New Footage Friday: LARRY CHENE!! FINLAY!! IIZUKA!! ZRNO!! SLINGER!! HOROWITZ!!

Rocky Columbo vs. Larry Chene Chicago 9/25/1953

MD: This was one of the most satisfying draws I've seen in a long time. Wrestled incredibly evenly, they made a show of it, one that stands up easily, if with real differences, to a lot of the 50s Catch we've seen seeing. They spent the first ten minutes really going at it before settling into holds that worked into spots for most of the rest of the match. They did a lot of hold-for-hold exchanges, though Chene, who wrestled this clean, was going to be the standout for the way that he continuously managed to bump himself, throwing himself into top rope on a miss, eating a bump off a dropkick while sitting on the top and then missing his attempt at receipt, bumping huge on both an electric chair position (out of a pumphandle) and on a headlock reversal, etc, ending up choked between the ropes, and so on. They kept it sportsmanlike and even, keeping things brisk and interesting so that when the bell finally rang, you found yourself surprisingly okay with the fact the match didn't have a winner.

PAS: I thought this was totally awesome. Larry Chene was nuts in this, taking crazy bump after crazy bump. He has this high back bump where he gets thrown in the air and lands directly on his spine, it is kind of a combo of a back body drop and a high back drop bump. There is also a great spot where Columbo lifts Chene and places him on the top rope, just to dropkick him off with Chene flying backwards and tweaking his knee. Chene tries to return the favor but Columbo jumps off the top and Chene ends up taking a Psicosis bump on the back of his head. Columbo was a solid grappler, and had a crazy TJP style rope fake, but this was mostly the Chene show. What a staggering talent he was.

ER: We've been watching a lot of French Catch this year, marveling at the speed and bumps and physical creativity, because none oF us had any idea that any of that even existed. And here we are, several years before our earliEst French footage, watching our own Chicago boys doing the exact same kind of wild hybrid wrestling that would have been impossible to predict. This is only the second Larry Chene match I have ever seen, and the first match I saw is our 1963 MOTY. Well, a decade prior and Chene is in our 1953 MOTY. Chene is a real marvel, and he and Columbo go at it so quick that the commentator reminds them a minute in that thematch has a 30 minute time limit. Slow down, boys! They do not. Chene has all these crazy spots that find him flying into the ropes the way most people don't fly into ropes, taking big chest first bumps into them like he was being hotshotted. He takes what has to be the absolute earliest recorded Psicosis corner bump, and also winds up missing a dropkick and hanging painfully by his leg over the top rope. Of course, later he hangs himself between the top and middle rope, another spot I never would have guessed happened in the early 50s. These two smack into each other in incredibly fun ways, really hard shoulderblocks that are sold with a nice amount of give, both guys running into each other and then recoiling from the impact. It was a refreshing take on tough guys who just absorb shoulderblocks and collisions, as a lot of these collisions felt like a car accident that sends both cars spinning apart from each other. The match goes to a draw and never loses that pace that the commentator warned them about 10 seconds in, and we're all left better for it.

Fit Finlay/Takayuki Iizuka vs. Mile Zrno/Prince Zefy CWA 9/13/91 - GREAT

MD: This was good stuff while it lasted but probably didn't rise to become better than the sum of its parts. A tag match that only half makes use of the implicit benefits of formula leaves opportunities on the table. Iizuka and Finlay were a great offensive team though. Completely believable that they could take over at any moment. All of Iizuka's stuff looked good and Finlay was a real presence in the corner. I've seen my share of Zrno but I tend to think of him as a cool, tough, technical machine. Here he shined as a more traditional babyface, and the crowd was very much behind him. Zefy's stuff didn't look as sharp but he bumped big (inducing on a ducked rana/dropkick attempt that set up the first fall) and took a solid beating. While they did a good job drawing the ref away so Finlay could cheat off and on through the match, they really just gave away the hot tag for no reason except for maybe heel hubris. Still, lots of good here.

PAS: All of this German Finlay that has shown up has been a real blessing. He and Iizuka are a fun bruiser tag team, with Finlay especially in his ass beating best. This is spunky babyface Zrno and much like highspot Blue Panther he can easily shift back and forth between technical master and guy with a nice dropkick getting fired up. Zefy was fun if a bit raw, and he was taking big bumps. I loved Finlay just chucking him balls first on the top rope with real menace, it got him DQ'd and it lost him the match, but it was a total fuck it moment, and a great one.

ER: It doesn't get more automatic Gem for me than a new Finlay match. At this point it might be a more worthy venture for us to find the Finlay matches that are not at all worth watching. That'll be a short list, but a weird fun project. All of the recently unearthed German Finlay is excellent, and I like how this match was all about Finlay hanging back and really only coming in when Iizuka got in over his head, and Finlay works great in those kind of quick starbursts. Iizuka has always been great at taking beatings but he clearly knows how to dish them, and I loved his interactions with Zrno. Zrno works like a stiff Euro Tommy Rogers, which is a great thing. He had hard uppercuts, a great headscissors, strong energy, and some fantastic (haha) mounted corner punches. Finlay was a great agitator from the apron, and every time he would storm into the ring you knew someone was about to get wasted. I love Finlay's Vader attack clothesline, the one where both of his feet are briefly off the ground as he slams his arm and chest into his opponent. The DQ finish was nasty, with Finlay slamming Zefy onto the top rope with an atomic drop, although it would have played much better if Zefy hadn't acted like nothing had happened to him seconds later. Finlay should have gotten back in the ring and done it until Zefy sold it properly or just burst his sac like he was Tommy Dreamer.

Richard Slinger vs. Barry Horowitz AJPW 1/9/93

MD: Fun Horowitz showcase. Early going had Horowitz outwrestling Slinger but Slinger outstriking him. The crowd turned on Horowitz after some elbows on the apron and a catapult onto the bottom rope and he played heel for the rest of the match. Horowitz was full of credible and varied offense (neckbreakers, neck whip, northern lights, just grinding Slinger's face across the mat in a headcissors). Slinger was naturally explosive and had an ok hope spot or too but probably needed at least one more, just as the finish probably needed one more time around: Slinger came back with a short spin kick reversal after Horowitz' huge pile driver (an attempt at which led to a hope spot earlier) but a bit of that comeback before the pile driver would have made everything feel more balanced. Still, solid prelim showing from guys who don't always get time like this.

PAS: Man for a guy who spent the vast majority of his career as a jobber, Horowitz will eat someone up if he has a chance. I remember an APW match where he just overwhelmed Donovan Morgan. He takes about 85% of this match, constantly cutting Slinger off every time he tries to get any momentum going. Horowitz has a lot of cool offense and was going to break out all of it. I really liked the headscissors where he dragged Slingers face across the mat, and his northern lights suplex look good. Slinger's final run with a pump kick and huge superfly splash was cool, but this would have been better if it hadn't been so one-sided

ER: Allow me to be the high vote on this one. That is coming from someone who was actually there LIVE for that Barry Horowitz/Donovan Morgan match that Phil mentioned. That match was so weird and unexpected, because it went 25 minutes and 20+ of those minutes were Horowitz controlling Morgan, who was an APW title holder at the time. That match was 25 and felt 40, lots of grounded headlocks and a crowd that was tiring, and Donovan got upset when someone yelled "just wrestle already". Obviously the guy meant "please just DO something" but once that got yelled the plan was clearly "let's rub this mat wrestling in their face". The match seemed to be attempting to rehab Horowitz's TV jobber rep, which is a weird thing to do against one of your top homegrown guys. This match had some elements of that, but didn't approach the weirdness that a 25 minute Horowitz/Slinger match would have.

This starts with Slinger really owning Horowitz, hitting a couple of slick takedowns with fancy control, and some of those hard kicks he throws. Slinger never gets talked about in the same breath as other kickers (Slinger doesn't really get talked about in general, which is a shame), but he has such great whipping kicks, always landing them hard. He hits a couple of great standing kicks and a big thudding kick to Horowitz's back here, also gets great height on his dropkick (which Horowitz kind of leans out of). The Horowitz control segment was way too long, but Horowitz had a lot of cool offense and it became fun seeing what he would break out next. I really liked his mat game, thought he had some super convincing grapevine cradles, and I will third the love for his headscissors that dragged Slinger's forehead across the mat. The most telling sign that Horowitz's control was going too long, is that by the end of it he wasn't hitting moves nearly as crisply as he was 8 minutes prior. You can see his perfect northern lights suplex earlier in the match, but down the stretch he kind of flubs two potentially big moments: there's a fireman's carry on the floor that is supposed to drop Slinger chest first onto the apron, but they both kind of just fall without hitting the apron; then, a piledriver that looks like it's going to be excellent, that sees Horowitz lean WAY too far back, making it look more like Slinger landing on Horowitz than getting his head driven into the mat. Slinger's big comeback was short but finished with a big damn exclamation point, as his superfly splash looked organ rupturing. The structure for this was a little perplexing, but Horowitz had such a deep bag of tricks that I kept getting into it the longer it went. Now lets find the handheld of Taue/Horowitz from a few months later.


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