New Footage Friday: Tarzan Goto, Sabu, Mr. Hughes, Steiners, Goldust, Curry Man

Big Titan/The Gladiator/Dr. Hannibal/Ricky Fuji/Attila the Hun vs. Tarzan Goto/Grigory Verichev/Sambo Asako/Sabu FMW 2/19/93

MD: This is part of a ten disc FMW HH set that's recently been unearthed by everyone's pal Pete F. Of it, only one disc seems to have been out there before. We put our heads together quickly and this was the first match that jumped out.

After watching it, I told Phil that we definitely needed to share it with the world but that I wasn't sure we could find anything intelligent to say about it. That said, if anyone can, it's probably Eric.

It's chaos. Given the angle the quality, you don't quite get the blood you'd expect, but you do get the violence. In a lot of ways, this is a Goto and Sabu showcase with Titan and Gladiator throwing everyone around dangerously and that's absolutely, 100% what you want it to be. I have no idea who some of the others even are. Attila the Hun, for instance, comes in solely to get gloriously demolished by Goto at the start of the match. The most horrifying and breathtaking moment of all of this isn't the wire at all but Sabu barely getting around on a Titan powerbomb, turning it into a rana at the last moment.

Post match goes on and on with meandering violence, only some of which caught on tape. Sabu had turned on Goto and everyone pretty much ends up fighting everyone else. There is a Sabu vs Goto match that follows this (I assume) on tape, and I definitely feel a need to check that out. I imagine we're going to get a ton of great Goto moments out of this footage.

ER: Oh man this match owns. It's quite possibly the most of every single thing you could possibly want in pro wrestling: A dangerous stipulation, a crowded ring, fat guys, tall guys with bad hair, a Russian judo medalist in a gi, a phony medical practitioner, a descendant of a tribal leader who invaded Italy (and now he's invading Japan!), stiff moves, dangerous moves, basically everything. This whole match is like the Royal Rumbles my childhood friend Eric O. and I used to have, where we would do separate entrances as every single guy, the match constantly being interrupted so one of us could run down the stairs and back up, constantly entering as someone new. This is one of the greatest Tarzan Goto performances ever. How were all of us tape traders so obsessed with unwatchable quality Sabu comps, while we took 20 years to realize that we should have been making and distributing Tarzan Goto comps? I counted 22 of the stiffest lariats you've ever seen, many of them coming from Goto (Goto threw so many brutal southpaw lariats that my left rotator cuff was sore after watching this), but several from Titan and Gladiator that would typically wind up with Sabu getting dumped on his head. Goto was a Tazmanian Devil throughout the briskly paced and chaotic match, always being in the center of something, throwing almost nothing more than those brutal lariats and his jaw breaking right hands.

We get one of the best and most unexpected ref bumps, as Goto rears back to slug someone and elbows the referee in the face, the ref taking a spectacular flipping bump backwards near the barbed wire ropes. Titan and Awesome make it their mission to hit increasingly dangerous powerbombs on every single person in the match, and their mission was successful. I thought for sure Sabu was going to get spiked right on the top of his head, the angle he was coming down at was looking murderous, but he rana'd Titan at what had to be the last possible inch to do so. Sambo Asako was wearing his aquamarine singlet/tights, stretched tight over that round build. Nobody wants camo pants Asako, they want this plump little blueberry. In a match with 10 men and no ropes we actually get a powder in the eyes finish and a double cross, then everyone swarms the ring. Far and away the best part of the swarm was Titan and Gladiator getting back in the ring. The video quality being handheld from 1993, we can't really see the barbed wire ropes. So seeing Gladiator and Titan hop to the ring apron and high step over what appears to me nothing just makes them look like they're on their way to interview at the Ministry of Silly Walks. Literally every single thing about this match was perfect.

PAS: This was a batch of fun, goddam is Tarzan Goto a monster in this. I loved him just obliterating Atilla the Hun in the opening fall, just punking this goof out, and he continued to just cracking people with stiff lariats and great punches. I also dug Gladiator and Big Titan as this roided out mulleted team of goofs. Really felt like they should have been ECW's Road Warriors. Poor Verichev. This has to be a bit of a rock bottom moment, big fall from the olympic medal platform to getting punched in the face by Mike Awesome in a some gym in Japan. This was the right kind of barbed wire match, where the wire was part of the crazy brawl rather then the focus of the match, some nice bumps into the wire, but not a lot of carving.. Sabu was fun too, he mostly threw punches and rana's but had that nutso aura which made him such a phenom. Nifty discovery.

Barbarian/Mr. Hughes vs. The Steiners ASW 9/3/96

PAS:  Wow, what a blast this was. Total big boy spotfest. No reason for all four of these guys to work this hard on a random North Carolina indy show. Everyone knows how great the Stieners and the Barbarian are, but Mr. Hughes was a beast in this, just a bump machine. He misses a top rope splash, takes a Pat Tanaka level backdrop, and gets dumped on his head with Steiner suplexes and a the Frankenstiener. His offense looked good too, he had a great Buzz Sawyer style powerslam (as did the Barbarian, weirdly Rick Steiner didn't) and a dope dropkick. Steiners hit a bunch of their big throws, and Rick threw some great clotheslines. Finish was completely bonkers, Barbarian put Scott on a table on the floor, and misses a top rope headbutt to the floor and just splinters the table, completely insane bump, as crazy as any Sabu or Tommy Dreamer table bumps in ECW prime. If this had been on WCWSN or a WCW PPV it would have been a legendary match.

ER: My word what a match! You know who was really great in 1996? Mr. Hughes, apparently! Mr. Hughes is not somebody who I've ever had much of an opinion on, good or bad. I guess my only opinion up until now was "It was kind of weird when he showed up for a month in 1999 WWE." But here he looked like my favorite wrestler. He's still really big here (I remember him being slimmer when he showed up in WWE, in the same way Bossman was slimmer when he came back that year) but incredibly fast and agile. "Am I going to need to go on a Mr. Hughes deep dive?" he asked excitedly. Hughes takes a few armdrags from Scott really fast, does a super fast rope running exchange, bumps huge over the top to the floor, hits a high dropkick, a gorgeous classic clothesline (you know, where the power is in you whipping them into the ropes and let them run neck first into your arm), takes maybe the highest back bump I've ever seen from a man his size, hits a fantastic powerslam on Scott, misses a giant splash off the top...I mean Mr. Hughes was just everything I would want a wrestler to be in this match, with the added bonus being that he looks sharp as hell in his duds and wears sunglasses.

You know who else was great in 1996? Everybody else here. Rick was awesome, throwing Hughes high by the ankles with that big back drop, comes in with this fiery hot tag with mean punches to Barbarian's forehead, runs HARD through Barb/Hughes with a double lariat, really looked like a long haul trucker getting super strength from rest stop crank. Scott throws a couple big suplexes (getting Barbarian dangerously vertical on and overhead throw) and snaps off an all time great Frankensteiner on Hughes down the stretch run (and damn does Hughes take a great fast and tumbling bump off it). Barbarian is great all around here, and takes the most unexpectedly dangerous and spectacular bump of the match, something that nobody attending this show expected they would see, when he flies from the top rope to the floor, through a table, missing a splash as Scott rolls out of the way, and gets pinned. Phil is completely right that if that match had been on any WWF/WCW TV or PPV, it would be a super talked about match in our circles long before now. If this match had happened exactly the same this year, it would rank highly on ours and others' MOTY List. Mr.freaking Hughes baby.

Goldust vs. Curry Man 1PW 10/14/06

ER: This isn't too long after Goldust's 4th WWE stint (that popular stint where he was Snitsky's tag partner), so he was still closer to prime time shape and hadn't yet bulked up to Black Reign superheavyweight status. This was a big event with a large indy crowd, and a lot of indy names scattered throughout the card (including Samoa Joe in a six man for some reason, and Smothers/Hamrick flown over to be in a tag trios), and the crowd is into the act here. I'm not 18 any longer, so Curry Man is no longer my flavor, and we get a lot of comedy including a long bit with everyone (ref included) trying to stomp feet. Not really sure I can get past the ref no selling having both of his feet stomped. Mainly because seeing Goldust stomp feet and then limp around after getting his foot stomped, made me want to see someone (Dustin Rhodes-level worker or better) work an entire match around one foot stomp. I know one of these guys can do it. Either stomp someone's foot early and then work over that foot, or get their own foot stomped and then limp through a match. I want a stubbed toe sell; that stubbed toe pain that is the worst pain you can imagine for one 2 second burst. Later the ref gets involved again by leaping in at the last moment to prevent Goldust from hitting Shattered Dreams, taking a leg kick in the process and delivering one as a receipt. If the referee needed to be involved in this, that at least felt like a more organic way to involve him. We get a lot of my favorite Dustin spots - one which I feel doesn't get brought up enough - which is his missed crossbody that sends him tumbling to the floor. It always looks fantastic, and isn't something he does in every match so you aren't exactly expecting it. Curry Man/Daniels is fine. You know what you're getting with him. His moonsault looked like something that deserved to be a nearfall. But it also felt like Dustin could have had this match with anybody.

MD: A year or two back I went out of my way to specifically look for Dustin-in-the-Wilderness matches. Dustin is almost always worth watching because despite the gimmick, he brings such pure pro-wrestling skills. This isn't too far off from the Muta/Tajiri vs. Goldustin/Hakushi match for instance. One thing I came across was a three minute fancam highlight reel of this, posted a week after the match happened.

In a lot of ways it's like trailers today. It had a lot of the "good stuff," some very fun comedy in a setting where you rarely saw Dustin, 00s UK Indy. I'm glad the whole match has showed up but I did get a sense that I'd already seen a lot of that "good stuff." That said, this is still worth seeing for the novelty. Daniels is a guy who's been precision execution but not always precision emotion, but he's unleashed and fully committed and emotive as Curry Man even if he leaves some of that execution at the door. They work the first part of this as a symmetry driven comedy match. Dustin, being Dustin, works the second half from underneath, getting the crowd honestly behind him and buying into his comebacks. He's one of the few people who in 2018 can still get people to do so and this crowd was even more game for it than their decade-later successors. That he was able to work both elements in the same match, in a strange place, with a unique opponent is just more of the gospel of how great he is and was.

PAS: I am with both guys, this was a Dustin showcase against a game but generic opponent. I never bought Curry Man as a character, it was always Daniels signature crisp athleticism with some colorless comedy spots thrown in. Still Goldust working shtick leading into a more serious match is going to work with anyone. Dustin had great uppercuts, hit his awesome missed bodypress spot and worked a fun shtick around the Shattered Dreams with the ref. Basically a fun syndie match, but Dustin is one of the great Syndie match workers off all time.