New Footage Friday: Funks, Invaders, Bestia, Dandy, Eddie, JBL

Terry/Dory Funk Jr. vs. Invaders WWC 12/9/86

MD: This is a find. Our Man in Puerto Rico tells me that that it was from a Clasicos segment that aired round 04-05 with a date of 12/9/86. The match itself is simple and straightforward, much more of a Southern Tag than a wild brawl like you'd expect from a Terry Funk Puerto Rico match. I love how much mileage they get just out of the headlock in the first third, with lots of babyface masked confusion switches and the heels getting flustered and Terry, especially stooging all over the place.

The heat has some more object-assisted choking (a theme this week), this time with Terry's wrist tape and the Funks getting some revenge for all the clowning of the first third. Invader 1 remains one of the greatest sellers of all time. The comeback was earned with him hitting a shot off the ropes like only he can but then having to dodge an elbow smash by Terry (who clocks Dory). The finish was brief but hot and I'm only disappointed we couldn't see the action on the outside with Invader 1 chasing after Terry.

ER: This was amusing, but kind of reverse of what you want. On paper you hope for white Invader masks turned red (why else would you be wearing a white mask!?) and we don't get a plasma match, we get more of a headlock match with some occasional fun Terry shtick. Terry has super short curly hair and his cop 'stache, but the bulk of this is Dory headlocks and Invader headlocks, and the tough part of Terry being such a fun hot tag is Dory is not usually an interesting guy to build to a Terry hot tag. You'd rather have Terry stumbling and swinging wildly to build to a some Dory hot tag forearms, but you get Dory headlocking his way into Terry throwing some punches and taking a couple loopy bumps. Terry is always going to be an amusing apron guy, there's always gold in them thar hills, but seeing him throw a nice punch from the apron isn't quite what I wanted here. A polite professional match, and professionally polite is never what you want or expect from 80s Puerto Rico OR Terry.

PAS: Terry Funk is such a master performer that any chance to fill in the holes in the tapestry is going to be well worth it. This is a minor performance, but a fun one. We did get a lot of Dory, and while we got a fun uppercut battle, Dory is going to be a bit dry. Invaders work a bunch of switches and double teams around a headlock early in the match, isolating Dory, and I am just disappointed I didn't get to see Terry react to getting hoodwinked like that. It got a little buzzy at the finish but more of a time capsule then a great match.

El Dandy vs. Bestia Salvaje CMLL 9/30/92

ER: This is another gem provided to us by premier wrestling YouTube champion Roy Lucier, a guy who makes this feature feel like we need to be doing it more than once a week just to catch up. It never quite struck me until we saw Dominic Garrini live 3 times in one day, but blurry YouTube video early 90s Bestia Salvaje is a spitting image of Dominic Garrini. I bet Garrini could grow his hair out a bit into Bestia's cool curly mullet shag. And if that Funks tag wasn't what we wanted, this match is exactly what we wanted (though we were kind of expecting some blood). I think it was a title match, but it was worked more like a stips brawl, but it didn't have the blood of a stips brawl. It was a fusion that worked and built to a scorching tercera. Bestia lived up to his gimmick name throughout, and I dug his hard kicks in the primera (ending with a two kick combo to Dandy's inner thighs), and viciousness in the segunda that backfires and ends with Dandy violently locking him into a brutal figure four stumpuller pin. You could feel a big tercera was on its way and yes that happened. Dandy takes a super fast and crazy bump into the third row, Salvaje hits a nice dive that sends Dandy back into seats, Bestia even comes running at Dandy with a ripped of row of hardass metal chairs and  - while we're used to Park taking something stupid like that - Dandy gets the hell out of Dodge once he sees 17 edges of sharp metal flying towards him, and that was a great visual. These two are pros and their exchanges were the kind of airtight gracefully violent lucha that plays so well to us.

MD: This is billed a title match, and I'm pretty sure it is, but it's definitely an odd one, especially for 92. By the time we come in, I assume they've already done the initial matwork, because we're deep into Bestia Salvaje drawing heat, beating Dandy on the ropes, choking him, biting him. I don't think this is a heel ref scenario but he's certainly hapless early on, preventing Dandy from using rudo tactics (like, you know, punching) in his first attempt at a comeback and missing about sixteen fouls from Bestia. I really liked the end of the primera, which had Bestia go out to jaw at a fan who threw something at him, allowing Dandy to come back with some great punches on the outside, only to get fouled back in the ring as the ref was still focused on the fan.

The segunda had a chain, choking and Dandy's biggest comeback of the match, whereas he got it and turned the tables on Bestia. The tercera had some more heat, another comeback by Dandy, including some great use of the side of the ring, just a hint of crazy brawling on the floor, and your dives and a finish out of nowhere.

Bestia drew a ton of heat with his cheating in a title match (I'm pretty sure that was what was going on here) and Dandy was sympathetic as ever, but the comebacks were a bit too sputtering and not quite triumphant enough to make this work as well as it should have. It was fine to use the ref actively and inactively to delay and defer it in the primera, but I think the comeback in the segunda should have been a bit more definitive. If you're going to lean into heat on a title match, make sure the payoff works out too. Still a good find though.

PAS: The graphic of this match said Super Libre, and I think it was that not a title match. Matt mentioned missing the matwork, but I think we got the match bell to bell and they didn't have any matwork, just started throwing. Dandy was such a multi tool player, he could brawl like an all time brawler, work the mat like a maestro and mix in suplexes and puro influenced stuff like the upcoming generation of guys who started watching tapes. Here we get the big time brawling, standing nose to nose against a hellacious asskicker like Bestia, the throws with a couple of big time spinebusters and a bit of technical wizardry with his pin combo. I liked the chain stuff, which is a old school wrestling trope you don't see much of in lucha, and the third fall was appropriately manic. If that chair hurl landed this would have amped up to an all timer level, it was a bit below that but a great unearthing by our boy Roy.

JBL vs. Eddie Guerrero WWF 6/3/04

ER: This was from a WWF Italy tour when Italy was the hottest wrestling market in the world, and my god does it deliver as any Eddie/JBL match we've seen thus far. It gets a lot of time, going past 25 minutes and building steadily. The headlock exchange at the beginning could have been rough, coming right after a good long look at Dory's headlocks, but instead Eddie and JBL show how damn awesome a long headlock sequence can be. Eddie especially throws a few perfect uppercut punches in a headlock, one of those things that is worth the price of admission alone. The important thing is we always built to something big out of the headlocks, as each guy's big moves were nicely executed and hit hard. JBL threw some of his best elbows (sometimes he could straighten his arm out a bit much to take away the "point of elbow" visual, here he threw heavy landing/tightly tucked elbowdrops, really among his best ever) and his lariat was really throat crushing. Eddie's stuff looked so good, I really miss seeing this guy, he was my favorite wrestler in the world when he passed and performances like this are part of it. Seeing him get caught on a crossbody but shifting it into a DDT, done with their movements, reads like such a big and special spot (as it should). The finish is even the kind of house show finish you would dream of if you were taking your kid to a show, as we get some big heel bumps (heel Kurt Angle was at ringside the whole time in a wheelchair and cast, Luther Reigns was pushing him), especially liked Luther Reigns taking a big backwards bump off the apron. But then all the biggest babyfaces at the time run out to hit big moves, so you have triumphant, Cena and Mysterio spots and a big RVD frog splash, the kind of extended moment that sent every kid and adult home incredibly happy. This was an awesome feud at the time and I don't think they ever had a poor match, now we see what they do off camera in Europe and it's clear we need to see every singles and tag from this era with these two on opposite sides.

MD: The 00s wrestling boom in Italy is one of my favorite things I know absolutely nothing about. Actually, I know Rikishi was big in Italy. That's the one thing I know. This was a WWE tour. I missed a lot of the Eddy vs JBL feud in real time (though I've gone back and seen the big matches) since I was abroad for the first half of the year. I love that this show had not just Chavo Jr. and Sr. vs Nunzio and Spike but that the Chavos won the match. Typical WWE killjoy booking. I wish we had that match too.

Anyway, this was a really good house show match (which last week established that we tend to enjoy) sandwiched by enjoyable WWE house show BS with Angle and Luther Reigns and a bunch of babyfaces. Eddy's lie, cheat, steal shtick meant that he could fill a shine with a ton of ritualistic entertaining nonsense. JBL made a great straight man for it too. Here it was all based out of a headlock with JBL trying to pull the hair to get out and Eddy osscilating between palm strikes and punches depending on the ref's position.

They laid the rest of this out smartly, with a lot of paralleled sequences and repetition of spots (for instance, a lot of the heat was JBL choking Eddy with his wrist tape. Eddy hit a belly to back to get free and started choking JBL who then hit a belly to back of his own ending that sequence and letting them move on to the next chapter; likewise, they smartly used multiple fall-away slams or attempts as a transition or to tease one, with the third attempt being turned into a DDT that helped to set up the finish). This had about three levels of feel-good finish and almost certainly made up for poor Nunzio losing earlier.

PAS: God do I love Eddie Guerrero. he is a guy who had a relatively short career for an all time great (15 years basically 1990-2005, consider how long Santo or Casas wrestled at a high level) so every new Eddie match is a mitzvah. He is especially great to watch in the house show format. He is such an electric performer and can really take the house show shortcuts and tropes and make them shine. Great JBL performance too, as he was great at flipping that switch between a stooge and a killer. He is a foil for Eddies stuff, but when he turns it on, he just crushed him with elbow drops, hurled him with throws and severed his head with a lariat. Loved the finish with every babyface in the back taking out every heel in the back, although RVD ending a show with a big frogsplash is pretty insulting on a show headlined by Eddie Guerrero.