AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 5/5 - 5/11

AEW Collision 5/8/25

Ricochet vs. Angelico

MD: When I think of the New Heel Movement in AEW, some surprises have been bigger than others. I don't think Okada leaning into getting heat as a TV worker was a surprise. I had seen inklings with Kyle Fletcher in commercial breaks for well over a year; no one could have anticipated just how far he'd go with it all, but potential had been there. Someone like Blake Christian still does just a little too much instead of letting things sink in, even if he's doing shtick instead of spots. Up and comers like Lee Johnson and Red Velvet are known to be hard workers and it made sense that they'd take to the rising wave. 

But Ricochet. Ricochet has taken me completely by surprise. I know there were some signs of stooging and heatseeking back in his indie days, but even then it had that aftertaste of PWG irony. Yeah, that's a thing. It's been absolutely telling watching him with the Bucks the last few weeks, because they come at it from different angles. For the Bucks, they always have to be winking, always have to be in on the joke, always have to have an arm around your shoulder so that you know they're laughing with you and you're laughing with them. In some ways, it's lovely, because they bring you into the tent with them. In others ways, though, it covers a lack of fearlessness. They can never be truly vulnerable. They're always playing the role. You'll always see the strings. They never REALLY let anything get to them, not really. They'll commit fully for any spot or any bump, but they won't commit emotionally.

And I get it. Given their size and their style and their preferences, they couldn't show that sort of weakness, or at least felt like they couldn't. Here's a bit of actual irony. They were, of course, essential to the creation of AEW. It's because AEW exists, it being a place where people can work their style and not be ridiculed or depushed or punished but instead glorified, I think Ricochet feels safe to be so confident and fearless and genuine as a performer. He has that layer of safety and security. He knows that he's safe from a monster who gets off on ridiculing his employees and that lets him put himself fully as the butt of the joke. In this case, the agency is in his hand. He doesn't have to worry about being dressed in in a bee costume or in polka dots or as a rooster against his will. If he ends up a rooster, it's because it's his creative vision. I get why the Bucks can't fully embrace that because they had to build everything and it's probably so very hard to let go and push away from what established them as stars in the first place. But now that AEW exists, to see wrestlers letting themselves stooge and show ass and be vulnerable is an amazing thing, a light of pro wrestling's uniqueness and specialness bursting out of the clouds once more.

And Ricochet is able to balance it with his big spots and quick action to high effect. Because he has that extra gear and everyone knows he has that extra gear, he can build and build to it by drawing heat and getting stooged. It's giving the fans the best of both worlds. That was certainly true in his match with Angelico, and it carried through all the way to the post match where he was able to push things all the way into the red emotionally in his interactions with Gowen. 

The fans and Angelico went straight to hair taunts to start and Ricochet responded, chip on his shoulder,  by winning the initial wrestling exchange of the match. He boasted about it and then Angelico did what Angelico does, trapping the arm out of a pin attempt after a trip and not letting go. Ricochet tried to roll out and Angelico rolled him back in, leaning on superior reach and ungodly technique. All the while he took liberties, paintbrushing the head while Ricochet could do nothing about it. Immediate comeuppance. When Ricochet finally scrambled to the ropes, the fans didn't cheer the exchange and the fact they got to see it, but they booed Ricochet's craven exit and the fact that it was over. That doesn't sound like much but it's the way pro wrestling is supposed to work, the emotional tugging that is supposed to happen, and something that's been lost in a sea of "This is Awesome."

Angelico went back to the hair in the ropes and Ricochet went for the eyes taking over. He cemented it with athleticism and beat down Angelico during the break while also fighting off the crowd, selling (because that's what it is!) everything the crowd was throwing at him. That's the key. That's what keeps them going that's what keeps this churning. That's what makes the fans want to tune in and buy tickets to see Ricochet. He's reacting to everything. He's letting it get under his skin. It's affecting his face, his actions, his body language, his everything. It means that he looks the fool when he's working from underneath and it drives his viciousness when he's on top. It's human and believable even if it's exaggerated and entertaining. It's perfect. If ever it becomes too distracting and the fans are chanting bald instead of responding to what's happening in the match, that's when Ricochet ramps up the viciousness a little and makes it clear that it's the fans' fault for what's happening to the babyface. That's tried and true heeling and it still works today. 

Angelico mounted a comeback after the break but maybe took his eye off the ball due to the temptation of mocking Ricochet more. Ricochet leaned hard into that viciousness and put him away in a manner that spoke well to hierarchy. Angelico left the match looking better than he came in. Ricochet was all the stronger for his immense vulnerability because he won so definitively and defeated someone who had pushed him to a limit (even if not the limit). And all of that set the stage for him to take everything one step further in the amazing post match angle with Gowen.

There's room for all sorts of styles and approaches in AEW. That's part of the strength of the promotion. But something genuine like this will always resonate more emotionally than something that's simply spectacle for the sake of spectacle and certainly more than something that's too winking and emotionally guarded. The more wrestlers give themselves over to pro wrestling in this way, the deeper the connection they'll have with the crowd. 

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ECW Fancam: Revere, MA 3/22/97

ECW 3/22/97 Full Show

 

1. Tracy Smothers/Little Guido vs. Spike Dudley/Chris Chetti 

There isn't enough match here to talk about. Joined in progress and the camera glitches throughout the two existing minutes. Spike's huracanrana looks good and reminds me of Kidman's. Did we ever get a Spike vs. Kidman singles? I associate their run with the era of endless WWF Cruiserweight 3 Ways. I looked it up. They had several dozen multimans and one singles match the literal first time they wrestled. I'm watching that Heat match later. The screen goes black when Chetti tags in and almost immediately everyone is chanting YOU FUCKED UP. That sounds about right. When the picture comes back Chetti hits the worst spinning heel kick I've ever seen. Tracy tries to get several people to swing on him after the win. 

2. Axl Rotten vs. Corporal Punishment (6:33)

They take the camera around a tour of the ring before this match. Not a lot of women out at the greyhound track pro wrestling show tonight. I love a low ceiling dog track as a pro wrestling venue but I imagine it would be hard to coax a woman there on a Saturday night. I wanted this to be a violent teacher vs. student match and the crowd wants the same, and instead it's kind of worked as 2000s Dusty Rhodes vs. Black Reign Dustin Rhodes, if they were teacher-student instead of father-son. Corporal can take chair shots, and his elbowdrop and kick to the ear are as good as the best eras of Dustin. His punches looked good too, he took a nice bump from the top buckle onto the ropes, and if he had a better clothesline I'd start seeking out more Maryland indies. 

3. Stevie Richards vs. Louie Spicolli (10:44)

I can't tell if Stevie's offense hits poorly or if Spicolli keeps bumping too early but it's much better when they're trading strikes. Spicolli has more than one kind of nice punch and good kicks to the stomach, and while I think he took Nova and Meanie's punches really well on the floor it also looked like Nova and Meanie somehow had great babyface punches!? Spicolli has a great gutbuster and works a rope assisted abdominal stretch spot and a killer bearhug for an ECW dog track crowd and I love that. His bearhug was shockingly great. He caught Stevie in what could have been turned into a spinebuster or atomic drop and instead dropped to his knees while squeezing the bearhug, then dragged him to the ground and held it there, even bridging into it. Goddamn that's cool. Match starts to go too long and Spicolli is working dominant heel with a knee injury. Stevie has no good way to take over a match, just no credible offense. He does a rocker dropper that looks much worse than the one Spike Dudley did to Tracy Smothers in the opener. Guy who already has problems with credible offense now doing worse looking versions of offense done by someone who is expressly working a Most Undersized of All Undersized Wrestlers gimmick. Spicolli keeps using that spinebuster to set up bearhug attempts so that when he finally uses it for a spinebuster it plays as an excellent spinebuster. The Stevie Kick actually looks like a finisher but Stevie did not wrestle like a guy who should be winning matches. 

4. The Sandman vs. Balls Mahoney (7:19)

I don't know if even Andre the Giant had the kind of aura Sandman has on shows like this. I hate that pro wrestling isn't a place where I can go and see anyone like The Sandman anymore, but I can go to an arena to see Adam Cole. We fucked up bad. Sandman has one of the most threatening glares but also looks like a guy who could not give a shit about a single thing you say so long as you don't interrupt his beer drinking. Downing beers while your lit cig is still in your mouth is something Andre probably could have done but I sure haven't seen him do it. He facially he looks like the most fucked up Gary Sinise character. Sandman was bleeding from breaking cans over his head and Balls bleeds from four hard canings. Sandman takes two full unprotected shots to the head and then sells the rest of the match exactly like a guy who shotgunned several beers and took chair shots should be selling. He takes two different perfect guardrail bumps and lets Balls legdrop a chair on his face. Balls misses a guillotine legdrop and Sandman wins with a schoolboy that looked like a drunk losing a fight dragging the man down who was only trying to help him out. This ugly guy was trying to get him to walk away from a fight and got swarmed by drunk zombie weight. As it should be.   

5. Dudley Boyz vs. The Eliminators (9:36)

This had a real good backyarder feel to it. Eliminators are a real pair of yarders and they're out here doing a bunch of mostly missed moonsault variations and flying kick combos that it looks like a bunch of high school friends wrestling in a swimming pool. Kronus is just throwing endless spinning heel kicks into the deep end. None of Saturn's moonsaults come anywhere close to his target, he's just a guy doing flips off his buddy's diving board and everyone screams every time his head comes close to grazing part of Bubba Ray's body. The Eliminators are not nearly as polished as 1997 High Voltage, but that's who they are. When Saturn hits a springboard missile dropkick right after losing his place (worse than Kenny Kaos ever did), I knew who they were. It's three minutes of the Dudleys being walked into position for moves that sometimes hit, and when the Dudleys took over their control was a lot more intelligible, but it was more fun when everyone was taking backdrop bumps and yarding. Saturn and both Dudleys take really great backdrop bumps. D-Von is tasked with the most difficult bumps, as he's the one taking most of the Eliminators' tandem kicks where they're out of sync but you still have to know how to bump for two kicks hitting you at different times. Dudleys do a powder in the eyes finish which I think is a great bit to run on an ECW show. These people hated that shit! 

After the match Joel Gertner gets in the ring to celebrate the win and of course take a Total Elimination, but Sign Guy hilariously saves him and screams NO NO NO NO when he realizes he now has to take it instead. Sign Guy sells that shit like the biggest martinete in Mexico too. The fancam camera runs out of battery because Sign Guy takes so long being helped from the ring by two referees and a woman EMT who got catcalled during the entire affair. What did I say earlier about how tough it would be to coax a woman into being in this building? 

6. Rob Van Dam vs. Taz 

I have no idea how much of this we missed. After running out of battery while Sign Guy was slowly helped to the back, our tape went dead. When it came back there was some incredible fancam tape dubbing interference that felt like something made for a modern movie about a haunted VHS tape. There's a split second of Kenta Kobashi footage in between blue screens and tracking lines, our camera returning for a very long shot of a man's sneakers as he stands behind a curtain, next to a trash can. A haunting film about a man hiding in his own skin, afraid to face the people who he's surrounded by, the people he's pretending to be like. Anyway, there's only a couple minutes of this. RVD takes a German that lands him on his stomach, and an exploder through a table after that. I was surprised at how much better RVD's punches were in '97. The matwork that was ending when the match was JIP looked really interesting, but this match ended when Sabu slid in the ring to attack Taz, Candido followed to attack Sabu, and RVD/Taz just disappeared to the back. 

7. Sabu vs. Chris Candido (14:10)

It's crazy how much damage these two took. I kept waiting for the match to gel into something bigger, beyond the surface your move-my move stuff, to move past this feeling of them constantly just getting to the next thing, and while it never did that - nothing really soaked in, nothing felt more impactful than any other thing - the longer they did it the more insane the match felt. The punishment they racked up was impressive, especially for a show that was only being taped by fancam cameras that had already missed two of the six matches. For all Sabu and Candido knew, this was only going to be seen by the trash populating this dog track, and man they went hard. Candido did his best to facilitate and set up spots for Sabu's craziness, and Sabu kept pushing through to do crazier things. All match long Sabu kept going for springboard offense, and regardless of it hitting or missing the landings had to have added up. Sabu took over a dozen falls to the mat springing off the ropes or leaping off the top, and that was just from his own offense, not even counting offense he was taking from Candido. 

The whole story of the match seemed to be Sabu just crashing over and over, sometimes onto a man, sometimes onto his tailbone, and Candido getting more and more flustered by this man who cannot be stopped from self destruction. There was a fun thread running through where Sabu would hit all of his springboard offense but kept missing everything where he vaulted off a chair. Something bad would happen every time he introduced one of those ass killing hotel conference room chairs. He gets spinebustered by Brian Lee, flies into a guardrail as hard as Sabu flies into guardrails, and the biggest was a triple jump plancha to the floor that ended with him taking a thrown conference ballroom chair to the face as he was landing. The thread changed when Candido introduced a chair for the first time and it went terribly for him, and then Sabu started hitting all of his chair jump insanity. 

A man with the most nauseating Boston accent starts really lacing into Chris out of nowhere. Real dirty, mean stuff. "Hey Chris! Ya wife sucks dick! Sunny's a whore! Your wife's blowing Sid right now! She's in Chicago, WITHOUT YOU. Chris! You know where Sunny is?" Good lord. Candido was good at tying all of Sabu's insanity together, punching him into position, knowing when Sabu's offense should hit and when it should miss, giving the man a PILEDRIVER off the middle buckle (that barely slowed Sabu down). There were no real sections of Candido control, they more just seemed like Candido trying desperately to slow things down while getting vile things screamed at him about his wife. But he was there to glue this broken vase together over and over again while Sabu took an absurd amount of bad landings for a house show.  

After he wins, Sabu acts like he's going to dive through a table for the fans and the crowd goes nuts thinking they're seeing something he hasn't done in several years. They actually crowd surf a table over their heads from the back up to ringside while Sabu calls for it, and the second it gets to ringside he jumps out of the ring, tears some teen's nicely drawn orange Taz poster in half and tells everyone to Fuck Off, swinging on a guy on his way to the back. The teen, no doubt a few years away from a date rape accusation that he weathered with no penalization of any kind, is furious. It was a really nicely drawn poster and Sabu managed to rip it right through Taz's neck, decapitating him. As the camera films the teen, he goes off, his voice breaking: "Motherfucker ripped it. That fucking piece of shit! I hope Taz eats that motherfucker alive! He's gonna fucking kill him! Katahajime!!" 

8. Terry Funk/Pitbull #2 vs. Raven/Shane Douglas (7:20)

This is a mess that doesn't stay in the ring long, and is clipped somewhere in the middle. Raven and Funk punch each other around ringside and I would have been fine if that was just the match. But Pitbull #2 is better than you remember and takes a couple of big bumps to the floor and is forced to take offense from Shane Douglas and make it look good. That's not always easy, unless The Franchise is just accidentally hurting him. Raven puts Funk through a ringside table with a pescado and we never see Funk again, and then Raven and Douglas powerbomb Pitbull on the floor and it goes terribly. Douglas couldn't get him up so it turned into a tandem Dominator (which I guess is better than a broken neck) and then Douglas punishes him further by actually powerbombing him through two chairs. Francine had set the chairs up. So...Francine was actually pretty great, huh? I don't think any of us can properly understand the amount of verbal abuse she received while drawing heat from so many mongrels. I didn't see any explicit directions for her to set up two unfolded chairs against each other either, but she's running around ringside the whole match setting things up and looking incredible while doing so. In the discussion for best ECW manager.  

The whole thing ends with everyone flooding the ring. Tommy Dreamer runs in and throws a dozen of the worst punches you've ever seen, then Brian Lee and Candido run to attack Dreamer, then Louie Spicolli runs in, Mikey Whipwreck in jeans and a normal man's t-shirt that doesn't have all over print dragons or some shit gets chokeslammed by Lee, Beulah is out to attack Francine and hike her cocktail dress up over her ass, Rick Rude under a mask is out to protect Francine, and Pitbull schoolboys Douglas for the win.

Best Matches

1. Sabu vs. Chris Candido

2. Sandman vs. Balls Mahoney

3. Dudley Boyz vs. the Eliminators

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Found Footage Friday: HANOVER 1980~! DESTROYER~! UFO~! COLT~! MARTIN~!

MD: More Richard Land Patreon finds. I like to be able to share links with everyone of what we're watching but the simple fact of the matter is that these Germany drops are the most exciting thing in wrestling footage right now, probably. So I'm going to keep covering them and people should just seek the patreon out when so inclined.

 

The Destroyer vs. UFO (Bob Della Serra - Date Unknown but around September/October 1980, maybe 9/8/80?)

MD: 20+ minutes of lost Destroyer footage and more than that, getting to see him in a completely new environment, working a European rounds match in 1980 Germany. UFO was over (lots of chants) and very game. Destroyer has a unique stocky way of walking and they were playing into it hard. He would try something like a full nelson; UFO would get out of it in a specific way such as a reverse monkey flip, and then when Destroyer tried it, he'd get jammed, then UFO would mock the stocky walk in a sort of strut and the fans would go nuts as Destroyer tantrumed around the ring furious.

They'd do bits where Destroyer would control with pretty nasty armwork or by hiding an object and going for the eyes masterfully but the nature of the rounds meant that UFO would be able to come back and make Destroyer stooge some more. He had some nice rolls ups to (including one out of a fireman's carry). I think they ran out of time in the end and it was a draw, but it was entertaining the whole way through. Great find.
 

10/3/80 

UFO vs. Klaus Karoff 

MD: This was inconclusive but really good while it lasted. Della Serra looked as good as i've ever seen him here and came off as one of the best in the world maybe? Maybe that's a stretch but he was real good here. Karoff was quite good as well. They started with strength spots vs finesse where Karoff would bully UFO only to get wound around at the last second. That lasted right until Della Serra ran into Karoff's fist and it was really an amazing moment. Just a great visual which Karoff than milked for all it was worth because he knew what he had. From there we had around or two of Karoff absolutely bullying UFO, with Della Serra throwing his arms all over the place and really selling it for the back row in a compelling way.

The big comeback was ducking another one of those clothesline punches off the ropes and UFO came back strong, just brutalizing Karoff with these massive haymacker European Uppercuts/Lifters. One after the next as Karoff went down big for them. He'd dodge shots and just keep them coming for a round or two before Karoff started to comeback and everything sort of just ended. Another one that was real good while it lasted though. Simple stuff but so well executed.

Caswell Martin/Karl Dauberger vs. Chris Colt/Francisco (Paco) Ramírez

MD: This was an absolute blast. From the moment Colt came down to the ring, dancing by hooking Ramirez and pulling him towards him and then doing the robot, he was pure entertainment, such a sleazy brilliant heel. Constant reactions to everything. Martin and Ramirez paired off well, with all of Martin's usual spots (landing on his feet out of a mare, the cartwheel counter, the leg splitter where he keeps spreading his feet wider). Once they started the tandem comedy spots, they never looked back. I don't even want to list them all because if you do see this, I don't want to spoil it, but they played the hits (just a taste: the pumphandle switch, the four man headlock into the double headlock charge, an estrella, etc). There wasn't really an ebb and flow here, just one entertaining spot after the other with Colt bumping huge into the corner or having it out with the ref or begging off after the fact. Not a ton of drama here because even when the heels took over, they couldn't keep it for long, but the audience (and German audiences laugh as well as any audience I've ever heard) were in stitches the whole time. Great look at Colt for anyone who's never seen him with a game cast of characters alongside him. Martin, for the footage we have of him, always looks incredible.

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Martin! Ikeshita! Rimi! Seiko!

62. 1979.10.XX - 01 Judy Martin & Yumi Ikeshita vs. Rimi Yokota & Seiko Hanawa (Either late September or before October 17)

K: This was a bit toned down compared to the face vs. heel tags I’ve gotten used to seeing, and that has good and bad points. The good being that the match felt pretty cohesive throughout. I got the impression that the heel team were clearly superior and they rightly dominating most of the proceedings, but they also established that Yokota has a bit more going for her than Hanawa. She got the big comebacks and most of the prolonged offense when they were able to put the heels on the backfoot. The bad point though, is that it all felt a bit pedestrian. Even when they spilled to the outside to brawl a bit it felt like they were doing it coz that’s just what happens in 1979 AJW tags rather than having any real commitment to it.

The definitely highlight for me was the 2nd big comeback when Ikeshita was able to swing a chair at her opponent only to get knocked over and it wasn’t immediately clear what even happened. It looked a bit like she just lost her balance because the chair was so heavy hah. But no it was Yokota saving the day. She had a pretty good showing in an otherwise very unmemorable affair. I thought Martin was pretty disappointing and didn’t add much at all.

*3/4

MD: This wasn’t perfect but I thought it was a structural improvement to what we’ve been seeing lately. No heel ref. Less sputtering heat and more clear delineated double heat (with a reason to justify the second). Pretty hot finish. Ikeshita took over right from the start and she looked like an absolute monster as per usual. Just scraping faces on mats. That sort of thing. Most of the first heat was on Yokota and Martin was able to give fairly well (though Ikeshita did most of the work). When it was time for the first comeback (Yokota pulling Ikeshita off the top as she was going for her seated senton) Martin didn’t take as well as I’d hope. Some of it was struggle and not going along with things but some of it seemed like she wasn’t exactly sure how to take something.

Second heat was because Ikeshita started to use the top of a microphone as a weapon and she escalated on to chairs. Again, they didn’t need a heel ref to make all of this work. It was just the usual chaos with a little help from the outside. Comeback here was good visually as Yokota came out of nowhere to make it happen. Ikeshita grabbed someone’s handbag as they were brawling down the aisle and used it as a weapon which I’m not sure I’d ever seen before. Then she used that advantage to get back in the ring and win the match. It was only one fall and was a little tighter overall than what we’ve been seeing

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 4/28 - 5/4

AEW Dynamite 4/30/25

Hangman Adam Page vs The Protostar Kyle Fletcher

MD: Full disclosure: I was looking forward to this as much as anything else AEW has done this year. Also full disclosure: if you had told me that 18 months ago, I would have called you crazy. Let's put Fletcher aside for now. I was not an Adam Page guy (and everyone seems to be an Adam Page guy). There was plenty to like (how he emoted, how he hit clean, how he hit hard, the entire anxious millennial cowboy deal), but I likened him to a tree that grew big in all the wrong ways. His matches escalated too fast, too quickly. The crowd went up for them but they came off as empty to me, ephemeral. A lack of mid-level offense. A tendency to spend too long down the stretch and not long enough building to it. Those early match death valley drivers and springboard clotheslines didn't do him any favors. Ever since he started leaning heel, he slowed down his pace, creating a seething methodological mood in a way that very few wrestlers today are able to create mood, and to enable that, he took on a number of things (even if it's just violence as opposed to "moves") to bridge the gaps. He's carried a lot of that forward now that he's leaning back babyface.

And of course, Kyle Fletcher is the most exciting wrestler in AEW. After two generations of cool heels who refused to take things seriously, refused to show weakness, refused to let themselves care about anything, who had to be in on the joke and let everyone know they were in on the joke, Fletcher is relighting a torch long put out as a stooging, cowardly, unlikable, absolutely genuine heel. He's part of a movement that is the most refreshing and wonderful thing in pro wrestling (one that depending on the day can include MJF and Ricochet, and increasingly wrestlers like Blake Christian and Lee Johnson and Red Velvet, and even believe it or not, Okada). I look forward to see what new bit he'll work into his matches each and every week (I miss the pullaway pants already). But it's his reactions in the moment as he responds to his fellow wrestlers, the ref, and most especially the crowd, that really put him over the top. I loved the build of this the week prior where Hangman charged down to the ring while Fletcher had the Don Callis Family around him. He went from cocky to terrified as Hangman grabbed him back to confident as his team was beating Hangman down. Fletcher wrestles with his heart on his sleeve as a heel and heart is absolutely everything.

The good in the match was very, very good. I loved the first two thirds and thought the finish was very good as well. The opening feeling out chain wrestling (which made sense as this was a tournament match) had a nice wrinkle or two from Hangman. Fletcher hitting the floor, first in response to Hangman getting one over on him, and then to avoid the Buckshot was everything I want from him, especially when Hangman came out of nowhere to clothesline him over the barricade. The laceration on Fletcher's back added an flavor of grisly realism. I liked the throughline of Fletcher using a bit of distance/distraction to hit superkicks to stay in it. I don't think that was overdone. Fletcher's shots in the corner while in control, whether they're boots or the sweeping elbows he does, are a huge part of his act, just him reveling and basking in his shitheel dominance. That makes the comeuppance he receives all the better.

And he absolutely did receive comeuppance. Hangman's comeback after the first commercial break was great. Total standing tall hometown hero stuff. I loved all the different lariat variations he used to fill the space and punish Fletcher. That's so much of what I thought he was missing two years ago. He had the corner clothesline, the sliding one, the corner repeated shots. All of that meant that they could build to the death valley driver (after one attempt at it) instead of using the death valley driver to build to something else. Same with the fall away slam. 

They were set to go long, which meant things escalated to the apron brainbuster/Orihara moonsault off the rail/tombstone spot on the floor to set up the second commercial break. That's where I though the match got a bit off course. The second commercial break was a bit of selling (Hangman nominally selling the apron brainbuster well after the fact) and then 50-50 stuff, culminating with another superkick takeover by Fletcher, and ultimately building to Hangman's big escape from the corner brainbuster and the subsequent superplex. That heralded the return from the break and the beginning of the true finishing stretch. 

This section, to me, felt fairly formless, which might be understandable as it was during a second commercial break in the match, but there was no reason not to go back to that tried and tested strength of AEW: stack heat in the commercial breaks. Fletcher was losing. Hangman had the hometown crowd. They had a spectacular finish planned with the lowblow nearfall followed by the roll-through quasi-Buckshot off the top. I get that there is a certain 2010s NJPW Tournament style that they try to ape sometimes, but this wasn't the time, place, or set up for it, not given the combatants, the locale, and that second break.

Instead, I wished they would have just put a little more heat on Fletcher. It's what he's there for. Have him reverse that tombstone on the floor and hit it himself. Go to break. Have him get a second round of heat and ramp up the pressure more and more. That's what pro wrestling is all about. Build and payoff. If you have the right wrestlers in the right place in front of the right crowd, there's nothing better than double heat! Instead, the crowd chanted at Don Callis and waited for the finishing stretch to begin as Hangman and Fletcher went 50-50 for a minute or two. If they had went back to having Fletcher grind down on Hangman while being an ass, they could have still built to the exact same moment in the corner but the crowd (probably, hopefully, probably) would have gone up even higher for it. 

It would be win-win-win. Fletcher would have been protected just a little more in the loss, not that he really needs it with the way that he responds to everything. Hangman would have had to overcome just a little more to make his win resonate even more; he'd already had a very dominant comeback after all. There would have been a clearer narrative going into the tighter, more focused finishing stretch, with more contrast with it and what came before. The crowd would have been all the more ready to boil over with the superplex and everything that came after. More, more, more (by doing a little less, actually, but that's the art of pro wrestling for you).

If they wanted to capture that tournament feel, they've got Ospreay vs Hangman coming, face vs quasi-face, and I'm sure that'll tap into it for good and ill, even (and especially, I suppose) with as far as Hangman has come. Still, despite all that, I had been looking forward to match for a reason and in most of the ways that mattered, it lived up to my expectations. With Fletcher, in Hangman's home area, I just really wanted a little bit more and I think if they had doubled down on the heat, they could have given it to me (and to everyone else too, of course!). Maybe that was greedy of me, but he's the sort of wrestler who is exciting enough to inspire greed. And he deserves all the credit in the world for that.

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Found Footage Friday: MAKABE~!

MD: Friend of the blog and of every person who holds the grandeur of pro wrestling somewhere in their heart, Daniel Makabe, has been following our dubious lead as of late and blogging about the entirety of his 3-2-1 Battle! run. https://danielgoestocollege.blogspot.com/ He's also posted some matches along the way and recommended a few of them to us to cover for a FFF. It'll be a while before he gets to 2017 and he's coming at things from the inside while we're as outside as can be. But if you ever read our stuff, you're going to want to pop over to his blog to see what he's doing.

Daniel Makabe/Scott Henson/White Tiger vs. Craig Mitchell/Matt Knicks/Kenny Sutra 3-2-1 Battle! 3/10/17

MD: This was one night before the European Rules match below and a testament to the variety at play. I liked how this was regimented to start. If you have a trios match, start with clean individual pairings. We see way too much bleed over in US trios matches and it just seems to defeat the strengths of the form. Here you had Makabe and Sutra with a bit of wrestling to start, Tiger and Knicks picking up the pace, and then Mitchell and Henson having a bit of a hossfight. Granted, the last one was more of a high-basing superheavylightweight bit with headscissors takeovers and what not but you can't complain too much because of Henson's connection to the crowd. 

Things broke down in the home team's favor and then they had a solid transition for the Chicago contingent to takeover, before rolling into an extended finishing stretch after the comeback. In the midst of it Mitchell got to hit three press slams in a row (meaning that they held back his strength spots from that opening exchange for a moment that it'd mean more deeper into the match). Unfortunately for him, his fate was to be crotched hard on the top and stuck there for a while until he could eat a huge super rana from Makabe. They had teased a top rope double team earlier when they were setting up the heat, but were able to pay it off impressively for the finish as Tiger had two guys in an Octopus at once (wish I had a better camera shot on that double stretch). Considering its place on the card, this was big, fun, and firework laden like you'd want.

ER: This started out as guys who didn't really feel familiar with each other and by the end it felt like guys who had been working rec center Rev Pro matches all year. RevPro is a vibe I'm happy I got to experience live and I love when a match brings me back. Get some subpar white bodies in a ring throwing legit suplexes and taking some death bumps and suddenly I'm back in the City of Industry in 2002. I've seen more polished versions of everyone in this match save White Tiger and Kenny Sutra, but I liked this energy and how it kept building. 

Craig Mitchell had a lot of nice stuff. Big belly small butt guy with a crisp standing moonsault, nice elbowdrop/right hand/dropkick, and at one point he gave all the cats this combo press slam/death valley driver one after the other. His Rainmaker looks better than almost every Okada Rainmaker I've seen. Henson was a guy who played to a comedy crowd while doing catboi Kings Road. He elbowed Sutra right in the mouth - I liked how Sutra pawed at his heated up face despite not being one of the cats - and his half nelson suplex to Knicks was fantastic. The half nelson suplex has become such an O'Connor Roll bump that seeing Henson do a more classic Kings Road style is a stand out. I loved the way Knicks' legs flew over his head. 

I first became aware of Makabe because of a match against Timothy Thatcher just a few months after this match, and here he's a guy who seems so different than the guy grappling with Thatcher. Nobody else here wants to try out his matwork (I bet he and Knicks could have worked a fun singles match around it. Knicks is pliable with good faces) but I like seeing him work nice basics combined with RevPro crazy. Nice headlocks and honest in how he handles How A Spot Looks vs. How It Was Supposed To Look, but then stuff like a super frankensteiner and an ambitious missile dropkick/senton aiming for all three of the Chicago boys and getting two of them. The finish is wild as Henson sets up a Meltzer Driver and Dan turns it into a flipping legdrop to the taint and crushing that boy. They call that one the Coal Harbour Hangover. 

Daniel Makabe vs. Kaden Talbain (European Rounds) 3-2-1 Battle! 3/11/17

MD: With wrestling, we take so much for granted. In almost any match you watch in 2025, there will be a dozen things that happen because they're supposed to happen, because they're tropes, because they're expected. The viewers and maybe even the wrestlers don't question why they happen, why they work. They're simply expected. And that's ok. There's a narrative language to pro wrestling and you don't necessarily need to constantly be focused on the etymology of every movement in order to enjoy it. A lot is symbolic and our minds and familiarity bridges the gap.

But here, with this match, there are no gaps to bridge. There is no air. There are no holes. What there is instead is pressure and leverage and positioning and meaning. Watching a match like this, where so much care is put into not just every hold and counterhold, but every movement of every extremity, makes you a smarter wrestling fan. It makes you think about things you've always just taken for granted. It's a match that triggers an animal part in our heads of a Regal match where he might have enacted a tiny leverage move to get a hold. Or yes, your World of Sport exchanges whether we're talking Saint or Jon Cortez or Clive Myers or whatever else. But this was more dogged, more focused, more single-minded. 

Those matches breathe. This never did. Save for the round breaks, it never came up for air. It kept you immersed in total dedication not just to craft but to pro wrestling physics, a world of joints and limbs and pure causality. To do A will cause B. Moving your leg just so will provide you with the slight positioning to accomplish the thing you need to do in order to do the thing you need to do in order to do the thing you need to do.

It took what was a widespread televised product and turned it inward, increased its potency, took it to its logical conclusion. And you, as a viewer, are no longer following the tides as they come in and out but are instead watching for every tiny bubble, every conscious decision to move a limb, a hand, a finger, for the impact it might have immediately, and down the line.

That is not to say the tides didn't exist. There were broader story elements at play. Makabe was the aggressor in the back half of the first round, with Talbain trying to work out of what I'll call an inner chicken wing with all the up and over tricks (headscissors and otherwise) that we'd become so used to in 50s French Catch a few years later, with Makabe managing to jam him right until his escape right at the end. At the end of the second round, Makabe almost (almost) locked in a butterfly suplex only to run out of time. It was that selfsame hold that Talbain was able to use in the third round to pick up the first fall.

Talbain came out of Makabe's equalizer in the fourth round damaged, that same unfortunate World of Sport feeling you'd sometimes get when someone toppled out of the ring and could barely continue. He then had to survive the final round, managing a clutch rope break that brought forth the same sort of subdued but obvious frustration in Makabe that followed the end of the second and the butterfly suplex that never was. Maybe that's why he transitioned away from holds and into pin attempts, a decision that would ultimately cost him the match. So yes all the small details were counterbalanced by large ones creating something greater than the sum of the whole.

You're left watching a match like this and wondering why we shouldn't hold wrestling to a higher standard when it comes to every tiny detail. If they could do it here over twenty minutes and five rounds, why can't the people we see on TV week in and week out meet them at least half way when it comes to leverage and consequence and meaning. Hitting spots is lazy. Constructing a castle like this has value to the viewer in not just outputs but inputs as well.

Daniel Makabe vs. SARIAN (Seattle Streetfight) 3-2-1 Battle! 4/8/17

MD: It's absolutely nuts to think this was just a month after the European Rules match. It's a big plunder filled, interference marred, wild brawl; punches right from the get go and then escalating weapons all the way through, with some nasty bumps, and just enough blood and guts along the way. 

All that said, there were a few underlying principles that connect the two matches and make it more than it could have been if it was sensation alone. First, every time a weapon gets introduced, there's a consequence to its entry. It almost felt like an X-On-A-Pole match in that regard (transitions tied to the cost of trying to win) because just introducing the weapon created an opening for the opponent. When Makabe tries to use the chair early, SARIAN is able to come back. When SARIAN introduces the skewers, Makabe is able to come back. Likewise the tacks. So on, so forth.

And then, connected with this, there's a ton of anticipation built around each weapon being used. Everything is framed so that it's introduced, built to, utilized, and then shown to be consequential. Makabe, after using the skewers, is momentarily shocked at what he just did and the consequence thereof. They fight around the tacks before bumping into them once or twice. It's that same sense of Onita in an exploding cage death match teasing and teasing and teasing before finally allowing for an explosion. Wrestling IS symbolic and there's no functional difference between a figurative bomb and a literal one in a narrative sense. In both cases, you want to build to it and then show the impact, and they did an amazing job here. It's not necessarily less is more, because this was all over the top, but instead it was more is most, where they squeezed out every bit of drama possible.

It meant that even after the interference and the dismantling of the ring, things still felt weighty and impactful. Makabe had is one last submission attempt while the post (and turnbuckle attached to it) were like the Sword of Damocles was in SARIAN's hand. Eventually the sword fell and Makabe fell shortly thereafter. Again, it's just hard to look at this, even with the little bits of discipline that remain among the chaos and not be amazed at the disparity between the two singles matches this week.

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

61. 1979.09.2X2 - 04 Leilani Kai & Yumi Ikeshita vs. Nancy Kumi & Victoria Fujimi (After 9/21, possibly October)

K: This has a heated energy to it that’s been missing in the earlier matches on the show. Things explode almost from the off when things go to the outside and Golden Pair get the better of the heels on the outside with some classic throwing wrestlers into chairs action. When things get back in the ring Leilani Kai behaves like she’s completely insane while choking Fukimi. Shaking her head and and screaming her head off loudly even by AJW standards.

It’s been a long time since I said this, but I thought Nancy Kumi really showed out here. Not that she was even necessarily the standout of the match (I thought all 4 put in good performances really) but she really got the crowd behind her both with her selling and the fiestiness she put into her offense when she managed to get some hits in. It felt that she was lashing out in anger at the dirty tactics she’d been subjected to and the crowd seemed to feel it and get excited for her. So it annoyed me more when she got submitted by Leilani to end the 1st fall, who then did this smarmy little celebration dance. The little shit. She gets pinned by Fujimi to finish the 2nd fall and pulls an even more deranged face at her afterwards.

I haven’t been keeping count so this is just based on memory, but I feel like Black Pair (or 1 Black Pair & Foreigner) ⅔ falls matches go one of two ways based on who takes the 1st fall. If the babyfaces take it, the heels go really wild and over the top with brawling on the outside, interference and weapons to try to get things into their kind of match. If the heels take the 1st fall, we have a slower, more calculated grinding down of their opponents with stuff like the Hide The Weapon special. This is what we got here, and the exciting brawling comes a bit later in this version as it’s the babyfaces who need to bring it when they get their comeback in, and any ‘unsporting’ moves from them at this point are justified retaliation.

The 3rd fall holds this back from being a great match. It wasn’t bad or anything but it felt like a bunch of stuff they’d established and built well in the 1st and 2nd didn’t get paid off. The heel team just smothered the babyfaces for several minutes until they got the win and it felt a bit deflating. Fujimi did get a bit of an exciting comeback at one hitting spin kicks but it was very short, if she had a minute or so on offense and looking like she might get the win to build to a climax I think this would have been a lot better.

***½

Oh and the music video at the end haha. Well they were trying to get Jackie Sato over as a solo pop star after Beauty Pair ended, but it comes across a bit like a personality cult. It didn’t really work, well she was super over with the live crowds, but they were getting smaller and she was never anywhere near as a big a star on her own as Beauty Pair were as an act. Think of it as a precursor to the more successful Chigusa Nagayo personality cult.


MD: This was a very good tag that was marred by the heel ref stuff and it was unfortunate since it really didn’t need it. You had the Golden Pair reunited (they had fought previously) for the first time in a while and Ikeshita teamed up with a very game Leilani Kai. She was primed and ready right from the bell, living her best life dancing as she was introduced and the two heels never looked back. I probably don’t give Ikeshita quite enough credit relative to Kumano because she lasts longer and is better known and doesn’t get the same sort of credit that I want to give Kumano, but she really is just as good. She can go from rubbing a face into the mat to stepping on a heel on the outside while her partner is choking to taking these huge flapjack bumps over and over or hitting a killer missile dropkick or a nasty side suplex or her rana off the ropes. Or maul someone with a chair. She could really do it all.

First fall here had a nice burst against Kai to start by the Pair but they got swept under pretty quickly. Hope spots, as they were, ended up disrupted by the ref. Just the usual Black Pair mauling with Kai adding a bit of effective Moolah-ism to the mix. Second fall had the a ton of hide the object, which was vicious and fairly entertaining though having a heel ref made it seem just a little silly maybe; he was letting them get away with murder even if they were doing a pretty good job at hiding the evidence. It did make one of Kumi’s big comebacks seem all the more impressive since the odds were so against them, but then they just got swept under again so maybe the pacing was a little off? The finish of the fall was spectacular though as Kumi slammed Kai and Fujimi came flying in off the screen to press up off of the turnbuckle to hit a splash. Just a wild move. It was all for naught though for in the third fall they got swept back under and despite Fujimi putting on a couple of submissions, Kumano burst out of nowhere at the last second to interfere so that they couldn’t break up a pin. Again, this was good but it didn’t need the heel ref stuff. They could have cheated more legitimately (I know that sounds funny but it’s wrestling) and things would have been all the better for it. Kai fit in well though and this is probably the best I’ve ever seen the Golden Pair look. I’ll let Kadaveri cover the music video that followed this if so inclined.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 4/21 - 4/27

AEW Collision 4/26/25

RUSH vs AR Fox

MD: I liked this because it was so different than almost every other AEW match. It didn't go two segments. There wasn't a commercial break in the middle. Yet Fox is a guy who has gotten both focus and competitive matches as of late. You need baselines and certain things are timed for ratings, but now and again you need exceptions, for things to feel different, to be weighed by hierarchy. I actually think the company's been doing a pretty good job of that at late, whether it be the use of Blake Christian or Max Caster's challenges or what. It keeps things moving, gives an air of unpredictability and makes stars feel like stars.

Fox is very good at what he does and while not all of those things are always the things I value the most, he does enough of what I value extremely well that I'm certainly happy to give him credit. Here, right from the get go, as Rush charged in with a forearm, he bumped and sold all around ringside, not just throwing his body into it, but being vocal and expressive. This wasn't going to go long but Fox went out of his way to make every moment jump off the screen. While that's not necessarily hard when you're up against rush, this was not a one man show and the sum of these two together was more than if Rush was up against someone without Fox's talent.

Then, after Rush took him just a little too lightly (tranquilo) and Fox came back. With just two or three moves, Fox left an indelible mark in the people watching live that night. It was a packed show, to the extent that the crowd couldn't quite get up for a really good main event (Kyle needed to be bleeding as he was fighting back defiantly, sorry; that's probably what the match needed). But they're not going to forget just how far Fox sailed across the ring from the top with his swanton (after he ran around the ring to get Rush from a surprise angle on it which was a clever but you don't usually ever see). Rush shut him down almost immediately thereafter but it did hit all the marks. Not everything has to shoot for all the stars. This was efficient and effective and I wouldn't mind seeing them run it back with Fox getting just a little closer.

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Found Footage Friday: KONG~! KANSAI~! HAMADA~! SATOMURA~! STOMPER~! HEENAN HANDCUFFED TO T~!

Frank Hickey vs. Mongolian Stomper Kansas City 1960s

MD: This was another old match that Charles from Wrestling Playlists posted last year in one of his huge tape buying sprees. As best as I can tell, the Geigel match from earlier in this show was online but this wasn't. It's certainly a moment in time and a moment in pro wrestling canon in its own way. More on that in a minute. Stomper, at this point, had the look (mostly shaved head, fu manchu style goatee) but he talked just like a normal guy and wasn't affected (in his inner ear) by the crowd's boos. Hickey had an elaborate costume with a cape and a headguard. They don't call him the Spaceman here, but he was. I don't know if this was heel vs heel or what but these were just two big guys throwing big shots for the most part. Hickey controlled this more than I'd expect, honestly, as Stomper was pushed harder and talked about going after Thesz post match. Midway through the match, a hulking figure with glasses from the crowd walked up to ringside and had to be shuffled away. That was a debuting Ox Baker (no facial hair) and one subplot through the match was the commentary talking about how they had to turn him down when he wanted to wrestle before because despite being 300 pounds he wasn't trained. At the end of the clip,  after Stomper had won somewhat anticlimactically, they said that the promoters were going to allow Ox to wrestle that coming Thursday and he got to introduce himself. Interesting little angle/gimmick for the 60s. To me, it was just strange to see the Stomper not even trying to put on foreign airs.

Superstar Billy Graham vs. Hercules WWF 8/15/87

MD: This was another recent Richard Land find so you'll have to go find his patreon. While there was absolutely no way it could live up to its promise on paper, it was still pretty great, all the more so because I didn't realize what the post-match was going to be. This was when Graham was stepping in for Patera. The match itself was ok. Hercules created the motion with a few big bumps. He had some nice cutoffs. Graham controlled the middle and was able to stand tall with his strength. They had a nice finish where Hercules tried to slam Graham from the outside in and got rolled through on it. 

The real appeal here, however, was Heenan. This had the one-two punch of Heenan handcuffed to Mr. T and the losing manager having to get whipped, so you can only imagine all of Heenan's mannerisms as he got yanked around by T and then the whole hoopla of the post-match with Hercules trying desperately to protect his manager and then Graham and finally Patera getting their shots in on a writhing, squirming Heenan as the crowd went wild. I wish there was more of it. A lot of the time we just got glimpses in the corner of the screen of Heenan's reactions. This was definitely more for the live crowd, but I'm glad we got to see it at all.

ER: I thought Heenan's promo to start this whole segment was far and away the most cutting thing. Heenan wasn't funny at all, he was ruthless. I mean, he was funny, but he came off tough, like a guy who ran a hard card game. When he was talking about being cuffed to Mr. T he straight up told Ken Patera to put the cuffs on himself, as a little stroll down memory lane. He talked about how everyone you see with big arms and a big body is unemployed, because working men can't spend 8 hours lifting and 8 hours working. He makes fun of Graham for eating 19 cans of tuna and 65 raw eggs all day. It's a promo that felt like real hate, and it made the match more disappointing for having hardly any hate at all. I don't think any of the Heenan/Mr. T payoffs were there and it was one of those reminders of how big wrestlers were and how small actors are. When Bobby Heenan is larger than Mr. T and he just cut a promo about real tough men from the midwest, I want more than just 10 minutes of Heenan cowering from T on the floor. 

It's insane how Billy Graham aged 30 years in 10. 1987 Billy Graham works like 75 year old Jimmy Valiant. 10 years earlier he was the most charismatic man in the building and here he's like 1999 Terry Gordy. Hercules I thought looked great. His kneedrops and elbowdrop and knuckle locks and big bump to the floor selling for Graham all looked strong. He had a pretty steep hill to climb and the stipulation would have been more fun if it had ended with Heenan bumping for Mr. T and Patera instead of absorbing pulled belt shots thrown by a one armed man and a suddenly elderly man. 

Aja Kong/Dynamite Kansai vs. Ayako Hamada/Meiko Satomura GAEA 6/22/03

MD: It's hard for me to write this one up. So much happens. It's one imaginative, iconic spot after the next. You watch it and by the end you forgot that Aja branded the guardrail at one point even though it was awesome in the moment. They just pack in so much in twenty minutes and while there are themes (Kansai going for the Splash Mountain until she gets it, it gets broken up, and then she gets it again for the win, for instance), and while I'd even say it comes together and never entirely falls apart, it's just a lot to keep track of. Here, of course, you have not just the problem of Aja early on but also the problem of Kansai where she can just catch you in a claw and slam you to the ground. Even worse for Hamada and Satomura is when you get the problem of both, where you can put one down but the other is creeping over to hit you with a lariat. There was one point where Hamada was pinballing back and forth to kick Kansai to try to break an ankle lock on Satomura and then nail Aja so Aja wouldn't flatten her and she had two or three tries to do that before she just got crushed by Aja.

In some ways, despite all the spots and bombs and bumps (and occasionally weapons) this did have a bit of a sports feel where Hamada and Satomura would get lots of little shots on goal, but all it would take would be one breakaway from Kong/Kansai to end it and everyone knew it. Some of that was from the two teams just constantly pressing forward and never letting up, even though things still had weight (of course they did) and impact. It felt like a big deal when Hamada and Satomura got their opponents down and on the ropes, and they had some very big bombs of their own (literally as they power bombed Kansai onto Aja for instance). That said, it was all just a matter of time, of course, but it was a spirited time while it lasted.

ER: I thought this was good but never came close to approaching the greatness of the Kong/Meiko match from the week before (which Matt and I wrote about earlier this month). Meiko is one of our great punishment takers, an out-laster on the same level of Yuki Ishikawa. I buy it from Meiko, it's Ayako I don't buy it from here. The excitement of the Aja/Meiko matches is how Aja is going to walk through most of Meiko's offense, and be honest about the things that slow her down. You don't just get leniency from Stan Hansen, you have to move him before he sells for you. Aja is the same, you actually need to move her or bounce her on her head, and Dynamite Kansai can do the same thing. Aja and Dynamite as a team are similar to the problem created when Vader and Hansen teamed in All Japan. They are going to walk through almost anyone and Ayako's well thrown but worked elbow smashes are not going to be taken seriously by either. I need some real fire from an underdog outsized babyface and if you're still holding back a little on arm strikes after Kansai stomps on your fucking face from the top, then I stop buying it. 

But I did like this. I made a prolonged noise I've never made before in reaction to that double stomp to the face. I let out of deep guttural oof at the finish when Aja presumably broke one of Meiko's ribs with a kick to the stomach harder than any Kawada ever threw. I liked the way Aja treated Hamada like a little pest, finally hitting her with a backfist without much effort and then sitting on her while Dynamite disposes of Meiko. There were stretches where kicks were missing and timing was behind, and that's just not going to be enough to stop two monsters. Also, it's crazy how much faster Kong's kicks look than Hamada's or Meiko's. She's like Scott Norton with speed, it's unreal. 

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We'll Meet Again Terry, Don't Know Where, Don't Know When, But We'll Meet Again Some Sunny Day

Black Terry vs. Mr. Condor vs. Pirata Morgan Zona 23 8/11/19 - GREAT

PAS: Terry in the junkyard is really special. This wasn't close to singles Mr. Condor match a couple years later (but honestly what in wrestling history ever was), but it was three awesome old men beating the shit out of each other in a rain storm and a junkyard. Lots of great punch exchanges, including an awesome one between Pirata and Terry, with Terry peppering him with jabs, and Pirata countering with a huge hook. Condor also nukes Pirata with a bottle. I think with a finish this might have touched EPIC territory, but instead it had a long meandering run in finish with Ovitt maybe? Some fat dudes who couldn't match the energy of the senior citizens they were beating up. Still this was sick.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BLACK TERRY

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70s Joshi on Wednesday: Tomi! Williams!

60. 1979.09.2X2 - 03 Tomi Aoyama vs. Vicki Williams (After 9/21, possibly October)

K: Well I agreed way back when we started this over a year ago that I’d do a write-up for every 70s match we had, and I don’t regret it, but boy I’m glad that AJW stopped having Moolah’s girls taking up so much space on the cards pretty soon after this. Who is to blame for this is another article in itself, but the result of her methods is a bunch of wrestlers who almost always just work the same kind of very limited match and everyone else just has to work within it. Things did improve a bit later on with some of them (I’m thinking Judy Martin & Leilani Kai especially), maybe because Moolah herself stopped being a prominent part of the tours.

This is similar to the last match with the twist that the babyface gets way more offense in, so I guess there was booking logic in putting them back to back. At least we have the Queen Angel with the more exciting offense so we get a few fun moves heh, that’s not something I’d usually single out for phrase in a match but you have to take what you get here. Tomi has incredible energy to her. In one of her big outbursts she does a very cool flying kick (not a dropkick she’s almost vertical throughout) which Vicki Williams springs up to in one of the freakiest ways I’ve ever seen I’m not even sure how to describe it. It looks like she’s a puppet and there’s someone pulling her up with strings.

I noticed the fans heckling the ref with the “referee kaere” chants (literally means “Go home referee!”, but it sounds ruder in Japanese). Shiro Abe wasn’t the first to get that thrown at him. This did get better heat than most of these matches, but within a couple of minutes of this hinting that it might even get good they just go to a double countout after a bit of brawling on the outside and that was the end of that. Well actually the end was Tomi getting revenge on the referee by dropkicking him in the back to a big pop. I guess that added to things. This was one of the better Japan vs. USA matches, but I don’t want to see any more of these.

**1/4

MD: Wright (at least I think that’s his name) was the referee again and by this point it’s just getting frustrating. The tags aren’t so bad but these singles matches are getting painful, especially after considering the standard level of quality (not through the moon or anything but definitely consistent) earlier in the year. That’s not to say this one was a particularly bad offering in these US vs Japan matches because it wasn’t. Tomi came back over and over and when she got dragged down it was due to the ref and interference, so there was a flow to this. Plus the big stuff was pretty big. Williams would take big bumps (and had one weird bridge up that was like nothing I’d seen before). She crashed into chairs. Tomi almost decapitated her with a catapult onto the bottom rope (the ref stopped her). There was a nasty bit of hairpulling as all the American team worked on her from the outside as Vicki held her legs on the inside. Vickie survived the giant swing through both hook and crook (the ref delayed the count but only after Tomi missed her first splash attempt), and things spilled out to a chaotic mess of chairshots and grabbed legs to spur a double countout. Post-match Tomi dropkicked Wright into everyone and got some revenge and the fans popped for it but this really should have been done and over after the Jackie match and the moment that the Japanese referee came in to intervene.

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This Sweet Thought Will Cheer Terry While Dying, We Will Miss Him When He's Gone

Black Terry vs. Multifacetico IWRG 4/17/08 - EPIC

PAS: Out of this world great match. There is something special about Terry in his house Arena Naucalpan, throwing left hooks, smashing people into beer coolers and spilling blood. I loved how he just tortured Multifacetico early, breaking his back by twisting his body in the rope, cracking him with perfcet punches, and then cutting him off mid air with a backcracker for the pin. Exactly what you want from that rudo beatdown fall. Loved the comeback he fed Multifacitico in the second fall and it all leads to a dramatic third fall with lots of blood. Terry has so many different great notes he could play, but this kind of dramatic fist fight is his best.

JR: They keep advertising their myspace page here: zona de combate. Can you imagine how great Terry would have been in mid 00s CZW?

There is a lot to like here. In the first fall, Terry works at such a deliberate pace, almost the closest we get to a WWE heel from this era. He doesn't preen, but the structure of the fall is so similar to something you might see on TV from Orton or someone else in the states just a few years later.

From there, we get Terry in a style that feels more familiar. The match quickens, and I think would come across significantly better if the camera had lingered on Multifacetico from ringside. The closer we got to him the more compelled I felt to root for him, but the hard cam here does him no favors.

The third fall is good, falling into some of the apuestas rhythms that I find so comfortable. Terry works holds that feel consequential and Multi finds flashes that make it seem as though he is in the fight. The seconds add very little here, muddying the waters in ways that lucha gets away with more often than other styles, but the finishing stretch feels mostly earned and suitably triumphant.

In a way, I like this match as an example of a match that feels taped together by Terry. There's nothing particularly exclamatory from him but I can't help but feel it would be decidedly worse with someone else taking his place. I don't mean for that to sound backhanded, quite the opposite. A Terry performance that for him seems so rote is inherently valuable, inherently above replacement.

Matt reviewed this match here

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BLACK TERRY

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Oh Bury Terry Not on the Lone Praire

Black Terry/Pantera vs. Negro Navarro/Pirata Morgan IWRG 7/23/11 - GREAT

PAS: Compact 13 minute match which kind of felt like an awesome first fall, where we never got the second and third. Match opens with 5 minutes of Navarro and Terry grappling which was delightful and an obvious highlight. Pantera hits a cool tope from the apron through the ringpost, and there are some cool eliminations. Pirata had a moment or two, but this was worth watching for that uncut raw Terry vs. Navarro.

 
MD: It's a joy to watch Terry and Navarro do their thing for a few minutes. They're wrestling's odd couple. Navarro makes everything look theatrical, able to somehow make a straight line look stylized and curved. Meanwhile, Terry's entirely business-like, poised and practical, able to make something infinitely complex seem simple and professional. Navarro is eternally bombastic and will take you on the scenic route pointing out every landmark true and fabricated along the way and Terry somehow finds a shortcut to wherever he's going, getting there two minutes early yet still leaving you completely satisfied by the quality of company. When you put them together, they play perfectly with one another's strengths, the contrast driving the entire endeavor and leaving you not wanting to look away.

Morgan was fun here too, pulling out a few things that, while maybe not contributing to a greater whole would be memorable: an abrupt contorting cradle when he first got in there, the rare double rotation Casita for one elimination and then a rolling sort of Anaconda Vice that felt just as rare for the second. And then Pantera added just a bit of flash and motion (not too much) with a few high spots. As Phil noted, this ultimately felt like a really good primera, never boiling over, never leading to heat and comeback, but as exhibitions go, any one that'll start with a few minutes of Navarro vs Terry like this is well worth watching.

JR:   This match is mostly an exhibition, although there are certainly worse people to have that sort of match than Terry and Navarro. There are fun holds and some good exchanges that might look too cooperative in the hands of lesser performers. Pirata Morgan hits a slingshot senton that I can only describe as a non-ironic version of the slow motion one Chuck Taylor used to do in Chikara.

After the opening portion, when Terry and Navarro tag out, there is a brief moment that will stick with me as Pantera struggles with Pirata Morgan. I found myself thinking, as I watched this, of Cubs' wonderful obituary from today. In it he talks about the truly beautiful outpouring of support for Terry and how beloved he was as a trainer and teacher. Terry was observant of new trends and styles and was willing to teach things that were not to his taste if he thought it would help his students succeed. Close to the corner, Terry crouches down and talks to his partner, giving what I can only assume are instructions. My relationship with Terry has always been purely critical, of course. I've never seen him train or eaten at his table or heard him tell stories. I've only watched him perform. Perhaps this was a performance as well, but in that moment I saw Black Terry not as a wrestler, but as someone that cared and wanted to help his partner sincerely. I saw the type of trainer he might be, offering quiet but serious suggestion.
When I picture Terry, I think I'll always picture a man brawling, grunting. I'll picture effort and sweat. Tonight, I am glad that I can briefly picture something else that makes me feel closer to the whole of him.

TKG: This is pretty much a one fall sprint with Terry and Navarro doing their ras de lona work, Pantera getting in his big dives and a small tease of Pirata v Terry.

At turn of century when both AAA and EMLL where both stripping out first fall technical exchanges…the indies fully leaned into them, highlighting the work of the older maestros keeping the style vital and alive.

I really popped when after the initial submission exchanges, Terry started the technical leverage throw section with a big monkey flip and Navarro answered with an impressive nasty suplex.
As maestro’s got older we’d see fewer big suplexes. Your Hechicero generation of technical wizards really don’t do suplexes as part of technical display. That moving from leverage submission holds into leverage arm drags still happens but the subs into suplexes is something we see less and less and I miss.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BLACK TERRY

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 4/14 - 4/20

AEW Dynamite 4/16/25

Athena vs Mercedes Mone

MD: There was a post that went viral a month or two ago where people were besmirching the good name of Manami Toyota because she didn't hit some of her stuff clean. I've some issues with Toyota structurally (because of course I do) but that's the last thing I'm going to criticize her on.

You want wrestling a little rough around the edges. You don't want everything to hit clean. You don't want things to look collaborative, even when you know they have to be. You want that grit, because with grit comes determination, and through determination, you get emotion that you can latch onto as a fan. Go back and watch Jumbo from the 70s, watch Fujinami from the 80s. Watch the sweat come down grimacing faces and veins all but popping out of necks. That draws you in, immerses you. It doesn't make for as good a gif but it makes for a far better match.

Almost nothing in this match looked like it hit clean but almost every single thing looked like it hit nonetheless, and it hit messy, and it hit dirty, and it hit after deep struggle, not just a struggle between the wrestlers and one another, but a struggle between the wrestlers and themselves as they worked to heft up their opponent. One might think that would pull people out of the match (feel "botchy"), but it did exactly the opposite. It drew them in all the more because it gave a viewer something to push off against, something real to underpin the fantastical world of pro wrestling, something worth believing in.

What, then, bridged the gap between two people struggling to hit moves and a match so gripping that it's still hanging on to me almost a week later? Some of it was the stakes. This was a big, first time match, champion vs champion, hot act vs hot act. The outcome was up in the air.

And that crowd wanted it so badly. The crowd reminded me of the crowd for Ospreay vs Danielson, a crowd that was reverent, almost too reverent, that was just happy to be there, that knew they were seeing something special. That it was in Boston meant that Mercedes wasn't even a de facto heel, and no one really got cheered or booed. It reminded me too much of that Ospreay vs Danielson crowd, where they weren't necessarily reacting to specific moments but instead just were glad to be there, glad for anything that happened. It's the sort of crowd that you can do anything for and that you can do nothing for. That Fletcher, Callis, the Death Riders were so over as heels later on (and Nick Wayne for the ROH taping) was such a testament to them and their performances both on that night and over time. So it was a special crowd, but that too was a double edged sword. I would have liked to see this somewhere other than Boston. I'd like to see it again somewhere other than Boston.

What really put it over the top for me though was the reactions of Mercedes and most especially of Athena. You watch her face throughout the match, watch her eyes, and you see someone reacting in the moment to everything that's happening, every success, every failure, every advantage, every mistake. Even if she might make the same sort of shocked face you'd get out of other wrestlers (let's say the Adam Coles of the world) on a two-count kickout, there's something that her eyes do a moment later as she shifts gears that almost no one else in wrestling is managing.

And here, it was contagious. I'm not sure I fully bought into the lock up that took them up the ramp and back but once things crashed out on the ring with the fight on the apron and the dive later, everything clicked for me, including Mercedes' own reaction. I haven't seen her this alive in years, and it lasted through the second battle on the apron, through the tombstone sequence, all the way to the finish. I don't know if this is the destination for All In or not. I don't know if Athena's just headed back to ROH where she can continue to anchor it. I'm not sure if she's made for live TV since she's so used to freedom and excess, but as an attraction, she makes everything (and I mean everything) more special around her whenever she's around. Even if there's maybe a potential cost to that, it's one worth paying now and again.

ROH TV 4/18/25

Dustin Rhodes/Ross Von Erich/Marshall Von Erich vs MxM Collection/Johnny TV

MD: There was a moment at right around the halfway point on this one where I was wondering exactly what they were going for. MxM and Johnny took out the champs on the way to the ring and Dustin was on the floor for almost the entirety of the match, but there was a modified shine here. Ross and Marshall fought off everything Mansoor and Johnny threw at them.

And then it hit me, I'm watching Von Erichs. That's exactly what Kerry and Kevin would have done in this situation, and it would have gone just like this for them right until Mason came in, because in this situation, Mason was Gordy and even if the Von Erichs could stand tall and fight off Buddy and Michael, they weren't going to be able to handle Gordy too. Von Erichs are a force of nature but then so's Mason Madden, and I'm not sure I've ever felt that quite so much as I did here.

Everything built to a great hot tag sequence where they made sure to nail Dustin again on the floor so it could go around and around a few times until he finally got in there. By holding back Dustin (as beloved a star in the hearts of the fans as AEW has) so long in these six-men, not only does it really give Ross and Marshall a chance to shine, but it also ramps up the pressure for Dustin to come in and hit his stuff.

This had lots of clever bits down the stretch including the set up for Shattered Dreams off a missed Mason shot and a claw-assisted triple nut shot that was sort of like a pro wrestling Rube Goldberg machine in the best way. There was a lot of wrestling to watch over the last few days but I'm glad I caught this one.

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Terry's Calling, Terry's Crying, Some Are Born Some Are Dying

Black Terry vs. Arez Lucha Memes 11/1/20 - GREAT

PAS: This was worked sort of like Arez was excited to work a Black Terry dream match, the way someone might work 2 Cold Scorpio on a Mania week show. They ran through all of the cool things Terry brings to a match, starting with Terry doing the Maestro catch and release submissions, where Arez would shoot in and get tied up with something cool, Terry would let him go, only to tie him up again. Then it spills to the floor and we get a great Terry punch out, with Arez hitting him harder then you would expect someone this old to get hit, and Terry firing back with great looking jabs and rights. Then there is a nifty finishing run with a great looking top rope back cracker. Everything looked great, it felt a bit exhibition-y which keeps it from EPIC, but Terry exhibitions are pretty great exhibitions. 

ER: I thought this was a really smartly worked almost meta Hero match, with Arez acting almost awed as Black Terry showed him close up magic llave as a crash course fantasy camp, until Arez gets tired of the maestro shit and starts kicking him. Es es unable llave, clap, nothing up my sleeves, veteran psych out. I thought Terry's snares were pretty incredible. There was no slowly applied submissions, this was all slick ankle pick sleight of hand knot tying as good as he was doing 15 years ago. It's pretty amazing really. People love his maestro submission artistry, enough that there's a loudly protesting chinga tu madre whistle over Arez's ropes course escape, protesting The New Ways. 

The fighting escalation in Black Terry Coacalco matches always manages to catch me off guard, always manages to surprise me with some of the violence. Arez can land some really forceful kicks to the stomach and Terry was taking some real shots to the torso. There was a great spot where Arez knew it was his turn to take his medicine and Terry went off with body kicks as crisp as Regal working Dave Taylor. Terry takes a backcracker down the home stretch that literally bounces him off Arez's knees, and all it does is make him want to drive his own knees into Arez. Jumping off the middle buckle to drag a man down onto your knees is crazy behavior for a man in his late 60s. In other words, a Black Terry Coacalco match. 

TKG: I really like the way this match is structured, it is almost like a backwards veteran Ric Flair underestimating upstart young Sam Houston. Arez as upstart youth puts on the first submission and makes a big production out of announcing ‘Now , that is a hold’ and then Terry just dominates on ground, putting Arez in holds at will as Arez super sells getting worked over. Eventually Arez can’t take any more and throws the first cheap shot strike only to find that Terry again can go on floor, with Arez getting in bits of desperate flurries. This isn’t an even match at all . This is about long sections of Terry control and desperate young Arez dealing with the beast.

There is a spot where Terry sidesteps a leg takedown to set up a submission that I watched multiple times. And favorite moment from the brawling was when he’s beating up Arez in chair but won’t allow the chair to tip over. Grabs Arez’ foot and goes , no I’m hitting you some more.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BLACK TERRY

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: PIRATA~! MS-1~! JAGUAR~! DEVIL~! FUJINAMI~! KOSHINAKA~! CHOSHU~! SAITO~!

Devil Masami vs. Jaguar Yokota AJW 9/7/83

Kadaveri: I think the context of this match finally surfacing needs a bit of explanation for those who aren't 80s Joshi nerds. Jaguar Yokota and Devil Masami were the top two stars of AJW in the 1981-84 period in between Jackie Sato retiring and the Crush Gals becoming megastars. This WWWA Singles Title match was the main event to one of the biggest shows of the era and essentially the blowoff to their feud, which goes back at least as far as them feuding over the AJW Junior Title in 1980. Jaguar & Devil went on to form the tag team 'Empress Duo' and never wrestled each other in a singles match again.

Sadly though, the match was missing. The source for most of the early 80s AJW footage you'll see online is one Japanese guy's collection of home-recorded VHS tapes of AJW broadcasts on Fuji TV. I got in contact with him a few years ago and specifically asked him if he had this match, as I noticed a Crush Gals vs. Mimi Hagiwara & Noriyo Tateno match (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_qqf3xDkrE) from the same show was circulating. Turns out that back in 1983 when recording the episode he'd mistakenly inserted a tape with only about 25 minutes left, so we got the first match of the episode but then it cut off and the main event wasn't recorded. Imagine making a little error like that, and finding out someone from another continent is upset about it 40 years later. It's far from the only big match of that era missing but I'd say it's the most historically important one. I'd hoped for years that surely someone else had recorded and kept a copy, but most of these older Japanese fans aren't very online so this hypothetical person might not even be aware that they have something rare.

In more recent times there have been different people uploading their own recordings of 80s AJW broadcasts to YouTube, which has filled a few gaps. You might see me in the comments asking if they have the 1983 Jaguar vs. Devil Title match, but to no avail. Despite there being no footage, I felt this match was important enough then when I made the 1980s Joshi Set last year I inserted a magazine description of the match into the video (https://vkvideo.ru/playlist/640112534_2/video640112534_456239022) to let everyone know the match happened, rather than just disregarding it entirely.

So for decades, all we had to go on to learn about this match was descriptions in Japanese media at the time, and references to it in future interviews. When Devil Masami defeated Dump Matsumoto to win the WWWA Singles Title in 1985, she referenced this match in her post-match interview, saying that she felt her performance had made up for her deporable display in the 1983 bout, where she was so upset about losing that she'd threatened to quit there and then. At the time, AJW was still running a strange mix of worked pro-wrestling with an element of legitimate competition. Specifically, while most matches were entirely worked, sometimes they'd do matches where the majority was worked for entertainment purposes, but there was no pre-determined winner. Rather, after some kind of signal had been given, the wrestlers would take turns to try and legitimately pin the other for a 3 count.

Then in July 2024, this Japanese blogger uploaded clips from the match, saying that someone who had a copy invited him to his house to watch it and allowed him to record some moments on his phone.  https://ameblo.jp/kimumasa992/entry-12860724586.html I only had to watch a few seconds of the clips to verify that this indeed was the 9/7/83 title match. Whether this directly led to the full match being uploaded isn't clear, but it's possible the buzz among the tiny number of 80s Joshi nerds about this footage being confirmed to exist caught the ear of the mysterious uploader who put up the whole broadcast several months later.

Now to the match itself. The match length was 38:26, with 25 minutes shown on the TV edit. My more wider thoughts on it is that it changes my ideas on the development of AJW's house style by quite a bit. My working theory at the moment is that in early 1984 we saw their working style(s) diverge into what ended being the most varied but somehow still cohesive wrestling products of the era.

Firstly, there was an escalation in quickening the pace of matches and adding innovative moves, which brought us the style most associated with Jaguar Yokota, the Crush Gals and the Jumping Bomb Angels.
Secondly, while brawls and evil cheating heels totally existed beforehand, Dump Matsumoto kept that style relevant by upping the ante considerable, adding horror elements and a level of unhinged spectacle far beyond anything the likes of Abdullah the Butcher ever did. Thirdly, in what feels like a restraining move on the other two trends (even if not conscious), there was a movement (in big title matches especially) towards slower, epic feeling matches based around holds (taking some influence from early shoot style) and longer control segments compared to the far more fluid Joshi house style. I associate this more with Devil Masami, but Yukari Omori also excelled in this.

What's thrown me off about this one is, while Devil Masami was still in her uber-heel phase here, this match is actually fought more like a 'Style Three' type of match that I thought didn't come until around a year later. There's barely any dirty play from her at all in fact, even though she doesn't do her turn from heel to 'tweener' until a big angle in February 1984. So I think this match is in fact a first draft in front of a live audience of the style that really peaked in the Crush Gals boom era of 1985-86. Also, this is before the UWF's first show, so while I do know that shoot style did influence some AJW wrestlers a bit after this, it clearly wasn't the only thing going on.

We get an opening flurry in the first couple of minutes where both wrestlers get to throw some offense but to little effect, and then things settle down and for the next ten minutes this is very grounded wrestling. Sometimes they're on the mat exchanging holds, and they switch things up by taking to their feet for tests of strength, but the one consistent thread is that Jaguar is the superior wrestler. Devil is competitive and gets ahead a few times, but Jaguar always comes out on top in these exchanges. There's a familiar moment where Jaguar has Devil in a facedown leglock and Devil just can't break out of it and tries going for the ropes, familiar because Devil would put Chigusa Nagayo in a similar predicament in their big title match two years later.

Eventually Devil needs to break this dynamic and she does it by throwing Jaguar headfirst into the ring post and throws her into some chairs on the outside. Within  the context of the match I guess this is a dirty play, but watching Devil up to this point with her liberal use of weapons and outside interference, it barely counts.

This doesn't work well for Devil though. Jaguar flies back into the ring and unloads some big flying offense on her before taking back control and getting her on the mat stuck in a hold again. It's an unconventional layout in that Jaguar is the smaller, faster babyface, but actually she's the one who's trying to keep things grounded and slowed down with Devil fighting from underneath. So it feels like she's the one whose comeback has been built to when she manages to counter Jaguar's hold with a headscissors and then hits a cool seated-piledriver like move for her first protracted segment of offense of the match. We get some feats of strength with her big delayed bodyslams but soon they're back on the mat but Devil has Jaguar grounded now. Her camel clutch feels like such a more heelish hold than anything Jaguar did however. But this just leads up to what I think is the match highlight, one of the sickest ganso bombs I've ever seen it's borderline attempted murder. Devil just plants Jaguar straight down on her head and Jaguar stays down looking like she'd had the life knocked out of her.

The big ganso bomb changes the match completely. The next section is all Devil-dominance and Jaguar is selling like she's at 50% energy at most for the next several minutes. It's not the kind of 'holding a specific body part' selling we're more used to in modern times, just a general sense of being out of it and just about holding on to survive. Jaguar does get in a counter by hitting a backdrop, but is too hurt to capitalise and they tease a double KO for a bit before they're both up (Devil actually gets up first). Jaguar also tries hiding out on the outside to recover, making the most of the 20 count. It's a really good selling performance. Bear in mind we are missing about 13 minutes of the match (I assume nothing was cut from here on as it's the finishing stretch and the time calls add up), so the exhaustion on display probably made a bit more sense if we were seeing this in full.

Now we get to the spicy bit. The ring announcer makes the call for 35 minutes passed, and Devil goes for the win as per the secret rules. She stands horizontally to Jaguar, who is lying flat back on the match, and Devil just goes down flat to try and hold her down for the 3 count. On the replay, I have to admit, it looks like Jaguar cheats a little bit. The rule was that you're not allowed to try to bridge out until the cover has already been applied, but she goes up a split second before. Might not have made a difference, but Jaguar is able to turn onto her front and keep herself in the match. It's her turn to try to win next. Devil again goes for a cover, but those in the know will see she wasn't trying to win this time, it's a spot for Jaguar to do her signature bridge out straight to her feet to come running off the ropes, which she follows with a very nice jump over Devil's head (she gets impressive height on it) to get back into the match. Her turn is next

The spiciness continues. Jaguar hits a butterfly suplex and she goes for the win as per the rules. Devil's shoulders are clearly down as Jaguar begins the cover, and she tries to fight her way out of it but can only get one shoulder up at any one time. There's an almighty struggle over this, but Jaguar definitely does manage to pin Devil's shoulders for a 2 count. But a 3? Well, this video quality isn't great so it's not entirely clear, but it does look to me that Devil's shoulder was up just before the 3. Anyway, Devil was convinced her shoulder was up and was outraged. I've read all about this incident but never seen it for myself, with Devil saying the referee was biased and Jaguar says Devil was just mad she lost. But she goes right over the announcer table to scream at Commission Ueda (who isn't just an on-screen authority, he was actually the most powerful person in the company who wasn't a Matsunaga) that she's been screwed.

While it would still be the norm for rookie matches, this would be the last time AJW had a World Title be decided by shoot-pin rules. Which is another thing which makes this match historically significant and I'm so glad we finally got to see it. While that aspect of the company would be downplayed going forward, they also created a template for the kind of epic title match that AJW would really specialise in over the next few years. This is a lot rougher than the later matches, there are some lulls in the action (I mean in terms of being captivating, not literal movement) and it feels like it'd take a little while longer for the AJW crew to fully figure out how to get the most out of this style. I'd say the 7/19/82 match between these two is still probably the better match, albeit a very different one. It feels a bit weird to give this a star rating considering the context, but I'm going to give this a flat 4. But for it's place in history this is a must watch for anyone interested in 80s Joshi. I'm so happy this has finally surfaced.

MD:  To my credit, I am back in 1979 still, right? And while I've seen the Dump stuff that's canonical, I'm less versed on this stuff. But this is a big match, and a lost match, and we'll jump right in. It really felt like a title match and a struggle, especially the holds where it was obvious just looking at Masami and Yokota just how much effort they were putting into them, and especially the finish which had Yokota forcing Masami's shoulders down almost from force of will alone (or as Kad pointed out, from true force alone). This had kinetic action that ground back into the holds in a way that gave the match substance. It never broke down into chaos or interference. It always went back to the center and therefore it never lost its way.

Throughout the match, Yokota would get an advantage with speed and grit, often times just throwing her body at Masami (which is really how the match started), and then Masami would grind her down with power (again, how the match started) and bombs. Some of the specific holds really worked for me, such as the way they were able to trade bodyscissors early, working basically all the way around the world shifting holds and positions until they switched places on who had on the bodyscissors. 

Masami would drive Yokota out of the ring or leave her laying, but Yokota came back again and again. The comeback towards the end had her basically vault straight up over Masami's head before hitting a rana. Even then Masami shut her down and tossed her off the second rope from a fireman's carry. So while it was all grounded, they built to some pretty big spots, before the finish which was scrappy as could be and still felt contested nonetheless. I don't know if those shoulders were down.

Riki Choshu/Masa Saito vs. Tatsumi Fujinami/Shiro Koshinaka 9/5/88

MD: This one's on us. We've had access to this HH since 2018 or whatever but I don't think anyone actually gave it a good look. It's the IWGP Heavyweight champion and the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Champion up against the tag champs for the belts. And it's really good and goes twice as long as I expected. 

After some opening title match feeling out between Saito and Fujinami (two of the most credible guys ever so it was good like you'd expect), Shiro wants to tag in against Choshu and we're off to the races. Koshinaka is a guy that I like a lot more in tags than singles. He (and Takano/Cobra) were really expected to be the heirs to Tiger Mask in having exciting, over the top Jr. Title matches and you really end up with a lot of noise. But he was a plucky underdog with a special connection with the crowd and a real sense of theatricality. Earlier in 88, he started being the only guy in the promotion (not even Inoki) who would sometimes "Hulk Up" and the fans couldn't get enough of it.

Here he quickly got outgunned by the superior hierarchical forces and what we ended up with was a tale of survival as he tried to punch his way out of first Saito's Prison Lock and then Choshu's Scorpion. There's probably nothing the fans in 88 New Japan would eat up more than someone fighting valiantly against holds like that and at one point they were clapping along to each valiant Koshinaka punch in a way that I'm not sure I've seen them do before. They cycled through this twice until, fighting a Scorpion attempt, Koshinaka was able to crawl over and make the tag.  

I thought things would go home shortly hereafter (once Koshinaka recovered enough to make it back in of course) and there was a bit of that, with Fujinami having to survive some of the holds Koshinaka fought out of as they targeted his knee. Shiro did come back in and they had the advantage for a while, but they were fighting from a deficit. It was Fujinami that got overwhelmed instead, posted on the outside by Saito and opened up to create a dramatic (and surprising) next act to the match as Saito bit the wound and Fujinami fought for his life.

Koshinaka tries to intervene and got trapped in the ropes just as Fujinami turned the tide, fighting off both Saito and Choshu until Choshu's lariat finally prevailed. Super dramatic stuff, the sort of which you can only get out of New Japan at its best. 

Pirata Morgan vs. MS-1 (hair vs hair) CMLL 3/15/91

MD: There's a moment at the end which is honestly remarkable and we're going to lead with that. After a solid tercera where I'm not sure MS-1's selling was warranted, but they sort of made you go for it anyway, Morgan gets a small package through countering a move for the pin. The commentary says that this move was invented by Lex Luger, champion of the world, and is called the Total Package. Honestly, this was worth dusting off just for that.

This is in the found, or at the very least, underlooked category. I'm sure most people haven't seen it. It's interesting but doesn't rise to the level you'd want it to, mainly due to some narrative quirks. It has some things you almost never see in a hair match, and despite Morgan wearing white with his black, it doesn't get quite as bloody as I thought it would.

We come in with MS-1 controlling in the primera. He is, of course, good at that. Morgan goes for a few comebacks but the ref gets in his way; it's that kind of match. They make a big deal out of the fact Morgan doesn't have a second. After MS-1 puts him away to win the first fall, he absolutely cracks him on the post on the outside. They made it sound as loud as any shot like that I've ever heard but then there isn't the massive amount of blood to follow it up. Morgan tries to come back with some big shots but the ref again gets in his way, which feels like an inversion to earlier apuestas matches. It'd be like the ref disrupting things after Chicana's big comeback punch vs MS-1. It just felt wrong.

As the segunda goes on, MS-1 keeps pulling Morgan up, which you almost never see in a hair match. He steps on his chest and then steps off before the three, that sort of thing. Eventually, Morgan tries coming back again and this time the ref pushes him out of the ring. That was the cue for Morgan's brother and Hombre Bala to come out to second him which symbolically turns the tide of the match and leads to his big comeback and some big dives before the finish. Along the way, there are some other weird quirks like Morgan rolling in the ring to get into position and some rope running that felt out of place, but in general, it ends well with that famous move invented by Luger and the fans are happy with the outcome. It all could have been just a bit more grounded and grisly though. 

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