Kingston v Garcia

Eddie Kingston v Daniel Garcia (AEW Rampage, 22/4/22)

This was the business. Kingston might be one of my three favourite guys in the company and Garcia might be one of my five favourite, despite me having seen all of about three matches with him in it. Eddie was a surly menace and I thought Garcia going after his stomach was an awesome bit of work. The transition spot on the ring steps was great and I like how Eddie took it right in the hip bone, then Garcia was dropping knees to the gut and ribcage, throwing strikes to the midsection to cut Kingston off, just going after him like he was trying to make deep inhalation an arduous process. There was one part where Eddie got to the ropes off a submission and Garcia milked the full five count before releasing, but Kingston kept selling the hold the whole time, shouting "get him off me!" through gritted teeth. Usually when someone gets to the ropes they'll just sort of stop selling the pain from the hold they're in, like the ropes themselves provide a mythical healing quality that leaves one impervious to pain, even if the applicant of the hold hasn't actually released it straight away. Kingston felt every second of this though, and his attention to vulnerability endears him even further to us all. He was also the most scrappy imaginable, how he'd throw strikes from his knees or back, sometimes just chopping Garcia in the thigh because it was there to be chopped and he couldn't reach his chest. A bit of it rubbed off on Garcia, who at one point fought fire with fire and started biting Kingston in the forehead (to which Kingston responded by trying to bite his ear off). They worked some hierarchy into the strike exchanges and I dug how Kingston sold one chop like it about caved his chest in, before inevitably caving in Garcia's because that young laddie is not about to be out-chopping Eddie Kingston at this juncture in their lives. 

CM Grapplin' Punk

CM Punk v Daniel Garcia (AEW Rampage, 10/8/21)

What a great wee bout. If you'd told me six months ago that CM Punk would end up being my favourite wrestler in the world in the year 2022 I would have respectfully told you that you were on a nonsense. But it's almost absurd how giddy I, a grown man, get for CM Punk right now. He is ridiculously fun and I thought he was sensational in this. Just a total chef's kiss of a performance, one that was loaded with little moments that resonate completely with a dipshit who geeks out for the sort of stuff I geek out for. If Punk had just been home sitting on his arse for the last seven years this would've had a cool young shooter stepping to the veteran dynamic, but since he went and messed around in an octagon for a minute there it had an even cooler young shooter stepping to the veteran shooter dynamic (even if his MMA record would suggest Punk was never much of a shooter). There were lots of neat moments that highlighted the experience gap, and I thought Tazz and Jericho were both great on commentary at pointing them out. Things like Garcia taking a few seconds to bask in gaining an advantage rather than actually following up on it, which allowed Punk to sidestep a corner dropkick, or when Garcia threw on the Sharpshooter but didn't drag Punk away from the ropes before it, which we see the reverse of later when Punk makes sure to pull Garcia into a favourable position before applying the Anaconda Vice. Garcia worked like a dude with a chip on his shoulder and Punk doing "these kids today don't know anything about respect" is a hoot, particularly when you think about CM Punk at Daniel Garcia's age. There was a great bit where Garcia was trying to grab something on the mat, maybe a kneebar or an armbar, each time Punk would try to sit up and Garcia would dismissively facepalm him back to the mat, and by the third time he did it you could see that Punk was going to box his ears in. That he wound up doing it with Mongolian chops was as random as it was awesome. Everything with the leg ruled and I thought Punk's selling was brilliant in an understated sort of way. He wasn't big and dramatic with it but you never forgot it was bothering him, and more than a couple times he had to switch up his attack to account for it. I watched this last night and I wish I could remember a few more specifics, but there were a couple moments that I know I thought were awesome. Also Garcia busted out the ring post figure-four and that right away is cause for celebration. Loved the Pepsi Twist, loved the big dive in how ungraceful it looked ("I need to hit three people here so why do a fancy flip when I can just throw myself on top of them as awkwardly as possible?") and loved the finish. Subbing out the GTS for the piledriver so it meant he wouldn't need to hit anyone in the skull with a bad knee was a great touch, and I like that the Vice is treated as a match-winner that doesn't need any build. 

Is 2020s CM Punk PEAK CM Punk?

CM Punk v Dustin Rhodes (AEW Dynamite, 4/20/22)

It's kind of nuts how this never happened until now. They were together in WWE for a decent while, yet I don't think they ever actually matched up. Still I'm not sure it would've been as good before, which is maybe a little crazy in and of itself considering Punk has only wrestled about 15 matches in eight years. It started fairly respectful, a pair of grizzled vets squaring off for the first time, two guys who clearly like the idea of wrestling each other. I mean you know Punk would've been giddy as fuck for something like Dustin v Bunkhouse Buck when he was 16. They even did maybe the slowest parity stand-off in AEW history, and any time a parity stand-off spot doesn't feel dumb you know you're in for something special. They introduce the first part of the duelling limb work early when Dustin goes after Punk's arm, then Dustin spills to the floor with a matured blend of his missed crossbody bump. Dustin's leg selling is awesome from then on out, just the right balance of expressive yet restrained, where you know it's a real problem but he isn't oscillating from crushed to bits in a bear trap to fuck it I can do this rope running exchange I'll be fine. The match also gets a bit more tetchy as it goes, and we get the first glimpse of it with Dustin kicking at Punk's arm to create some distance and Punk looking at the camera like "he should not have done that." Punk gets frustrated when he can't put Dustin away and ups the surliness with the stomp and headbutt to the verrrrry low abdomen, then he even does a mocking little Goldust pose. Dustin would try and make inroads by going for Punk's arm again and some of the body part selling was outstanding. I loved not just how those injured body parts would prevent them from hitting certain moves, but how targeting the knee or arm would always provide advantages for whoever chose to take them at the time. There was a great sequence in particular where Dustin is on the apron and Punk kicks the leg away (and Dustin takes a nasty back bump on the hardest part of the ring), then Dustin comes back with a drop-down arm-wringer and Punk goes shoulder-first into the apron. Dustin does the 10 count punches in the corner and flips Punk the double bird, I'm guessing because he saw that little Goldust bit earlier (would assume Punk is now blocked on all social media platforms), but then when he jumps down he jars the knee again and Punk immediately capitalises. By the time they're slapping each other across the face while locked in the figure-four you know you're no longer watching a mere gentleman's contest. And it's rare that you get a satisfying payoff to a match built around limb work so obviously I thought the finish was great. This is an interesting comparison to the early Punk matches, at least in terms of his demeanour and mood. In the Darby match he looked ecstatic to be back, even if he had some ring rust. Now he's got some of the old attitude back and I guess has his eyes on the cowboy fella. This also might be the most CM Punk working as Bret Hart match yet, judging by that twitter video of Bret v Goldust, and CM Punk working as Bret Hart is just about the coolest thing going right now. And that's really not something I thought I would be saying in the year 2022. 

Some Stuff from AEW All Out '21

Miro v Eddie Kingston 

This was badass as fuck. By god what an Eddie Kingston performance. Excalibur basically says it outright on commentary anyway, but this was clearly Kingston doing 90s All Japan, just not in the corny way with him hitting yer big Orange Crush Bombs and Burning Hammers. He wears his influences on his sleeve right next to his heart and this was him doing Kawada if Kawada one day decided he wanted to EMOTE like Kobashi. The strikes, the selling, the comebacks - those that failed and those that were successful - were all magic, had perfect timing and he had pretty much everyone on strings the whole match. Lots of amazing little moments from him as well, like when Miro booted him in the face and Kingston started blinking away tears like his nose was broken. The little delayed staggers after getting rocked, the struggle over moves, just great. I'm honestly neither here nor there on Miro and I don't recall ever having much of a stance on him one way or the other, but this was as surly as I've ever seen him and he was basically the perfect foil for a man who would die on his sword. Thought the finish with the exposed turnbuckle stuff and desperation low blow came off great. Kingston honest to god might be better now than he was 15 years ago.

Young Bucks v Lucha Brothers (Cage Match)

Well this was certainly something. Look, you know it'll never totally be my jam, but for some reason I want to persevere with the stuff I generally don't like because I'm actually really enjoying everything else. And this was what it was. I am not the audience they're trying to appeal to and it feels like the audience they ARE trying to appeal to went home thrilled, so fair fucks to them for collaring that corner of the market. The second half I mostly quite liked, in fact. I mean it was a tag team cage match from 2021 and not 1981 so I was probably never going to LOVE it, but I already knew that so at least I wasn't likely to be disappointed. First half was more or less a series of one team doing a bunch of cool things followed by the other team doing the same, and there were no real transitions and it was sort of obvious that they were bouncing momentum back and forth because that's how they'd rehearsed the exchanges, but the stuff they were actually doing was mostly impressive. Like, I was a gymnast in my prime and fancied myself as quite a good one but I'll be fucked if I could pull off most of this shit so they have my deepest respect that I'm sure all four of them covet. But, you know, just like...do a proper transition maybe once or something. In the second half they dropped the pace and I thought it was way better for it, but then of course I would think that because I'm old and set in my ways. I'll level with you, I kind of loved the stupid thumbtack shoe. Then Penta got his Arena Mexico on and bled like fuck and Fenix had his mask all torn up and obviously that will resonate with a thing such as I. Revenge shots came off well and I dug Matt gettin' some colour to even things up. Fenix with the dive off the cage was loony toon but then the twenty superkick bit was maybe the worst thing I've ever seen and I once saw a man get kicked in the head by a horse but then the finish felt like a fucking gigantic moment and so we take the good with the dooky, as my grandmother would say. I enjoyed some of this, even if I wouldn't say I enjoyed it in totality.

CM Punk v Darby Allin

This is the sort of thing that probably isn't a five star match in the traditional sense, but for what I figure they were going for and the circumstances under which they wrestled it, I thought it was pretty much perfect. And even in the traditional sense of "is this a great wrestling match?" I honestly thought it was superb. Like, one of the three or four best matches I've watched so far. Both guys ruled. What I like most about what I've seen in this Punk run so far is that, even though he's one of the guys most responsible for the predominant wrestling style in America right now, he wrestles very differently from just about everyone else in the company. Most of the AEW roster wrestle some stylistic approximation - or evolution? - of what 2005 CM Punk was doing, but 2021/22 CM Punk had been retired for seven years and had a whole bunch of miles on the clock even before then, and he wrestled this match like a 40-something-year-old from 1995, forget 2005. He slowed down the pace because how the hell was he supposed to know if he had the engine to go long on a PPV yet, especially against a maniac like Allin? A fuckin abdominal stretch?! In 2021 AEW? Awesome. Then there were the little things that he's always been good at, like when he threw Darby into the corner so hard that he landed face down on the mat himself (and Darby's ring post bump is GOAT tier). The grin when he realised Darby's spine might be mangled, then immediately going for the bow and arrow. There were points as well where Darby would string together some offence and Punk would sort of huddle in the corner like "boy they were not hitting this hard in 2014 WWE, not even Ryback who didn't know how not to." I don't know if it was intentional or not but even the way he took that flip Stunner from Darby made him look like a guy who wasn't used to eating flip Stunners from tiny wildmen, how he landed almost flat on his stomach rather than how everyone else I've seen take it would. That's a 2021 move and Punk's still going off 2014 fumes. I guess that's pretty META~, but what is AEW if not meta and I really wouldn't be surprised if he did it on purpose. Know yer audience and all that. The GTS has also never looked better and the first one was all Darby leaning face-first into and falling dead weight through the ropes, but I loved Punk reacting like he really would've preferred for the wee fella to have landed in the ring so he could've put a cap on this thing. I'm hyped to watch Danielson stretch out and be the American Dragon again, but I think I'm more excited about watching Punk work as the one-time indie revolutionary who's been dropped into a future he's almost out of place in despite helping create it to begin with.

The American Dragon v The Best Bout Machine

Kenny Omega v Bryan Danielson (AEW Dynamite, 9/22/21)

I thought this was shockingly great, and I know there'll be some people reading that thinking I sound ridiculous. "How could you be shocked that this was great? Unless by SHOCKINGLY you mean you thought it was twelve stars rather than seven or whatever we're at now." I mean maybe it shouldn't shock me, but I know what I like and by all accounts this didn't sound like it would be that. So maybe it was the low-ish expectations. Either way I'll be fucked if I wasn't into it basically all the way through. It's probably the most I've ever enjoyed Omega - and I really mean ever - and I thought he more than held up his end. Most people will see the suggestion that he might not have as ludicrous, but if you're asking me if I'd rather watch them work a Bryan Danielson match or a Kenny Omega match then I'm picking the former all day, and there are a whole bunch of people I'd rather see opposite Bryan Danielson in a Bryan Danielson match than Kenny Omega. Actually I don't even think it was a Bryan Danielson match - in the way I'd usually think of a Bryan Danielson match - or at least it wasn't by the end. But none of that was what shocked me anyway. I've seen scrubs look good in a Bryan Danielson match or just generally against Bryan Danielson and Omega is better than, like, Delirious or someone. Prolly. The most shocking part is that I enjoyed Omega during the Bryan Danielson bits AND the Kenny Omega bits, and Kenny Omega Dream Match Epic is not something I'm desperate to watch at this stage of the game. To be honest, judging by the reaction for the first lock-up they could've worked any match and they'd have had people on strings, but they knew their audience to a tee and in the end gave them what they came to see, and they came to see Dream Match Epic. 

All of the early build was great. They laced into each other and both of them had welts on chests, bruises on foreheads, scrapes on elbows, burns on backs, all the signs of something in which a pair of guys smashed each other to bits. It might've only been the idea or just the CONCEPT of Bryan Danielson getting to stretch out and be Bryan Danielson again that got me, but when he was bending Omega's wrist and stomping it into the mat it really did feel like the shackles had been cast off. Omega was a fun shithead through all of it and when it was his turn to dish out some damage he did it like he meant it. If the first half was the Bryan Danielson part of the match and the second half was the Kenny Omega part then I at least thought they segued from one to the other pretty seamlessly. I don't even remember a point where I thought "okay now we're in Omega's lane," but if it happened with the stuff on the ramp then they sure picked a hell of a transition for it. The Snapdragon was nuts but goodness christ that V-Trigger was fucking bonkers. He about launched himself from halfway up the ramp, downhill, and it looked like he fully caved in Danielson's temple. Just an unreal spot that I rewound half a dozen times. Danielson's selling after that was predictably amazing and I really loved Omega juuuust about accepting the count out only for his ego to take over and opt for the decisive victory instead. You know a man who calls himself the Best Bout Machine is meta enough that he'd realise a count out would cost him at least half a star. The buckle bomb was absolutely ludicrous and I thought he was for yeeting Danielson clean over the post. The biggest compliment I can pay to the last 10 minutes is that there were probably transitions that I'd usually find ropey, or kickouts that I'd usually find silly, or STUFF that I'd usually find excessive, but they really had me hooked and I was fully immersed in the moment. Like, I had a music teacher in high school who would say that music was both the best and worst thing that ever happened to her. It was her career, her life, her passion and the thing she enjoyed more than anything else in the world. But it sort of ruined a bunch of other things for her, like movies and television, because she'd be watching something and all she could think about was the musical score, the chords, all that other stuff that I don't understand because I am not and have never been a musician. Well pro wrestling is not my life or my career, but it is my passion, watching and talking and writing about it, and it's hard for me to just "turn off my brain" when it's there in front of me now because I can't help but think of all the nerdy carry on like selling and transitions and whatever else knocks about our heads as doofus wrestling fans on the internet. And as corny as it sounds, I just kind of...switched off for a while and didn't give a shit about any of that. It wasn't intentional, wasn't something I consciously made a decision to do, I just didn't think about it. For that to happen when watching one guy I think is great but have no real personal affinity for and another guy I quite often actively dread watching, that's kind of cool as fuck. Three and a half stars. 

A Great Chuck Taylor Match!

Santana & Ortiz v Chuck Taylor & Trent (Parking Lot Brawl) (AEW Dynamite, 9/16/20)

This is another match that my dear beloved internet wrestling friends told me I would probably like. I have no use whatsoever for Chuck Taylor, haven't watched anything involving Trent Baretta in about 10 years, and I'm pretty sure the only time I've seen Santana and Ortiz was during that stadium match where one of them tried to drown Matt Hardy in a swimming pool. I also didn't have a clue about the feud leading up to this point (something about Trent's ma or whatever), so I was sort of apathetic going in, and yet in the end I thought it was stupid great. Like, easily the most I've ever enjoyed Chuck Taylor, and I guess Trent Baretta and the LAX into the bargain (the latter through lack of exposure more than anything). There was pretty much no nonsense in this and I appreciated that they just went for violence straight out the gate. At one point the Best Friends had Ortiz under the hood of a car and they were hitting somersault sentons, and the way Ortiz's leg was sticking out it looked like they were trying to stuff a cadaver in - fittingly enough - the trunk of a car. Basically everything looked brutal, from the overt lunacy like Trent getting powerbombed on the roof of one of the cars, to the more subtle nastiness like Santana getting his forehead split open by being thrown into a wing mirror. Trent was actually a maniac in this, taking a face-first slingshot into the bottom of a truck, blading his arm after spearing someone through a door, sliding down a windshield leaving bloody streaks, then taking a truly ludicrous double powerbomb through that windshield where his back got cut to pieces. There was even a bit where he smashed a plank of wood over Ortiz's back and a piece of it flew up and hit him in the eye. When you're having one of those days you're just having one of those days. The Chuck Taylor wheelie bin suplex is also is one of the only times I've seen a spot involving a wheelie bin in a wrestling match that felt properly brutal. I don't know what the deal is with Orange Cassidy appearing out the trunk at the end. Probably some daft shit that I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on and say fit with the feud, but I feel like the less I think about Orange Cassidy the easier my life is. That said, if you're going to do a comedy spot in a match that had been fully about the violence up until then, they at least reeled it back in when Cassidy immediately smashed Santana in the ear with a chain-wrapped fist. And the Strong Zero through the wood in the truck bed felt like a suitable finish to a match even containing this much wildness. Parking lot brawls are sort of a rarity, great ones even more so, but this one might be the best ever. Which is staggering considering William Regal v Fit Finlay and John Cena v Eddie Guerrero were things that happened, and neither of those had Chuck Taylor in them. 

Whiskey & Wrestling Gets All Elite

I don't think I've written a single word about AEW on this thing up until now. To be fair, I've watched about as many minutes of AEW as I have written words about it, so that'll be why. But my brother has a subscription to that Fite TV thing and in a very cool turn of events I can simply steal it from him and have access to basically every bit of AEW television. There are plenty of wrestlers in AEW that I don't really care about and those are the folk I won't watch much of as I jump into this, but there also now plenty of wrestlers I do care about and I'll watch stuff and write about some of it. I might even try my hand at some of those wrestlers I don't usually like and we'll see what's what. Eventually my plan is to basically pick up from the All Out PPV last September (Punk's debut match) and go through stuff chronologically until the present day. I imagine that idea will be dropped before its completion, but it's at least useful to have goals in life. Before then I've just been jumping around catching up with stuff that either sounds interesting or that other people who have similar preferences have talked up. It's mostly the Darby Allin stuff. 

Jon Moxley v Darby Allin (AEW Dynamite, 11/20/19) 

This is one I've been meaning to watch for a while now (about two and a half years, I guess). I think basically every person I regularly talk to about wrestling who has a decent idea of what I like has told me I would enjoy this, and sure enough they were very correct. This is actually one of my favourite Moxley performances and I thought he looked - if you'll excuse the pun - dynamite. Thought he managed to look vulnerable enough while still coming across as tough, gave Allin plenty and got surly as a bastard when necessary. Allin catching him with the surprise tope at the beginning ruled and nobody has a better tope in current day American wrestling than Darby Allin. Every tope in WWE these days looks full on dog muck because guys are obviously told to lead with their hands, so it looks like a diving shove and it quite frankly spits in the face of Ciclon Ramirez and Sangre Chicana who would tope someone with the crown of the head directly into somewhere between chest and chin and send the recipient several rows deep and into a pensioner's lap. Darby does not lead with his hands and just torpedoes folk at a hunner miles an hour, as it should be. At another point he flies off the top with a crossbody and I love that he just bounced clean off Moxley, who braced for contact and went full Colossus in metal form. Also loved Darby biting and stomping on Moxley's fingers, a couple times as a sort of desperation cut off spot to prevent Moxley from almost certainly dropping him on his skull. When Moxley put Allin in the body bag Darby brought to the ring I got a wee bit worried because I thought for sure he was going to powerbomb him or some nonsense, and even for a fella who routinely takes bumps with his hands literally tied behind his back a body bag powerbomb seemed more dangerous than it was worth. Ultimately he didn't do anything of the sort and I figured Darby was escaping without taking a potential crippling, but then Moxley went and absolutely fucking obliterated him with one of the wildest top rope DDTs I've ever seen. Darby is certifiable and this was great.

It's a Seedy WAR Midcard Extravaganza

Koki Kitahara v Hiromichi Fuyuki (WAR, 4/2/95)

Very much the sort of mangy close-quarters potatofest you want from these two. Kitahara is bandaged up around the midsection and fights an uphill battle against Fuyuki and his minions in their red pyjamas, like Hogan stepping against the entire Heenan Family. Within a minute blood is trickling from Kitahara's forehead, a result of them grabbing each other by the hair and throwing headbutts. It spills to the floor and Fuyuki whomps Kitahara with a chair so hard that I guess the latter bit his own tongue, because he crawls back in the ring bleeding from both forehead and mouth. Fuyuki was a shrieking menace and threw brutal lariats, coconut headbutts and vicious slaps. When Kitahara was pushed past breaking point he would retaliate in the nastiest ways possible, the best example being the wildest spin kick I think I've ever seen. It landed flush on Fuyuki's face and it sounded like someone had waffled him with a cricket bat. Towards the end the bottom ring rope gets taken apart and used as a weapon, then Gedo sprays half a can of deodorant in Kitahara's face from about four inches away and I can't believe Kitahara never puked. The seedy WAR midcard extravaganza truly cannot be beaten. 

The 2002 Eddie Guerrero Return Tour Continues

Eddie Guerrero & Chris Benoit v The Rock & Edge (Smackdown!, 8/1/02)

Kind of a weird layout here, with two decently long FIP segments and very little babyface control, then a short finishing run after the second hot tag. You'd think Rock would at least get to go on a bit of a tear out the gate, but instead they basically went straight into a heat segment on him. Eddie and Benoit work very INTENSELY and even if it's sort of trite or played out as a talking point about Benoit, he really did bring an almost unmatched INTENSITY to everything he did. I don't really want to talk about Chris Benoit though, so instead I will take that intensity talking point and apply it to the context of Eddie Guerrero being INTENSE. Tazz on commentary mentions this as well and it really is very noticeable. He definitely came back from that sabbatical with no intention of ever being saddled in an angle where he takes Chyna to the prom ever again. A very angry man. The heat segment on Edge was probably the better of the two peril sections, a little more focused with Eddie and Benoit working over the lower back. My favourite part of this was Eddie crushing him with a hilo to the spine as Edge was struggling to get to his hands and knees. Edge's spear looked much better in 2002 than it did when he started using it as an actual finisher. Maybe I'll like that Edge/Eddie no DQ match more now than I did the last time. This was good stuff. 

Territory Road Trip: Midnights and the Rider

Midnight Express v The James Boys (World Championship Wrestling, 5/3/86)

I've written a decent amount of words on this here nonsense blog about 1986 Jim Crockett Promotions. I've written about five-minute throwaway studio bouts, long showcase arena bouts, and most of what falls in between. I'm sure I've mentioned at least once that Crockett's booking in '86, at least through the first five months of the year and you can extend that start point back into the last quarter of '85, is about as well-booked as you can get for a wrestling promotion. They had a stacked roster with some of the all-time best in the ring and all-time best on THE STICK~ (many who were both) and basically every feud up and down the card felt meaningful. Pez Whatley felt like the biggest bastard on the planet because he cut Jimmy Valiant's ponytail and I can't remember ever thinking about Pez Whatley for more than six seconds any other time. At the top of the card you had a revolving door of guys you could slot into main events, basically all of whom being involved in multiple feuds and conflicts without it ever feeling contrived or confusing. By this point in the year Flair was feuding with Dusty, who was feuding with Tully, who still had beef with Magnum TA, who was in a war with the Russians, who were embroiled in another war with the Road Warriors, who were after the Midnight Express, who were still locked in their eternal feud with the Rock n Roll Express, who were out for revenge on Flair because the Horsemen tried to deform Ricky Morton. Then a few weeks earlier the Midnights got a bug up their butt about Dusty and Magnum, who were going by America's Team. The latter wanted a title shot and Cornette was having none of it because they weren't a REAL team and they hadn't beaten anybody. Things then got nuclear at the end of April, when the MX battered Dusty with Cornette's tennis racket on TV, and when Baby Doll tried to intervene Cornette walloped her as well. It got insane heat and Cornette ranting like a maniac afterwards while Dusty cradled Baby Doll in his arms was near riot material. 

Which brings us to this bit of top drawer wrestling telly. Baby Doll speaks with Schiavone before the match about how she's doing well and that she got involved last week out of instinct. Cornette is about as contrite as you'd expect. "I'm disappointed your injuries prevented you from running in the Kentucky Derby this weekend." The Midnights have a match scheduled against some team called the James Boys, whoever the hell they are, so Cornette says it'll be a fine tune-up match. And if Dusty and Magnum ever want a title shot, they still need to actually BEAT someone. The Midnights are in the ring ready to go and the Allman Brothers' 'Midnight Rider' starts playing over the studio speakers. To begin with Cornette looks around like "what is this shit, just hurry up already," while some folks in the crowd clap along. And then two guys in black masks, cowboy hats and trench coats hit the ring and everyone and their granny knows what's up. Everybody involved in this was amazing, from the four guys in the ring to Cornette on the floor to Schiavone at the desk. It might be my favourite Tony Schiavone call ever. Every week on World Championship Wrestling Tony has to endure Cornette's whining and insults and general horse shit. Every single week, yet he's a professional and like water off a duck's back he gets on with it, the perfect wrestling straight man. The Rock n Roll Express are teeny boppers, the Road Warriors and stupid, Dusty's fat and Magnum's a hillbilly. Jim Crockett Sr has a vendetta against the Midnight Express. Bob Caudle's an alcoholic. Tony never rises to any of it. But you could tell he was loving this and I thought it was brilliant how he called the match as if he DIDN'T know who was under those masks. Cornette is beside himself, running from the ring to the desk and back again, ranting and raving the whole time. "That's Dusty Rhodes and Magnum TA, you gotta be an idiot! Ray Charles could see it!" Magnum is wearing a vest with bazookas for arms and his blond curls sticking out under the mask, Dusty could be covered head to toe and you'd know it was him because he just radiates Dusty, but Schiavone just plays it off like they're a pair of ham n eggers. "Wow, these James Boys can really wrestle." I think he even refers to them as Frank and Jesse James which sends Cornette off the deep end. And the actual work inside the ring ruled too. You can usually gauge the seriousness of a situation by how quickly Dennis Condrey removes his little bowtie and he did not wrestle one second of this studio match bowtie'd up. Eaton bumps like a headcase and takes an atomic drop straight into a Dusty elbow on the floor, which he then flip bumps off of. The MX eventually take over on Magnum when Eaton just goes fuck it and jumps off the top rope with an axe handle. When they string together some offence - and it's great offence, properly vicious and they don't give Magnum a second to breathe - Cornette shouts about how they tried to hornswoggle the Midnight Express but now it's them who are doing the hornswoggling. We don't get much of a build to the finish as Dusty just sort of comes in and America's Team hit stereo belly-to-bellies, but it's hard to ask for much more from a match-slash-angle and the pop for the pin is incredible. Baby Doll coming back out ready to bullwhip Cornette into oblivion was also phenomenal and then Schiavone seems none the wiser as to the identity of Frank James despite him having maybe the most distinctive voice in the history of wrestling. This whole thing was twelve stars, and if I watched it live and they advertised an America's Team v Midnight Express match in my area they would've had my money in an instant. 

Spent a Lotta Summer Nights in the Back of That Field, Every Inch of Mid-South Seen These Four Wheels

Buzz Sawyer & Dick Slater v The Fantastics (10/27/85)

On paper there's very little chance of this not being good. It's been over a decade since I last watched most of this stuff (apparently I started this project eleven years ago this month. I refuse to believe that) and I didn't remember a thing about this match, but they had a match on TV a day earlier that was really nifty and sure enough this fucking ruled. I think Sawyer and Slater were only together as a team for a short while, which is pretty unfortunate because they were an awesome pair of bruisers here. Buzz was having one of those nights where you bought him flying off the rails any minute. During the Fantastics' entrance he was covering his ears and rocking back and forth, the shrieks from the audience's female population and the droning of ZZ Top's 'Sharp Dressed Man' clearly setting him on edge. The early shine segment was strong as you'd expect, but things got really good when Buzz and Slater took over. The transition was great, with Rogers going for a sunset flip on Slater, Slater countering by just dropping on top of Rogers and drilling him in the mouth. Sawyer works a great side headlock, grinding his chin across the neck and head of Rogers, really cranking back and forth on the hold, then we get an incredible rope running sequence where Tommy crashes and dies off a missed crossbody. The surlier Sawyer and Slater get the more agitated Fulton becomes, the easier it is to then goad him into the ring, to draw the attention of the referee, so the more opportunities arise for Sawyer, Slater and even Dark Journey to pile in on Rogers. Slater really squeezed as much heat out of that hot tag as he could, waiting until Rogers was just about able to reach Fulton only to drag him back by the trunks, then a second time, then a third, so when Fulton actually got the tag the crowd was set to blow the roof off (we assume anyway. This was one of those matches where we had no crowd audio and instead it was Joel Watts doing commentary from his bedroom or whatever). Rogers fucking wastes Slater with an amazing dropkick during the scramble at the end, and then the finish with Sawyer and Slater hitting a Hart Attack was great. A very badass tag, in a great year for tag wrestling in the US. 

Ric Flair v Butch Reed (11/9/85)

This was an excellent bitta TV. It was Watts' take on Harley Race hiring bounty hunters to cripple Flair, only with Flair now in the Harley role and Reed in the Flair role. Amusingly enough, Dick Slater was the one collecting the bounty in both instances and I could absolutely see Slater as some roaming hitman terrorising the south for whoever pays the most handsomely. Originally this was supposed to be Flair versus Al Perez in a non-title match, but Reed comes out before it and calls Flair a lowlife back-jumper (for the bounty thing). He challenges Flair instead and even turns his back so Flair can jump him again. Flair says all of this is beneath him but then of course goes to back-jump Reed, only to walk into a right hand. It leads to a nice studio bout, around seven minutes so obviously they cut out the fluff from the longer arena matches. Flair is mostly on the back foot and having to throw pot shots where he can, quick chops, knees to the gut, kicks from his back, even his awesome double stomp that I'll once again maintain he should've kept as part of his regular moveset. All of Reed's power offence looked great and his big shoulder tackle at the end felt like something that would put a World Champion on their back for a 10-count. Reed barely has time to celebrate the victory as Slater immediately hits the ring and, like he did to his current employer only a couple years earlier, sets about putting Reed on the shelf. I guess nothing highlights the fickleness of the pro wrestling game more than the Champion of the World helping a man who once tried to break his neck to now try and break the neck of another. 

Mid-South Project

Territory Road Trip: There's a Snake in Mid-South

Jake Roberts v Brad Armstrong (Mid-South, 4/16/85)

I'm not sure this is a great match. I thought it was comfortably a good one, just not sure it's a great one, and I'm not even sure it's a great Jake performance. But I know it was a mesmerising one. He was an incredible scumbag here. Brad Armstrong is a rock solid wrestler at his worst, who will bring lots of energy as a babyface even if he's sort of meat and potatoes in the overall sense. He's easy to root for, or at least the way he works is easy to root for, if you know what I mean. That wasn't enough for Jake though, who decided that if there was a ceiling on how much a crowd might want to get behind Brad Armstrong then there would be no ceiling on how much they might want to hate Jake the Snake Roberts. They didn't do anything particularly unique to start out. Jake would grab an armbar and yank Armstrong to the mat with the hair, the ref' would question him about it as the crowd got on his case, but Jake would obviously deny it, gesturing innocently like "Me?! Really?!" He basically treated Armstrong like a scrub and the longer it went the longer it felt like he didn't actually NEED to do all this cheating, he just...wanted to. It was a thing he enjoyed. He would drag Armstrong to the mat and muss up his hair, shouting "Braaaaad. Braaaaaaaaaad" in his ear, just bullying this kid in front of everyone. Armstrong fired back with a couple shots, but they mostly just annoyed Jake and Armstrong was always a bit too nice to do what needed to be done. At a certain point you almost have to fight fire with fire, even if it runs contrary to how you live your life as an upstanding American, and it looked like Brad just wasn't about that no matter how far he was pushed. Even then I don't think anybody in that building was more sick of Jake's shit than the ref'. This was probably as wound up as I've ever seen a referee, and that includes every match where Earl Hebnar loses the plot and nearly has a heart attack. Jake terrorised this poor guy about as much as he terrorised Brad Armstrong, though this was wholly psychological. The longer it went the more Jake cheated, and because the referee never actually saw most of it he was powerless to do anything, which enraged him even more. Then Jake would blatantly cheat right in front of him, like when he'd have Brad in an armbar and start pulling his ARMPIT hair. The ref' would scream in Jake's face and Jake would just grin and stare at him, unblinking. It was kind of disconcerting. Jake does slimeball as well as anyone but this was more sinister, like '91 WWF where he set upon a man with a king cobra. As someone who was an antagonistic wee bastard as a child I've seen the look of many a school teacher who's wanted to physically strike me, and I can tell you right now that this referee wanted to lay one on Jake's chin. It made the big payback spot about halfway in doubly awesome. After one too many hair pulls Brad had finally had enough, so he kipped up and dragged Jake to the mat by the hair, and when Jake got up in disbelief Armstrong punched him clean out the ring. Jake then pulled a rope out of his pocket, but as he slinked back in the ring everyone knew he had something in his hand, including the ref' who jumped all over him and actually managed to take it away! A victory for the little fella! In the end it didn't really matter. He had to raise Jake's hand anyway, because the DDT was inevitable, but referees in every profession take a hammering on the daily and for a change you maybe felt some sympathy for this one. 

Jake Roberts & Nord the Barbarian v Dirty White Boys (Mid-South, 6/30/85)

This was a very different look at Jake. If you needed any proof that he was a changed man, our referee from the last match was in charge again here and not once did it look like he wanted to take a shotgun to the Snake. I actually don't know if Jake had even turned full babyface yet, but he and big Nord were working as such and Jake was so over by this point that it would've been impossible to keep him heel anyway. And this was a decent tag, in a year where Mid-South had about a thousand decent tags and on a show that featured an awesome RnRs v Midnights tag. You probably won't remember it months down the line, but you can't really go wrong either. Jake played face in peril for a while and he was really good at it. He milked the hell out of those near tags and Barbarian is always fun on the apron getting more and more agitated. Denton looked badass in this. All of his cutoffs looked sharp, he sailed face first into the mat off a missed headbutt, and he sold wanting absolutely no part of the DDT by not even letting Jake grab a hold of him. Usually Jake would at least make enough contact to set the move up before the would-be recipient would bold, but Denton wasn't inclined to let it even get that far. Maybe he thought Jake was out there SHOOTIN'. Better to be safe than sorry. 

Territory Road Trip: Tully v Garvin!

Tully Blanchard v Ron Garvin (Worldwide, 5/3/86)

An absolute corker of a match. One of the biggest compliments I could give it, bearing in mind that I no longer have the patience to sit and watch most matches that go any longer than about twelve minutes, is that this never felt like it went over half an hour. A lot of that is down to the pace they cut, which was electric right from the start. Garvin comes in with a busted hand, sustained in the first place by Tully and Arn when they wrapped it around a ring post and clobbered it with a cowboy boot. It takes away the punch, his biggest weapon, so he has to pull out everything else in his arsenal. He was relentless and gave Tully no breathing room at all. I thought his selling of the hand was pretty much perfect. It's not just how he would sell the physical pain, like when Tully would take a swipe at it or later when it was actively being worked over. All of that was great, but there were the more subtle touches as well, like when he wouldn't be able to hook the leg on a cover, or when he'd use his forearm instead to grind Tully's face into the mat, and those instances were what really drew me in. He threw one or two strikes with the hand - a couple overhand chops, no punches - and immediately regretted it, so he had to switch it up and use forearms, elbows, kicks and headbutts, pretty much anything else he could think of. The headbutts were amazing, especially the first one early on where he caught Tully going for a kick, held that leg there as Tully tried to throw punches off the standing leg, then just whomped him with a jumping headbutt. The Garvin Stomp was also a phenomenal moment and even David Crockett getting all weird on commentary couldn't detract from it. I can see why people might think Garvin's offence was a bit haphazard overall, or that there was no escalation to it, but to me it absolutely worked and he came across as a guy doing everything he could think of because he couldn't do the one thing he usually would. Tully was incredible as well. His runs on offence were few and far between, but he was vicious when he got the chance to be and tough as a bastard working from below. I think this more than even the cage match with Magnum is the perfect representation of Tully. He's a weasel and a cheat, but when it gets right down to it that boy will scrape and claw and bite and do whatever else needs doing to keep his belt. He took an almighty shit-kicking and refused to stay down. When there was an opening he would jump on it - quite often literally - and even if he couldn't sustain those advantages you never felt like he was out of the fight. At points he would resort to just grabbing one of Garvin's legs and twisting it around the bottom rope, I guess because he happened to be close to it and it would hurt so why would you not do that? He'd leap from his knees and try to headbutt Garvin in the guts. Then JJ got involved like you knew he would and the brief run of hand work was tremendous. There was one bit where he went for a sunset flip from the apron and Garvin held onto the ropes with both hands, then eventually had to let go with the right and Tully practically yanked his trunks clean off just to drag him into the pin. It almost summed up the match: Garvin fighting uphill with one good hand, against a guy who wouldn't go away no matter what. The finish is one of my favourite Dusty Finishes. Tommy Young gets bumped and JJ sneaks Tully a roll of quarters, but at the same time Dusty tapes up Garvin's hand for that one big shot. Both get up and throw a punch at the same time, Garvin is half a second quicker, Tully gets dropped. Coins everywhere. And of course JJ is apoplectic after Garvin gets the pin, pointing to the taped fist and the coins all over the mat. Decision reversed, Garvin dejected, Tully oblivious, a cockroach surviving yet another nuke. Just an awesome match from start to finish. I guess if I had a criticism then I'd have liked for Tully to work the hand a bit longer, but it's really a minor quibble when you consider how much of the match he spent getting smashed to bits. 

She Said She's Going Back to Mid-South; New York is Way too Cold

Dick Murdoch v Butch Reed (10/14/85)

I wish we had a thousand versions of this match-up, or at least a baker's dozen. We have two hundred Flair/Kerry matches, even a mere REGULAR dozen of Murdoch/Reed shouldn't be too much to ask for. The September match might be the best US match of the decade and I thought that the first time I saw it thirteen years ago, but I remembered a whole lot less about this one other than it going over half an hour. I think it's a step down from September, but not by a lot and of course it ruled like fuck. It was also very different from the first match, when they quite easily could've worked the same contest with a rejigged finish. The first fifteen minutes are for Reed's TV title while anything after that is for Murdoch's North American belt, which is a cool sort of wrinkle. TV title or not, those first 15 minutes were pretty much a masterclass in building to a punch. Not a big highspot, no piledriver, no brainbuster, just a punch. They're still face v face so work clean early, even if you know Murdoch is the most likely to drag things off the rails if it comes to it (like the September match). Reed works the arm and it's decent enough, plus Murdoch is always interesting working from below. They half tease things breaking down, both of them looking like they're about to throw a fist at one or two points, but it never comes to that and they do in fact keep it clean. Reed just keeps grinding him down with the hammerlock and armbar and Murdoch is frustrated, then we get the first moment of chicanery from Murdoch as he backs Reed into the corner, waits for the ref' to try and break them up, and shoves him away so he can throw a forearm that, while legal in and of itself, was at the very least unsporting. I like that Reed under most circumstances would've retaliated, but here seemed intent on seeing out that first fifteen minutes to make sure the TV title was safe. So he keeps himself in check and goes back to the arm despite Murdoch getting more surly, even resorting to throwing VERY questionable pot shots from the headlock. When the fifteen minutes are up Reed's title is safe and Murdoch is clearly annoyed, but now it's all about the North American title. And Reed hasn't forgotten about those little pot shots or that sneaky forearm. They both hit the ropes, Murdoch clears Reed with a leapfrog, then upon landing turns around into an absolute bastard of a haymaker. They'd built that one shot up from the start, feeding the crowd opportunities for Reed to take it earlier but holding back, Murdoch going from obviously legal elbows to questionable forearms to sly rabbit punches. The crowd knew it was coming at some point, and when it connected it resonated perfectly. Murdoch sold it like it took the whole jaw off him as well, losing a giant wad of spit or maybe a row of teeth before falling through the ropes and stumbling around on the floor. It was one punch but it felt like a blast from a cannon. The second half is tremendous; really just a brilliant fifteen minutes of duelling limb work, starting with Murdoch going after Reed's leg. He throws some of the best stomps ever, right to the kneecap, the side of the knee, the back of it, then pretty much everywhere else on Reed's head and body. That has him on top for a while until Reed goes back to the arm from earlier, which sets up a finishing run of both picking apart a limb. The way they sold exhaustion along with the body part damage down the stretch is some of the best you'll see. I also like how this never degenerated into a brawl like the September match did. It never turned into a fist fight and, barring Murdoch repaying Reed with a carbon copy haymaker of his own, I can't even remember any instances of them punching each other in the back half of the match. Reed's lightning bolt right at the midpoint suggested it would go that route, but it largely stayed on the straight and narrow. Good first half, exceptional second half, and Reed hoisting the belt up in the air at the end while all the black kids in attendance rush to the front row was fucking biblical. That's yer pro wrestling right there. 

Mid-South Project

Territory Road Trip: The Second, Third and Fourth Best Guerrero Brothers

Chavo & Hector Guerrero v Rip Oliver & The Grappler (NWA Battle of the Belts, 9/2/85)

I'm always psyched about new Guerreros footage, not just because they were an awesome tag team, but because any Hector Guerrero is a treat that I can't not be thankful for. This isn't even "new" in the sense that it was recently unearthed or whatever. It opened a pretty famous card and as far as I'm aware that full show has been out there forever. But other than the Flair/Wahoo match I'd never seen anything from it, nor did I know until last night that there was a lengthy Guerreros tag right there jerking the curtain. And this was pretty damn great. It got lots of time to build and they clearly put some thought into what they were going to do in each segment. The Guerreros always throw in some neat - dare I say INNOVATIVE? - stuff and I loved their play on the "babyfaces get whipped into each other" spot. Just before the point of contact they decelerate, then push off one another as they roll backwards and flip up to a standing position. When Oliver and the Grappler try the same immediately afterwards they are much less graceful, and the Guerreros catch them prior to the backwards roll and jump into the row boat sequence using the heels' legs as oars. Hector has a long stint in peril and Oliver and the Grappler were a really fun pair of bruisers. At one point they did a king of the mountain segment with Chavo getting more and more irritated, but every time he lost his head Hector would get thrown into a table or the barricade or sent flying across the floor while hanging off the edge of a chair. They even get a few minutes after the hot tag to take it home, and I liked how Chavo never just ducked out the way of the loaded boot shot, but actively pulled Oliver into its path as he leaped to safety. The Guerreros. What a wrestling family. 

Hector & Mando Guerrero v Badd Company (AWA, 5/14/88)

Well this was like two thirds of a stone cold classic. A few more minutes during the heat segment, maybe a bit less time spent on the babyface shine, a proper finish, we're easily looking at a five and one quarter star affair. Pre-match DDP asks the Guerreros where the nearest Taco Bell is, so Hector grabs his bullwhip and threatens to bring some ruckus. A man who's had to endure that sort of shit more than once. When the match actually starts, Mando does a goofy Karate Kid crane pose in front of Tanaka and Tanaka looks at him like "c'mon man, really?" A man who's had to endure that sort of shit more than once. I actually like how Tanaka played it up like he was almost disconcerted by it. "Okay mate, you can stop now, I've seen it before, we all think you're hilarious." Except Mando kept doing it and then even Hector started and Tanaka must've figured there was something not right with these two. The Guerreros were just a hoot running up the score here, and the crowd went from being sort of apathetic towards them to losing their minds for all of the cool stuff they were doing. They work Tanaka's arm for a while and run a bunch of fun double teams and miscommunication spots, cleaning house to a standing ovation while Mando does a mini spin-a-roonie in the middle of the ring (a mini-roonie!). One or two of the spots didn't come off perfectly, but it's hard to ding guys for trying something different rather than going through the motions. Trongard and Nelson are going wild for all of it on commentary as well, culminating with Mando hitting a bonkers dive from the top rope to the concrete, wiping out both Diamonds (Paul and Dallas Page). What held it back most was the TV time limit, so we never got much of a heat segment despite Tanaka leading into it with his impeccable leaping forearm. Hopefully there's a longer match between them because this could be a killer pairing. 

Territory Road Trip: Texas When I Die

Kevin Von Erich v Chris Adams (No DQ, Gino Hernandez in a Cage) (WCCW, 9/2/85)

Imagine how much hair was torn out by health and safety boards across the country in the 1970s and 80s whenever they caught wind of a "person locked in a cage" match at one of the stupid pro wrestling shows. Some poor bastard locked in a too-small cage thirty feet in the air, hoisted up there in the first place by six people pulling on a rope, the rope then held in place with a fisherman's knot anchored around a stack of chairs partially bolted to the floor. Gino couldn't even stand fully upright in this particular cage, had to ask the small handful of people in charge of raising him to the ceiling to hold on for a second so he could say something on the house mic, then the thing never stopped swaying around when it was actually up in the air. I'm pretty sure people were still sitting directly underneath it, like a cage with a person in it hanging over their heads was just an everyday thing. This was the lead in to the double hair match between the Von Erichs and Dynamic Duo, so of course the heat was nuclear and everyone was completely fucking rabid. It actually started out a little cleaner than you'd think. The intensity was high, but Kevin never went straight for the throat and instead worked the body scissors. And Kevin Von Erich has a great body scissors, the way he'll lift the recipient up and drop them back down hard, really squeeze as hard as possible. Before long it spills to the floor and the last few minutes are manic. Adams was really awesome at desperately fighting out of what Kevin threw at him, and then being vicious in response. Kevin would try for a piledriver and Adams would smash him in the ears by bringing his knees together, then he started choking Kevin with the microphone chord and jabbing the whole microphone into his throat. Adams was not the least bit interested in enduring the claw for the fourteen-thousandth time since he's been in Texas, but Kevin wasn't for giving it up and I loved the bit where he basically dragged Adams into the middle of the ring with the claw hand. You knew Gino would get involved at some point, and it's Texas and there's a Von Erich in there so you probably knew it would backfire, and the finish and post-match scene was insanity. Gino gets his SWANK suit torn to pieces but he and Adams manage to stuff Kevin in the cage (which was lowered to the ring through no small amount of effort by referees and Kevin himself), then Gino whips out scissors and tries to cut Kevin's hair! The fight over the scissors after Kerry hits the ring is borderline terrifying and I'm kind of surprised nobody wound up stabbed. I remember the hair match being awesome so I'll maybe watch it again later. Maybe. 

Michael Hayes v Buddy Roberts (WCCW, 5/13/88)

Remember there was a time when Michael Hayes was not only NOT considered the best Freebird, but actively considered the WORST Freebird? What a ridiculous world we lived in. The DVDVR Texas set was quite the eye-opener for me, as prior to that I had always considered Gordy to be the best wrestler of the Freebirds by a distance, while Hayes was the promo guy (an incredible promo guy, but still). I have been wrong many times in my long and foolish life and I was very wrong about Michael P.S. Hayes. Because Hayes was the godking of the ten-minute bar fight, the rabid cage match or strap match, where he would try and claw someone's eyes out when it became apparent that he couldn't weasel his way out of a fight. He was a cornered animal and hell mend whoever did the cornering (usually a Von Erich). By '88 he was a full blown babyface, and I can't recall how that came about but by Christ this was an amazing babyface Michael Hayes performance. His babyface energy was off the charts here and people were bonkers for him. It would be hard to imagine these two being running buddies five years earlier; hard to imagine a point in time where these Texas crowds were going ballistic for Hayes being the one getting his clock cleaned. He threw some awesome punch combos while Buddy pinballed all over the shop for him, including a sequence early where Hayes popped him off the apron and Roberts landed on the announcer's table. Hayes stomps a mudhole in Roberts in the corner like the herald of Stone Cold and then moonwalks into the middle of the ring and I think someone fainted in the crowd. They brawl around the floor and Hayes clobbers Buddy in the back of the head with a chair and you almost cover your eyes knowing what you know about CTE in the year 2022. This was about seven minutes all in, and I loved it when I watched it 10+ years ago and I'm glad it was as great as I remembered. 

Territory Road Trip: Wildfire!

Tommy Rich & Bill Dundee v Bounty Hunters (Memphis, 2/2/81)

This was peak Memphis. Pre-match the Bounty Hunters (Dave and Jerry Novak, managed by 'Cashbox' Jimmy Kent, whom I honestly have zero recollection of) jump Rich and Dundee on their way to the ring, and Kent slabbers Dundee with a shoe and Dundee is carted away covered in blood. You probably know where this is going. Rich and Dundee are the tag champs and if the match doesn't go ahead they need to forfeit the belts, and obviously Rich says to hell with that and decides to go it alone. Rich was so awesome in this, sticking and moving, always making sure he couldn't be cornered by the Bounty Hunters, throwing quick shots (amazing punches), regrouping, throwing more quick shots (amazing punches), never being static long enough to be caught, a couple times roping the two Bounty Hunters into elbowing each other or having one of them monkey flip the other. He even loaded up his elbow pad with a foreign object and the people were a million percent behind him elbowing a hole in Jerry Novak's forehead and drinking the blood. There was also one bit where he threw four consecutive fist drops that were some of the greatest fist drops you've ever seen. When the numbers game ends up proving too much for him he bleeds everywhere (of course he does) and sells the blood loss amazingly, then Dundee sprints out with a bandaged up head and the last minute is bonkers. Unfortunately the finish is clipped out, but if I know Memphis like I know Memphis then I can only assume we saw what LED to the finish (Dundee getting slabbered with a shoe again), even if we don't get to see the actual pinfall. This ruled. 

Tommy Rich & Steve Armstrong v The Nightmares (Continental, 6/22/85)

Continental is a real blind spot for me. I could probably count on one hand the number of matches I've seen from when it actually became Continental Championship Wrestling, and not too many more from when it was still Southeastern. The TV set up in the Boutwell Auditorium (in Birmingham, Alabama; "deep in the heart of Dixie," as Gordon Solie puts it) has a similar sort of aesthetic to some of the early AAA shows. So there's a thing for you. Anyway this was a real blast. Basically every time I watch the Nightmares they're a hoot and I probably come out of every one of those matches thinking I should watch all the Nightmares footage I can get. This was another awesome pinballing heel performance from them. I don't know whether it was Nightmare #1 or Nightmare #2 (nor do I know which one was which between Davis and Wayne) but one of them takes an absolutely incredible over the top corner bump where they smack their head off the apron on the way down, and it was done with such grace that I can only assume it's a signature spot and I guarantee I'd pop for it every time (though maybe not enough of a signature spot that I've seen them do it before, because I don't think I have). When they finally take over you know they run some phantom tag shenanigans as Rich and Armstrong and the crowd gets irate. Steve Armstrong may not be the most accomplished of the Armstrong family but he does have a superb dropkick, which he threw several of here. There's a follow-up match to this with Johnny Rich joining Tommy so perhaps I should watch that soon. 

Territory Road Trip: Attempted Murder on Turner Broadcasting!

Ric Flair & Sting v The Great Muta & Dick Slater (WCW Clash of the Champions VIII, 9/12/89)

I needed to forget about that Flair/Reed match from the other day so naturally I decided to watch another Ric Flair match. I guess in a lot of ways the '89 run revitalised him, having the Steamboat series and then the babyface turn. I think Flair's even said himself that Funk lit a fire under him. And judging by this it was a fucking inferno because man what a tremendous Flair performance. Maybe it's because he got to work like this so infrequently, touring heel NWA champ as he had been for nearly the entire decade, but when Flair is fired up like he was here it almost makes me wish the NWA business model was a little closer to Vince's and they had Flair tour the country against not the local babyfaces but the local dirtbags and bastards. Because babyface Flair could be sensational, boys. He brought a gigaton of energy to this and never stopped the whole match. I suppose that was his approach to wrestling anyway, heel or face. Keep things moving, always be doing something, don't give the people a chance to get bored, all of that. Whether you enjoy that approach or not is another thing, but it sure translated perfectly here. He was always active on the apron, never let you forget this was a hate feud even if the main source of his hatred wasn't present (Funk was "injured" so Slater was drafted in as a replacement and...come on, that just writes itself), never allowed the heels to let their guard down. When he wasn't wooing and high-fiving Sting he was bursting into the ring unprompted to shred folk with chops, then he went face in peril and that was just as good - maybe even better, honestly - and I guess it's easy to forget how great a tag wrestler Flair was. Early on he gets knocked to the floor and Muta catches him with a plancha, then Sting catches Muta with a plancha, then Slater jumps Sting, then Flair starts throwing chops and punching noses and the crowd just erupts. When Sting takes a turn being beat on there's an amazing moment where Slater and Muta have him on the floor over by their corner, so Flair runs all the way around and goes bonkers on them. A phenomenal performance all round. Under normal circumstances the non-finish would've been a bit of a bummer, but I'd suggest these are not normal circumstances and you don't really care about the non-finish when Funk shows up with his arm in a cast, the sleeve torn off his suit jacket, and tries to literally suffocate Flair with a plastic bag. The Flair/Funk feud was something else. 

Territory Road Trip: Funk in New York (by way of Toronto)!

I've been watching a lot of random 80s US territory stuff lately. Just hopping around promotions, from up north to as far south as the border will allow, watching studio matches, arena matches, some promos, some angles, just whatever takes my fancy when looking through match lists and whatever. I'll see where it takes me.

Terry Funk v Steve Gatorwolf (WWF from Maple Leaf Gardens, 10/13/85)

This was basically Terry Funk being as Terry Funk as possible in order to make a purse out of a gatorwolf's ear. He was ten thousand percent ridiculous and if you like the idea of Terry Funk being a ridiculous idiot against enhancement talent then you will probably enjoy this. Alternatively, if you are a joyless sack of meat and potatoes and do not like the idea of Terry Funk being a ridiculous idiot against enhancement talent then you can go and watch whatever else it is you people like. Funk was determined to make Steve Gatorwolf look like someone who had even the tiniest chance of victory. That often entailed stooging around in absurd fashion. "How can I make this feller look like he has a shot of winning? Perhaps I'll have him bonk my head off the turnbuckle and I'll sell it by staggering all the way over to the opposite corner, bonk my own head off that turnbuckle and then nearly fall through the ring ropes over there." Funk clotheslines Gatorwolf over the top rope and nearly goes with him, then teeter-totters on the rope for about fifteen seconds waiting for his bewildered opponent to do something. He falls off that Maple Leaf Gardens stage twice, then on his way back into the ring he takes a kick at Monsoon and I love how Funk riling up Gorilla was a nightly occurrence with him. Gorilla would bite nearly every time (he didn't this time on account of the fact that it MIGHT'VE been an accident (it was not)) and Funk would find a new way to stir up shit every match. Prior to the finish Funk tried to apply the sleeper three separate times and Gatorwolf slipped out of each attempt, managed to even apply his own to Funk, but in the end you knew who was getting jabbed in the chest with a branding iron. I can't think of many wrestlers in history that you could put in there with Funk and their presence would make me not want to watch the match. 

I'm a Man with a Plan and a Taste for Freedom, and I got 34 Acres on the Mid-South Line

Ric Flair v Butch Reed (10/11/85)

Well, this is a match that happened. It was pretty Flair by the numbers, and I figure if you're one of the seven people who reads this thing then you've seen enough instances or read enough words on Flair by the numbers that you don't need another thousand of them today. It started out fine. Reed worked the headlock and he has a great headlock, so that was okay. Flair couldn't mount any offence so he threw some quick chops, and I thought Reed sold the initial impact of them great, showed that they stung like a bastard, but then immediately wanted to punch Flair's head off and the ref' had to talk him down (a bit too forcefully, because we're dealing with Tommy Gilbert). It had the feel of Flair trying to get under Reed's skin, maybe goad him into making a mistake. It was decent stuff. Then at some point they just kind of dropped everything else and started running through the signature Flair spots, including the bridging backslide that felt about as out of place as I've seen it. It was like they worked the first ten minutes of a 40-minute match before shifting to the last ten minutes of the 20-minute match it actually was. I love Reed to death but I'd rather watch him work a series with the Iron Sheik at this point. 

Ted DiBiase v Bob Sweetan (10/13/85)

This was pretty similar to their match from a couple days earlier, just without the taped fist stipulation. But taped fists or not, many punches were thrown. I feel like Sweetan's a guy who does a lot of stuff - or at least works in a way - that I like in theory, but watching one match of his every sixteen months or so makes it difficult for those matches to really engage me. I'm not likely to learn anything new about DiBiase at this point so I'm looking to see how Sweetan works with him, how he throws in any hope spots, how he sells for DiBiase, all that fun nerdy shit you think about when you've been reading about wrestling on the internet for like twenty years. He's GRUFF but sympathetic enough and I liked him trying to smash DiBiase's head through a table in a rage. He will also bleed, as you may very well expect from a man who looks like Bob Sweetan. This was pretty alright. 

Mid-South Project

Piper Stops Wrestlers' Careers, the Weak Spot was Their Ears, Scorpion Darts Hit Their Mark, Pierce Their Heart with Silver Spears

Roddy Piper v Dick Slater (Mid-Atlantic, 4/24/83) - GOOD

This was a fun Slater showcase. I don't know if it was intended to be that, but either way it felt like it was his match and Piper sort of let him lead. It worked pretty well, other than a bit in the middle where Piper made his comeback and Slater basically shut him down and abruptly went back on offence. We got one amazing Hot Rod punch flurry, an amazing eye poke, a string of headbutts on all fours - a low key Piper performance, but a good one regardless. "Slater is a poor man's Terry Funk" is probably a tired talking point by now, and might even be a little unfair (they were pretty much contemporaries and started wrestling only a few years apart, so it's not exactly the same as a million indie wrestlers aping Johnny Saint), but it's hard not to make the comparison watching something like this. I don't even mean it as a knock really, because Funk might be the best wrestler ever and if the film was a little grainier I could've been convinced this was actually Terry Funk at points. The mannerisms are striking, from the obvious stuff like the seesaw in the ropes spot to the more subtle, like how he would throw jab combos or even just the way he'd move at times. But it wasn't just the Funk similarities. There were parts of this where it looked like Slater was doing his best Harley Race impression too. He did a falling elbow drop that was pure Race, then hit a falling headbutt and it was the best Harley impression I've ever seen, the way he stepped back and measured Piper, took a wide base, seemed to fall forward in slow motion, even the way he connected with the headbutt. In all the years of Triple H doing Ric Flair and Harley Race cosplays I've never seen him capture the ESSENCE of Harley like Slater did with that one headbutt. 

Complete & Accurate Hot Rod

Anjoh Wasn't Trying to do No Harm, He was just Trying to Prove He was Tough. What He Lacked in Years, He Made Up in Guts

Yoji Anjoh v Tatsuo Nakano (New Japan, 8/29/87) - GOOD

This is one of the earliest Anjoh match I've seen. Maybe the earliest Nakano match. Both were still raw here, but they had twelve minutes to go and do their thing and by the end it was a nifty little contest. You could see some of that tetchiness both would soon welcome into their lives, though Anjoh wasn't a complete asshole yet and Nakano was still a little too lean to be considered the portly wee squash-faced monster he'd become. That what they did was rough around the edges added to the feel of it, like these were two rookies out to put their name in peoples' mouths. The kicks weren't always the prettiest, but they were thrown like they were intended to land hard and a few times they did, including one awesome high kick in the corner that hit Nakano flush in the neck. Anjoh had some great looking takedowns where he'd grab a limb first, and I don't know if it was intentional or not but Nakano took at least three of them by landing almost on his head. One was a hammerlock takedown and usually the recipient of that would roll through onto their back, but Nakano didn't and basically DDTd himself with his head all twisted. Maybe this was a thing he planned on doing going forward, a niche that he wanted to carve out for himself, like the Necro Butcher taking powerslams on his face. I reckon there would've been a place for that in shoot style. I guess he changed his mind and instead leaned into the guy whose nose would bleed in every single match. For his own safety the latter was probably the wisest course of action. 

Complete & Accurate Anjoh

Revisiting 90s Joshi #34

Shinobu Kandori v Yumiko Hotta (AJW, 3/10/99)

Yeah, this is the good stuff. I half wondered if this match wasn't a myth and it never actually existed, because despite reading about it over the last couple years I could never find it on yon internet. But lo and behold our favourite Eastern European Facebook came through in the clutch! It's very different from their '98 match, much more deliberate, a bit stop-start in terms of pacing, which gave it a bit of a shoot style vibe. Ikeda/Ishikawa works again as a comparison, at least in the sense that they wallop each other many times. I liked that those big shots felt like huge moments though, partly because they used them sort of sparingly. There was a tentativeness to what they were doing, where you knew one of them could reel off a KO shot at any moment, then when they did you bought it as a potential knockout, whether it was the first minute or the fifteenth. Lots of low key moments of nastiness to go with the overt in-your-face holy shit I can't believe she just did that moments of nastiness, like Hotta punting Kandori in the wrist as her arm was hammerlocked and Kandori making a point of selling it for the next few minutes (or maybe it wasn't selling). At one point Hotta full on volleyed Kandori in the spine and Kandori opening and closing her hand like she had nerve damage was an incredible little piece of selling. The grappling wasn't flashy at all, but like everything else it had an underlying danger, and on a couple of occasions one of them would snap into a hold and the other would need to scramble to the ropes. It was pretty awesome how they'd build tension like that and the crowd responded to it big time. Hotta using an old fashioned arm wringer to set up a brutal knee to the face was also amazing. I suppose I could see the finish maybe falling a wee bit flat for some, but I thought it was really cool how technically Kandori got up before the 10 count, but she wasn't actually in the ring when she did. Also the punt that put her down was brutal as fuck, because obviously.

RINGS Maelstrom: 1st (3/25/96)

Emil Krastev v Yuri Bekichev 

A spirited little contest. Didn't have a clue who either of them were but the customary google search tells me Krastev competed at the Sydney Olympics for Bulgaria in boxing, while Bekichev is - or at least would become, based on a glance at his late-career fight record - an actual mixed martial artist, though I don't know how many of the martial arts he'd dabbled in mixing at this point in time. I would imagine not very many as this was fought entirely on the feet. Which is probably not shocking when one guy is wearing boxing gloves and the other doesn't attempt to take him to the ground inside four seconds (suggesting he himself would rather the fight not go there). There were a couple awkward moments where they seemed unsure how to react to something, a hesitancy to maybe force the issue and stray a little too close to the shootfighting. At one point Bekichev took a kick to the face and sort of stood there like "what the fuck mate that HURT," as if Maeda suggested this was all merely going to be an illusion and so the possibility of ACTUALLY getting smacked in the face hadn't occurred to our man. But they both grew into it as it went and when Krastev unloaded with a flurry of jabs and a by god spinning backfist I was very much on board. I even hoped he'd get up and we'd get another couple minutes by the end. 

Wataru Sakata v Christopher Haseman 

A short bit of business that I'm thinking may have been a shoot. Not a whole lot happened. There was a bit of struggle on the ground that trickled over to the ropes, they were stood up, Sakata caught Hasemen's leg and after another brief struggle a nice heel hook scored the tap. Watch it while you wait for the kettle to boil, maybe. It's your life, don't let me stop you. 

Mitsuya Nagai v Mikhail Ilioukhine

Ilioukhine is the bomb. He's a short, pale, stocky wee tank of a man, like a Russian Dynamite Kid who will throw you around like a sack of flour. His mere BEING is a continual advance and Nagai can barely do anything about it, especially on the ground. Some of the setups are a little clunky, like Ilioukhine's cross-armbreaker, but he's inventive and the crowd certainly don't seem to mind too much. I guess this boils down to striker v grappler, which is a tale old as time when it comes to the shoot style. Ilioukhine practically ragdolls Nagai at will but Nagai can cause him real trouble on the feet, so not shockingly that's where he tries to keep it. The one time Ilioukhine tried to respond he fired off a piddly leg kick that Nagai outwardly laughed at, retaliated with a much more effective flurry of his own, so Ilioukhine swiftly took him down and went about bending his arms and legs at weird angles. Ilioukhine also looks like a fella who can take a shot to the face so Nagai needed to make a TKO look convincing, and that palm strike to end things looked fairly convincing. Ilioukhine has at least one stone cold RINGS classic. This wasn't that but it was awfully fun. 

Tsuyoshi Kohsaka v Hans Nyman 

This was nifty as well, and also very much your striker v grappler contest. Nyman always has pretty looking kicks, all of them with a real nice snap to them, but they don't always look like there's a ton of meat behind them. They quite often look like kicks thrown by a guy not actually trying to knock out his opponent *for real* for real, you know? Not every kick he threw in this looked lethal, but some of them did and Kohsaka was absolutely great at selling them, like when he took a glancing blow to the back of the head and half stumbled into a nasty body kick. He gets the full Fujiwara point for his selling performance in this fight. Kohsaka's strategy was obviously to hit the mat but Nyman wasn't about to engage there at all. He basically grabbed the rope any time there was even a chance he'd be caught in a problematic situation, which didn't always make for a very compelling contest but at the same time I guess it was realistic enough. I'm a sucker for someone pulling a rabbit out the hat right when all hope seems lost, so even if the finish was a little on the nose I dug it. 

Volk Han v Dick Vrij

This wasn't as good as their match from 1992, but it was fought along the same lines. A shorter bargain bin version of it. Vrij is no fool and wants nothing to do with Han on the mat, or anywhere in the building if grappling is involved. He wants to swing for the fences and if he can't score a knockout he'll settle for racking up points via downs. It's a strategy that serves him pretty well, but Han will always be dangerous and Vrij immediately goes to the ropes whenever he's grabbed. There's no attempt to escape by any other means - it would be stupid to bother so why even waste anybody's time with the pretence? A fun six minutes, as you'd probably expect. 

Yoshihisa Yamamoto v Bitsadze Tariel

Before this show I'd largely been focusing on the early years of RINGS, the furthest I'd gotten when writing everything up being 1993. At that point Yamamoto was a pretty fun rookie starting to find his feet, usually pairing off with Masayuki Naruse in a sort of young lions series. Fast forward a few years and here's Yamamoto in a main event, fresh off a win over the mighty Volk Han a few months earlier, ready to push on and maybe even climb to Ace status. He was obviously more assured here than in '92-'93, though he always had a bit of a chip on his shoulder even as a wee lad. Based on the size difference you'd expect Tariel to come out and force the issue, but it's Yamamoto who throws forty palm thrusts as soon as the bell rings. He fought this like a young phenom who was on a roll, who knew he was ready to put the pieces together and confidence was high. Tariel got pretty fun in his RINGS run but he maybe wasn't quite there yet. He was a bit hesitant at points, where you'd expect him to press on and knee Yamamoto in the spleen while he's buckled over in pain there, and it never quite happens. Maybe he is the gentle sort of bear. Alas, the gentle sort do not last very long in the Fighting Network. It's been ages since I've watched any late 90s Yamamoto and I'm hyped to do so again, but I've never really seen much from his "in between" years so that should be cool as well. 

Complete & Accurate RINGS

Fujiwara v Funaki!

Yoshiaki Fujiwara v Masakatsu Funaki (UWF, 5/4/89)

The king back. This was Fujiwara's first match in UWF 2.0 since jumping over from New Japan, and I guess it's fitting that it was against the shoot style prince. There was something about Funaki around this period. While he didn't necessarily act like a prick, he sort of had that demeanour. You know the kind. He's all cut up, super athletic, good looking, has the incredible 80s metal drummer hair. He's the shit and he knows it. Fujiwara's old and wrinkled, has a buzz cut that he did at home with an egg beater, has worn the same black trunks forever, his white socks have faded more to grey, nothing about him screams box office. But he's as dangerous as they come and every single person in the building knows it. There was some really slick grappling in the first few minutes, which probably made up my favourite stretch of the fight. Then Funaki's temper started to flare and Fujiwara fed off it, as has always been his wont. Funaki would go for a flurry of strikes and Fujiwara would duck and weave and grin like you'll need to try harder than that, young man. It made Funaki almost petulant, especially with how he kicked his way out of a kneebar using the heel of his foot and looking at Fujiwara like how dare he even try and submit the prodigy. There's a strange restart after Fujiwara gets disqualified for headbutting Funaki in the face, and the finish wasn't great, but this had some decent stuff and I really should watch their PWFG bout already.