70s Joshi on Wednesday: Queen Angels! Black Pair!

39. 1979.07.31 - 02 Lucy Kayama & Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano & Yumi Ikeshita (WWWA Tag Team Titles) (2/3 Falls)

K: This to me is the first match in the canon of the Joshi Classics. It’d probably be the weakest of the collection strictly in terms of quality, there’s still a few stylistic creases that they’d yet to iron out, but it’s definitely great and it hits a specific tragic emotional resonance that would become AJW’s speciality in the years to come.

In the intros it’s made clear that Lucy Kayama is coming in with an injured knee, and with her opponents being the nastiest and more ruthless heels imaginable you know that’s a serious weakness. So it makes sense that Queen Angels would go on a frantic attack as soon as the bell starts to try and get the advantage as quickly as possible. Immediately there’s an energy and urgency to this that you rarely got in the regular TV matches. Black Pair’s titles being on the line and Lucy’s injury being a threat double up the stakes. It’s a little hard to follow sometimes with how fast they move, but it also definitely feels like you’re watching a rough and frantic fight between wrestlers desperate to win. Black Pair manage to take control when Mami storms across the ring to attack with her wrench, and once that happens you feel impending doom.

Black Pair just cheat, cheat and cheat. They have so many tricks up their sleeve you never know what they’re going to do next. We didn’t even see Mami Kumano’s trademark in this match because she was too busy pulling other stuff out. Like this is really simple one, but rather than accept a tag from Yumi Ikeshita who wasn’t quite close enough, she runs across the apron, gets in the ring at the middle point and then jumps Tomi from behind like she’s a Maccabi hooligan and drags her across the ring meanwhile Yumi jumps into her corner as if a legal tag just happened. The ref just gets forced to accept this a done deal. When Lucy’s in the ring though they’re even worse, it just turns into a sadistic torture session as they hang her off the side of the ring choking her and wrenching her injured leg. Lucy then gets her bandages torn off and stamped on as the crowd shrieks. They keep part of the bandage wrapped around her knee but use the bit they’ve pulled out to tie around her neck, so when they kick at her knee and it moves Lucy also gets choked by the bandage. Quite the imagination this evil pair.

Unfortunately AJW don’t seem to have figured out how a ‘hot tag’ is supposed to work until a few years later, because the drama is hurt a bit by Tomi then just being allowed to be tagged in rather than this being built more effectively. Not that Tomi’s comeback attempt isn’t really good though. She shows a lot of rage and fire, even that Yumi Ikeshita doesn’t seem very keen on fighting her, so she throws her into her tag corner, grabs Lucy and pulls Lucy back into the ring to fight her instead, hah. Tomi actually tries to grab Lucy to stop her from being brought back into the match but she’s too late. Yumi gives Lucy two 2nd rope flying headbutts to the injured knee and then pins her with a sick suplex bridge and, with exquisite timing, Mami Kumano runs across the ring to cut off Tomi from making the save just as the count is being made. Great fall.

In between falls, it’s clear that Lucy’s knee is too injured to continue so she is removed from the match. So Tomi needs to either forfeit, or continue trying to win the tag titles in a 1 vs. 2 situation. This is a booking trope that the Matsunagas seemed to like to throw out once a year or two, and although they weren’t good booker generally speaking I think this is one tool they had good judgement in knowing when you deploy for maximised effectiveness.

The 2nd fall starts, again, with Black Pair just jumping Tomi. She gets a shin across her throat on the mat as she’s getting her head stomped in. She just looks so helpless and sad as she puts up this futile fight. We get one last hope spot from her, she gets Irish Whipped and counters with her spectacular boomerang flying bodypress. She isn’t able to nail the leap properly though so she comes a bit short, which actually worked in the match narrative as she’d been taking a hell of a beating. She still just about hits it though. This leads into her going on a rampage with kicks, dropkicks and later some suplexes. This feels like the big comeback the match had been building to and the crowd are super hot now. It feels like such a punch to the gut when she presumably goes for her over-the-top-rope dive onto Yumi Ikeshita, only for Mami Kumano to intercept with a chairshot to the head. Even when they have a 2 vs. 1 advantage they still pull out weapons to put the babyface down. It’s so wrong. She gets nailed with the chair a couple more  times before Mami puts her away to get the 1, 2, 3 to win two straight falls.

This must have been upsetting for the live crowd. The bigger effect it had on me was how heroic Tomi Aoyama came across as. Both in the first fall when she was doing every possible to protect her partner from getting mauled and injured, and again in second fall when faced with impossible odds she pulled out a superhuman effort to try level the playing field. Maybe if she hit that last dive she could have pulled it off, but she wasn’t quite superhuman enough.

****1/4

MD: You can really feel the build on this one. It felt like a big deal. The Angels were challenging and in matching gear (Lucy in red and Tomi in blue). Kumano’s cut off leather jacket thing remains cool, just like her. Lucy was coming in with a taped up knee. The Angels started out hot; they were absolutely wrestling to win, with Tomi charging forth with dropkicks and Lucy hitting her short arm shots. They hit a double team inverted gutwrench facebuster too. It looked like they had a real shot at it but the Pair struck from behind and started doubleteaming. They were able to switch off and fight back a bit but it was for naught.

To cut the momentum off, they started on Lucy’s leg, undoing the tape and wrapping it around her throat. They absolutely demolished her, finishing it with a bridging backdrop driver for the first fall. She had to get stretchered out leaving things in a dire spot for Tomi. After a few minutes of eating a beating, she hit her leap-to-the-top-rope bounce back body press (albeit not cleanly) and started to fire back. It looked like she might have a shot but both of the Pair ended up on the floor and when she charged after them, she crashed right into a chair shot. From there it was downright tragic with them crushing her with a chair and draining the last bit of life from her with Mami’s dangling chokehold. This certainly ended on a down note but the Angels had Lucy’s knee as an out and Tomi certainly came off as valiant in fighting them both off. Really though, it was the Pair who looked like an unstoppable force in the end.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/11 - 11/17

ROH 11/14/24

Dustin Rhodes/Sammy Guevara vs Love Doug/TJ Crawford

MD: Dutch having Dusty's cowbell as one of his last students is a good compelling real life wrinkle to the feud. I think on some level, I don't want to think about Dutch having a life outside of being a member of the Righteous though. It's not like they're wildly fleshed out as characters. I don't know why Vincent became who he is. He's just here fully formed and snapping, so it's kind of weird to think of Dutch in development doing promo class with Dusty. It'd be interesting if they were able to link this to how he fell somehow. I guess it's a sort of "don't open the door, unless you are willing to fully walk through it" sort of deal. Unless they're putting the belts on the Righteous, they're kind of okay as two dimensional characters who serve as physical threats. If they're going to try to do anything more out of them, I think we need to get to the heart of what makes them tick more. This could be a good step along that road or it could be messy depending on how this places out.

Likewise, the idea of Dustin and Sammy having a tag match and the Righteous having one on the same show, with a Righteous beat down after the former, is a pretty good bit of work too. Just nice, straightforward booking keeping things moving. Here it let them introduce the cowbell too, carried by the commentary. And the Righteous' new finisher which is Vincent picking someone up in a fireman's carry and then Dutch hefting both of them over his shoulder. 

The match itself was fun fluff with Shot Through the Heart feeding and feeding and feeding, with no care for the rules. Normally, I'd cry foul but they basically just kept running into Dustin and Sammy's offense, save for a brief respite while they were waiting for Sammy to hit a dive. It fit the characters. It fit the moment. It put Dustin and Sammy over strong right before they were about to get wiped out and the emotional element was to be introduced. Just good episodic pro wrestling TV.

AEW Rampage 11/15/24

RUSH/The Beast Mortos vs Alec Price/Richard Holliday

AEW Collision 11/16/24

RUSH/The Beast Mortos vs The Acclaimed

MD: The squash on Rampage was effective. We've seen Mortos basing for smaller luchadores and working against other talent equal, but it was very nice to see him just crushing people. The Buzz Sawyer-esque power slam stood out as much as anything else. 

The Acclaimed match needs to be unpacked a little more. Let's talk about the Acclaimed first. Something has to give. I don't know what that is yet. Traditional pro wrestling booking would have it look like Caster was going to go with the Hurt Syndicate and Bowens be the one to do it first. That would be a mistake. For one, Caster can't be a babyface. He took the FIP here and it felt GOOD. It felt great to see Rush take the cord and flip him over his head to the floor. That was one of the most refreshing, rewarding, satisfying moments of the year in AEW. You want to see him get beat up. And it's wrestling, so he can use that, not as some sort of edgelord heel like he's been as a face, but instead as a stooging, heatseeking, scummy, scuzzy Eric Embry/Rip Rogers type. It's obvious by this point that Perry isn't going to really lean into that so there's still a window. 

That leaves us with Bowens. I think Bowens could be a successful aggressive, athletic heel, sure. But why? He's one of the two most likable guys in the company off screen. He's got a great story. People want to get behind him. He's short which would be a detriment as a heel but works fine as a babyface who can go and who can bring it. Look, I get it. Whatever the company wants to do right now, it's not Tsuruta-gun vs the Super Generation Army. Maybe we'll get there in a few months, maybe not. Daniel Garcia is Misawa in that case. He's 100% Miswa, unquestionably Misawa. Maybe Hook is Kawada, maybe not. There was a world where Yuta could have been Kobashi but he's Taue now, the turncoat. Bowens is one of the only guys in the company that can be Kobashi, that can push up against monsters bigger and stronger with him through heart and intensity and passion alone. Just let him be himself and let him face off against all the darkness in the world. The fans will get behind him. They got behind the Acclaimed an idea, a concept, a hand gesture, an attitude. They'll get behind Bowens as a person. I'm sure of it. He just needs to believe in himself and to have the company believe in him. The fans believing in him? That's the easy part. 

And then there are RUSH and Mortos. Given what's happening with the Acclaimed right now and just the general positioning of LFI I would have much preferred a roll up pin after Mortos wiped out in the corner as opposed to him eating the Arrival/Mic Drop combo. It might be counter intuitive but one protects him more than the other. You can forgive a banana peel roll up more. 

Here's another "Look". Look, I get that RUSH has a history of... you know, everything under the sun, right? Being uncooperative, having a few injuries, supporting Cuatrero, all sorts of stuff. But if you're going to have him on your roster and pay him well and use him steadily anyway, USE HIM. There are maybe four people on the roster (with two of them being Mox and Athena) who can bring the same level of seething, immersive intensity. Rush is a generational talent. When he was gone more often then not, it was fine to use him as a sort of gatekeeper/mercenary for bounty situations because he's instantly credible just by showing up in the ring. Now that he's a more of a weekly character, he can't just be a normal guy. 

I'm pretty sure that one of the biggest matches they can put on for the Texas All In, at least if you care about walkup, is finally getting LA Park to put his mask up against Rush's hair. Rush's hair was one of the biggest draws in Mexico for years in the 2010s. Granted, I don't know the lucha politics nor do I want to in this case. The point more is this. He draws the eye. He captures attention. He has that feel to him of "Well, it's not all real, but maybe it's a little real when this guy is in there." Someone said a few days ago that if Rush knew what Caster had been saying on his rap, the match might have gone very differently. Obviously on one level you don't want that, but it's a double-edged sword. Genius and madness go hand in hand in pro wrestling, and you have to tap into the talent you have as much as possible. Give him a brass knucks title and feud him with the wildest people on the roster. Build to he and Moxley completely dismantling the set in the world's craziest no contest. Make him the threat that Bowens has to overcome over time like Hansen to Kobashi. Something. Anything. He's lightning in a bottle. Use him to light up the world.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Sabre vs. Shingo

 

1. Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Shingo Takagi NJPW 11/4/24

ER: "Wow," he thought. "A Shingo Takagi match, finally getting discussed on Segunda Caida." That's not true of course, because Matt is a psycho who covers so much wrestling that obviously he hit the AEW appearances of Shingo, but he's a big name whose acclaimed work has never quite connected with me. His career has been long and successful and I'm sure there are plenty of matches among his thousands that will connect with me, but this is the first I've seen that felt just right. I fell in love with Michinoku Pro and still love it as much as ever, and I was there for the Toryumon tape trading and fell in love with a new generation of guys, and then I was older and out of college and had a job and a live in girlfriend and didn't connect with Dragon Gate the same and had less time to watch wrestling and so now I'm writing about Shingo Takagi for the first time on Segunda Caida. 

But this is a Zack Sabre Jr. review. Carry job is an insulting term that I don't really like using and this was not that, but Sabre's constant interruptions of Shingo's well orchestrated timing based wrestling made this dynamite. Dragon Gate at its best had exceptional speed with exceptional timing. The best of their multimans are undeniable. The timing and flow was real important to the style and Zack Sabre is amazing at working with the same timing to purposely monkeywrench the steps. He hits very hard and seems to enjoy being hit very hard. Sabre, over the last decade, has transitioned from a guy formerly accused of being a beanpole who needs people to hold still, to a deceptively sturdy guy who works as stiff as any of the BattlArts legends. He's a disruptor, he disrupts with surprising pop, and he seems to have this insistence on being hit just as hard and just as much. Unlike guys who make that their entire personality, whether they're actually stiff workers or just mimes doing bad stand and trade, he does not make it his personality. The stiffness and abuse are all part of the methodology to get to his submissions, which are also applied stiffly and forcefully. There's never any overwrought Hit Me Harder faces in sequences that stop a match dead, it's all stiffness that's intent on finishing. 

Sabre never seems to look for one answer. He has a shocking amount of depth and knows how to go several directions from established positions, making his method of attack always feel like his own while always surprising me. His willingness to lean into punishment to lean timing allows Shingo to work at his stiff best, getting to land full force clotheslines that occasionally get caught and twisted or beaten. But it never becomes an arm match, or a neck match, or a leg match, even though Sabre runs through sections of working on all of those things with the intent to finish, to wound, to slow. He can crank Shingo's neck with his legs, dropping his weight to drag him into the ring, without going back to a neck attack until the attack presents itself. When Shingo takes a second too long attempting a Gory Special, Sabre is there with a side headlock clutch that moves quickly into a disgusting octopus hold. If the neck presents itself, it becomes a neck match. As a disruptor, he allows Shingo to work his timing and takes every torso extension that presents itself. Sabre understands the weight of his offense and how to make submission applications and submission set ups look and feel as real as possible. The way he can straight an arm - quickly, slowly with pressure, working against resistance - and make it look like straightening an arm away from a man's body is requiring full strength from both, keeping that weight and gravity always present. For me, it adds meaning. Shingo looks like he's struggling to keep his head up at spots and it gave his responses frantic importance. 

Sabre is adept at catching Shingo's Actually Fast stuff, like the way he catches a few of his lariats and twists them into something dangerous, catching one and throwing uppercuts at it once he traps the arm, kicking at it another time. It's an all out attack and he commits just as hard to each attack, knowing one of them will lead to an ultimate opening. The weight made this into a match that could have ended satisfactorily at 15, 20 or 30 minutes. The survival felt earned but the attempts to finish felt real. Sabre's match long wear down was made even better with Shingo working 30 full minutes of body degradation. The final straw came down to Sabre throwing several short mule kicks at the inside of Shingo's knee before Shingo pulls off the Shingo Driver, causing enough of a delay in the pin attempt, and the way those kicks and the other knee and body attacks culminated in Shingo's slightly slower step down the stretch, his inability to get his legs underneath him on more than one occasion, and the way it was all done with no overacting, captured the best of this style. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: OKI IN KOREA~! DUK~! HEEL TITO~! TOR~! IDOL~! PATERA~! BRET~! HAKUSHI~!

Kintaro Oki/Kim Duk vs. Dick Blood (Tito Santana)/Tor Kamata Korea 1978

MD: What an amazing find. Oki and Duk as native heroes. Plus we had that one Andre match where Tito and Chavo are his little buddies from 79 but this is some of the only heel Tito footage ever. It goes 40 with all sorts of pomp before and after the match (check out the robe on Oki) and is a fully fleshed out 2/3 falls match.

Tito isn't fully developed yet, but he's a stooging (lots of early headscissors foolery), big bumping (he must go over the top rope hard five times), dropkicking (the big finishing bit is Oki avoiding one of his dropkicks), heatseeking heel, as fiery as we'd expect. There are a couple of fun strike exchanges or flurries, especially in the third fall when he's kicking at Duk's wound leading to a huge comeback moment.

Duk's actually the standout here. Oki's fun on the mat once or twice and when he unleashes the headbutt (first in the corner as Santana was taking liberties, then against Kamata, driving him back on the outside, and finally to take out Tito to build to the finish) the crowd erupts but this is really much more the Duk show. He's super charismatic here, calling Tor into the ring, gesturing to him when he has control of Tito. After Tito won the first fall with a sunset flip in, Tor spends a chunk of the second, keeping him on the floor by knocking him off the apron again and again to the crowd's delight. You don't usually see a babyface king of the mountain bit but it worked here. He even had a football charge from a three point stance.

In the third fall, Tor pulls the pad back and opens him up with it, working over the wound like you'd want him to. When Oki finally gets in after Duk's big comeback shot on Tito, Tor tries to get Oki's head with the post, but he no sells it and takes out Tor which sets up the finish while Duk and Tor are brawling on the outside. This match was full of a lot of the conventions of the time but the roles were reversed and it made for just an amazing bit of lost footage.

Austin Idol vs. Ken Patera Memphis 9/5/83 

MD: This was on the Savoldi network and it's about as far from those Idol vs. Hansen matches as humanly possible. It's still really good but it's conventional as can be. You can shut your eyes and see this match play out for the most part, but the crowd was up the whole time and the performances were good and sometimes pro wrestling just works the way it's supposed to. 

Idol got the fans riled early which upset Patera. It was a contest between him waving them on and Patera posing. For a chunk of it Idol controlled the arm and teased punches to the fans' delight as Patera tried to cheat to get out by pulling the hair, that sort of thing. Patera got over on him and worked the back with a great bearhug. Idol was perfect in it, lilting sideways and appealing to the crowd to support him, appealing to God to look down and bless him, appealing to you, the viewer, decades later. Just a transcendent over the top selling of it.

He fought out but Patera cut him off with a reverse of a whip and a clothesline out of the corner and got on the full nelson. Idol climbed the turnbuckles for a double pin but apparently he got his shoulder up at the last second. Post match, he took out Hart, dodged Patera's jumping knee into the corner and put his leglock on him. Again, delighted crowd. As straightforward as could be and I wouldn't change a thing.

ER: Patera in '83 was such a feast for the eyes. He's constructed like a freak Rob Leifeld drawing; cut, but with incredible mass. You catch him at certain angles and it doesn't seem possible to be that rock solid and have so much space between your belly button and spine. It's incredible. Perhaps more incredible, is that Patera has that body but Idol is the one posing, and the posing is the best. It all happens when Idol holds the ropes on a whip and breaks out all these excellent little kneeling poses and flexes. And I just kept waiting for Patera to wreck him for it. It's a crime that Patera has that body and that power and mostly wrestles like a guy in a mid tier Russian gimmick, all clubbing and axe handling. I need more bearhugs, more presses, more whips with crazy pull strength. I wanted a Patera/Idol match and this felt more like a match that Idol could have had with Don Bass. I dug the way Idol sold Patera's grounded bearhug - I actually wish we got more bearhugging in this - and was excited to see how Idol would sell the full nelson. We didn't get him selling the full nelson, instead we got him doing one of the messiest, loose ropes versions of the Austin/Bret finish (yeah I know this was well before Austin/Bret but it sounds better than describing what happened). His missed knee into the corner, after the match, looked really cool with his size, wild that he used it in a post-match deal. I don't know enough about Patera to know if he's a guy who usually limits his bumping in a match and saves it for after.  

Cage Match: Bret Hart vs. Hakushi WWF 7/25/95

MD: Dark match from a taping. Honestly, I won't lie, I would have rather had Brad vs. Flair which lost the poll to this one. The best part of this was probably Hakushi's entrance in the cage which was moody and will stick with you. The biggest issue overall is that they went to too much selling too soon, before it was earned. Whenever Bret hit the ropes or the corner, there was a big clunking sound from the cage but he wasn't really selling cage shots from it. I'm not sure if he ever went into the cage. Instead, he got the early advantage but both of them crashed into each other in the first minute or two with a double clothesline and they went right into the labored slow attempts to escape for the next ten minutes. They probably should have led with an extra five minutes of action before that double clothesline spot instead?

There were bits I did like down the stretch. There were certain parallels, like Bret missing his second rope elbow drop and then Hakushi instead of leaving the cage, choosing to hit the diving headbutt and wiping out. Bret snuck in the five moves in interesting ways and yeah, sure, there was always the sense that they were trying to win, even if like I noted, the drama didn't quite feel earned. The finish was a superplex where Bret was able to recover first and scoot out and the fans responded to a lot of the big moments but this all felt just a little underwater to me due to that narrative choice early.

ER: I thought this was both really good, and felt unnecessarily long due to the narrative choice Matt pointed out. It's really strange, how much weight they each decided to give a double clothesline. The entire match can be divided into two, uneven parts, by that double clothesline. The single minute before the clotheslines was absolute fire, both men throwing worked strikes so great that the entire match could have been sustained by them. Hakushi throws a throat thrust (one of many, but one in particular) that sounds insanely loud, the crowd reacts to it like death, and Bret crumples from it like a hardened hand of stone had just smashed his trachea. This was a battle. 

Then there was a double clothesline that carried the weight of a thousand bad decisions. And that double clothesline seemed to double as the missing 6-7 minutes of work that led to both men being tired slow climbers the rest of the match. Here's what's important: I thought all of the slow climbing and tired selling was really good. That ring looked like unmoving concrete, and every bump Hakushi took off the ropes onto it was completely unforgiving. There are three different landings - before the insane match ending superplex - that had no give, no bounce, nothing but a man's skeleton absorbing his landing with no bounce. The speed they worked had actual drama, the crowd bit at the cage escapes, and the final 10 minutes of escalation felt right. It also made a 12 minute match feel like 20, instead of a 20 minute match that was missing an important 8 minutes. It's so weird. All of the elements we have are good, nothing is missing, it just feels incomplete and also too long as is. Bret's bumps into the buckles looked damaging as ever, and the superplex is something that I literally don't understand. I don't see how it's possible to be doing bumps like that when they "don't count". You watch that ring. It does not budge. Hakushi came off the literal top of the cage, suplexed onto a sidewalk, for a match that was never supposed to air, and is still wrestling 30 years later instead of in a chair. And I guess it's bizarre to me that, in a match that went on to have several high end skeleton-eroding bumps that should have naturally led to slow down, they paid so much more lip service to a double clothesline. 

 

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Sato! Iwae!

38. 1979.07.31 - 01 Chino Sato vs. Kazuko Iwae (Kazuko Iwae debut)

K: There’s not much to say about the actual wrestling in this match so I’m going to talk about debuts. A much bigger deal of them is made in Joshi compared to other wrestling scenes. Part of this is that after its first boom in popularity with Beauty Pair, AJW set up a unique system of accepting new wrestlers with a two-stage process.

First, hopefuls would have to pass an audition, then they are accepted as trainees (and thus, are already considered ‘employed’ by the company), usually live at the dojo and train full-time until they’re ready to pass the second stage called the ‘pro-test’. The pro-test is like a live exam, and consists of a mixture of general athletic feats (e.g. squats, bridges) and specifically pro-wrestling skills like rope-running and grappling. If you want to see a modern example of a pro-test, Marvelous broadcasted one on their YouTube channel last month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IIHmgkbzxk

If they pass the pro-test, they’re then given a debut date. AJW (and its descendents) made a much bigger deal out of debuts than other companies, they’d usually be on relatively big show and would be televised. In later years AJW would also sometimes broadcast footage of their trainees getting ready to debut or their pro-tests to hype this up, so it means that the fans would often be able to follow a wrestler’s career right from the beginning.

As for the match, it’s more evenly-matched than debuts typically would be later on (this is probably just because the formula hasn’t developed yet). Iwae does a good job of showing her stuff. She has some pretty cool headscissors moves on a standing opponent that I don’t remember seeing much of, but the crowd certainly sounded like they bought them as offense. Her lowly status is more established with her lack of hit points, as all it takes to beat her is for Chino to dodge a flying crossbody then splat her with a powerbomb and that’s her out for the 3 count. Chino looks like she’s barely been hurt from the whole thing though.

*

MD: This is Iwae’s debut and she looks ok out of the gate, starting with a couple of armdrags before Sato took her out with a jumping fist and jumping knee. Iwae turned a bodyscissors around by grabbing the hair and pulling her up and then controlled for a while with a series of headscissors. She missed a cross body and Sato hit a couple of power bombs to end her. Not a lot to say here but she looked ready to debut at least.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/4 - 11/10

AEW Dynamite 11/6/24

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs Claudio Castagnoli/PAC

MD: This was an extremely well put together tag match. I'd like to say more about Cassidy in general in a bit and then I'll follow it up with something I wrote about AEW storytelling in general, but let me start with layout of the tag itself.

Just to recap quickly, it started with Cassidy luring the Deathriders into Darby's dive off the set. From there, Darby fought Claudio on the floor and Cassidy fought PAC in the ring. Cassidy side stepped and Claudio hit an uppercut almost simultaneously. Yuta distracted Cassidy however, but he was able to push a resurgent PAC off the ropes and hit a jumping DDT. Claudio had been laying in wait and rushed in to break up the pin and hit three big power moves in a row to turn the tide and start the actual heat.

There's so much going on in there, so many wrinkles, so many little bits of character, so much specific highlighting of what makes each of these wrestlers unique. It was a great way to start a match. The shine wasn't long and it was fairly back and forth (as you have to keep your relatively new heel unit strong while making the defenders of the company stand out) but it was punctuated with big moments in Darby's dive and Cassidy's jumping DDT, then Claudio went way overboard in smashing him. Just a very effective opening.

That brings us to heat #1, on Cassidy, through the commercial break. It's so frustrating to see people who should know what they're talking about completely miss the boat on him. He'd already done multiple things extremely well in the match (the character-driven sidestep, getting distracted by Yuta) but he did exactly what he should have done as a face-in-peril. He was constantly fighting, constantly reaching, constantly showing the world just how tough it all was, constantly giving the fans something to latch on to. He has all of the substance of being a traditional babyface in traditional wrestling, and it's just the style and the trappings that work differently. The important stuff all hits. How can people who know so much about wrestling be blind about this? 

And the Deathriders, to their credit, kept it interesting. They had a multiple distraction spot just so Claudio (the illegal man) could hit a double stomp on the floor. Claudio is the bar, a wall, the perfect guy to cut people off and he had a great cutoff with the gutwrench over the shoulder backbreaker as Cassidy was starting to fire back after the commercial break. Then Cassidy capitalized on a banana peel slip as Claudio hit the corner and got the tag.

Darby came in hot, and things were elementary from there. He took everyone out, got caught by Claudio, gracefully avoided the catch once but not twice, got beat on a bit, and then slipped through the legs in the bumpiest, most Darby way possible for a second hot tag and to roll into the finishing stretch. Then as they were pinballing into the Deathriders and as Cassidy was hitting Orange Punch after Orange Punch, Shafir and Mox asserted themselves and we got a rare DQ. A perfectly fine DQ by the way given how good the match was and how it gave Darby and Cassidy something of a moral victory right up until Darby got lawn darted into the post (won the battle, lost the war; clearly were dominant, but the heels more than got their heat back). Matches without clean finishes happen so rarely that this gave everything a chaotic mood that kept things chugging along on the road to Full Gear. Not an every day occurrence but something they shouldn't be afraid to use when needed.

Which brings me to something I posted on Twitter yesterday (https://x.com/MattD_SC/status/1855593937882247204)

The State of AEW Storytelling

The people who say there is no story in AEW are completely and blatantly wrong. Almost every match has some driving force and purpose. Every match on TV is either set up or is setting up something. There are criticisms to be made but that's not one of them. Instead, people should look at the style, the execution, the sometimes mechanical nature, the pacing, the lack of tangible change over time. While AEW succeeds sometimes in some of these things, they're apt to fail just as often.

There is a hierarchy to how AEW matches work. Wrestlers are built up on Rampage to build someone up on Collision so that they may be built up for someone on Dynamite. AR Fox will get a win vs Josh Woods on ROH TV (this well could have been Rampage) so that he can lose to Nick Wayne on Collision, very likely for Wayne to lose sometime in the near future to HOOK on Dynamite to set up a match with Christian on the PPV. Often all of those intermediary matches are further underpinned by story. Wayne wants to get back at AR Fox for Fox attacking him in his dad's school with Swerve last year. So things are both set up with lead-in matches and underpinned with story.

It's mechanically sound. It works on paper. Maybe the fact that Woods never gets a win (maybe in an enhancement match on ROH sometimes? His last was in August.) hurts things a little but hierarchy is hierarchy.

So what's the problem? Well, there are a few. For one, it's too mechanical. It's too obvious maybe. It'd work if you were scoring on a machine, if you were checking boxes on a video game. In real life, it's a logical engine but not necessarily a compelling one.  It's organized but it doesn't feel organic, doesn't feel alive. It's not vibrant. Everything feels like a means to an end.
Things are supposed to be means to ends, yes, but it's not always supposed to feel that way in the moment. Maybe some of that has to do with the fact that none of the results are ever in question. The lower-positioned wrestler is always going to lose to heat up the higher one. What would it mean to the story for the opposite to be true? It wouldn't make sense.

Maybe it shouldn't be so neat all the time? AEW is known for clean finishes but maybe there are other ways to get to Point C (that Dynamite match) where Point A and Point B (ROH/Rampage/Collision) can be a bit more in question. A few more DQs. A few more countouts. A few more double DQs or countouts. These are tools that were in the toolbox for all bookers for decades. They were used to cheat crowds out of finishes at times and that should be avoided but that doesn't mean they can't be used on the path to the match that actually matters in a way that still gets everything where it's going.

Then there's lack of follow up on midcarders after they've served their purpose. To continue with the current advantage, Woods isn't going to grow or change from his loss to Fox. Fox is going to come out of a potentially emotional substory with Wayne probably no different the next time we see him.

Things start and stop and are not always clearly communicated. Look at Top Flight. Andretti had been getting more impulsive and aggressive for weeks but it was more or less dropped so they could weave them in as early Deathriders opponents, spiking again when he needed to be bullheaded enough to fill a segment and get destroyed by PAC. They never clearly defined if Top Flight lost their new look due to the Deathriders pressing them or if it was just haphazard. There was nothing to connect Andretti's aggression in September with what was happening in late October. Likewise, there's nothing connecting Lio Rush getting pushed by the Deathriders to him potentially working with the Hurt Syndicate. Someone who watches all (and I mean ALL) of the TV can read between the lines, but the average viewer isn't at all led and it leaves the company open to criticism.

AEW's gotten better about recaps and trying to let things sink in as of late, but that's primarily served the A stories, not the B and C ones that lead to the A stories, and it's those B and C ones that fill TV time and where the criticisms tend to sit.

I know what people might say here, or what they should say. When has any company really managed what I'm talking about above? Consistently and over time especially? Maybe never. Maybe it's all an unfair expectation that I'm setting on Khan and AEW.

Here's the thing though. AEW is match-based promotion. There aren't long promos that carry the story. There aren't extended interview segments. I don't want that. Khan doesn't want that. The hardcores don't want that. The only people who seem to want those things are the bad faith grifters and the people who have only known wrestling in their lives to be one sort of thing.

So then how do you get around that? You use every tool in your disposal. You flesh out your characters as much as possible. You find ways to introduce stakes in the matches themselves, propelling the winners but also developing the losers along the way so that they either someday can be winners or that the idea of beating them time and time again becomes more important. You ensure that things, like Andretti's character development, 1) exist in the first place 2) are clear and flowing and not start and stop and haphazard, and 3) allow for meaningful change and aren't just jettisoned when no longer immediately useful. It's all a big ask but it's a big, frequent criticism and if it's to be countered, it should be in a way that furthers the company and rewards viewers not just those acting in bad faith.

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The 5 Minute Legend of Angus Legstrong

 

Angus Legstrong vs. Hex NJPW Academy 10/7/23

ER: The only known recorded match of the legendary Angus Legstrong. There have been rumors of dark matches, but those are only close whispers in darkened hallways. This is our only existing proof of the wrecking ball that is Angus Legstrong, and I want more. This is the only 5 minutes we have of a guy who I wanted to feature on DEAN~! earlier this year. That didn't work out, but I was hoping this many months later that there would be many more Angus Legstrong. There aren't, yet. But this is 5 minutes you will want to watch, to get on board for his inevitable return. This is a student match from the New Japan Dojo and could have played like a student exhibition, or been a glaringly obvious First Match. Instead it was built around real struggle and felt like an actual battle, while nearly everything else on the card was worked like a typical NXT match. There's something pure about two debuting guys having several standing grappling struggles instead of mapped out reversals, and they stood out in a way that no other match on this show did. Every match on this card would have benefitted from using the kind of struggle and resistance that Legstrong and Hex showed. 

They each went after the others' arm in ways I liked. Both guys were keeping their arms in tight in a preventative flex for nearly the entire match, and that feeling of wrestling resistance is cool. Legstrong is compact in a cool way, and larger than Hex. He's the one who starts breaking this out with an judo style arm takedown and a cool natural instinct fireman's carry. He has a wrestling base like Tamon Honda's, if Honda was built like a the world's toughest Bobby Hill. His armbar and brief short arm scissors were things that Hex had to really work to break away from, and that energy was there the whole match. Neither lets the other skip any steps. I dug how Hex held onto a sunset flip and tried to bar Legstrong's arm after, and how he later grapevined Angus's leg with everything he had just to block a gutwrench. Legstrong had a big slam, with a bit of a pause, after Hex came in high with a crossbody, and he hit a double leg that Hex couldn't have stopped if he knew exactly what was coming and when. The way Legstrong made a quick space before springing back forward with that takedown was something I want to see in wrestling more than endless reversals of reversals. After fighting over both sides of a Boston crab, they close out with more head and arm grappling. It's great. 

I wanted to see this story go 12. I wanted to see where this was headed. I wanted to see them get into a bit of trouble, out over their skis. But I like that the most striking we got was a quick open hand to the body by Legstrong, close to the end. I'm ready for more in 2024. 

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Found Footage Friday: HACKENSCHMIDT~! HEENAN~! LANZA~! WANZ~! DON LEO~!

Georg Hackenschmidt vs. Joe Rogers 1/30/1908

MD: If you're here reading this, I don't have to give you the backstory. You know it. Full props to Dan Rice for going the extra mile and making this happen. With that said, let's take a look at the text itself. I've seen people come down on whether this was a shoot or a work, but Hackenschmidt absolutely dominant here, whether he was simply presented that way or not. We get two full falls with matches in between and outside of losing his shoe early on, he never seemed in danger at all. Past the opening when they were both standing and jockeying for position, most of this was on the mat and he was in control for most of it. He was constantly shifting positions, pulling Rogers leg out to hobble his balance, working around him.

Meanwhile, Rogers was constantly active but there was a sense that if he tried for anything to aggressive then Hackenschmidt would be able to get him on his back. A couple of times he was able to bring his arm around for a headlock but it seemed to do him more harm than good overall. Whenever they got towards the end of the mat, Hackenschmidt, being the one in control would indicate that they move back to center and they'd reset with him in control once more. Maybe the most compelling bits here were the pins, especially in the first round. Rogers was larger, more tan, more obviously muscular (though the end clip of Hackenschmidt flexing was certainly something). Hackenschmidt had his number regardless and eventually worked him to his back. Rogers was able to keep a shoulder up ever so slightly and over the span of a minute, Hackenschmidt ground him down switching positions and angles until the shoulder dropped and the ref called it. It was inevitable but compelling nonetheless. I have no great takeaways here, no great wisdom. You could see how this could evolve into something more with the drama of that finish, with the interest from losing the show and working the rest of the fall without it. Genuine sense of struggle, be it in a work or a shoot, will always be compelling. Maybe that's the takeaway.

Blackjack Lanza vs. Bobby Heenan AWA 11/4/83

MD: This was a Wrestling Playlists find and it's a lot of fun. Really, you're watching this for Heenan taking a bunch of interesting offense in incredibly over the top ways. Lanza hits him with a double eye poke, a claw, these great stalking and then corner punches, a head knocker, so on and so forth. Just grumpy old guy offense and Heenan bounces and bounds all over the place, often ending up stuck across the turnbuckles or into the ropes. At one point towards the end he takes a bulldog with a front roll, spiking himself in the process.

What offense he gets here is by using some wrist tape to choke, but Lanza only takes so much of that before angrily popping up to the crowd's delight. When he gets the tape himself, he doesn't choke Heenan with it but instead goes straight for the eyes in the nastiest way possible. This ends with Heenan running for the hills but the fans were booing him and not the promotion for ending a match that way. Thus was the power of Bobby Heenan. I could watch him take offense all day. There was never anyone like him.

ER: Anyone who goes out of their way to consume as much of Bobby Heenan: Wrestler as possible all know that he is in the discussion for wrestling's all time biggest bump freak. But a thing that doesn't get talked about enough is that he doesn't ever seem to do the same bump twice. His bumps are all instantly recognizable as Heenan Bumps but I swear none of them are the same. I've watched this man bump into turnbuckles a few hundred times and I don't think I've seen him land the same way twice. You can watch him get thrown towards, into, and onto the turnbuckles as many times as you like and come away thinking every one is its own snowflake. You've seen him take bumps like the ones you are seeing, but this time he's getting hung up in the ropes different than you've seen, going over the ropes different, or just falling into them different. 

Nobody lands like Bobby Heenan, and maybe that's because Heenan is a man who never gives anyone a blueprint of how to land. His blend of pratfalls and violent bumps and violent pratfalls are second to none. Lanza shot him into the ropes just so he could thrust both his thumbs into Bobby's eyes on the rebound, and Heenan - selling his eyes - staggered until he fell face first into the middle buckle, then bumped backwards from the turnbuckle impact. I've never seen him do that, that way, because that is what he does. Lanza is a great taller skinnier Greg Gagne and would have stood out in plenty of ways if his opponent wasn't Bobby Heenan. Lanza's big punches and those eye pokes and his undeniable charisma do hold their own, but so much of this act is completely made by Heenan wrecking his body in novel ways. You've seen Bobby Heenan flip over in amazing ways taking a punch, but you have never seen him flip the way he does here. Because that's how Bobby Heenan bumps work. He's just going to take a bulldog like a spike DDT.  

Otto Wanz vs. Don Leo Jonathan Graz, Austria 7/12/80

MD: The Great Don Leo Jonathan's final match. We previously had 12 clipped minutes of this in watchable format and the brunt of the footage in completely unwatchable format with the sound muted. I had watched the former a few years back when I was going over some Wanz and couldn't make too much sense of it, clipped. This is very much new and complete then and it's worth watching. It starts slow and clean with the two playing size vs size but quickly gets more heated.

Wanz wins a couple of early exchanges and Jonathan starts to go for inside moves. The engine of these Wanz matches was that his opponent cheated and Wanz tried to stay on the up and up with the fans wanting him to fire back and go dirty more and more. When he finally did it, they erupted. Jonathan had a great variety of punches. Pokey ones in the corner, these flicking backhands, big meaty shots. And when Wanz fired back he was willing to bump around, even it being his last match, including getting knocked over the top a couple of times.

They both had specific bits of athleticism too. Jonathan flipped over using the ropes to get of an armhold and hit a dropkick as well. Wanz had his flipping sentons towards the end but also did an up and over headscissors takedown. More than any move however, was the physicality and intensity of those corner beatdowns from Jonathan which ended a round and then Wanz starting the next round but rushing across the ring to pummel him to the crowd's delight. He had such a special relationship with them and they got so loud as started to fight fire with fire.

What we get here with the full match is much more fleshed out and valuable than the 12 minutes we already had. It seemed like Jonathan still had a lot to offer but he bowed out on a high note against Wanz.

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El Deporte de las Mil Emociones: Christmas Revenge

Week 39: Christmas Revenge

EB: We’re nearing the end of our runthrough of 1990 and we have hit another stretch where results and footage are a bit scarce. What we do have is concentrated more in the latter half of December, so before talking about the final weeks of the year let’s take a moment to review where things stand as December begins.

The Texas Hangmen have had a series of matches vs La Pareja Increible of Carlos Colon and TNT. As we enter December, Carlos is going to shift away from battling the Hangmen, as his responsibilities as Universal champion come calling. He is set to defend the Universal title on December 15 against a new challenger, one that has not really had a run before in CSP. Direct from the World Wrestling Federation, it is Greg Valentine (back to his signature blonde look after  the end of Rhythm n’ Blues). 

TNT is still in the fight against the World tag team champions the Texas Hangmen, but he needs a tag partner with Colon otherwise engaged. It just so happens that Invader #1 has made a recovery from the hanging the Texas Hangmen gave him in mid October, and he has been cleared to return to active wrestling duty. Invader wants to get revenge on the Texas Hangmen and that chance will happen on December 15, as he will team with TNT.

The feud between the Super Medicos and Eric Embry & Rick Valentine has been going on for almost three months. As we get into December, the two teams had an apuestas elimination match where the last person eliminated would lose either their mask or their hair. The two teams continued their rivalry over the Caribbean tag titles, including a time limit draw that resulted in a no time limit rematch happening on December 15. A key part of this feud has been the involvement of Monster Ripper and Sasha, and both ladies are still actively involved. Ripper is scheduled to defend the Women’s World title against Sasha on December 15.

As for the remaining titles, Huracan Castillo Jr. remains as the World Junior champion after defeating Billy Joe Travis in their feud, while Kim Duk has been able to hold onto the Caribbean title for the past few months. However, Duk has a title defense scheduled for December 15 against El Bronco #1, a wrestler who in his short time in CSP has become a fan favorite. Speaking of fan favorites, Giant Warrior makes his return to CSP after being on a month long Japan tour.. He is set for action on December 15 against another World Wrestling Federation wrestler in The Barbarian.

So with this summary, it is time to look at the last couple of weeks in1990. We have a mix of results and matches from December 15, clips from the December 22 episode of Superestrellas and also some matches from the December 25 Christmas Day show that ended the year. Let’s begin with a match from the big December 15 card, as Giant Warrior makes his return and faces The Barbarian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnFyCJr1qmI

This match is from a video release about a year or so after the match took place, so again the commentary is after the fact . This is Giant Warrior’s first big match since returning from Japan and this is also a return for The Barbarian, who had previously been in CSP in 1984 (Barbarian actually faced Invader #1 at that year’s Aniversario show). The video begins with El Profe leading Barbarian to the ring, Giant Warrior already having made his entrance. It is a battle of big men here in CSP. The Barbarian takes his time getting his ring entrance attire off and finally the bell rings. A lockup leads to Warrior backing Barbarian into a corner, and on the break they start shoving each other. Warrior pumps up the crowd while Barbarian resets for another lockup. Warrior gets a side headlock that leads to Barbarian sending Warrior into the ropes. Barbarian puts his head down too early and gets kicked in the face by Warrior. The third lockup leads to Barbarian gaining control with several arm wringers. Barbarian works the arm, but Giant Warrior is able to counter with an arm wringer of his own and starts working over Barbarian’s arm. The match continues with Warrior in control until an eyerake from Barbarian leads to Warrior being tossed outside. Barbarian follows and both men fight on the field. Warrior gets the better of Barbarian and once back in the ring, Warrior works over Barbarian’s arm once more. 

A pin attempt by Warrior after an atomic drop and a clothesline only gets two. From there, Barbarian is able to find an opening and takes over the match, working Warrior over with several blows and a rear chinlock. Warrior starts fading and the ref does the arm lift check. Warrior is able to keep his arms up on the third check and starts getting fired up. Warrior fights out of the chinlock but a knee to the stomach from Barbarian stops any further comeback. Barbarian hits several punches, and when the ref gets Barbarian to back off, El Profe takes advantage and gets a hit on Giant Warrior. A series of headbutts from Barbarian leads to a pinfall attempt, but Warrior breaks it by getting his leg on the middle rope.  Barbarian gets a slam to set up an elbow drop from the turnbuckle, but he takes too long and Warrior rolls out of the way. Warrior goes on the attack, making an unsuccessful pin attempt after a clothesline in the corner. A back elbow gets two, and it seems that momentum is favoring Giant Warrior. A slam and a legdrop only get two. Warrior signals for the big boot but Kim Duk runs out from the dugout upon seeing this. Warrior gets distracted by Kim Duk (who has gotten on the ring apron). With Warrior and the ref distracted by Kim Duk, Barbarian takes off his boot and clocks Warrior from behind with it. Barbarian makes the cover (while slyly tossing the boot out of the ring to Kim Duk) and the ref makes the three count. The Barbarian has defeated  Giant Warrior thanks to Kim Duk’s help. Not the successful return Warrior was likely hoping for. The rudos celebrate the win on their way back to the dugout. 

MD: This got a lot of time (12 minute video) but was overall good. Warrior seems well trained, right? He’s a little bit gangly and awkward but can still hit things clean enough. He can move around in there. He really tries to engage and work the crowd. I think he lacks some natural charisma but he’s doing the right things generally. Barbarian looked good here. He came out in his WWF 1990 garb with the antlers and everything. Just like Warrior can punch down, he was able to punch up here and his shots looked good. They built to a lengthy chinlock but it’s not like Barbarian wasn’t straining and working it. Big transition was Barbarian missing a rope walk elbow drop. Warrior was loading up the boot when Kim Duk came in and interfered, allowing Barbarian to get a cheapshot with his own boot used as a weapon for the win. I’m up for more Barbarian but against some of the other babyfaces. Amusingly, they mentioned a bunch of other giants on commentary including Baba, Andre, and El Gigante of Argentina.

EB: We have a title change happening at Bayamon on December 15, with El Bronco #1 defeating Kim Duk to become the new Caribbean champion. It’s quite the accomplishment for someone who has not been in the territory long, and it’ll be interesting to see where El Bronco goes from here. We do not have footage of the match but to celebrate Bronco’s victory, we do have a music video. The video features clips from Bronco’s initial intro vignette where he arrives in Puerto Rico, highlights from matches against Rick Valentine, El Exotico, El Condor and Grizzly Boone, and of course dancing with Amarilis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7Naop1qYpc

MD: It’s a good act, right? Dancing neighbor. Black and red mask. Dancing valet. Latin American NWA champion. The drop down DDT. The Mongolian type chops. I don’t know about the dance itself, but it does seem like the sort of thing that would get over. I’m not sure I have a great sense of who he is from this, but I do have a good sense of what he is, and it makes for a solid mid-card act.

EB: One of the big matches for the December 15 card is the tag match featuring Invader #1’s return. We have the full match video, once again from the raw house show footage so there’s no commentary (but you’ll get to hear the crowd loud and clear).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x49ewXyjj7c

We have Invader and TNT waiting in the ring as the Texas Hangmen are on their way out. Psycho and Killer stop at a distance, so they can remove their bullropes and World tag title belts. They are both wearing studded leather masks for their entrance which they remove as well. Eliud Gonzlez makes the ring introductions (with the crowd heavily cheering both TNT and Invader). The tecnicos rush to meet the Hangmen just as they are getting into the ring and the action is underway. TNT fights one of the Hangmen in the ring, while Invader tosses the other one outside. Judging by the hair sticking out from the mask, I’d say Killer is outside with Invader and Psycho is in the ring with TNT. For the next four minutes, the tecnicos run over both Hangmen. Invader attacks Killer around the ballfield, smashing him into the announcer’s table, the playing field, into the ringpost and near the crowd. TNT is doing the same to Psycho in the ring, at one point using his karate belt to choke Psycho. The crowd is electric for all of this, cheering on the tecnicos as they run over the Hangmen. TNT and Psycho also head outside of the ring and they continue fighting on the field. Invader once again rams Killer into the small ringside table and then picks it up to hit Killer over the head. Psycho tries to head over to help his partner, but TNT grabs him from behind. TNT holds Psycho so Invader can get some hits in. Finally, all four men get in the ring, but the tecnicos continue with the advantage. What appears to be a smoke bomb goes off at ringside and TNT exits the ring, leaving Invader and Killer. Invader presses the attack, hitting a Garvin stomp on Killer. TNT is tagged in and handles both Hangmen with kicks. 

The tecnicos continue in control until about the 8 minute mark, where the Hangmen are able to stop TNT and turn the tide in their favor. The Hangmen control the next part of the match with their usual assortment of double teaming behind the ref’s back. TNT (who it looks has started to bleed) is thrown to the outside, but Invader rushes over to prevent any further attack (including hitting a foul kick on one of the Hangmen). Invader helps TNT into the ring near the tecnico corner, but Psycho quickly grabs TNT and puts him in an armbar. TNT is able to briefly fight out of the hold with several blows, but Killer runs in from behind to knock TNT down. Psycho again puts TNT in an armbar as the crowd tries to cheer TNT on. Psycho attempts a pin after a clothesline but Invader makes the save. The Hangmen work TNT over in their corner and Killer is tagged back in. The Hangmen continue in control until TNT and Psycho collide, and then Psycho misses a follow up splash. Both men tag their partners and Invader cleans house for a bit on both Hangmen. TNT recovers and gets back in the ring. All four men are in the ring, with the tecnicos taking control and ramming the Hangmen into each other. TNT and  Psycho go to the outside, leaving Invader with Killer in the ring. 

Invader has Killer against the ropes and sets up for a heart punch, but is grabbed by the referee since Killer is tied up in the ropes. Invader, thinking it was Psycho, turns around and fires off the heart punch on El Vikingo (who goes flying through the ropes to the outside). With the referee out, Killer knocks Invader down and goes for one of the bullropes. TNT stops Killer from attacking Invader and Invader ends up with the bullrope after a quick tug of war. However, Psycho rushes in and knocks Invader down. He attempts another hanging but can’t hold Invader high enough because there is only one person doing the hanging. Profe comes in to help and Invader takes advantage by kicking Profe away, using the momentum to flip over and out of the hanging. Invader sends Psycho out of the ring and is able to grab Profe. Invader sets up Profe and is able to hang him for a few moments before the Hangmen break it up. The Hangmen again try to hang Invader but TNT stops them, with Invader grabbing the bullrrope again. The tecnicos fight off the Hangmen and chase them all the way to the dugout. Invader and TNT stand tall and walk along the field to the cheers of the crowd, with Invader ringing the cowbell in response. There is no winner and you can bet Invader still wants payback.

MD: You know you’re going to get something good when you hear the buzz of the crowd for Invader and TNT being announced. This is a little wild considering how deep into a blood feud TNT and Invader were not long before. The Hangmen come out with spikey Demolition style masks. Once the bell rings however, Invader gets right to it brawling around the stadium with a Hangman, slamming his head repeatedly into a convenient desk that’s been conveniently placed there. TNT holds down the other in the ring to give Invader a spotlight to shine upon his return but eventually gets into the walking and brawling act as well.

When they hit the ring, TNT and Invader got to beat them all over the place for a bit. Probably what made them viable as a main event act in Puerto Rico (on top of the big heatseeking angles) was that they were very much willing to stooge and flail about and weren’t just monsters. The numbers game won out however and they started a lengthy bit of heat on TNT, including choking him with the rope behind the ref’s back once or twice. Invader made it in finally and the place came unglued. 

He took out the ref but they still built to a big post-match moment of Invader holding up the rope, the Hangmen getting it back and trying to choke him, and Invader flipping backwards onto his feet. He got the rope and hung a writhing, spasming Profe for a bit before the Hangmen saved him. After that TNT recovered and saved Invader and they chased the Hangmen off. Great little bit of booking which gave the fans plenty memorable and meaningful even with a non-finish, leaving much more on the bone.

EB: We finish off our look at the December 15 card by noting the other title changes that occurred that night. Sasha was able to win back the Women’s World title from Monster Ripper, but her allies the Super Medicos were not as fortunate. They lost the Caribbean tag titles to Eric Embry and Rick Valentine under unfortunate circumstances that we will discuss shortly. The Universal title was also defended by Carlos Colon against Greg Valentine, and after the match was over controversy reigned. Valentine had attempted a figure four with his reverse shin guard on, but Colon was able to kick Greg away. However, Valentine ended up colliding with the referee, knocking El Vikingo out of the ring. Colon was able to gain control of the match and put his figure four leglock on Valentine, but there was no ref in the ring. As Colon kept the hold applied, El Vikingo started to get up but was still a bit loopy outside of the ring. Meanwhile, El Profe ran into the ring and hit Colon with a loaded punch, causing the figure four to be broken. Valentine recovered and put on his figure four leglock. Colon struggled in the hold but El Vikingo was still trying to get back in the ring. Finally, referee Victor Quiñones arrived on the scene and, after a few moments, called for the bell indicating Colon had submitted. Valentine and Profe started celebrating with the Universal title but El Vikingo had finally made his way to the ring. Vikingo went over and pulled down Valentine’s arm. It turns out that Vikingo had seen El Profe’s interference and was disqualifying Valentine. The referees started talking the situation over and it was decided that the Universal title would be held up pending a review. 

We now go to the December 22 Superestrelals episode, where we have some clips that provide some direction on where things are going. There’s a big Christmas Day show on Tuesday and we have a few rematches set for that day. The big news (which we don’t have footage for) is that the Universal title will remain held up until December 25, where Carlos Colon and Greg Valentine will have a rematch to determine who the rightful champion is. As for the other matches, we’ll begin with Giant Warrior and his scheduled opponents for Christmas day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0uaYkyIcrA

This is Giant Warrior’s return to the TV tapings after his Japan tour (which Hugo mentions on commentary). As has been the case for the Giant Warrior singles matches we have seen so far from TV, it’s a handicap match. This time Warrior is matched up with El Condor and Johnny Ringo. The two rudos jump Warrior at the bell to try to get a quick advantage, but Warrior stops them with a double clothesline. El Condor rakes the eyes to again try to gain the advantage, but makes the mistake of trying to slam Warrior (which goes as well as you’d expect). Warrior counters with his own bodyslams on Condor and Ringo is tagged in for the rudos. Johnny tries a running shoulder block but ends up bouncing off Warrior on impact. Ringo attempts another shoulder block with the same result, and Warrior hits a high back body drop on Ringo. Condor comes in to help and Warrior just choke lifts and tosses Condor to the corner. Warrior continues in control (including turning Ringo up and over with a clothesline) before signaling for the big boot. Warrior gets the big boot (with Hugo commenting on the aspect of is he really or not really loading up the boot) and gets the three count on Ringo. An impressive TV return for Giant Warrior. 

As for Christmas Day, Warrior has got a rematch with the Barbarian but it will be a tag match. Joining Barbarian is Kim Duk (who interfered in the previous Giant Warrior vs Barbarian match). Joining Giant Warrior as his tag partner is a returning face for the big Christmas Day show, none other than Scott Hall. 

MD: Not much to say here, but Johnny Ringo looked great, both just bouncing off of Warrior with shoulder blocks, and with a nutty flip bump on a clothesline. I’m now of the opinion that Warrior was probably a boon to this specific territory at this specific time in this specific role even if it’s a little counter-intuitive. 

EB: As mentioned above, Sasha had regained the Women’s World title from Monster Ripper in the latest chapter of their ongoing rivalry. The Super Medicos had lost the Caribbean tag titles thanks to Eric Embry tossing fire into Super Medico #1’s face. Medico #1’s left eye has been hurt from the attack but he has demanded a match with the ring surrounded by fire in order to pay back Embry. It’s set to be a Caribbean tag title match as well ,but the new champions have lodged a protest over defending their titles against an unworthy team (in their eyes) and about being put into such a dangerous match. Let’s see what the WWC decides regarding this protest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKQA06Y12pk

Hugo starts the segment by saying that we are going to look at what happened last week in Bayamon, where Eric Embry and Rick Valentine regained the Caribbean tag titles and in the process, threw fire in the face of Super Medico #1. The clip from the no time limit match between the two teams is shown, and the Medicos are in control. Embry and Valentine are bleeding and you can also see that Valentine has a new haircut (so you can guess who was the last person eliminated in the mask vs hair match). Medico #1 crotches Embry on the top rope, while Medico #3 is attacking Valentine in the opposite corner. Medico #1 attempts a cover after a headbutt from the top, but  Valentien comes over to help his partner after having tossed Medico #3 to the outside. Embry rolls to the outside and as Medico #1 fights with Valentine, we see Monster Ripper come over to Embry and toss him some paraphernalia. Ripper gets on the apron but gets inadvertently hit by a Rick Valentine clothesline after Medico #1 ducked. We get a quick cut and we have Medico #3 punching Valentine in a corner, while Medico #1 is punching Ripper on the apron (it looks like he has had enough of Ripper’s interference these past few months). The ref is busy with Valentine and Medico #3, and as Medico #1 continues punching Ripper, Eric Embry pops back up and throws fire into Medico #1’s face. Embry quickly scrambles into the ring as Ripper rolls off the apron, and covers Medico #1. Embry gets the three count and he and Valentine have regained the Caribbean tag titles. Medico #1 is rolling around on the mat in clear distress as the match clip ends.

We go to an interview with the former Women’s champion Monster Ripper and the new Caribbean tag champions Eric Embry and Rick Valentine. It seems that a rematch is happening on Christmas Day, and it will be with the ring surrounded by fire. The champions had lodged a protest about the match, and it will now be non-title but the fire stipulation remains. Valentine mentions that Medico #1’s face lit up like a Christmas tree, but now they are being forced by the WWC to have this match. It won’t matter because they are going to light up the Medicos on Tuesday. Embry insists that the Medicos will not get another title shot because they do not deserve it, they’d have to earn one by winning a match against the champions. Again, they are being forced to wrestle in this match against their wishes. Embry promises to wipe all the grease off of the Medicos and burn them.

The Medicos respond, with Medico #3 angry and promising that they will pay back the rudos for what they did to Medico #1. Hugo makes note that Medico #1 still has a bandaged eye and asks him if the rudos did that to him illegally, is he worried about what they may do with the fire being legal. Medico #1 says that the way he is feeling, he is not afraid of anything. He will be ready for Tuesday, maybe his eye won’t be all the way healed but he certainly will be there. He was attacked with fire and that is why he wanted this fire match, because you fight fire with fire. When Embry comes face to face with him, Embry better be ready for the fight of his life, because as Embry tried to take Medico #1 out, Medico #1 is going to do his best to take Embry out for good. 

MD: We get a clip of the title change where Ripper passes Embry some fabric and he tosses a fireball at Medico 1 for the win. Now Valentine (who has shorter hair and a bandage on his forehead) and Embry won’t put the titles on the line until the Medicos beat them BUT are being forced by the WWC (mentioned by name) to have a fire match with the Medicos. We get their view and see that Medico #1 has a white eyepatch under his mask which is a pretty unique look. 

EB: The other big rematch scheduled for Christmas is Invader #1 and TNT tangling with the Texas Hangmen once more. Let’s watch some promos from both teams about the upcoming rematch. Since we’ve seen the full match, I’ll take this opportunity to highlight the narration Hugo provides for the clip of the match that begins the segment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBqGqORyEyw

Hugo (at 0:15): People, the moment has arrived where we will show you what occurred during Invader #1's return to wrestling at the Juan Ramon Loubriel in Bayamon, teaming up with TNT against the Texas Hangmen. Go ahead Mr. Director.

Tape rolls off the end of the match while Hugo narrates.

Hugo: Vengeance match as Invader returns to wrestling, with TNT fighting the Texas Hangmen. They have bloodied the Hangmen, their masks are somewhat torn. There has been fury from the Invader and TNT. And here it is! Look out, the Invader's preparing the heart punch! The referee tries to stop him, but there it is, El Vikingo just received the devastating heart punch! The Hangman takes advantage of the situation, he's grabbed the same rope they used to send him to the hospital. El Vikingo is on the floor! He's (the Hangman) running the ropes to deliver the blow, but TNT tripped him. Invader's trying to take the rope away and he's got it! Wow, he's got the rope. But El Profe's sending the other Hangman in and he's surprised Invader. He's got the rope back. TNT's fighting with the other Hangman outside of the ring and El Profe's yelling for them to hang Invader! TNT's tied up with the other Hangman and here it comes! He's doing it by himself. El Profe comes in to help, but Invader does a tremendous counter and now he's got the rope. The tecnicos are carrying El Vikingo off. Invader's setting up El Profe and, yes, he's hanging El Profe. This crowd is blowing the roof off. But here come the Hangmen to save El Profe. They keep attacking the Invader.

El Ptrofe (at 2:45): The day is almost here and what a sad Christmas it will be for Invader #1 and TNT.

The Hangmen speak as Psycho (thanks Profe for saying who is who here) promises that in two days it will be their Christmas because Invader and TNT are stepping into the war zone with the Hangmen. It will be a bad Christmas for the people of Puerto Rico, since the tecncios will spend Christmas night in the hospital. Killer promises that they will get their noose back and that the people of Puerto Rico will spend Christmas crying. 

Hugo (at 4:38): The Puerto Ricans have that bullrope and that bell. Invader #1 and TNT in a rematch this Tuesday in the Loubriel in Bayamon. What's going to happen Invader #1?

Invader: You know Savinovich, the Hangmen are worried about this bullrope because they know that this bullrope is very dangerous. With this bullrope is how they sent me to the hospital. And they know that with this bullrope we could do anything. But TNT and I only have one thing in mind, on December 25th, on a very special day like this, I would like to invite all of the people of Puerto Rico to be there that day. Because when that bell rings, TNT and I will have only one thing in our heads, and that is to try everything possible to hang one of them. It doesn't matter which of the two it is, and if it's possible El Profe too. Because he has laughed enough about this when I was in the hospital. Profe, let me tell you something, when the bell rings that day, you tell your Texas Hangmen that they better buckle their pants up tight, because we only have one thing in mind, and that is vengeance. And it doesn't matter what we have to do Savinovich, but we're going to do it.

Hugo: Wow! TNT?

TNT (at 5:50): You know Invader, as Carlos Colon and I did once already, we threw the rulebook in the garbage. And that's the same thing you and I have to do this Tuesday at the Loubriel in Bayamon, throw the rulebook in the trash. So Texas Hangmen, this next Tuesday, as Invader said, buckle up those pants real tight. Because with this bell and this rope, we are going to hang and we are going to do the impossible to run you out of Puerto Rico, Texas Hangmen...

Invader: That's exactly right TNT! That's what we are going to do!

TNT: So come Texas Hangmen because we're going to fight!

Hugo closes with ‘ Friends, the Puerto Ricans are ready! This Tuesday at the Loubriel. We continue with more of the best wrestling in the world.’

MD: They show the end of the last match with Invader getting Profe and escaping getting hung again, plus Invader and TNT getting the noose. Hangmen say it’s going to be a bad Christmas for the people of Puerto Rico because Invader and TNT will be in the hospital. TNT and Invader retort with their usual passion. Invader has the noose and TNT is in his full hooded entrance gear.

EB: To close out the clips from the December 22 Superestrellas episode, we have a match from August 25, which features the Giant Warrior’s debut in Puerto Rico against  Atkie Mulumba. After the match, there’s a brief clip of Hugo running down part of the Christmas show lineup.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzg2N8IumYg

We’re in Caguas for the debut of Giant Warrior. It's interesting to see him make his entrance through the crowd and step over the ringside barricade. The crowd seems to be very impressed with Warrior, who poses briefly for the crowd before heading towards the ring., Atkie Mulumba is already in the ring, waiting in a corner for Giant Warrior to enter. Warrior again plays to the crowd but gets jumped by Atkie as the bell rings. Both wrestlers exchange blows, with Warrior getting the better of Atkie after an elbow to the head. Atkie starts staggering and a few more blows knock him down. More overhand chops are exchanged and Mulumba takes Warrior over to the ropes to try to choke him. A head smash attempt by Atkie is blocked and Warrior counters with one of his own. Warrior plays to the crowd as he hits a few more turnbuckle smashes and then sends Atkie hard into a corner, where Atkie ends up smashing his head on the ringpost from the momentum. Mulumba takes control thanks to the use of his totem and works a nerve hold. The advantage does not last long as Warrior gets fired up, breaks the hold and eventually gets the big boot to get a clear win over Atkie Mulumba. Quite a debut match and it looks like Warrior is a hit with the local fans. 

We immediately go to  Hugo for the show closer, where he reminds fans to keep their eye on Channel 4 for more of the best wrestling in the world. every Saturday from 12pm to 1pm and every Sunday from 11:30am to 1pm. Hugo wishes all of the viewers a Merry Christmas and reminds them to be mindful during the holidays since there are a lot of kids out and about, to have fun but be very careful (I’m guessing this is either related to drinking too much and/or engaging in reckless use of firearms or fireworks). Hugo also invites the fans to a special activity the Invaders are having the next day in Humacao, a Christmas ‘merengazo’ (basically a concert / party) with several bands taking part, as well as several of the Invaders’ friends like Carlos Colon, the Super Medicos and Miguelito Perez. And the big event coming up Tuesday at 6pm,with tickets on sale at the stadium this Monday. We have a rematch between Carlos Colon (defending the colors of Puerto Rico and the WWC) and Greg Valentine for the held up Universal title, the rematch between Invader #1 and TNT vs the Texas Hangmen, the minis will be in action,  and the match between the Super Medicos and Eric Embry & Rick Valentine with the ring surrounded by fire. Be sure to tune in tomorrow.

MD: Definitive victory to put Warrior over. He was so tall that he could punch down onto the top of Mulumba’s head. Mulumba took over for a brief period with the staff/wand, and a nerve hold, but Warrior tried to get the crowd into it and worked from underneath to fire back. He hit the big boot for the win, remembering to hook the leg midway through. I don’t know if Mulumba was on the way out or what but this really put Warrior over.

EB: We finish our look at 1990 with some of the matches from that Christmas day show. First is a clip from the minis match featuring the teams of  Mascarita Sagrada & Aguilita Solitaria vs. Espectrito & Piratita Morgan 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3bIO1jgxU4

We join the match in progress, with the rudo team working over Aguilita Solitaria in their corner. Espectrito continues in control over Aguilita, sending him into a Morgan kick in the corner. Sagrada tries to come in and help, but Espectrito heads him off with some kicks. In the other corner, Piratita is tearing at Aguilita’s mask. The rudos again double tema Aguilita and end up sending him to the outside. Sagrada sees the opening with the rudos having their backs turned (and this being lucha rules he can come in now that his partner is out of the ring), and punches Espectrito from behind. Sagrada shows off some great acrobatic moves into armdrags (a handspring into an armdrag on Morgan and getting backdropped onto Espectrito for another one), causing the rudos to be off balance and roll outside to stop the momentum. The crowd cheers for the tecnicos and it looks like Piratita and Espectrito are having an argument on the outside, leadng to Morgan shoving Espectrito. The crowd is enjoying this breakdown between the rudos,but it seems that the rudos have gotten back on the same page when the action resumes. Espectrito takes out both tecnicos with kicks  Espectrito celebrates a bit as he continues with kicks on Aguilita, then follows up with a clothesline into the corner. Espectrito gets a submission on Aguilita and when Sagrada tries to break it up, Morgan heads him off. Sagrada dodges Morgan and tries to hit a moonsault off the ropes, but Morgan ducks and Mascarita crashes to the mat. Morgan covers Mascarita and gets a three count. The rudos have won the match. Post match, the rudos continue attacking both tecnicos, leaving them laid out before leaving the ring area.

MD: We get five minutes of this and it’s good for what we get. A little bullying from the rudos to start, Mascarita Sagrada with a big comeback where he clowns them as smoothly as can be, some arguing between then rudos on the pitch, and then Espectrito and Piratita turning things around for a pretty good, clean and straight finish. Post match, Mascarita got lawn darted into the post in a nice spot. I’m surprised they were still running this as an attraction but it’s a good one.

EB: Our next match from Christmas Day is the tag match featuring Scott Hall’s return to Puerto Rico to team up with Giant Warrior to face the rudo combination of Kim Duk and The Barbarian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfcQbO27_G8

Kim Duk and Giant Warrior start off for their teams. El Profe on commentary mentions ‘look at all the great people we have in the ring’, to which Hugo responds that we is too many people. Profe says that his greatness is not in height. Warrior goes for a quick cover but Barbarian breaks it up, and this allows the rudo team to take control with quick tags. Duk and Barbarian are pretty aggressive in their attacks on Warrior, and they take advantage of Hall trying to come in to double team Warrior behind the ref’s back. Hall is able to break up a Barbarian chinlock on Warrior, but for the most part the rudos remain in control throughout the first half of the match. Giant Warrior is able to turn things around after about six minutes by ducking a clothesline and countering with one of his own. But before he can crawl over to Hall to make a tag, Barbarian kicks Hall off the apron in order to stop the tag. Warrior counters a suplex attempt with one of his own and this time is able to make the tag. Hall comes in and attacks both rudos, and Warrior almost immediately gets back in the ring to help out. Warrior and Duk end up outside as Hall punches Barbarian in the corner. As Hall continues punching, the referee gets close to the action and Hall accidentally knocks him down on one of the wind ups. Hall looks to not have noticed this, as he continues punching Barbarian. Meanwhile, Kim Duk rushes back to the ring with a chair and attacks Hall from behind with it. The rudos double team Hall and set him up for a piledriver on the chair, but Warrior is back in the ring and pulls the chair away (although Barbarian still ends up piledriving Hall). Barbarian makes the cover and Warrior swings the chair to hit Barbarian, but he rolls out of the way and Warrior instead hits Hall. The ref lets the match continue for some reason and throws the chair out of the ring. While this is happening, Warrior seems to be apologizing to Hall about what happened, but Barbarian takes advantage of that moment and attacks Hall from behind. The referee tells Warrior to leave the ring and he goes back to the tecnico corner, as Barbarian continues attacking Hall. Scott is able to come back and gets Barbarian in an abominable stretch. Warrior comes in to head off Duk, and while the referee is distracted by them, Preofe sneaks into the ring with the chair and hits Hall with it. A second attempt is stopped by Warrior, who takes the chair from Profe. Hall turns around and sees Warrior with the chair, resulting in Hall immediately attacking Warrior (he had already been hit once before by accident, so I’m guessing he thought Warrior did it again on purpose). Hall continues attacking Warrior, grabbing the chair and hitting Warrior. El Profe is on the apron egging Hall on by yelling that it was Warrior that had hit him with the chair. Hall starts choking Warrior with the edge of the chair but some of the  tecnicos come in to make the save. Hall leaves the ring and complains to the camera about being hit twice. We then go to Hugo and Profe in the studio, with Profe happy about what went down and Hugo declaring that if Hall wants to go with El Profe then he can have him, not a big loss for El Ejercito de la Justicia. El Profe starts talking about how his guys will deal with the tecnicos and Hugo just walks away in disgust as the credits roll. 

MD: What an odd match on paper. Duk had more of a run here than you’d think, but him and Barbarian as a tag team at the very end of 1990? And then Hall with Giant Warrior. This had a long heat on Warrior which was compelling enough if a bit weird on paper. Barbarian looked great in knocking Hall off the apron at one point and ate a suplex on the big come back spot. Hall came in hot but Duk ran in with a chair (it took him a couple of tries to get it between the ropes as it wasn’t a folding chair). Warrior accidentally hit Hall with it after preventing a pile driver on it (but not the pile driver itself). Hall shrugged it off and kept fighting but then Profe hit Hall with a chair and when Hall turned, Warrior had taken it from Profe. Uh oh. Hall showed great emotion in destroying Warrior due to the miscommunication and Profe was pleased with his own brilliance after the fact. I thought Hall was a great babyface earlier in the year so this is a bit of a shame, but he’s probably more worthwhile on the heel side at this point.

EB: Our last match from Christmas Day is the fire match between the Super Medicos and Eric Embry & Rick Valentine. Will we finally have an end to this feud? Let's find out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9hghuCwB0o

The match begins with the Medicos attacking Embry and Valentine on the outside, and they have yet to light the fire on the ring ropes. Hugo explains that the fire will be lit once all four men have entered the ring. Medico #1 tosses Embry into the ring and they continue fighting, as Medico #3 has Valentine on the ground outside continuing his attack. They start lighting the fire as Embry and Medico #1 continue fighting. They leave one side unlit for a few moments as they finally get Valentine and Medico #3 in the ring. With all four men in, they light up the remaining side and now no one can leave until there is a winner. The Medicos control most of the match, as the dynamic is Embry and Valentine trying to fight off being pushed into the fire and not being too successful. Hugo and Profe mention everything that’s happened between the two teams (Valentine lost his hair, a leg was injured, they’ve bloodied each other up, the fire thrown in the face) and that this seems to be another escalation in the rivalry. As the match continues, Hugo makes note that the referee is only there for a pinfall or submission, he cannot disqualify anybody. The Medicos continue in control of the match, although Valentine and Embry do get some brief moments of offense. But the Medicos quickly come back and it is Embry and Valentine that feel the effects of the fire. Profe on commentary says that he is hoping to see one of the Medico’s masks catch on fire and see their head look like a torch. The match reaches a climax when Embry gets a foul blow on one of the Medcios and then the rudos try a double team on the other one. However, the Medico gets out of the way and Embry hits Valentine instead. The blow sends Valentine into the fire and Valentine gets rolled up for the win. But the Medicos are not done yet, as they grab Embry to dish out some more punishment. A headbutt sends Embry backwards into the ropes, where he smashes his face into the flames. Medico #1 continues punching and raking Embry’s eyes as the ringside attendants start removing the fire from the ropes. All four men exit the ring, as the Medicos continue attacking Embry and Valentine all the way to the dugout.  I guess this means the Super Medicos have earned a shot at the Caribbean tag titles based on the champions’ previous protest.

MD: This is a little bizarre. It’s the only fire match that I’ve ever seen that is mostly a stooging comedy affair. I can’t even count how many times Embry and especially Valentine go careening into the flames and bounce off wildly. Medicos control most of this except for a few times where Embry/Valentine get lucky shots in. It’s always sold big but it’s never decisive. The finish, which is a heel communication bit that sends one into the flame to set up a roll up doesn’t seem particularly worse than any other spot that didn’t lead to a pin. It’s not bad. The stooging is good. You can buy that they never take the fire in the worst place, maybe, but they probably could have accomplished twice as much with half the fire bumps.

EB: And with that, we’ve reached the end of our look at 1990 in Puerto Rico wrestling. We do have some pending results to talk about, specifically what happened in the Invader #1 & TNT vs Texas Hangmen rematch and who is the Universal champion after the Carlos Colon and Greg Valentine rematch. Also, is the feud between the Super Medicos and Eric Embry & Rick Valentine finally over? What about Scott Hall, is he really going with El Profe? We’ll find out the answer to all this and more when we begin our journey through 1991. But first…

Next time on El Deporte de las Mil Emociones, since we have reached the end of 1990, it seems like a good moment to give some thoughts on our journey so far. So we will have a checkpoint of sorts, where Matt and Esteban are going to talk about what has been covered so far on our journey from mid 89 to 90. What have we learned? What have been our highlights.or surprises so far? How has this changed our thoughts or notions of Puerto Rico wrestling? We’ll give our thoughts on these and other topics as we get ready to move into 1991. 

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One-Post Complete and Accurate Bockwinkel vs. Jumbo

MD: Back in November 2022, I was doing fairly detailed bullet point write ups of AEW TV over at DVDVR. I think maybe it was a little bit easier to do that at that point of the pandemic, I don't know. I had no intention of writing up the Death Triangle vs Elite series though, so I decided to counter-program by going through all of the singles Bockwinkel vs Jumbo matches we had on tape. These are more conversational message board reviews so not quite up to my normal Segunda Caida standard (maybe a little repetitive too since I didn't write them to be put in one post like this), but I thought I'd collate them all into a quick C+A. If you twisted my arm, then Matches 2-5 and 7 would be EPIC, 1 and 9 would be GREAT and 6 would be FUN, but I wasn't writing with that in mind. You can watch along as the matches are linked.

Match 1 of 9: Nick Bockwinkel (c) vs Jumbo Tsuruta AJPW 12/13/78

This was for Bock's AWA belt. It's basically in three acts. Bockwinkel controls the arm for one third, Jumbo controls the arm for one third, and then there's a finishing stretch as they work towards the draw. I can't even begin to express how hard they were working the holds. There are shots mid-match and you can just see the sweat pouring off of Jumbo just off of armbars and hammerlocks and in and out exchanges. In the middle of December. He created a ton of motion with Bockwinkel when he was working from underneath. Of course, the greatest strength of Bock is his reactions, the way he's always constantly in the moment and his pure elation of hurting someone. When Jumbo took over, it was all about Bockwinkel trying to escape and getting reversed back into it. With Bock on top, it was about Jumbo's different attempts at escaping. With Jumbo on top, it was about Jumbo using varied techniques to stretch Bockwinkel, switching things up after each escape attempt. There was a clear moment where he shifted to hammering Bockwinkel and going for the win. He knew time was against him and Bockwinkel had the champion's advantage. Some people might find this transition stilted or awkward or ignoring what came before, but it was really all about Jumbo trying to pick the exact moment where he'd worn down Bock just enough that he'd be able to hit his stuff and try to beat him. If he went too soon, Bockwinkel would reverse it. If he went too late, he wouldn't have enough time to put him away. And maybe there wasn't a perfect moment because the champ was just that good. Judging by the fact this went to a draw after they threw everything they had at one another, that was probably the case. We'll see how these matches develop from here, but the wrestling that took up at least two thirds of it was just so good.

Match 2 of 9: Nick Bockwinkel (c) vs Jumbo Tsuruta Hawaii 2/14/79

This one was 2/3 falls and man was it ever good. The first fall was full of so much of what I love about Bockwinkel and then the second fall was such an amazing showing for Jumbo. In that first fall, they went a different way with it, with Bockwinkel trying to take liberties to get an advantage early but getting jammed by Jumbo. This time, Bock didn't get his arm control first and it went straight to Jumbo's and they worked it and worked it with Bockwinkel cheating to get out or making it seem like he just might, but getting jammed right back down. He's always struggling, always fighting, always reacting and Jumbo's so smooth working from top. Eventually, Bock has enough and drops the pretense and just starts kicking and stomping him down, but Jumbo fires back, including a huge chop off the ropes that causes Bock to do his full body sell. They're about twenty in now, as there were a couple of minutes clipped here and his total exhaustion sell is the best ever. And it's still early really! Anyway, after blocking Jumbo's butterfly, Bock tries the King of the Mountain which is what he does when there's a babyface too fiery for him but Jumbo immediately fights out, rushes in and just unloads on Bock, super intense. He misses a knee in the corner and Bock, in short order, gets the figure four. Just great fighting out of it by Jumbo turning it a couple of times, but he succumbs. So that's the first fall and I love how one beat so smoothly led to the next and you could just tell what kayfabe Bock was thinking and trying to do at every point.

Second fall has Jumbo fighting with the bad leg and he does it so valiantly that the crowd really starts to get behind him. I've seen American crowds get behind Japanese guys before (especially in California) but maybe never quite like this and it's both Bock AND Jumbo here. He keeps falling a bit behind due to his leg but powering back, including hitting an atomic drop but being unable to hang on to the cobra twist. This ultimately leads to Bock containing him with a King of the Mountain (This time) but pressing it too far and allowing for Jumbo to fire back in, opening Bock up with chops and ultimately hitting the butterfly and the cobra twist causing him to pass out.

The last fall teases the time limit (9 minutes left) just from the start, and they have some near falls (a butterfly that Bock blocks but Jumbo turns into a piledriver, brutal stomps on the leg turned into a Jumbo half crab). You get maybe a sense that Jumbo doesn't know how to put him away but he goes for broke with his hurt leg with another atomic drop and gets another cobra twist only for Bock to toss the ref and draw the DQ. Really masterful match here. And just a lovely 1980 crowd to get behind a foreigner so thoroughly. I couldn't imagine a nicer crowd, the sort that you'd want for big wrestling match like this, that bought into it fully and that put aside their own biases to give their all for the challenger.

Match 3 of 9: Nick Bockwinkel (c) vs Jumbo Tsuruta AWA 6/22/80

This was in AWA territory and Baba was in to commentate for Japanese TV. That means, Heenan was there, Mean Gene did the Ring Announcing ("Tommy" Jumbo Tsuruta) and Verne said before the match he'd wrestle the winner. Heenan then shoved him for no good reason and Verne clocked him, which made Heenan sort of a non-factor for much of the match. Match itself was very good. They worked the entry point much differently than the last two, more of the format of Bockwinkel trying to abuse Jumbo and then Jumbo firing back tit-for-tat. If Bock would get an arm drag and slam him then Jumbo would get the spots as revenge and show him up. Bock took over with some real chippy stuff, just a double leg that looked like they were shooting and hard, hard shots onto the arm. He was trying to contain Jumbo but Jumbo hit the jumping knee and started to meanly work over the back. Bock may have unlocked grumpy Jumbo years early with how hard they were going at it. Less long holds here, but definite focus to try to set up the double underhook suplex and abdominal stretch. Bockwinkel would try to figure up from underneath but Jumbo stayed on him. When they finally got to the hold, Bock was able to push them out of the ring. He came back in with a bunch of headlock cheapshots to the throat. Two of the things I tend to give Bock credit for are his total engagement and full body selling as the match goes on. The cross-section of the two is how he just throws his entire body into everything he does. If he throws a punch, he'll sort of recoil back with it. There's a spot here where he goes for a pile driver, can't get it, and Jumbo gets one shortly thereafter, and as he's up, he's just flailing his feet perfectly. But he does that with almost everything. It's just this amazing performance presence in the moment that almost not other wrestler can live up to (Terry Funk and... maybe Negro Casas and Buddy Rose and I'm not even sure who else?). Jumbo kept coming back with the crowd definitely behind him, with Bock trying to slow him down, including with a King of the Mountain. Ultimately, they ended back up in the stretch, but Bock was able to hiptoss Jumbo right into the ref. Great ref bump but the follow up was muddled. Heenan took too long to blatantly interfere. They couldn't get the ref in the right place soon enough, etc. Shame as the match itself was great. So three matches, three different feels and structures, all good stuff.

Match 4 of 9: Nick Bockwinkel (c) vs Jumbo Tsuruta AJPW 2/4/82

I need to keep going with these as I have 9 matches and they only have 7. This was in AJPW but for the AWA Title. Verne had gotten it back and retired at this point. Between 80 and 82, I'd say Jumbo had moved on to his second form more fully. That is to say that he and Bock came off like equals here, which gave the match a different sort of feel. Bock slammed him from the get go, but then Jumbo returned favor and he took almost the entirety of the opening matwork by hanging onto the arm through Bockwinkel's escape attempts. On paper, some of this (the arm submissions, into a surfboard sort of test of strength, into the initial cobra twist) that took up the first ten minutes might not sound compelling, but when they were zoomed into Bock (and Jumbo's!) facial expressions, it was very good. Just full commitment to the struggle. Bockwinkel might be the best actor and reactor in a wrestling ring ever. And Jumbo, with mouth stretched open and gritted teeth, rose to the occasion.

This went just under twenty and it probably needed another two or three minutes with Bock on top. He took over after the Cobra Twist with some hard shots to the gut in the ropes, a little King of the Mountain, and a slam from a suplex position bringing Jumbo in from the apron. Bock had some holds here but it just needed a bit more heat. Jumbo's big comeback was with the jumping knee off the ropes out of the sleeper.

I'd say the last five minutes of this were excellent. Jumbo was absolutely feeling it, yelling and charging across the ring for these big jumping stomps to Bock's back. He'd use the crab and most of a camel clutch to really wear it down and set things up for the second Cobra Twist. Pretty dramatic stuff and the fans were buying into it. Bockwinkel was able to pry the leg out slowly and dramatically to get him over and escape. He had a last burst of offense, but was always reaching back to sell the back in a way that felt organic and never took away from what he was doing. Just the stuff that he was better than literally anyone in wrestling at doing and that puts him over his contemporaries because he's able to balance this and registering what happened in the match while still keeping it dynamic and exciting and emotional and electric. It all builds to him being unable to slam Jumbo and Jumbo trying to put him away with an airplane spin. Both wrestlers go tumbling out and Jumbo starts spinning him again again, spiraling around the ringside area erratically as photographers have to dive out of the way. Incredible visual. He's unable to beat the count back in though so it's a draw. This was a different dynamic and interesting to see but I think Bockwinkel ultimately gave up just a little too much without getting a little more back to really put it over the top. If Bock had leaned on him a bit more the place would have exploded all the more so when Jumbo hit the jumping knee. Still, great performances.

Match 5 of 9, Nick Bockwinkel vs Jumbo Tsuruta AJPW 7/13/78

The armwork in the first ten minutes of this one is just all time great. Previous matches between them were more clinical and academic and "title match" but here he's doing top wristlocks and double wristlocks it's just so, so mean. It takes the full ten minutes for Jumbo to start to get an advantage and power over the top and Bock just grabs the hair or lays in a knee to the gut (he hadn't had to previously) after all that work and struggle. Finally something clicks in Jumbo's pre-grumpy brain and he steps around on an arm pulling wristlock and rakes Bock's face with his boot to take over. You can see him level up mid match.

Bock's still able to keep the advantage due to the hurt arm though (Jumbo selling after he hits elbows) and Bock presses it in the corner, but it's just not enough of a lever and Jumbo comes back. Bock's able to block the belly to back though and hits one of his own. Exciting stuff. He followed it with a pile driver but went back to the well and Jumbo comes back. By this point, it's sort of clear that Bock has to do something extra to really keep Jumbo down and he tries, going up for a second rope knee drop, something he's learned from Stevens over the years, but never does himself. He misses (of course) and Jumbo starts on the leg, going for a figure four. Bock survives, but is selling big. He's good enough at almost every point to find a way back whether it's an eyepoke or punching from underneath and he manages to start the King of the Mountain and even post Jumbo on the outside. He's still desperate though and gets backdropped when he tries a pile driver on the floor.

The match really opens up after that, with Jumbo hitting a knee lift so high that the announcers call it a leg lariat. He starts on the back after this, but Bock wins a punch exchange. I love the balance between a competent champion and a desperate cheater with Bockwinkel. He was always credible. Always dangerous. But backed against a wall, he'd do anything to survive. It makes it mean all the more a little later on when Jumbo is able to fire up and win a punch exchange and hit a stalling turning pile driver of his own. As the match rolls into the last five minutes, Jumbo leans more and more on Bock's back (With Bock doing some amazing full body selling draped into the ropes), getting the crab and ultimately going for the cobra twist. Bock tries to turn it and crashes into the ref. This leads to a phantom fall after the belly to back and another ref bump as Bock nails him when Jumbo moves. There's a figure four afterwards (and maybe they should have not moved onto the back and stayed with the leg if that was going to be the phantom win #2?) but the ref calls for the dq and Jumbo is despondent. This was some really good stuff. If last one they were equals, this one you got the sense that Jumbo had Bock's number and furthermore, that he was going to get him next time.

Match 6 of 9: Jumbo Tsuruta vs Nick Bockwinkel AJPW 2/23/84

I hate to say it but I wasn't feeling this one quite as much. It's a shame because it's the end of a big journey for Jumbo and Terry Funk is the special ref. It even starts brilliantly with Bock rushing in for a cross body right at the bell. I love his entry point gameplans. He got a major early advantage from that and the next fifteen (!) minutes or so was him controlling the arm, and honestly, I wish it was better. Bock did his job, really working it, at times working it almost too much to keep the crowd in it, just huge flailing motions while keeping technique and switching it up again and again, one hold after the next. Jumbo seemed weirdly listless though. I could hardly tell this was the same guy who was doing such gritty working from underneath in the previous years. I just don't really get it given the setting; my only guess, other than him just feeling sluggish for some reason like sickness, was that he knew he was winning the title and he wanted to look at strong as possible. He did sell towards the end of it, but mostly when he was out of a hold and trying to take over.

Ultimately (after a tease with the jumping knee), Jumbo fought into a front face lock and after he couldn't get the double underhook suplex, he hit two pile drivers and they were on. It was fairly back and forth from there, with a big feel to it, inside and outside of the ring. Jumbo pressed an advantage with a beautiful double underhook (when he actually hit it) and gutwrench suplex. Bock got a knee up on a corner charge and landed a pile driver of his own. Jumbo dodged a corner charge and dug in on a crab. Funk was really a non factor for most of the match, a shame considering how he could have helped those first 15-20 minutes sing, but I liked him a lot during the crab, explaining the stakes to Bock but that he could quit. Bock's full body selling was at play here, the best ever. The way his arm flailed about as Jumbo was positioning him for the gutwrench was just so, so good. No one better. Bock took back over and knocked Jumbo into Funk, both of them sailing out of the ring. There was a second ref though. Bock continued to press, slamming Jumbo from the outside in repeatedly. Jumbo finally floated over (beautifully, might I add) and hit a belly to back with a bridge as Funk slid back in for the ironclad win. It was a great moment, but it wasn't as great of a match as the ones that preceeded it. I'm not sure if they were under a certain directive to do things a certain way. I know that Funk didn't want to take attention off of them but Funk, being Funk, always makes things better. While Jumbo was fiery at certain moments, and while the crowd went absolutely nuts for the win, he was neither what he had been against Bock previously or what he would be (a vicious gladiator) in the years to come. This is not the best match in the series.

Match 7 of 9: Nick Bockwinkel vs Jumbo Tsuruta (c) AJPW 2/26/84

This was a couple of nights later and was Jumbo defending. I have to look at where this is on the tour actually. Let me see. There were a couple of nights left but this was the last really big match for Jumbo on it. I imagine the Japanese fans having seen what happened with Baba a few years earlier and certain other things, half expected Bockwinkel to win it back, that Jumbo would just get a win but not get to hold it through the end of the tour. That, combined with the fact that Bockwinkel took so much of this, gave things a real sense of drama. This was certainly better than the title change and it might be my most favorite match of the series so far, even though I don't necessarily think it was the best.

Bockwinkel controlled for the first eight minutes or so with headlocks and front face locks. He had more history as a title match wrestler and they were great headlocks. Watching this, you wanted Jumbo to try to toss him off just to see Bockwinkel grind down and sink to his knees. Really top notch stuff. He hit a pile driver between the headlock and the front facelock exchanges, but ultimately lost things by trying to go for a butterfly suplex. He needed Jumbo into the corner but lost the offense. He'd take back over quickly enough but then hit a clumsy but cool cross body off the top and Jumbo would take over after that. Bock was going out of his comfort zone with both moves, externally calm but internally roiling over having lost the title and he was paying for it.

Jumbo would hit an errant pile driver here and go for a sleeper only to get driven into the corner (more there later). This led to the bit we were missing from the last match as Bockwinkel locked on a cobra twist only for Funk to somehow go sailing out of the ring, followed by him getting strung up in some rope running. Good. If you're going to have Funk, use him. It was right in the middle of the match, between chapters, like a palette cleaner. Jumbo would go for the butterfly, but get jammed, allowing Bock to get a crab attempt. Jumbo would toss him out with sheer strength and, after some back and forth, go for a sleeper again, only for Bock to chuck him out, starting the real King of the Mountain stuff. Two points here; one, when Bock was getting in a cheapshot from underneath, he'd follow it up (while being admonished by Funk) by selling his whole body as only he could really putting over what Jumbo had just done to him and the weight of the match and how desperate he'd been to get out of that spot; second, he used King of the Mountain in almost all of his matches and it was often used to cut off a hot babyface and keep control, but he used it at different points and in different ways. It always fit the match.

Anyway, the King of the Mountain was really good here, with Bock continuing to go for it, suplexing Jumbo in once right on his head, and having Jumbo fire back into the ring another time. Before the last one, they both hit heads and then did a double punch which shifted gears towards more of a finishing stretch. The last KOTM had Jumbo get his leg stuck in the ropes and Bockwinkel just unload on it. This led to a figure four and both guys hitting the floor. Bockwinkel had clear control as the count was on, but at the very last second, as Bock was about to roll back in and win, Jumbo grabbed him so he couldn't make it in. It was a very dramatic, New Japan style finish that kept Jumbo the belt as they were both counted out. Very much a Bock match with Jumbo just needing to show fire and having the crowd behind him. Good stuff.

Match 8 of 9: Jumbo Tsuruta (c) vs Nick Bockwinkel AJPW 3/24/84

This was another really good one, driven by the fact that Bockwinkel, as the challenger, controlled a lot of it. That meant headlocks to begin, but the best headlocks imaginable. When it seemed like Jumbo might get out, a hairpull, when Jumbo overcame that, he hit a drop toehold and really locked in a deep scissored toehold. When the fans would chant for Jumbo, Bock would grind it more and Jumbo would sell huge. When Jumbo turned over his own headlock out of it, Bock was able to turn it around for a shinbreaker and a leglock. When Jumbo made it to the ropes, Bock switched to attacking the leg and starting a king of the mountain. I just love that from a narrative perspective. Bock put him in trouble and Jumbo worked so hard to get out only to get immediately stymied by something else and the work began anew.

Anyway, Jumbo fought his way back in and even got the jumping knee, but Bock was basically fresh and got out at one. From there, Jumbo was just trying to contain Bock, and he couldn't do it. Bock floated over and started going for the figure four. This was real Clash of Titans stuff, with Jumbo pressing his arms up to try to prevent the leg from dropping down. Bock eventually got it though. Just amazing overhead visuals on this struggle and then the hold. Jumbo made it to the ropes and Bock started slamming his leg against the apron brutally. Back in the ring, Jumbo comes back with a leg caught enzuigiri to a huge pop and he's back in the fight. Butterfly suplex, two count. Pile driver, two count.

The leg selling is gone by the way which is a shame. Jumbo could have used it to let Bock take back over, for instance. Instead, Bock just fights from underneath, hitting a pile driver of his own. What I love is that before he picks him up for it, he just turns his head ever so slightly to take in the crowd; he's always so in the moment. It's a tiny thing but it's everpresent in his work. They crash into each other and then do a double punch (Bock hits a belly to back out of a headlock in the middle). Bock tries for another King of the Mountain but Jumbo storms in with chops. This is pissed off angry proto-Gladiator Jumbo, a very different entity than a few years earlier even if he wasn't who he'd be a few years later. Bock knows he's in trouble, so he tosses him into the ref and hits a belt shot on the outside. Jumbo recovers though, charging in, tossing Bock out, and going for belt shots of his own. When the ref gets in the way, Jumbo nails him too, the seed of violence already taking root. Post match, they brawl repeatedly with people trying to separate them, Bock gets big cheers from the crowd, and Jumbo cuts a promo about defending in the US. He had defended against Lanza, Robinson, and Brunzell the first round and in the second, he'd even face Baron Von Raschke (We don't have that one unfortunately), before falling to Martel. I really liked these two Bock-As-Challenger matches, though I probably liked the last one a bit more. This one had the first inklings of really violent Jumbo though.

Match 9 of 9: Jumbo Tsuruta (c) vs Nick Bockwinkel AJPW 9/12/87

This was for Jumbo's International Title and it only went around ten minutes. It was worked very differently from all the previous matches. I'd call it an AJPW heavyweight sprint. There were holds but they weren't worked for long. They were worked hard, of course, but without overt consequence and escapes or reversals were relatively quick. There was no moment of posturing, no empty space within the match. They were right back up throwing knees or forearms or going for the next hold or spot. That doesn't doesn't mean there wasn't implied consequence. I've never seen a Bockwinkel match end with him sucking air like this. Yes, he was at the absolute tail end of his career, but it was a testament to how hard they were going.

I'd prefer a match where things built and resonated more but there was nothing unbelievable in this. It was both men jockeying for opportunity at any moment and going as hard against each other as they absolutely could. Jumbo won off of a flying body press, which is nice as it's an unusual way for him to win and the fans would remember next time he'd hit one, but I'd rather him have used the Thesz Press as that was one of his more regular moves, if they were going to go with a finish like this. Both men, the worse for wear, shook hands after the match. If nothing else, this shows another hat Bockwinkel could wear and that he could hang even in the wilds of hard-hitting 1987 AJPW. Overall, it's not my favorite of the series, but it's an interesting and different look at things and shows how the company and Jumbo were progressing. I'm not going to rank the nine but I'd say the best matches overall would be the middle defenses for Bockwinkel and the two defenses for Jumbo with the lesser matches being the title switch and this last one. It's all good in its own way though.

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