Gilbert Cesca v Billy Catanzaro (French Catch, 1960s)
Maybe the greatest obscure discovery in internet wrestling nerd history. It feels almost impossible that this took place closer in time to the Second World War than today. Stylistically it's bonkers that something like it happened in the 1960s, especially compared to pretty much every other match from the same time period. Something that feels like the greatest possible opening fall in a lucha title match. Like the best possible hybrid of lucha and World of Sport. A match that would be state of the art by 2019 let alone almost SIXTY years ago. They brought the flash, the struggle, the build, the grittiness, the lot. They hit a Ganso Bomb, fer chrissakes! Some of the hold-trading was gorgeous, the counters as slick as anything, everything done at superspeed. But they fought over all those holds and nothing was given up easy. They'd dig knuckles into joints, twist limbs at unnatural angles, use momentum to reverse and roll through. At one point Cesca flipped out of a sunset flip and immediately hit a fucking hurricanrana, but then Catanzaro rolled through on that and took him over again with a sick hammerlock. Cesca would try to pounce on a downed Catanzaro but Catanzaro would upkick him halfway across the ring. There was one bit where Cesca tried to bridge out of a headscissors and Caranzaro would constantly shift his weight, sweep Cesca's arms out from under him, squeeze even harder on that hold, anything he could to maintain advantage. By the last five minutes they've started hammering each other with forearms and Catanzaro's headbutts to the chest were unbelievable. What an absurdly cool match.
Randy Savage v Tito Santana (No DQ) (WWF from Maple Leaf Gardens, 5/4/86)
I love this feud. It might be my favourite WWF feud of the 80s. This wasn't quite as good as what my memory tells me about the MSG match - I may watch that for Whiskey & Wrestling #800! - but it was another home run. Tito was so good, man. He probably had a heel run somewhere or other but as far as career babyfaces go he got believably fired up like no other. I bought him wanting to kill Savage, take his belt (which Savage had taken from him in the first place under controversial circumstances), then kill him again. Savage was also a whirlwind of crazy. He threw Tito over the ropes, the barricade, almost fell several times climbing after him, jumped off of turnbuckles and the ring apron and the barricade, hit him with a chair, threw the chair away, hopped into the crowd to get it back, hit him again. Security were having to follow him around and keep fans in check, put stuff back in its original place for everyone's safety, really having to earn their keep that night. I've said before that one of my favourite things about Savage is how, despite being a guy who reportedly planned out his matches to the letter, there was always a sense of chaos and unpredictability to what he was doing. And the whole time he was in control here it felt like he was just rushing through the ideas that were coming to mind for ways to inflict misery. "I'll just jump off this shit and club him in the head." "Oh there's a steel chair, might as well hit him with that. Oh look another thing I can jump off of, I'ma climb it." It was never directionless in the way you'd get someone just running through stuff with no rhyme or reason. I mean it was directionless in that he's a nutjob who was acting on his impulses, yet it had plenty direction in the sense it was all ultimately designed to fuck up Tito Santana. The opening was also awesome with Elizabeth getting bumped off her feet as Savage tried to use her as a meat shield, Tito checking on her and Savage blindsiding him, because what's more important to Savage than the Intercontinental title? Not Elizabeth, apparently.
Bull Nakano & Grizzly Iwamoto v Aja Kong & Bison Kimura (AJW, 8/19/90)
I feel like I should have more of an opinion on Bull Nakano. Like, I know I've seen more than ten matches with her in them, but I couldn't really offer anything of worth on what I think makes her good or not so good or whatever. I have no take on her, really. The Aja Kong feud was something I wanted to get to during the GWE project and of course I shit the bed on that because obviously, so this is me finally getting around to it. And this was alright, though watching it now after four months of barely having watched anything else maybe hurt it a little (joshi isn't the easiest wrestling for me to jump into cold). Bull came across as quite the monster and a young Aja having to go the extra mile to keep up led to some cool moments. Some of it verged a wee bit on the no-selly from Bull, but she's charismatic enough that it never really felt lazy on her part. My favourite parts of the match were when Iwamoto and Kimura were involved, though. They smashed the absolute dogshit out of each other and I don't know if shots with a kendo stick have ever looked more brutal. At one point Kimura home run'd her flush in the ear, both of them were super reckless just swinging like crazy, everyone was getting hit in awkward places like the elbow and back of the knee and neck, welts were most definitely left everywhere. Bull then took her turn and by the end her kendo stick was a splintered mess. There were some brief moments where someone would grab an opponent by the hair and drag (or gesture, I guess) them around the building, but it usually felt chaotic and nowhere near as bad as it'll sometimes get with joshi. And even if the spot where Bull stands tall as Aja and Kimura try to chop her down with kendo sticks felt a bit hokey, it was a pretty cool touch. I imagine if you're someone who was invested in the Bull/Aja feud and knew a bit more of the context going in then it would've been a great moment.
Katsuyori Shibata v Tomoaki Honma (New Japan, 8/3/14)
A deeply brutal sprint. No wonder Shibata's brain is putty. On the surface this isn't totally my thing, but if I'm watching 2010s boom period New Japan then I guess I'm way more likely to appreciate it if they just get right to the murdering each other and don't bother dicking about for fifty minutes first. And this was pretty much ten minutes of two guys murdering each other, with the cool and obvious wrinkle of Honma fighting waaaay above his station against a truly Bad Motherfucker. I remember first seeing Honma forever ago when he was getting popped with light tubes and chucked through flaming tables. He was probably one of the first indie sleaze guys I paid much attention to. But that was then and by 2014 he'd given up the light tubes and barbed wire; a man on a different journey though one clearly no less perilous. I don't know whether he wanted to show the world he was every bit as tough as Shibata or he's just a psychopath, but he went hell on wheels right from the start and was determined to go blow for blow all the way. Some of these strikes were disgusting and there was one forearm that scored a full "that might be the nastiest forearm I've ever seen" Battlarts point. Honma would stumble at several hurdles, usually when trying to connect on headbutts, but he would pick himself up again and keep on trucking, possibly with brains too scrambled to know any better. Shibata never really reacted to Honma's persistence with frustration, he mostly continued doing his thing in the face of it knowing he'll always have the advantage in a fight like this, but there was one amazing sell of a slap where he landed on his butt with this "what the fuck was THAT?" expression. At that point he had no choice but to take Honma seriously. Honma diving face first into Shibata's boots was completely screwball and one of the best bumps like it ever. In the end I suppose you can only stand against the tide for so long before it drowns you. "Go back to poachin' gators. It's safer."
So there we have it. Whiskey & Wrestling #700. And here's to seven hunner more!
