Tuesdays with Daddy: Week 9: w/Sayama vs. Stuart/Vladimir

Week 9

Big Daddy/Sammy Lee (Sayama) vs. Mal Stuart/Grand Vladimir 1/24/81

MD: Time for a tag with Sayama, and against our old friend from the French and German footage, Grand Vladimir. Stuart had a bit of a Matt Lucas thing going on. This is an electric scene. Daddy, clad in gold, hat on head, comes out not just with Sammy dressed like Bruce Lee in the yellow tracksuit, but with the 21st Wolverhampton Boys Brigade Marching Band. The crowd was singing before he made it out. Once he does, he kisses old ladies with canes, shakes women’s hands, gives thumbs up to young men, hugs children, kisses a baby, the whole nine yards. It’s amazing. It’s surreal. He doesn’t have quite the same personal interaction with the fans a couple of years later, not like this, not from what I’ve seen, but here it’s very giving and very engaging. Everyone gets to feel like they’re part of this movement, like they’re seen, like they’re moving together in one direction. It has that small town Portland type feel to it but still seems larger than life. You have to imagine this was more what it was like when Andre came to Portland, but Daddy was one of their own; maybe instead like when Piper came back to Portland later on in the 80s after he became a national star. 

Daddy was more aggressive than usual to start. I’m blaming it on Vlad being billed as a Frenchman maybe. He’s very active. He’s moving around the ring, antsy, ready to lock up. When they break, he slaps his chest and comes right back in for more. He’s giving the crowd something to latch on to, something to believe in. He sticks his chest out to absorb Vlad’s blows and downs him with one of his own. This time, when he gets in a top wristlock, he slams him right down. There would be peril but it would be on Sammy later. This was pure shine.

And of course, Sammy gets to shine too. Kicks from angles you wouldn’t expect, both in general and to get out of holds like a full nelson. He turned a Stuart shin breaker into a sunset flip. And yes, he locked on the headlock and did the hyper-rotation into a toehold. Daddy’s reactions here are great. He knew what he had in this partner and he was happy to share the spotlight. He gawked along at first and then after Sayama rides Mal and after he returns a cheapshot with a series of karate strikes and his step off backflip in the corner, Daddy leads the crowd in a big clapping cheer for Sayama. All rise together.

After that came the danger. Stuart got a headlock and another cheapshot. He moved Sayama to the ropes so Vlad could get a piece. Daddy burst into the ring and complained. Again, I don’t see him doing that part of the act quite as much a few years later as he does here, earlier on, but it was incredibly effective. He cares, so the fans care, even if it means he might get a public warning. Here, he didn’t draw that, but he did draw a woman out of the crowd to rush up to ringside and complain too. That’s such a key to his act. He is engaged. He’s not coasting. There’s not workrate involved necessarily, but there is working, and he is working with every opportunity he gets.

Vlad came in and put on the cobra clutch. Not sure if it was an illegal hold or if Sammy went out and the ref wanted to end the fall, but Vlad refused to let go. Regardless, he got a second public warning and Daddy came charging in again. Vlad ended up arguing with the ref which let Sayama crawl to the tag. Vlad turned around to eat a slam and a splash to end the fall. Second fall had Daddy run across the ring with an awesome punch on Vlad (it looked great truly), and then toss Stuart groin first to the turnbuckle. Sammy came in with dropkicks and a tilt a whirl and Daddy was quick to rush to congratulate him and raise his hand while people around ringside slapped the mat.

Pretty effective stuff overall, with Daddy a bit more driven and angry from the get go here. Then he didn't just sit back and let Sayama shine but he really leaned into putting Sayama over in his own way. He’s been engaged in all of the footage I’ve seen so far, but the 79-82 stuff maybe has him just a bit more engaged in how he interacts with the fans and bursts into the ring and it does help things, though the fans do seem hot for him all the way to the end.

ER: So this is far and away the best Big Daddy match we've written about. It's the most complete match, and it has the most Normal Match ebb and flow, as in it feels like an actual tag match and not entirely a Big Daddy match. I don't intend to say that the best Big Daddy match is also the match least like a Big Daddy match, even thought that's not untrue. It has the most variety of Daddy spots and an actual build in Big Daddy's aggression and attack. The fans actually seemed honest to god worried about Le Grand Vladimir. A woman attacks Vlad in this match, which is the kind of fan aggression we have never seen before at a Big Daddy event. The whole thing is a scene, the kind of match that would have been on the DVDVR 80s England set if we had done one of those (did we do one of those in the years I've foolishly spent away from message boards?) and finished in the bottom 25%, but everyone would have been really excited that a Daddy match made the set. I always got excited for the guys who only showed up in one or two matches on an 80s set. The Memphis set was better for having a couple Nightmare Freddy matches on it, even though I'm sure there was a Dream Machine match that could have finished last instead. People would love seeing Bog Daddy teaming with a wrestling Hall of Famer who he couldn't have physically less in common with. 

This is simple, well crafted, crowd pleasing wrestling. People hated Vladimir, a wrestler I don't think I'd even heard about until we started writing about German wrestling from my birth year. They hated Vlad so much that this might be the mythical concern for Daddy's losing that Matt has been seeking. Daddy is still never in trouble, but the match appears to be in trouble enough for Daddy to come in and start throwing elbows. Sayama shows up in a fed where all the wrestlers move differently than any other wrestling in the world, and delights the crowd on sight by moving differently than any other wrestler anywhere in the world. Vladimir actually chokes Sayama OUT and walks away from his body cold. It led to an incredible camera moment, as we're in tight on Vlad as he may have just murdered a foreigner, and we cut back to a wide shot in time to see Daddy in frame elbowing the life out of Vlad. Daddy hits him with the first big standing splash that actually looked like he wanted to hurt someone. This was an aggressive Daddy match, an exciting Sayama match, an incredible Heel Vlad match, and Mal Stuart flies balls first into a turnbuckle. That's on the set. Everyone should watch this.  

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 10/26 - 11/1

AEW Collision 10/31/26

Adam Priest vs Konosuke Takeshita

MD: On paper this was a cold match. That's actually rare for AEW, despite what the grifters will tell you. Almost always, if someone's on TV, it's either stems from something that happened or is meant to heat them up for a match/program right around the corner. In general almost everything is coming from somewhere or going somewhere.

Of course, it's okay if it doesn't (and maybe Takeshita ends up on Full Gear out of nowhere, but it's ok if he doesn't). Wrestling for the sake of wrestling is lovely, a joy, and there are pieces that can be set up that pay off down the line. You put a star in front of a crowd and let them be a star and it can be of its own use. AEW is a matchmaker's promotion. It just is. It's just that people search for anything to cling onto with their complaining (which then blurs the actual issues). 

This was also a taped Collision (and fairly deep into the taping) that was going to air on a very rare Saturday night Halloween (next one will be 2037). I was out with the kids or just getting back. We never, ever talk about ratings here, but it's probably going to score a low one. No one's fault. It's here for the people who go back for it though. Once something makes tape, it's always out there for you to find. 

And we've gone over this before, but just because something doesn't have plot on the way in or out doesn't mean there isn't story either. There is intrinsic story. 

Takeshita has not had a good few months in character. He lost the International title in August, wasn't able to reclaim it at All In, didn't repeat his previous G1 success, and while he qualified for Clockwork Carnage, he was eliminated before the scoring round.

Giving him a well earned win against a game opponent is only ever a good thing. As a character, he wanted and needed a win.

Adam Priest was punching above his weight class, literally, but as a character (and a wrestler) he knows every match is an opportunity. 

He's a remarkable pro wrestler. In a lot of ways, I think pro wrestling is almost more biased against heavyweights in 2026, as crazy as that sounds, but even despite that, Priest is a guy who doesn't necessarily pass the airport test. That means he needs to be better than everyone around him to even place and have a spot. It means he has to work twice as hard. It means he has to wrestle twice as smart. It means he has to do literally everything right just to prove he belongs there. It's not fair but pro wrestling isn't fair no matter how much some people want it to be. 

It's a damn good thing he's capable of all that and more then. 

Takeshita is, on the other hand, a natural talent, a natural star. He's larger than life, endlessly dynamic. He towers over many of his opponents, powerful and lithe, agile and spirted. When it comes to physicality, he's a modern day Barry Windham who you would believe could just roll out of bed and work sixty minutes. In-ring, he's very opponent dependent. The wrong opponent will bring out his worst maximalist instincts and preferences (people will pop anyway but a pop isn't everything, believe it or not, and some don't; that's fine as I doubt most of those people made it to this paragraph anyway). The right opponent will have endless opportunities to create magic. 

Adam Priest, even in an 8 minute TV match, was the right opponent. 

Story starts with character and attributes and those were fairly clear. It was basically this. How was Priest going to try to solve the problem of Takeshita and how would Takeshita respond?

Almost immediately, Priest dove at him with a trip attempt on a drop down, but Takeshita isn't a normal opponent and he was able to bound over. He asserted himself, took control, but Priest refused to simply give him anything. Almost any other opponent would go with a whip, maybe helpless not to, maybe not wanting to use up energy when there was a chance for opportunity off the ropes. Not Priest, he jammed the Irish Whip and came back at Takeshita. He hit under the arm, went high and low and high again. He landed a dropkick and got Takeshita to the floor. He broke the count and then came in with a low shot to the gut. The problem was he had to keep on Konosuke and all it took was one sidestep and one shot to turn things around. In this case, it was a DDT.

A funny thing happened back in the ring though. The fans started to clap up Priest. Takeshita is charismatic. He jumps off the screen. He reaches the back row with his mannerisms and offense. But Priest, despite being maybe the most natural heel of the decade on the indies, is undeniable in his effort. He kept coming, kept trying, kept fighting, and even though St. Louis is real far from Alabama, he struck a chord with the people through his efforts. They got behind him. He clenched his fist in a chinlock and worked his way up. 

He tried a dragonscrew in the ropes, but Takeshita was too much. So he adapted, bending the leg over the other way and dropkicking it. That changed everything. Now it became about Priest being laser focused on getting his half crab. Takeshita was still able to utilize power and momentum to get him up, but once he got him up, the knee buckled and he couldn't put him down. Priest escaped by the skin of his teeth again and again, getting opportunities, capitalizing on them, but just not able to put Takeshita down.

And you have to put Takeshita down, because damaged leg (and strong, emotive selling) or no, there's just too much fight fueling too big an engine. He's portrayed as the ultimate hybrid mix of power, intensity, and skill, and these things catalyze one another. Priest survived a comeback flurry to manage a clutch, desperate backslide, but Takeshita rolled through it and landed a knee. Maybe he needed to pull Priest into the Raging Fire. Maybe his knee was hurt enough that he couldn't do it without that extra bit of motion and momentum, but Priest, by that point, was already out on his feet. Maybe he would have been able to kick out like he had for the Blue Thunder Bomb, because damn it if there wasn't plenty of spirit in Priest too, but maybe too, for Takeshita, it was a matter of pride. He had been wounded and he would show Priest, the crowd, the world, that he could fight through that and win on his own terms. 

Regardless, win he did, but in a way where both wrestlers probably came out stronger, and where Priest could rest easy knowing that despite it all, the crowd has gotten behind him in the end. To me, that's more important than any airport test. It's proof right before our eyes. 

So a cold match? Maybe, but it was one with a strong enough story to heat up not just both wrestlers but the crowd as well.

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Found Footage Friday: YOKOZUNA 2000~! DOOGAN~! FANTASTICS~! BROWN SUGAR~! DOC~! GILBERT~! DIBIASE~! HERCULES~!

Eddie Gilbert/Ricky Morton vs. Stan Lane/Sweet Brown Sugar Memphis 1981 

MD: I have no idea how we didn't have this already but we didn't have this already. Gilbert and Morton. This has to be fall of 81. It's an expiration of time match where the team that gets the most falls wins, which is a great gimmick for TV, though it may not work today in a world where they stay with matches until they're over, I guess. 

What surprised me a bit is how they didn't go wild with the gimmick actually. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Both sides worked so hard to prevent pinfalls, maybe even more so than usual. We only get the first two falls of this but that's over 20 minutes of very good stuff. Lane fed and stooged like a champ. Then Koko would come in and do something awesome that made him look like one of the best wrestlers in the world. He had one up and over into a dropkick followed by a confident swagger that was picture perfect. Later on he'd hit an Alabama Jam that was not perfect but that was still pretty wild nonetheless. These are puzzle pieces (and you could put Gibson or Eaton or Rich or a lot of the other usual suspects int here and it'd all just work) and they fit together nicely. Morton's stuff was more majestic and sweeping than Gilbert's but he wasn't at all out of place with armdrags and what have you.

After a lot of escalation and saves, Morton lost the first fall by stumbling on rope running which let Lane get the better of him. After Gilbert worked face in peril in the second fall and they got a hot tag, Moton put his head down (it felt like a callback) but he caught the foot and forced them to toss him over the top for the DQ. That's where the segment ends though. Without a finish, it becomes wrestling for wrestling's sake, but the wrestling is very good so I'm not going to complain.

ER: When I saw we were writing about this match, I immediately recognized this exact pairing from the DVDVR 80s Memphis set. Is this the same match? Loss and Bix apparently don't think so, and I last watched that match a few times when we were actually doing that set (so basically 20 years ago?). It feels odd there would be a different match with very similar stips, that aired on television (since we had all the television I believe), but if this match has been out of circulation for that long then it's well worth talking about here, if only to discuss the full thick swept back non-canon head of hair on Ricky. Ricky looks like a Nashville session bassist while Eddie Gilbert looks like a 14 year old who hit his growth spurt before his classmates. 

Everything in the match was class, with a slow start that kept ramping up pace, every basic exchange looking rock solid. It's that sturdy base that hooks me in and rewards the viewer once they build to bigger spots, like Koko's top rope fistdrop he drills square from 3/4 across the ring (his Alabama Jam is an illusion that looks great...until you realize we saw it from the camera angle that reveals it actually missed Eddie Gilbert completely). The SMILE on Koko's face after crushing that fistdrop brought a smile just as wide to my face. Stan Lane had a fine handle on cutting off Gilbert, loved his hooking kicks that nobody else was throwing in 1981. Even in Japan you were just barely seeing juniors throwing sweeping high kicks so seeing Sweet Stan kick Gilbert across the face on a Saturday morning must have been a trip. When it turns into a punch out between Koko and Gilbert, they are better punches than you will see anywhere in wrestling. In Memphis, maybe they were top 10 on the roster, it's tough when there are 30 great punchers. But damn these were great. Koko rears back and punches Gilbert straight in the teeth, Gilbert throws a beaut dropping down to a knee, there are at least six that made me skip back and watch again. 

The studio crowd, as always, made this special, as it's the perfect mix of kids, women, black people, and old people. You get women's screams for Eddie and Ricky, but also tiny kid screams at everything that happens, an energy that is incomparable. Was it the punches that got us all to fall in love with Memphis, or was it the punches scored to a chorus of the best kinds of wrestling fans who also wanted to see those punches? Yes. 

Hacksaw Jim Duggan/Fantastics vs. Ted Dibiase/Dr. Death Steve Williams/Hercules Hernandez Mid-South 10/28/84

MD: New house show Mid-South popping up is a gift. We will take it. Nice tease at the start here as Duggan and Dibiase do a little rope running, but Ted stops as Jim's about to slug him and takes a powder instead. Then he tags Doc right in. Just a tease. Duggan was electric here, throwing punches hitting a cross body, hyping the crowd, waving his fists, high fiving the Fantastics. He had a shoulder block war with Hercules ending in an atomic drop that took out all the heels at once, which led to crazy brawling and more atomic drops. Then the Fantastics came in and clowned Herc and Doc for a while. Fans loved every second of it.

Doc took over with a hairpull on Fulton and then a pretty nice punch for his experience level. Fans hated that. Good face-in-peril with Fulton working up from lots of holds only to get taken out by the numbers game. Finish was a little weird as Duggan finally has enough and charges in and in the chaos that follows Rogers gets cheapshotted by Doc and pinned by Herc. They never actually got to the hot tag though. I see this as cosmic justice for the babyfaces swarming like they did. Past that (and even with it) this was a lot of fun.

ER: I assume this was filmed professionally by a ringside camera, for purposes of having footage to show a highlight of on television. We get the full complete match, filmed in a way that feels like we're among the people. This is the ideal way to experience wrestling. Being surrounded by a hot crowd with no commentary keeping us from what the people want to see and feel. A lively environment where you can see 20 minutes of essentially punching and hope spots a couple well-timed flash pins, and the only noise you hear is the thrilling screams of the witnesses. I'm happy we got an opening shot down the entrance aisle, setting the scene by showing a woman there with her three (four, five?) children who all appear to be under the age of five. One of them was a baby and one of them looked exactly like me when I was three, in the exact same year I was three. My mother took me to see Sesame Street Live when I was a couple years older, but they kept the existence of live pro wrestling in our area a secret from me. This Louisiana boy was watching Ted Dibiase fistdrops without being able to even describe what it was he was seeing. 

This is the easiest kind of wrestling to feast on for 20 minutes. The action is constant and the energy is omnipresent. Jim Duggan is a force, a babyface god who looks like the most standing tall fighting hero. the Fantastics are undersized men in with linebackers and play their roles to the letter, everything they manage to hit is fought for, properly sold, and delivered craftily. The people understand the simple stories being told, the learned behaviors. When Bobby Fulton gets tossed high with a back body drop, it's the cleanest story in the world to witness Dibiase drop his head for another, only for Bobby to pull off a lightning fast dramatic 2 count on an inside cradle. They all understand the value of not hitting everything perfectly clean, because a bit of messiness makes wrestling better. Bobby Fulton shouldn't be hitting clean crossbody blocks on Dr. Death, he should throw his weight at him and fall onto him in a heap. Every step of the match is an exercise in that pure wrestling logic. There isn't anything you could even call a true highspot - even thought we all know a leather gloved hand fistdrop is the highest highspot I could personally witness - but the energy everyone commanded made this feel like there was a constant whirl of action. Matt called this a gift, just another Found Footage Friday find that I couldn't picture being a let down in any way. Just another electric performance from babyface god Jim Duggan. 

Brian Lee vs. Yokozuna Lynn, MA 5/2000

MD: So when two things drop out of mid-air everyone goes looking. Sometimes, this is what we find. Maybe it was out there. It was definitely new to me. Lynn in May 2000 was actually very achievable for me to go and see in college and I am not 100% sure why I didn't. I think maybe this promotion was just not on my radar. It's not like the result is on cagematch either, so it wasn't on anyone's radar. 

Brian Lee is more or less in his Undertaker Cosplay here. He's billed as Brian Lee but does the uppercut and moves a bit like Taker. Yokozuna is in black casual gear, as huge as he'd ever be. It's not like we have a ton of 2000 Yoko. He was sort of in Stone Cold mode, jawing angrily on the mic as a tough babyface, the whole sumo thing thrown away. 

What's fascinating here is what he still does and what he doesn't. A lot of it is just him controlling the center with Lee creating motion. That means huge shots and headbutts and recoiling this way and that depending on who's throwing, sure. But he also throws everything into a clothesline or even takes one. He hits the Samoan Drop which never looked bigger. If this was 1980 instead of 2000, he, in this exact form, would actually have been a huge attraction. He could come into territories as a special enforcer/tag team partner, could do enough to be entirely credible/dangerous, and had presence. 

A couple of guys run in here (one is Candido-ish in appearance) and as per the indies of the time, this becomes and impromptu tag match that ends quickly. Including Heroes of Wrestling, there are only ten Yoko matches on cagematch between 98 and 2000 but I'm curious how many matches from those three years actually made tape. 

ER: I can confidently say that I have never seen a Yokozuna match from 2000. I wrote about a December 1999 match he had with Tatanka, but I have never seen a single second of Year 2000 Yoko. I recognize that it is entirely stupid that this was the first match I jumped on this week, skipping past a freaking glory years Mid-South handheld and a Memphis tag that is presumably a different match than the one we watched nearly 20 years ago on the 80s Memphis set. It's such a predictable move by me, and I don't regret it, but hot damn do I love the way Yokozuna 2000 works. This was a man who, if 99% of the promotions in the world were not worried about him having a heart attack and dying in their ring, would have still had actual value. He wouldn't need to be in a main event, his size and presence are enough to slot him in anywhere, and his smarts as a worker allowed him to still build a cool match with a Fake Undertaker while heavier than we've ever seen. 

It's ludicrous that Brian Lee was working Fake Undertaker matches in his post-Chainz indy return. That said, this is mostly a puncher's match, and Lee's Undertaker uppercuts look quite good balanced out by Yokozuna's heavy overhands. The fattest wrestler you've ever seen who can throw bombs and still build to a big back bump is such a cool wrestler, and that's what this match was. Lee stalled, Yoko battered him, Lee finally stood and fought, eventually knocking Yoko down with a big clothesline. Yoko leapt into the bump like Bret delivering a vertical suplex, and I was actually surprised how well he moved. He wasn't hitting the ropes - he shouldn't have been anyway - but for a man as wide as he was it was so cool seeing how he still got up, and his Samoan drop was hit with the same speed and impact he had in '93. His legdrop looked as good as ever, and I would have hated to be on the receiving end of that double clothesline he hit on whoever ran in to break up the pin. I was excited for Yoko 2000 but I don't think I was actually expecting him to look this good while looking this bad. Post-NOAH All Japan would have been desperate enough to bring him in, right? He was basically Jerry Blackwell x2. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Chigusa! Lioness! Matsumoto! Masami!

Volume 5 

9. Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka vs. Devil Masami & Dump Matsumoto 2/28/84 

K: Even if this was a bad match, and it certainly isn't, this was always 100% making the set; because it's one of the most important angles in Joshi history and effectively sets the scene for the next two or three years of big feuds.

The crowd is noticeably a bit wilder than usual. Both teams need to avoid rowdy fans trying to grab a hold of them, the Crush Gals are practically fighting their way to the ring. But other than that there’s nothing yet really hinting that something big is going to happen, in fact the whole 1st fall is just a match. When Dump’s in the ring she hits two big lariats to Asuka. The first one was allowed to sink in very well, the second one probably could have done without Asuka being up for a drop toehold almost immediately but I think the first one was enough to get the move over a bit. Devil on the other hand is using more wrestling skill to beat Asuka on the mat, you see the contrast when she tags in Dump after a bit of matwork and Dump’s first move is to go straight for stomping on Asuka’s hand. But the closest thing we get to cheating actually comes from Devil when she gets frustrated with being unable to keep Asuka down and starts pulling her hair. Chigusa gets very worked up about this on the apron pointing it out to the referee.

This is a fine match and all, the one good thing about it is it feels like they’re getting over more the contrast between Devil and Dump’s mode of heeling than the actual fight with the Crush Gals, who are more there as antagonists for Devil and Dump to try overcome, as strange as that sounds. There’s a little escalation in moves when Dump hits Asuka with a lariat again, but the 2nd time instead of hitting another one again, moves to two big kicks instead that got some reaction. She is very much out done in the moves department though when Devil hits an awesome tilt-a-whirl backbreaker, then locks in a Romero Special and gets the submission win and proves to everyone what a great wrestler she is.

So that’s the 1st fall, which is just a match. The 2nd fall is where it starts turning into an angle as Dump, for no real reason at all, pulls out a weapon. Now usually in AJW when heels pull out weapons in the 2nd fall, it’s because they lost the 1st fall and feel the need to stack the deck in their favour. Pulling out weapons in the 2nd fall when you just won the 1st one relatively cleanly is against the code of conduct even for AJW heels. What on Earth is Dump doing?

There’s also a funny bit where she fails to play hide-the-weapon by dropping it, but that might help the narrative a bit because it means Devil obviously notices it as well as the referee and they BOTH scold her, Devil even looks like she’s trying to get Dump to hand it over. The angle escalates more when they fight on the outside and Dump is trying to use weapons again, but Devil actually physically restrains her this time. This means Masked Yu has to get involved to keep the Crush Gals from taking advantage of the fallout. Oh no it’s all going wrong.

Now the 3rd fall is barely even a match, it’s just an angle. Dump is mad at Devil for intervening over the weapons usage and is behaving like she doesn’t care about the match anymore, she just wants to hurt someone. Her and Masked Yu jump the Crush Gals with their weapons, they get DQ’d finally, but then they attack Devil Masami from behind and choke her with a cable around her neck! What psychos. 

If I was to fault the execution of this in anyway I feel like the Crush Gals could have done a bit more than just be there, it felt like they could have put almost any other babyface tag team in their role and it wouldn’t have made a difference? But it feels silly to have any significant criticisms about this. After the match Devil announces that she’s disbanding Devil Legion, though she still leaves with Itsuki Yamazaki, so I guess they’re just a tag team now and Dump & Yu are going their own way? Tarantula is about to retire so not really a factor anymore.

Just for match itself I’d give this ***, but wrestling is more than just the matches of course.

Oh and another note, for people who are nerdy about this stuff. You’ll spot wrestlers on the outside all wearing company tracksuits with AJWW on them. Yes, an “extra” W. I say extra because afaik the company never actually called itself ‘AJW’, it’s just something Western observers came up with at some point. Perhaps someone thought having AJWW was unwieldy, dropped 1 W, and now it’s just stuck forever.

MD: We have seen some shifts over the last few months. Fans are more into Devil than before, especially the new crowd of younger girls. Obviously, they’re not going to pick her over the Crush Gals, but there has been a shift. Part of me wonders if this is because they started watching when she was having a heel vs heel feud (with her as the de facto face of sorts) against Monster Ripper in fall 83 (of that, we have the Chain match; it felt like a weather balloon of sorts). 

Dump has become Dump. Even two months before, she was still Kaoru (we also have a 2/4/84 draw with her teaming with Yu vs the Crush Gals which MIGHT have been better than this tag even if it’s not as historically important). She also wasn’t using the weapon(s) two months before nearly as much, though she was coming into her own and asserting herself. It’s striking, thinking back, how the hidden weapon was much more a part of the Black Army’s act than something the Devil Army used. You didn’t really see it much in the Devil/Tarantula or Devil/Yamazaki tags. They were mean and brutal but there was much more high tempo offense and tandem offense instead, and while the Army interfered plenty, it was all blatant and if there was a weapon involved it tended to be the sword and used to turn the tide. So you can sort of get why Devil was so frustrated here, especially as she was telling Dump specifically not to do this. 

These are the sort of distinctions that watching chronologically help us work out. We always lose some to context. There’s a different ref than usual here, for instance, and I know the commentary talked about another ref getting disqualified for being biased in a January match, but I don’t think we have the January 18 (Probably Jaguar/Chigusa vs Dump/Devil) match and I’m not 100% sure what was going on and if it’s about. Was it something that led to refs being more permissive as the year went on or just a failed way to deal with the chaos.

You really do get a sense of what Dump/Devil would have looked like as a super team. Lioness is able to deal with Dump with her athleticism but Dump has a way of turning things back over with her strength and size. She’ll turn a sunset flip right back over after Lioness gets her, that sort of thing. Chigusa is more reliant on her kicks and heart, but we’ll see more of this as the year goes on, I’m sure. First fall ended with Devil dismantling Lioness’ back and getting a submission with a tapitia, a rare sight. Second fall had the weapons come out with Devil frustrated. Maybe that let the Crush Gals come back with tandem offense, including the double kick and their belly to back/back elbow drop off the top finisher. Then, of course, the third fall devolved into chaos with Yu and Dump ultimately turning on Devil and Devil announcing the disbanding of the Devil Army. Most interesting bit of all of this was her facing off with the Crush Gals post match. You still get more of a sense that Devil’s rivals were Jaguar, Mimi, and Jumbo/Yukari and there was a generation gap of sort between her and Chigusa/Lioness, even though she was only a year or two older, but it added to the wonder of what might possibly happen next. 

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Tuesdays with Daddy: Week 8: w/Jones vs. The Barbarians

Big Daddy/Marty Jones vs. The Barbarians (Karl & Wolfe Kramer) 2/13/88

MD: I thought it was worth seeing some later Daddy here. This is early 88. Daddy is 57! That’s one thing I haven’t noted previously. While he was in great shape when he was younger and apparently kept his cardio up even when older, the start of this run has him in his mid 40s and by the time we hit 80 he’s already fifty. Plus he is carrying all this weight. Maybe that’s a strike against him but I think it’s wild he’s able to accomplish what he did in the ring even at this age. Some of that is working around it but some is what he works towards.

Biggest takeaway from this match is that the danger just wasn’t there. Not at all. Barely for a moment. Some of that is that Jones is probably higher up on the card and more skilled/experienced and the Kramers/Barbarians are not formidable opponents. They had a weird gimmick, Barbarians, barefoot, judo jackets and skill, facepaint over the eyes brothers. Karl was only 18 and the larger one. They barely hit anything meaningful all match so who knows what sort of offense they would have. 

Point being, they barely hit anything. Once or twice Jones got too close to the corner and got caught. Once one came in to get him to try to pull him back, but Daddy came right in to stop that with a double headlock charge (first time I’ve seen him do that, a point for variation and/or changing up bits). He got a public warning for that, but who cares? Jones would get whipped in but always got his foot up or came right back. He was never in danger. He was just, at best, in danger of being in danger, and I do think that affected the match. It was celebratory and the kids clapped and chanted but there was never any sense of tension here. I’m not sure if that was a trend for 88 or just a blip because of the opponents and because of Jones but it is a mark against this one and sort of an exception that proves the rule for Big Daddy's act. I just don’t think it works without that (reassuring, mind you) sense of peril. 

Past the headlock spot, Daddy did do a few things differently, including a double noggin knocker to start (the old standby of opponents getting a cheapshot in on Daddy’s partner before the bell), and he knocked Wolfe off the apron with a forearm and hit a nice wallop on Karl after the whips back and forth into the corners, but not until he tapped him on the shoulder, which is another nice addition. I haven’t seen him do a ton of strikes up until now. Look, you might think this stuff doesn’t matter, but I am looking for an intellectual laziness to his act as a strike against him, and I’m just not seeing it. The structure was quite often the same. The engine was the same. But the trappings have been different in little ways in every match I’ve seen so far, and to me, that does matter, and it is a strong defensive point for Daddy.

As noted, the issue here wasn’t the trappings or the details, but the engine itself, which didn’t go quite as well, not due to age, but due to the lack of real peril that Daddy was always good at ensuring was in his earlier matches. This did lead to a post match challenge for a hair match(!) from Drew McDonald, so again, at least they were keeping things interesting now and again. I don’t think I’ll see any more matches from this late in the run, but I’m glad I got to see at least one.

ER: I'm really happy we covered some late era Daddy because there ARE changes, even if they wouldn't have been as noticeable if we hadn't been writing about him every week. Most of the changes are to his physical form, as his legs are much less muscular, which actually affects his center of gravity. There's a moment in this match where he's knocked back on his heels by a much smaller man, in a way I don't think ever happens earlier in the decade with much larger men running into him. He incorporates more strikes (this is the first match of his we've covered that sees him kick someone!) and still his his incredible pulling strength, but those legs kept standing out to me. 

The Barbarians were about as Memphis goofball as a team could get, in cherry red gi with spiked arm bands, black eye paint like Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner, plus a downright brutal hairline on Wolfe. Both come off inexperienced, but in a way that adds to their demise. Karl - said to be 18 and looking no younger than 36 - had nothing but fun bumps, not taken like normal fully trained bumps, much more like a man getting knocked about and just falling over hard. He takes armdrags straight down onto his shoulder, no floatover, just spiking himself into the mat, and there's a fun spot where Jones catches a kick and keeps lift Karl's bare foot straight up until he just falls back in a heap. Jones really looked like he went out of his way to fuck this teenage middle aged man up. Daddy, too. 

Daddy really compresses Karl's vertebrae on a battering ram spot, using his shoving power to toss this guy top of head first into an abrupt wall of his brother. It probably felt better than Marty Jones dropkicking him as hard as he could. Jones kept laying in his dropkicks and Karl was great at just walking unprotected into them. The first dropkick must have left a mark on his chest, he runs into a boot on a corner charge that went straight into his face, and Jones' dropkick off the middle buckle looked like a finisher. He didn't fare any better against Daddy. Karl got knocked ass over elbow with a charging belly bump, and when Daddy grabbed him by the gi and whipped him with tremendous power across the ring, it didn't look like he had any legs under him. Daddy sent him flying and he was going to wind up wherever he wound up. 

Daddy's great little kick comes after he's splashed and pinned Karl, after sending his brother Wolfe into his brother with a tumbling bump. Daddy sits down on Karl while throwing a kick straight to Wolfe's temple. Wolfe goes through his own bad stretch with Jones, getting whipped hard chest first into the buckles, knee dropped onto his face, but nothing compared to Jones's full weight middle buckle senton that leaves Wolfe visibly gasping for breath as he holds his guts. Brutal. 

After the match Drew McDonald issues a hair vs. hair challenge to Daddy while wearing a t-shirt advertising a Scottish men's big & tall clothes boutique. Can't get that anywhere else. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 10/19 - 10/25

ROH TV 10/22/26

Lee Moriarty vs Mance Warner

MD: "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations." is a quote attributed to Orson Welles, though we only have second-hand evidence he ever said it.

It is counter-intuitive, of course. If you can do absolutely anything then you can be as creative as possible, right? There are a few ways to look at it. For me, when talking about pro wrestling, creativity is a means and not an end. Innovation is a means and not an end. Creativity and innovation are not intrinsically good (I know, that's counter-intuitive too). What are the wrestlers trying to accomplish? For those who are just trying to be creative and innovative for the sake of being creative and innovative, even if it is to stand out, then very often, it comes at a cost. The end product is less primal, less resonant, less focused. The limitations of the form, norms, rules, expectations, consistent boundaries from match to match and show to show, all not only provides fans a grounding point so they can value things in a unified experience, but also force a sort of contained, constrained, distilled, concentrated sort of creativity. They give the wrestlers something to push off of instead of just things to tear down. 

It's true for any match. It's especially true for tag team wrestling, which is so often why I'm frustrated by the Young Bucks, who lean hard into an unbridled sort of deconstructive creativity at the expense of the all of those time-tested and straightforward tricks and tools that come from leaning hard into the enforced rules of tag team wrestling. Having a permissive Rick Knox in all of their matches leaves so much opportunity for heat, build, payoff (denial! denial is such an important part of tag team wrestling) on the table. With a little more time and care, they could still have their cake and eat it too. Instead, they gorge themselves on all the cake they can eat. It's spectacular, often delicious, but man are those calories ever emptier than they could be. If every match can become a tornado tag at any point, what's the value of the rules in the first place?

But yes, even more than tag team wrestling, there is the Pure Rules division of ROH. Three rope breaks. One punch. Twenty-count on the floor. Three judges. A sixty minute time-limit (probably about thirty minutes too long, maybe even forty minutes too long for a televised/PPV product, but that's beside the point; you DO want the judges to come into play now and again or why are they even there, right?). 

The rules are an opportunity. The rules allow different, unique stories to be told. They give wrestlers a jumping off point to be creative and allow that creativity to matter more. How can you work the rope breaks into a match? How can you work the punch or lack of such into a match (that's a big one for this match)? If things matter differently in Pure Rules matches, how can you use that distinction to be more creative, not less so?

Which brings us to Mance Warner. Lee Moriarty has an a very long reign as pure champ and while plenty of his matches play into the rules in clever ways, I've seen a few where a wrestler just comes in and wrestles like they might normally. It becomes more of a throwaway match in that case, one that leaves so much on the table. Those matches end up as Lee Moriarty showcases because he's playing with the rules while his opponent is just there for the ride.

Mance Warner was not going to leave a single scrap on the table. A match is an opportunity. It's a chance to show the world what you can do, to make people care about you, remember you, want to see more of you. A gimmick match, and the Pure Rules are, in their own way, a gimmick (just like Dax Harwood would claim a tag team match to be), is a chance to highlight what makes a wrestler special with some unconventional limitations. 

The fact that Warner is an unconventional wrestler, a roughneck, wildman brawler and scrapper, means that to put him in this sort of a dignified, technical, scientific environment creates an immediate fish out of water, Country Mouse/City Mouse dissonance. That's unquestionably interesting, and Mance knows it's interesting. He leaned hard into it in promos and social media. Mance mastered the rule book. He was ready to bend it and twist it and engage with it in every way possible to win. 

That meant, for once, a Pure Rules Title defense became not a Lee Moriarty showcase, but instead a Mance Warner showcase. The power of limitations. The openness to be creative in the face of them, not in spite of them but because of them.

There are a couple of ways to look at Pure Rules matches (and they don't have to be mutually exclusive). Are you interested in the technique at play, the mechanics, the tricked out submissions, the counters? Or are you interested in the characters, how they interface with each other, the rules, the possibilities? Again, it's not either/or but this match was so fascinating for the latter.

Moriarty got Warner into a cross armbreaker shortly after the bell rung. Mance paused, hesitated. Did he blow one of his rope breaks so early? Did he stay in the hold too long and potentially find a solution that didn't cost him one but instead weakened him for the rest of the match? That's interesting! He picked the rope break, but the fact he hesitated beforehand was just as fascinating as his decision. That's the sort of storytelling that you get from pro wrestling matches themselves and not just the angles or build to them (again, not either/or). It's human. In that moment, you saw into the character's soul. 

Where Mance (the character) succeeded the most were those places where he could bring forth his own style and dance around rules and conventions (pushing off of them to create an emotional effect instead of just ignoring them to do whatever he wanted). That might be spitting on his hands before a double knucklelock challenge, or, memorably, slipping Lee's foot over the rope on a pin attempt in a way that the ref couldn't see the slip, only the result, to force Lee to burn a rope break. We've seen similar things (rope breaks on illegal rope-assisted holds that counted, something that I didn't like nearly as much as this since they went against the spirit of the rules instead of playing towards them), but this was the sort of thing a canny wrestler out of his element might get away with one time. 

Lee's reaction was great too since he represented order and consistency and competence and here was this bumpkin (affectionate from me, not from Lee) coming in to create chaos in his orderly pro wrestling. Likewise with the spitting in the hands; Lee responded with a wristlock, patting Mance's hand against the mat to clean it off. It was a dance of character and personality and that's the best sort of pro wrestling dance imaginable.

By dancing this dance, by leaning into his own canniness and roughness, Mance kept Lee on his toes. He might throw a forearm or he might drop him down into a crossface. Lee couldn't know what to expect next. The problem was that it wasn't a dance he could dance forever. He mounted the top rope with Lee under him and while he realized he couldn't throw a punch (or didn't want to sacrifice his one punch in that moment), the weighing of the possibilities threw him off and Lee was able to literally throw him headfirst into the post. 

That changed the dynamics of the match. In fact, it introduced an entirely new element to a Pure Rules match. Mance Warner came back to the ring a bloody mess. Theoretically, it was more a Mance Warner match now, but maybe not when the blood was only flowing from one person. Lee controlled (all the way to forcing Lance to blow a rope break by biting the ropes to get out of a straitjacket-like hold). Mance came back. 

I think, ultimately, he got a little too out over his skis. He started using a chair in clever ways as a way to take off some of the leverage, as a way to get an extra bound. At some point, I think for Mance, blood running down his face, rope-breaks disappearing, it no longer became about beating Moriarty but instead about showing him all the things he could do. That very sort of creativity that can create for worse matches! But here it was all in character and made for a better one. Why? Because in the end, it cost Mance. Maybe it helped him force Lee to blow all of his rope breaks. Maybe it allowed him to last longer than should have been possible with the pure champ, but he blew all his breaks too, and all else equal, Lee was going to tie him up in the ropes, not the other way around.

All that means to me though, is that if Mance gets even one more chance against Lee, maybe, just maybe, he gets the balance right. And isn't THAT idea interesting! Isn't pro wrestling great?

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Found Footage Friday: PWFG We Love Murdoch FOREVER 7/27/96

Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi "We Love Murdoch FOREVER" 7/27/96 

MD: Pretty sure this is the last PWFG show ever and it's a Dick Murdoch tribute. I was expecting a blurry handheld but this has commentary and is on a polished home video. They start with a ten bell salute with Fujiwara holding a picture of Murdoch and they show photos of Fujiwara and Murdoch battling over the years throughout, including a great shot of Murdoch about to hit Calf Branding. 

PAS: Incredible that we got a previously unseen PWFG show, honestly one of my favorite promotions ever and there is still gold in them hills.

Arkangel de la Muerte/Blitzkrieg/Hellblazer vs. Suicide Kid/Super Phoenix/Ultraman Jr.

MD: Cagematch only has two Blitzkrieg matches in Japan and this is one. Who knows how reliable that is. It only has 8 matches of his before 99. I don't think I've seen any 1996 Blitzkrieg. Commentary said that this was a lucha libre match with the hot young stars of Mexico. 

Obviously there was a lot going on here. Arkangel and Ultraman were mostly paired, which seemed to make sense. Hellblazer looked like indie lucha Abyss ten years early and he was basing well for everyone, plus had one killer forearm. I wondered if it was actually Blitzkrieg as he had a pared down look and was with the rudos, but yes, yup, can confirm. Definitely Blitzkrieg. You see it in his first handspring into the corner and then you definitely see it when he comes off the top to the floor twisting too many times and far too fast to be just about anyone else. Anyway, that cleared the ring for the finish. Fans weren't into this quite as much as you'd expect but they probably didn't come to this specific show for this specific match either.  

ER: What an unexpected match to find on a PWFG card. The PWFG crowd - for the most part - did not seem to want it on the card. It's not a very good match, but fascinating from a historical standpoint. This is among the earliest Blitzkrieg matches we have (is it the earliest? Feels like it), and it's cool seeing the act in its infancy, tried out on the wrong Japanese crowd (at a time when his style would have fit in perfectly in every other Japanese indy). What's funny, is while the crowd doesn't seem to want this match, Blitzkrieg is the guy who gets the most reaction from them. He is 120 pounds soaking wet, has no presence to speak of, and spends the match pulling up his karate pants that kept slipping down. He also moves like someone who looked insanely far ahead of US juniors wrestling, so even though everything he did made zero impact due to his size, it's still cool seeing him somersault senton himself onto Super Phoenix's face or do some kind of twisting back splash to the floor that gets the crowd temporarily alive. 

I unexpectedly thought Hellblazer looked like the most polished wrestler in the match. Unexpected, because Arkangel is a guy I always go out of my way to see, but here I thought he was mostly stuck doing rote basing for Ultraman and looked more like he was rushing to get out of there. Hellblazer had strikes that would have played in 1996 Japan indies, swung missed clotheslines at Suicide Kid's face and hoped he ducked, caught a slick Suicide Kid slingshot rana on the floor, just seemed like a guy who understood Japanese undercard juniors trios better than the rest of the guys in the match (again, feels absurd to say that about someone who is in a match with Arkangel).  

PAS: If we had gotten this match in 1996 we would have been losing our collective shit, this has a very CMLL Japan feel to it, especially with Archangel and Ultraman Jr. who where staples of that promotion, lots of cool armdrags, and Blitzkrieg was out of his mind in a way you rarely saw back then. He does like two things in the match, but they are both mental.  It isn't necessarily what 50 year old Phil wants out of a PWFG show, but 20 year old Phil would have opened  Schneider Comp 6 with this for sure.

Onryo vs. Pequeno Gefero

MD: On paper, Onryo vs Pequeno anything seems unfair. I have no idea who this guy is and the internet isn't much help. Commentary said he was from Brazil and a mysterious fighter. If this was 8 years earlier, I would have said he could have been Owen. If it was 6 years earlier I would have said it could have been Benoit. He was blonde with a real Calgary feel to him under the mask.

Almost a rough around the edges ECW/pre-Super indie bombfest feel to this. They did a lot of stuff. Lots of bombs. Some of it hit well. Some of it was that "Oooooh" of barely getting a guy over for a power bomb. Onyro started hot with a big dive and I thought he'd not look back but Gefero got a dragon screw and a STF. Onryo had to snatch the ropes with his teeth. After that, Onryo came back with a twisting shoulder tackle off the second rope where the timing was off  and they didn't look back together.

When Onryo finally won the thing with a low blow and small package instead of something more dominant you bought it because nothing conventional was going to stop either of these two on this night. This is the sort of match that probably would have made a comp tape in 1996 but might not in 2026, if that makes sense. 

ER: I am a big fan of Onryo undercard singles matches. Dude is a weirdo who hits hard and can crash harder, and he's weirdly good at getting neat matches out of unknowns or greenhorns. I have no idea who Pequeno Gefero might be - only that his existence implies the existence of a regular size or gigantic Gefero - but damn if he didn't stand firmly in the way of Onryo's low cutting springboard cannonball, taking it right to the chest and face with no soft landing, and keep finding ways to impress. When the match started, I was convinced he was a beginner tasked with catching something far beyond Beginner Level, and by the end he seemed like kind of a badass who was testing Onryo's patience. Who knows where the truth may lie in all that. There are moments where Onryo seems frustrated, where Gefero seems to not know how to follow up...but many more sequences where the match grows to something More.

Moments like Onryo breaking La Tapatia by biting the middle rope, or when Gefero runs too close to the turnbuckles for Onryo to fully rotate on his corkscrew moonsault, so instead it hits Gefero like a torpedo headbutt. After, Onryo drills him with a fast and rough Saito suplex to teach him a lesson, then teaches him the same lesson to make sure he doesn't forget. You'd think that's where the match was headed, towards Onryo imposing his will on the way to the finish...but that's when Gefero goes on a big run, hitting stiff clotheslines, a superplex, even hitting his own torpedo shoulderblock off the buckles to the floor! Where I was expecting Onryo, the assumed vet, to take things home by beating Gefero's ass, the reverse kind of happens? Instead of beating ass to the finish, Onryo looks like he is the one looking for a way out. He punches Gefero in the balls and Gefero reacts to it the way a man not expecting to be punched in the balls would react. When Onryo takes him over with a small package to finish, it is not clean. Gefero gets spiked on his head by Onryo pulling him into the clutch, shoulders forced down with the weight of the hold. Something happened. Maybe nothing nefarious. Maybe just intriguing pro wrestling. 

Masashi Aoyagi/Takashi Okamura vs. Hirofumi Miura/Masayoshi Motegi

MD: This was chaotic, having that mix of karate guys fighting, out of the ring brawling, and weapons and just enough blood that you'd expect from some Japanese indies in the 90s. Miura took a hell of a beating from Okamura and Aoyagi for a chunk of this. He'd try to just eat the kicks and the kicks would eat him. 

They controlled on Aoyagi for a bit later but it was by tossing him out and using weapons. That led to a big comeback from Okamura where he ducked nunchucks followed by him messing around with them in the ring as Aoyagi crushed people on the outside. Miura ended up bloody. There were some pretty believable nearfalls on Okamura. Aoyagi got revenge on everyone on the floor multiple times. It ended a double countout. Everything on this show has hit the marks so far even if the marks for each match were very different.

PAS: Put some dudes in gi's in 90s indy puro, I am seated. Mirua and Aoyagi are guys who worked a ton as both a tag team and opponents and just slide right into their shtick, which is a great shtick full of straight punches spin kicks and recklessness. We get some cool chair shots where the seat flies off, some nunchucks and blood. I am not sure this match was much higher then the floor for these four guys, but the floor is super high 

Shinichi Nakano vs. Kamikaze

MD: Of guys who were regularly featured in late 80s/turn of the 90s AJPW, Nakano is the least inspired of his generation. He's the Steve O of the era, and watching some of his mid-90s indie work, he had very little to offer the scene except for maybe a meat and potatoes throwback feel which served as contrast to the other styles flying around. Maybe there was something comforting about that? 

This was straightforward as could be, down to a shine/heat/comeback structure you don't even usually get in Japan. He worked the leg early, really bullying Kamikaze. Kamikaze came back as if the leg had never been worked on at all and hit a number of mid level moves like DDTs or things treated mid-level like a Superplex, building to a top rope 'rana near fall. He tried another 'rana but got power bombed and Nakano came back. They traded things a bit. Nakano got a nearfall with his powerslam and won it with a Nothern Lights. It was fine but fine looked paltry in comparison. 

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Tatsuo Nakano

MD: Very weird (to me, at least) to have both Nakanos on the show. We've seen 96 Shinichi vs Fujiwara and while that was fine, I'm very glad to see the more DVDVR coded Nakano against him here. They have Mr. Takahashi from NJPW refereeing this. 

Nakano has come so far from where he was in 1989. He was able to utilize his size advantage to control with holds, not just to try for big bombs and an early win. If he had followed that track, he'd wear down Fujiwara and conserve his own energy instead of the other way around.

But Fujiwara wasn't going to let him do that. There's a point in almost every Fujiwara match where he gets his opponent to "break." It's one of the most fascinating and interesting things in the history of pro wrestling. Here he peppered in headbutts, launched elbows from the ground, and even rode Nakano's back in a way that did little damage but was borderline humiliating.

And Nakano did break, slapping Fujiwara down, hitting a suplex. He went back to holds, a choke from behind, but the die had been cast. The tension then becomes whether or not Fujiwara gambled properly. Did he unleash something he couldn't counter or control or was everything part of a complicated chess game with Fujiwara sitting five moves ahead. 

In this case, as with most cases, Fujiwara was the master. He escaped the choke a few times and eventually Nakano swiped at him once again. Fujiwara dodged it and locked in the armbar and that was it. Ten moves to one, but the one was all that mattered.

PAS: Very cool structure. It felt like Fujiwara remembered the hothead Nakano of 7 years before, who could be counted on to blow his top and make a mistake, while Nakano seemed determined to be patient, use his size and keep his cool. Fujiwara can bring it out of you though, and while Nakano was able to keep it together for a while, eventually he fell into the trap. The thing about Fujiwara is he is always moments away, he can take a beating, get worked over, seem out of it, but make one mistake, lose focus once, and you are done, and eventually Nakano made that mistake.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 10/12 - 10/18 Part 2

AEW WrestleDream 10/17/26

Jon Moxley vs Mark Davis

MD: I'm writing this about a week after the PPV. I just saw the match. The way AEW PPVs usually work for me is that I get to watch the first hour or so before I have to take care of some parental duties and I usually just catch the rest over the next few days. Which I did for WrestleDream, including the Tailgate Brawl which I thought was a great, varied show.

But I held off on Mox vs Davis. I knew it was going to be heavy. I had to be ready for it. Then they went and ran a big angle on Dynamite and I knew that I should see this before that and long story short, I caught it today.

Part of the hesitance was that I knew it'd be heavy and I had to feel up for it, sure, but part of it was that I knew I'd be compelled to write about it and I don't know how to deal with Mox.

When I wrote about Cassidy vs Mox on the PAC tribute show, I did it as sort of an alternate reality Mox, a difference in perception and perspective. That was fine for a one time thing. It would not do this match justice.

The problem is one of sensitivity and appropriateness and is ingrained with the nature of pro wrestling and what makes it unique and special.

I imagine if you're reading this, you've read other things I've written about Mox. I love writing about the character of Jon Moxley. He entered into a pact with Bryan Danielson to shape the future, and then, for any number of reasons (call it a mid-life crisis; call it seeing what Roman was doing over on the other channel and feeling like he was falling behind; call it dissatisfaction with how things had turned out; call it envy over Bryan being champion and Moxley not), he crossed a line and didn't look back. 

I saw him as a hypocrite, a villain, a tyrant, holding the AEW Men's World Title hostage for the better part of a year and putting the company under siege. 

And that meant he became really, truly interesting once he lost the title and then had to deal with the weight of what he created. He had a bandit legion who needed victories and plunder, mouths to feed lest they turn upon him. He ran from Darby's revenge, was on his back foot against Kyle, yet through dogged desperation and a few dice rolls going his way, he won the Continental Classic. 

Food on the table. It let him spout empty platitudes (or full platitudes that he himself said in the light but then refused to follow in the dark), let him play the gallant knight and warrior once again. All the way through mentoring Ospreay, losing at All Out, and so on.

He was an emperor with no clothes, Fagin with his Artful Dodger, a demagogue pulling the wool over the eyes of his army and the fans, but never over himself, never truly.

He never had that peace. He always knew deep down it was a lie. And in part, that's because he never truly paid the price, never was betrayed. In a world where corruption rules and consequence is fleeting, this fictional character never got his comeuppance, not really. 

I've written a lot about it. You know how I feel. Right? Great. 

So here's where we stand. The divide between the people portraying pro wrestlers and the pro wrestlers themselves is much thinner than in other forms of media. If an actor dies tragically, their character is written off in the show, often in a way that makes the most sense for the plot. 

The character of Jon Moxley is clearly carrying the weight of tragedy. The way things played out in his backstage segment. The way this match played out. The death of PAC (of Ben) weighs on him. If this had happened on a television drama, you could put the onus on the character of Jon Moxley, make it so  Mox's actions led to the death of the character of PAC (not Ben), that it was his comeuppance, that it was the spiritual cost for everything he did. That would make this match make sense, would tie together the story, would give everything a cathartic path forward. It would be good fiction and I do think it's what many TV dramas might do. 

But the divide is so thin in pro wrestling that you can't do that. You can't suggest that. Ben was PAC and PAC was Ben and Jonathan Good is Jon Moxley and Jon Moxley is Jonathan Good. They are but they aren't but they are. I can't suggest that. I won't. I won't engage with it that way. It's terrible. I'm not going to write about that story, no matter how powerful it might be, and no matter how well it fits the heartfelt performance that Moxley gave. It's clearly what drove the performance.

So I don't entirely know how to deal with this otherwise. 

But I am going to try.

Jon Moxley hit rock bottom. It was cumulative. It was based, in large part, on his actions over the last year and a half. He had been running past consequences, past life and death itself, had been wrestling not through it, but past it. So long as he never looked down, he never fell, not really. He'd convinced the world, but never himself. And that was fine, because he thought he could run forever. He couldn't. The weight, both perceived, and so, so very real, had finally dragged his head down. He looked down. He fell.

And when you hit rock bottom, sometimes you find a monster at the bottom of the pit waiting for you. That monster was Mark Davis. 

Mox is a canny beast himself, especially with his back against the wall. This wasn't the first time in the last year he was in a tough situation. He came out there ready to survive. He was used to bullying his opponents. He couldn't bully Mark Davis. That's fine. He could out wrestle him. 

But he couldn't. Davis was too strong. He was able to snatch a limb and turn Mox's grip back around. Just like that. 

That was fine too. Mox would just go meaner and dirtier. 

But he couldn't. Davis was too strong. He was willing to go just as mean. Just as dirty. Moxley got a few shots in, but Davis struck back, and one of his shots was worth five of Mox's. Davis has a way of channeling that strength to hit you from odd angles. A clothesline while you're laying down, a half crab over a guardrail, the cross section of bestial power and opportunistic creativity. 

So Moxley bled. He was used to making his opponents bleed. Here he bled. The visuals were striking. Moxley retreated to the floor multiple times, and he laid there, blood dripping off his head onto the mat. When dragged back into the ring, white ring ropes found themselves adorned in crimson. Davis' chest was much the same. 

Moxley had bled before though. Maybe he'd never been in this exact situation, had never made it all the way to the bottom, but he had been low before. He was resilient, determined, dogged. He came back as he had come back so many times before. 

And Davis put him down. Hard. Pile driver on the apron hard.

Mox sat in his own blood, back against the guardrail as the referee tried to convince him to get back into the fight. He was done. He was spent. It was over. 

Until it wasn't.

The Continental Title means no one at ringside, no interference, but then, as the last grains of sands were slipping down in the hourglass that was Jon Moxley, hope hit him like sunlight rising in the east.

Marina Shafir. Daniel Garcia. Not at ringside but behind the rail, inspiring him as he had inspired them.

For so much of the last two years, Jon Moxley did not practice what he preached. That's what made him a villain. 

But those things that he preached were often good things, had value. That's why he was so dangerous. They were complicated like any other big ideas, but growth through adversity, through combat, through struggle. Those can be very valid things.

He helped reward Marina Shafir's hard work and determination with opportunity. He picked up Daniel Garcia after his opportunity had faded to dust. He offered them what they needed. Perhaps the act was self-serving in intention. But the act was still the act.

That's the thing about wrestling through it. About fighting through it. About doing the deed, day after day after day after day. It adds up. Intention doesn't matter nearly as much as outcome. 

That had worked against him when the Death Riders were formed and he claimed grand things and then committed horrific ones. But as Continental Champion, it worked for him. He was still the Jon Moxley who had ended Bryan Danielson's career, but now he was doing valiant things week in and week out. 

If you do the right thing for long enough, then you too start to become right in doing it. Consistency of action matters most of all.

He had hit bottom. It wasn't due to a betrayal (though that would come later). But he had hit bottom, and now, baptized in a pool of his own blood, Jon Moxley was reborn. 

The Mox that reentered the ring wasn't a bullshit artist, wasn't an emperor with no clothes. He was the Ace, the Wild Thing. He had lived among the beasts, dragged himself, his people, the company, through the mud, committed acts that could never be taken back, but one step after the next, he was fighting through it, wrestling through it, clawing and grasping his way back towards the light, buoyed by those who he had both led and misled, who were better than him, and that reminded him of the better him that he had once been.

He redirected Davis and made him bleed. He moved with precision and focus. He ducked under a clothesline so perfectly and hit the Death Rider. He went for the Brutalizer, but had the grace and focus (a burgeoning inner peace) to shift positions and put on a choke. And then he didn't let go. He squeezed like his life depended on it, like the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and he let out all of the fury and grief and emotion within him.

And he won. He had made it through, not through all of it, because we're never through all of it and he will carry that weight forever, but he made it through the match, through this first step of dealing with his own grief, and I think, through the first huge step of coming back to the man he once was. Inspired by those he inspired, he lived up to his own myth and he won the day.

It was a bloody, heavy, heartwrenching match, full of physicality and emotion. It was probably one of the best matches AEW has ever put on because it was one of the realest and deepest matches possible. It was about things that are real and true and human, things that pro wrestling can tackle, but that it usually does not. And they executed it perfectly in their own way.

Rarely do matches have a thesis statement. This one did. The only way out is through. To me, the character of Jon Moxley had so much more to get through than beating Mark Davis, and even so much more than the events of the last month. He had to get through the last two years, through even more than that, through a lifetime maybe. And I have every reason to believe he's going to spending the rest of his life finding his way through. But I also have every reason to believe that he's going to make it. That's what Aces do. And no one in the world could honestly watch this match and deny him that title.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jumbo! Yukari! Chigusa! Lioness!

Volume 5   

8. 1984 New Year's Marathon

K: This is a cut from a much longer segment of AJW doing various activities for New Year. Here it feels like a spiritual sequel to the first segment of the set, in that it’s mostly wrestlers running :) I also think it fits the overall vibe of 80s AJW in feeling like wholesome fun for the most part, then there’s an ominous bit of foreboding at the end…

Oh and a bit of trivial, there’s a wrestler in the race almost no one will recognise called Masami Yagishita. She retired very soon after this, and later resurfaced as a referee in JWP. She’s still on the scene now as referee Tommy.

Addendum

Bonus: Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka vs. Jumbo Hori & Yukari Omori (WWWA Tag Team Titles) 1/4/84

K: This is the biggest of the bonus matches. The one which I had the toughest time deciding whether to include it or not, and still think I may have got it wrong. The reasons for inclusion are very strong. It's the first Crush Gals title shot we have footage of (they had another title shot against the Dynamite Girls of 8/27/83, but we don't have that one), it's a very good match, some think great. It also apparently did a great TV rating, and is part of the story of how they ended up becoming such a strongly pushed act.

Reasons against? Firstly, it's really long. I'd have to cut out two others matches to include it (I was giving myself time limits to not push people's patience), and I couldn't pick two matches from this Volume to remove without thinking nah, it's not worth the price. Secondly, we only have a little over half the match, so it's hard to assess it. I wouldn't give it a rating for instance. Thirdly, we're going to have another Crush Gals vs. Dynamite Girls match soon, so it's not like we're missing this match-up entirely.

The bonus matches volume was basically made so I could include this somewhere. So let's go. I'm going to start by absolutely BURYING Yukari Omori's terrible outfit for her entrance. Why is she dressed in a zebra-fur giant sports bra thing. Who on Earth thinks that's a good look? 

The crowd are loud and seem to be cheering for both teams, but Crush Gals clearly have more support. We get a pretty heated bit of argy-bargy before the introductions. Crush Gals did something similar with Devil Masami & Itsuki Yamazaki back in November before their match, so it's a bit illuminating to see that they did this for a babyface vs. babyface match too. Dynamite Girls don't come across as heelish here, both teams are being equally aggressive.

I don't remember ever seeing a match start like this. Crush Gals get jumped, and immediately get put into... double sharpshooters? It's the kind of spot you'd expect to see in the middle of a match where the babyfaces embarrass the heels for a bit. But in this context, it seemed to convey that Crush Gals are the less experienced team and need to level up quick if they aren't gonna get steamrolled by the (relatively) veteran pair.

Next segment of interest. Chigusa gets isolated by the Dynamite Girls and they focus their attacks on her right arm. Chigusa is really expressive in her selling and trying to struggle out of things, even if she can't get much offense. They milk this a bit, could have milked it a bit more imo (especially since they're going long) as this was good stuff. It gets wrapped up quickly though when Chigusa rolls to the outside to get her shoulder bandaged, then gets back in the ring, does a quick comeback with an enzuigiri, gets the hot tag to Asuka and before you know it Asuka's got the pin to take the 1st fall looking as strong as Goldberg.

Good set up, abrupt payoff. I don't think having Asuka look so strong like that served the narrative well. It would have worked better if her getting that pin was more flukey. Coz that's how the Dynamite Girls react. They're mad and really throw themselves at it and things feels more like a brawl in the 2nd fall. They make some mistakes too. Jumbo allows herself to get put in the sharpshooter by Chigusa, but Omori isn't having it, walks over and just breaks it up without regard for the rules and then hits Chigusa with a big top rope dive to the outside for good measure. Even worse is a bit later though, when she hits Chigusa with a guillotine legdrop where she's just lands right on her face. Take that you little punk.

It feels a bit harsh considering it was Asuka who got the pin and not Chigusa, yet she's barely got any focus. But nevermind. When Asuka does get in she also puts Jumbo in a sharpshooter, and Omori also comes over to break it up by repeatedly smacking Asuka in the face looking very mad. But it has no effect on Asuka and she just keeps the hold locked in, she's just that much stronger than Chigusa. I respect that that's the narrative they're going for, but it does result in a match where Chigusa is the one carrying the narrative and Asuka's role is really just to tag in for a little while, kick ass and then tag out for Chigusa to mostly get beat up again. I don't think they get the balance right.

Chigusa is pinned at the end of the 2nd fall with a big 2nd rope powerslam from Jumbo Hori. At the start of the 3rd fall her selling is awesome. I might say, Mimi Hagiwara-esque. She even has wet hair for some reason, echoes of the 1/4/82 tag. The moment I saw her like that I can feel my blood pumping.

The big change in the 3rd fall is that Lioness Asuka drops being the Goldberg hot tag and contributes a lot more. Certainly on the selling side, it's her turn to get isolated and beat up now. We see a lot of great offense here. At one point the Dynamite Girls do a Demolition Device style move on Asuka, except Jumbo Hori does a big flying crossbody off the top. Soon afterwards (a bit too soon maybe, but it's hard to say with all the clipping), Jumbo is on the receiving end of a side suplex off the turnbuckle. She takes the bump like a champ (well I guess she is one). Chigusa does a crafty little riling up of the crowd while she's on the apron here, but this is Asuka's fall and she uses her strengths well to make this fall the most exciting one. She can work a crazy high-octane pace like no-one else except Jaguar, even when she's getting repeatedly dropped on her head. She also very well conveys being an overly-intense jock super athlete who just wants to win no matter what, but wants to win fairly. 

Doesn't happen though. The 60 minute time limit elapses without a decision in the 3rd fall, so we have a draw. First time there's been a 60 minute draw in AJW since the Rimi Yokota-Yumi Ikeshita match on 8/8/80 AFAIK. These certainly can be effective when used sporadically and it certainly seems to have done the job here. I won't rate this because of so much being clipped out, but it was an enjoyable watch.

MD: It’s funny. I know the boom period is right around the corner and I am expecting to love it, but I am going to miss 1983. Jaguar and Mimi as the lead babyfaces. The Dynamite Girls as the lead tag team. Devil teaming with Tarantula and then Yamizaki. Chigusa, Lioness, Tateno all on the rise. Ripper back in for a run. Galactica bursting onto the scene and then gone again. Yu and Matsumoto asserting themselves on the outside. We’re missing a lot of footage, but I enjoyed the year. I guess that means I’m probably going to really enjoy what’s coming. We have to get there first, and we start with the team of 83 and the team of 84 facing off against one another for the tag titles.

This is a remarkable match, even if we can’t fully wrap our heads around it. I honestly don’t know what was cut. I presume it was a bunch of holds and feeling out and I don’t even know. It’s a pretty clever series of cuts. There were a lot of moves here, a lot of stuff, some tandem offense from the Crush Gals, like a belly to back reverse elbow drop, a spike power bomb, a spike pile driver. Omori used the fireman’s carry gutbuster a couple of times. Jumbo at one point hit her power bomb, rocket launcher, front tombstone sequence. Big stuff. There was also more martial arts type kicks, and not just from Chigusa. What we didn’t see however, were the Dynamite Girls using their finishing sequence. When they did hit their big moves, they were broken up more than usual. 

The Crush Gals controlled for a lot of what was kept. I wonder how intentional THAT cutting was? Probably me being a conspiracy theorist? Maybe it just worked out that way. Despite that, the Dynamite Girls came out as the original aggressors and things did absolutely spill out to the floor violently and chaotically at the end. 

The other big takeaway was just how worn out and worn down Chigusa seemed as the match wore down. She was already excellent at portraying that deep deep selling where it affects her down to the soul.

So those are big takeaways. The biggest though?

From what I’ve been able to see, they had pushed the Crush Gals so hard over the last few months. They were equal against Jaguar and Devil teams, even beating Jaguar’s team at least once. Asuka had some amazing athletic exchanges against Jaguar. She beat Monster Ripper and Yamazaki in a two on one match somehow. 

And it was working. The crowd was starting to change. Mimi, the Dynamite Girls, Jaguar, all had fan clubs that seemed to be made of high school boys. They may still have been there but they had been invaded by a small encroaching legion of young girls with paper bullhorns chanting Asuka over and over again. The tide was shifting and nothing would ever be the same. 

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Tuesdays with Daddy: Week 7: vs. The Mississippi Mauler Jim Harris

Week 7

Big Daddy vs. “The Mississippi Mauler” Jim Harris 3/13/82

MD: This is probably not the best use of one of my 15 matches but it’s Kamala! We’ve seen him in Germany in the start of the 80s as Big Jim Harris and against the right opponent he really did have a lot to offer. He could have had an entire career never becoming Kamala and he still would have probably done pretty well for himself. 

This is interesting because it was set up as best two-out-of-three arm wrestling with a match to follow. I had picked this, in part, due to the length of the clip (just under ten minutes), but I realize now more than half of it will be the arm wrestling. That’s okay though, because you clearly can learn something from such things. You learn a ton about a wrestler from how they participate in the side bits, be it a worked weightlifting angle or boxing or this. It’s all about how they work it. 

And here Daddy worked it just like he works everything else. He let Harris take over to start, building up that sense of vulnerability and then thudded him down to a big pop. This was two-out-of-three. It made sense that Harris would do something cheap to win in the second right? But that bit of vulnerability Daddy always showed in one way or another never got to the point of real true heat and danger. It was always safe. Always reassuring. I could make some sort of parallel that the declined empire Brits wanted just a tiny bit of terror, a little bit of that (ultimately safe and sanitized) Doctor Who “hide behind the couch” sensation and then to have their fears reassured in the most definitive way possible. But that seems a bit too much for this project. 

Still…

Well, anyway, that bit of peril that Daddy experienced in the first would be the whole of it. For the second (which Harris decided he wanted to be on the other side of the table on which was a good bit of heeling, making excuses), he pressed Harris’ hand down quickly, only for Harris to pull away and stand up at the last second, complaining on the mic for all the ills of the world and how they were Daddy’s fault.

The match itself was just a few minutes and yes, a bit of peril up front with Harris putting on a headlock. The whips would soon start, back and forth and back again, the big boom stuff that was made possible by the smaller ring (I assume it’s smaller. It may just be that Daddy’s bigger, but it’s really just a few steps from corner to corner with the way these guys moved). There was a moment of Harris missing the hand at one point which didn’t quite make things seem more organic in a way a slip like that might. The waterwheel back drop pancake looked pretty exceptional however, and Harris (selling quite well with spasms and attempts to move) couldn’t beat the count after that. The crowd, of course, was elated. 

The criticism is, as always so far, that if Daddy gave just a little more, then things would have seemed more gripping in his victory, but perhaps they would have felt less safe and even, on some level, less triumphant and monumental, less larger than life. Which again, gives things that short Goldberg or JYD feel. That is, of course, not to say that he didn’t show vulnerability at all. He just did it in a very measured, and I think given the patterns, self-conscious way. Was it because he was afraid to be more vulnerable or because it worked and appealed to his audience? That I’m not sure of, but to say that he didn’t give at all would be a mistake. Overall, this was worth including because it showed that the act could transfer into connected elements like arm-wrestling while still being incredibly consistent and undeniably effective, if, perhaps, too hesitant and conservative.

ER: Look at The Mississippi Mauler in his beautiful red and white poncho, a look so strong that I can see a world where he's a major star even without playing a godless savage. There's just something about a cool black guy wearing a poncho like he's in an Italian western. It's like the first time I saw Bounty Hunter Brian Keith making his way to the ring in a poncho, how much aura he had...before I saw him wrestle. Mauler has his sick poncho, he didn't need a cheap tactic such as letting a deathly ill girl accompany him to the ring, like Daddy. This girl's dying wish was to accompany Daddy to the ring and well...okay that's very sweet and I love that it happened. 

I love a good arm wrestling angle and Mauler is great at what makes arm wrestling angles so good: The Bullshit. My favorite is him refusing to sit in the chair closest to him, rightly suspecting there's some foul play and insisting on sitting in Daddy's seat. When he loses the first (of 3!) arm wrestling falls, that's when he demands to switch seats back. Perfect. Pulling away from a loss, kicking the table away, logging off PSN just as you're about to lose a game, that's the behavior I want to see when there's arm wrestling in a wrestling ring. Mauler gets on the mic and talks about how arm wrestling isn't what he was here to do, pro wrestling is how he plies his trade. It's so great to demand certain rules, and the second you're about to lose under those rules, gaslight the people into thinking nobody was even here to DO arm wrestling. We're here to wrestle, I don't even know what this tiny table is doing here, we're supposed to be PRO wrestling. 

I loved their deeply sunk collar and elbow tie ups. I'm not sure I've seen someone go after Daddy so directly. We've all seen the shoulderblocks and the belly bumps but a direct collar and elbow, strength to strength, is rare. This is a good one, with Mauler widening his base, forcing Daddy to widen his own, both men in a heavy lean so you can really see Daddy's big belly sagging down between his legs. Daddy shoves off each time, with Mauler pounding his chest like King Kong, leaping and stomping and hopping, as much to intimidate as to celebrate that he locked up with Daddy and is still standing tall. 

Big Daddy's Irish whips remain among the strongest looking I've seen. Mauler is huge but I can't say I've ever seen Kamala run so fast as when Daddy whips him back and forth into the buckles. And boy do we get to see him whipped into the buckles. Is it just because Kamala is so young here? We have the German footage where he's even younger, but Germany didn't really have a lot of "running" in their heavyweight ring style. It was a lot slower, a lot more walking. Mauler should be thanking the turnbuckles, because they were the only thing stopping him here. He was whipped so hard, that the ropes went slack and ringside technicians were required to hold the whole rigging into place as the Mauler kept hitting the buckles. 

And my god does Daddy's waterwheel absolutely CRUSH Mauler. I watched it back several times and it looks like Daddy lands full weight on Mauler's face, and Mauler starts sputtering and convulsing, lying there looking like Keith David after taking Roddy Piper's worst. I've more often seen Daddy roll it off to the side, but here he just flattens the Mauler's face and even with fight in him, no man was meant to stand up from that. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/12 - 10/18

AEW Collision 10/14/26

Darby Allin vs Hechicero 

MD: Darby Allin pinned Hechicero in 14:10 to qualify for Clockwork Carnage after hitting two Coffin Drops on Hechicero, who was returning to the ring after both men were wiped out by a spectacular Coffin Drop from the top to the floor. Darby sold his leg during the match with Hechicero targeting it and took some of his usual big bumps. The crowd was tired but went up for the big moments and counters. **** 1/4.

So that's a review, right? I put it together quickly. It's not bad for posterity purpose. It tells you in broad strokes what happened. Darby won. Darby qualified. It was a little less than 15 minutes. It more or less had the crowd. There was a big dive at the end. Darby sold the leg. There were some counters. You look at this twenty years from now and you theoretically have some sense of what happened. You missed the show because you don't watch Collision (even after Dynamite) and you have some sense of what happened. What. You even have a quantitative sense of how good it is. 

But look at what it leaves out.

This was a qualifier match, yes. It was the last one. Darby had survived Kyle Fletcher in Paris the previous week and followed that by climbing a mountain, because of course he did. His leg was bandaged up. Hechicero smelled blood. This was his first AEW appearance since August where he lost a Continental Cup match to Nigel.  Hechicero, is of course, the CMLL Heavyweight Championship. It hasn't exactly been a satisfying reign. There was the poorly received Eddie match. There was a three way at Aniversario. It's not like he's been able to defend it on AEW TV either, despite being a Don Callis Family member.

People complained, for good reasons and bad, that this finish was not exactly up to chance. Darby's more of a draw in the main event of a PPV, even as a role player among other main eventers, than Hechicero is. Though maybe you don't elevate wrestlers without taking chances on them sometimes. But then AEW is run by a stats guy, even if he's one who's prone to sentiment like any other pro wrestling fan. 

Look at the situation though. Hechicero had a chip on his shoulder. Darby had a bum leg. We should care about the destination but only in so much as it informs the journey. We care about where they're going. We care even more about how they get there. Otherwise, what's the point of actually watching? Why not just run a simulation. The art is in how they choose to get from point A to point B and how they then execute that plan. 

And this match was incredibly artful and dramatic, even if the outcome was never entirely in doubt.

Hechicero was, as noted, like a shark smelling blood, stalking Darby to start. He didn't go right for the leg, but instead used Darby's need to protect it to twist at the arm and the neck. Darby tried to use his legs to kick back to escape one situation, but in his selling, he was slowed down enough that Hechicero was able to catch him on a leapfrog and drive him down knee first to the mat. He followed that up with a rear roll on a tapitia (then dropping Darby right on his knee) which all looked particularly brutal. It was a creative leveraging of Darby's flexibility, certainly.

The match would follow along those lines. When able, Hechicero would target the leg. That might be a reverse dragon screw with the leg dangling off the apron or just tying it up and twisting it, making sure to mock Darby and the crowd after the fact. When Darby found a way to edge back (primarily biting at the hand until his comeback later in the match), Hechicero would cut him off with more holistic and opportunistic offense. Darby couldn't capitalize further because of the leg. He'd get a jackknife pin but then would sell the leg by hopping on it losing leverage, or when he did get leverage, like after a reversal of a rear naked choke, his leg gave out after the fact, a cost/benefit decision that did not work out in his favor.

When he did finally start to come back, it was by letting Hechicero do the heavy lifting for him, he turned the conjuro spinning backbreaker into a crucifix bomb. The crowd started chanting for him after that, and he deserved it. He made it to the top for a 'rana, but only by reversing Hechicero's attempt to dangle him in a choke while sitting on the top rope. He followed that up with a Code Red, another move where he barely needed to put any pressure on his leg, and then trapped Hechicero in the apron to set up the tope and top rope coffin drop to the floor that would lead things to the finish. 

The story here was the color, variety, meanness, and adaptability of Hechicero's offense, and then how Darby's selling met the moment. It wasn't done to just check boxes. It limited his opportunities and created a cost for everything he tried to do. It impact not just what he did but how he moved, the best sort of selling. Meanwhile, Hechicero wasn't dogmatically just going after the limb, but instead meeting every moment for the possibilities available. Sometimes that meant going after something else to open the leg back up or because Darby was overly protecting it. That's a fascinating sort of pro wrestling, one where the moments truly do matter.

I did see complaints about the finish and how it was a copy of other Darby matches this year. I think the way he takes the wind out of an opponent is both opportunistic and logical and much more about the set up. How does he get them in that position in the first place? That's what's compelling more than the Coffin Drops themselves. Here it was by using Hechicero's moves as a way to position himself to hit something and then to throw his body at him when he had the chance. 

Where I do question it, however, is the need to have a pin in the first place. I'd argue that Hechicero was protected to a degree because he did beat the count and was simply ambushed on the way back in the ring, but with all the Champion vs Champion matches in AEW, they should lean into the 70s aesthetic and have some countouts or double countouts now and again. I can hear people grumbling already, but it's been so long  since this was a common part of pro wrestling, there's a chance to reframe and reclaim it. It's a tool like any other tool and in a CMLL Heavyweight Champion vs TNT Champion match, a finish where Darby just barely makes it back and and Hechicero doesn't could actually be compelling. Certainly, it'd make those finishes where both wrestlers make it back in a little more exciting to do the opposite now and again. A match like this where everyone more or less knew the winner coming in could have been a great place to switch things up and do it.

So that's the match. You could have covered the bare bones of the what like that first paragraph. You could just focus on the outcome and how many matches Darby won or lost this year and how many more you think he should have won or lost. Or you could lean into the third option and really try to immerse yourself in the art being created, in the excitement being generated, in details worth delving through. 

We've spent generations doing the one or the other, but I think everyone would be so much happier with the third.

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Found Footage Friday: 1986 UWF SUPERDOME EXTRAVAGANZA '86

UWF Superdome 6/14/1986    

One Man Gang vs. Brett Sawyer

MD: Brett Sawyer is the king of Vault footage and here he is again with another really good performance. Well, a glimpse at one. Only so much you can do in a couple of minutes, but the cat and mouse at the start was spirited and effective with all the build and payoff you'd want as he built to a two hands-on-one test of strength only for Gang to crush him in the corner. Much of the rest of the match was Gang hamhocks coming down on him. Occasionally Sawyer tried to get shots to the legs in to no avail, but the effort was appreciated. Things finally went to the floor and Gang got DQed using some chairs. Back in the ring more crushing as the fans stomped in rhythm for anyone to make the save (no one did). This accomplished what it set out to do.

Robert Gibson vs. Baron Von Raschke

MD: It's always surreal to see Von Raschke in weird settings bumping without bending as he was want to do. Morton's up against Flair second from the top (we don't have that match) and Gibson's here on the undercard against the Baron. Fans were behind him but more in a general sense. After a quick shine, meat of the match was an armbar where the Baron kept going for a hairpull and it was fine but it didn't really get any extra heat. There's probably a different crowd where this match would work in front of but here, they just went up for the goosestepping and the claw attempt. Gibson blocked it, which was moderately dramatic stuff and then after Baron tossed him, he turned a slam attempt from the outside in into a small package for the win. Certainly not the best match we've seen out of the vault this year.

Koko B. Ware vs. Jack Victory

MD: This felt way bigger than you'd think. Victory had Mad Maxine with him and Koko had Dark Journey (babyface). Another weird pairing or set of pairings but they'd built it with Maxine bullying Journey. Maxine did not have a long run but she did pop up a number of different places, like Kamala in her own way (Kamala was also on this card vs Link but we don't have that). Florida, Continental, here. An attraction doing attraction things. 

We come in JIP here and the early stuff based around punching is great. Koko has just an awesome flurry to come back and the crowd goes up for it until he crashes and burns in the corner (which also looked great). Then Victory leans on him a bit until Dark Journey comes out, causing a huge pop. We lose the audio to a degree here but can still hear Ross. She's enough of a distraction to let Koko get a snap schoolboy takeover which has an almost power bomb impact to it. Looked great how Victory threw himself back for it. Post-match Maxine and Victory are poor losers but Journey gets big revenge with powder and a low kick and the place goes nuts. I imagine this probably made TV in part at least somewhere as we have commentary but it did feel like a memorable angle and a big deal, even if you wouldn't think Koko and Victory would be the ones involved. You'd almost think it'd be Taylor and Sawyer instead for instance.

Buddy Roberts & Terry Gordy vs. Blade Runners

MD: Hayes was fun on the mic pre-match letting Gilbert know that if he stays out of this, Hayes will stay out of this, but if he doesn't... This is an only time match up between Warrior and Gordy and it's a weird visual, let me tell you. Fun start to this where it's chaos and the ref has to appeal on the mic to Gilbert and Hayes to calm things down. I'm not sure I've ever quite seen that. 

Match itself had a Buddy playing face-in-peril. That meant some bearhugging from Sting, but most of it was Sting and Warrior working together. Lots of quick tags and double teams off the ropes. Eventually Buddy ducked one and Gordy came in to even the sides and he and Warrior crashed into each other with a double clothesline for a very unsatisfying (but still larger than life) double KO as neither met the ten count. 

UWF Television Title: Terry Taylor (c) vs. Buzz Sawyer

MD: This aired on Power Pro but it's likely a footage upgrade with just the crowd noise and we'll cover it. I've read someone recently question why Buzz was used so well by Ole and Watts when he was such a bad person (maybe Ron Starr's book?) but look at how he gave and gave on a big show like this for a guy like Taylor. He tried to lure him in with handshakes to start and got clowned. He got a little advantage and crashed into the turnbuckle. Taylor controlled on the arm for the next few minutes including hitting a big cross body. Buzz only took over because Taylor missed a second one. Then he honed in on the ribs/back because of the miss with bearhugs, basically. Taylor came back but ate the power slam. Buzz missed a top rope splash and lost to a sunset flip, clean. Then he demanded Taylor get back in the ring to have another impromptu match, ambushed him, immediately fed for a comeback, and lost to a quick Thesz press, again, definitively. I imagine one squash the following weekend would wash away any shame from this loss too. But he put over Taylor like a million bucks here. Maybe Taylor won due to Buzz's own mistake but then he won again even more definitively. You get a completely loathsome character who's as talented as Buzz was and that would do business on a big show and it makes sense why the guy got used as well as he did. 

Ted DiBiase vs. Michael Hayes

MD: I really love this pairing, especially when Dibiase is the babyface. Dibiase vs the Freebirds is probably one of my favorite feuds of the 80s honestly. It's a huge testament to Hayes that he could be a de facto babyface earlier against Gilbert and the Blade Runners and then go full on heel here. This starts with some great BS (even if maybe not all appropriate in 2026). Dibiase gets the fans chanting. Hayes moonwalks. He goes to the second rope to preen and Dibiase jumps up to shake the ropes messing with his balance. Criss Crossing ends abruptly with Dibiase putting a fist up and Hayes taking a powder. Hayes tries a cheapshot in the ropes but Dibiase ducks and hits a series of jabs before paying off that big punch. Hayes takes another powder. Hayes hits a bodyslam and struts. He hits an armdrag and shimmies. So Dibiase hits an armdrag and two bodyslams and the fist drop and then after a pause, struts himself closing the parentheses. Perfectly parallel pro wrestling. The fans are into all of it.  

Hayes plays mind games and gets a temporary advantage but misses a kneedrop after a strut. They do some legwork and tease the figure four but that leads to the actual heat which is mostly Hayes leaning on Dibiase's injured neck. It's just a chinlock with a hope spot or two but the fans go up huge for Dibiase firing up. Then they tease a kick with his head down for a back body drop but Dibiase dodges it and goes into his comeback. It was a clever and effective inversion. Finish is very wonky though. He hits the powerslam and goes for the Figure Four but Gordy comes out. Then he power slams him and pins him instead. Ref counts it. Gordy was mostly fresh. He's more foreboding and dangerous than Hayes (despite JR calling Hayes a Charles Manson like figure). If you used Buddy in that role it would have worked a hundred times better even though it would have still been an annoying and illogical bait and switch. Ah well. Post-match they beat on Dibiase and tease the pile driver but Dibiase gets free and gets out the glove to a huge pop as the Birds run away. The good in this was very good but I'm sure people would miss it all because of the finish. 

Street Fight: Bill Watts & Dusty Rhodes & Steve Williams vs. Ivan Koloff & Nikita Koloff & Korstia Korchenko

MD: This is a come as you are street fight. Watts' shirt is too small so he looks like Ricky Morton with the cut off shirt. He had to be aware of this. I do like the idea that the Soviets come in their gear. The Americans are in jeans like normal relatable people (Watts' shirt notwithstanding). The Russians are alien creatures with a broken society that we can't relate to. Etc. It's effective even if seeing these guys in street clothes would have been more entertaining decades later.

I don't have a ton else to say about this one. It's less than ten minutes in and out and mostly chaotic brawling. Dusty and Watts position themselves to save Williams from a double team once or twice. Ivan gets the chain out early and does damage with it. Finish has Gilbert try to intervene with a weapon but (I think) trip on the way in letting Watts get it and the win. Post-match Watts clears house with the chain and then gets to whip Gilbert a bit, but not enough that there isn't more meat on the bone. The one view meant we missed a decent amount of the action and Dusty sort of disappeared because of that in a way I'm not used to. Plus, given the build, this was the Watts' show after all.

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