80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Galactica!

Volume 4  

13. Jaguar Yokota vs. La Galactica (WWWA Singles Title, Hair vs. Mask) - 5/7/83

K: We previously covered Devil & Tarantula vs. The Dynamite Girls from this show, but I’ll add now that this was probably the biggest AJW event of the year. I’m not sure exactly what the build for the Hair vs. Mask match was; it’s a little strange because you’d expect that stipulation to be a blowoff, or at least in a well-developed feud, but this is actually La Galactica’s first match in AJW (she wrestled as Pantera Surena in Mexico, maybe running Jaguar vs. Panther would be too much). I’m guessing the stipulation was more to sell to the Japanese fans that a top Mexican star was coming over and they’d be getting something unique because of that.

And, of course, this has historical significance because it’s the first match in AJW history where someone’s hair would be on the line, which would go on to be one of the company’s big special stipulations.

They don’t wrestle in the opening like they’re in a hot feud - though to be fair, they aren’t, it’s mainly just exchanges of throws and holds where no one really gets the advantage. But it does put over that Jaguar can hold her own against the unfamiliar Lucha stylings of her opponent here. The lack of heat does hurt things a bit though. The main noise from the crowd is someone blowing a whistle a bit erratically like at a sports game, but without context you wouldn’t be able to guess who they were even rooting for. 

There’s a nice little payoff early on when Galactica extends a hand of sportsmanship to Jaguar, who seems a bit reticent to accept but she still kind of falls for it in that Galactica immediately jumps her once she’s allowed to get too close. They later do a reset after Galactica gets thrown into the chairs, and she gets back in and tries the same trick, but there’s no way Jaguar’s gonna get suckered in a second time and just charges at her with strikes.
About halfway in we get the first Monster Ripper interference, which then becomes a frequent occurrence. I’m not a fan of this. Firstly, the way the match was building didn’t lead us to this. Galactica seemed to be handling things quite well up to that point, whereas Monster was acting like her pal was in danger of losing if she didn’t charge in. Part of this is Galactica is only in Japan for a six week tour whereas Monster is here full time (I’m guessing the AJW office wouldn’t know at this point how often Galactica would be back over the next few years), so this is putting the bulk of the heat on Monster to use up later, but at the expense of today.

We get a glimpse of that more vicious Jaguar Yokota when Monster Ripper’s interference escalates into cutting a chunk of Jaguar’s hair off with a pair of scissors, and Jaguar lets out a great yowl of frustration. I thought it was a bit funny when she hit Galactica with a piledriver and then attempts to pin her despite her legs very obviously being in the ropes, like she was hoping the referee would brazenly cheat to help her to compensate for the illegal interference she’d suffered earlier. Doesn’t work though.

Jaguar’s frustrations get the better of her when she pulls out a chair, and takes out the referee and another official when they try to stop her. The referee being out though just gives Monster Ripper the opportunity to jump in and do a prolonged double team with big top rope moves that leave Jaguar crushed, with the referee getting back in the ring just in time to count the three for Jaguar’s 1st title reign to end after 27 months. That is a big deal in itself, but the bigger deal is the drama of the hair cutting ceremony. Jaguar tries to bail out at first, loudly protesting the injustice of it, but the commissioner insists that the result must stand (though promising a rematch and advertising which show it will be at in a classic pro-wrestling hustle). Jaguar calms down and accepts her fate. We cut to a girl in the crowd in tears as the hair cutting commences, and the former champ seems transformed into a wounded, more bitter, less innocent creature.

The match wasn’t that great and I wouldn’t recommend it if someone just wanted to see why this feud is so well regarded (it’s easily the worst of their series), but I include pre/post-match events when assessing matches when they’re clearly part of the overall package, and the post-match definitely enhances this into something very good and worth watching, even without the historical ground you’re getting for later.

***1/2 

14. Jaguar Yokota Interview - 5/7/83

K: This is the earlier extended interview/talking segment I’ve been able to find of Jaguar Yokota, she doesn’t seem to be a wrestler who ever talked that much. She just let her in-ring do the talking. I thought she was effective here though. She’s even kind of funny when she sternly shut down a reporter who dared comment that he thought the whole hair-shaving match stipulation was a bit melodramatic, insisting that losing this match was truly devastating for her and she looked deadly serious the whole time. She’s not known for her promo ability but handled this whole segment like pro-wrestling was all real and, for me, sometimes that’s all I need a wrestler to do to enjoy it.
The slow zoom out as Jaguar finishes the interview and looks like she’s slowly starting to cry and drop her iron lady persona is very well done. Felt like an arty movie scene.

MD: This was clearly to set up a show a few weeks later. It should be viewed as much as an angle as a conventional match. What we get of a conventional match in here shows us that there could probably be a really good straightforward (heated, bloody, etc) match between these two at this exact moment in time. Despite the stakes, they start it almost like a lucha title match. There are some very nice exchanges that no one but Yokota could pull off (or at least it feels that way). She bounds on her feet like it’s nothing. You wouldn’t want a whole roster doing that but when she does it, it’s great. Likewise, during a bodyscissors reversal where Galactica picks her up by her hair, she is able to somehow turn it into a drop toehold of sorts and I’ve never seen it done quite like that.

Charles over at Wrestling Playlists has been watching a lot of this for a best of the 80s capper he’s doing and (to paraphrase) he does feel like in a lot of what he’s seen Yokota is almost too much, too indestructible, too athletic. I think that’s been less of an issue in the singles matches. Here, though, this was almost a handicap match with Ripper interfering again and again and again. Jaguar would have her big comebacks (using the bridge out of a pin or the front tumble to start them) and hit her big bombs (tombstone, belly to back) but there would be Ripper to break things up. Jaguar had ten people at ringside with her but neither them nor the refs could do anything to stop Ripper. At one point she tried to give Galactica the scissors but Jaguar got them and cut part of the mask, which is a pretty novel idea that I don’t remember ever really seeing in a lucha mask vs hair match.  

Eventually, it was just too much and after Ripper jumped off the top rope on her, Galactica choked her while pinning her. The officials said the result had to stand but immediately mentioned a rematch, so this was as carny as anything you’d get in Memphis, even if there they’d establish the rules and why Ripper was able to break them more clearly (and yes, I know this was billed as Death match, but come on). 

There was one moment in the middle where Yaguar let out a primal scream after putting up with too much interference and that’s the sort of thing that makes a match like this work, as did her fighting the haircut, eventually giving in, and giving the emotional post-match promo how she’d die if that’s what it took to win the rematch. We don’t have the rematch but I bet that thing drew even if this match had to be relatively unsatisfying to get us there.

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Tuesdays with Daddy: Week 1: Introduction - vs. Mr. X (12/22/79)

Introduction

MD: So just what are we trying to do here? Just what do I, an uncultured American, have to do with Big Daddy? Not a lot actually. I don’t have any core memories of him. I probably never heard of him until some time into my late 20s or 30s. I haven’t seen a lot of matches. I have a lot more to say about Otto Wanz and a lot more of a personal connection, even after the fact, to Jerry Blackwell. Honestly, the one Klondike Bill (UK) match we got from the French Footage probably moved me more than any thought I’ve ever had about Big Daddy. But I know he was a star. I know he was beloved. I know a lot about the behind the scenes reasons for that.

And I know no one’s ever seriously looked at his ringwork to see why and how he connected to crowds.

I have to think that he did. We’ve evaluated Hogan and Dusty, Backlund and Inoki. Even Cena and Reigns. Jackie Sato too! We’ve taken a look at stars and aces, lead babyfaces, and we’ve tried to distill what they did specifically that moved the fans. It’s not just presentation. It’s not just being booked to win. Plenty of wrestlers have been booked to win and weren’t national sensations. I believe, above all else, that details matter when it comes to pro wrestling. What the wrestlers do in the ring matter. 

I want to see up close and first hand what Daddy did and what he didn’t do. Even if he didn’t have conventionally great matches, that doesn’t mean he might not have been a great wrestler. Maybe great matches weren’t going to serve the purpose of what he was trying to do. Even if he wasn’t athletic or didn’t have a great workrate, that doesn’t mean he didn’t do other things well when it came to crowd control and engagement, in working to his opponents’ and partners’ strengths and working them into his act.

Or maybe he didn’t do any of this? Maybe the rep is true. Maybe conventional wisdom is right. Maybe we reevaluate and find that there isn’t much laudable there and the promotion and the framing was everything. That’ll be interesting too. 

But don’t you want to know? Wouldn’t any wrestler or wrestling fan want to know what, in a wrestler’s ring work, helped to make him a cultural sensation? I sure do. Maybe we can figure this out together. The goal isn’t necessarily to push back against this or that or even get him into the WON HOF. The point is that I don’t know, I haven’t seen for myself, and we’re willing to put in the legwork and write about it.

So we’re going to watch around ten matches picked completely at random, just what’s available and I can easily date. Singles where I can find them. Tags. We’ll look at him a little younger and a little older and in the middle. We’re not trying to be comprehensive in how the act changed over time, but we’ll point out things as we go. Feel free to play along and comment along. We’ll take firsthand accounts and extra bits of context if anyone wants to share, but for the sake of this project, the footage’s the thing.

Week 1: Big Daddy vs Mr. X 12/22/79 

MD: We're still early into this, and I'm trying to make sense of just what he does well. Why is he over? What does he do that connects with the crowd? It's not just "he's big." It's not just "he's pushed." The presentation is part of it, but there have to be performative elements, good or bad. Details have to matter. That's the world I want us to live in and quite frankly, when it comes to pro wrestling, that's the world that I witness no matter the place or era. 

So let's break this down. Daddy comes out with his hat and jacket. When he takes them off, the fans are happy to see the girth and he starts a celebratory chant with them, engaging immediately. He's got a white singlet with black "Big Daddy" letters on them. It is certainly memorable. Mr. X is a masked hairy bloke. 

Daddy moves around the ring fairly spry. He's fresh after all. He lets Mr. X get him in a couple of holds first to sort of invert expectations and get his points with the crowd in the escape. First he tosses him across the ring off the headlock to a big pop. Then he actually sells for a few long seconds in a top wristlock, grimacing, slapping Mr. X's back gingerly, before chucking him off with one hand. That matters. It creates a bit of dissonance, the hint of peril. It certainly got a pop because he drew people in.

Then he takes over and doesn't really look back over the rest of the round and the minute and a half or so of the next. He does have some varied offense though. There are corner whips which X takes face first. There are beales off the rope but he charges into them in a way that puts real impact behind it. He lets X bounce off him a couple of times, but when X throws a fit and jumps up and down, he's right there with a belly bump. 

Some things are more interactive with him engaging the crowd and giving them something to latch on to. He does a cross stranglehold and then goes for the mask, revealing that Mr. X has a beard. When he's done with that, he just chucks him to the mat. Mr. X is creating the motion, even running around the ringside area in frustration at one point, but Daddy more than helps him along. 

It gets a little repetitive at times, even in a short match, another headlock toss off, another set of whips. These don't have quite the same response with the fans, but as soon as that starts to happen, he brings things to a close, first with a thudding headlock takeover he rides X down with. Then at the end of Round 1 with a front chancery suplex. It doesn't look great but you get the point anyway and the fans liked it. Then in round two, with X beaten down and barely beating the count, he did a sort of hanging back body drop, almost a waterwheel drop, landing on him in a way that looked brutal. X didn't get up from that.

Not a bad first look, but the question, in part, is how much is going to be ritual and how much is going to be variance. He'll certainly have opponents of different types and there will be tags and other things. It's clear that he knew the sort of effect he could have on the crowd through something as simple as taking his hat off and something as complex as selling a top wristlock for a few seconds before dispatching X. He knew when it was time to wind things down too. It is telling, maybe, that he was in a tiny bit of danger of overstretching what he did have, but that was, in part because X really didn't pose a threat. Key bits of his offense looked honestly great in in 79 at least. Let's see how that progresses. You watch this and see a pretty talented wrestler who knew how to make use of both his skills and work around his limitations and really understood the crowd. But that's just a snapshot.

ER: Matt has been waiting so patiently for me to hop on this Big Daddy project, I don't know why I've been putting it off. Matt waited for me because he knows how much I love fat guy wrestling. Fat guys are what drew me to pro wrestling in the first place. Maybe it was because I had a fat dad, of the different kinds of dads we could have. He was shaped like Boss Man and maybe that's why I loved wrestlers shaped like Bam Bam Bigelow. I wanted to see fat guys even though I did not aspire myself to be fat. My neighbor friend Colin had a Vietnam vet electrician dad, so instead probably liked Jesse Ventura or Dutch Mantell. Sgt. Slaughter if he didn't know. Fat guys in wrestling make great shapes. WWF was nothing but great wrestling shapes. Big fat guys are the most pure, beautiful things Allowed by pro wrestling. Pro wrestling does this weird magic trick with the biggest and best fat guys: it makes them look more normal in their gear than in normal man clothes. Bam Bam Bigelow, John Tenta...I don't want to see them in jeans. Bam Bam found the perfect flame unitard to enhance the best features of his wrestling body. He looks perfect in his flame suits, literally every color, even though we all know the one with that rich blue is the best one. 

Big Daddy was a great shape. What a figure. Big Daddy's body is wrestling perfection. The British were right on this one. The Germans loved big fat Otto Wanz, Big Daddy discovered the perfect wrestling shape and the glowing white singlet to contain it, and the British rightly said "That's our guy." Imagine what that body would have looked like with American portions and American snack food aisles. Big Daddy grew this tremendous body on tinned mince and boiled potatoes. 

Big Daddy is a unique character, a dominant babyface who is literally never in trouble, never threatened, never on his heels. In control, at all times, effortlessly....but that shape. I gotta say, I get it. If you're going to be a dominant babyface, you have to bring a new way of executing offense, and Big Daddy is captivating to watch. 

Is this really just an Arthur "Buffalo" Bice project? Will this project, instead of being a Big Daddy love fest, turn into Matt and I discovering all the different no names who were incredible at getting run over by this sequined dump truck? Every week will it be something like "Did this just become a John "Bengal" Swynford project??" Here's Buffalo Bice pulling the Big Daddy Christmas match, which feels like a major deal. This program signs off with Christmas wishes for all, and Mr. X is tasked with taking two dozen dangerous bumps in the biggest match of his career. 

But this is no big bumping youngster pinballing for an old man, this is a man being forced to bump by an incredibly imposing megastar. Yes, Bice bumped big, but I don't know if he ever had a choice. Any time Daddy whipped or bieled X, X had no say in his landing. Daddy looked like he had the pulling power of Andre. Every time X got yanked full speed face first into the turnbuckles, it was like an ogre swinging a peasant into a tree. His biels are quick and violent and go farther faster than you'd think. His biels are a real satisfying motion, backing X into the ropes and letting him go at their most torqued, and just letting that man fly. This lad has no chance of stopping. His bumping was forced upon him by a double size Dick Murdoch with quick closing speed. By the time he escalates to his side headlock takeover or front chancery suplex, Bice is a corpse getting dummied. Bice makes it to the 2nd round, the last time any TV Daddy match went to the 2nd round. It may have been because the cat was enjoying the exercise, but it happened, and Bice weathered it. 

And God DAMN Fatty Thomas!! Did I hear 42 stone?? That's nearly 600 pounds! This is Daddy's next opponent? Ringing in the new year with Fatty "Bulk" Thomas? How great is it that he has a nickname that's a much nicer name than his first name. His name is true. His body no longer resembles the shape of a human man, his stomach bulging out low and farther than I've ever seen a belly bulge. Commentary is unsure he'll even be able to get into the ring. God what a business. Just find the fattest men you can and let 'em struggle to get into a ring without help. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/24 - 8/30

All In 2026 8/30/26

Willow Nightingale vs Mercedes Mone

If you live by stories, you die by them too.

Willow Nightingale chose to live by them and she ended up dying by them in the end.

Mercedes Mone entered the ring preceded by a ballet performance, then attended to by those self-same ballerinas. The message was clear. She deserved art. She was heralded by art. Art respected her. Art served her. She was art. A transcendent pinnacle.

Willow, on the other hand, was preceded by a storybook narration, with images highlighting her unlikely ascent as a brave knight, her fantastic triumph, and how she would never, ever stop smiling.

Willow Nightingale lost to Mercedes Mone. That was not how the story was supposed to end. Yet as the match careened towards its finish, its unfortunate inevitability revealed itself. When? It was the moment where a line was crossed, the moment when the story ended even before the match did.

How did Willow Nightingale lose to Mercedes Mone?

Was it because Willow entered injured? That would be the most logical reason, no? Even though she bedazzled her cast, she came in at a disadvantage. That made it hard for her to do things as simple as whipping Mercedes across the ring or as difficult as climbing the ropes for a moonsault. It gave Mercedes a wedge to take back over at any point in the match and it let her drive a dagger through that wedge to split Willow asunder and tear apart both the cast and her hand late in the match. Yet Willow still had her strength, still had her resolve, still had her savvy and her bravery and she was able to fight through that pain and disadvantage again and again.

Was it because Mercedes Mone wanted it more? Because she was more dangerous? Because she was the better wrestler? Mercedes knew Willow’s moves, knew her tricks. Early on, Mercedes broke her nose and she spent the entire match with blood splattered across her visage (a visual that enhanced every single thing within this match turning even practiced sequences into gripping moments of unpredictable drama), but she obsessively fought on. She had answers for Willow’s biggest weapons, hand or no, strength or no. But then Willow knew Mercedes too, had defeated her before, was the defending champion, wanted it every bit as much, maybe even too much.

Was it because Mercedes was a dirty cheater? Towards the start of the match, the corner turnbuckle pad inadvertently came sailing off as Mercedes tried to block a strength move by Willow. Twice, Mercedes was able to get an edge by running Willow’s head into the corner, and once it even allowed her to hit her finisher. Later on, on the floor, Mercedes tried to wield the belt against Willow, but Willow is not one to back down and let bad people do bad things. She knew exactly who and what Mercedes was. She was able to wrest it from Mercedes and turn it back upon her. In that moment, it was justice. In that moment it was warranted. She met that moment with a smile.

Was it because Aubrey Edwards was knocked down? The referee was knocked prone. Willow hit the Babe With the Power Bomb. She had a visual pin closer to ten seconds than to three. She should have won. She hit her best shot. Mercedes survived. It wasn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. The trick then is to smile anyway, right? So long as she did that, she’d win in the end. So while this and everything that preceded it led to her loss, none of them caused it. Because up until this point, it was still her story.

It was none of those things.

It was what happened next in the face of all of them.

Mercedes had survived her best shot. Willow looked up, momentarily at a loss. She was not smiling. Her cast had been mangled. Her hand hurt. For just a moment. even her monumental spirit faltered; for brave knight or not, she’s human like the rest of us. If she wasn’t, we wouldn’t care nearly as much. We see ourselves in her, the best of us and the rest of us as well.

Looking around the ring, Willow tried to figure out what to do next. She pointed to the corner, to the exposed turnbuckle. She rose with resolve. She slammed Mercedes into it without mercy or hesitation. She doomed herself in the process.

Willow Nightingale lost because in a moment of doubt and confusing, she transgressed. Willow broke a rule. Willow faced the consequences, for in stories, everything has a price.

Yes, Mercedes had used the exposed turnbuckle on her twice, and to high effect. Yes, Willow had used the belt on Mercedes. But when she used the belt, it was after stopping Mercedes from attacking her with it. It was justice. Here? Now? This? Mercedes was helpless, prone. It wasn’t justice. It was desperation at worst and revenge at best. A wrestler can do that, even a babyface, but not a storybook knight. 

That was the moment this stopped being a story and became a match once again. Her armor, just like her cast, was torn asunder, but unlike the cast, this was her own doing. 

She tried to escalate matters, to hit another power bomb, this time from the top rope, but Mercedes was still all of those things that she had always been, the best at what she did. Now, with Willow no longer protected by fate, Mercedes took her over with an avalanche ‘rana and let that momentum carry her to a cruel, unyielding victory, all the way to adding insult to injury by pressing her foot into the damaged hand after the ref’s call. 

Willow Nightingale is a knight. Maybe even more than that, she is a superhero. And her superpower is perspective. She finds the positivity in life. She uses that positivity to carry her forward and to take all of us along with her. She makes us better. But she’s human like the rest of us. Just like Mercedes, if you break her nose, she will bleed. 

People aren’t going to like this, just as I don’t like writing it, but Willow Nightingale lost this match because just for a moment, she lost her smile. I don’t like it. You don’t like it. You can be mad at me for saying it. We’re not supposed to like it. 

But it is supposed to make us feel something. I felt something while watching this match. I feel something writing this now. I hope you feel something reading it. 

The thing is… I know something else too.

The joy and frustration of pro wrestling is that it is a story that never ends. And even if for all the reasons above, Willow faltered on this night, she has given us every reason to believe in her, not to believe that she is infallible, but to believe that given time, given a moment to shake of the dust, she will find her smile once again. She will cling to it, she will rise up, and she will take everyone she can with her. 

The story of her reign ended, but the story of Willow Nightingale has not. She may have not been able to write the ending at All In, but the next chapter is wide open and I know that you believe just as much as I do that we’ll all be smiling when she comes back to write it, all of us except for maybe Mercedes Mone.

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Jon Moxley vs Nigel McGuinness 

(1) Jon Moxley understands the power of time and place. He lost last year to Adam Page in Texas, a cowboy bringing down the man with the black hat in front of another stadium crowd. This was England. This was Nigel McGuinness' dream.

Moxley has spent the better part of a year pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, most of all himself. He presents himself as the warrior prophet, the shepherd of violence and battle and righteous combat. If you look at his actions, however, you find someone who does not practice what he preaches. But he (a champion) wins, and so long as he wins, it doesn't matter in the end. What Moxley truly practices is that might equals right, the same damn thing he practiced at the height of his reign of terror.

Usually, he'll wrestle even to start, get down on the mat, make a show of it. It's only when it gets hard or inconvenient that he'll turn the screw and show his true colors.

Not here. Not against a Nigel McGuinness in this stadium, in front of this crowd, on this unlikely path, with this apparent destiny.

(2) Against Nigel, he didn't even pretend. At the first opportunity, the first chance to break in the ropes, he went in on the ankle.

Nigel had hurt it against Shibata utilizing an all-too-clever block of a Penalty Kick with his own leg. It helped win him the match but at high cost. How high? He had to drop out of his match against Moriarty at the ROH PPV. He almost didn't carry on in the Cup.

Nigel has seen it all and done it all as well. He's world weary. He's known great highs and even greater lows. He understands how the world works, just like Moxley does.

When Hechicero tried to attack his ankle, he went straight to the mask. He's an expert, a practitioner, a technician, a commentator, Staff, but if you cross a line, he'll cross it twice as quickly and twice as cruelly.

So against Mox, he did just that. He went after the nose, the face, the eyes. Every time that Moxley went for the ankle, he came back twice as vicious and desperate and mean. If Mox was going to fight dirty, he'd make him pay.

(3) That changed the tenor of the match. Mox, the leader of the Death Riders, a man constantly looking back over his shoulder, a man who can only look into the eyes of his own reflection for so long, was already paranoid of Nigel, paranoid of what his destiny might be. Instead of having a match wholly focused around working the ankle, they went other places instead, Mox too hesitant to unleash whatever create grown from years of desperation and despair might still lurk within McGuinness.

It became a game of counters then. Nigel tried for the London Dungeon but Mox was ready of it. Mox went for the charging corner clotheslines, but Nigel caught him and hoisted him up with an uppercut for the Tower of London. Nigel tried for the Les Kellett lariat, but Mox was ready for a cutter. Mox tried one of his own and Nigel was ready with a Lariat. Mox was lock in the LeBell Lock, but there Nigel was to reverse it into one of his own.

(4) Still, when the opportunity arose, when things got desperate, when he realized he couldn't win through conventional means, Mox, his true colors already revealed, had no choice but to roll the dice. He had been able to get the bulldog choke on, but Nigel escaped through pluck, determination, and an  understanding of human anatomy, driving his own chin into the nerve in Moxley's arm.

The ankle, then. Moxley stomped down on the ankle, went for ankle locks. Nigel fired back with everything he had, even locking in the London Dungeon, but at the end of the day, while both men were desperate, only one was healthy. Moxley had found bravery within his own cowardice as he honed in on the ankle.

Both men were not just desperate; they were also clever. Moxley realized that he was about to lose the lock, that Nigel was about to make it to the ropes, so he let go and spun him, keeping the advantage and setting him up for a stomp to the skull. From there, it was one last scissored ankle lock. Nigel stretched valiantly, but was forced to quit. This time, destiny was averted, and Moxley wrestled his way through it all yet again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was enough. 

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

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

And they did. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SUPER DRAGON

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Masami! Tarantula! Jumbo! Yukari!

Volume 4   

12. Devil Masami & Tarantula vs. Jumbo Hori & Yukari Omori (WWWA Tag Team Titles Decision Match #2) - 5/7/83

K: This is a best of 3 series for the WWWA Tag Titles where all 3 matches are ⅔ falls. Yeah it does feel like they’re duplicating a gimmick but there you go. We get a recap of the 1st match so you know Dynamite Girls are 1-0 up on Devil Legion going into this one. 

The Dynamite Girls are wearing these little frilly dresses for their introductions, which looks especially weird on Yukari Omori. Also during the Devil/Tarantula’s entrance you can spot 15 year old Bull Nakano doing some crowd stewarding.

Babyfaces take control early and really go hard-hitting from the start. Devil Masami is selling well and fighting to get herself back into it. When she does Omori takes a hell of a bump off a Devil Masami cross chop. Proper hauls herself hard across the ring for it. There’s a really good superplex a bit later on due to Devil really milking the struggle she’s having to make of getting Omori up for it, but she eventually gets her up and gets a nearfall from it to a good crowd reaction. Omori’s too hurt to put up much of a fight though when Devil drags her up, and then I’m not sure what to call this move (Devil’s arsenal of offense is immense), but she gets Omori up from the apron and seems to hit her with a twisting brainbuster? Although it’s more on her face than her head. It’s really cool though and looked just as damaging as the superplex but more novel, so deservedly gets the 1st fall. So far, very good.
It also felt like the Dynamite Girls took most of the fall, and should really have extended the advantage they held from winning the first match, but they dropped a fall against the balance of play.

Again the babyfaces take control early in the 2nd fall. This time we get a little brawl on the outside when Jumbo Hori drags Devil Masami out and tries throwing her into chairs, but it doesn’t quite work as planned and they fight it out relatively evenly. By the time they’re getting back into the ring Devil is on top and Jumbo is doing a good sell job. I liked the pained expressions as she was on the mat. Once Tarantula gets tagged in though Jumbo is demolishing her again pretty quickly. She even throws her onto Devil at one point like she’s fighting both of them at once. Jumbo’s also utilising her size here a lot with big power moves like that, which is something I wish she’d done more often.

It’s a strange finish that you don’t see coming. The babyfaces look like they’re in control when they swing the heel team into each other. Then Tarantula gets thrown into the corner where Devil is, presumably to set up a spot where both heels are in the same corner and get hit with a running splash or something. But no. Devil darts out of the way and Tarantula she jumps up the turnbuckle, boomerangs back into Devil, who then fallaway slams her onto Jumbo Hori so it becomes like an assisted crossbody pin, and Tarantula actually wins it to take a 2-0 clean sweep. Again, against the run of play. You can’t really call it a fluke because it looked like a maneuver Devil & Tarantula had practiced hard in training to pull off in a situation like this, more of a very crafty sneaky win. Not sure if that’s really heelish or not.

The 1st match of the series was kinda just a going through the motions tag match. This was definitely not that. It felt like you were watching a crafty sports team with their backs against the wall coming in with a gameplan to steal a win and pulling it off, even if their tactics weren’t crowd-pleasing. Memorable stuff.

***1/2

MD: I don’t spend much time talking about gear here because I am ill-qualified to do so, but there was a real Mork and Mindy stripes with suspenders deal going on with Omori and Hori, with some odd color choices. They were the Dynamite Girls which I did not realize until after the fact. Devil and Tarantula had thematically (though not color) matching split colored deals with their names up the leg that were far cooler. I’m sure you’re glad you know that. Look, I have a whole spiel about how Mimi was full elf and Jaguar was half elf and Omori was half dwarf and Hori was some sort of giant race but I don't 100% know what D&D races exist and I don't want to call her a troll, so we'll  just move on.

Some thoughts from the first fall. The babyfaces tried for the first attack but they didn’t get far. The Devil Legion got them to the floor and took over. That said, their comeback was so good with so much of their signature stuff (Omori with a Russian Leg Sweep, a fireman’s carry throw, and her reverse bearhug drop down, which is what she took over with, Jumbo with these neat driving arm breakers, her fireman’s carry widowmakers, and a body block) that I thought it was going to lead to the finish with an Omori Vader bomb but Masami got her knees up. She followed it up with a brutal tapitia where she made Omori land on her face after the fact. Devil had some new tricks in the last few matches I’ve seen, including a throat cross chop (with Tarantula having these sweeping and overdramatic martial arts strikes), and a superplex from the second rope. That didn’t finish Omori off but a great outside in gourdbuster with a little half turn did.

Second fall had more of the same with the heels pulling them out to keep control. Wonderful visual of Devil revelling in it all as she hit a double underhook suplex from the outside in. Tarantula hit her rolls into dropkicks, which might be the best roll-into-a-move of all time. This time Jumbo came back with her twisting bearhug slam and they did a bunch more of their signature stuff. Jumbo hit the power bomb into throwing Jumbo suplex combo, Omori did her reverse tilt-a-whirl dropping Masami right on Tarantula. But Devil fought back out of a Jumbo full nelson and got her feet up as Omori charged in. After some nice tandem moves (double flying headbutts, double neckbreaker drop) by Devil and Tarantula, Omori and Jumbo came back, only to run right into a great finish as Devil hit a fall away slam on Tarantula so that she’d land in a body press and get the pin. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before and it caught both me and Hori/Omori by surprise. So they took it in two falls after only losing the first match because of the second fall DQ. It certainly put Omori and Hori behind the eightball for the third match (which thankfully we do have).

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What's Wrong with Being a Tengu? What's So Bad About Being a Tengu? Senka vs Chi Chi

Sareee-ISM ​Chapter XI 8/24/06

Senka Akatsuki vs Chi Chi

MD: It's Chi Chi's world. Everyone else just lives in it. She moves in lockstep with society and society follows her lead. Fashion, pop music, social media. We live in an increasingly digital existence where style rules over substance, where influencer is not just a profession but a college degree, where we're judged by likes, reposts, followers. Reality is getting overtaken by the slick, sticky veneer of AI slop and aggregated information and Chi Chi is perfectly positioned to profit.

She comes out to the ring with Aqua's Barbie Girl blaring over the loudspeaker. She carries with her a handbag. She blows kisses to the crowd. She's carved her niche and created her following and is a potent force poised to disinfect professional wrestling of everything out of place and recreate it in her image.

Yet Senka exists.

Senka is the outer dark to Chi Chi's outer light (though maybe the inner light to her inner dark). Senka wrestles in her singlet, carrying the weight of generations of tradition before her. She charges forward. She kicks out. She never quits. She never stops. She is unrelenting, incessant. She's a storm. Depending on her opponent, maybe she's just a squall, but she's a force of nature nonetheless.

So she exists. Should that bother Chi Chi? Plenty exist beneath her. The majority exists beneath her. That's the point of the majority. They need to exist in order to serve as contrast that highlights her all the more. 

But Senka does not exist quietly. She could wear grey or brown and might blend in, might fit her station in life. She does not. She wears red. She walks with pride. She moves with determination. She will not be pushed aside. She will not be hidden away. She will show the world her merit and make the world remember her name. 

There is no room in Chi Chi's world for a Senka Akatsuki who doesn't know her place. She is a blemish that cannot be tolerated, a burr that must be yanked out, a lump that has to be stomped down. She is not just an imperfection, but is instead a celebration of imperfection. Chi Chi has pride. Chi Chi has determination. Chi Chi is a force. 

But Senka represents another path to success, one wreathed in substance instead of style. She is the exception who demands the world see her as exceptional. 

In the press conference leading up to this match, Chi Chi bemoaned Senka's pride, admonished her brazenness to wrestle in red, suggested she might prune the world of her, and most of all, named her as a Tengu. 

Instead of being properly chastised at the insult, one of the worst possible in Chi Chi's reality, Senka dared to take pride in it. What's wrong about being a Tengu? What's so bad about being a Tengu? 

Opposing forces, opposite poles. Neither could possibly suffer the existence of the other.

Fate (and very likely mirth, whether it be Sareee's or Chigusa's) put the two of them together, forced them to associate as a team against Spark Rush. At first opportunity, Senka kicked Chi Chi in the gut and slammed her onto their opponents. When Senka went to tag out, Chi Chi took the tag and then threw a punch for good measure. They were handedly defeated. A house divided can't stand against Spark Rush.

But that just positioned them, one week later, here against one another. 

At the bell, Chi Chi hung back in the corner, refusing to come meet Senka in the center. This was about pride. It was about a difference of lifestyles, of world views, of what the world should be. She'd hold her nose up and not give an inch. She demanded Senka come to her instead. Chi Chi might be bullheaded, but you can't outstubborn Senka. Senka dropped to the mat, sat cross-legged, and Chi Chi was forced to come to her. The first skirmish went to Senka.

After scrambling on the mat, Senka got the first real advantage as well, surviving a double wristlock to hit a few slams and lock in a crab. Her face, as always, was the portrait of effort and strain, but for a split second, it seemed like the tiniest of smiles flashed across it, a brief hint of joy for the damage she was doing to her opposite. 

Chi Chi honed in on the arm, turning a Senka fireman's carry into a flying Octopus Hold and then really sinking it in on a second attempt off the ropes. Senka survived it but came out damaged, clutching her arm and her side. With almost any other wrestler, you would want to see their offense hindered there. She shouldn't have been throwing a lariat with that arm, shouldn't have tried to use both arms to lock in a choke, or to hit multiple suplexes in a row. But, of course, that's exactly what she did. 

Unlike every other wrestler in the world, however, she made it work. It wasn't about fighting spirit or adrenaline. She emoted pain. She radiated pain. You could feel her pain burst from the screen, just as you had when she recoiled in the corner like a wounded animal. It was still there when she was on offense as well. It was pure stubbornness that made her use that arm despite the pain. How dare Chi Chi attack it? How dare Chi Chi think that it would stop her? That it would slow her down? There was a clear cost to Senka's offense, but it was a cost that she bore as opposed a cost that she ignored. 

Since she didn't ignore it, we could not ignore it either. Likely Chi Chi could not as well. Likely she was all the more frustrated and aggrieved because of it. Why couldn't Senka just stay down? Why couldn't Senka just shut up? Why couldn't Senka just go away? 

Of course, Chi Chi didn't go away either. She endured the choke and rolled to the floor putting them at another impasse. This time, she wouldn't give Senka what she wanted. This time she found it in herself to be the more stubborn of the two and forced an increasingly irate Senka to come after her. She was ready and fought her way back into the match by eating a headbutt and hitting an exploder off the apron to the floor. 

She couldn't put away Senka however. She couldn't keep up the pace, not with Senka constantly dragging her back down to her level. She threw kicks into Senka's face. Senka came back with lariats. Things devolved into wrestling's most basic form, headlocks. Senka strained to hang on while Chi Chi fought for a Saito Suplex. Chi Chi hit it but to no avail. Then when she tried to contain Senka with a headlock of her own, the strain was mirrored back the other direction. As time ticked down, Senka finally powered her over to hit a huge suplex, but the bell rang before she could full capitalize on it. 

The last minute of the match saw the two as truly mirrored images, two very different sides of what looked increasingly like the same coin. Chi Chi grabbed the mic post-match, spent, exhausted, and noted how disappointing and unsatisfying that was. Yet when Senka demanded more, Chi Chi slipped out of the ring and headed to the back. They traded insults one last time and our last image of the match was that of Senka rushing after her.

The world is a complicated place full of competing pressures. A wrestling ring has traditionally served  as a wonderful canvas on which to paint the clash of social and cultural differences. While on this night, the clash between these two primal forces proved woefully inconclusive, we were left with the promise of more battles to come. After all, the world simply isn't big enough for the two of them. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/17 - 8/23

ROH Death Before Dishonor 8/21/26

Daniel Garcia vs Adam Priest

MD: Throughout the history of pro wrestling criticism, there has always been a premium on what was done: what (hot) moves, what spots, what popped the crowd, hot finishing stretches with a lot of kickouts. And of course, the execution of those things. Did things hit clean? Were there botches? More often than not, it wasn’t about the impact those things had on the crowd, but instead a sort of “Russian Judge” approach like the reviewer was scoring Olympics Gymnastics. How much action did the match contain? How well did the wrestlers hit their floor routine? And maybe, just maybe, how much innovation/variation existed in that action? 

Rarely, if ever, was the actual narrative of the match discussed. How that action fit into an overall story was considered almost beyond the point and even sometimes something that got in the way. I’ve seen reviews that mentioned either the overarching story being told by the wrestlers or specific character beats and flourishes in their reactions as things that got in the way of the match, as opposed to being the heart of the match itself. In the eyes of these reviewers, they disrupted the possibilities for action within the match.

I’m not sure what drove this approach, whether it was a need to feel superior, a need to cope with inferiority complexes about wrestling, resentment towards wrestlers who leaned harder on story or character beats over action as if they were somehow lazier for doing so, or just personal preference, but it would be looking at a movie review and having them focus only on the special effects and stuntwork (or maybe just the cinematography if we’re being kind) instead of the writing, acting, or overall direction, let alone things like the art design or sound.

That is to say that you could watch this match and focus just on the action and big spots. In this match, it’d be Garcia shrugging Priest off the top when he went for a superplex, and Priest’s stalling superplex later. It would be the gimmicky figure-four leglock that went out of the ring and rolled up the ramp. It’d maybe be Priest’s pile driver. Or maybe you could hyper fixate on some of the technique, the scrambling early, some of the trading of holds down the stretch, some of the false finishes like the stretch where Garcia put his foot on Priest’s head or when Priest got the half crab on. And maybe you’d call it an ok match that couldn’t compare to the spotfests on the rest of the card.

But if you did this, you’d miss so much of what made this match stand out as special.

I care about that story. I care, maybe even more so, about the characters at play. Moves are great, but we’ve seen them all. Bumps. Spots. Sequences. Reversals. When something somehow manages to be innovative in 2026, it stands out because everything’s been done, but then it’s over and copied six times. It’s ephemeral. What’s timeless is the human aspect of pro wrestling. Who are these characters? What makes them interesting? How do we related to them? How does their character shape their actions and reactions? How do they interact with one another and the crowd?

Let’s map our way through this one a little. Work with me here a bit because I truly do believe this is a different way of tracking a pro wrestling match.

First, the setting. This is a ROH PPV, where they have time to breathe. No commercial breaks. No real time constraints. It’s in the midst of a very broad card with a tag team spotfest and a bomb-throwing title match, and two Pure Rules matches, and a Fight without Honor. It’s for an opportunity, an opportunity that neither man had, to enter the Continental Cup tournament in the Quarterfinals, face Claudio Castagnoli, and potentially go to Wembley. In both cases, it might be the only possible chance they’d have to get on the biggest card of the year. For Garcia, it’s a chance to prove himself against his fellow Death Riders, to show he belongs, to show he can hang, that he’s not just the most junior member. For Priest, it’s the best opportunity he’s had in his entire AEW/ROH TV run. Clear motivation driving both of them.

There is a way to watch wrestling where you focus on their creative emotional choices, their faces, their body language. Priest came down to the ring slapping hands. He shook Bryce’s hand. He shook Bobby Cruise’s hand. He moved with purpose, intensity, but played up the southern gentleman motif as well. Garcia was doing push ups with Marina, huddled with her, slunk down the ring with that chip on his shoulder, an undertone of mouthy petulance. The Code of Honor handshake is a wonderful way to immediately establish character and tone. Do they shake? Do they look their opponent in the eye? It sets the stage for the match. Here, the shake was clean, quick, brisk. It opened the door for the possibility of a clean Continental wrestling match, something which Mox always preached but never truly practiced. 

Of course, there is a third character at play in any wrestling match, the crowd. They began to chant for Priest. That’s something he’s still getting used to given that he menaces the indies, up and down, as one of the more hated men in America. On ROH TV, though, in front of this Philly crowd, he was the favorite, and he basked in it, hyping them up, maybe even pointing it out to Garcia. That poisoned already murky waters. They scrambled on the mat (the first lock up being another way to set the tone). Priest went for a snap suplex but couldn’t get it. Too close to the ropes. He maybe took a few seconds too long to break it and Garcia, boiling over already, maybe frustrated by the crowd, maybe frustrated by life itself and his lot in it, shoved Priest back angrily. 

Priest followed with a headlock. Garcia shrugged him off and ran through him, basking in the tiny triumph, the first in the match. They went running again and Garcia stopped before a Priest leapfrog and piefaced him with one hand. He continued to get in Priest’s face, shoving him back, taking up his air, asserting himself. So what did Priest do? He shrugged and kicked Garcia in the shin. Action. Reaction. Character.

The match was maybe two minutes in but the lines were clearly defined and compelling. Active, engaged characters acting with motivation and drive, reacting to one another and the crowd. This is what gives all of those spots and moves and innovation meaning and purpose. It underpins it all and makes it resonate. They were showing us exactly who they were and what made them interesting and worth caring about. They care so we care. 

From here, Garcia responded with aggravation, having an answer to every Priest shot. He overstretched though, wanting it too badly, already gotten to a bit, and found himself with his foot caught in the corner. That let Priest start to wear it down. The crowd went up for Priest again and that distracted him, allowing Garcia to fire back. Priest went low with a chop block to cut him off. 

Just like Priest was caught up with the crowd’s reaction, he was a bit ahead of himself overall. He went for the half crab too early then went for a superplex too early. Garcia shrugged him off to the mat, forcing his leg to jam on the way down. Now both men had damaged legs which would inform the rest of the match. Priest moved right in to reassert the advantage, but Garcia caught him in the ropes and dragon screwed the leg from the outside in. He then hopped to the floor to celebrate his small victory, jawing with the fans and getting right in their faces. Was it the smartest tactical move? No. Was it absolutely what Daniel Garcia would have done and part of what makes him so engaging? Absolutely. 

You can trace these trends through the rest of the match. Priest used the crowd to help him fire back up, refusing to quit or back down, Garcia resorting to a cheap throat shot to cut him off. Garcia got distracted mocking the crowd during his ten-count corner punch and Priest was able to take advantage of the space. Priest hit a series of nasty dragon screw leg whips which Garcia sold in a unique stalling way, but Adam got caught up as the crowd wanted just one more and that allowed Garcia to lock in a sleeper. Their mistakes are human mistakes. Their resilience is a very human resilience. The balance between the two is where the human interest in the match resides and the human interest is far better than any series of complex choreographed spots that exist for its own sake and to pop a crowd.

At one point, they found themselves at an impasse, each having grabbed the other’s leg, two men intertwined through fate and determination. That was even more true during that figure-four which rolled up the ramp. Part of it was spurred on by the shared legwork throughout the match, sure, but so much of it was sheer stubbornness, with neither wanting to be the first to find a way out, neither wanting to be the first to blink, to let the other see him blink, to let the crowd and the world see him blink.

Priest was infinitely resourceful. When Garcia (leaning hard into his Death Riders rearing) managed to beat him down, he always had one last trick to use. He’s not big to begin with. He’s used to fighting from underneath and he did so literally, tossing a knife-edged chop into Danny’s knee so he could hit the pile driver. Garcia survived it though, managed one last trip using a dropdown (the oldest trick in the book but one that almost never works, fitting that it did here), and locked in the Dragontamer for the win. Post-match, he limped through the crowd from whence he came, while Priest convalesced in pain and disappointment.

It was a hell of a match but it was a hell of a match as much (more so if you ask me, far moer so) for who they were and how they presented themselves as for any specific thing that they did. There’s not really been a critical tradition of us examining that in pro wrestling. If anything it’s been lumped into the category of “charisma,” but charisma, to me, is much more about a certain sort of over the top dynamism, and really, in a lot of ways, goes back to popping crowds instead of serving narratives. 

A narrative was served here, driven by character, by actions and reactions, and the prideful, tempestuous, driven, and all too human souls underneath. That’s what makes this one of the best AEW/ROH matches of the year and a quiet triumph. Interesting people doing interesting things in interesting ways to interesting effect. Motivation, character, consequence, where the action serves and is shaped by the narrative instead of forcing it, kicking and screaming, to drag breathlessly behind. That’s the ideal and they absolutely nailed it here. 

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Found Footage Friday: PRE-MUTA SCALE MUTO SCALE~! BUZZ~! NEW VS. NOW~! BIGELOW~! FUJINAMI~!

Buzz Sawyer vs. Keiji Muto NJPW 7/21/87

MD: This episode of NJPW TV wasn't in the usual sets over the years. It had fallen through the cracks. There's very, very little written about this match, for instance, and the match deserves to have a lot written about it. It's wild. I have some questions about this episode of TV actually. There are some hype pieces before the matches and I don't know if they were just clipped out of how I usually watched NJPW or if this was a different show but they are cool and of the times. Laser lights and noises as you see Buzz posing and stuff.

Muto was Space Lone Wolf here, coming out to Final Countdown. He was getting a push as the young guy in NOW but he really felt like an outlier here. His stuff was smoother and more theatrical than anyone else in the company. He didn't fit in against the UWF guys, for instance, but since he was the only guy like that, he stood out. Buzz, is, of course, way over the top here, funny faces, noises, whining, etc.

At first this is a normal match with Muto controlling the arm and Buzz hitting the floor and Muto hitting the handspring elbow in the corner. But then Buzz tosses Muto out and they end up sort of under the ring with Buzz biting him and obviously some big blading happens here, as they both comes up bloody. Buzz works the wound: headbutts, biting, a chairshot. Muto bites to break a hold and they slam each other's head into the mat. It's pretty glorious carnage by this point, exacerbated by Muto punching the wound in the corner and Buzz hitting a snap suplex on the floor. All the while, the blood masses all the more. Muto reverses a suplex. Buzz gets his power slam. Muto tries for a desperate roll up out of nowhere.

It builds and builds, but to what? It builds to Buzz getting knocked out of the ring. He staggers, stands, arms extended, welcoming, blood running down his face. I've never seen a man waiting for a dive quite like this. He invites it. He longs for it. He wants nothing more than for Muto to embrace his in this grisly bloodletting, for the two to become one there on the floor. He craves an escalation of the violence, an increase of the danger, for flesh to hit flesh and bone to crash against bone.

And Muto, Space Lone Wolf, a boy becoming a man before everyone's eyes, does not disappoint him. 

The match is shortly thereafter thrown out, a heap of bodies and blood, but what a ride while it happened.

ER: Buzz is no longer working as Mad Dog, here he is some kind of ill, demented, disease riddled dog. He's weepy, he's weird, he sometimes appears to be crying, he mainly appears to be unwell. It's a totally unique take on the unleashed monster gaijin. He's not out and swinging at a soul, he's like a rabid dog who goy sprayed by a skunk and he's just wandering around and sort of whimpering, effects of the rabies hitting his system hard. Every time the camera cuts to Muta in the ring, he's wearing an expression of concerned distrust, no clue what this diseased dog has in store.

As he works over Sawyer's arm, Sawyer howls and whimpers and you can see a version of this match that doesn't build to blood and stays Sawyer fighting through arm work and I can see an interesting match there...but it plays so much better as Muto using it as a way to restrain a large unpredictable animal before he breaks free from his restraints. I don't know if I've ever seen a scene like Buzz holding Muto on the floor of the gym for so long, biting at his head. It goes on long enough that it almost seems like the illusion is broken, as it always looks like a man holding a smaller man down solely for the purpose of gigging his head, but the longer it goes it dips into the wrestling illusion being broken and back into something Not Supposed To Be Happening. The more young boys swarm, the more it feels like this diseased animal had done something unpredictable even for him. When Muto comes up bloody, I admittedly expected there to be more, but I also don't think there are many instances of Muto bleeding before this. The truly shocking thing happens just after, when Muto gets his first chance to bite Buzz back, and it is truly disgusting. Muto digs the entirety of his full lower jaw of teeth into Sawyer's forehead, and when he pulls away Sawyer has so much dark crimson on his face and chest that I said aloud "Muto fucking bit him FOR REAL!?" 

Buzz Sawyer has this magical blood that behaves differently from any other bleeder I've seen. His blood is not free flowing. He tried several times, earlier in the match, to bust himself open by slamming his head into the railing, but he only ever got a stain. Now, cut open, his blood does not flow free but it flows in spurts, when attacked. I don't know if I've seen bleeding like this. He spurts blood after Muto bites him...then it stops. Until Muto rans him into the ringpost, and then a new batch gushes out all at once, repainting his body. It's fascinating. The whole things ends in a mess, Buzz staggering around to let everyone in the arena see the damage, Muto looking shell shocked. I love the use of Sawyer's signature bump, flying out backwards through the ropes from a dropkick, and I loved him simply standing up from the floor, arms raised. He flies through the ropes and rises from the depths like Michael Myers standing up after a shotgun blast, and Muto knows his only chance is to ignore rules and referees and just try to escape intact. 

Every new piece of Buzz Sawyer footage adds to his legacy, the type of person who we will likely never see in pro wrestling again. Shape, look, attitude, style. We're not getting any of that back. Celebrate this.  

 

Antonio Inoki/Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Masa Saito vs. Akira Maeda/Kengo Kimura/Nobuhiko Takada NJPW 7/21/87 

MD: This was right in the midst of the NOW vs NEW feud where instead of having, for instance, Choshu's Army come in and declare war on everyone, they positioned all the old guys (and Muto) against all the younger guys. Inoki, Fujiwara, and Saito were sort of the leaders of NOW. Maeda, Fujinami, and Choshu were the leaders of NEW. This meant that Inoki could be positioned against all of the other top stars and none of them could be positioned against each other. It was a real frustrating state of affairs that only lasted a couple of months even if it did make for at least a couple of fresh match ups. It also absolutely killed Kengo Kimura's momentum. He was one of the hottest acts of the year having turned on Fujinami (in a Choshu-esque way) at the start of the year and disappearing to "learn boxing". 

Regardless of how frustrating the overall feud was, just given the people involved here and the potential match-ups, this was going to be fun and heated. This wasn't a subtle feud either. The commentary more or less outright said as the NOW team came out that they were trying to protect their spots and they presented it as a battle between fathers and sons (or at least older and younger brothers).

We never got that satisfying Inoki vs Maeda singles match but it was always exciting to the crowds when they faced off in a setting like this. Even before getting the towel off, Inoki charged him here. But all of these match-ups were exciting. The fans wanted to see Fujiwara vs Takada after a year and a half of the two being on the same side. Saito vs Takada was fresh (and felt unlikely). Fujiwara vs Kimura was particularly chippy with Kimura using that boxing skill in the corner (and some slaps) and Fujiwara fighting out. And Inoki vs Maeda when they finally faced off? Well Inoki was a genius in framing it. He took a tag from Saito and time just stopped with a huge pop. Takada was in the ring and he saw Inoki poised to enter and tagged in Maeda, and the place went nuts. It was a minute of awesome scrapping with a rolling kick and the spin wheel kick and headbutts and a half hatch suplex and Inoki scrambling his way to an advantage and Maeda jamming it. Just what you'd want until Inoki made the tag.

But even that was okay because the tag was to Fujiwara so now the crowd got THAT match up. That's the way a match like this worked. Fujiwara did get swept under, and I've seen enough of these, that for him to be the one to take so much offense in the match and work from underneath, well, I knew the ending midway through this bit of heat. It was chaotic enough but he was going to get the armbar on out of nowhere, and he did. All of this did feel larger than life. The feud was a failure but not necessarily because the action wasn't good or fans didn't like specific match ups. It's just that it didn't give them everything they wanted most. 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Bam Bam Bigelow 7/21/87

MD: This is usually a solid match up, but maybe not as fun as Bigelow vs Choshu, for instance. They'd wrestle a notorious 3-match series in early 1989 which was about making Fujinami as champion look as dominant as possible as he was teaming with Inoki and Choshu, wherein he won all three matches. 

This was well before that. It's sub-five minutes but I think we get most of it. Bigelow (who came out with a chair threatening the crowd effectively) dominated to start, just clubbering and power moves. I wouldn't say that it was the best clubbering in the world, but it worked. Fujinami came back by ducking a clothesline and leapfrogging Bigelow but then he crashed into Shibata's dad who was reffing. I can only assume he was supposed to crash into him right after the leapfrog which would have been a great visual, but instead, he came up short and had to clothesline him by accident, which came off as pretty funny. Bigelow used this to get a chair and smack Fujinami. He went for a top rope splash with the chair (with Japanese letters on it) on Fujinami, but Fujinami rolled. I'm sure he was supposed to get all the way out of the way but instead he ended up tripping Bigelow on the way down, which was another great visual, this one made better by the miscue. 

If it went to a finish right after that, this would have actually been very effective and one of the better sub-five minute matches I've seen in a while. Instead, Fujinami threw an enziguiri but then Bigelow went out and eventually over the rail for the DQ instead. Ah well. 

ER: This was like going into an ice cream shop intending to buy a scoop, but getting enticed by the different flavors on display, getting a few different tasty samples on those little wooden spoons...and then you realize the samples scratched that sweet itch and you back out of buying a scoop, annoying every employee in the shop. It's over before it really begins, but contains several moments of intrigue, most of them from the young red singleted Bigelow. You expect a couple big bumps, and get them. Toward the end of the match he ocean crashes over the top to the floor off a dropkick, then takes a faster and even cooler version of that bump going over a guardrail. While I wasn't sure which type of big bumps we'd get, I was expecting them. The neatest things were the things I wasn't expecting. Bigelow had an almost fistdrop turned into a single hand choke. I've never seen Bam Bam do a fistdrop, and this was not intended to be one, but it very clearly was one, just with different intentions. Then a huge missed splash off the top, that turned into a much weirder and cooler and bizarre looking moment. Bigelow had set a chair over Fujinami before going up top, but Fujinami rolled out the way of the splash a bit late. What this wound up doing was causing a fluke log roll effect, where Bigelow was going to splash flat on the chair, but instead his ankles caught Fujinami mid-roll and it whipped Bigelow into a face plant on the chair. A much worse bump than was planned, but much cooler in an unintentional cool accident way. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Matsumoto! Yu! Chigusa! Lioness! (But not the Crush Gals!)

Volume 4  

9. Saipan Training

K: I liked the little bit in this where Devil is making her minions all run up the hill and Matsumoto is way slower than the rest and she gets a little whack on the backside for it. Villain origin story in the making there. 

MD: This was a fun contrast between Jaguar just practicing holds and the Devil Legion running through the woods and doing crash push ups on tree branches. They made a special point that the Legion was trying to uncover the secret of Jaguar’s speed and that Yu and Tarantula still wore their masks despite the heat. 

10. Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka vs. Kaoru Matsumoto & Masked Yu 4/11/83

K: I think it’d be nice for someone to watch this set with zero knowledge of where things are going, and I know for some people that’s close to being true. But someone watching this without knowing that the team of “Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka” are the Crush Gals is probably pushing it. But for historical accuracy’s sake, these are not the Crush Gals. They wouldn’t get that name and become a regular team until later in the year. This is just another  inconsequential two random babyfaces vs. two random heels tag amongst many that happened on AJW TV most weeks to fill time. But yes of course this becomes interesting with the benefit of hindsight quite quickly, especially when in less than two years these exact teams will be having some of the most heated matches in wrestling history (which I doubt anyone would have thought possible at this point). 

So with that in mind, this is also a peak into the low-card. Matsumoto & Yu ambush the babyfaces to start but with a twist, they grab them by the ankles from the floor and pull them outside. You don’t see them coming from the camera angle, so it’s an elevated bit of chaos compared to the usual ambush when both teams are in the ring.

Chigusa is very worked up. She’s shouting and pointing at the heels, making herself, her emotions and feisty attitude the centre of attention. When she gets in the ring she quickly succumbs to Kaoru’s repeated lariats, which she hits with a very smug demeanour. I think this was the most noteworthy part of the match without looking ahead. After this, the strange thing is how little this looks like their future matches. You even see what looks like a classic spot, like the Irish Whip into a double strike, but instead of doing the signature Crush Gals pose & punch we just got a (missed) double dropkick. It feels like these two becoming a tag team was an idea, but they have absolutely nothing else figured out other than a little fun match.

**

MD: Got to think this was included because it’s the earliest Crush Gals footage we have as a team. It’s sub-ten minutes and while it has its moments, I’m not sure there’s all that much to it. Chigusa and Asuka come out without any sort of unifying theme but they do come out together. Then they get yanked out of the ring by surprise as Matsumoto and Yu had been lying in wait. It was a great visual actually. 

They’re all coming along really. Matsumoto has these nice thudding clotheslines. Chigusa sells as viscerally as you’d expect. Asuka is a dynamo on the initial hope spot/teased comeback and Chigusa has all of the added intensity from earlier this year with her karate shots. Finishing stretch was good with Yu and Matsumoto hitting a fun double belly crush until they crashed into into each other. Asuka and Chigusa hit this great belly to back/top rope back elbow combo but got jammed on a double dropkick as Matsumoto held Yu on the ropes. Then the Legion pretty much won clean on a canadian backbreaker by Yu while Matsumoto cut off Asuka. Post match, Asuka and Chigusa were upset and thrashed the ref but best I can tell, they didn’t really have a case. Not an auspicious start for the Crush Gals (which is fair as it wasn't a start at all) but there was something there, I think.

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I Just Wasn't Made for These Times (AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/10 - 8/16)

AEW Dynamite 8/12/26

Kevin Knight vs (Chris) Jericho 

When I was a kid, my favorite band was the Beach Boys. Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m old, but I’m not THAT old. My parents are though, and I am old enough that when you were in a car, you listened to the radio. They controlled the radio and listened to Oldies 103.3 so that’s what I heard. 

I have no idea why I gravitated towards the Beach Boys in particular. We were in Massachusetts far from any sort of surfing scene. I’m pretty tone deaf so I couldn’t exactly appreciate layered harmonies. Maybe they were just fun to sing to despite that. Get Around is 2 minutes and 12 seconds and it’s perfect for a kid. 

I had Pet Sounds on cassette too though I don’t think I fully appreciated it until I got older. Nor did I understand Brian Wilson’s struggles until I was older. I probably had a few chances to see various forms of the band over the years, but I never went for it. It just always seemed off or wrong for reasons one might imagine (many of which having to do with Mike Love). 

Still, one of the better birthday presents I’ve gotten in my life is when my wife arranged for us to see Wilson (aged 74) with a few remaining band members and associates perform the album in Atlantic City in 2016. 

Almost everyone there seemed to be my parents’ age and they blissfully bobbed their heads and sang along, happy and oblivious, but I just couldn’t look away from Wilson. I’d never had a concert experience quite like this. He’d lived a hard life, one full of many different forms of abuse, and one might question the motivation for him to even be on the stage at that point, even if, very likely, it was more earnest than previous tours. 

But when he performed, there was every sense that he wanted to hit the notes, that he wanted to sing loud and be proud of what he had created in front of an audience that wanted to hear it. Founding guitarist Al Jardine was with him, and it was Jardine’s son who ended up doing most of the heavy lifting on vocals, Wilson cutting out at points of almost every song. He just couldn’t hit the notes, couldn’t sustain. 

But yet he always came back, trying, striving. It felt more like an athlete pushing himself down the stretch than a singer playing the hits. It should have, perhaps, been sad and maybe for some there actually paying attention it was, but there was something undeniably valiant about it. The effort somehow transcended the result and it left me uncomfortable in some ways, but moved in others.

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Chris Jericho was my favorite wrestler in my later teenage years. I had come back to wrestling after a few years away during the back half of the Monday Night Wars. A scrawny kid growing up, I had loved the idea of WCW and GWF’s light heavyweight divisions (though maybe not the execution), so it was great to see a Cruiserweight division flourishing. As a scrawny kid, I was a bit of a smartass too, so to see Jericho out there, utilizing clever bits and scenarios at every turn (even if he often was made the fool in them), well, that was great to see too. 

The only official wrestling shirt I ever bought was a Y2J one (having missed my chance at a Monday Night Jericho one). That’s how big a fan I was. In-ring, he played a cruiseweight bully well, doing moves that he’d have a harder time doing against bigger opponents and he was well protected through that year. Having some great opponents didn’t hurt. 

As I got older, I don’t think his work resonated with me quite as much. I appreciated his penchant for adapting and refreshing his act, but what I got the most enjoyment out of was his Bockwinkel-esque turn in the late 00s (even if I hadn’t fully learned to love Bock yet) and the bits with the List a few years later, not necessarily what he did in ring. I think he had a very strong 2022 though. I’ll stand by the Kingston match, for instance.

He was always a very self-aware worker in some ways, prone to building to spots that he knew would have a big impact, but he was online enough to react with thin skin if they perhaps did not get quite the credit that he thought they deserved.

Moreover, he always had a bigger eye than stomach when it came to his own athleticism. He couldn’t always quite do what he wanted, but he’d go for it nonetheless. On some level, that’s admirable. On another level, it leaves someone with a broken arm after trying and failing to hit a shooting star press or, to a lesser extent, with a match which may have worked out better in his head than on the screen.

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I’m not sure there was as important an “event” for me when it comes to pro wrestling in the last fifteen years than the Houston Footage ending up on NWA On Demand. That’s what really took me down another rabbit hole of seeking out lost footage (we cover new matches every week with New/Found Friday and have for years and years now). It was amazing to see 80s arena footage that no one had seen since it first happened in great quality with interesting and varied talents. 

Of all those talents, maybe none made quite the impression as Jose Lothario. He was a figure most of us only knew from his ill-fated WWF run as Shawn’s trainer. To see him even in the back third of his active in-ring career was eye-opening, however. He was “Supersock,” with one of the best worked punches in history and had such a special connection with the crowd. On his comebacks, he’d be able to hold court in the center of the ring, have his opponent create the motion for him, and through his perfect timing, execution, and performative instincts, he’d make the crowd go wild. 

It was one of the most impressive things I’d ever seen because he was able to do so, so much with so, so little and have it feel more gripping and immersive than what most people are able to do with ten times more. If you were to watch late 2010s Jerry Lawler, he was able to do much of the same, though with a few more tricks, bells, and whistles. In both cases, it was a blueprint for how to age not just gracefully but greatly as a pro wrestler.

Likewise, we’ve spent the last couple of years watching Blue Panther do his thing. The highlight reels will show you the dives, and given his age, the dives are impressive, but it’s how he hypes the crowd up and frames them that makes them work even more than the idea of a 65 year old actually hitting them. So much of what makes Blue Panther stand out as special is his crowd control, not the moments that make it into the gifs. 

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Which brings us to Jericho. No Chris. Just Jericho. I have no idea what he’s doing with this run, except for that he wants to wrestle new people and in new ways. Maybe he’s running out the clock on injury time. Maybe he wants to make sure to keep himself relevant in case he wants to jump. Maybe he just can’t give up the ghost. 

We’re past the self-aware Jericho Vortex stuff. He got what heat he could out of it. I’ve been under the opinion for a while that he should be transitioning into Paul Jones, more of a manager who occasionally wrestles than a wrestler himself, ideally positioned against a Jimmy Valiant type figure (Mark Briscoe or Eddie Kingston for instance?) but I assure you (Chris) Jericho doesn’t care what I think. I absolutely believe the ROH Title feud with Bandido would have served everyone better if Jericho was managing a monster Big Bill for it. But then again, Bill’s gone, so who knows.

But, if he’s not going to do that, then he should lean harder into his charisma and follow Jose Lothario’s lesson. He should be wrestling people who can create the motion for him. He can follow Blue Panther’s lesson too. He can hit those few big spots, but only properly built to and when they’ll mean the most, and maybe leaning more on the anticipation than the actual payoff. 

And on paper, there’s been some of that. His first feud was with Ricochet, someone perfect to create motion for him. But he still felt the need to do more than his share (and to carry more of the load than was advisable), and they turned a quite good twelve minute match into a very dubious nineteen minute one. 

It’s interesting to think why he’s not adapting. It follows a career-long trend of overestimating his own physical abilities, sure, but I think it’s more about incentives than anything else. He could have a far better match that would be far simpler where his opponent created the motion and he created the emotion, and not only would he not be rewarded for it, even if it got over with the crowd, he’d probably be actively punished for it in certain critical circles. And at this stage of his career, he literally cannot afford to be punished. Instead, so long as he does enough stuff, and contributes enough stuff of his own, no matter how well it hits, he’s going to be more rewarded for that.

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Which, finally, leads us to the Kevin Knight TNT Title match on Dynamite.

A match he was rewarded for, not by conventional wisdom which was instantaneously frustrated by it, but by instead the unconventional wise man that matters more to the people that matter most.

There were things about the match that clearly worked. One tricky part about having a heel opponent that creates motion is that the fans may decide to back them. Jericho is, of course, a pro at playing to the crowd and continuously fighting back so they have reasons to root for him, but Knight did his best to keep himself reviled. He ambushed to start. On the floor, when he took over, he mocked Paul Wight who was on commentary with the Big Show hand raise. Callis snuck in a cheap shot when the ref was distracted. On a backslide, Knight used his athleticism not to further the hold but to reach blatantly to the rope for leverage with his foot. They went out of their way to draw clear lines.

But then, there was Jericho’s awkward dive to the floor. There was, of course, the baffling spot with Callis interfering during the Walls. There was Knight’s need to cheat not just early on to establish roles or later to control, but on the finish, when really, the damage had already been done and Jericho, who doesn’t need to be protected like this anyway, had already been protected.

But most of all, the image that will stick with me, the reason why I brought up Brian Wilson in the first place, were those ten count punches. Jericho straddled Knight on the top rope. His legs were splayed oddly, not without reason as we would soon see, but to bizarre visual effect. He hung on to Knight with one hand as he threw the strangest worked punches, coming in at totally askew angles, creating an illusion of connecting right up until they didn’t, which was far too soon. It was all to set up the top rope rana (for he apparently would not be able to get his legs where they needed to be otherwise), which hit clean, but in the meantime, we were left with the image of a man who was not punishing an opponent, but instead seemed afraid.

Afraid of falling, afraid of aging, afraid of irrelevance, afraid of being undervalued, afraid of one critic and every critic, afraid of not living up to his own self-image, unable to work himself and unwilling to do what it took to work everyone else, so all that was left was embracing the real, athletic elements of pro wrestling that his body could no longer manage.

Jericho, this amazingly self-aware, incredibly delusional wrestler, who has somehow spent an entire career balancing those two impulses to incredible and frankly, unbelievable, success, could likely find one last grasp at it were he to admit who he was now, admit what he was, and lean hard into it. He made me feel something as he perched up on that top rope. He could spend a whole match making a crowd feel that and come out, once again, against all odds, on top. 

But it would be admitting a vulnerability that he could never come back from. It would be his greatest strength, his last great strength, one that he might even be able to carry for years, carny that he is, but one that would never let him be the in-ring rock star that he’s seen himself as. God only knows what he could accomplish if he could admit it and embrace it.

But he can’t, and so he won’t. So instead, we have this, a wrestler trapped in a purgatory of his own making and forcing us all along for the ride. And as I watch it, I do not see something valiant and inspirational as I did that day in Atlantic City ten years ago. Mostly? Mostly, I just feel sad.
 

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