New Footage Friday: Paul Diamond, Liger, TNT, Hashimoto, Claudio, Navarro, Solar, Quack

Negro Navarro/Claudio Castagnoli/Mr. Ferrari vs. Mike Quackenbush/Solar/Kendo LLM 3/9/09

ER: This is something I've heard about for a decade, but have never seen, and now I have! And it is just what I hoped it was. It has a super satisfying build and the pairings I hoped to see, thought everyone was good at ramping up the intensity of the match. Just some maestro lucha straight outta Delaware, a state I think about less than at least 40 other states. At minimum I wanted some exciting Navarro/Quackenbush in spades, and we got a nice bounty of them; the whole match starts with them and far more time is devoted to them together than anyone else in the match, which is what I wanted. The pairing is playful but can turn painful in a blink. Navarro was looking spry as hell and it was great seeing him whip Quack's legs in a predicament and then clap his hands and break, like a magician doing a trick for you, and then repeating it to see if you can figure it out. Quack is a perfect dance partner for Navarro as he has a bottomless bucket of ideas and can execute them at any moment, and it was cool seeing them both executed and blocked. I loved a moment where Navarro was on his back, Quack grabbed his hand and immediately did a handspring off Navarro's chest, dragging the arm with him and setting into position; not long after Quack went to grab Quack's hand and Navarro immediately dropped it, dropping Quack in the process. There exchanges were what trippy lucha matwork dreams are made of. We didn't get to the Navarro/Solar section until 3/4 of the way through the match, really building to the longest running feud, and their short time together was pretty amazing. It's a match-up we've all seen many times but they appear to be doing their thing in double time, and I mean these are guys in their early 50s and we know that, but I don't think I've ever seen someone in their 50s move like this. The others in the match are nice complements: Ferrari is a husky boy who resembles no kind of sleek Ferrari that I've seen, but I liked what he and Kendo pulled off together; I thought Claudio was somewhat out of place - his strength is his work as a base and there weren't really fliers here - but there were rewarding moments with him; I loved a Navarro moment right at the end, going back to the theme of Navarro as Lucha Magician, where he comes in only to boot Solar in the balls, and then disappears by bumping backwards through the ropes to the floor, like he threw a flash bomb after a ball kick. Why do I suddenly want to see Navarro vs. Jarek 1-20?

MD: Big thanks to Rah for reuploading this after other things went down. We get two falls out of three here and while a lot of the narrative is sort of the sloppy indy affair you'd expect, that's not why you're here. This is about seeing Navarro work with an empty canvas and with a wholly receptive opponent. Quackenbush must of had the time of his life getting stretched. He was smaller and very flexible and totally willing to let Navarro bend him in any number of shapes. That his own stuff looked so good is a testament to both of them too. There were a few moments that looked just a little too cooperative (or involved excessive waiting) but in general, everything was way more fluid than you'd think. That's not a slight on Quack either. It's just that the stuff they were trying was so tricked out. The rest was ok. Claudio was deep into shtick at this point, flexing at every point. He worked a bit with Solar and it was ok with lots of armdrags, but really didn't have nearly as much time to breathe. Kendo and Ferrari were fine rounding things out. We had the segunda and tercera here and we probably missed a bit more with the others not having the primera. The rudo beat down towards the end gave me just a taste of the other thing I wanted here, Claudio and Navarro working together. Navarro's a ham too (though the world's most astute, dangerous ham) and you figure the two of them could have really done some fun stuff. We get a hint at it but no more. Watch this for Navarro and Quack, which felt twice as long as it actually went but in the best way.

PAS: Tomk and I went to this show live in 2009 (long road report which really pissed off a bunch of Chikara die hards here) and outside of a random bit of this showing up on a weird streaming site later that year and disappearing (that might be what Rah got his hands on) I hadn't seen any footage of this show. Really cool to revisit this a decade later. From reading our live review it looks like we actually get most of the first fall, and the third fall but miss the segunda. Some of the narrative issues Matt have had might be because of that. I loved Navarro schooling Quack, and we get almost 10 minutes of those guys rolling, sometimes Navarro's catch and release mat work bugged, here it worked great. He was showing this indy punk that he could tap him any time he wanted, so he would lock him up and let him out, just to lock him up again. In that second fall we don't see here, Quack gets the tap, which really helps the story. The taste of Solar vs. Navarro was incredible, just adderall fast which was nuts for so many old guys. Too bad Navarro pissed off Quack, as he would have been an awesome semi-regular in Chikara like Skayde or Saint, still not knowing what happened between them, I am always siding with Navarro.

Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Paul Diamond NJPW 7/18/93

MD: I wasn't entirely sure what to expect out of 93 Paul Diamond here, but he delivered. He could have been the third guy in a Kroffat/Furnas trio. He had some great junior acrobatics, including a cartwheel out of a monkey flip, traded holds well with Liger (though there wasn't a lot of chain wrestling though what they did was ok), and had great offense (this deep German, a slide through the legs from the outside in to a Northern Lights, what looked like a Casas seated dive off the apron, and a gourdbuster, plus this great kick in the corner), and mostly everything was smooth. For all the limb targeting they did, it could have used a bit more focused selling, but this was an overachiever of a back and forth juniors match.

PAS: This was a Diamond showcase match, and he really looks like a guy who could have had a Benoit/Guerrero/Malenko like run in the New Japan juniors division. He had some big time offense for this time period, his Northern Lights suplex looked great and his Casas senton off the apron got great height and distance. Liger is an all time master at working with a guys strengths, so maybe you need to see Diamond's Kido singles on the same tour to really get a sense of his potential, but this was a weirdo match up which totally delivered.

ER: The Paul Diamond showcase we've all been waiting for! Phil is right that Liger is great at showcasing any guy's strengths, a guy who will always have an interesting match with a young lion, a guy I saw try to do things with Blue Demon, a guy who is going to make a singles match work. And Diamond is a guy with cool stuff! More cool stuff than I realized! He kind of came off like a junior heavyweight Jerry Flynn. I dug how the crowd reacted to him cartwheeling out of Liger's monkey flip, liked the matwork as he's a guy I've never seen work the mat this long, hit two really nice lefty lariats, a cool hooking kick in the corner, a guy I've seen plenty of but felt like I was seeing something really different from him here. There were a couple awkward moments but overall this was a blast, and jeez does Liger take 2" of Diamond's height with his match ending Liger Bomb. He practically dropped Diamond vertically, and we're obviously happy that this exists. 

Shinya Hashimoto/Akira Nogami vs. Brad Armstrong/TNT NJPW 7/18/93

MD: I also had my doubts about this one (it fit into our weird match ups for the week), but I thought it really held up. Vega as TNT can be great or goofy depending on how deeply he leans into the shtick and who he's up against. Here it's perfect though, because Hashimoto's the perfect intersection of toughness and charisma. After a bit of anticipation by having Armstrong star the match against Hash, TNT comes in and it's great. They ran a couple of sequences of TNT controlling with cheapshots and martial arts punctuating with both guys missing spin wheel kicks and TNT doing his karate chop pose at the end. Finally though, Hash hits one and follows it up by mocking the pose with a middle finger payoff. Great stuff. About one third of the way in, Brad starts to work heel which is surreal but really enjoyable, with them primarily working over Nogami. It's a little nervehold-centric but with some good hope spots (including a headbutt flurry) built in. The hot tag's good, with another wrinkle of Brad and TNT cheating to take back over on Hash (including Brad's always awesome Russian Leg Sweep) before Hash comes back for the win. Good, measured stuff, making the most of the tag structure, including utilizing break ups instead of kick-outs. Post match, TNT and Hash clown around with the pose and middle finger again.

PAS: I really loved the opening section with Hashimoto and TNT, it was more Stan Lane martial arts then normal Hashimoto stand offs, but I thought it worked really well and I loved Hash doing the TNT pose and flipping him off. Still this was a Hashimoto match where Hashimoto is almost an afterthought. Most of this match was Nogami being worked over by TNT and Brad and Nogami isn't really a compelling face in peril, and TNT and Armstrong aren't doing many interesting things in control. It picks up a bit at the Hashimoto hot tag, but that doesn't last long before the finish. Fun oddball matchup, but I want more Hash.