Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka v Yumi Ogura & Kazue Nagahori (AJW, 1/4/87)
This wasn't entirely for me. There were things that I thought they did well, certainly. I liked the escalation as it went, with the bigger moves coming later and not being thrown out early. Chigusa and Asuka were obviously the favourites and top dogs and they acted like it, never really being flustered or coming at things too HASTILY. Chigusa adopted a sort of martial arts stance at one point and started bouncing on the balls of her feet and it was very minor but very badass. The crowd of course lived and died with everything she did, to a quite frankly absurd degree. Ogura and Nagahori were the very opposite of not hasty and they knew they needed the full court press. They were quick to come to each other's aid when they looked in danger, whereas the Crush Gals were mostly fine to let the other extricate themselves from any predicament. The only time in the opening third I remember one of them coming in to break something up was when Asuka kicked Nagahori in the spine when she had Chigusa in a kneebar, but there wasn't much mustard behind it and she never followed up when Nagahori didn't let go immediately. Chigusa had things well enough in hand and Asuka knew it. They cut a hell of a pace as well, but there wasn't a real story hook for me to latch onto the longer it went. Even though they never worked even there was a fair amount of parity and I'll sometimes struggle to stay engaged with this much back and forth. If there was some interpromotional heat or searing hatred or even just a bit of mild distaste then maybe it would've been different, but there was clearly respect between both teams at the end of the day and that's less appealing. The commentators grimacing at the sheer crowd volume pre-match was kind of wild when you think about it. The Crush Gals were perhaps somewhat over?
Dick Murdoch & Tim Horner v Rick Rude & Manny Fernandez (JCP, 1/4/87)
House show footage and a bit clipped up (we miss around six minutes of the 20) but it wasn't hard to get the gist of it. Really I wanted to see this for the Murdoch v Rude parts; a dream match I'd never even thought about before. So I was happy when Murdoch hit an atomic drop and Rude crumpled holding his keister. Horner was in for most of it and played FIP twice. Early on he did this amazing twisting flip over Rude's back when the latter went for a back body drop. Then later Rude went for a dropkick that I think Horner was supposed to avoid but instead he walked face first into it and Rude landed on his own neck. Rude must've been watching Flair work the main on these shows because he got up and simply redid the spot the way it was supposed to be done immediately afterwards. Murdoch hits a first drop to Rude and someone in the crowd proclaims that "Murdoch ain't playin' now" and no I can assure you he is not. He held Manny in a full nelson at one point so Horner could crack him a few times while the ref' was distracted and Horner was almost adorable in how he threw one body shot from the apron and stopped. Murdoch just kept Manny there so Horner had no choice but to dirty his hands further. I guess that's what you get for hanging around with Dick Murdoch. I'd like to see this in full so maybe one day the WWE Vault people release it and sixty three of us watch it and talk about it on the twitter.
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