Mercedes v Willow! For the STRAP!!!!~!

Mercedes Mone v Willow Nightingale (AEW Dynamite, 12/31/25)

I think this is the first time I've seen Mercedes since she became Mercedes. It's definitely my first Willow Nightingale match. Mercedes had been doing some sort of J Crown gimmick with a ton of title belts that she won on indies and whatever but she only had about five with her here so perhaps she's been on a bit of a losing streak. I always preferred Sasha Banks working heel and this was a really good heel Mercedes Mone performance. She was super vicious when she needed to be, really aggressive in trying to bridge that substantial size difference, never afraid to just yank Willow to the deck by the hair whenever Willow tried to pick her up. She used some smart counters as well by taking out Willow's legs, something she did as soon as the bell rang with a basement dropkick. She would also chuck Willow into the LED boards around ringside and Willow got heaved into them with enough force early that two of them broke, which was certainly a cool visual. The first real transition also played into Mercedes taking Willow's legs away, sweeping those legs as Willow was on the apron sending her face-first into the ring steps. The follow-up running knees with Willow's head against the steps looked great and that was something else Mercedes went back to several times; the running knee variation. It served her well the whole match, until she went to it once too often and Willow finally caught her late on. In control Mercedes would really crank on a chinlock while driving her knee into Willow's back. She exposed Willow's throat and dragged a sharp fingernail across it, which was kind of goofy but also maybe sort of gnarly in the stupidest of ways? Perhaps? Mercedes' facial expressions as she got more and more frustrated made her actually look like a demented person rather than some ropey method actor. Nightingale was a fun UNIT and she came across as a properly likable babyface. Mercedes being a pitbull helped, but I thought Willow's sympathy-garnering was great, she bumped big (and crazy) and her selling was on point. She also used that size to crush Mercedes when she needed to. Obviously the latter has the speed so Willow would just scythe her down with a monster lariat or a flying shoulder tackle. The tackle nearly sent Mercedes through the fucking barricade. Mercedes was dogged in going for the Mone Maker so at one point Willow repeatedly backed her into the corner and Mercedes took three Bret Hart sternum bumps, if every Bret Hart sternum bump had Neidhart follow him in and squash him agains the buckles. Willow's running senton in the corner looked suitably brutal and exactly what you want from someone who outweighs their skinny opponent by like a hunner pounds cannonballing into their face. The big table spot at the end was rough as fuck and it looked like every one of Willow's vertebrae got separated on contact. I didn't know the result of this going in either, so by the end I was fully behind Nightingale winning the title and not just because my friend's daughter is called Willow so they must've done something right! At my old age you have to appreciate the IMMERSION and such. I should watch more AEW Mercedes. 

Magnum v Nikita - The Last Stand

Magnum TA v Nikita Koloff (2/3 Falls) (World Wide Wrestling, 9/20/86)

To me, this feud is right up there with anything Crockett put out during arguably their best year. Even if none of the Magnum/Nikita matches were on the level of Flair/Morton from the Bash or the Tully/Garvin match from Worldwide, everything was good and at least two of their matches were sensational. Their match 7 in the best of 7 series for the US title a month earlier is pretty much perfect pro wrestling and one of the best matches anywhere in the world for 1986. This is the end of the feud, or at least what was intended to be the end of the feud for now (they obviously never got the chance to go back to it due to Magnum's retirement), and honestly might be even better. 

Magnum Terry Allen was an amazing pro wrestler. Every time I watch him I say it and then I write about him and say it again. I don't even know how many times I've said he looked like the future of the SPORT or whatever around this time and I'm certainly not the first or only person who has. Charisma, crowd connection, crowd CONTROL, selling, bumping, timing, brawling, bleeding, offence, whatever else. I've watched just about every Magnum TA match we have available from 1984 to the end of his run in '86; he had all of it and there was still room to get better. Some of his exhausted selling was absolutely tremendous here, particularly in the third fall. Actually both guys' selling in the third fall was great. It wasn't an especially long match for a 2/3 falls, but it made sense they'd both be spent given they'd taken the other's finisher and lost a fall each, something they'd never needed to continue wrestling after in any other scenario.  

Every move they did in this felt like it mattered, which can sound cliche but it really came across that way to me. It had a proper big fight feel and the crowd was rabid from the first second. Early on Magnum was steady and unfazed, refusing to engage as Nikita tried to goad him with little shoulder fakes. The first fall was largely Magnum in control, frustrating Nikita by allowing him to build momentum just to use it against him. There were headlocks where they jockeyed for position and Magnum would sidestep to send Nikita into the buckles, Nikita getting visibly annoyed while Magnum stayed laser-focused. Our boy David Crockett smartly points it out as well - Nikita is taller and heavier but Magnum can use that to his advantage. It looks like Nikita's taken over when he backs Magnum into the corner and picks up a piece of thrown trash, jabbing him in the eye with it. Any time a heel uses a piece of debris that's been thrown at them to their own advantage will sit well with me so obviously I loved that. But the advantage doesn't last as Magnum reverses a turnbuckle whip and hits the belly to belly. You don't need me to tell you how the crowd responded to that. Magnum's intensity and dedication to everything is pretty special. Even the way he reversed his Irish whip looked spectacular, how he got airborne and really threw his weight behind whipping a huge guy like Nikita into the turnbuckles. He puts across the struggle of his situation as well as anyone. 

When we come back after commercial to the second fall Magnum is working the leg, and honestly the guy just exudes control and confidence. He goes for the figure-four but Nikita kicks him off and Magnum ends up flying outside, and Magnum is great at getting flung outside a ring and hitting hard on the concrete. This whole nonsense write-up has been about Magnum TA but I really liked how Nikita continued selling the leg for a little while afterwards, even if it stopped being a story point in the match. Credit where it's due and all that. Nikita basically ramming Magnum's head into turnbuckles and barricades was the bulk of his offence for a spell and it was pretty great. There was an amazing cut off spot with the running chokeslam type thing he'd do sometimes and the sickle to close out the fall looked positively Hansenish, legitimately the best he's ever thrown. 

And then your third fall is basically a masterclass in building heat. There was a couple times where it looked like Magnum was ready for the big comeback and the crowd was ready for it, but the wrestlers clearly decided they weren't ready ENOUGH and held off on it, Magnum looking dead on his feet. Each time they did this it built more heat and the selling was honestly as good as I've seen in ages. They might've botched a backdrop at one point but even that worked just because it looked like Magnum almost stumbled into it purely on instinct, barely mustering enough to flip Nikita over. When the comeback happens I rewound it half a dozen times. It's maybe the best roaring lion Magnum TA comeback of them all - that covers a substantial amount of ground - and this crowd reaction was fucking awe-inspiring. He knew exactly how to make them respond like that as well and the place was going absolutely bonkers. It's the sort of thing that reminds you why you watch and obsess over this stupidity of a hobby. 

The finish was clever, though I'd be lying if I said I didn't really want Magnum to pull it out. It's rare that I'll go into a match like this, invested the way I was, not already knowing the result. Being able to lose yourself in the moment doesn't always happen for us nerds so I was deflated when it went down the way it did. Which is really the beauty of it, isn't it? Three weeks later Magnum would crash his car and his career would be done. In an alternate universe he took the bus or waited until the rain had stopped. In that universe he became WCW's Hogan and the world we inhabit would be a better place right now. You know, probably. 

Hechicero against the legends! (pt. 2)

Hechicero v Blue Panther (CMLL, 1/10/25)

Blue Panther is not a spring chicken. He was 64 years old when this match happened, which by lucha standards means he still probably has a good 12 years ahead of him but by regular mortal standards he's getting pretty well on in years. My old man is 66 and can barely lift one of his arms above his head and has a knee with no cartilage left and he did not spend the last four decades doing what Blue Panther has been doing. The mad bastard debuted in 1978! He is an old man however you slice it and after nearly 50 years of wrestling I can only imagine how his body must feel on a bad day. I train professional athletes for a living and if any of them can still do what Panther was doing in this match when they hit their 60s I will take immense amounts of pride in that and also loudly proclaim on all forms of social media that I had anything to do with it. Still though, 64 is 64 and Panther looks like a 64-year-old man. He's up against a bully probably twenty years his junior and comparatively speaking - or just generally speaking - he moves like a 64-year-old man. Hechicero is faster, stronger, fitter, so Panther turns himself into a lodestone and feeds off the crowd's energy. He's not shy about asking for it either. He knows he needs it and he wants everyone else to know it too, for how else will THEY know when to provide it most? Panther basically works this as a classic masked tecnico while Hechicero does what he does and bases for everything like only he can. 30 years ago Panther was trying to wrangle Atlantis, today he's channelling him. He hit five dives in this and crashed and burned badly on one - a botch for the philistines but a moment of POIGNANCY for the rest of us who nod solemnly at a man in his twilight trying to fling himself headfirst out a wrestling ring only to clip the top rope with his heel and almost concuss himself on the floor. Panther was never really a high-flyer in his pomp so can we be shocked that his hit rate in his 60s isn't 100%? We most certainly cannot. Every dive he connected on was tremendous, though. The way he fired up the crowd before each one, the way he had to almost convince himself it was a good idea to even try, the way he sold the toll of HITTING the dives never mind missing them, it was fantastic stuff. I think my favourite was the running hurricanrana off the apron, where he tucked his chin and covered his head with his arms for fear he might paralyze himself, then lay prone afterwards for a few seconds, completely motionless, maybe wondering if moving at all is a good idea. Unfortunately for him, Hechicero either gets up first or at the same time as Panther after every dive, so each risk can only chip away at Hechicero, never fully swing the tide. Eventually Hechicero takes Panther up the ramp and tries to smash his head open on the steps. When Panther manages to throw Hechicero into them and buy himself some time he knows he has to bring out the big gun. When the old maniac climbed the steps and looked to the crowd I thought there was no way he'd actually jump. Then he jumped and it was basically the perfect payoff, not only because it looked nuts but because it finally kept Hechicero down. Beyond Panther throwing himself around like a missile and Hechicero taking all of it in the sternum, these two are an amazing pairing. The matwork in the primera was brief but it was exceptional. Things like Panther grabbing a wrist while swinging Hechicero over with his leg to secure control is one of those veteran touches that tells you Panther is one of the very best to have rolled around a wrestling ring. Panther engaging in any sort of strike exchange is a fool's errand but he's too proud to take any shit. Hechicero obviously wants to go blow for blow and Panther will use that aggression against him, which they even worked into a strike exchange that set up Panther's dive off the apron. The tercera is long and the way they built through Panther's ongoing struggle was awesome. Just the way Panther throws himself onto Hechicero for a cover, his whole bodyweight on top of the shoulders, it communicated the task he was faced with and how desperate he was to see it through. The fact Hechicero had to rip Panther's mask off to gain that final advantage told you how far he'd been pushed. An outstanding match and a Panther performance for the ages. 

Hechicero against the legends! (pt. 1)

Hechicero v Virus (Lucha Memes, 5/15/16)

There was a slight edit in this around halfway, but based on how much of Virus' face paint had been worn off before the edit and how much after, I don't think we really miss anything. Which is good, because it would be annoying otherwise, because what we got was a wonderful 10 minutes. Hechicero is slimmer and NIPPIER in 2016 than he is today and the first five minutes was just a beautiful mat clinic between him and one of the true GOATs of lucha grappling. The camera was practically inside the ring so we were right there with the action, seeing how they manipulate joints and shift their body to create openings, maneuver the other guy into positions that might allow them to seize advantages two steps down the line. You can also hear everything and Hechicero was a growling shit-talking freak while Virus went about business like the seasoned pro he is. There was an amazing moment where Hechicero turned a crucifix pin into a Texas cloverleaf and fuck knows how he did it. They linked up in a knucklelock and ran through an extended sequence of rolls and tumbles and pins and attempted monkey flips and neither guy let go of the other's hand once. It was the very best sort of pro wrestling and I'll say that about half a dozen sorts of pro wrestling but I genuinely think this is my wrestling ideal. Nothing else mesmerises me the way lucha matwork does. I wish it lasted another 10 minutes but, much like the Hechicero of 2026, the Hechicero of 2016 had a chip on his shoulder and a propensity to turn a sporting contest into a fist fight. He pulled the straps down and opened himself up for an exchange of chops, so Virus obliged, took his shirt off and laid one on Hechicero's chest. Hechicero about caved the wee fella's chest in so Virus immediately threw that nonsense out the window and kicked him in the knee instead. There's a reason the most well-adjusted among us would call Virus one of the 30 greatest wrestlers to have ever lived. It also meant they got back to the grappling, not the same as the opening as this was more interspersed with movement, strikes and rope-running, but it was awesome all the same and I dug the escalation. Hechicero crushes Virus with a shoulder block and leans down to ask him if he's okay ("que pasa, hermano?"), then shouts "puta madre!" as Virus uses his WILES and nearly sends him flying over the ropes. Hechicero ends up draped over the top rope and Virus just cracks him with a flying leg lariat that slingshots him back into the ring. Hechicero's spinning hammerlock backbreaker is a great spot and in the end veteran smarts or caginess won't save you from getting swung around and dropped spine-first across someone's knee. I fucking loved this. 

Complete & Accurate Virus

Hechicero v Bandido! For the gold!

Hechicero v Bandido (ROH Death Before Dishonor, 8/29/25)

Well shit, I wasn't really sure what to expect from this but I thought it was a downright tremendous ol' time. I've been on a bit of a Hechicero kick lately, and while I'm generally hesitant to use cagematch as a reference for the top end stuff to watch, this jumped out as a pretty decent five and a half star affair and that one time I saw Bandido I quite liked him so to hell with it. I'll say this off the bat - this did not feel like a 37-minute match and of course I mean that in the best way possible. If I knew the thing went 37 minutes beforehand I honestly wouldn't have watched it. The youtube file was around 40 minutes, but I figured there'd be some preamble and whatever because it was an ROH World Title match on a PPV and whatever. But no, it went 37 bell to bell. I didn't actually realise it went that long until the end and there was never a point during it when I thought to check, and coming from an easily agitated man that's about as big a compliment as I can pay it. The early parts with the lucha-inspired matwork just landed on the money for me. I'd watched some mid-2010s Hechicero before going into this and I'm not sure if it's because the bulking up (shall we say) slowed him down between then and 2025, because Bandido isn't as used to working holds like this (I honestly could not say) so they slowed it down a touch, because they wanted to slow it down a little for their audience, or a combination of all three, but either way this was slower than some of the Mexico Hechicero I'd been watching. It wasn't as snappy or fluid and they never transitioned between holds as gracefully. There was maybe a sense that they were working through things they'd mapped out beforehand, if I'm being hyper-critical. Still, it was good stuff and I was engaged the whole time. Hechicero is super creative as always but I thought Bandido hung with him well. I'd only seen Bandido one other time, against Bryan Danielson on Dynamite from back in January 2023, and while I liked that match and his performance it wasn't enough for me to have a proper handle on him. He struck me as a true babyface here, one not afraid to emote and show real vulnerability and engage with the crowd, look to them for support and feed off it. The crowd respond to him as well and it felt like they were fully behind him. There was even a nice touch where Bandido paid Hechicero in kind for some earlier mask-ripping, but when the crowd didn't take all that kindly to it Bandido half turned and apologised for stooping to such a level. It was cool to see a babyface lean all the way into that, basically. The layout here was simple enough and there was really only two major transitions the whole match. The first came after the early matwork, where Bandido hit a big dive over the top and looked to be in control, only to run face-first into a flying knee that put the ball in Hechicero's court. When Hechicero starts to get too cocky and asks for Bandido to hit him, Bandido obliges and it actually leads to him taking over, which is a pretty nice bit of comeuppance. The finishing stretch was long, but it had some great build and the pacing really worked. They let the big moments sink in and they never rushed through things. Some of those big moments were huge too. The brainbuster on the guardrail was fucking wild and then Bandido ate shit on that spinning F5 thing off the apron. The big dives were BIG and even the strike exchanges had enough exhaustion behind them that they never felt rote. Even that exhaustion - whether it was selling or genuine - helped smooth over some of the more elaborate stuff towards the end being a bit sluggish in execution. When they both stood up on the top rope it looked like they might crash and burn but Bandido hitting a crazy backflip fallaway slam was a hell of a way to shut me up. That's something else Bandido was great at, putting across how much effort he had to exert to lift Hechicero for some moves or reverse certain holds. I don't think I've watched more than a dozen matches from 2025 but I'd be shocked if I watched a hundred and found five better than this. 

GWE 2026 Legwork: The Destroyer (#4)

The Destroyer v Giant Baba (JWA, 3/5/69)

Pretty sublime performance from the Destroyer. As far as heelin' it up goes you'll struggle to find many better examples of it from the era, or maybe any era. It was sort of masterful how he had people agitated just from his body language and complaining about every little thing. He didn't need to make physical contact with Baba or outright cheat for you to know that this was not a particularly pleasant man. Then when they did make contact he acted like the shithouse we all expected. He couldn't get anything to stick and Baba had his number early so that only made him more frustrated, which he demonstrated by bitching about mask-pulling that clearly never happened. When he manages to actually tie Baba in a hold for a second he gets right to cutting corners, bending Baba's fingers at disgusting angles, biting them behind the ref's back, choking Baba with the free hand when ref' checks him on the biting then kneeling with his shin across the throat during yet another conversation with the referee. Everything was a discourse, everything needed an argument and everything made him outwardly belligerent. It actually would've been MORE conducive to doing underhanded shit if he'd just shut up, but he could never help himself. It's simple enough stuff but he's so natural with all of it that you really want Baba to crack his jaw and really that's the whole point at the end of the day. And Destroyer is great at even delaying that payoff because he'll never be above just ducking out the ring to avoid one of Baba's big boots. The build and escalation was excellent, basically. Escalation in this sense was how they moved through holds and kept milking and teasing key things, getting closer and closer to landing them each time. For Baba it was that boot, while for Destroyer it was the figure-4, which he explicitly brought up before the match even started as his route to victory. He went for it several times and got jammed on each attempt, Baba rolling through on the early attempts and chopping him in the throat on the late ones, before it finally stuck at the very end, just as the time limit expired. They ran through a solid chunk of holds and rarely went back to any of them, always finding something new after their previous gambit ultimately proved unsuccessful. They almost worked the holds in blocks, got what they could out of them before moving onto something else, but it never felt like it was done in a haphazard way. Even Beyer's cheating had escalation as he finally got fed up enough to use a foreign object, first by jabbing it in Baba's eyes and hiding it in the trunks. Then when he'd reached the end of his rope he loaded up the mask and split Baba open with those headbutts. I loved Baba just trying to rip the thing off him towards the end because at a certain point what else are you supposed to do? Both guys really sold the toll of everything, the exhaustion of working 30, 40, 50 minutes and beyond at a stalemate, and by the end Destroyer was almost walking around with his eyes closed while Baba's face was covered in crusted up blood. The longer it went the more of a scene Destroyer's entourage on the floor caused as well. I don't know who any of them were, two in cowboy hats and waistcoats, another in a suit smoking a cigar and the suit jacket was on and off every other minute. The latter was up and down like a yoyo and after Baba picked up the first fall Destroyer had to tell his boy to calm it before he wound up getting disqualified. In the last 10 minutes they get properly involved and one of the cowboy fellas holds Baba's leg over the bottom rope so Destroyer can jump on it. That was another really cool moment of escalation because Baba had managed to avoid it all match. Honestly, I think the French Catch stuff has halfway ruined a lot of other matwork and grappling from this era (or really every era) and I can't help but compare things like this to that. The actual trading of holds and complexity of movements here will never really match that, but the beauty of this doesn't entirely lie in the holds themselves as opposed to the slow build and escalation and rampant cheating and the desire it INSTILLS in us to see someone get their ears boxed in. Or maybe that's all wrestling in a nutshell. I guess this was good. 

Demolition v Strike Force!

Demolition v Strike Force (WWF, 4/25/88)

Terrific little sprint. Strike Force are PEEVED after losing the tag titles at Wrestlemania and come out guns blazing from the start. Tito is always top tier when it comes to babyfaces who convey wanting to throttle you but Martel was dialing the intensity way up too, even going for the Boston Crab inside about 30 seconds. Every time the Demos try to halt their momentum Strike Force have an answer. Ax reels off a few big clubbing blows and grabs a containment headlock, but Martel scoots out the back, counters with three rapid fast arm-wringers and Ax takes an awesome flip bump on the third. You'd think Santana's life depended on them regaining the belts and Fuji was sweating bullets on the floor. They call him the devious one for a reason though and eventually his distraction pays off, allowing Ax to slide across the apron and catch Martel running the ropes with a knee to the back. Demolition really have some of the best clubbering. It wasn't always something I appreciated, but as I've grown old and enfeebled I appreciate the things that make me wince as if I were on the receiving end of it myself, and these clubbing forearms to the spine would surely leave me in a state unfit for purpose. Ax has especially great clubbering, and varied into the bargain - clubs to the neck, the shoulders, the mid back, the low back, everything credible and visceral and you also fully buy a headbutt from Ax stopping you dead in your tracks. The referee kind of sucks unfortunately, wandering out of position and clearly seeing Smash ram Martel's back into the ring apron, so in some ways you wonder if him missing the Santana hot tag and forcing him back out was actual incompetence. I 100% expected Gorilla to slaughter him on commentary but he never did so I guess maybe they were old drinking buddies or some such. When the proper hot tag comes the heat is right where you want it, though. Demolition end up getting flung into each other with a thud during the last hectic minute and Santana clobbers Smash with a gorgeous flying forearm, but Fuji is on hand again and jabs Tito in the throat with the cane as he's going for the Figure 4. Between this, the amazing Rockers match from December and a lost classic against the Bulldogs in July, Demolition had quite the year in 1988. 

Tully in God Mode

Tully Blanchard v Brian Adias (JCP Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, 2/16/85)

This started with Tully shaking Adias' hand, the sort of smile on his face that tells us he thinks he's got this one in the bag, only to get dropped on that face out of a collar-and-elbow tie-up 10 seconds later. Which really meant it couldn't have started much better. Tully was incensed that not only did fucking Brian Adias have the audacity to do that to the television champion ON television, but that the crowd actually took great pleasure in it. The early parts of this were all about Adias on the front foot trying to get at Tully while Tully would backpedal and duck out the ring for a reprieve, every instance of it denying the crowd that sweet moment where he gets put on his backside. He fully threw himself out the ring at one point and wanted Adias disqualified for it. The way he frantically tries to create distance is amazing, giving nothing for free, making Adias work to even close the space only for Tully to bolt anyway. When Adias reverses an Irish whip and hits a CORKER of a dropkick - one where he practically backflipped after making contact and landed on his feet - you just kind of sit back and take in the crowd response and reconcile that Tully Blanchard might just be the perfect heel. All of Adias' arm work in control was solid stuff but it's made again by Tully working from below, feeding everything and growing more and more desperate, making the crowd want to see him get his clock cleaned WHILE he's getting his clock cleaned. Tully was that rare and special sort of loathsome where you could beat him up and it would never fully satisfy the people that wanted to see him get beaten up. Magnum TA came within millimeters of gouging his eye out with a broken chair leg and after the dust had settled you can bet people would've been like "that was great and everything but you know what really would've made it? If Magnum had just blinded the little prick." Brian Adias gets to look like the coolest person in the building when Tully throws him out the ring and tries to kick him in the head only to get caught and have that leg wrapped around the post, Tully backing up knowing he'd severely miscalculated the situation. Still though, weasel he may be, Tully is the TV champion for a reason and in the end he'll always find a way, sometimes through questionable means, sometimes by just being really good at the wrestling. For 15 minutes you might get close, but close doesn't win you the belt. You could probably count on one hand the number of wrestlers who've ever been as good at working the TV wrestling match as Tully Blanchard. 

More from our favourite Dirty White Boys

Dirty White Boys v The Fantastics (Mid-South, 4/15/85)

This was the Fantastics working double duty on a day where they'd already had (or were about to have) another awesome match against Jake the Snake and the Barbarian. Perhaps some of the THIRSTIEST of the wimmenfolk in the crowd bought tickets to both shows just to see them. The White Boys looked partly amused and partly disgusted as Rogers and Fulton made their way around the whole front row hugging each woman, accepting a peck on the cheek from the boldest among them. The White Boys may not be heartthrobs but they are the manliest team of all and Len Denton demonstrates this by easily slamming Bobby Fulton and flexing his muscles. There are no shrieks of joy from the crowd's women, however; merely displeasure at best, revulsion at worst. I'm sure we've all been there. Eventually Fulton turns the tables, hip tosses Denton and pops both White Boys with a punch and the crowd reaction is one that us peasants will quite simply never experience for ourselves. Anthony decides to show us that the Dirty White Boys can wrestle with the best of them by taking Rogers over with a SWANK headlock into a hammerlock, but Rogers even MORE swankily scoots out the back door with a cool submission that ties up both of Anthony's arms. Fulton waltzes in and steps over Anthony to talk shit at Denton, the ref' sends him out again so of course he steps back over Anthony on his way, Denton is livid. This happens three times and the place is going nuts, because obviously would be. The White Boys take over thanks to their trailer park smarts, kneeing Rogers in the gut as he's hitting the ropes, then flattening him with a huge atomic drop. The heat segment is all on the lower back and they hit some real nice elbow drops to the kidneys before working the hearhug. It was top stuff and Rogers was a great face in peril as usual. The White Boys were always treated as a team in Mid-South that could just as easily knock your head off to win, one that didn't NEED to cheat even if they were underhanded by nature, and the finishing lariat behind the ref's back was a corker. 

The Dirty White Boys! and The Interns!

Dirty White Boys v The Interns (Memphis, 1/14/85)

Yeah Memphis was the fucking best. I'm wondering if this was even available when the DVDVR 80s set was being put together because it feels like something that would've been on there with a bullet. I think it was part of a one-night tag tournament, which would explain why they were basically running heel v heel. The White Boys were not exactly working babyface at the start, but by the end they'd morphed into the grimiest trailer park Rock n Roll Express you've ever seen and it was a thing of beauty. Even if the match doesn't start as an all-out brawl you can tell these are two teams who don't particularly care for each other. It's also not a ring full of people who you'd call well-behaved individuals. Rules are open to interpretation and all that. There was always an underlying sense that it could break down and about five minutes in that's what happens. It turns into a madness with Tony Anthony getting slammed on a table and dragged around ringside with a rope around his neck, which was quite frankly wild as fuck. One of the Interns holds Anthony as the other jumps off a table with a forearm, Len Denton grabs a belt and tries to wring an Intern's neck, tables are getting tossed and the Interns' manager is rolling around in a wheelchair wearing hospital scrubs. It was peak Memphis and I half expected the match to get thrown out Fabs/Moondogs style, which honestly wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world if they just kept trying to kill each other for a while afterwards, but it did make its way back into the ring and they worked a red hot peril segment on Anthony. It looked like he was done for when they rolled him in and Denton had to make an awesome last ditch save with a flying shoulder tackle. 1985 is a very different time from 2026 but it's hard to imagine a crowd today getting this thoroughly behind a heel team over the course of a match. Maybe there are simply no teams in 2026 like the Dirty White Boys from Bucksnort, Tennessee. Anthony's peril segment was tremendous and when Denton comes in off the hot tag the place erupts. The White Boys' double Russian leg sweep was killer and then there's this great miscue segment where everyone hits the ropes that ends with both Interns, Tony Anthony and the referee all getting laid out. Denton runs the ropes on three sides of the ring as the Interns chase him, both Interns smash into each other again, and as their manager throws a piece of his wheelchair into the ring Denton catches it and clonks one of them in the head. They just don't make them like this anymore. 

Well I Left Mid-South in My Brother's Old Chevrolet with a Map and a Half-Tank Dream

Butch Reed v Dick Slater (No DQ) (12/13/85)

This is my favourite of all the Reed v Slater matches, and honestly might be the best Dick Slater performance I've seen. They're coming off the heels of Slater trying to cash in Ric Flair's bounty on Reed and in their previous match Reed was in a neck brace, which of course Dirty Dick Slater painted a bullseye on. This time Reed is brace-free so that's great for him personally and pretty soon into the match he pops Slater with one of the best punches of his career so that's great for me personally, and really all of us as a collective. You'd sometimes forget they were working no DQ matches in Mid-South/Houston because rules were still mostly enforced the same way by referees, but you knew this was no mere sporting contest when Reed launched Slater over the ropes to the floor and then dropped him across the safety rail. In their last match Slater worked over Reed's neck when he managed to take control. It makes sense because Reed was in a beck brace and Slater is Dirty by nature. In the end it didn't matter because Reed won and took Slater's North American title. Maybe this time Slater knew a different strategy was in order so when he got his chance he tried to break Reed's arm. This was some awesome arm work, first in how he dragged Reed over to the corner and wrapped the arm around the ring post, then smashed it with the edge of a chair. All of Slater's armbars were rugged as fuck and I loved him kneeling across Reed's head while he applied it, grated his forearm bone across Reed's face, super nasty stuff. Reed paying him back with the post spot later was some great revenge but even that was eclipsed by the uppercut he landed on Slater's chin towards the end. A no DQ match ending in what pretty much was a DQ is sort of stupid, but I did love Slater knowing that Reed was a force not easily stopped and just elbow dropping the ref' in the neck. Part of it was frustration, part fear. Reed WILL keep coming so I guess if there's no referee to count Slater out then he can't actually lose the match. You'd think, anyway. He clearly hadn't considered the possibility of a disqualification in a no disqualification match. This was still top, though. 

Chris Adams & Terry Taylor v Iceman Parsons & Eddie Gilbert (3/20/87)

Long, awesome southern style tag. The first five minutes of this - which goes dead on 20 in total - were mostly comprised of Iceman Parsons reaching deep into his bag of shithead stupidity and it was very great. I guess he'd turned on Adams recently and Adams wanted revenge here. He got on the mic and called Parsons buckwheat, then started a buckwheat chant as Parsons got visibly livid. I don't really know what buckwheat is or why Adams chose that as an insult but I hope he wasn't doing a racism. When Parsons grabs the mic to respond the crowd immediately start up another buckwheat chant and Parsons of course milks this like crazy. When he finally gets to speak he calls Adams' mother a hobo and says he had his back when Adams was in the slammer. He makes a salient point but either way wants absolutely no part of Chris Adams and will outright run away from him during the early part of the match. Adams tries to swing on him a few times and Iceman will grab the post and hang waaaaay back out of reach. The heels do manage to take over on Adams briefly during a commercial break, but Boesch points out on commentary that it was Gilbert who did it and Parsons is riding the wave of his partner's success. When Adams rolls away from a Parsons elbow Iceman cuts bait and tags out instantly, another bullet dodged. So most of the babyface shine is Eddie Gilbert getting punched around the ring and this might be my all-time favourite string of Eddie Gilbert getting punched around a ring. He would get pinged with a jab, stumble into the wrong corner, get pinged with another, turn around and get pinged a third time, turn the other way and bump face-first into a turnbuckle. The babyfaces work an armbar on Gilbert and Iceman tries to come in and break it up, but when he does the ref' puts him straight back out and as this happens Adams and Taylor work the blind tag shtick. Parsons is apoplectic and the crowd eat it up and pro wrestling doesn't need to be all that complicated when you get down to brass tacks. On the third attempt Adams is a little too slow in switching with Taylor so it's him the ref' has to put out, so Parsons nails Taylor on the temple with a jumping hip attack and as far as transitions go that was pretty great. In a nice play on the norm Taylor tries to fire back with a headbutt on Iceman and pays dearly as Parsons struts and wiggles like the biggest most punchable idiot you've ever seen, albeit an idiot with a rock solid cranium. The heat segment pretty much ruled. Every cutoff built the heat and Taylor was just a really strong face in peril, and when Adams gets the hot tag the crowd knows he can finally get his hands on Parsons. Even the double count out finish was fine just for the wild bump that led to it. I had no memory of this match at all and it was badass. 

Mid-South Project