years away, mysteries layered on top of mysteries where every answer just brings forth two more questions. We see it in wrestling too, albeit less in AEW than elsewhere. 

In AEW, much of the storytelling happens in the matches themselves. Even here though, things tend to be bogged down by excess and bloat. Sometimes that manifests in small ways: despite being both poetic and visually brutal, it wasn't enough for MJF to meet his comeuppance from the Angel's Wings; he needed to eat a Buckshot too (no, he didn't). Sometimes it manifests in medium ways: trust me, the Swerve vs Ricochet match really, truly could have ended after the Vertebreaker on the table and the subsequent House Call. They didn't need to go into a second finishing stretch. Sometimes it manifests in huge ways: I haven't actually watched Ospreay vs Fletcher yet, but I'll get there and then make sure to do everyone a favor and not write about it. All too often Chekhov's Gun fails to go off or outright misfires. Elements are dropped, forgotten, overutilized, made blatant where subtly would be more effective. 

Yet here we had a match which cleverly and organically looped in elements from over a year's worth of television, full of what might be considered excess were it not for the skillful structuring and execution, which could have easily fallen to pretention and navel-gazing but instead led with emotion and beautiful brutality. Here we had a match which was theatrical without being forced to be "cinematic," that was artistic in its imagery but trusted in all the strengths of the medium. Instead of using the genre it evoked to escape the stigma of pro wrestling, it highlighted the form instead, enhanced it, shined a spotlight on the sort of cathartic release and dramatic finality that can only come from this violent spectacle that we love so much.

It closed every parenthesis but never in a way that felt like busywork or an obligation. Instead, each easter egg and resurrected plot point, from the image of Toni and Mariah's bodies intersected after the early Sky High all the way to the use of the shoe at the very end, felt like an opportunity that they were able to make the most of. Every perfectly crafted image (Mariah writhing after being crotched on the barricade; the first real look at Toni bloodied, as she blinked her eyes in a shot that would have made Norma Desmond seethe with jealous; Toni laying sprawled as if plucked from a grisly murder scene) contributed to the whole while never feeling fabricated, never robbing us, the viewers, of our suspension of belief and sense of immersion. 

And they hit so many of these narrative marks: the hip attacks (enhanced by the rail, the chair); the finisher stealing which makes more sense in these matches with the two characters playing one another than in any other before it; and yes, the stomach-churning climax: Mariah's trademark champagne celebration turned into a nightmarish horrorshow. There, the match called upon Onita as much as it did a Spaghetti Western, that sense of anticipation (the wrapping with tape, Mariah's determination mixed with fear, Toni's old timey bareknuckled boxer stiff upper lip, the first few ducked shots) leading to deathmatch paymatch of Mariah getting punched in the face and the glass strewn across the mat (which did a great job rationalizing some of the finisher kickouts). 

Everything led back to the hall of mirrors carnival set piece burned in our memories, the top of the entrance where Mariah betrayed Toni. Here, Toni did whip Mariah with the belt, a final act of symmetrical revenge, but once again showed just an inch of merciful hesitation with shoe in hand. Unlike in London, however, it was brief, fleeting, and when Mariah tried to take advantage of it like the unredeemable villain that she was, she brought forth her own final comeuppance. 

It was a masterpiece not just for the violence, not just for the over the top excess, not just for all the references, but for its own restraint. Everything mattered. Everything was done with care. Everything created an effect. Instead of forcing any number of contrived sequences to cascade on top of one another, it gathered all of the narrative opportunities of the last year and managed to deliver upon the full storytelling potential of each and every one. The cart didn't drive the horse. Nothing was done simply for the sake of doing it. At every point, the characters drove the action. As I said, it was theatrical and not just cinematic; full of gif-worthy images, but never meant simply to create them; a payoff worthy of the build, and a bloody classic of a finale to join the canon on the Permanent Tapes. 

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Found Footage Friday: CHICANA~! FARAON~! MAYNE~! VENTURA~! SAVAGE HANDICAP MATCH~!

Jesse Ventura vs. Moondog Mayne Portland 5/7/77

MD: Savoldi footage here but on youtube. Definitely new to me and among the earliest Portland I've ever seen. We just get eight and a half minutes but it's great. Watching old Portland wrestling always feels like going home to me. It's just the atmosphere. Just such a family set up. Ventura here has a mask because he lost his hair so that's novel. Mayne is the One Man Gang, the Blond Bomber, scruffy and a local legend even by this point. 

Ventura controlled early with pretty conventional stuff. We don't see how he took over on either fall that we get unfortunately. Mayne's comeback is great as someone gave him coffee and he just blatantly tossed it into the mask. He took the first fall with the bombs away kneedrop, that stalwart of the west coast (used by Stevens, Patterson, Mayne). When we come back in the second fall, he's trapped in the ropes and takes this great bump through them as Ventura frees him. He comes back with an eyepoke after a little bit of king of the mountain though and we leave off with Snuka having tossed him a cowbell from outside and him going to town on Ventura. Just a nice snapshot. Hopefully even more of this 77 Portland shows up. It's always wild to see pre-Buddy Portland.

ER: I thought this was pedestrian stuff until the moment Moondog graciously accepted a fan's cup of hot coffee and threw it in Ventura's face. Throwing beer or getting hit with a soda is always great wrestling, but you never get guys utilizing hot coffee or cocoa. Hot coffee to finally kick the main event into gear is so great. Lonnie Mayne is only 33 years old year but looks 60, so it looks cool when he takes the Harley Race bump to the floor. It looks like an old man falls head first on the concrete or an old man jumped off the rope onto his knee and it makes Mayne a more compelling babyface. It means he's the kind of great babyface who got loud cheers for eye raking and bashing Ventura with a cowbell. So we only get the first 7 minutes of a 20 or 30 minute 2/3 falls draw, which is not much. I want to know if there was blood, and what Ventura did when/if his mask got torn off, and how he looked. We need to go further back to establish when Sandy Barr firmly established his trademark look that he carried through the 80s.   

Randy Savage vs. Danny Doyle/Buddy Landel ICW 1980

MD: New footage Allan uncovered and posted to Twitter. This is fascinating because it's Savage against two real undercard guys. This isn't even on Cagematch. The earliest Landel we have noted there is 81. Roop (injured) is on commentary with Izzy Slapowitz and a little of the latter goes a long way. Doug Vines is in the crowd watching. There's a 10K bounty on Ronnie Garvin who Savage (the champ) is dodging.

Like I said, it's Savage, as a vulnerable but dangerous champ against two undercard wrestlers, saying he can beat them both in the ten minutes, elimination style, and they really play up the numbers advantage and just how high a hill Savage has to climb against two guys. It's a while before he gets any offense at all and then even after he gets it, it's hard to keep it. 

He hits the top rope axe handle to the floor on Landel and they note that while a top rope move into the ring is illegal, there are no rules against jumping to the floor since no one's ever done it. He then finishes off Landel by suplexing him back in. Doyle immediately rushes him and while Savage takes over, the bell rings as the time limit expires. Then Savage has a fit at the commentary booth, threatening everyone until Vines offers to take out Garvin next week for just $5000. Pretty engaging stuff that really made Savage look like he could be beaten and that he was edging ever closer to losing his mind and just accepting a challenge from Garvin. Very cool find.

ER: I never think much about the handicap as a match structure, but it might be our least explored "common" match structure. I say least explored, because they are not often worked like Savage works here, which is approaching the match as an actual obstacle. Yes, these two men are undercarders who Savage would have no trouble with in a singles, but the match takes an honest look at how tough it would be to face off against two men. Handicap matches are most commonly used to put over one man dominating two men. The Andre handicap matches are entertaining, brief looks at Andre stacking boneless men like cordwood, but rarely used as a way to actually just double (or triple) the danger Andre was in. It's like fighting a zombie. Easy in theory, but throw in another and it's suddenly easy to get overwhelmed. Savage was facing a couple nobodies and not getting overwhelmed, but he's treating it like being outnumbered and it's a fascinating approach. 

Buddy Landel looks like Gino here and I love it. This is teenage Buddy Landel! Savage hits this kid with a middle rope elbowdrop that's weird because it's different than how Savage hits his top rope elbowdrop. Buddy takes two massive bumps to the floor, both through the ropes: the first bounces the side of his head off the apron, the second is after he's pinned and Savage sends him into a sprawling bump onto the concrete. Seeing No Kneepads Buddy Landel bumping this big is like a DVDVR version of the Can't Powerbomb Kidman joke.

Bob Roop is a real scary type. He's the most dull man you've ever heard on commentary, getting just trampled over by Izzy Slapowitz, who dominates him with his routine like Robert Smigel on a red carpet, and Roop just takes it with the sad little quiet responses of a man playing by the rules. It freaks me out man. Do you know how tough Bob Roop is? It's chilling to hear a real shooter and killer sound this soft, like finding out some guy who works at your mom's office has broken multiple mens' bones. Slapowitz and then even Savage call Roop a gimp and a "stupid cripple" when Savage's 10 minute time limit is legitimately shorted by a minute and it made me want to see Roop/Savage so bad. We probably don't have that. 

Sangre Chicana vs. El Faraon CMLL 11/23/85

MD: This was a hell of a find. Yes it's anticlimactic but it's anticlimactic because they're trying to kill one another with a bottle which is the very best reason in the history of wrestling for a match to be anticlimactic. Props to Roy for finding this and the associated full episode of 85 EMLL That we will get to eventually.

Chicana is wild to start, massive hair bouncing around his head, the sort of hair that you'd pay a week's salary to watch him lose, that kind of hair, and he's relentless to start, guzzling Faraon's throat on the top rope, just all over him in the short, direct primera stretching him a couple of times before the ref calls it (though none of his trademark punches; those will come later). Then, for good measure, he decides it wasn't enough and that he needed to find a glass bottle.

The ref tries to intervene and he does stall things just long enough for Faraon to get his windback. He sells beautifully here, staggering but less and less as he gets his balance. He has this great trademark way of moving where he slides down through the second and third ropes to get to Chicana more quickly, and after an attempt at it that fails, the second hits and he gets the bottle and gets his revenge. 

Eventually things make it back into the ring, and Faraon takes the segunda, but things go even again in the tercera, with Chicana firing back with some of the biggest, best sweeping punches you'll ever see. It all devolves to the floor and given the blood and chaos and mayhem the ref calls it off to no one's satisfaction. You get the sense this led to an even better match but at least we've not got to see this one in full.

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